The Sound of Music

I wouldn't call it a strict tradition, but some time in the Christmas season most years, my family sits down and watches The Sound of Music. My brother hates the movie, but my mother, sister and I love it. I'll have to ask my dad his opinion, but I'm willing to bet he enjoys it, too. The thing is, it feels sort of weird to be watching the movie when we're not quite in the holiday season (despite the decorations you may have seen cropping up at your local retail establishments), even if the movie is by no means Christmas themed.

I love this movie. Love, love, love it. So this reunion was fun for me, and it meant that at the end of an Oprah episode, I was actually sort of sad there wasn't more. That was a first, though I might experience it again tomorrow when they air Oprah and Gayle's Yosemite Adventure. Two fun, good Oprah episodes in a row? Why, a girl could get used to this.

What's that you say? Monday features Portia de Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres? Well, suddenly I have come crashing back to earth, and we haven't even gotten through the two good ones yet. Thanks a lot, Opes.

Oprah, I think most of your viewers are pretty confident about what show they're watching when they tune in to you, so maybe we could ease off with your name on some of these graphics, huh? Is there a reason that the "O" in "Oprah" has to be as big as the title of the movie? Can't we just know that we're watching Oprah and get a graphic that says "The Sound of Music Reunion" or something?

The show started off with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer talking with Oprah. Plummer mentioned having a crush on Andrews, but said he stayed far away because she had just had a baby at the time they were shooting the film. Plummer was sort of a feisty old dude, and I liked it. Plus, he was one hell of a handsome man when he was younger. I think I've always been secretly in love with Captain Von Trapp. 

Not very long into the interview, Plummer got out a whistle and blew it, which called in the very grown-up actors who played the Von Trapp children. Plummer only blew once, instead of the long, complicated sequence Von Trapp uses to introduce his children to Maria in the film, but it was a nice touch anyway. Oprah's crew went all out for this episode, changing the set so that there was a staircase on each side, just like the foyer of the Von Trapp home in the movie. The seven actors who played the children came down one of those staircases and stood around their make-believe parents for a few moments before Oprah told us they would be coming back later in the show.

Then it was time for the one-on-one with Julie Andrews, during which she discussed the 1997 throat surgery that left her voice permanently damaged. The operation to deal with muscle striations was not successful, and now her range is completely gone. She says she can hit a few low notes pretty well, and can "...sing the hell out of 'Old Man River' if you really want [her] to." She found her voice in publishing children's books with her daughter, and has (perhaps somewhat ironically) found a career in voice acting, in the Shrek series and most recently in Despicable Me.

The lover of all things pop culture, Rosie O'Donnell, grew up wishing Andrews could be her mother, a fact we learned in a taped interview the Oprah crew did with Rosie a few weeks ago. This was not as notable as a couple of other stories from "regular" people, though. Oprah wanted us to see how the film affected people out there, so we saw interviews with three of them. The first one was stupid, compared to the two that followed. This girl sings "I Have Confidence" whenever she needs a little extra boost, like before a job interview, or even her own wedding. Bo-ring. You know what's good? Receiving a cochlear impact and having "the hills are alive..." be the very first song you hear in your life. Or even being a 23-year-old guy who gets sent to Vietnam and watches The Sound of Music 127 times during your one-year deployment. Get out of here with that "I Have Confidence" crap.

Oprah was giddy during this whole episode, which makes me think she actually really cared about this movie, and really appreciated the fact that she got the whole cast together for the first time since the film's release. When they talked about "My Favorite Things," Oprah was so proud of herself for saying, "I LOVE favorite things!" Nice tie-in. It would be awesome if all those people in the audience for "Oprah's Ultimate Favorite Things" (airing next month) left that taping with arms full of brown paper packages tied up with string. And inside those brown paper packages? Warm woolen mittens and schnitzel with noodles.

So, on to the children, who are not at all children anymore. The standouts: Liesl looks and sounds exactly the same. She was 21 (not "16 going on 17") during the filming, and had a big crush on Plummer, who taught her how to drink during the production. The girl who played Gretl couldn't swim, which made the scene where they all tumble out of the rowboat just a bit more precarious. Andrews was supposed to fall forward so that she could grab the little girl as quickly as possible, but she fell backward accidentally, and says she never swam the breast stroke so fast in her life. Gretl swallowed a bunch of water and then puked it back up, but obviously lived to tell the tale. The actor who played Friedrich grew six inches during the six months of shooting. And now he appears to be gay. There's no correlation there; just two facts about the dude. And the girl who played Louise grew up to be Robert Urich's second wife. Weird.

There was some awesome behind-the-scenes footage, featuring film that has clearly been amazingly restored. It looks so cool, and I'm assuming it's part of the extras on the new edition of the movie that comes out next week. On Blu-Ray.

A weird commercial for Dove aired toward the end, with Lea Michele of Glee singing "My Favorite Things." It started as a solo, then they mixed in Maria Von Trapp singing with her. Michele's voice is perfect, but the commercial was weird.

They showed an awesome clip from some 1973 show, during which Andrews and the real Maria Von Trapp sang "Edelweiss" together. It was goosebumps inducing for sure.

And speaking of goosebumps, at the very end of the show, four great grandchildren of the real Von Trapps, who are the new "Von Trapp Family Singers" sang "Edelweiss" while the cast and audience looked on. The audience did that dumb thing where they put their arms around one another and sway back and forth, and I wanted to smack them for nearly ruining a really nice moment. When the camera cut to the cast watching, Plummer looked like he was on the verge of tears. When I looked over at Katie, she was past the verge and already crying. I was moved, but managed to hold back the waterworks. I'll save that for when I watch the movie again in another month or so, hopefully on Blu-Ray.

Tomorrow: Black people go camping.