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Spoilers May Be Below!
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Spoilers May Be Below!
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Cinimatical Ask a Question
Johnny Depp and Tim Burton: Ask the 'Sweeney Todd' Star and Director a Question
by Patricia ChuiSweeney ToddHeeeeeere's Johnny! No, really. He's here, or he will be on Wednesday, December 5. By "Johnny," of course, we mean the man better known to fans of Pirates of the Caribbean and 21 Jump Street as Johnny Depp; and by "here" we mean right here in Moviefone's studios, answering your questions with director Tim Burton as part of our Unscripted interview series.
Depp is starring in one of the most anticipated films of the season, and that's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the Stephen Sondheim musical that's finally getting the lavish on-screen treatment it's due. At the helm is frequent Depp collaborator Tim Burton; and if you've ever been lucky enough to catch the musical, you'll know that Burton is perfect to direct the dark and twisted tale of Sweeney Todd (Depp), "the demon barber of Fleet Street," who, with the help of his landlady (Helena Bonham Carter), kills people and bakes them into scrumptious meat pies. It's sort of like Waitress except with killing, crazier hair ... and singing!
There's been a ton of Oscar talk around the movie, Depp, Burton and Bonham Carter, and now's your chance to interrogate both Depp and Burton for yourself. Hit Captain Jack and, uh, Mr. Burton with whatever you're dying to know, then check back the week of December 17 to see if your question made it on the air.
From Reuters
Depp plays "punk rock Sweeney Todd" in new film
Mon Dec 3, 2007 7:51am EST
By Mike Collett-WhiteLONDON (Reuters) - He once likened his singing voice to "the mating call of a rutting stag".
But Johnny Depp did not let it get in the way of arguably his most challenging film role yet -- an all-singing turn as the serial-killing barber Sweeney Todd in a remake of the Stephen Sondheim musical.
Directed by long-time collaborator Tim Burton, Depp is pale-faced and dark-eyed in the grim story of revenge, blending into the black-and-white world of grimy 19th Century London punctuated only by the vivid red of his victims' blood.
His sinister sidekick is Mrs. Lovett, played by Burton's partner Helena Bonham Carter, whose meat pies start to sell like hot cakes when she teams up with neighbor Todd in an ingenious venture to dispose of the countless bodies he produces.
"I never sang before in my life, so I had to kind of find my way to it," Depp told journalists in London at a recent press launch for the film, which premieres on Monday. "I didn't know if I would be able to hit a note, to be honest."
To find out, Depp called a member of the band he played for in the 1980s and recorded "My Friends", an early song in the musical. When producer Richard Zanuck heard the recording, he believed Depp could pull it off.
The 44-year-old star of the hit "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, as well as Burton pictures including "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Edward Scissorhands", said he hoped to bring something new to the Sweeney Todd legend.
"I just thought it might be a great opportunity to try to find a new Sweeney, a different Sweeney, in a good way a slightly more contemporary, almost like a punk rock Sweeney."
Asked why he took more risks in his career than many actors, he replied: "I think it's probably something in between hard-headed and ignorant."
SONDHEIM BLESSING
It was script writer John Logan's job to condense the three-hour stage musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" to a two-hour movie. Sondheim had approval rights over the parts of Todd and Lovett and the choice of director.
Some songs were shortened, others cut altogether, and the focus of Burton's lens is as much on the acting as the singing.
Depp and Bonham Carter are joined by Alan Rickman as the malevolent Judge Turpin, who wrongly imprisons Benjamin Barker to steal his wife, and later his daughter.
Sacha Baron Cohen of "Borat" fame plays Pirelli, a buffoonish rival barber who threatens to reveal Barker's true identity after he takes on the guise of Todd.
It is generally accepted that Sweeney Todd never existed, although some have argued that the personality is based on fact.
One legend has it that he was born in London in 1748 and arrested aged 14 for theft. After becoming apprentice to a prison barber, he opened a shop on Fleet Street, where he carried out his grisly crimes with the help of Mrs. Lovett.
Burton recognized it was not obvious material for a Christmas release, which tend to be feel good and child friendly.
Pulling few punches in a film full of gore and blood, the movie has been given an R rating, meaning anyone under 17 must by accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.
"I've seen productions where they've tried to be a bit more politically correct, and 'Let's lessen the blood', and it really deflated the impact of what the story is," Burton said.
From the Hollywood Reporter
Bottom Line: Bloody good.
