Lost in transition ... Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the 2005 movie version of The Producers. Photograph: Andrew Schwartz/AP
There's a new recycling process evident in the arts: the decent film which spawns a lousy musical now spawns an ever more dreadful movie. The first such was The Producers: a classic screen comedy and, at least in its original Broadway incarnation, with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, an enjoyable night at the theatre. Transferred back to film, however, with the same leads, it seemed flat. Watching it, you had the feeling (which it shared with the film version of The History Boys) that acting these characters was by now tired second-nature to its cast.
Now comes Hairspray. Originally a sweet-natured 1988 John Waters flick, it made the journey to the Great White Way - via a test run in Seattle - in 2002, where it has played ever since. Now it's been adapted into another film, this time with an all-star cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Queen Latifah and, as the heroine's plus-size, blousy mom (a role immortalised by the late Divine), a cross-dressing John Travolta. Clearly, after the wretched farrago of Battlefield Earth, there are no depths to which he will not sink.
Grey Gardens, the Maysles Brothers' superb 1976 documentary about the squalid lives of two distant relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, was recently adapted for the stage by Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, and proved one of the surprise hits of the 2006 season. Inevitably, it's now being developed as a feature, reportedly to star Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. No word, as yet, on whether it will be an all-singing, all-dancing affair. Meanwhile, of course, there is another Mel Brooks adaptation in the pipeline - this time, a musical take on Young Frankenstein.
All this is a little like watching a dog consume its own vomit. We have become a witless, disposable culture, and it shows most clearly in our popular entertainment. Bad enough that theatre should look to the pop charts for inspiration; that it should also go scrounging from Hollywood - where original ideas are rarer than full-fat lattés - is little short of terrifying. How long before some enterprising young producer seizes upon the chance to make a movie of the musical of Spamalot? ("This 'Knights Who Say Ni!' stuff ... this is gold!") Or a musical re-telling of that sparkling comedy classic, Legally Blonde?
