Glass Shallot by Adam Baer | Adambaer.com

Never Byrne-d Out

In the course of interviewing David Byrne for this short piece about his design work and music in May's Departures Culturewatch section, I realized that Shallot friend Hillman Curtis had done a really cool commercial (embedded above) for Byrne's joint album with Brian Eno "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." For people who aren't in the know (which could have been me if I had not done this piece, sadly), the album has been freely streamable on the Web for some time. For those who like to hold amazing design in your hands and play with dice, you can still buy a Sagmeister-designed Deluxe (CD) Package that includes an original Hillman Curtis film about the album as well as a full book and other goodies (watch a video that explains the contents here). 

Byrne told me the following about why the duo decided to offer the album in these different forms. "We had both been thinking about the changes the music business has been going through," he said. "There are now many more ways that musicians can get their messages across than before, though the industry typically lags behind. We decided to try some of those out for ourselves by initially selling the record exclusively through our website and allowing people to stream the whole album if they simply wanted to hear what it was like.  It just seemed obvious. I wanted to sing these songs more, so I asked my booking agents to book some tours -- so that kind of gave the project an endpoint -- and the only way to get the music out to people before the tour started was to make it available online.  That said, there are many among us who still love a physical object. A well-designed package can enhance the experience. It used to be that an eye-catching package helped sell a record: it would shout at you like a box of laundry detergent. But I don't think CD package design is meant to do that anymore. Now it's more about adding another layer to the experience. I'd worked with Stefan (Sagmeister) many times before, so he was a natural choice."

Other questions broached in my interview included prompts about the joy of performing.  "At my age and situation, I don't need to tour simply for financial reasons (though I do make money touring)," Byrne said. "Though I would love to believe otherwise, I don't think touring sells many records either. I do it for two reasons: it's immensely pleasurable these days and because I can (immodestly, I can say that I do know how to perform and put on a show). The show we've created -- the band, crew, singers, dancers, choreographers, etc. -- is like nothing I've ever done before, so though half of the show consists of older material, it's been placed in a new context. At some point, performing changed from being a thing that I psychologically had to do into something that was actually pleasurable. Some edge in my demeanor might have been lost with those changes, but songs from that period remain, so the edginess can be dredged back up."

Byrne, as the article points out, also writes the music to the HBO show Big Love (coming back soon), which actually opens with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys's "God Only Knows," so I was curious as to how he might add music to such a thoroughly branded motion picture experience.  "It's an interesting show and doing a score like this allows one to exercise some musical muscles one doesn't always use," Byrne said. "It's good to stretch oneself sometimes, to get out of a comfort zone, which forces some kind of creative response. Initially I thought I'd try to base much of the music on Mormon hymns -- not use them but write in that style. Having seen the 1st season, I sensed that many of the characters felt that their behavior and decisions were based on deep spiritual beliefs -- as wacky and unusual as some of it might seem to us. I therefore imagined that hymn-type chord progressions and melodies would hint at this spiritual underpinning without saying it out loud. The hope was also that this music would also help one empathize with the characters, even, or maybe especially, with some of the more extreme ones. Music can hint at their motivations and justifications, where their hearts are despite what we see them doing. Well, in the end, that approach only worked a few times: it tended to draw attention to itself and to draw you out of the intimate scale of the drama. That music tended to pull you back to a God's eye view of things -- yes, music can do that. So, in the end I had to use other muscles and write some other material that was subtler, more character driven."

Intriguing, especially for film music buffs (of which there are few, apparently). More au courant, perhaps, was Byrne's answer to my question about how he and Eno both influence(d) each other.  He answered: "The process of using the recording studio as a writing tool was something a few of us learned from Brian. Not that he was the only one to do it, but they way he encouraged us in Talking Heads (and myself) to start from zero and create new tracks was something we were ready for...it was the right idea, the right nudge, at the right moment. It wasn't that strange, really, as it basically was taking the writing process, which usually goes on in one's head, hidden, invisible, or little my little with a guitar in hand and some notepaper in front, and it made it all -- the creative process -- explicit, visible, and most important for potential collaborators, available for others to enter into. How did Talking Heads and myself influence Brian? I think we encouraged him to be a little more funky, more groove oriented."

noise, glossary-d

Alex Ross has done yet another amazing thing (simply writing the first chapter of "The Rest Is Noise" humbled Shallots everywhere), and no one was more deserving of a MacArthur this year (although, I guess that friendly geomorphologist is a stone-cold rockstar).  At any rate, Ross has now expanded the online audio guide to his book, now in paperback, which is sort of like creating a multimedia museum as a simple compendium. You know it's unusually meaningful when it can teach people (via sound) how to better understand The White Album as well as The Rite of Spring. Now, if only we could Google sounds. I know someone's gotta be working on that, but hurry up!

