Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. If you're going
Speaker 1: to see The Lion King on Broadway, don't be late.
Speaker 1: The first number, The Circle of Life is as miraculous
Speaker 1: an opening as you'll ever see. Life sized animal puppets
Speaker 1: parade through the aisles to African music. It's breathtaking. Julie Taymore,
Speaker 1: the woman who brought this animated Disney musical to the stage,
Speaker 1: which went on to become the most successful Broadway musical
Speaker 1: of all time, is my guest today. Since The Lion King,
Speaker 1: Julie's work has run the gamut. She's directed Shakespeare operas, films,
Speaker 1: and a solo show. Her recent staging of A Midsummer
Speaker 1: Night's Dream christened a new theater space in Brooklyn this summer.
Speaker 1: She released a movie of the production, and we prepared
Speaker 1: it over three days and shot it. But I knew
Speaker 1: the play well and I could make a shot list.
Speaker 1: I knew it very well, so I could I could
Speaker 1: really think about what would be the scenes that I
Speaker 1: would want to do. And that's it. The last week
Speaker 1: of performances. Whose idea was it to do the play itself?
Speaker 1: What was the genesis of the play. Well, the theater
Speaker 1: for new audience was getting a new new theater, and
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Harwitz, the producer, asked me if I would inaugurate
Speaker 1: the new house, and you know, he knew I wanted
Speaker 1: to do Macbeth, but he said go ahead. I said,
Speaker 1: are you out of your mind? You can't open a
Speaker 1: new theater with McBeth. So I had read, sure you
Speaker 1: can her house down? I don't think so. But we
Speaker 1: did readings of four or places Harness on our back.
Speaker 1: You've done it. I know that. Um So I decided,
Speaker 1: even though I hadn't really been all that interested in dream,
Speaker 1: I decided it was the right one to bless a
Speaker 1: new house because it's the new Amsterdam. It was it
Speaker 1: blessed that house years ago. It's it's it's was created
Speaker 1: by Shakespeare for a wedding. We hear, and that's what
Speaker 1: a new theater is. It's a wedding between a new
Speaker 1: audience and the artists. And I felt that it would
Speaker 1: bring in the audience that would cross from young kids
Speaker 1: right up through old age and deceased. And we we would,
Speaker 1: we would, um, we'd be properly doing what I think
Speaker 1: a new play has to do it in a new house.
Speaker 1: I mean, not a new play, but a production should
Speaker 1: do in a new house. So it was Jeffrey was thrilled,
Speaker 1: everybody was happy, and it worked out. How do you
Speaker 1: cast well, t Tanya Oh, Tina benk Oh, my god,
Speaker 1: well you should see you didn't know her, right, she
Speaker 1: should be a national treasure in America. She's an American
Speaker 1: New York City and come out on stage. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, she's gorgeous. She's so talented and amazing.
Speaker 1: There was the most amazing representation of ever saying, well,
Speaker 1: that's great. She she auditioned. I didn't know who she was.
Speaker 1: I heard that she had done a one woman show,
Speaker 1: Jackie on Jackie Onassis and Peter Sellers had used her.
Speaker 1: But if she were in England, if we were in
Speaker 1: London was set from tempest. If we were in England
Speaker 1: now is once we were, um, she'd be known. But
Speaker 1: the person who I've cast first was Katherine Hunter, who
Speaker 1: played Puck and and She was pivotal for me because
Speaker 1: if I didn't find my Puck, I didn't know if
Speaker 1: I wanted to do the play. So I asked her
Speaker 1: over a year in advance, and I had seen her.
Speaker 1: She's she's sort of she's English and American, she can
Speaker 1: work in both places. And I had seen her in
Speaker 1: London at the National ten years ago in Carol Churchill's
Speaker 1: The Striker, and I had seen her here a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and I went, oh, my god, this woman.
Speaker 1: She is the background that I have Lecoq studying in Paris.
Speaker 1: But she's one of the greats. She's played King lear
Speaker 1: in She's one of the only women Richard the Third.
Speaker 1: She's just brilliant and uh. She came over and we
Speaker 1: did workshops with children because if I I felt if
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out how to do the fairy world,
Speaker 1: the supernatural fairy world, I wouldn't find I had to
Speaker 1: find my way into that because I didn't want to
Speaker 1: do puppets. I didn't want to do what people expected
Speaker 1: me to do because for years, oh, you've got to
Speaker 1: do Midsummer Night's Dream, right, you know why, Oh, because
Speaker 1: you can do that? And then oh, good reason not
Speaker 1: to do it exactly, so there aren't there's a few
Speaker 1: deer masks, but I wanted to figure out if I
Speaker 1: could create this rude elemental world as opposed to fairies.
Speaker 1: I called them the rude elementals. You know. The mechanicals
Speaker 1: are the rude mechanicals. And we did workshops, three or
Speaker 1: four of them with the New York City schools, children
Speaker 1: from all over start out with eight and we whittled
Speaker 1: it down to seventeen or eighteen after a couple of months,
Speaker 1: and Catherine came over was the pied piper, and together
Speaker 1: we had these wild workshops where we try out these
Speaker 1: young kids playing the forest, the maniacal part of the forest,
Speaker 1: the malignant, the terrorizing. The What why I felt they
Speaker 1: were important is because the play, which is about marriage,
Speaker 1: is about codifying love right. It's about putting strictures. What's
Speaker 1: a marriage, but putting fetters on something that is natural,
Speaker 1: human being civilized. We need to organize. But children under
Speaker 1: a certain age or pre that they're raw, they're rude there.
