ust when you thought it was safe to go back to Stepford, the boys went and created a whole new bunch of sexually compliant, eager-to-please robot versions of their wives. That's right, The Stepford Wives returns to action for a new generation of moviegoers. Unlike the original film, which starred Katharine Ross and Paula Prentiss, the current version puts a comedic spin on Ira Levin's cautionary tale.
Director Frank Oz cast Nicole Kidman as Joanna Eberhart, a disgraced TV exec who ends up in the bucolic suburb of Stepford, Conn., with her nebbishy husband, Walter (Matthew Broderick). Joanna quickly notices that something is a little off in Stepford: The women are buxom zombies who heed their husbands' every word. And so, with help from fellow recent Stepford arrivals Bobbie (Bette Midler) and Roger (Roger Bart), Joanna digs deep into the secrets of Stepford and discovers that the women are robots created by the town's de facto leader, Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken). The film also stars Glenn Close as Wellington's wife, singer Faith Hill as a Stepford neighbor and Jon Lovitz as Bobbie's husband. It was reportedly a tough shoot, with various actors clashing at various times with Oz, and Oz having to gather everyone together just weeks before the film's scheduled release in order to shoot a new ending.
Kidman, Hill, Close, Midler, Oz, Bart and Broderick recently sat down to talk with Science Fiction Weekly about The Stepford Wives, which opens June 11. The men sat together at one press conference, which was followed immediately afterward by a press conference with the ladies.
Nicole, Bette, Faith and Glenn, you're all incredibly hard-working, but we assume you like to have fun, right? Also, domestically, what are you four good at?
Kidman: We are hard-working, I suppose, but we also like to have fun. Am I right? [Laughs.] I suppose that my thing is that I like cooking. That's the thing that I would like to become better at. It actually relaxes me. I don't see it as work. I really enjoy being able to make things. Otherwise, forget it. I can't sew. I'm a very poor knitter. Actually, I can wrap Christmas presents really well. Bette, what are you good at?
Midler: I'm very good at opening beer and wine bottles [laughs].
Kidman: I'll attest to that.
Midler: I'm good at picking up pet toys.
Kidman: She has a lot of dogs.
Midler: A lot of dogs. And I'm good at making pancakes and baking powdered biscuits.
Hill: I'm a cook, too. I'm a Southern cook. I'm a good piddler. I enjoy piddling.
Kidman: What is piddling?
Hill: Just kind of floating around the house and dilly-dallying in all of your stuff. Things like that.
Bette Midler, what was the appeal of this project for you?
Midler: Well, I was a fill-in.
Kidman: [Laughs.] No she wasn't.
Midler: I was a fill-in. Joan Cusack and John Cusack were originally hired to play my part and Matthew Broderick's part. Then their father was sick. They didn't want to go on. They wanted to spend time with their dad. So they sent me the script, and I was very happy to get the job, because it was a fantastic cast. Frank Oz has made hit after hit, and I thought, "Oh my goodness, this is great," because I hadn't done a picture in a while. I was anxious to do one again. So I was utterly thrilled. I thought that the material was really, really funny and thought that Paul Rudnick had done a terrific job on updating it and sort of spinning it around with this new addition of the gay couple, and making it more timely with plastic surgery shows and reality shows, and all of the things that are kind of floating around in the media. It's not so much in people's lives, but definitely being pushed in the media. So I thought that it was a terrific opportunity, and I was really happy to get the job, and it turned out so great.
Bette Midler and Glenn Close, what were the best moments for each of you on the film?
Midler: For me, I loved the clothes. That was the best thing for me, to be able to wear those clothes. The clothes were really fabulous. I thought that the sets were really divine. That's very female. Really beautiful sets, great clothes, kind of OK hair. Kind of demented hair, right? The hair was very odd, but we loved it. All of that landscaping, that's kind of like, for me, a travelogue. It's like a travelogue from a land that I had never been to. I found it very exotic.
Close: To waltz with Chris Walken, that was great for me, to get to pretend that I'm a great dancer. I'm a very bad dancer.
Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler and Glenn Close, had you seen the original movie when it came out?
Kidman: No. I hadn't.
Close: I hadn't. When I got cast. I went and rented it and watched it.
Kidman: Same here.
Midler: I was sad afterwards. It was so tragic, and all she wanted to do was be a photographer. Poor girl.
Close: That's what was considered threatening in '72. I mean, imagine.
Nicole Kidman, if you had access to the Stepford technology, what would constitute the perfect man?
