The Director's Chair: Adam Shankman's Hairspray Diary #10

BroadwayWorld.com has an exclusive look into the making of the movie musical HAIRSPRAY with this special Director's Diary written by Adam Shankman. Check back daily for new entries!

So I have my creative team locked in.  Rita Ryack will be doing the costumes.  Her passion is unsurpassed and the fact that she seemed a bit like a maniac made me very happy.  She has a great black bob with a nice white streak through it and a nice white bod with a great black streak through her heart.  She has done a ton of work with Ron Howard and was also nominated for an Oscar for her work on the GRINCH. She's gonna keep me running. I think I talked about Peter Pan collars and buttons with her for about three and a half hours.  This is going to get fun.  

For the Production Designer, I'm going to be working with David Gropman. He did CASSANOVA, AN UNFINISHED LIFE, THE SHIPPING NEWS, CHOCOLAT and THE CIDER HOUSE RULES to just name a few.  He started out as a theater designer and really seemed to understand that I was trying to anchor the movie with a very firm physical reality.  I love the color palettes that we discussed. We just seem to see eye-to-eye on everything.  He's going to do an amazing job.  

Finally, the insane Bojan Bazelli, my Director of Photography, is from somewhere in Eastern Europe. I'm not exactly sure where, but I can barely understand him because he gets so excited and he talks even more quickly than me which I've never heard of before.  He did some really interesting work on MR. & MRS. SMITH and THE RING, which were two of my favorite visual movies the last couple years.  Once again, his unbridled passion is winning him the job. He seemed to understand that I wanted the whole thing to look like a giant bowl of candy.  Let's see what he does.  With this group, I'm very interested to see how exactly it's going to work out.

For an editor, I chose Michael Tronick.  He also worked on MR & MRS SMITH, but most compellingly, he was Bob Fosse's music editor.  I think he's really going to understand what I'm trying to do and certainly he's worked with music enhanced with the greatest director of the film musical possibly to ever live. 

More tomorrow with entry #11...