Hairspray Feature

By Ian Spelling on July 19, 2007

The new big-screen version of Hairspray took a bizarro path to theaters – it’s a movie musical based on a Broadway musical that itself was based on a non-musical comedy-drama directed 20 years ago by cult filmmaker John Waters – but whatever its origins, it’s a bright, colorful, relentlessly entertaining winner that looks destined to raise the roof at the box office starting on July 20. The film features an eclectic cast that includes such familiar faces as John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Queen Latifah, Amanda Bynes and James Marsden, as well as rising stars Brittany Snow, Zac Efron and Elijah Kelley, not to mention a star-making performance from newcomer Nikki Blonsky.
 
Blonsky plays the central figure, Tracy Turnblad, a big girl with big hair and an even bigger dream: it’s 1962 and she wants to dance on The Corny Collins Show, Baltimore’s coolest live dance television program. Tracy’s mom, Edna (Travolta), is a large lady, too, and she hasn’t left her house in 11 years. She doesn’t think Nikki should try out for the show. Meanwhile, dad Wilbur (Walken) encourages her to give it a go, which she does. Tracy eventually makes it onto The Corny Collins Show and encounters everyone there: open-minded host Corny (Marsden), bitchy star dancer Amber (Snow), Amber’s aging and equally bitchy station manager mother, Velma (Pfeiffer), Amber’s boyfriend and fellow star performer, Link (Efron), and Motormouth Maybelle (Latifah), who hosts the show’s negro days. The trouble and the fun kick in when, among other events, Tracy becomes a fan favorite, attracts the attention of Link and starts to fight for racial equality after she befriends Maybelle and after Tracy’s lollipop-sucking best pal Penny (Bynes) starts romancing a black teen named Seaweed (Kelley); when Amber tries to derail Tracy; and as Velma attempts to seduce Wilbur in the aisles of his joke-product store.
 
Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the tandem behind the Oscar-winning Chicago, produced the $75 million film and handed the directorial reins to Adam Shankman, whose credits include The Wedding Planner, A Walk to Remember, Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier and Cheaper By the Dozen 2, not exactly classics that suggested he’d be the right guy for Hairspray. “When I got it, because I am a choreographer, because I’m really a dancer at heart, this job -- which was not a job, because it was a like a dream come true, in all ways; it was a total dream – I am so much more suited for than the other things I’ve done, which I apologize for,” Shankman says during an interview at a Manhattan hotel. “I didn’t feel a burden. I was there when (Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman) were writing the songs (for the Broadway show), because I’ve known them for 20 years.
 
“So I was familiar with the material and in love with it and so jealous that people got to work with it before me,” he adds. “It was just something I slammed right into. In fact, the choreography literally poured out of me so fast the assistants couldn’t keep up. They really had a hard time. I was like a machine. It was like having sex for the first time in four years or something. It was crazy.”
 
Travolta boarded the Hairspray express before Shankman arrived on the scene; actually, he’d shown interest for more than a year, but held off committing until Zadan and Meron hired Shankman and he’d met with Shankman. Shankman, meanwhile, wanted John Waters’ blessing and happened to be in Waters’ native Baltimore producing Step Up as Hairspray came together. “Who the fuck knew that was going to happen!?” Shankman shouts. “I never saw that coming. I’m from L.A. I went to school here. I’d never thought of stepping foot in Baltimore and I’ve spent the last two years there, and I’m doing Step Up 2 in Baltimore. The weekend we open (Hairspray) I have to fly to Baltimore to do the first two weeks (of Step Up 2 as a producer).
 
“But, when I got the job I got John Waters’ email address and I literally just was like, ‘Dear Mr. Waters, My name is Adam Shankman. I’m going to be directing the new version of Hairspray. I hope you don’t mind,’” Shankman continues excitedly. “He said, ‘Let’s go to lunch.’ So we had lunch and we had the greatest time and he said, ‘Let me show you something.’ We got in his car and he drove me to Highland Town, where he shot the (original) movie. He showed me all the neighborhoods, drove me up and down the streets, showed me the residences of the people who he based the characters on. He showed me Patterson Park and Patterson Park High, where he went to school, and it’s totally unchanged since the era. So I had my production designer go down and I said, ‘Shoot every square foot of this neighborhood because I need you to build that somehow in Toronto,’ and he did. John got to Toronto (for an amusing opening-number cameo) and he was like, ‘Sweet Jesus, you’ve done it.’”
 
Depending on who one talks to, either Travolta or Blonsky is the breakout Hairspray story. For the sake of this article, it’s Blonksy, since she’s here now and Travolta did the L.A. press day. She was your everyday high school on Long Island, working part-time at an ice cream shop, performing in school plays, and hoping to make it in show business. A fan of the Broadway show, she auditioned several times for the Hairspray movie. She landed the role of Tracy on a Wednesday, attended her senior prom on a Thursday and was interviewed on The Today Show on Friday. Just as Edna was always played by a man – Divine in the first movie, Harvey Fierstein and others in the stage musical – the producers retained the tradition of hiring an unknown for Tracy. And so Blonsky followed in the footsteps of the film’s Ricki Lake and the play’s Marissa Janet Winokur. In fact, Blonsky, Lake and Winokur joined forces for a song on the Hairspray movie soundtrack.
 
“This has been a dream come true,” Blonsky says. “I saw Hairspray on Broadway when I was 15 and I fell in love with it. So, to be able to be a part of this and to be bringing the messages of Hairspray and Tracy to life on the big screen for all the viewers… Broadway is just in New York, so you’ll only get the experience of Hairspray (if) you come to New York or live in New York. But this is a movie that is going everywhere. I’m so excited to bring Tracy to life and to bring her views to little kids and to show them that different is OK and uniqueness is beautiful. I think (the story) is about being who you are, being proud of who you are, embracing it, accepting yourself and accepting others, because you can’t accept and love others until you love and accept yourself.”
 
Blonsky, who’s about to ink a deal for her next movie and who’s hoping to record an album soon, is experiencing now with Hairspray what Zac Efron went through last summer, when the Disney Channel original movie High School Musical catapulted him to instant stardom. Nineteen-year-old Efron is currently red-hot with the Tiger Beat crowd and that will only persist with the one-two punch of Hairspray and the August 17 premiere of High School Musical 2. The actor nods his head knowingly and laughs when asked how long he thinks it will be before he feels the urge to ditch the teen idol crown in order to do a Pulp Fiction and say fuck a lot in a performance.
 
“As I grow up and as I get older I definitely get interested in different types of films,” Efron says. “Of course I’m in love with Pulp Fiction and so many different types of films. I don’t know when that transition is going to be. It’s usually just finding projects that interest me, and it’s not necessarily curse words and drugs that are interesting; it’s the characters and the drama and the situations that they’re put in. So if I find a heroic character in a nitty-gritty story I would love to go play that character. Although I love musicals and I don’t plan to continue being in them, they’re not the only genre that I’d love to do. I’d love to try everything from action to straight comedies. There’s so much in this business that you can do and there are all different levels of the creative process.”

Source:Latino Review

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