Speaker 1: They don't understand those limitations. And I wanted to play
Speaker 1: that aspect because the night of Midsummer Night's Dream as
Speaker 1: a night where everything goes topsy turvy and haywire. So
Speaker 1: the kids could be many, many things, including finally the
Speaker 1: children of the court. When you said you had to
Speaker 1: have my puck. Are you from this school, I should say,
Speaker 1: or maybe you It varies where you know what you
Speaker 1: want and you go and find that, or someone shows
Speaker 1: it to you, or both both. You asked me about
Speaker 1: how I cast I knew I needed someone who understood
Speaker 1: that Shakespeare. There's two parts to Shakespeare. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: the language. Usually people separate, they go, oh, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: do spectacle Shakespeare. We want to hear the language in
Speaker 1: the Iamic Bentameter, and it's Shakespeare wrote visual effects play
Speaker 1: and by the time Midsummer Night's Dream happened, it was
Speaker 1: inside and there were footlights, and there were fairies. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that they did their little fairies coming in on
Speaker 1: ropes and stuff like that in his day. But I
Speaker 1: knew that that with Pack you needed a transformer. You
Speaker 1: needed someone who could not only deliver the incredible language,
Speaker 1: but who was neither male nor female, neither eight or
Speaker 1: nine or fifty or eighty. She's everything, She's he she
Speaker 1: and Catherine has that. She's she's your age and yet
Speaker 1: you think she's five years old. Some of the time
Speaker 1: she's four ft eight, So she mixed with these kids.
Speaker 1: You're remarkable looking actress. She's totally you know, her body
Speaker 1: is all different. She can do anything with her body. Yes,
Speaker 1: and she's got that all Julie, Let's do it like that.
Speaker 1: She always talks in this voice. Now you um, I
Speaker 1: want you to describe in whatever word you want to use,
Speaker 1: the period from when you're like ten or eleven years
Speaker 1: old and you go into Boston and your parents have
Speaker 1: you going by yourself and too well, you live very
Speaker 1: unique period there that leads to a lot of very
Speaker 1: eclectic things in France and Japan. And what was that about,
Speaker 1: you know, in those days, the early days, in the
Speaker 1: late I guess sixties and seventies. First of all, I'm
Speaker 1: a lot younger than my brother and sister, and my
Speaker 1: parents had a lot to contend with with them going
Speaker 1: through the sixties, and they let me alone. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you ever saw across the universe? Did you
Speaker 1: ever see the Beatles physical? Okay, that's the closest thing
Speaker 1: to my family and that older brother and sit my
Speaker 1: sister was very politically active. My brother was a musician
Speaker 1: and a captain. Anyway, my parents had their hands full.
Speaker 1: They were great parents, but they basically let me be free.
Speaker 1: So I literally took the the the t in Boston
Speaker 1: and I would go to Boston Children's Theater at age
Speaker 1: probably starting eight or nine, after school ten eleven and
Speaker 1: and started acting. But I was in more of the
Speaker 1: Cinderella's and Tom Sawyers and I think Cinderella was the
Speaker 1: first thing I ever played. And I always wanted to
Speaker 1: be the evil step sisters, but I was never cast.
Speaker 1: I said, I wanted to be a character actress, but
Speaker 1: I had this, you know, nice pretty little face, and
Speaker 1: so I never really liked doing that. That's why I
Speaker 1: didn't go into acting, because where I want to play
Speaker 1: is not what I look like. Probably maybe now, maybe
Speaker 1: now when you get older. But uh, then when I
Speaker 1: was about thirteen or fourteen, and this is um what
Speaker 1: is this? You know, this is a time where Gratowski
Speaker 1: and the Living Theater and many people were creating theater
Speaker 1: from scratch, from ideas, and I joined a company I
Speaker 1: was the youngest by far, Theater Workshop of Boston, and
Speaker 1: Julie Portman was the director. But they were creating work
Speaker 1: based on political ideas, and the first one they did
Speaker 1: was called Riot, which was really about the racial issues
Speaker 1: in America. The one that I got involved in was
Speaker 1: was called Tribe, and it was about Native Americans and
Speaker 1: all the people in the company. This was a younger company,
Speaker 1: probably sixteen seventeen through twenty, and I was the youngest.
Speaker 1: We would bring in the material and we were working
Speaker 1: very physically with our bodies in a church basement, the
Speaker 1: Arlington Street Church. What was exciting was we were responsible
Speaker 1: for creating the content of the material. But even at
Speaker 1: that age of fifteen sixteen, I felt that though I
Speaker 1: was good physically, I wanted more disciplined. So I graduated
Speaker 1: high school early and went to Paris at sixteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these parents, they went okay, fine, And I lived with
Speaker 1: this twenty one year old Deborah Tate, who was a
Speaker 1: photographer and who was wild. We're living in Paris, and
Speaker 1: and I mean, and I went to moms school. I
Speaker 1: went to it called him mean Jacques Lecoq, Yes, let
Speaker 1: Jacques Lecoq. And that's where Simon McBurney, a lot of
Speaker 1: directors and actors whom I really admire. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: of us went there and had this training, which was
Speaker 1: physical training, how to use your body to express, not
Speaker 1: to do mine, not to end up being a mime.
