"Into the Woods" playwright James Lapine compares the Hollywood and Broadway versions of his story; Filmmaker Dan Gilroy weighs in on Sony scandal; and a Festivus for the rest of us.
Dan Gilroy on Sony hacks: 'It's ethically wrong to reprint stolen material'
Dan Gilroy's "Nightcrawler" might look like an action movie, but it's also an examination of the vicious cycle between the media and consumers that drives the proliferation of traumatic material, often at the expense of the involved victims.
It's no surprise that Gilroy would have some strong feelings regarding the recent Sony hacks.
When Gilroy dropped by The Frame, he talked about what he views as the "Wild West" nature of online journalism and the difficulty in evaluating Sony's decision to pull "The Interview" form theaters.
Interview Highlights:
You've spent the last couple of years on your film thinking, writing, and talking about the news business, and you're also someone who works in the film business. Those two have really come together over the last couple of weeks, so what are your thoughts on these developments?
Well, when I look at the hacking scandal, in many ways it has disseminated through the world of Internet journalism. And Internet journalism, when I look at it, is really The Wild West, but it has the same prime directive: if you run a blog, or you have an Internet site, and you have your advertising banners on the side, you're in fierce hand-to-hand combat for eyeballs.
I think Aaron Sorkin really put his finger on the black-and-white morality of it, which is how criminally wrong it is to, one, purvey stolen internet material, and secondly, just how morally wrong it is for each one of us to be a part of that and read it.
Well, where do you think the Internet journalists crossed the line with Sony?
I think that if something has been stolen, it's morally, ethically, and journalistically wrong to reprint it. At the same time, I understand; in "Nightcrawler," Rene Russo plays Nina, a news director at the lowest-rated station in Los Angeles, and she's under tremendous pressure to show increasingly graphic, violent images.
And one of the things I tried to do in the film is I tried to say, "Look, I'm not pointing a finger at Nina or her station." I was trying to cast a larger net with "Nightcrawler" \ that, at the end, the viewer might say, "Wait a minute, I'm one of the people that's attracted to these graphic, violent images, perhaps I should be more self-aware of what I'm ingesting here."
So the best way to discourage that kind of conduct is not to read it, not to click on it?
Yeah, I can tell you from a personal standpoint that I had not really given the idea of disseminating hacked e-mails much thought. In making "Nightcrawler" and in becoming more aware of the bombardment of violent, graphic images in our lives, I'm slightly more careful in the morning with what I watch.
I certainly don't want to watch the ISIS beheadings, I probably don't want to look at the schoolroom where 120 poor children were massacred in Pakistan — there are just things that I don't want to put in or follow-through on. There may not be a direct connection between them, but I think we're all going to have to find our own boundaries in this new Wild West world where these images are going to come out.
It's not going to stop, but at a certain point, the information might be so socially relevant that at a certain point it doesn't matter if I do it, so I might as well just do it. I think it's a very complicated world if you're running an internet journalism website or if you're running a television station.
Speaking of complicated worlds, you're a creative person in a creative industry. You're a filmmaker, and Sony Pictures, rightly or wrongly, has canceled the release of "The Interview." As a creative person, what does that decision mean to you?
As somebody who creates stories, the outcome is tragic. I think we've all given this a tremendous amount of thought, and it is a very complex problem that's being faced by Sony. It goes beyond the threat of more hacked e-mails coming out, but there's no question in my mind that this is a wake-up call in order to rectify a very complicated situation in the hopes that it doesn't happen again. I think we all fear that it will happen again.
Well, the President of the United States said that Sony's decision was "a mistake." Do you agree?
It's a mistake in the sense of how sad it is that we've come to a place that we're being censored because of an act of terrorism. It's a mistake in that way, but I certainly cannot point the finger at anybody who was in power and had to make this decision and say to them, "Well, you made a mistake."
It's very easy for me to say that. I don't know. I'm impressed with how complicated an issue this is in its resolution; I think it's not hard to get your head around the idea about the outcome. The outcome is wrong. The outcome is wrong, and how we got here and how we get out of it is going to require a lot of thought.
'Into the Woods' scribe James Lapine learns the writer may be king on Broadway, but not in Hollywood
"Into the Woods" first premiered on Broadway in 1987 with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and the book by James Lapine. It went on to receive rave reviews and Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book.
Lapine continued to revisit "Into the Woods" over the years, directing revivals in 1997 and 2002. But the musical was destined to remain on the stage — or so it seemed until Disney came calling. Lapine began adapting "Into the Woods" for the big screen in 2010, and soon you'll be able to see the finished product for yourself.
