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Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in the movie \u201cWicked: For Good.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Giles Keyte \/ Universal Pictures)<\/p>\n
Opening wide on Friday, \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d continues the story of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo<\/a>), Glinda (Ariana Grande) and many other citizens of Oz as they face the consequences of Elphaba\u2019s realization that her beloved Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is not just a fraud but a tyrant. Sides must be taken and choices made as Elphaba does her best to battle for the freedom of Oz.<\/p>\n It is a darker film than the first one, both thematically and literally. Brooks, who loves musicals more than any other sort of film, is known for her deep understanding of color and her ability to use close-ups and capture details even in the most extravagant dance number. <\/p>\n \u201cAlice is not about the tricks and gadgets of cinematography,\u201d Chu says in a recent phone interview. \u201cShe\u2019s about savoring the essence of the frame, the lens, specifically the light. She sees things in a humanistic way. She\u2019s a storyteller, not a technician.\u201d <\/p>\n Differing from \u201cWicked,\u201d Brooks chose a handheld camera for more scenes in \u201cFor Good,\u201d which has fewer big dance numbers and more intimate moments. Elphaba and Glinda have left the playfully Gothic Shiz University and gone their separate ways. The lighting and hues of their respective environments reflect how different their circumstances \u2014 and world-views \u2014 have become. <\/p>\n Early on, Brooks had decided that the sun would always rise for Glinda and set for Elphaba. Darkness, dimness and silence make \u201cFor Good\u201d a marked contrast from the Technicolor effusiveness of \u201cWicked.\u201d While doing prep, she, Chu and other team members created a visual roadmap that listed all the intentions and emotions that would carry each scene. <\/p>\n \u201cFor the first film,\u201d Brooks says, \u201cthose intentions were things like celebration, joy, power, friendship and choice. For the second they were sacrifice, surrender, consequence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt became very clear,\u201d she continues, \u201cthat the first movie would be effervescent and the second would have a weight and a maturity to it. But there\u2019s a visual heartbeat, through lighting and camera, that connects the two.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooks calls the \u201cWicked\u201d films \u201cthe greatest love story about two women.\u201d But real love stories involve choosing to stay the course despite the inevitable setbacks and conflicts. During the course of their friendship, Elphaba and Glinda have to take risks and decide which dreams really matter in the end.<\/p>\n Indeed, Brooks says her favorite shot in the new film is one in which Glinda has to make a difficult call. \u201cWe lit her with one teeny tiny light so it\u2019s a very low light, very shallow focus. The only thing that\u2019s in focus is her eyes and you just sit with her.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s a different kind of shot, even in a film that uses silence and stillness more markedly than the first. <\/p>\n \u201cJon creates a team that all trust each other so much that when we have ideas, he\u2019s willing to try them or trust us to tell him if he\u2019s gone too far one way or another,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cAnd this movie is about the quiet places, amid all the noise of all the propaganda that\u2019s going on in Oz.\u201d <\/p>\n Brooks, Chu says, connects with the characters on a deep emotional level. \u201cIt\u2019s not about the razzle dazzle \u2014 it\u2019s about what you feel,\u201d the director says. \u201cSo I can have all those vulnerable conversations about character with her.\u201d <\/p>\n For Brooks, the dream she confessed to harboring on that Santa Monica beach almost 30 years ago, has most certainly come true. In the last five years, her career has taken off with \u201cIn the Heights,\u201d<\/a> \u201cTick, Tick \u2026 Boom!,\u201d<\/a> \u201cQueen Bees\u201d and the \u201cWicked\u201d films. In February, she became one of only a few women to ever be nominated for the American Cinematographers Society award for a theatrical release. (Rachel Morrison<\/a> was the first, in 2018, for \u201cMudbound\u201d and Mandy Walker<\/a> became the first female winner in 2023 for \u201cElvis.\u201d) It\u2019s a nomination she could easily replicate with \u201cWicked: For Good.\u201d She\u2019s currently working on \u201cSpiderman: Beyond the Spider-Verse.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooks was born in New York, where she grew up in a family rich with love and creativity \u2014 her father, Stephen Levi, was a playwright, her mother, Candace Coulston, a singer and a dancer \u2014 but often short on finances. \u201cWe lived a teeny tenement apartment on 29th and 2nd Avenue above the Wonderland Blues Bar,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cI know what it is to not have enough food.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlice is not about the tricks and gadgets of cinematography,\u201d says director Jon M. Chu. \u201cShe\u2019s about savoring the essence of the frame, the lens, specifically the light. She sees things in a humanistic way.\u201d<\/p>\n (Christina House \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Money was one reason Brooks and her sister became child actors and why her announcement that she wanted to be a cinematographer was such a big deal. She knew she would have to go to film school and the family could not afford it. <\/p>\n Her mother, agreeing on both counts, decided on the film school at USC. \u201cShe made me apply in person and she told them, \u2018Alice deserves to go here, but we can\u2019t afford to send her,\u2019\u201d Brooks recalls.<\/p>\n Two weeks later Brooks received a full academic scholarship from USC, as well as a smaller one from the Ebell of Los Angeles.