Wide-eyed science-fiction, edge-of-your-seat adventure, breathless depictions of humanity. It’s hard to think of something Steven Spielberg hasn’t achieved in his long and storied career. One thing perhaps missing from his inimitable catalogue though, was a musical. Until now, that is. The desire to bring song and dance to the big screen isn’t new for Spielberg however, but one that has been there from the very beginning.
“I could have asked that question to myself 25 years ago when I turned 50 because I had wanted to make a musical out of the gate”, Spielberg states. “When I was in my early twenties and just directing television, I had always wanted to do musicals. And for some reason, it eluded me when I got more experienced, more successful, and I could kind of write my own ticket.”
“I developed two or three films that were designed to have music in them”, he explains. “One of them was like American Graffiti, and one of them a little more like La La Land that came out much, much later. I just was never happy with any of my own attempts because looming in the background and upstaging everything original that I tried to mount as a musical was always my favorite musical, West Side Story, that had been in my life since I was a 10-year-old kid and my parents brought home the original Broadway cast album. So that was really my true love and I just knew that was also what my true dream was, to someday be able to reimagine West Side Story.”
If making a musical could be considered Spielberg’s last crusade, then there’s no doubt that West Side Story is his holy grail. 1961’s West Side Story directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise is undoubtedly one of the most beloved movie musicals of all time. Taking on a reimagining of such a cherished film and stage play is no small task then for your first musical project, but Spielberg has dipped his toes into those waters before.
Musicals may not be the first thing that pops up when you think of Spielberg, and who could blame you. This is a man responsible for some of the most iconic science-fiction, action and war films ever made. But, if you look back through a number of his films, the breadcrumb trail is there to see, hidden in plain sight within those works.
“George Lucas always knew”, he chuckles. “He knew because I always said to George, ‘I got to make a musical someday’. So George heard me like a broken record talking about wanting to make a musical. So he called me up one day and said, ‘Hey, we can make a musical. Why don't we do the opening of Temple of Doom as a musical number? An homage to Busby Berkeley, with a bunch of dancers and we'll get a real choreographer and you can shoot your first musical number’. That was George's idea because he knew how much I love musicals. Danny Daniels choreographed that.”
“And then there was a little bit of a quasi-musical number in 1941, which was the jitterbug contest. That was a little more serious”, he notes. “That was because that number wasn't a main title sequence where it doesn't matter what's happening under the titles - it was part of the storytelling. So I got for the first time to sample an action scene done musically, an action scene that was about a dance gone awry, and a dance turning into a gang fight. So those are my only real two close encounters with the musical genre and maybe a little bit in Ready Player One in that zero-gravity dance they do to the Bee Gees.”
George Lucas called me and said, ‘Hey, we can make a musical. Why don't we do the opening of Temple of Doom as a musical number?'
Spielberg may only have shot a few scenes approaching musical status in the past, but more prominently, he’s given us his fair share of action scenes. West Side Story has always been a tale that blurs that line between fighting and dancing, it’s there for all to see in the iconic opening of the 1961 film. In Spielberg’s version though, the fighting feels much more separate from the dancing, less balletic, and more ballistic.
On the surface, directing an action scene may not seem too dissimilar to orchestrating a dance number. They both contain multiple people moving at high speed, both are stylishly choreographed and meticulously blocked out, and have the same end goal. Converting motion into emotion. Spielberg himself notes the similarities between the two, but also welcomed the challenges that directing each supplied.
“It compares in a number of ways”, he reveals. “For one thing, I have to always make the decision, what is going to be a oner? Meaning what am I going to do as a master in one shot that doesn't have any coverage and what am I going to break up so I have more control in the editing room of the rhythm and pacing? I had to make those decisions way ahead of time with West Side Story because where I put the camera was completely dependent upon where Justin Peck placed his dancers. Often when I predetermined a shot, Justin had to rewrite the choreography to adapt to the shot that I was predetermined to do.”
“So that's why a relationship was so good because unlike the bar fight in Raiders, or the storming of Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan, I didn't have a collaborator like that on any of those films. Now I had somebody that was in charge of a discipline I knew very little about and had no personal skills at all. I have two left feet when it comes to dancing and I have no singing voice.
Unlike the bar fight in Raiders, or the storming of Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan, I didn't have a collaborator like that on any of those films.
“So I loved suddenly having full partnership in disciplines that I was not trained to perform or direct others to perform, but relied on those experts to do their best work so I could do my best work. I could teach them about camera, but they could teach me about movement, especially among people dancing.”