Speaker 1: But this is where I started really understanding the power
Speaker 1: of mask, the mask and even poppetry. She would this
Speaker 1: this crazy lady named Madame Citroen, who looked like a lemon.
Speaker 1: She was like a lemon. She was very brutal, but
Speaker 1: she would take We would take objects, brooms and candles
Speaker 1: and all kinds of objects and make them come alive,
Speaker 1: understanding what what hardness, what metal? What what kind of character?
Speaker 1: You know? How when we say someone is, you know
Speaker 1: they're they're They're as brittle as a break or something
Speaker 1: you know, eat to express it. So we would take
Speaker 1: shapes and materials and make stories and characters out of them.
Speaker 1: So it's a different approach to puppetry, but very interesting.
Speaker 1: And the mask work was there to understand to get
Speaker 1: yourself out of yourself, Like when you can wear a mask,
Speaker 1: you can transport yourself to being a completely different human
Speaker 1: being because you lose your identity. And I understood how
Speaker 1: the body then becomes a complete sculpture. So I learned
Speaker 1: a lot that year at Lecoq. I didn't stay for
Speaker 1: the full two years. The second year was clowning, and
Speaker 1: I'm not The red nose didn't appeal to me. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go there, but but I did get
Speaker 1: a lot out of that. Where from there, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: went to college. I went to Oberlin. I went to Oberlin,
Speaker 1: and I I at Oberlin there was a man from
Speaker 1: named Herbert Blow. Did you ever hear of Herbert Blow?
Speaker 1: Us to run Lincoln Center. Then he went to cal Arts,
Speaker 1: started cal Arts, and he brought Bill Irwin Um Sharon
Speaker 1: at and about four or five actors came from cal
Speaker 1: Arts and he started a program at Oberlin, an interdisciplinary
Speaker 1: theater thing. At this point, for you, it's mostly about acting.
Speaker 1: You're an actor. No. I went to Oberlin to study
Speaker 1: anthropology and religion. Yes, No, I just couldn't stay away
Speaker 1: from theater. I didn't really want to study theater. I
Speaker 1: didn't mind doing it because that's the origins of the
Speaker 1: I loved I loved Antipope, I loved um traveling. I
Speaker 1: went I'd have to go back for a second. Before
Speaker 1: I went to Oberlin, I went to Sri Lanka one
Speaker 1: summer to Ceylon was Cylon back then and on the
Speaker 1: experiment in international living so you sort of see I constantly,
Speaker 1: whether it was Boston or out to Asia. My parents
Speaker 1: let me go and I loved. I loved experiencing other culture.
Speaker 1: There's a big part of you even touch treated parents.
Speaker 1: I'm very close to them. I never had I never
Speaker 1: went through all the crap that people do with their parents,
Speaker 1: because they treated me with enormous respect. And I was
Speaker 1: called they did, and I called them by their first
Speaker 1: name since I was little. I didn't call them mommy, daddy.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that was about, but they I
Speaker 1: never had to lie to them, and when I did lie,
Speaker 1: I lied once and told them afterwards, I said, you
Speaker 1: made me lie because you didn't trust me, And that
Speaker 1: never happened again. I was about fifteen, you know. It
Speaker 1: was about going away with my boyfriend and they didn't
Speaker 1: want me, so I lied and went anyway, miserable the
Speaker 1: whole time. That's right, Ka. Well, I lived to the
Speaker 1: family and UH and saw this extraordinary culture. I was
Speaker 1: in India, went through India a bit of India and
Speaker 1: then Ceylon, lived with the Ceylonese family and started to
Speaker 1: get my interest in that part of the world back then,
Speaker 1: and I did come to New York in between. Actually
Speaker 1: I did do at New York. I came and I
Speaker 1: went to Herbert broke Off School of Acting. I acted
Speaker 1: in the Lower east Side. I worked with Bob Californ
Speaker 1: at the in Brooklyn, at the Chelsea Theater Center. But
Speaker 1: I didn't I had my resume and I went out.
Speaker 1: But that's what I'm saying. I didn't really want to do.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be playing the roles I wanted. So I
Speaker 1: was more interested in theater that you created from scratch.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't be playing the roles you wanted. No, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to don't No, not a seventeen right, No,
Speaker 1: I really didn't. And soap opera's and you could. You're
Speaker 1: naming all the things I ended up doing. By the way,
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of pissing on my whole early crept.