Oh, My Word: Omaha's "Whatevs" Disaster. News as it Breaks.

The news is slowly creeping out of Nebraska Methodist Hospital. But apparently three ordinarily healthy septuagenarian Omaha librarians are still in critical care after suffering simultaneous cardiac arrests this morning when they were struck by news so grammatically and linguistically abominable that they could not maintain homeostasis. Margaret Dubrovic, 71, head librarian at Omaha's central library system, was reportedly enjoying a routine morning when her latest copy of The New Yorker magazine arrived in the mail. Allegedly, Dubrovic looked forward with great verve to the arrival of her private subscription copy and had been rumored to read half of the entire periodical well before the end of morning on delivery days with friends and co-librarians Betsy O'Neill, 74, and Edith Cooper, 76, both of whom also suffered cardiac arrests. But this morning the group happened upon what junior librarian Thomas DeBouef, 23, could only call "literary blasphemy of the highest proportions." The insidious word "whatevs," a slang term for "whatever" used by the so-called Britney Generation and the blog whatevs.org, apparently found its way into music critic Sasha Frere-Jones's recent review of the latest Coldplay album. And while the estimable writer had likely used the term in the most tongue-in-cheek manner, it even appeared as a one-word sentence--capitalized, of course. "He didn't have to go that far," said DeBouef, whose grandfather Eli, 89, also works in the library as a volunteer and suffered minor whiplash from today's events. "There's no doubt in my mind that the act of literally seeing such a word, if you can call it that, printed in the magazine these ladies have held so dear to their literary hearts for so many years caused their simultaneous tragedies. It's a damn shame." Of course, one Generation X reporter cannot help but wonder, in the words of character Carrie Bradshaw from the HBO show "Sex and the City," what septuagenarian librarians were hoping for from a review of a Coldplay album in the first place. "They weren't as shocked as many of their friends were that The New Yorker had taken to reviewing popular music so substantively over the last few years," added Debouef.  "They rather liked Coldplay, and as the article said, they often played the album 'Parachutes' during their afternoon tea sessions as a means to relax from the stress of their jobs." For now, however, the implicit danger posed by a simple unsubstantiated slang term such as "whatevs" is all an entire community can cling to for some explanation as to why their best librarians are on leave from the city's hottest reading room. More news as it breaks. In the meantime, get better, girls.

thoughts on the mechanical tennis stars we love

I have just interviewed three of America's top tennis players -- though, not the celebs you may be thinking of -- and have to share the following with the world: these people are super-boring! So much so, I find the above tennis racquet-manufacturing image much more interesting. It's odd: Growing up, I always thought tennis was a social, thinking person's game. But now the young stars are not unlike the young conservatory bred violin prodigies putting us to sleep at concert halls. So much technical game, so little personality. More on this story as I get deeper into it. But how sad has tennis become since Andre Agassi left the courts? I continue to mourn life on the court.

a shallot hero

Talk about someone who knows more than he lets on.

there will be...cheap narrative and musical climaxes

I admire Daniel Day Lewis as much as any dedicated film fan--the idea of seeing a film with him even scares me a little in the good way. But I was never big on P.T. Anderson-- even though I liked Magnolia and Boogie Nights some, I never felt the director made important narrative decisions that felt earned. His work seemed to crave hipness--to steal it--instead of achieving it with truly innovative and genuine narrative work.

Oddly, I thought this concern would dissolve upon seeing the massively hyped "There Will Be Blood." I thought the film would be, as it has been publicized, an epic interpretation of Upton Sinclair--replete with fantastic acting; an admirable score in the old sense; and big ideas about oil, humanity, industrialism, America, Manifest Destiny, evil. But most important, a script worth drooling over. I believed in DDL that much.

But I was wrong, and despite all the universal praise for the film--yes, the main performance is admirable--I have to wonder why so very few people have come out to say this movie is even smaller--and malignantly so--in some ways than Anderson's "small" indies. There is so much obsession over detail, so much amazing cinematography and early buildup. But it doesn't come together when the film jumps down into a hole and narrows in on a petty if entertaining climax that could have been performed on a cheap stage--never mind the expanded issues this climax could have symbolized (that the director probably thinks it does symbolize) with better developmental screenwriting.