When trying something new it’s always wise to lean on the experience of others, even if you are one of the most successful filmmakers of all-time. Collaboration is key and at the centre of what makes West Side Story work so well (ironically, the stubbornness for anyone to work together and co-exist being the tragedy of its story).
It’s rare for someone of his vast experience to approach something so fresh to them, and easy to imagine, especially daunting when they’re trying to recapture the magic of one of their favourite films. It was a challenge that never felt too overwhelming to Spielberg however, and thankfully, one that lived up to what he always dreamt it would be.
“Thank goodness I had enough experience points that it didn't feel like I had gone back to square one”, he says. “But what it did offer me was something that I could only imagine to have expected and was so overjoyed when it was exactly what was to be expected - and that’s making a musical is a massively collaborative effort between people who are familiar with things that you have no idea of yet, and you have to learn what they already know.”
“Justin Peck was a tremendous partner to have as my choreographer, Jeanine Tesori as the musical director who got all the vocal performances out of the kids, and then Stephen Sondheim that collaborated in the making of this movie and sat with us for three weeks.”
“Every day, we did vocal recordings of the whole cast. Steve was there with his notes and his ideas. He was there at every single draft of the script and gave us notes on the script. To have had the honor to collaborate with the inimitable Stephen Sondheim is one of the greatest honors of my life. The fact that he isn't sitting right next to me, talking to you where he should have been, is something that's going to take all of us a long time to get over.”
To have had the honor to collaborate with the inimitable Stephen Sondheim is one of the greatest honors of my life.
“He saw the film in February and all he kept saying was, ‘I can't wait to see it in front of an audience. I want to see this in front of a big audience.’ He kept saying it over and over again. Two weeks ago, he also said, ‘I can't wait for Monday night, the New York premiere of West Side Story. I cannot wait to come to that with my husband, Jeff.’ So it was a complete shock three days before the premiere when we received this news.”
Thanks to Spielberg, Stephen Sondheim’s words now find themselves at movie theatres for the world to enjoy again. The resulting work by the whole cast and crew is a film full of passion that bursts off the screen - a faithful adaptation, reinvented for a new audience with signature touches only a master filmmaker could add. For Spielberg, his first musical may have been decades in the making, but it’s one that’s certainly been worth the wait for all of us.
Simon Cardy's favourite Spielberg films are Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Close Encounters. Come and tell him your top 3 on Twitter at @CardySimon.
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“I could have asked that question to myself 25 years ago when I turned 50 because I had wanted to make a musical out of the gate”, Spielberg states. “When I was in my early twenties and just directing television, I had always wanted to do musicals. And for some reason, it eluded me when I got more experienced, more successful, and I could kind of write my own ticket.”
“I developed two or three films that were designed to have music in them”, he explains. “One of them was like American Graffiti, and one of them a little more like La La Land that came out much, much later. I just was never happy with any of my own attempts because looming in the background and upstaging everything original that I tried to mount as a musical was always my favorite musical, West Side Story, that had been in my life since I was a 10-year-old kid and my parents brought home the original Broadway cast album. So that was really my true love and I just knew that was also what my true dream was, to someday be able to reimagine West Side Story.”
If making a musical could be considered Spielberg’s last crusade, then there’s no doubt that West Side Story is his holy grail. 1961’s West Side Story directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise is undoubtedly one of the most beloved movie musicals of all time. Taking on a reimagining of such a cherished film and stage play is no small task then for your first musical project, but Spielberg has dipped his toes into those waters before.
Musicals may not be the first thing that pops up when you think of Spielberg, and who could blame you. This is a man responsible for some of the most iconic science-fiction, action and war films ever made. But, if you look back through a number of his films, the breadcrumb trail is there to see, hidden in plain sight within those works.
“George Lucas always knew”, he chuckles. “He knew because I always said to George, ‘I got to make a musical someday’. So George heard me like a broken record talking about wanting to make a musical. So he called me up one day and said, ‘Hey, we can make a musical. Why don't we do the opening of Temple of Doom as a musical number? An homage to Busby Berkeley, with a bunch of dancers and we'll get a real choreographer and you can shoot your first musical number’. That was George's idea because he knew how much I love musicals. Danny Daniels choreographed that.”
“And then there was a little bit of a quasi-musical number in 1941, which was the jitterbug contest. That was a little more serious”, he notes. “That was because that number wasn't a main title sequence where it doesn't matter what's happening under the titles - it was part of the storytelling. So I got for the first time to sample an action scene done musically, an action scene that was about a dance gone awry, and a dance turning into a gang fight. So those are my only real two close encounters with the musical genre and maybe a little bit in Ready Player One in that zero-gravity dance they do to the Bee Gees.”