Speaker 1: But but you stayed with wanting to be an actor,
Speaker 1: right reluctantly. You look what you're doing. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's changed so much in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: It's very different. You know. When I started, there was
Speaker 1: um it was easier to make it. It wasn't easy,
Speaker 1: but it was easier. You could slalom between the one
Speaker 1: for them, one for me, one for the one for me,
Speaker 1: go to a play, come back and do make some
Speaker 1: money backing forth. And now it's not like that anymore. No,
Speaker 1: not in any in any of those areas, it's not
Speaker 1: like that. And when do you start directing? Well, I
Speaker 1: started in college a little bit, but then I went
Speaker 1: to Indonesia. At the end of Oberlin, I got a
Speaker 1: traveling fellowship in visual theater, experimental puppet theater to Eastern Europe, Indonesia,
Speaker 1: and Japan and pronounce it for me, Oh, where's my glasses?
Speaker 1: Tatulaw Well, that didn't happen right away. I was going
Speaker 1: to spend a year in Japan with have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of the buon Rocku? Okay, So there's a folk
Speaker 1: buon Rocku called the awaji and this is where it
Speaker 1: is a very ancient technique where three people manipulate the puppet.
Speaker 1: And I was on my way to Japan, but I
Speaker 1: went to Indonesia first. I was going to spend three
Speaker 1: months in Indonesia and I ended up four years at
Speaker 1: because Indonesia Java. I was in Java first, and then
Speaker 1: Bali and then Sumatra toward I had never experienced theater
Speaker 1: in its original form. Now, going back to Oberlin, those
Speaker 1: were the days where you made up your own major,
Speaker 1: and my major was folklore mythology, and I studied shamanism.
Speaker 1: In the early forms of theater. I was in a
Speaker 1: country now where I was watching traditional theater function in
Speaker 1: all of its original ways, because there was no television.
Speaker 1: There was very little film. I mean I was forty
Speaker 1: years ago. I was in Java and Bali, and there
Speaker 1: was so little of that. Villages were distinct from a
Speaker 1: village ten miles away. They had their own culture, distinct.
Speaker 1: And I saw nine hour plays that would be from
Speaker 1: the Mahabad, the Ramayana, the epics, you know, they're like
Speaker 1: our epics, are Shakespeare there or our Greeks. And watch
Speaker 1: these plays that would go on in the audience, moving
Speaker 1: back and forth behind the shadow puppet screen or behind
Speaker 1: and in front, and see that during the nine hours
Speaker 1: of a play, teenagers were flirting with others. Where people
Speaker 1: would talk or children would fall asleep, where you you
Speaker 1: wake up for the clowns, you know, the fools, like
Speaker 1: in Lear, where politics of the day were discussed because
Speaker 1: the comedians would speak in the local language, where philosophies
Speaker 1: were all done in ancient Sanskrit kaoi, but nobody understood
Speaker 1: it except for the you know, the Hindu priests or whoever.
Speaker 1: I watched theater function in its original humanizing way, and
Speaker 1: that blew my mind as an artist, As an artist
Speaker 1: who was trying not to be an artist, meaning I
Speaker 1: could never commit to saying I was going to do theater.
Speaker 1: I suddenly found myself in a place where I understood
Speaker 1: the origins and watched it function in this most astounding way,
Speaker 1: and I decided to stay. And I got encouraged to
Speaker 1: stay by a major political theater figure who was always
Speaker 1: imprisoned in an out rendra a w s Rendra Javanese Muslim,
Speaker 1: who thought I'd be his fourth wife. And I said, now,
Speaker 1: I don't sign on. But I did sign on to
Speaker 1: do choreography for him. And um the problem with radio
Speaker 1: as you can't see facials. A Taylor of Java, Julie
Speaker 1: Tamore now makes her home in New York City. Listen
Speaker 1: to our archives to hear what Debbie Reynolds says of
Speaker 1: working with the real Elizabeth Taylor, as well as Joan
Speaker 1: Collins and Shirley mcclaim. Well, we had a lot of
Speaker 1: fun working together. That Joan never lets you watch her makeup,
Speaker 1: and she hides in her trailer and all her makeup.
Speaker 1: But we all kind of quite an operation. Well it
Speaker 1: is an operation for all of us as a certain
Speaker 1: point when you look in the mirror and everything is
Speaker 1: moved someplace else, take a listen, and here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: here's the thing. The New York Times called my guest
Speaker 1: Julie Tamore the cosmic p. T. Barnum of contemporary stagecraft.
Speaker 1: Her work draws heavily on her eclectic life experiences. In
Speaker 1: her early twenties, Julie was the director of a theater
Speaker 1: group in Indonesia. She could have stayed and lived a
Speaker 1: very different life, but she had a sense it just
Speaker 1: wouldn't work. I felt, after living that many years in Indonesia,
Speaker 1: I would never ever be accepted as an Indonesian. But
Speaker 1: if a Javanese guy came to New York, they could disappear.
Speaker 1: I was always that white woman with the bula booloo,
Speaker 1: which is I don't have it now, but hair on
Speaker 1: the arms, feathers, you know. And also I had to
Speaker 1: deal with the fact that there's two words that describe
Speaker 1: human beings in Javanny in Indonesian halusen kassar. Hallus is
Speaker 1: refined and kassar is crude. Well, being the head of
Speaker 1: a theater company at a two, you can't be hallus.
Speaker 1: I had to deal with the fact that just being
Speaker 1: in that position was really tricky because you're the boss.
