July 21, 2005

Not the same ol' song & dance

By Susan Wloszczyna, USA Today

BROOKLYN — In the wee hours of a Manhattan morn, the unscrupulous Max Bialystock and his nebbishy accomplice Leo Bloom are holed up in that den of iniquity known as a producer's office, weary from poring over stack after stack of scripts. And not just any scripts. Dreadful scripts. The kind that would make your eyes not just water, but bleed.

These schemers are on a quest for the un-Holy Grail of the theatrical world, the worst stage musical ever written. In other words, a guaranteed flop. That way the show instantly closes and the pair can slip away unnoticed with their backers' cash. The eureka arrives as Max's greedy mitts finally land upon the execrable Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden. Failure is theirs at last!

But will success be theirs when The Producers: The Movie Musical opens on Dec. 21 — in time to reap the benefits of holiday filmgoing and the awards season?

Max and company are not the only Broadway-inspired suitors hoping to woo movie audiences in the near future. Rent, Dreamgirls and Hairspray will all soon take a shot at getting the box office humming again for musicals.

Even British impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose The Phantom of the Opera struck a box-office middle note of $51 million last year, is in the early stages of bringing another one of his lush stage shows to the screen.

Just announced: A movie version of Sunset Boulevard, based on Billy Wilder's 1950 Tinseltown noir. While it has been reported that Tony winner Glenn Close will reprise her role as the faded silent film star, a press contact at Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Films production company says casting and other details are still being worked out.

Will 'Producers' produce?

But if any song-and-dance throwback to Hollywood's heyday has the impressive credentials to bring down the multiplex, it's The Producers.

The scene in Max's office, being filmed on one of five spacious soundstages at the new Steiner Studios located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, is from the still-running Broadway bonanza from 2001 that drove ticket prices to rock-concert highs and crushed the Tony record with 12 wins. You want pedigree? Even the 1968 comedy it's based on boasts a best-screenplay Oscar.

On the surface, Universal's big, brassy and unabashedly old-style extravaganza with its brazenly politically incorrect humor — think golden-age MGM meets Hogan's Heroes at a gay pride parade — packs the knockout goods to be a surefire crowd pleaser.

Much of the top-drawer talent involved in the first major movie musical to be made in New York in decades has been imported from the theatrical version. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick revisit their raved-about stage roles as Max and Leo. Susan Stroman, the director/choreographer whose witty production numbers lend Mel Brooks' showbiz satire a welcome spritz of glitz, assumes the same duties as she makes her film debut.

And if this Broadway stalwart of 13 years is nervous, it doesn't show. She isn't even rattled by occasional set visits from the larger-than-life Brooks. Like Max, this producer has his eye on the money. Namely, keeping tabs on the budget that hovers at a reasonable $50 million. Typical of his frugal advice to Stroman: "Stop asking for pie à la mode. Just ask for the pie."

"I got into theater because of movie musicals," says the 50-year-old "Stro" while taking a rare breather on a set that includes a realistic Shubert Alley circa 1959 in the heart of the theater district. It's authentic down to the era-appropriate titles ablaze on nearby marquees (The Sound of Music, Fiorello) and the grimy wads of gum defacing the sidewalks.

"I grew up on Fred and Ginger," she says. "It was a big event in my house when a Fred Astaire movie was on TV. Top Hat, Swing Time. I've come full circle by making a movie musical. It's my dream realized."

The 'Chicago' effect

The chances of that dream continuing on the silver screen should be as much of a sure bet as the sight of curvaceous chorus girls sporting little more than beer steins and bratwursts onscreen. But it remains to be seen whether the ovation earned by 2002's Chicago, the first musical to win the best-picture Oscar in 34 years, was a fluke or has truly set the stage for a comeback of an all-American art form — the Broadway-bred movie musical.

Sure, audiences fell hard for all that cold-hearted jazz as Chicago, the beneficiary of one of Miramax's full-tilt marketing pushes, shimmied to $170 million-plus in ticket sales. But the steamy satire of celebrity man killers was in large part a novelty act, with non-musical stars like Richard Gere and Renee Zellweger proving they could tap and carry a tune at the same time.

That was a pop quiz. The curtain is about to be raised on a real test. Even as Stroman and her crew hunker down to put the post-production touches on her film at Manhattan's Brill Building, three other ambitious movie musicals are at various stages of production:

• First up is Rent, based on the 1996 rock reinvention of the opera La Bohème set among the cross-dressers and drug users in the East Village during the late '80s. The estimated $40 million film, whose all-singing teaser trailer is available online, will open Nov. 11. (Related story: Beyond The Producers)

• Jamie Foxx, fresh off his Oscar-winning triumph in the musical biopic Ray, and R&B queen Beyoncé Knowles will be among those belting such now-standards as One Night Only in next year's Dreamgirls, the 1981 showbiz saga inspired by the travails of Motown's premier girl group, The Supremes.

