[IMG:L]When Hollywood producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron went to see the Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun, they weren’t scouting their next project, in fact Zadan says they were just looking forward to the show. The pair, known for bringing Chicago, Annie and Gypsy from the stage to the screen, were blown away by how “contemporary it felt” and the “make up of the audience,” Zadan says. “We thought, ‘Boy, wouldn’t it be great to do a new movie of Raisin with this cast?'”
The team did just that, enlisting everyone from director Kenny Leon and rapper-turned-actor Sean Combs to Tony Award winners Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald to their next project, a TV version of the play for ABC. The movie, about a family torn apart when their mother receives an estate check worth $10,000, quickly generated buzz, becoming the first broadcast film to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and will air on ABC on Feb. 25 at 8/7c.
Hollywood.com caught up with Zadan and Meron to talk about the film, the buzz and more.
Hollywood.com: What do you think these young audiences have to learn from this story?
Craig Zadan: What’s interesting is that a lot of pieces that were written in the ’50’s feel very dated today and I think this one doesn’t. The fact that it doesn’t is also very sad…look at what happened last year with the Michael Richards incident and the Don Imus incident…Plus, now we have the issue of potentially having the first African American president. There are so many race issues going on front and center in this country now that even though in 1957 you’d think the issues brought up then would be dated right now they’re not. They’re just as contemporary and still with us as much as they always were.
HW: In fact, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry was only 27 years old when she wrote this story. How has her work inspired you?
CZ: How could someone who was 27 years old in the 1950’s be so prescient about what was to come in terms of the civil rights movement that really started a couple of years later and how amazing that she sort of understood the differentiation among the different groups of African Americans…Many different African Americans are represented in this one story and so many issues and so many ideals. It’s just fascinating that someone that young could know so much at such a young age.
[IMG:R]HW: The story has existed for stage, television and film. How did you approach it differently this time?
CZ: First of all, we felt that we were going to approach it with a different kind of shooting style to make it look and feel fresh. Part of that was a decision to shoot it in Super 16. What that means is that most movies are shot in either 35mm or a digital format. Super 16 gives you a slightly grainy look and doesn’t give you a polished look. By using that film stock and then using a lot of handheld camera and a lot of steady-cam the movie felt like you were eavesdropping on that family that you were in the room as a fly on the wall.
HW: Tell me, how does Langston Hughes’ poem A Dream Deferred resonate with you?
CZ: It says so much about what happens when you basically never fulfill your dreams and you just keep delaying and delaying and delaying them and burying them under the carpet. So you can’t ignore it anymore because you’re going to trip over it. I think that it says so much about not delaying your dreams and saying finally, “We can’t wait any longer. We must move now.”
HW: Can you talk a little about this amazing cast? Both Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald won Tonys for their performances.
CZ: Did you know that [Phylicia] was the first African American actress to win that award? A few years ago. She was the first one. No African American actress had ever won Best Actress in a drama. I mean, the statement that made was huge. When I first heard about it I thought, ‘Oh, this is a mistake. This can’t be correct. How could that be?’ Then we checked and we realized that it was true. So it was a very important award for her to win. Audra then winning supporting actress, and again, she’s so masterful. She’s racking up those Tony Awards like Meryl Streep racked up Oscars. It’s been the most amazing career and I’m very hopeful that three women in the movie – Sanaa [Lathan], Audra and Phylicia – get nominated for Emmy’s. I’m hoping that Sean gets nominated for an Emmy as well.
HW: Sean was on board as both an actor and a producer? What was he like to work with?
CZ: Well, he was involved in every decision. Every decision we made from the producing point of view he was included…Usually when you hook up with a star one of two things happens. Either they put their name on it and they don’t actually do any work and then in other cases they put their name on it they feel a huge responsibility to participate in everything so that they feel like their name is there for a purpose and isn’t something that’s gratuitous. I think that Sean from the very beginning said, ‘Look, if I’m going to produce this with you I have to be part of everything and I have to be active in all the creative producing decisions.’ So we were a team from beginning to end.