Speaker 1: And I had a fifty year old master mask performer
Speaker 1: from Bali who was one of the company. But I'm
Speaker 1: the director of the company. And at that time I
Speaker 1: had a great partner of photographer, Javanese photographer, who was
Speaker 1: sort of the daddy. We were the mommy and daddy
Speaker 1: of the company, and we all lived together in this
Speaker 1: Mother Death Temple hotel and we started to create this
Speaker 1: original piece of theater and I acted in it as well.
Speaker 1: I acted as the outsider, the one who's trespassed. We'll
Speaker 1: come back to you And did you enjoy that? Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I hadn't stopped acting then. I hadn't. I didn't stop
Speaker 1: acting professionally or literally until I came back to the States,
Speaker 1: where you have to be put in boxes and you
Speaker 1: can't be a director and a designer and an actor.
Speaker 1: You have to be one thing or another, and I
Speaker 1: had stories to tell, so I decided the best thing
Speaker 1: was to be the kind of I call myself a
Speaker 1: creator more. And then I got boxed into being a
Speaker 1: designer in New York because I designed at the Public
Speaker 1: Theater for Elizabeth Swados. I designed the Hagada, you know,
Speaker 1: the passover, which was done every three years. I was
Speaker 1: the set, cost him, mask and puppet designer. And I
Speaker 1: had never studied that. I just did it and choreographer
Speaker 1: and sort of created that with her because that was
Speaker 1: the She liked that. That was the kind of background
Speaker 1: that I had really had, which was to create from
Speaker 1: a ritual. I've just been in a country for four
Speaker 1: years where theater comes from ritual and religion. So doing
Speaker 1: the Hagada, the Jewish passover ceremony was really something I understood.
Speaker 1: I'm jumping around here, So when do you come back
Speaker 1: to the US. Well, four years of Indonesia, Well, I
Speaker 1: have to tell the story. I we created this play
Speaker 1: in Bali. We had a tsunami in the meantime, and
Speaker 1: everybody was living. They had moved that one hotel got
Speaker 1: taken away by the tsunami, and we're all living crowded
Speaker 1: in these rooms and we're ready to go on tour.
Speaker 1: And this mixture of Hindus, Muslims, um Jews, Christians and atheists,
Speaker 1: you know, we're all there, and we all get on
Speaker 1: this night bus. Uh. We take the ferry from Bali
Speaker 1: to Java and get on a night bus to go
Speaker 1: to Surabaya. And we crashed on our way to our
Speaker 1: first performance after a year of rehearsal and total truck
Speaker 1: and bus. The truck driver died and I got glass
Speaker 1: all over and people's backs. So you can imagine being
Speaker 1: the mommy of this troop. It was horrendous. It was horrendous,
Speaker 1: and I had two operations and but talk about my parents.
Speaker 1: I finally I came home and then I said to them, no,
Speaker 1: I have to go back again, and they let me,
Speaker 1: and I went back and my troop got together, and
Speaker 1: then we toured for three more months, and at the
Speaker 1: end of that I just felt I I wanted to
Speaker 1: go back to the States. I felt I needed to,
Speaker 1: but I also wanted to bring what I had learned there.
Speaker 1: And I came to New York and went to La
Speaker 1: Mama to Ellen Stewart, and we couldn't bring all of
Speaker 1: my troop. I found Indonesians here and Bill Irwin, who
Speaker 1: I'd worked with, he came and played the opposite the
Speaker 1: character with me, and that was the last thing I said, Well,
Speaker 1: I I really have to go back to making my
Speaker 1: own shows. So I worked off off Broadway, and then
Speaker 1: I started work off Broadway and started to create original
Speaker 1: shows or direct things that existed. It was Broadway, something
Speaker 1: you wanted to do, something you thought not from it,
Speaker 1: not for no change. Well, somebody like Tom Schumacher at
Speaker 1: Disney called me up one day and and I did,
Speaker 1: and I told you could do what you want. They
Speaker 1: wanted you to do what you do. That's what they did.
Speaker 1: They did. They said, do you know the Lion King?
Speaker 1: And I said, and I said no, I mean I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen the animated film. And that was a nice
Speaker 1: big laugh at the other end of the telephone because
Speaker 1: that was weird. And he said, well, I had just
Speaker 1: done opera in Japan, Odipus Rex in Japan, and I
Speaker 1: did want dot Agen at You know, I had had
Speaker 1: shows and I had won awards. It wasn't like I
Speaker 1: was in some obscure little off off Broadway theater I had.
Speaker 1: I was doing opera around the world and other kinds
Speaker 1: of theater and Lion King. I look did the movie
Speaker 1: and I went, Wow, how much fun to try and
Speaker 1: figure out how to do a stampede on stage that's
Speaker 1: like this. Also, I thought it was thrilling to try
Speaker 1: and bring that animal world to the stage. What have
Speaker 1: they seen of yours? Well? One Thienne had won many awards,
Speaker 1: you know, the Uruguay and short story that Elliott Goldenfall
Speaker 1: and I had done three times or by that time
Speaker 1: two times, and Toward It which isn't, which is a
Speaker 1: Jaguar tale of transformation. So I'd worked with My work
Speaker 1: is in the Disney World, fairy tales, myths, animal legends,
Speaker 1: the green birds, it is. It's just my aesthetic is
Speaker 1: totally different. And and when I got together with them,
Speaker 1: I said, you know my aesthetic, I'm a I'm a sculptor,
Speaker 1: plastic artist. I don't wear for using. So when you
Speaker 1: first lay out even the most primary takes on what
Speaker 1: Lion came gonna be on, probably did they kind of
Speaker 1: lean into each othern go they've got to get rid
Speaker 1: of her, or they got it? Did they get they did?
