BOOTLEG FILES 924: “Waiting for Godot” (2024 version of the Beckett classic).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Not cleared for home entertainment release.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Doesn’t seem likely at the moment.
At the moment, one of the hottest tickets on Broadway is the revival of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. But if you can’t make it to Broadway or don’t have the money to afford tickets, fear not because an inventive, enchanting, and under-the-radar version of the Beckett classic can be seen for free on YouTube.
The creative force behind this version is Rudi Azank, who translated Beckett’s original French-language text “En Attendant Godot” into English, keeping the bawdy humor that was bowdlerized out for the original English-language productions in the 1950s. Azank used this version of the play in 2013 to create a web series called “While Waiting for Godot” while he was a film student at New York University. This production was later expanded into the feature-length version “Waiting for Godot,” which Azank re-edited over the years into slightly different versions.
I’ve seen multiple filmed versions of “Waiting for Godot” and this is, hands down, the most creative and entertaining. As the director and screenwriter Azank imaginatively updated Beckett’s play to contemporary Manhattan at twilight, where the bedraggled Didi (Azank) and Gogo (Ron Shelly) wait through the night for the elusive Mr. Godot. The pair are lost souls amid the neon glow of the overnight hours, dwarfed by the grand avenues and skyscrapers and ignored by the few people who pass by them.
Azank and Shelly are wonderful actors, and their extreme youth creates a fascinating shift in appreciating the work. Most productions have Didi and Gogo as older men who living on the outskirts of society – tramps who have been trampled by life. But in this film, they are young men who exist as misfits in a power society that is not willing to open any doors for them. Azank’s seedy exuberance and Shelly’s morose pessimism are the yin-and-yang of a coin no one wants. They are nearly cartoonish in their outlandish outsider vibes, to the point that Hanna-Barbera style sound effects punctuate their actions.
Azank’s Didi carries a suitcase with a saxophone, but he never plays the instrument, and he also has a 2013-era cell phone that gets a text message that Godot is delayed. He retrieves a discarded cigar stub from the sidewalk and puffs furiously on it to achieve a brief inhale of second-hand nicotine. Shelly’s Gogo has no material belongings beyond what he is wearing, and his only possession is his imagination that briefly erupts in an unexpected full-color sequence with him and Didi in a verdant park.
One casting change from Beckett’s text has the boy who eventually informs the duo that Godot is not coming reinvented as a young adult dressed like an office intern, complete with name tag on his sweater. It is much funnier, giving the impression that Godot is important enough that he has interns on his staff.
But the biggest change involves Pozzo and Lucky, who are now females. The film begins with Lucky launching into the gibberish monologue, and Molly Densmore does a brilliant job rolling off seemingly nonsensical sentences (Azank’s editing masterfully frames the precise cadences of the speech). A chic J. Moliere is a sexier Pozzo than Beckett fans might be used to seeing – with her unique blend of sultriness and exasperation, she is worthy of her own film. It is also fun to see Didi and Gogo pair off briefly with Pozzo and Lucky in a brief display of adolescent adoration. Mercifully, Pozzo and Lucky’s reappearance later in the play is omitted here, which is fine since their impression is so strong that the follow-up as imagined by Beckett would have been out of place.
Azank laced the soundtrack with Great American Songbook selections by the likes of Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and Nat “King” Cole. The rights clearance to that musical accompaniment, plus the unlikelihood (I assume) of a student filmmaker clearing the film rights from the Beckett estate, will keep this “Waiting for Godot” out of commercial home entertainment release. Mercifully, this YouTube upload brings the simply wonderful reinvention of Beckett’s masterwork into a new peak in underground cinema. Bravo, Rudi Azank and company, for a job very well done!
Heads Up: This column is taking the next two weeks off in observance of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. I’ll see you again on January 9, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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