Topic Bernadette for Sweeney from the General Chit-Chat forum.
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| Author | Topic: Bernadette for Sweeney |
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Karen
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Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 9/21/2006 at 7:24:11 PM ET
In the musical's book, Hugh Wheeler describes Sweeney Todd as "a heavy-set, saturnine man in his forties who might, say, be a blacksmith or a dockhand." Mrs Lovett is described as "a vigorous, slatternly woman in her forties."
|  Christine-NYC
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| posted: 9/22/2006 at 12:50:32 AM ET
the question is... can Johnny sing?
Does "Cry Baby" count? I like that movie. lol Even if Johnny's character was an Elvis wannabe.
<3CMH<3
| Scottie
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Registered:
3/6/2006
From:
Edinburgh, Scotland | posted: 9/22/2006 at 6:43:56 AM ET
An amusing take on Sondheim's demands and Johnny's "voice" in The Sunday Times recently.
The Sunday Times August 13, 2006
Doubts whether Depp can cut it as Sweeney Todd
John Harlow, Los Angeles
AS a pirate Johnny Depp rules the waves, but can he master the high Cs? Stephen Sondheim, the veteran composer, wants the actor to take a voice test before he blesses Depp as cinema’s latest Sweeney Todd.
The 76-year-old composer is concerned that Depp, who has played with rock bands since he was 13 and based his anti-hero Jack Sparrow on Keith Richards, the Rolling Stone, may be too “rock’n’roll” to play the murderous barber of Fleet Street.
Tim Burton, the London-based director behind the proposed film, has been praising Depp’s singing voice, but Sondheim needs to be convinced. The composer has said that he will not approve a cinematic version of his Broadway musical, which he describes as “virtually an opera”, if the main character has to mime rather than sing.
“He wants to make sure that all versions of his works are the best possible,” said his spokesman.
Hollywood producers acting as mediators between the New York composer and the London-based director have tracked down rock records made by Depp during the 1980s. However, on most of them Depp only plays guitar, so some other form of voice test may prove necessary.
This musical demand did not affect the previous portrayals of the Victorian era’s favourite villain. He has been played by the aptly-named but tone deaf Tod Slaughter in 1936, followed more recently by Ben Kingsley and Ray Winstone in British television adaptations.
In the original story from 1847, based on a court report in The Times, Todd cuts his clients’ throats and tumbles them into a cellar where an accomplice turns them into meat pies. But Burton wants to film the Sondheim version in which the barber is seeking revenge on a judge who destroyed his family.
Depp, 43, a half-Irish, half-Cherokee American, once described how he used rock music to escape depression and self-mutilation in his adolescence. Like other actors such as Keanu Reeves and Bruce Willis, he has carried on playing his music off-screen, appearing on Top of the Pops in 1994 with the Irish band the Pogues. He imitated Elvis Presley in his early film Cry Baby where he proved that he could sing, albeit in a stylised fashion.
A business source close to Depp said that the actor had been bemused by Sondheim’s request: “He finds it funny that there are questions about his voice as he has been singing all his life.”
Actors are not always great singers, as Clint Eastwood proved when he talked to the trees in Paint Your Wagon.
In the 1960s Marni Nixon, the soprano, secretly lent her voice to Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, to Natalie Wood in West Side Story and to Deborah Kerr in The King and I.
Recently a number of actors have successfully played well known singers: Jamie Foxx won an Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles, followed last year by Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash; Joaquin Phoenix was nominated for his role of Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. Their success has encouraged studios to take more chances with raw voices.
Both Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman have talked about signing up for a musical. A spokesman for Kidman said last week: “Of course she can sing, but how good is she? I do not know, I have not been in a shower with her.”
as Bernadette says....just keep moving on.....
|  moljul
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Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
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| posted: 9/22/2006 at 10:40:24 AM ET
Christine,
I've heard some conflicting reports that he didn't actually sing in Cry Baby. Some say that was his voice and some say it was dubbed.
"I'm one star away from Dolly Parton ... and Raymond Massey is between us. I hope we don't suffocate him." Bernadette Peters receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, April 24, 1987
|  Jean
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Registered:
6/7/2003 | posted: 10/18/2006 at 6:27:20 AM ET
Both ATC and BWW are chatting about Helena Bonham Carter getting the role of Lovett in the Sweeney Todd movie.
--> is anyone surprised
--> I think this is a most credible rumor (Variety is reporting it)
I can't wait for this movie. (<--not sarcastic)
| Karen
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Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 10/18/2006 at 8:56:00 AM ET
Nepotism. Very bad idea.