I'll try not to spoil the journey for you should you care to take it on the half hour as many theaters have scheduled it. But not only does Anderson choose to focus on what should just be one small conflict in a potentially epic story--and then choose to skip through time and tell us about it as opposed to showing a lot of foundational material needed to care this much about said conflict as the movie's most obvious struggle. The rapscallion--oh, P.T., you're sly--mischievously doesn't follow through on the promise of the film about big ideas, and he sadly doesn't completely flesh out his "oil man." His history or his relationships--say, with his son. Such that when they fall on hard times, it's nearly impossible to care. That is, if you can detach yourself from DDL's performance--and it's hard, but try.

Sure, it's fun to see bowling pins used in new American ways (I'm not a spoiler). But the whole show shouldn't have been so comedic or surprisingly focused on such a lame tangent when it seemed like so much could have happened. There was a lot of laughter in the theater--and it wasn't the dark, twisted laughter for which the filmmaker may hope. But don't worry if you liked it: I'm sure the Academy's already sealed this film's destiny.

After all, it's an acting triumph for DDL. But is it really? Didn't we know he could do this stuff? Did we need to see it again? Some of it was very enjoyable but it seemed like wasted effort. Pair the genius actor up with someone who thinks bigger--and better. To make a movie this long that gives us this little is really a feat--but not one we should endorse.

Even more offensive to Shallot central is the musical side of the equation. The filmmakers hired a potentially strong composer--Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood--to write what sounded like an intriguing score made of pitch-bending dissonances and anxiety provoking rhythms.

But the movie tries too hard, shallowly, in this department too. Instead of letting Greenwood follow through on what could have been a start-to-finish symphonic score--something you'd want to listen to on its own, say--Anderson shares with us the novel third movement of Brahms's Violin Concerto to interrupt it and accompany one of the film's most triumphant and tragic plot points. Then, when matters turn mysterious, the music supervisor throws in a cello ensemble version of Arvo Pärt's Fratres. Too easy and disrespectful. To the film, the older music, and new film composer.

I love both of these pieces--and there's definitely something in the barren setting of the film and the character's wayward morality apropos of Pärt if not this one movement of Brahms. But both of these musical insertions undermine Greenwood's work. The film feels musically disjunct because of them, especially when the credits role to the victorious Brahms conclusion.The real Independent thing to do here--you're P.T. Anderson, right?--would have been to let Greenwood score the film in its entirety, not use pre-recorded hits known to conjure narrative power in the middle of the story.

This type of music-supervisory decision isn't always the supervisor's fault. And I'm usually a fan of using great music in a movie--but not so cheaply. It could just be--and seemingly is--the director's too-self-conscious "I'm not as good as I sell myself to be so I better throw in everything but the kitchen sink" mentality. It's hard to find this problem under the thick veil of all that tarry oil and DDL glory acting. But it's there. Believe me.

In fact, such a musical strategy--to say nothing of flaunting DDL and all the detail and epic cinematographic talent the movie employs--renders this truth shockingly obvious when you realize how petty the film's main narrative turns out to be.

And I'm not alone. So many people--including friends I disagree with very often--left my showing at the Arclight disappointed. This movie could have been so much more than it was. But by producers giving free reign to an "indie" filmmaker who shouldn't have been given so much freedom to begin with--then again: hell, I'd give money to anything involving DDL, too--that's what you get.

Frankly, I prefer it when Steve Martin gets small.

oh, please offer us some...intelligent variety

I had a funny discussion the other day with another New Yorker living in LA. He said he felt like an "expat" here: a "big fish living in a small pond," in his telling--at least when it comes to meeting people who think beyond headlines. I didn't exactly agree or make the statement, but it wasn't the first time I heard it. Luckily, I've met tons of brilliant people in my new fair city. But I've sought a lot of them out. You don't always converse with new ones in line at El Pollo Loco. But my tales of serendipitous philosophical chicken-joint communion will have to wait.

Funnily, another friend just pointed out that Variety, Hollywood's glory trade mag (Ari Gold once called it the "school paper" on Entourage), linked to my Sweeney Todd piece earlier in December. The blog's quote? "Adam Baer claims that 'Tim Burton "re-invents the movie musical" with 'Sweeney Todd.' Really?'"

