Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, under their Storyline Entertainment banner, are the producers of critically acclaimed and award-winning feature films, television movies and series. All totaled, their films and television movies have garnered six Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, eleven Emmy Awards, two Peabodys, two GLAAD Media Awards, the Actors Fund Nedda Logan Award, and the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Award. For their work in television, their movies have amassed 66 Emmy nominations.
The pairs film projects include Chicago, The Music Man, Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadow, The Beach Boys: An American Family, Annie, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, Gypsy with Bette Midler, The Reagans and Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story.
The dynamic duo sat down for a phone interview with BroadwayWorld.com to discuss their latest collaboration on HAIRSPRAY.
When did you first become interested in turning HAIRSPRAY back into a film?
Neil: We became first interested in doing a movie of Hairspray when we went to see a preview of it before opening. We went on what was an incredible night because there were so many people there from Los Angeles all descending on the show. That night there was Steven Spielberg, Rob Reiner, Francis Ford Coppola – a true galaxy of film directors there on the same night… not to mention all the usual local theatre stars!
Craig: Then we got a call asking for us to have dinner with Marc (Shaiman) and Scott (Wittman) and Jack (O'Brien) and Jerry (Mitchell). At the time, we had heard that New Line wanted to make a movie musical based on the Broadway show. We went into New York, and had dinner with the group at Orso and we explained our approach, based on all the other movie musicals that we had produced. They got very excited, and said that they'd like to collaborate with us and have us produce the film.
Where did things go from there on the road to the screen?
Craig: We had several meetings with New Line, and the process really began about 2 and a half years ago.
After Chicago we looked around to see what was out there and the only musical that we wanted to do as a film was Hairspray. We thought that it had all the fun and entertainment value of Grease, but it had this subtext of seriousness and weight with the civil rights undertones.
Neil: It was so completely different from Chicago. Chicago is very dark and cynical while Hairspray is filled with optimism and sunnyness and humor so it was a chance to do a musical with a different feel. I'm sure that theatre fans will be curious to hear how Jerry Mitchell and Jack O'Brien wound up not involved with the film?
Craig: Purely scheduling… The situation was that Jack and Jerry had hoped to start the production right away and based on our experience we felt that we needed more time to fine-tune the script and get the film cast properly. We had started talking to Travolta and Latifah, but none of the other casting had gotten underway. We had hired Leslie Dixon as our screenwriter and we had begun the process of creating a brand new screenplay based on the Broadway show.
Jack had postponed the The Coast of Utopia, the Stoppard trilogy already and Lincoln Center was getting very antsy. Jerry was getting his big chance to direct and choreograph Legally Blonde and making his big transition into being a director/choreographer. So, they both had 2 stage pieces waiting in the wings and they finally said that although they're dying to do the film they had these previous commitments, that did not allow for any further postponements.