[IMG:R]HW: Have you toyed with the idea of doing something music-related with Sean?
CZ: I remember when Kenny Leon showed us the director’s cut, the very first cut of the movie and I saw it for the very first time I called Sean. He said, ‘What did you think?’ I said, ‘Well, the best compliment that I could give you is that if I had nothing to do with this movie whatsoever I would now go out and hire you for a movie.’ He said, ‘Really?’…So I feel like now that we have this great relationship with him and now that we’re collaborating it’d be wonderful to come up with other projects to do with him. Certainly because he has that music background wouldn’t it be great to do a music project with him.
HW: You guys took yet another stage director and brought him to television.
CZ: We sort of have been very successful at doing this sort of thing. A couple of years ago we found a choreographer working on Broadway and we gave him his first shot at directing a movie and that movie was Annie with Kathy Bates. That was Rob Marshall. Rob won The Emmy for that. He had never directed on film before. Never. Anything. From Annie he got the job of directing Chicago which Neil Meron and I produced for him. So we took somebody who was basically a choreographer, who had no film experience whatsoever and we gave him a shot at directing a movie. Part of the process that we did with Rob we did also with Kenny…Part of it is really going through a sort of educational process of having the director look at movies and saying, “Look, at this movie and look at the color pallet in this film. Look at the camera movement. Look at the way that the movie is shot.” You then get into a discussion about movie making where you sort of walk a director through that. The next part is that you put that director on the set. Luckily, we were shooting Hairspray before Raisin. So Kenny came on the set and watched us shoot Hairspray and he got to talk to the director and he got to talk to the crew. He got to talk to different people and he asked a lot of questions. So he got to use that as his sort of college education in how to shoot a movie. Then by the time we finished Hairspray we were starting Raisin and he was all ready to direct his own movie.
HW: You guys are working on bringing Peter Pan to television. How is that coming along?
CZ: We’ll be casting it and we’ll be using movie stars and we’ll get a great star to play Peter Pan and Captain Hook. So that’ll be the next stage project that we’re going to do for television as a movie. So that’ll happen hopefully sometime later this year.
HW: There is a lot of buzz surrounding Fahrenheit 451 as well.
CZ: Yeah. That’s the one that Frank Darabont wrote the screenplay for and he’s going to direct it…He always wanted to do it. He’s always been somebody who has been obsessed with the piece. It’s really been something that’s been a total obsession of his for a very long time. So I would say that it’s a dream come true for him to do this. So he’s been working on it and it’s now a matter of putting the casting together and going forward with it.
[IMG:R]HW: I’d love to hear your take on how the story parallels what’s going on in today’s world.
CZ: It’s a really interesting thing because Fahrenheit 451 was made into a movie by Trufo. I think it was in the ’60’s. It was a terrible movie and I can say it’s a terrible movie because no one associated with it liked what was done with it. Ray Bradbury who wrote the book Fahrenheit 451 really didn’t like that movie. So Ray Bradbury was really excited that Frank Darabont was going to take another shot at it and make it into a new movie. But I mean, my God, the subject matter in there about burning books and about having the government control what you believe is very contemporary in dealing with what’s going on in the country today. There’s the fact that we’re now asked to believe everything we’re told without questioning it, which is arguably how we got into Iraq. I think that everything that’s permeating our society right now is so contemporary in a period piece like Fahrenheit 451. It feels so new when you think about what it’s saying about society. So we think that the movie could be a great entertainment and something that’s exciting and fun to watch, but also that has something very important to say.
HW: Rumor has it that you are remaking your 1984 hit Footloose.
