She Likes to Watch

Pity the poor features writer.
We slave daily over a hot keyboard, fretting over quotes and commas, searching for the pithiest words, the most expressive turn of phrase. Then we pass our opus to a merciless editor and watch as they carefully rip it to shreds.
Ever heard the expression, “Kill your darlings?”
Below are some insights from The Tribune’s interview with Oscar-nominated director Norman Jewison that didn’t make the print edition.You’re best known as the director of the Oscar-winning drama “In the Heat of the Night.” How did you end up directing two of the most popular screen musicals of the 1970s?
I was very excited when they offered me the opportunity to make (1971’s) “Fiddler on the Roof” but I was going back to what I knew best … I think at that point in my career I was a lot more fulfilled because I had been able to do drama, I had been able to do political satire.
I think the marriage of music and the moving image is very, very powerful. You almost don’t need dialogue. So I always wanted to make an opera and I got the opportunity to at least make a modern opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which has no dialogue. It has one line, and that’s it.

Talk more about 1973’s “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
I always saw it as a kind of highly stylized, modern opera being staged against a Biblical background. And so we did that as a play within a play, where we opened with a bus arriving and unloading the costumes and the props. It was like a group of itinerant actors staging their own rock version of a Biblical story.… It helped set the tone for what we could then do with our costuming and our setting.
I like “Superstar” a lot. I think it’s one of my most interesting films, frankly.

What about “Fiddler on the Roof,” which is based on the stories of a Jewish Russian writer?Sholom Aleichem was writing about Russia in 1910 or 1912 and I was trying to invoke that period in the Ukraine in this little village. I was trying to make it very real and at the same time allow the audience, allow the characters to slide into songs…
I think that’s probably one of the great aspects of “Fiddler,” that it really is written so brilliantly as far as the lyrics propelling the story along.

What are the challenges of taking a play or musical from the stage to the big screen?
I think when you try to translate from the theater to film, especially in a musical, you have to be careful that the film doesn’t stop and a production number starts.
You’re in a very real world because film is as close to reality as we can possibly get. Because the camera is photographing what’s out there and there’s cars and people and streets and buildings.
Now in the old days, they didn’t go outside very much. They stayed inside in kind of a make-believe world. The older Hollywood musicals, as good as some of them are … start to look a little false to us from the standpoint of reality.

What attracted you to the 1987 romantic comedy “Moonstruck”?
I think “Moonstruck” is probably as highly original a screenplay as you can find in the last 20 years in America.… I was overjoyed after we made the film and (John Patrick Shanley) won the Academy Award for best screenplay.
It was more than just a comedy. It was a glimpse into a family and into an Italian American family with problems. There was something very real about it. It was (also) very lyrical and that’s what I liked about it. It had a theatrical feeling to it almost like an opera — with Cher being the soprano and Nicolas Cage being the tenor and Danny Aiello the baritone …

Talk about the casting. Two of your actresses won Academy Awards — Cher as a widow torn between two suitors, Olympia Dukakis as her mom.
There are times when you just get lucky and you get who you want and everybody fits. It was one of those pictures.
I got Cher and she was my first choice. I said, ‘If you don’t do this, if you don’t play Loretta Castorini, Cher, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’ … She says, ‘You feel that strongly about it.’ I said, ‘Yes, I think you’re the only person to play this role, but I do have a second choice.’ And all the way through the picture, she kept saying, ‘Who’s your second choice?’
Olympia Dukakis … hadn’t done that many films and I had seen her so many times on Broadway. I went to her and she says, “I can’t play that part. I’m not Italian, I’m Greek!” But I said, “But I want you to play it because there is no one that has your sense of timing. You’re the perfect age for it. You look Italian. You’ll get away with it.”

What are you working on now?
Believe it or not, I’m working on a film very close to (his 1966 satire) “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.” It’s called ‘High Alert’ and it’s very similar to “The Russians Are Coming” insofar that it has people out of place and plays off a kind of a paranoia the country’s going through. It takes place in the Hamptons in New York in the middle of summer.
The general premise is that everyone thinks there’s an invasion. They think the terrorists have landed. All it is, is a group of Moroccans who have an act. They want to get to Vegas.

And you’re working on another romantic comedy written by John Patrick Shanley?
It’s called “The Accordion.” It’s a romantic comedy that takes place in New Orleans.
It’s not as easy to make films today as it was 15 years ago. Most of the really good films today are independent films, smaller films, and that means we have to work really hard at getting people to back us.

– Sarah L.