By Kirk HoneycuttDec 4, 2007
Johnny Depp is a Sweeney Todd for the ages.
user posted image
It's 19th century London and everyone is singing, but when arterial blood sprays from the opened throat of Signor Adolfo Pirelli, you know this is no "My Fair Lady."Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," a savage tale of cannibalism, madness and serial murder, is now Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd." The show couldn't have fallen into better hands. With realistic gore replacing the stylistic bloodletting in the stage version, "Sweeney" loses some of its darkly comic tone -- not a lot of laughs here except the nervous kind.
More akin to Burton's "Sleepy Hollow," where heads rolled like so many bowling balls, his "Sweeney Todd" places its emphasis on Grand Guignol and the deeply human story of twice-lost love and the horrifying destructiveness of revenge.
It took two studios, DreamWorks and Warner Bros., to share the considerable risk of making and marketing this tragic tale that defies so many conventions of the American musical. It will be a significant challenge to find a substantial audience despite the advantage of the Burton and Sondheim brands along with a cast that includes Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen.
"Sweeney Todd" comes from an obscure British melodrama -- which might or might not have been based on true 18th century events -- about a deranged barber who slit the throats of customers and his landlady who served the victims up in meatpies.Sondheim's 1979 show took place within the context of the Industrial Revolution and its rampant corruption and avarice. More satiric opera than musical, "Sweeney Todd" blended together a number of theatrical and literary modes, making the show at once Brechtian, Dickensian and Jacobean. Sondheim acknowledges the influence of the film music of Bernard Herrmann even as he throws in a Viennese waltz or music hall burlesque.
Burton and writer John Logan take all this as a gift, which is then filtered through Burton's own unrepentant sense of the macabre. Except for imaginary sequences or flashbacks to happier days, the film has a monochromatic look with color drained from cityscape. Depp and Carter dress mostly in stark dark clothes with black circles around the eyes, almost as if the figures in Burton's "Corpse Bride" served as models.
In choosing actors who can carry a tune as opposed to singing-actors, Burton has wisely gone for the tragic, emotional heart of the story, narrowing the focus to Sweeney; Mrs. Lovett, the meatpie lady, plagued by unrequited love for Sweeney; and Toby (Edward Sanders, who has a striking voice), the street urchin who assists but is innocent of the pie's ingredients.
Depp is the movie's heart and guts. His Sweeney, nee Benjamin Barker -- having escaped false imprisonment in Australia after 15 years -- is ruled by revenge upon his return to London. Presented with his razors, which Mrs. Lovett (Carter) has lovingly guarded all these years, he grasps a blade with his firm right hand. "At last, my arm is complete again," he thunders.
His homicidal rage centers on Judge Turpin (a dour Alan Rickman), a vile sexual predator who had Benjamin arrested by henchman Beadle Bamford (a smarmy Timothy Spall) so he can steal Benjamin's wife (Laura Michelle Kelly) and baby daughter. Sweeney learns that his wife poisoned herself and Turpin, who took the baby as his ward, lusts after the now grown woman Johanna (a wan Jayne Wisener). Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), a young sailor who rescued Sweeney at sea, now longs to do likewise for Johanna on land.
Thus, a triangle of obsessed characters emerges. Depp plays Sweeney as a man so focused on death, so committed to blood, that he has lost all touch with life. Carter's amoral Nellie Lovett, her hair apparently combed with an egg beater, is herself obsessed with Sweeney. She imagines an impossible life with him without realizing he is unmoored from any reality in which this might take place.
The judge, hungering after young women, is the film's major disappointment. Onstage, the tormented man struggled with his obsession, longing to regain his goodness. Here he is a stock melodramatic villain who lacks any ideals other than those of self-interest, though Rickman uses all the tricks in his actor's bag to coax a human being out of the caricature.
Sanders' Toby is a street kid who turns out to possess a moral compass the adults so sorely lack. Baron Cohen as Pirelli, the barber's first victim, is surprisingly muted. Perhaps the requirement to sing has neutralized Cohen's usual outrageousness. Burton doesn't seem to know what to do with film's ingenues, Wisener's Johanna and Bower's Anthony, so they are largely ignored.
The musical numbers ooze with Sondheim's audacious wit and scathing lyrics. A lullaby conveys menace. A waltz celebrates conspiracy. Cynicism runs through all the songs' social critique.
The blood juxtaposed to the music is highly unsettling. It runs contrary to expectations. Burton pushes this gore into his audiences' faces so as to feel the madness and the destructive fury of Sweeney's obsession. Teaming with Depp, his long-time alter ego, Burton makes Sweeney a smoldering dark pit of fury and hate that consumes itself. With his sturdy acting and surprisingly good voice, Depp is a Sweeney Todd for the ages.
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