CZ: We were asked by Paramount to do a brand new version with Zac Efron. The question is, I’m not quite sure where we stand on it because I would only be interested in doing it if we could reinvent it as a movie musical. Originally it wasn’t a musical. It was a movie that had dancing in it, but it had a soundtrack album. No one actually sang in the movie. So if it could be reinvented completely as a movie musical with Zac Efron that’s something that we’d be interested in doing, but only if it was completely rethought. If it turned out to be something that was really just a remake of the movie that I’ve already made I wouldn’t be interested in it because why bother remaking something that was so successful. I wouldn’t touch it. I would want the audience to sit there and say, “Oh, I see why he remade that.” If they can’t say that or if they said, “I don’t understand why he remade that,” – then I wouldn’t want to do it.
HW: Zac’s High School Musical franchise has really created a young fan base for movie musicals.
CZ: Everyone keeps on saying, “How come it was so successful.” I think it’s the simplest thing. I think that it’s almost simplistic because the truth of the matter is that nobody made a musical for kids. The moment that someone made a musical for kids they went crazy and they loved it and it just shows you that there’s an audience out there.
[IMG:L] Neil Meron: ‘We Had Lightening in a Bottle’
What’s the true mark of a classic? When “each generation can claim it as their own,” says Meron. Existing on stage, film and television since its debut in 1959, Raisin surpasses the notion and he knew watching the Broadway revival that they “had lightening in a bottle.”
HW: The original 1961 film cast of A Raisin in the Sun came from the Broadway show; did that influence your decision to do the same this time?
NM: Do you know what, the whole lore of the movie is about a family and when these people have worked together so closely they do build up this family bond. That’s hard to recreate when you’re putting a new group of actors together and so we wanted to keep the family of actors in tact and so that’s what we did. The performances speak for themselves because I think they’re some of the greatest performances ever committed to film.
HW: How do you make a decision about whether to do a project for television or for the big screen?
NM: It’s on a case by case basis…I think that we’d have to fight to get people to see this as a feature film, but here it’s available to a wide audience…keeping the legacy of Lorraine Hansberry alive is really, really important to all of us. She was very, very impactful. She was the first African American woman to ever produce a play on Broadway. So she’s been sadly neglected. She was 27- years-old when Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway. She died when she was 34. So that’s a voice that has been extinguished. So exposing it again is a great privilege.
HW: What was it like working with Sean Combs?
NM: When you work with him no one works harder as an actor or as a fellow producer in getting out there and promoting the film, working take after take on the set and making sure it’s right. He’s a perfectionist. He doesn’t rest and his takes were very, very long takes and he would check himself.
[IMG:R]HW: The scenes with him and Audra are very powerful.
NM: Oh, yeah, and it is like music. The whole thing moves like music…Audra‘s one of the great ladies of Broadway. I don’t think that people have any idea of the depth of an actress that she is. That’s what’s so wonderful about this. They don’t know Sean as an actor. They know Audra as a musical theater actress and from the show Private Practice. They know Phylicia basically from The Cosby Show and Sanaa is one of the up and coming actresses in our business. So this is a movie of great introductions to different sides of their talent. Of course John Stamos too having done this part which is a such a complete 180 for him – ER and Full House. He’s playing this bigoted person that helps spin this even further out of control.
HW: How does the line resonate with you from Langston Hughes “What happens to a dream deferred, does it dry up like a raisin in the sun…”
NM: It is one of those lines that you hear that you instantly relate to just in terms of people always having their dreams and what happens to them if you put them off. That’s really the theme of the play and the universality of the entire piece is in those lines. You know who says them in the movie. It’s Morgan Freeman.
HW: Oh, yes as the narrator?
NM: Yeah. Morgan Freeman reads that because we were doing a movie called The Bucket List and we were working with Morgan Freeman as we were doing both films. So thought we’d ask Morgan. So he did it as a favor to us.
[IMG:R]HW: What do you have coming up?
NM: Coming up after Raisin in the Sun we’re doing a movie for Lifetime which is about the doctor who developed the treatment for breast cancer…We’re also doing a new musical of Peter Pan for ABC which Mary Martin did it onstage. It’s a classic Mary Martin piece. We’re going to do that as a film for TV.