I had to laugh when I saw that. Did the blogger even realize that the actual subhead of the article--written by someone other than me--made it very clear that "re-inventing the movie musical" is what the filmmakers claim, and that I simply reported what they had to say? Probably not, because short-order blogs and especially movie-trade blogs meant for D-people aren't exactly the most accurate places to get your news.

Read the story that I wrote carefully. There's hardly any criticism in the piece, save for a very careful statement that reads: " [Sweeney's] as entertaining, artistic and efficient as anyone could make a 'Sweeney Todd' film that might appeal to a broad swath of moviegoers." While I believe the movie is entertaining and a great shot at creating a Hollywood movie version of Sweeney, save for a lot of the singing, I don't go beyond that point. I'm not hired to be a critic here. And I'm actually pleased with that fact.  So argue away with each other. I'm not jumping into the fray as a film or music critic on this one.

And that's the way it was supposed to be. I was paid to tell other peoples' stories in this case. Additionally, I write that:  "The key, therefore, was not to produce a performance film like Ingmar Bergman's "The Magic Flute" but to create an original movie genre: a consciously present-day spoke-sung music-film with younger actors, no traditional singers and a cinema-grotesquerie style, full of viscous slashes of blood." But this isn't my opinion. It's implied that the "key" belongs to the filmmakers.  This is the opinion of those interviewed--see forthcoming Steven Sondheim quote. It's factual reportage.

In Sondheim's words: "You can't just adapt stage musicals for the screen. You have to re-create them."

If I had been hired to critique the film, I might have printed all kinds of comments that discuss this recreation of genre and what Sweeney means to music and film. But I wasn't. And I'm not going to do it here and undermine my story. I stand by it. And if its sub-headline should read that the filmmakers' claim they've created a new genre--and if I should go on to give you those opinions--well, that doesn't mean I'm making the critical statement.

Frankly, after a childhood of conservatory composition, mainstream movie-loving, and a decade of criticism, I don't think Sweeney re-invents the movie musical; I think it adds new elements to it as filmic entertainment.  As I wrote: " Sweeney's new Burtonesque world is a visceral, inflated experience only film can provide."

But please, Variety blog, read between the lines before misquoting reporters on critical statements they, personally, haven't made. This sort of reaction to a story about Sweeney Todd is exactly what worried me when I learned such a meaningful and complex piece of music-theater was going to be fed to the multiplex crowd--and those who blog for those who feed them. Perhaps I should have asked the producers if they were worried about how the insider movie press would handle the movie and the primary press it might inspire--as opposed to how audiences across America would handle it. Happily, I left a midwestern theater the other day after seeing the movie in its completed version to find goth teenagers singing "Nothing's Gonna Harm You..." Sondheim doesn't need anyone's help connecting to any brand of audience.

Depp + Burton + Sondheim = Sweeney Todd 2007Demons will charm you with a smile, for a while...

Burton Reinvents the Movie Musical, Los Angeles Times, December 18, 2007 (Click title for online version of article)

For behind-the-scenes extras, see yesterday's look at the writer's quote book.

For a text version of the article, click on "continue"

Sweeney Todd: Razor cuttings from the newspaper floor

On Tuesday, I’m told, the Los Angeles Times will publish my story on Tim Burton’s “Sweeney Todd.”  I’ve reported it for months, after noticing in the summer that perhaps the only musical I like would be turned into a film. The story was initially assigned as a thorough narrative about the idea of the music-film that would include deep reporting on how the music-driven stage show became a cinematic production in many respects--good, bad, or ugly. In the course of the reporting, I had some intriguing discussions—basically with everyone involved in the film, including some self-congratulatory remarks but also some really unusual quotes. Most memorable? A lunch with producer Dick Zanuck at Warner’s and a few funny comments from Tim Burton, to say nothing of a conversation about the business of such filmmaking with Dreamworks’s Walter F. Parkes. But over the course of the last few months, the Times also published a separate story about Burton that included information my original story would have covered (nothing personal: this is how newspapers often work when they cover entertainment so thoroughly from so many angles). So my piece, for tomorrow or later this week, has had to be rejiggered. It will now focus more on the musical qualities of the film, but still include chats with Depp, Burton, and others. Still, there are lots of cutting-floor scraps. To precede the piece, then, I thought I’d share some extra quotes with you, and take you behind the scenes of the story.