Speaker 1: Schumacher got it, Schneider got it. Other people got scared,
Speaker 1: but not the main people, including Michael Eisner. I made
Speaker 1: one of the first things I made um was the
Speaker 1: thing that we call the gazelle wheel if if you know,
Speaker 1: after eighteen years, maybe some people have seen it, but
Speaker 1: it's it. I used bicycle wheels and the idea was
Speaker 1: to create gazelles that would that would leap across. And
Speaker 1: I made a model of that, and I had done
Speaker 1: the drawings of the how you would always show the
Speaker 1: humans in the masks, in the bodies, whether it was
Speaker 1: scar or a zebra or the elephants, you'd see the
Speaker 1: people in the legs. And so the concept of not
Speaker 1: hiding the human beings, of having the strings and rods exposed.
Speaker 1: I brought my models and my drawings and they got it.
Speaker 1: And there were some people and I can leave them mentionless,
Speaker 1: but who didn't get it, and who were very high
Speaker 1: up in Disney but Disney Film, who didn't really know theater.
Speaker 1: So we did some workshops and everything were and then
Speaker 1: Eisner said the thing that I really love that he said, well,
Speaker 1: let's do your original concept. Let's go back to the
Speaker 1: one that you first presented, where all the doubt happened,
Speaker 1: and he didn't doubt, but he wanted to know for sure.
Speaker 1: He said, because the bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff.
Speaker 1: And I thought, for the head of a company, that
Speaker 1: was a really terrific motto and for them came true
Speaker 1: for them, me for that point at that point, yes,
Speaker 1: so the But at what point did you sit there
Speaker 1: and say you knew you were onto something in the
Speaker 1: early rehearsals or oh no, right from the you know.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you. The big thing that was so exciting
Speaker 1: was the movie had five Elton and Tim songs with Hunts,
Speaker 1: Zimmer and Lebo am doing all the South African stuff
Speaker 1: in mark Manchina. And there was an album that was
Speaker 1: put out at the same time as the movie called
Speaker 1: Rhythm of the Pride Lands and it was all of
Speaker 1: the South for in those languages called son Zulu and
Speaker 1: you know. And you heard Lebo and the chorus do
Speaker 1: all of these songs. And I heard that, and I
Speaker 1: said to the to the producers, what if we take
Speaker 1: those and make fill out the score with that and
Speaker 1: keep it in its original language. And they did it,
Speaker 1: and then Lebo came on as a major composer, and
Speaker 1: I wrote some of the lyrics to one of the songs,
Speaker 1: but we took those songs and we made them work
Speaker 1: into the story structure. And people love the visual but
Speaker 1: it's the It's the first thing online, King is that
Speaker 1: not's going You know when you hear the chant and
Speaker 1: they come down and and it's hard to say why,
Speaker 1: but but that kind of music, that coral, spiritual, chorl
Speaker 1: South African singing, gets you as much as any imagery.
Speaker 1: And we knew that right away in the first workshop,
Speaker 1: minus visuals. You knew that the story worked and the
Speaker 1: music worked. And even though I think imagery is a
Speaker 1: huge part of it, the book has to work, the
Speaker 1: music has to work, has to be there and work.
Speaker 1: And it did you win the Tony Award for Best
Speaker 1: Director of a Musical, And would you say that After that,
Speaker 1: there was just an onslaught of people wanting you to
Speaker 1: replicate that same kind of a little bit. One of
Speaker 1: the first things I think was Steven Spielberg. I think
Speaker 1: I got an offer to do some kind of children's
Speaker 1: maybe even the Cat in the Hat, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, sure, if the cat's black. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever it is, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: do Titus. I wanted to do Titus Andronicus, which I
Speaker 1: had directed off Broadway before Lion King. And I think
Speaker 1: this is the perverse side of my nature, which is
Speaker 1: I don't like to be put into a box, and
Speaker 1: I like to do something that I've never done before.
Speaker 1: I've done Shakespeare, but I wanted to do a feature
Speaker 1: film of Titus, and I wanted to work with the
Speaker 1: best writer in the English language and the best actors
Speaker 1: in the English Tony, Your Tony are Tony. And so
Speaker 1: for me going from Lion King, which is brilliant actors,
Speaker 1: but it's still you know, the it's a musical. It's
Speaker 1: broad for families. Uh I was. I really felt that
Speaker 1: at that this point, which is that issue of violence
Speaker 1: in American culture and violence in general, this was what
Speaker 1: was really on my mind, as it was on everybody's minds.
