AP Film Studies: Chasing Dreams

¡Three Amigos! gets the live musical treatment you didn’t know it needed.

Steve Coker just wanted to be Chevy Chase.

It's an understandable wish, especially for anybody who wore out a VHS tape of Fletch or Caddyshack. Chase was many things to many children in the '80s. But for Coker, a Portland actor, Dusty Bottoms was the ultimate.

To quote The Big Lebowski's Walter Sobchak (himself quoting Theodore Herzl), "If you will it, Dude, it is no dream." Now Coker, who once played Sobchak in a live Lebowski, is donning Chase's iconic chaps for StageWorks Ink's Three Amigos, Live! show, opening this weekend at the Clinton.

We've seen a rash of live stage versions of cult movies lately. There is Point Break Live, the local Hot Gun take on Top Gun, the touring Evil Dead Live and a local adaptation of Manos: The Hands of Fate, which is largely considered the worst movie of all time. But this is different: a reverent tribute to a funny film, rather than a parody.

Make no mistake, the 1986 movie, which stars Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin as silent-film stars roped into saving a Mexican village from the evil El Guapo, isn't the most revered entry in any of its leads' filmographies (well, maybe Short's). Ask folks too old for the film's silly, slapstick shtick, and they'll call it garbage. But to the right people, it's a bona fide classic. There's a singing bush, for God's sake. That's comic gold.

Coker and his company are in the latter camp, transforming the movie into a minimalist musical packed with a robust live score. It's what you should expect from a crew that includes Blitzen Trapper's Brian Koch in a hilariously large sombrero.

"We play the music super-serious. We play to our strengths," says Coker, the fringe group's artistic director. "Obviously we don't spend money on props or sets. All of our sets are the same: two boxes. We just move them around and let the performances really shine."

And shine they have. StageWorks didn't exactly come out of the woodwork here, but it hasn't been hogging the spotlight either. The group has been packing unlikely houses for a while, starting with the Jack London Bar for live readings of Coker's Varsity Cheerleader Werewolves From Outer Space, then live adaptations of films like Xanadu and Flash Gordon, which is now a tradition where the company recruits kids from the School of Rock to rip through classic Queen songs.

Amigos will get a similar treatment. The films' musical numbers remain intact—including "My Little Buttercup" and a potential cameo by a certain scene-stealing reptile—with on-point additions written by the likes of Freddie Fender and singin' cowboy Gene Autry.

Lest you worry the show will be anything short of reverent, take comfort.

"We're staying as true to the script as we can. We don't over-rehearse, and we let the show develop," says Coker. "It really starts to come to life when the audience shows up. We'll ad lib, and there will be some audience participation. They can expect the pieces that are iconic, but for us to amp it up as well."

Chevy Chase might approve. Not the current Chevy Chase, who's kind of an asshole. Amigos-era Chase. The one who counts, and in whose spirit StageWorks is performing.

Fandango - Movie Tickets Online

SEE IT: Three Amigos, Live! is at the Clinton Street Theater, stageworksink.com. Thursday-Saturday, March 31-April 9.

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