 

1. From my Sondheim conversation:

 On the cutting down of songs in the film:

 
“Of course, you can fill them, but it's not dynamic, and that's what Tim [Burton] and[screenwriter/producer John Logan] were so cognizant of. You can't just expect the audience to watch anything. I'm a movie fan, and if something isn't happening in a movie, get on with it... The director is hard put just to keep the camera interested [when a song occurs in a traditional movie musical].”

 On the germination of the work:

 “In 1973, I was in London for Gypsy, and I'd heard there was this grand piece called Sweeney Todd. I went out to this pub theater--you brought your stein of beer into the main theater--and they did this play in between the themes. They were music hall themes, but it just struck me that it would make a good musical. The next day, I talked to the director about it. I had seen Christopher Bond's new play. So I looked up old “Sweeney” versions, which were all stodgy and terrible , and I read Bond’s version, which had charm and was suspenseful: a combination of wit and really good language and a wonderful plot. So I met with Bond and found out he had written it as an actor with a troupe, and they thought it would be fun to do it. They had sent for the 1953 version. There had been about six public versions over 125 yrs at that point. And he said it was so dreadful that he would write his own. It ran 20-30 weeks, himself playing Tobias, but what he did was he added elements of a revenge tragedy and the Count of Monte Cristo to the mix. Prior to that, it was just sort of a blood-and-thunder play from the 19th century. It was popularized in 1843 by a journalist, it was a penny dreadful show for a while and then a serial. And then it was made into a play in 1847 by the Neil Simon of his day. So bond wrote his own and ended up at Strattford East. I just asked if he would option it to be written as a musical.

It had been nibbled at by two producers in New York: Barr and Woodward (they produced “Virginia Woolf.” They optioned it just as it was: as a straight play. I went to them and said I wanted to do it as a musical if they would mind waiting, I would be happy to let them produce it. So in fact they paid the option money. They just said: Ok, fine, write your show, and we'll do it. So they were the producers [of the 1979 show].

I started work in 1977, it was first done in ‘79, and that's it. I should say I was going to write the whole thing, including libretto, but by the time i got up to page seven of 35 in the printed version, I was already close to an hour, and I thought: Uh, oh, this is going to be longer than the Ring cycle. So I called Hugh Wheeler. He was british and knew the legend and had also written mysteries - under name of Patrick Quentin. Then, when his collaborator died, he wrote solo mystery novels under Q. Patrick, and they were popular in the 1930s and 40s when Ellery Queen was popular. I thought he would be perfect: he was a suspense writer and we had a good time writing it.

He saw to it that it wasn’t five hours long. He essentially took what Bond had done but re-plotted successions of incidents, introduced the young person's story a little. He changed the periodicity of it. He stuck very closely to what Bond did. And I did too. Bond wrote this as a potboiler for his traveling theater company. He not only introduced classic stuff in it but made the distinction in language between upper and lower class. The upper class spoke in a kind of blank verse, not written out in pentameter. Lower classes were much more vernacular. There was a whole sociological caste from the play. But the point was that he gave us free reign. It was easy to write.

I was big fan of Bernard Hermann. A big fan of Hangover Square. And the score got me. So this is an homage to Hermann and that kind of Victorian melodrama music that you hear if if you listen to Hangover Square. I wanted to write a musical that would keep an audience in suspense without letting them laugh at it, which is not easy to do. What you realize when you step outside the theater, though, is that the horrors are so much more than inside. You have to keep background music going: it keeps the audience’s suspension of belief. Once they step one foot back, it's close to way over the top. Sweeney is over the top but in a way that an audience gets involved as opposed to giggling at it.

On different productions of his many works, and this one work in particular:

 “That’s the great thing about writing for theaters: that it’s done in so many ways. A movie is always the sames but a show, even one performance of the same show, is always different. But from production to production, every group does a different play, even when they’re working on the same song. It’s constantly full of surprises, and that's what keeps any play or show alive.

An opera approach in an opera house is a different show than when [Sweeney’s performed] on Broadway. I've always felt when people say: what defines opera, what makes it different from theater. It's where the performance is done. When Menotti was done on Broadway, it was a Broadway show. It's audiences’ expectations and what an audience brings into an opera house as well as how performers perform. With opera singers, the concentration is on vocal production. In Broadway or theater, the concentrations is on story-telling and acting. And the best operas like Carmen combine both. That’s what Puccini was, too. 

On Sweeney being a genre bender:

 “There’s a lot of singing and it's not through-composed but it’s pretty close. Nobody composes through-composed musicals. Operas are through-composed as one structure, like Wozzeck. There’s a lot of singing and there’s some dialogue.

