Here is what I know about the musical Cats: It is about cats. The actors wear leotards and face paint. There is a song called “Memory”. “Memory” is a pretty good song. One cat is called “Rum Tum Tugger”. Everyone says “Rum Tum Tugger” with a completely straight face. There are other cats. I do not know their names. Cats ran on Broadway for a really long time, like a scary long time, like a “brainwashed the audience” length of time. I also learned on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt that Cats is just a long-running scam giving unemployed actors the pretense of work.
Please don’t ever tell me anything about Cats. Do not come into my inbox or my mentions to explain that, actually, the real cats are the friends we made along the way. I want to remain as pure and unspoiled as possible for the Cats movie coming out in December. I want to know the exact extent to which knowing about Cats changes a person, and the only way to correctly measure that is to not know anything about Cats and then go see it and discover what is Cats as it happens in real time. Please let me complete this important scientific work in peace.
The first trailer for Cats comes out Friday. Today, to hype the trailer, we have a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Cats. I am very disappointed that no one is dressed like a cat. I was hoping the Cats movie would be actors dressed like cats, but it is apparently all done with technology. I am sad that we will never see Idris Elba in a cat leotard. I am disappointed I won’t be able to prove my hypothesis that Taylor Swift has her own elaborate cat costume she brought from home. But now I am wondering if we are going to be treated to realistic cats singing and dancing like The Lion King. This could be horrible. But is it more horrible than people dressed like cats? Is ANYTHING more horrible than people dressed like cats?
From this teaser I am trying to decode what is Cats and I cannot tell. All I get is “BONKERS”. The sets are oversized to give the human performers “cat perspective”. There is a tremendous amount of talent involved. Tom Hooper is the director; he makes mawkish movies with British people. Is Cats mawkish? It seems too insane for that, but this is Tom Hooper. Would he even be attracted to this material if there wasn’t some emotionally manipulative angle to exploit?
I love cats. I live with one, she’s a complete f-cking nightmare and I love her anyway. Cats have interesting personalities, and unlike dogs, they make you earn their love—cats are more emotionally honest creatures. One thing about cats, though, is I don’t wonder about their inner lives. My cat sleeps like 18 hours a day. When she is awake, she has two modes: “leave me alone” and “I’m gonna kill this thing over here”. Cats act all mysterious and wise but they are just assholes with only two thoughts: sleep and murder. I’m not convinced this warrants an entire Broadway show-cum-movie.
Based on my experience of cat ownership, I assume Cats is two-thirds people dressed like cats sleeping, and one-third attempted murder. Don’t tell me if I’m wrong. I am preparing a list of questions for when I see Cats including, “Is Cats at all like the classic 1942 horror movie Cat People?” and “Which one of these cat-people is singing ‘Memory’?”. This teaser does not definitively answer “What is Cats?” but I will be conducting experiments throughout the year and shall share the results of my research in December.