When Lapine joined us on The Frame, we asked him about the differences between writing for the stage and writing for the screen, the tricky parts of adapting a musical, and dealing with the expectations of fans.
Interview Highlights:
In watching the movie, what immediately struck me is it almost feels as if it should have been a movie first and then a musical, because there are so many cinematic elements to the story itself.
Yeah. Well, that was what was fun about adapting it for the screen. Being a writer/director on stage, I have to be very aware of what I can do and can't do, but in this instance it was an open invitation to go anywhere the imagination chose to go.
As a screenwriter, was it liberating to be able to write things that, as a playwright, you might have to say, "I'm not sure how they're going to pull this off, so I have to come up with an alternative version?" Was that exciting and rewarding?
I don't get excited very often ... or rewarded, actually. [laughs] But I enjoyed it!
Maybe satisfied?
Now we're talking. [laughs] I loved to be able to just sit down and write whatever came into my head. Of course, that's the first draft, and by the time you get to the second draft and you've got a budget, a lot of those wonderful things that you wanted to do are unfortunately no longer able to be realized.
Well, it was an adjustment. But I'm married to a screenwriter, so it was no big surprise. I didn't really have a problem with it; what was an adjustment was when I actually saw, after the movie was shot, that there was some freedom with the language. I'm sort of fastidious about that, so that took a little adjustment, just personally, since most people probably wouldn't even know what I'm talking about. But you pick a very, you pick a particular verb, and when somebody uses a different verb on the stage you would correct them and say, "No, that's not what I wrote." But the film's already made, so ...
You're working with a piece of material — your own musical — that's incredibly well-known and beloved. There are a lot of people who know every word of every song, so when you're adapting that, in the back of your mind you probably know that some people are going to be concerned about any little change. But you're having to make a movie adaptation, and on top of that it's a Disney movie adaptation. How do you balance all of those competing interests?
First of all, you know what you're signing up for. Secondly, we were lucky to have a director who loved the stage version and was happy to honor it. We had sold the movie earlier in the 90s, and it was very loosely adapted and, I thought, kind of left our story behind and went somewhere else.
But the stage version always exists, it's not going anywhere. And I've told people who are upset with this, that, or some other thing, "You always have the stage version." The movie has to be its own thing, and it would be very dull and boring if it were completely honorable to the stage version; it wouldn't be a very good movie.
Let's talk about a song that's in both the musical and the movie, "On the Steps of the Palace."
On stage, we had very presentational moments, and by that I mean people came forward and basically confided in the audience, which is a stage convention. In our first production we had something called a "passerelle," which really allowed actors to step off the proscenium into the audience, and we used that in those instances where they were sharing their thoughts.
That doesn't work in film, so we had to look at these songs that did that and reinvent them in a way such that they were either sung to another character, which happened in a few instances, but Cinderella's was more of a dilemma. So what we chose to do was freeze time and create a kind of device in which we see her dramatically make a decision about what to do given the circumstances of almost being trapped by her Prince.
One of the things that seems immediately appealing about doing this adaptation is that there are a lot of things referenced in the musical that are off-stage, and now you get a chance to dramatize them. Cinderella goes to a ball, you get up to the Giant's world when Jack goes up the beanstalk, and yet when the movie comes out, you kind of get close to those entrances but you don't go in. What happened there?
They cut the budget. It's just that simple. There were some great visuals there, but that's when you make the hard choices. It could have been a big, sprawling, special effects-driven, hundred million dollar movie, but it wasn't. And I think Rob [Marshall] had to make the choices; they weren't mine to make; they were his, and he knew what things were going to cost, what our shooting time was going to be, and production design, so that's why certain things like the Giant's Kingdom and Cinderella's Ball are not realized.
"Into the Woods" opens in theaters on Christmas Day.
Skylight Theater to host its very own Festivus celebration
Monday marks the eve of a holiday staple for people who don’t like participating in the consumerism of the Christmas season — at least according to "Seinfeld."
The Festivus tradition is similar to Christmas, except instead of a Christmas tree, there’s an unadorned aluminum Festivus pole. And instead of saying thanks, there’s a practice known as the “Airing of Grievances.”
Festivus was invented by "Seinfeld" writer Daniel O'Keefe's family and popularized in the '90s TV sitcom in an episode in which George is forced by his father to celebrate the tradition.
It has since become its own cult tradition. The Frame talked about it with actor John Fleck, who will be doing a reading at the Skylight Theater in Los Feliz for its Festivus celebration. Fleck gave us a sample of what he will be performing. It’s the poem, “The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus,” by Ogden Nash.
You can catch John Fleck perform Nash's poem and more on Tuesday, Dec. 23 at Skylight Theater at 7 p.m.