On Sweeney being called “musically complicated”:

”Well, Ravel would have thought it was pretty stodgy. That's not a Broadway audience, though. A Broadway audience hears a dissonance and…[he was implying they react strongly to this stuff.] A person at Yale even once came up and said was this the first atonal music ever written! [Insert shock on the part of Sondheim.] My father was shocked by West Side Story be cause he was brought up on Victor Herbert.

On how a broad American audience will react to it:

“What are they going to make of it? I have no idea. They’re going to wait for the power chords!

“John Logan [the screenwriter] tried very scrupulously to keep the shape of the score while recognizing it had to be kept down… Anybody can do MTV-style cutting to any song in world. That's happened in movies like La Boheme. The point of this is a really good story, and you got to keep it going. This isn’t Bergman’s Magic Flute [ prompted by question the journalist had offered] whose pleasure is lingering over the singing and audience. An opera audience. I'm a movie fan. If somewthing isn't happening, get on with it. When you go into a musical in the theater, you have an unwritten contract: people are going to face front, imagine a fourth wall, and what goes on for three and a half minutes holds your attention because you have a little lingering that opera audiences have love for.

On whether or not Sondheim ever thought the work would have a life in Hollywood

It never occurred to me. You can't just adapt stage musicals for screen, you have to recreate them. Where songs are respites in the middle of comedy, it’s OK. But when you attempt with musical theater to tell story through song, it becomes a whole other matter.

On letting go of the rights to the show:

Dreamworks took an option on the piece and it was developed. It's like writing a novel. It started during the recording session of Bernadette Peters’ revival of Gypsy. I went out with Sam Mendes for coffee, and he asked if I thought about it as a movie, and I said no. And he said, wel, I have. He had a deal with Dreamworks. He got together with [screenwriter John] Logan, and then Sam decided not to direct it, but it was taken to Tim Burton. Tim came to me 20 years ago and asked to do it, and I said no, and he went on to other projects. When Sam brought it up again, I was startled.  And when this came back to Tim, he wanted to do it. It was a piece he liked. I wasn’t worried about how it would be treated because it was Sam who suggested it in the first place, and then I loved what Logan had done, and because Tim Burton liked it. It's so much the province of the director, but no, I didn’t actively worry about it. I thought it was the right match. I got to tell you: Burton had expressed such a real feeling and liking for the story. And you can tell when a director likes and trusts the story he's telling- he doesn’t feel the need to decorate it.

On how Oscar Hammerstein would react to the film:

 “He died right after Gypsy. One of his children said he would be disgusted by [the show]. I know he would approve of the fact that I treated the story without condescension, though.

 On the younger case in the film:

 “That was Tim's idea. It changes the tone significantly, and that's again one of the wonderful things about reinterpretation.

 

2. From my conversation with Tim Burton:

“This is not my background at all, you know. I certainly was never a big theatergoer. I just happened to be in London and sort of heard about it. It looked like a really great story to me when I saw it.  I feel good about it; it's interesting.  I've never done anything on stage, or like I said, I don't even go that much to the theater.  But it's interesting to take something that was a stage thing and do a film of it.  Except you don't really know until you get into it how much things can change.

“What works on a stage, doesn’t work on film all the time. With film, you have the luxury of seeing character's faces and being up close and kind of getting the more interior nature--the inner piece, in a way.  And, it changes things.  My goal was always to be true to it, because I loved the original.

The first script I ran by [Sondheim] had less music in it, so we ended up going back and putting more back into it just because the show was more music-driven and less kind of traditional dialogue and structure.

On the potential difficulties in editing the film:

Well, you know, the writer John, now I don't know this for sure, but he'd done it where there was more music, less music, different music, you know. He'd been through a lot of different versions and when I got in the ballpark, I went back to more music, like I said. But there were certain things that surprised me that we ended up not doing or changing just because of the somewhat organic nature of it--and it being a film.  There a lot of different weird elements. Sondheim's music isn’t the easiest thing to do.  Except for a couple of effects, we had no real professional singers--you know, they weren't really classically trained. But that created an interesting dynamic and it was actually quite exciting to me that way. We did it fairly quickly, as we went along.

The interesting thing is that it's great having music on the set because it really informs you and the actors.

Any stage influences?

