Little Shop of Horrors (2003 Broadway cast album) = Finished

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEYMOUR

I WAS WRONG ABOUT SEYMOUR

It's amazing how much listening to the stage version (specifically the 2003 Broadway revival recommended by Mike Bithell, natch) changed how I viewed the movie. I still love it, but decisions I previously saw as sacred or intentional are now revealed to be...something else.

Let's recap some changes in the stage version:
- The dentist gets a song begging Seymour to help him before asphyxiating
- Seymour lures Mushnik into Audrey II's mouth
- Seymour is far more pushy/Hollywood Nice Guy to Audrey, and sees himself as a hero even as he feeds her to Audrey II
- Audrey II takes over the world because Seymour is an ambitious glory-seeking bastard shrouded in a cloak of his own assumed victimhood

Just a few minuscule additions and subtractions totally change the framing of the story. Seymour is a selfish person after all, caught up in his own hero myth--one that Audrey tragically buys into while dying a death that is fundamentally his fault. In the 80s movie, the nozzle on the gas mask snaps off in the Dentist's hands. He's presented as a threat all the way up until he dies. In the musical, Seymour's inaction isn't one borne of fear: it's one of keeping clean hands, even as he shows both the desire and willingness to do something truly horrible.

It turns out Moranis' performance doesn't just capture Seymour's mixture of passive victimhood and earnest, selfish desire--it redeems him in a way that the script changes barely support.

I enjoy the movie more, but it's both vital and chilling to consider how a few framing changes--a couple of lines--stand between Seymour being a monster or a saint.
Maybe he wasn't as much of a saint as I thought in the first place.