"Magic Mike XXL" focuses on the lives of an ex-stripper as he and friends hit the road for one last hurrah. Starring Channing Tatum, the sequel to the 2012 original has been successful — especially among female audiences. Some estimates say 96 percent of ticket buyers are women.
Alison Faulk was the lead choreographer on both "Magic Mike" films. Faulk and her team, including Teresa Espinosa and Luke Broadlick, with some input from Channing Tatum, were behind the suggestive dance sequences seen throughout the film.
Faulk met with the Frame's John Horn to discuss her team's creative process.
Interview Highlights
What does Channing Tatum bring as a choreographer? And are there certain moves that he has done over the years that he wants to bring into the film?
He's a freestyle dancer by nature so he is always just going to [call] on his natural abilities. He just moves a certain way. For this [film] in particular, because the first one was a little bit more of a realistic view into the underbelly of the stripper world, this one was meant to be more fun. We wanted to kind of take it up a notch and add a little more dancing in there and make it a little bit more ... just more exciting. So he definitely had some ideas. We all had some ideas. So it was fun to try it all out. Every single rehearsal we were just cracking up constantly.
There is a scene early in the movie that unfolds in a workshop, including a part that involves a power drill. So is that an example of Channing Tatum free styling with a power drill or do you look at this workshop and say, "You got to do something with a drill."
That was probably the only part that I was like, "Hey, do something!" ... The way that was written was Mike hears [the song] "Pony" come on and he messes around a little bit.
Why is that an important song for him here?
It was in the first film. It was kind of an iconic moment for him and people talk about it. So, everyone kind of connects to this song — people that saw the first film. So this song comes on in the workshop, and when we began choreographing the number we let him freestyle. We recorded him and then we picked out moments we really liked.
We gave him a couple of ideas and then he ran with it because he's so athletic. He can do things that [we suggest], Oh try this, and then he amps it up like 80 billion notches. I think I saw the drill on the table and [said], "Do the drill!"
Tatum is self-taught, he's experienced and he knows how to dance. A lot of the cast are actors who you have to teach how to dance. How do you make sure that the rest of the team doesn't look like they're not as good as Channing? How do you teach actors who are not experienced dancers how to dance?
On the second film it was great because we worked with the guys on the first film so there was a little bit of groundwork laid. They also knew the stakes for this film were much higher and they were going to be seen more. They wanted to do a good job. They really put the time in, which was great. We knew the guys, so we knew their strengths [and] pulled from them.
Adam Rodriguez is super athletic, so we knew we wanted to go in a b-boy direction for him and teach him movements like that. We just would see them move and then we'd veer in the direction that was good for them. Really, it was a lot of commitment on their part. If you're not a dancer, it's tedious to sit and practice and practice and practice. The guys put so much work in and we were really impressed with their commitment level.
You also have a couple of athletes in this cast who are pretty good dancers. Talk about working with them.
Michael Strahan — we only had one rehearsal with him. We had a routine set that we wanted to do and, to be honest, we had no idea how it was going to go. Michael, I didn't know him. I just knew he was a great guy and knew he was obviously, super-gifted athletically. So Chan had given me the idea, "Watch his [football] highlight reels, he's really dope."
We could see how he moved. We knew he kind of played around on his [TV] show, like with the tear-away pants, so we knew he was going to be game. We're [wondering], Man, how is this going to go? He killed it. He just literally saw the routine one time and then he started repeating it back to us. It was best-case scenario. He was just honestly a naturally gifted dancer.
There are people who probably think they know how a stripper should dance. Did you, in preparation for the first "Magic Mike," go out and watch a lot of strippers? What is the stereotype that you wanted to challenge and did you want to get to the more truthful depiction of how strippers actually strip?
For the first movie we actually did go see some shows. Just because we wanted to become familiar with the genre. Our team comes from the pop world. We work with pop stars and do films, television, commercials. Other than just what we've seen in life, we didn't really know about strippers. Chan and myself are both from Florida so we kind of have a similar music aesthetic and ideas about certain stripper-y things, so that's always been good.
We wanted it to feel real, but we also wanted to make it a little dancier. Of course we respect all the strippers out there, but we wanted to take it up a notch. From standing around, doing very basic dance steps and looking beautiful to [becoming] guys that really dance. That's at least what we tried to do.
In the movie you're doing two things: one is that you're choreographing dances for the audience that is in the film; and the other thing is that you're choreographing dances for the camera. How do those two compete and who wins?
Well I think it's a win-win situation. When you have Gregory Jacobs directing and Steven Soderbergh as the [director of photography], you really can't go wrong. From day one they're watching our choreography and plotting how they're going to be shooting all this stuff.
So you're really describing the way a sporting event is shot. You guys are going to have your game and they have to figure out how to shoot it?
Yeah, absolutely, and they're down for that. They always tell us, "Create what you want." Within what was written in the script, they always gave us free reign. We'll run ideas past them and most always they're like, "Yeah, cool. We'll shoot it," and they always have super-creative ways of shooting. I love what Greg did with the finale. You feel like you're that girl experiencing what is happening, but you also see what is happening, which is really cool as well.
One of the things that this movie really seems to celebrate is that the women of the movie are of all shapes, sizes and ages. Was that something that the filmmakers thought was important in terms of depicting?
One hundred percent, yeah, the filmmakers thought it was very important. The casting directors along with the choreography team wanted to depict women of all shapes, sizes, colors and ethnicities. Yeah! Because not just young, fit, skinny girls are going to want to experience this. That is not realistic. So, yeah, we thought it would be super-fun, real and important for everyone to see themselves up there in the movie.