<\/a> <\/p>\n Over the course of her studies, she met Chu.<\/p>\n \u201cShe had a reputation before I even knew her,\u201d he says, remembering one of her early assignments, a project she photographed but didn\u2019t direct. \u201cIt opened with a subway shot and when the screen went dark, she had a black light that showed up all the graffiti and I was like, \u2018Who is this? I have to work with her.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When she finished in 2001, she knew she couldn\u2019t afford graduate school so she worked as a waitress while attempting to convince film students to let her shoot their thesis films. She did 30 in one year, including Chu\u2019s much acclaimed early musical \u201cWhen the Kids Are Away.\u201d He was impressed by her love of musicals and her willingness to stay up until 2 in the morning editing her films.<\/p>\n Like Chu, she was considered a rising star and wound up with a reel that got her an agent.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then,\u201d she says with a small, rueful laugh, \u201ceverything was really hard for the next 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with an agent, Brooks found it difficult to find work that paid, either in money or decent film credits, never mind anyone who was making the musicals she longed to shoot. The pixie dust of film school wore off fairly quickly, she remembers.<\/p>\n \u201cI started doing features where I made a hundred dollars a day and no one has ever seen them and they\u2019re terrible,\u201d she says. \u201cThe thesis films had money and lights \u2014 you have everything and suddenly you don\u2019t have anything. So learning how to make movies with nothing was a new skill set.\u201d<\/p>\n After four years of waiting tables and making forgettable movies, she decided she\u2019d had enough of Los Angeles and its cutthroat competition. <\/p>\n \u201dI kept getting so close to breaking through and then not getting there,\u201d she says. She moved to Maine, where her mother now lives.<\/p>\n There, she met her husband, Sam Spencer, a businessman who was working for the state\u2019s Democratic Party. They were attending President Obama\u2019s 2009 inauguration when, out of the blue, Chu called. He had released his first feature film, \u201cStep Up 2: The Streets\u201d and he wanted Brooks for his next project.<\/p>\n \u201cI was outside in the freezing cold in Washington, D.C., and I hadn\u2019t talked to him for a couple of years. He said \u2018I\u2019ve got this idea for a web series that Hulu is going to do. You need to be in L.A. tomorrow.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI called her,\u201d Chu says, \u201cbecause it was a high-ambition show with no resources and that\u2019s what we were best at \u2014 we knew how to make something out of nothing. Someone who was going break new ground. Alice was that person to always do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooks flew to L.A. the next day and began shooting the web series \u201cThe Legion of Extraordinary Dancers,\u201d<\/a> which followed the adventures of a group of men whose superpower was their ability to dance. (The series was choreographed by Christopher Scott, who had starred in \u201cStep Up 2\u201d and would go on to work with Chu and Brooks on \u201cIn the Heights\u201d and \u201cWicked.\u201d)<\/p>\n They worked on \u201cLegion\u201d for three years, then re-united for the feature film \u201cJem and the Holograms,\u201d<\/a> which had the opposite effect of boosting her career. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was,\u201d Brooks says, \u201ca complete box-office disaster.\u201d <\/p>\n For a minute in 2017, it appeared that she and Chu would collaborate again, on an ABC musical drama that had breakthrough promise. <\/p>\n \u201cI thought: Great, finally I have made it. I was 38 years old, about to turn 39, I have a kid and it was more money than I had ever made,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n When the show was axed mere days before production was set to begin, Brooks took it as a sign that her dream was dead.<\/p>\n \u201cI sat in the car and cried and cried,\u201d she says. \u201cLuckily, my daughter slept through it. I told my husband, \u2018I\u2019m done. I can\u2019t keep doing this. I feel like there\u2019s no success in my future.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Spencer told her it was fine if she quit. \u201cThen there was this long pause,\u201d Brooks recalls, \u201cand he said, \u2018But you can\u2019t do it tomorrow. You have to wait six months and in those six months, you have to do everything you can.\u2019 Finally I agreed.\u201d<\/p>\n Ariana Grande, left, and Cynthia Erivo in \u201cWicked: For Good.\u201d<\/p>\n (Giles Keyte \/ Universal Pictures)<\/p>\n She shot a small musical film in New York \u201cwhich gave me confidence,\u201d Brooks says, and made weekly trips from Maine for days filled with meetings. She got a new agent and landed the Ellen Burstyn film \u201cQueen Bees.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n Then, six months after she told her husband she wanted to quit, Chu reached out again. He was in the middle of making \u201cCrazy Rich Asians\u201d<\/a> and he wanted her to meet with Dana Fox, who had co-created what would be Chu\u2019s next project, the series \u201cHome Before Dark.\u201d <\/p>\n She got the job and when she met Chu in Vancouver to begin shooting, he asked her to join him on his next film, \u201cIn the Heights.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Crazy Rich Asians\u2019 had come out,\u201d Brooks said, \u201cand he suddenly had power to say who he wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n And Brooks was exactly who Chu wanted. <\/p>\n \u201cI like being around someone who knows exactly what she\u2019s doing but is open to other ideas,\u201d he says. \u201cWe call each other out and we get to paint together.\u201d <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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