No.  Probably the first one that I saw in London. I just happened upon it.  I guess that was the one I most enjoyed. The one thing I enjoyed about the one I saw in London was that they didn't skimp on the blood, which I thought was especially in juxtaposition with the music.  I saw another production where they tried to be more politically correct with it but I just didn't quite seem as powerful to me.   

 

The music is quite beautiful.  That's what I love about the piece; it's very lyrical. And then you have that juxtaposed against the imagery.  That's what I love about it.

Was Sondheim thinking movies when he wrote this?

Absolutely. The first time I met him he said that and it just made complete sense.  And in fact what was amazing was when we first recorded the orchestra without hearing the lyrics, we really hear it.  So that was fun in this case to do.  Some of the pieces, we didn't keep the lyrics but we kept his score.  So it's really kind of great to hear the score because you usually hear it mainly with the lyrics. To find that balance was interesting.  And also we recorded it with full orchestra and then we isolated some instruments, and when you pare it down, it really is like an amazing film music score.

On this recording of the music—is it thick or thin?

No, it's thick.  But there are, like I said, times when we didn't end up using the lyrics so that you could hear the music.

Is it too sophisticated for mainstream movies?

Well, it was a strange thing. It's an R rated musical, and while some musicals have met with a certain amount of success, you never know.  It's something that, you know, doesn’t necessarily come to mind.  I think the term “musical” still scares studios a bit.  Throw in some blood and an R rating, and you know…

Is this an homage to horror movies?

Yeah, that's one of the things Johnny and I have always talked about over the years.  You know, horror movie actors that we loved.  This was an opportunity to try to do characters like that.  And again the music really fit.  There used to be a pianist in these music, or somebody on the side, and the actors just move differently.  And what was exciting about this is that you see everybody acting in a different way and moving in a different way because of the music.  I thought beforehand that it was going to be really restricting, but it turned out to be the opposite.

On delegating the filmmaking:

“Dante Ferreti [the production designer], I've never really, really worked with before but he's done Fellini movies. You just try to find people that you feel in sync with.  We kind of had... not quite a luxurious schedule like you sometimes do on a movie. It was a bit tighter.  But it was fun in a way to do that because it did feel like we were making an old horror movie.  Just get in there and shoot it as quickly as possible. It kind of woke up the whole horror movie thing.  I like to work where you don't have to be overly literal, and everybody gets the whole vibe of it.   We never see just one thing as an inspiration, it's always a few. So it never feels like it's this precious box. If it gets to a point where you have to say: do it exactly like that. Or you have to show them a picture and say, make it look exactly like that, you know you're working with the wrong people.

On Burton’s previous interest in Sweeney:

“I was actually interested, a long, long time ago, maybe more than 10 years ago.  I was sort of involved with it loosely. I was just with Warner Brothers at that time.  I was interested in it for different producers, and I just got sidetracked with other things.  I didn't even really know Johnny at that point very much, and I always felt everything happens for a reason, and he just felt more accurate with the character.  And that was another issue.  You know, on stage, everybody was a little bit older, and that was fine.  But for the film it just felt right to make them slightly younger.  To make a kid feel like a kid, you know? Not that you’re going to harm your son by a real kid. But it was great: it just gives them an extra layer of strangeness and emotion that it isn't sung by a 30-year-old.  There’s something about a kid going in that makes it more strangely real.   

On Sondheim and the play:

“I didn't really know Sondheim at all.  I had seen enough productions to see that he seemed to be open to different interpretations.  One was a bit more stylized, one was not. You know, it's been around for a while, and someone told me that it's one of the most performed school plays: kids love performing it. There's a large arena of different types of productions. I talked to so many people here at schools in England, and it's one of the kids' favorites to perform.

On the cast being mostly British:

It just seemed right.  Obviously, Johnny's not British. But [the piece] lived there, and it just made more sense. 

How was Sondheim involved?

“He had cast approval over the two leads and we ran by everybody else with him.  And he was great because he was extremely knowledgeable about films.  He was a fairly cool guy; he came to the first couple days of the orchestra recording.  He spoke to Helena, he spoke to a couple of actors, and gave them pointers.  The thing about him and I think he realizes, is it's like speaking to, you know, God or something.  He kind of freaked everyone out a little bit.  He didn't mean to, of course. And he was very respectful and kind of let everybody have their piece, which was really good.

Blood.

“Well, it's not real.  That's the thing, to me. It's more like it was on the stage where it was a bit over the top. It goes less for reality and more for emotional effect.  It sort of undermines the emotional; it flourishes; it serves as exclamation points. Because it is a melodrama and old horror movie it sort of fit right into that.