George Lucas called me and said, ‘Hey, we can make a musical. Why don't we do the opening of Temple of Doom as a musical number?'
Spielberg may only have shot a few scenes approaching musical status in the past, but more prominently, he’s given us his fair share of action scenes. West Side Story has always been a tale that blurs that line between fighting and dancing, it’s there for all to see in the iconic opening of the 1961 film. In Spielberg’s version though, the fighting feels much more separate from the dancing, less balletic, and more ballistic.
On the surface, directing an action scene may not seem too dissimilar to orchestrating a dance number. They both contain multiple people moving at high speed, both are stylishly choreographed and meticulously blocked out, and have the same end goal. Converting motion into emotion. Spielberg himself notes the similarities between the two, but also welcomed the challenges that directing each supplied.
“It compares in a number of ways”, he reveals. “For one thing, I have to always make the decision, what is going to be a oner? Meaning what am I going to do as a master in one shot that doesn't have any coverage and what am I going to break up so I have more control in the editing room of the rhythm and pacing? I had to make those decisions way ahead of time with West Side Story because where I put the camera was completely dependent upon where Justin Peck placed his dancers. Often when I predetermined a shot, Justin had to rewrite the choreography to adapt to the shot that I was predetermined to do.”
“So that's why a relationship was so good because unlike the bar fight in Raiders, or the storming of Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan, I didn't have a collaborator like that on any of those films. Now I had somebody that was in charge of a discipline I knew very little about and had no personal skills at all. I have two left feet when it comes to dancing and I have no singing voice.
Unlike the bar fight in Raiders, or the storming of Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan, I didn't have a collaborator like that on any of those films.
“So I loved suddenly having full partnership in disciplines that I was not trained to perform or direct others to perform, but relied on those experts to do their best work so I could do my best work. I could teach them about camera, but they could teach me about movement, especially among people dancing.”
When trying something new it’s always wise to lean on the experience of others, even if you are one of the most successful filmmakers of all-time. Collaboration is key and at the centre of what makes West Side Story work so well (ironically, the stubbornness for anyone to work together and co-exist being the tragedy of its story).
It’s rare for someone of his vast experience to approach something so fresh to them, and easy to imagine, especially daunting when they’re trying to recapture the magic of one of their favourite films. It was a challenge that never felt too overwhelming to Spielberg however, and thankfully, one that lived up to what he always dreamt it would be.
“Thank goodness I had enough experience points that it didn't feel like I had gone back to square one”, he says. “But what it did offer me was something that I could only imagine to have expected and was so overjoyed when it was exactly what was to be expected - and that’s making a musical is a massively collaborative effort between people who are familiar with things that you have no idea of yet, and you have to learn what they already know.”
“Justin Peck was a tremendous partner to have as my choreographer, Jeanine Tesori as the musical director who got all the vocal performances out of the kids, and then Stephen Sondheim that collaborated in the making of this movie and sat with us for three weeks.”
“Every day, we did vocal recordings of the whole cast. Steve was there with his notes and his ideas. He was there at every single draft of the script and gave us notes on the script. To have had the honor to collaborate with the inimitable Stephen Sondheim is one of the greatest honors of my life. The fact that he isn't sitting right next to me, talking to you where he should have been, is something that's going to take all of us a long time to get over.”
To have had the honor to collaborate with the inimitable Stephen Sondheim is one of the greatest honors of my life.
“He saw the film in February and all he kept saying was, ‘I can't wait to see it in front of an audience. I want to see this in front of a big audience.’ He kept saying it over and over again. Two weeks ago, he also said, ‘I can't wait for Monday night, the New York premiere of West Side Story. I cannot wait to come to that with my husband, Jeff.’ So it was a complete shock three days before the premiere when we received this news.”
Thanks to Spielberg, Stephen Sondheim’s words now find themselves at movie theatres for the world to enjoy again. The resulting work by the whole cast and crew is a film full of passion that bursts off the screen - a faithful adaptation, reinvented for a new audience with signature touches only a master filmmaker could add. For Spielberg, his first musical may have been decades in the making, but it’s one that’s certainly been worth the wait for all of us.
Simon Cardy's favourite Spielberg films are Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Close Encounters. Come and tell him your top 3 on Twitter at @CardySimon.
Continue reading...