Yes, I'm very surprised. I just hate this.
| moljul
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Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 10/18/2006 at 10:17:42 AM ET
Very disappointing. And just a few days the rumor was that Toni Collette was moments away from being cast. Of course at least there seems to be an actual announcement in a trade paper.
"I'm one star away from Dolly Parton ... and Raymond Massey is between us. I hope we don't suffocate him." Bernadette Peters receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, April 24, 1987
| Christine-NYC
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3/23/2002
From:
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Fav. BP Song: With So Little to be Sure Of
Fav. BP Show: Gypsy
Fav. BP Character: Marie (insert last name) lol There's a few
Fav. BP CD: Bernadette Peters Loves Rogers and Hammerstein
| posted: 10/18/2006 at 10:32:27 AM ET
mreh 
I would rather have seen Toni Collette in the role than that other woman.
<3CMH<3
| Karen
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Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 10/18/2006 at 10:46:42 AM ET
Mark my words, the songs will all be dubbed--or maybe even cut altogether except as background music. This may be Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, but it won't be Sondheim's.
Helena Bonham Carter is such a nothing. She's always struck me as one of those people who coast through life on their connections--originally her family connections and later various liaisons with power players.
If I were twenty years younger, I would say: This sucks!
| moljul
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Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 10/18/2006 at 11:05:23 AM ET
Karen, Take you time and everything but please do let us know when you have formed an opinion on this whole thing. I would be interested in hearing it.  
"I'm one star away from Dolly Parton ... and Raymond Massey is between us. I hope we don't suffocate him." Bernadette Peters receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, April 24, 1987
| Scottie
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Registered:
3/6/2006
From:
Edinburgh, Scotland | posted: 10/18/2006 at 11:07:30 AM ET
quote:
Helena Bonham Carter is such a nothing. She's always struck me as one of those people who coast through life on their connections--originally her family connections and later various liasons with power players.
If I were twenty years younger, I would say: This sucks!
And yet she was so compelling in The Planet of The Apes. Perfectly cast, I thought.
Much as I cannot understand the wisdom of the casting choices of Tim Burton ( surely Burton's number one man, Johnny Depp, is equally as nepotistic a choice as the poorly talented Bonham Carter?) ... far less can I understand the mind-set of Mr Sondheim. Did someone bludgeon the old guy over the head and steal his masterpiece away? Or has he sold the ownership of this wonderful piece of Musical Theatre and therefore has no say in how it is carried forward?
as Bernadette says....just keep moving on.....
| jmslsu01
Registered User
Registered:
6/9/2003
From:
northern VA | posted: 10/18/2006 at 6:09:02 PM ET
I wouldn't be too hard on Sondheim. Despite reports that he wouldn't "allow" the film to go through if he didn't like the choices, he probably doesn't have that much pull with the overall production. Novelists don't have much power, for the most part, when their novels are adapted for the screen (unless they write the screenplay), and composers are probably in the same boat.
Jenn, who liked HBC when she was the queen of Merchant Ivory films, and I thought she deserved her Oscar nom for The Wings of the Dove. However, I'm crying in my corset now and trying not to faint.
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 10/18/2006 at 6:31:05 PM ET
Oh, I agree. Once you've sold the film rights, that's it. Your say has ended. I don't think Sondheim was bludgeoned. I assume he was made a monetary offer that he didn't feel like turning down.
| Scottie
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Registered:
3/6/2006
From:
Edinburgh, Scotland | posted: 10/18/2006 at 7:11:21 PM ET
quote:
Jenn, who liked HBC when she was the queen of Merchant Ivory films, and I thought she deserved her Oscar nom for The Wings of the Dove. However, I'm crying in my corset now and trying not to faint.
Oh, come now! There can only be one Merchant Ivory queen! OK, she may have been a Slave, rather than a Queen, but ...
as Bernadette says....just keep moving on.....
| jmslsu01
Registered User
Registered:
6/9/2003
From:
northern VA | posted: 10/18/2006 at 7:41:25 PM ET
Oh, c'mon. Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson were the poster children for those movies. She can't have everything!
Jenn, who has "Painting Her Portrait" from Jane Eyre in her head now!
| Jean
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Registered:
6/7/2003 | posted: 10/19/2006 at 4:59:49 PM ET
On ABC Family tonight @8:00pm (EDT):
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride--Johnny Depp and H.B. Carter provide the voices, among others.
I plan on taping this and watching for clues as to how these folks might handle Sweeney Todd.
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