Speaker 1: There was the Columbine, there was the Menendez brothers. I
Speaker 1: remember very much feeling that that this we're coming to
Speaker 1: the end of what is it, the twentieth century and
Speaker 1: lo and behold, but nothing has changed, has just gotten worse.
Speaker 1: But there was an idealism at the time that if
Speaker 1: you take this incredible play of Shakespeare's which is the
Speaker 1: best dissertation on violence ever written, ever written. It's astounding.
Speaker 1: And try and tell that story. You know that that
Speaker 1: really had meaning for me. And then Hopkins saw Lion King.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is interesting. He saw Lion King. I I.
Speaker 1: I had done workshops with Gino on doing it, but
Speaker 1: he never committed, you know, al so he would never commit.
Speaker 1: And finally I had the money, whether it was Pacino
Speaker 1: or somebody else, didn't have to be Puccino. And I
Speaker 1: called up Tony hopt where we found Tony Hopkins, and
Speaker 1: he said, well, let's have a meeting. And three hours
Speaker 1: after the meeting, I get it. He says, okay. I
Speaker 1: got a message when I come back to New York
Speaker 1: and said, well, we don't have to make a decision
Speaker 1: right away. He said, no, no, let's do it. He
Speaker 1: liked that he saw a director in line. He liked
Speaker 1: that there was a person with a concept and that
Speaker 1: I had an idea about I had done the play.
Speaker 1: So he signed on. And then I got Jessica Lang
Speaker 1: and Alan Cummings and Harry Lennox and Matthew Reason, Jonathan
Speaker 1: re Smyers and all these fabulous actors to do it.
Speaker 1: It was it was the right thing for me to do.
Speaker 1: Maybe not commercially, but so what you know, have you
Speaker 1: struggled with that about movie abdicating commerciality? Have you ever thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll go do that to make a living. Well, I
Speaker 1: make a them. No, I'm well aware of them. But
Speaker 1: in terms of do you just sit there and say
Speaker 1: you can make more of a living? Do you get
Speaker 1: not about making a living for me? It's about being
Speaker 1: able to do the films I want and period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what governs everything or theater or opera, Yes, completely,
Speaker 1: because I make a good enough living with Lion King,
Speaker 1: so I don't have to do it to make a living.
Speaker 1: I have tremendous freedom. Is the greatest boon that an
Speaker 1: artist can have is to make that choice of the
Speaker 1: kind of work. So I can do an opera here,
Speaker 1: I can do a one woman show at the public
Speaker 1: theater like with Anne Hathaway this This Spring, which I
Speaker 1: love doing. Uh, the movies I want to make, run
Speaker 1: the Gamut and something like Frieda was very successful, didn't
Speaker 1: cost very much and made a lot of money compared
Speaker 1: to what it costs. But then I've done three Shakespeare
Speaker 1: films and If you don't have money to promote shape
Speaker 1: any movie. If you don't spend money in advertising and promotion,
Speaker 1: no movie will do well. That's a wonderful place to
Speaker 1: be to have. Uh. I mean, obviously, you direct a
Speaker 1: Broadway show, and there are like my friend Walter Bobby
Speaker 1: who did Chicago, and like Mantella with Wicked, and on
Speaker 1: and on many other people throughout history who the royalties
Speaker 1: give them some great reward. And it seems that you've
Speaker 1: done amazing things with that freedom that you've had. You
Speaker 1: really have done what you wanted to do. Or a
Speaker 1: lot of other people have this condition where they're told, well,
Speaker 1: now you can do whatever you want to do, and
Speaker 1: they don't know what they wanted to know. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just that I have projects that I'm still twenty years
Speaker 1: trying to do. There that's when we started this conversation.
Speaker 1: I have a movie that's still after all this time.
Speaker 1: If I don't get quote the A list actor two
Speaker 1: of them at the top, I can't get the money.
Speaker 1: Because some of the movies I want to make, they
Speaker 1: their magical realism. They combine realism with fantasy. There's visual effects.
Speaker 1: It's not a ten million dollar film. It's more like
Speaker 1: five and that that that what do you call it?
Speaker 1: But those million dollar films don't exist very much anymore.
Speaker 1: It's the five million dollar film and the two exactly
Speaker 1: and the two million. Rarely do women get offered that
Speaker 1: you know? And even the men, if you just again
Speaker 1: not naming names, there's a couple you see that they
Speaker 1: hire men that even have no experience that because everybody
Speaker 1: thinks they can make those big comic book movies by
Speaker 1: wrote or there's you know, they'd rather not have someone
Speaker 1: who's too much of an autour director doing it. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming you've done projects it didn't always go the way
Speaker 1: you wanted them to go. And when they didn't go
Speaker 1: the way you wanted them to go, did you sense
Speaker 1: it right up in the beginning If that's interesting, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. No, if you know it right at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you'd get out, wouldn't you? Maybe maybe not? Like for actors,
Speaker 1: the condition is like booking a ticket on a train.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to work now. I've told myself,
Speaker 1: my wife, my family, in my life October fift we
Speaker 1: set sail, and all of a sudden we going we
Speaker 1: do it, and I go, oh, this is not. There's
Speaker 1: an iceberg here in the harbor. I think we're going
Speaker 1: to hit that iceberg. We should turn around. They're like, no,
Speaker 1: we're not turning. You can't turn around. It's not up
Speaker 1: to you to turn around. I don't think. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of these you can't. You're right, you can't
Speaker 1: turn around. So but I think, you know, in these
Speaker 1: projects that take so long to develop, there are points
Speaker 1: where you where you should where you could if you knew.