Sweeney.

“He's such a repressed, such a brooding character.  Really, the whole movie is about him getting back at people.  So, you know, since he's such an internal character, it really felt like it needed those releases.  [The blood, again.]

Were drawings made beforehand?

“Eh, not too much.  A little bit.  I mean one of the things that struck me was as I was going back through old sketchbooks, I found a little sketch of Ms. Lovett in Sweeney Todd and I thought, Jesus, it looks like Johnny and Helena, you see.  And I did it before I knew her. And I mean all my sketches kind of look the same. But it did strike me. I did a couple of drawings like that of the characters, and I did a couple of little sketches, little barber shop sketches.  Dante [Ferretti] is such an amazing draftsman.  I would do a couple of little doodles if I had the thought.

The Desaturated look. 

We thought a lot about the color in terms of how much color to put on the set and the costumes.  It's nice to kind of do and not to so much rely on so much post-production. It almost feels a bit too easy, so we tried to think about it as much as we could up front.  The environment was the environment we wanted it to be.

Did Depp’s portrayal surprise?

You know when I asked him if he would be into it, I didn't know if he could sing or not.  But I knew well enough that he wouldn't have said yes if he didn't think he could do it.  That was good enough for me  And I felt very confident that he would do it.  Which made it really nice when I first heard him. I thought he could do it, but he also exceeded what I thought, and I just got really excited.  It's always nice when people do that: go beyond what you think they're going to do.  And it's quite an exposing thing, you know. I'm not a singer.  It was quite difficult to not rehearse people, singing. That was a new feeling for me, seeing that.

“I hope it doesn't disappoint.  It's hard to know how purists will respond to it. I know, for me, I love the show. So it was always my goal to keep it true to it but make it a movie at the same time. I think the spirit of it is right.  And I don't always feel that way.  It's just kind of weird experiment to do.  We always felt a bit funny, kind of like almost laughing, making this R rated musical.  There was this kind of exciting feeling on the set.

“When you see different kind of productions of this done, there all over the shop in a way, aren't they?”

would you like a little jew in you?

I think it was John Stewart (did you know his real last name: Leibowitz?) speaking to a supermodel years ago on MTV when I first heard the joke. The model discussed her ethnic background: she had "a little Native American in her," some Indian, some Scottish, some Brazilian. Stewart then asked her if she had a little Jew in her. The model said no. Stewart countered: Would you like to?

It was a funny moment, and it was a joke that Stewart could make, being Jewish, or at least of Jewish heritage. I, too, am Jewish in that it's my cultural makeup. I'm agnostic but still identify as a Jew because it's a culture even if it's not one specific race. (Plus, I'm wholly Ashkenazi, and we have our own genetic diseases, which I consider a rule for determining whether or not you belong to a race or ethnicity. If you're at risk for something that can kill you because of inbreeding that led to you having one cultural makeup, well, welcome to the "having a race" club. Or something.)

But I digress. Recently, while writing a story about direct e-mail publicity and marketing, I took notice of an e-mail I frequently receive from a PR firm representing Nextbook.org, a great magazine concerning Jewish culture. I respect this publication but don't know how they found my address. Perhaps it's because I'm a writer or blogger, and they just have a good PR team that looks for coverage under many stones (including blogs where the writer might post schmaltz recipes). That's probably the case. But I also have Jewish friends who receive notices from synagogues when they move to new cities. How do congregations know when new Jews move to town? Odd.

As for Jew-on-Jew humor, I'm usually in favor of it, especially from purveyors who share a somewhat common sense of gravitas: Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, even Sacha Baron Cohen (who definitely isn't anti-Semitic by acting as an anti-Semite and showing scenes of people in America offering glimpses of their fucked-up social views). I have never felt that these jokes about Jewish life are anti-Semitic, though some of the more conservative Jews definitely get cranky about them. In fact, I make fun of what being Jewish in 2007 can be like, too--for instance, needing to eat salted cured meat on a regular basis because my body chemistry requires it to produce a specific kind of irony-fuel.  Or the fact that I'm glad I didn't marry another Ashkenazi, so my children might actually have good musculature. You get my point.

One team of writers and directors who cross the line in my opinion, however, have a new biopic-spoof movie coming out soon about a Johnny Cash-like character. I'm not allowed to discuss the film before its release, so say the PR people. But I have to say something without mentioning it, and I'm sure you'll put the pieces together.