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Barry Levinson and Sheryl Crow remake ‘Diner’ for Broadway stage

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Eddie, Shrevie and Boogie are heading to Broadway.

Production company Base Entertainment announced Tuesday that it will mount a musical version of Barry Levinson’s 1982 seriocomic hit ‘Diner’--and has enlisted Levinson to write the book and Sheryl Crow to write the lyrics and music.

Tony Award winner Kathleen Marshall (she won three times for best choreography) will direct the show, which will come to Broadway after playing a limited road engagement in an as-yet unnamed city.

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Levinson’ poignant male-centric tale centers on twentysomething friends growing up in Baltimore in the 1960s.The film featured then up-and-coming actors including Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg and Mickey Rourke in leading roles and is told via the conversations of the group, who gather in a diner to reminisce as one of them gets married.

‘Diner’ completists will recall a television pilot in 1983, so it’s not like a spinoff is without precedent. But unlike many of the other movies that have become Broadway musicals, there isn’t an obvious hook to ‘Diner’; the movie is, of course, more of a rambling discussion about life and love than a series of set pieces with obvious musical connections.

The movie-theater pipeline has flowed heavily in recent years; ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ became ‘Spamalot,’ and Disney has turned seemingly every other one of its hit films from the 1990s into a show on the Great White Way.

Perhaps the closest analogue to ‘Diner’ is ‘Movin’ Out,’ Twyla tharp’s Billy Joel-oriented dance musical about young men growing up slightly later, in the ‘60’s and ‘70s. Here’s hoping for a Rourke cameo in the ‘Diner’ musical--and that he doesn’t dance.

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Barry Levinson to receive WGA’s Screen Laurel Award

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Review: Sheryl Crow’s ‘Detours

What happened to Mickey Rourke?

--Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

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