Speaker 1: And I won't do anything if I don't really love
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, you know, I mean I Lion King
Speaker 1: taught me that you don't condescend to your audience, that
Speaker 1: you don't patronize your audience, that you can still be
Speaker 1: the artist or do the things you want to do
Speaker 1: and reach a wide audience. It's proven it's possible take
Speaker 1: people to a place they didn't know they wanted to go.
Speaker 1: That's a tricky where where you have. Most producers say,
Speaker 1: give the audience what they want. My my raison detre
Speaker 1: is not that if you give them what they want,
Speaker 1: you're going to be bored doing it because you've already
Speaker 1: seen it, They've done it, they know it. I'm going
Speaker 1: to be investing minimum of two years in any film.
Speaker 1: As a director, you've got to feel excited every day
Speaker 1: going to work, right you have to do you know,
Speaker 1: do you go to the theater and watch TV and
Speaker 1: go to the movies? What entertainment for you? Privately? All
Speaker 1: of them? All of them? I mean, it's oh god,
Speaker 1: I I watched Breaking Bad like mentally at this one
Speaker 1: my favorite. I've watched them What's the Downtown Abbey until it?
Speaker 1: Until it sort of didn't interest me as much anymore.
Speaker 1: But I that those forms. I've got two projects for
Speaker 1: television that are in development, you know, will take a
Speaker 1: long time. But I have too that I'm working on
Speaker 1: with a writer, and I'm gonna do Grendel hopefully is
Speaker 1: an opera film. One dot An we're talking about is
Speaker 1: the film These are the non commercial you know, the
Speaker 1: word art film. That's such a bad word, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't all films be art films? Shouldn't they all be
Speaker 1: artfully done? This is the big This is the conundrum
Speaker 1: that I have because they make art into a bad word.
Speaker 1: Means you don't make money on it. That's what art means.
Speaker 1: Whereas any film I do, whether it's a big, huge
Speaker 1: one like Across the Universe was a big film or not?
Speaker 1: You hope you're doing it artfully. Who produced Across the Universe? Well,
Speaker 1: that was Joe Roth and Revolution and we did you
Speaker 1: calaborate with any of the surviving Beatles and that at all?
Speaker 1: Or now they weren't a part of it. I wish
Speaker 1: they had been. I did meet. I sat next to
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney watching the movie in London. I was so thrilling.
Speaker 1: I he's right when Jude sings oh My Love and hit,
Speaker 1: I could hear McCartney singing under under his breath and
Speaker 1: I died because I was twelve or something when that happened.
Speaker 1: And um I met with Yoko up in her apartment
Speaker 1: with the white piano and Olivia Harrison. I didn't meet
Speaker 1: with Ringo, but I wanted their approval when we finished it.
Speaker 1: Even though they don't own the rights to their own music.
Speaker 1: It's strange, but I am trying to do that on stage.
Speaker 1: Who owns the rights to their music? Sony a TV.
Speaker 1: So when we get those worked out, I would love
Speaker 1: to do it on the stage because we rehearsed it
Speaker 1: like we were doing a real musical. When we did
Speaker 1: the movie and if in Korea. You know, I put
Speaker 1: the choreography back in that. I really didn't do much
Speaker 1: choreography in the movie because I wanted it more real.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that I really want to do.
Speaker 1: And uh, and then these TV things and then this
Speaker 1: beautiful movie called Writers on the Storm, although we'll probably
Speaker 1: have to change the title, which is an updating of
Speaker 1: the Flying Dutchman and it takes that that myth. That's
Speaker 1: something I'd love to do, take the myth of the
Speaker 1: Dutchman and bring it into the present. And it takes
Speaker 1: place in newportant New Bedford. I love story, kind of
Speaker 1: action love story. And this is the one where I
Speaker 1: was mentioning, Okay, but I have great actors, the greatest
Speaker 1: actors for these two leads, and for me, it's more
Speaker 1: exciting that they aren't household. Well one is sort of
Speaker 1: but you know that's thrilling because then you can believe it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's fantastic. But but it's this this number
Speaker 1: that I'm dealing with, the number can we get it
Speaker 1: down to fifteen? And going yeah, But then it doesn't
Speaker 1: have sailing scenes that are of the eighteen hundreds mixed
Speaker 1: with the present, and you know, somehow, in spite of
Speaker 1: these limitations, because what you try to do is such
Speaker 1: a rich meal, you prevail. You find a way. I
Speaker 1: guess you find a way. You'll find a way, don't you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope so, I have no doubt. We'll see Julie
Speaker 1: Taymor's The Flying Dutchman in our sites. In the future.
Speaker 1: You can see her film version of A Midsummer Night's
Speaker 1: Dream in select theaters in the US and the UK.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to hear? Is the
Speaker 1: thing