Bill Condon knows how to bring a musical to the big screen.<\/p>\n
His screenplay for the 2002 Oscar-winning \u201cChicago\u201d helped reinvigorate the genre after a long fallow period. He then stepped behind the camera to write and direct 2006\u2019s \u201cDreamgirls,\u201d a movie that won Jennifer Hudson an Academy Award for her debut feature role. In 2017, he pulled double-duty, directing the live-action \u201cBeauty and the Beauty\u201d and sharing writing credit on \u201cThe Greatest Showman,\u201d both massive hits. And today, he sees the release of his latest movie musical, \u201cKiss of the Spider Woman,\u201d featuring Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna and newcomer Tonatiuh.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/p>\n
The secret to a good musical adaptation? Condon has a seemingly simple answer. \u201cThe crucial question you have to ask when you are revisiting something is: is it necessary?\u201d he admits. \u201cWhy do it?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the case of this new \u201cSpider Woman,\u201d there were several factors. Condon had read the 1976 Manuel Puig novel and seen both the 1985 film adaptation and the 1993 Broadway musical with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, the duo behind \u201cChicago.\u201d The story focuses on the relationship between two political prisoners \u2014 a gay window dresser named Molina (Tonatiuh) and a revolutionary named Valentin (Luna) \u2014 and how the power of movies helps them survive imprisonment. In Condon\u2019s version, it\u2019s one film in particular, a Golden Age musical called \u201cKiss of the Spider Woman\u201d that Molina recounts to his cellmate.<\/p>\n
Condon had an appreciation for the previous adaptations. \u201cEach version was groundbreaking in its time,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd as a gay man who didn\u2019t have that many stories being told in either mainstream cinema or on Broadway, it felt important and personal.\u201d As he thought about making his film, he revisited the novel and was struck by how ahead of its time Puig\u2019s work had been. \u201cThere are so many ways in which the world was finally catching up to what he\u2019d written about,\u201d he notes. \u201cThere was this examination of gender fluidity and this real commitment to these characters and their stories.\u201d And though the previous versions had portrayed a sexual relationship between the pair, it had been presented as largely transactional. Says Condon, \u201cI felt it had never really been told as a love story before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the film\u2019s primary love story is between the cellmates, there are also the relationships playing out in the fictional movie musical set within the movie, which stars Lopez as an actress playing both the unlucky-in-love heroine and the diabolical Spider Woman of the title. Luna and Tonatiuh also appear in the film-within-the-film, their dashing personas and colorful surroundings a stark juxtaposition to the dreary prison walls.<\/p>\n
Condon knew from the start he wanted Lopez for his film but even he was impressed by just how well she nailed the nuance of the role. \u201cI was obviously confident she could do the singing and dancing, but it went beyond that,\u201d he praises. \u201cShe captured the essence of a studio-trained \u201840s and \u201850s musical diva, the little adjustments, their elocution style, the way they moved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Casting Lopez and then Luna helped relieve the pressure to cast a big-name as the male lead, paving the way for a revelatory star turn from Tonatiuh. And Condon took other big risks, making some major changes from the stage incarnation.<\/p>\n
In the stage version, there is no delineation between the worlds when it comes to the music \u2014 both the prisoners and the fictional film characters sing. But Condon choose to eliminate the numbers in the prison scenes so as not to \u201cask the audience to make the leap to watching hard-bitten political prisoners sing out loud\u201d \u2014 something he notes works better on stage.<\/p>\n
Instead, he says, \u201cThere was a chance to let the musical numbers exist in the world of performance and, because it\u2019s about movie musicals, that\u2019s where the numbers naturally live.\u201d So, the songs are all diegetic, where everyone present acknowledges them. (As opposed to non-diegetic singing, which is for the audience and not necessarily heard by all the characters.) Condon had made a similar choice with \u201cChicago,\u201d where the musical numbers exist only in the fantasies of the main protagonist.<\/p>\n
When it came to \u201cDreamgirls,\u201d Condon struck a happy medium \u2013 at the start of the film, the characters are singing as part of live performances. It isn\u2019t until several songs in, \u201cSteppin\u2019 to the Bad Side,\u201d where the singing is non-diegetic. Condon admits he made this choice to help ease audiences into the format. \u201cIt was intentional, and maybe a mistake,\u201d he notes. \u201cMaybe we should have just embraced it right from the start.\u201d But he wasn\u2019t sure that audiences were yet accustomed to fully sung-through musicals. \u201cWith some sung-through musicals made to movies, they can sort of collapse under their own weight,\u201d he notes. \u201cI think in a movie, when everything\u2019s sung at you for over two hours, there\u2019s a relentlessness to it that I think slowly undermines the dramatic kind of power of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He knew, however, that Hudson\u2019s show-stopping \u201cAnd I Am Telling You I\u2019m Not Going\u201d could not be done as part of a performance in the film. Says Condon, \u201cThat\u2019s a number where a woman is singing her heart out to the man she\u2019s losing. You can\u2019t put that in the quotation marks of a stage performance.\u201d It also helped that, by that time, audiences had begun embracing movie musicals again thanks to films like \u201cChicago\u201d and \u201cMoulin Rouge!\u201d<\/p>\n
Musicals are still a tough sell for some, and we\u2019ve all seen those trailers that seem to want to obscure the fact they\u2019re advertising a musical. But Condon says that was never an issue with his distributor, Roadside Attractions, Lionsgate and LD Entertainment. \u201cI really applaud [them] because they went the other way,\u201d he says. \u201cAll the materials make it clear we\u2019re selling a musical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Condon admits such an experience, from shooting to release, has been both unusual and remarkable. \u201cI\u2019d call this a unicorn movie,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough time for unicorn movies and a tough time for theatrical exhibition in general. But the people who wound up buying the movie did it in the way that all great show business things happen, which is forgetting the logic, forgetting the business, and just doing it out of love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Best of Variety<\/p>\n
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