VMI: Village Mostly Invisible, an investigation of Brigadoon

A LONG TIME AGO IN THE 1954 MGM MUSICAL BRIGADOON: New York City gents Gene Kelly and Van Johnson are lost in the Scottish Highlands! They want to shoot some birds, but instead stumble upon a village that’s not on the map… Brigadoon! Everyone’s dancing around the town and preparing for a wedding that evening; meanwhile, sister of the bride Cyd Charisse gets to fall in love with Gene Kelly on the heathery hillsides. But something’s weird, and it’s not just the fake Scottish accents, the very tight tartan trousers, the two-dimensional mountains and all the day-drinking: it’s that the village is under an enchantment whereby it only appears on one day every hundred years, and it will disappear forever if anyone tries to leave. Then someone tries to leave! Then Gene Kelly and Van Johnson have to leave before the village goes sleepy-byes for another hundred years. But Gene left his heart behind... Lucky for him, there’s a special wake-up-Brigadoon-early clause buried deep in the small print of the enchantment, because of course there is. Join Jenny Owen Youngs and Helen Zaltzman to investigate the 1954 MGM musical Brigadoon and its many, many mysteries, such as why choose an enchantment with SO many downsides, how Logan Echolls might have seen this, seriously why such a self-owning enchantment, whether the village's crops and foods stay fresh during the 100-year sleeps, and COME ON THINK THIS ENCHANTMENT THROUGH BEFORE CONDEMNING YOUR WHOLE VILLAGE TO IT. For more about this episode, and to read the transcript, visit the podcast’s official site VMIpod.com/brigadoon. VMI will now take a pause; to keep posted about what's coming up on the show, follow @VMIpod on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and sign up for our mailing list at vmipod.com/vmimail. This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman; the music is by Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs. We have MERCH but only till the end of 2021! And it's currently on deep discount. So you have a very short time to get your beautiful Not Milk T-shirts and pins, and your long lens pins and Gay For Weevil mementoes, at hellomerch.com/collections/veronica-mars-investigations. Our ad partner is Multitude. To sponsor episodes of the show, contact them at multitude.productions/ads. This episode is sponsored by Dipsea, the app full of sexy stories and somnolent soundscapes. Get an extended 30 day free trial at DipseaStories.com/veronica.Support the show: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=TWQYZDRGZUGH8&source=urlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.