'Cats' Creator Hated The Movie So Much That He Got A Dog

Ah, Cats. The movie that made the entire world collectively cringe at the sight of Sir Ian McKellen sporting a cat tail, the thought of Dame Judi Dench licking her own butthole, and James Corden. Yes, simply the mere existence of bratty James Corden made us all recoil in unison. 

There was a lot wrong with this 2019 movie musical, and we’re sure if T.S. Eliot was around to see it, he would’ve grabbed his Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats copy just to check what the hell he had written in the first place. No one, however, thought it was worse than Andrew Lloyd Webber. You know, the guy who adapted Eliot’s book of Jellicle poems into the Broadway musical that is arguably just as weird but whatever.

Lloyd Webber hated Tom Hooper’s adaptation of Rum Tum Tugger and Friends so much that he went out and bought a dog. A small one, those fluffy Havanese types, about the size of a big tabby.

Said the English composer: “Cats was off-the-scale all wrong. There wasn’t really any understanding of why the music ticked at all. I saw it and I just thought, ‘Oh, God, no.’ It was the first time in my 70-odd years on this planet that I went out and bought a dog. So the one good thing to come out of it is my little Havanese puppy.”

There you have it, animal shelters. If you want people to adopt more dogs, apparently make sure they see 2019’s Cats, somehow. Sure, Lloyd Webber has a sharp sense of humor (how else do you write stage directions like “Orange Cat Person enters while other Cat Persons smell his butt”), and he took it to that hilarious level when he spoke of traveling with his newfound, presumably CATS-hating dog.

“I wrote (the airline) and said I needed him with me at all times because I’m emotionally damaged and I must have this therapy dog. The airline wrote back and said, ‘Can you prove that you really need him?’ And I said, ‘Yes, just see what Hollywood did to my musical Cats.’ Then the approval came back with a note saying, ‘No doctor’s report required.’”

So dramatic.

Zanandi is on Twitter and also on that other platform.

Top Image: Universal Pictures