• Musical specialists Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are tending to Hairspray, the kitschy-cute '60s ode to Baltimore beehives and big-boned gals that first charmed Broadway crowds in 2002 and is based on John Waters' 1988 comedy hit. It's due in summer 2007.

"There's so much diversity," says Zadan, who along with producing partner Meron jump-started the renewed interest in musicals during the '90s with their high-rated TV efforts, including Gypsy with Bette Midler. "Two dramas, two comedies, different eras. We will know a lot about future movie musicals after they open and we see what worked and what didn't."

And they each have a connection to Chicago. Taye Diggs, who reprises his stage role as the ambitious landlord Benny in Rent, played the dapper bandleader in Chicago. Bill Condon, who wrote Chicago's inventive Oscar-nominated script, is directing and writing Dreamgirls. Zadan and Meron executive-produced Chicago. Broderick, who makes his big-screen musical bow with The Producers, headlined Zadan and Meron's 2003 TV revival of The Music Man.

And they all owe a debt to Chicago for their very existence. "None would have gotten made otherwise," says Thomas Hischak, author of Through the Screen Door: What Happened to the Broadway Musical When It Went to Hollywood. After Chicago caught fire, "a lot of projects got green-lit, stuff that had been sitting on the shelf. But musicals are expensive, hard to make, hard to cast and require a lot of thinking. There are no guarantees."

At least the forces behind each upcoming musical are in harmonic agreement on one touchy subject, often pointed to as the main culprit in the death of the traditional movie musical. While Chicago with its jazz club performances and fantasy sequences went out of its way to avoid having the cast simply break out in song for no reason, these products of our American Idol-crazed times revel in such opportunities.

As Lane says, "Are we going to have a shot in this where Renee Zellweger is in my office and we explain that these dance numbers are happening in her head so we don't trouble anyone with all this singing and dancing?"

The answer, if you haven't guessed, is no. "If it is done well, audiences will accept the convention," he says.

Or as his co-star Broderick simply puts it, "This movie says, 'I'm happy, so I'm singing.' "

Grab 'em with the gags

Besides, who could deny moviegoers the chance of experiencing a supersize version of the Act 1-ending "Little Old Lady Land" number that rarely fails to provoke convulsive belly laughs on Broadway: a chorus line of 60 randy grannies — Max's silver-haired harem of investors — spryly tap-dancing with their walkers in front of the Plaza hotel.

Not that The Producers hasn't taken a few hints from Chicago's playbook. Two big-time movie stars have been recruited for key roles. Comedy wild man Will Ferrell is Franz Liebkind, the schnitzel-for-brains neo-Nazi playwright. Uma Thurman goes from Kill Bill cool to knock 'em dead glam as Ulla, Max and Leo's Swedish dish of a secretary.

"When I first met Uma for the job, she told me she really has a Swedish grandmother," Stroman says. "Will is a natural singer and dancer after being on Saturday Night Live. I hit the jackpot."

If The Producers can boast a hook that sets it apart from the dark cynicism of Chicago and may prove its main selling point, it is that uniquely Brooksian view of a skewed universe. "Chicago was sexy and edgy," Stroman says. "We're not sexy and edgy. We're good old musical comedy."

The blatantly tasteless jokes take aim at gays, Jews, blacks, transvestites, Germans, geriatrics, accountants and even nuns who perform the hora. As Lane observes, "Oklahoma!, it's not. I hear talk of those red states. Although it has done well on tour, I don't think it is for everybody. Only if you have a sense of humor."

The next act in the rebirth of the movie musical, original works instead of adaptations, is already unfolding. Julie Taymor of Broadway's The Lion King and Hollywood's Frida is directing an untitled musical about lovers in '60s London with a soundtrack of more than a dozen Beatles songs sung by the cast. Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen) stars.

And Disney, apparently no longer smarting from 1992's ill-conceived paperboy musical Newsies, has a deal to produce original musicals with Hugh Jackman, the big-screen action hero who wowed 'em with his high kicks on Broadway in The Boy from Oz.

Meanwhile, Stroman received a hopeful omen during The Producers shoot. Stanley Donen, the 81-year-old co-director of what many consider the greatest movie musical ever, 1952's Singin' in the Rain, paid a visit. He also officially passed the torch. His On the Town from 1949, with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as sailors on leave, was the last movie musical to be filmed at the Brooklyn Navy Yards.

"What a treat that was," Stroman recalls. "It was quite emotional. He came by when Matthew was dancing in the middle of 20 beautiful girls in pearls, a real nod to that era. We just hugged each other and couldn't let go."

Sounds as if at least one ticket sale is guaranteed come December.