Falsettos (2017) on Netflix
NR20172h 23mComedyDramaMusicRomance
In 1979 New York, Marvin has left his wife Trina for his lover Whizzer but still wants one family. Their ten-year-old son Jason fears he will grow up gay like his father.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb8.5/10360 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1979 New York City, Marvin has moved out on his wife, Trina, to live with his lover, Whizzer, and he wants Whizzer folded into the family he left. No one in the arrangement is happy. Trina goes to the psychiatrist Mendel to talk about the end of her marriage and her fear that she failed as a wife, and Mendel is taken with her. Jason, Marvin and Trina's ten-year-old son, has mood swings and worries that he will turn out gay like his father, so his parents send him to Mendel for therapy. Marvin and Whizzer, who share little beyond attraction, argue over Marvin's wish to cast Whizzer in the role of a homemaker.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Falsettos (2017)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before the 2019 off West End production opened in London, more than 20 Jewish actors and playwrights, among them Miriam Margolyes and Maureen Lipman, signed an open letter to the producers, concerned about the lack of Jewish presence within the cast and creatives.
- William Finn struggled over where to place Jason's bar mitzvah in Falsettos, and the idea of setting it in the hospital came to him in a dream.
- The haftorah Jason reads at his bar mitzvah was originally the same one read at William Finn's own bar mitzvah, but Finn got bored writing it and added words that are grammatically incorrect in Hebrew.
- Hoping for a logo as recognizable as the one for Cats, producers Barry and Fran Weissler used a Keith Haring drawing of two adults and a child holding up a bright red heart. Barry Weissler said that because Keith died of AIDS, many people felt the drawing was meant to attract a gay audience.
- William Finn, who played Little League baseball as a child, invited Sandy Koufax to a Los Angeles performance of Falsettos. The song "The Baseball Game" jokes about Jewish athleticism while naming Koufax and Hank Greenberg, and Koufax was reportedly offended by the joke.
- Stephen Bogardus, who played Whizzer in the original cast of both one-act shows, said director James Lapine came up with the racquetball scenes in Falsettoland and that he and his racquetball partner Bogardus added racquetball terminology to the dialogue.
- James Lapine was inspired to revisit Falsettos for the 2016 revival after seeing The Normal Heart with a recent college graduate, who asked him at intermission, "Well, I kind of know about AIDS, but was it really like this?" The revival was partly meant to teach LGBTQ youth about gay life in the 1980s.
- After his one-act musical In Trousers received sharply unfavorable reviews, William Finn considered abandoning musical theater and attending medical school.