Kidman: I don't want perfect. I think that the discovery of someone is the fun thing. And the discovery of the things that someone else might find appalling. You think that they're really cute. I mean, I don't know. I don't even know what I'm looking for. I suppose it's a mystery, isn't it? I like the mystery.
Roger Bart and Frank Oz, what was it like to see the characters become Stepfordized?
Bart: It was a relief not to be a dazzling blond. That was my first response. And it was, quite frankly, a relief to have clothes that actually allowed me to breathe. It was interesting. As I was looking at the script from the beginning it was very important to me to make sure that I set up the alteration to my robot self so that it would be slightly spooky, socially relevant and, hopefully, ultimately, comedically satisfying. So those there the things. So when I looked at myself in my Brooks Brothers suit and that goofy wig: "Yeah, it seems to be working OK."
Oz: Just in regard to the women who changed, not only Bette and Nic, but what I call our Greek chorus, our four women, but also the extras, which was a 150 extras, I had to tell them how to be Stepford Wives, how to change. It's very difficult for women today to do that because they had to be vapid. They had to be pleasant. They couldn't have any highs and they couldn't have lows. They had to speak only in a very pleasant manner. They couldn't speak about politics or religion; that's man stuff. They had to smile all the time. The women found it very difficult—and I would find it very difficult, too—to be just vapid. In order to make that change, and certainly we exaggerated it to make it comedic, that's really what we did with the women.
Frank Oz, Matthew Broderick has said it was scary when a bunch of nerdy white guys got together to film the scene with all the guys in the men's club. What was that experience like for you?
Oz: I told all the men to be adolescents. I asked them to. The truth is that they're powerful because they're frightened to death of strong women and because they can, they change the women. They change them only because they're scared to death of strong women. The only way they can be strong is to make the women weak. Once they made the women weak, hey, they're big guys. But you notice at the end they became their normal twit selves. So really, the exploration—which I like about this movie—is a lot about that power struggle. I believe that women are much stronger than men, but these particular men were threatened. And it's funny what Matthew said, because I love smoking cigars. I said, "Hey, light up some cigars." Matthew did, and it's amazing, just like Matthew said, how quickly we reverted. When he said "white nerds," I thought he was talking about me and him and everybody else. All of a sudden, there's the set and they're playing computer games and cards and I'd say, "Hey guys, we've gotta shoot." But it's amazing how the men, like a wolf pack, fall into this. It's extraordinary.
How do you manage to balance all the needs of four actresses who want to look good and want to come across well?
Oz: I don't really manage actors or balance. As far as looking good and everything, we have the director of photography, the lighting and makeup and hair. They had themselves and were quite able to do that. As far as working with the actors, we're all looking for one thing, and only one thing. We're all looking to catch lightning in a jar. We're all looking for that moment that cooks and bubbles. So it's not my job to manage them or to balance them. It's my job, and they want me to do this, to catch that lightning, to catch that moment. And so I don't really think that aspect of it. I only think about that moment where I can say, "OK, print. We got it."
Given that you're one of the masters of puppetry, it was kind of surprising to see a CGI dog in The Stepford Wives. Yoda, who you used puppeteer in the Star Wars films, is CGI now. Is Hollywood moving toward CGI and the art of puppetry is gone now?
Oz: It doesn't matter what you do. It could be a banana for all it matters, as long as it serves the story and characters. It's not about CGI. It's not about puppetry. If you have a carrot dancing, I don't care. [It's about] what serves the story, what serves the relationships, what serves the characters. That's what it's all about. It makes no difference how it's done.
Word is that you had a tough time finding an appropriate ending for the film. What happened?
Oz: We had a couple of different endings. I reshot one for What About Bob? I reshot Little Shop of Horrors' ending. You know, it's all normal. It's always confusing when people ask that question, as if we shouldn't have done it. In the old days they always budgeted in reshoot time, an additional shoot time because, unlike [journalists], where you can take a piece of paper and throw it away or can type something [new] or erase something, we only have one shot. That's it. We can't do 10 drafts for an article. We can only do one attempt. So we had the opportunity to look at it and say, "Oh, jeez, you know, maybe this is better. Let's do a rewrite on this." And that's what we did.
But what was the reason for the reshoot?
Oz: The reason?
Did a test screening go poorly? Did people just not like the ending?
Oz: It wasn't that. [He sighs]. It wasn't satisfying. It wasn't that they didn't like it. It wasn't satisfying. You can kind of feel when something's an appetizer and something's a full entree. It just wasn't a plate.
Matthew Broderick, so much of your role hinges on whether or not Walter wants to kill Joanna. Can you talk a bit about walking that fine line? And was that the appeal of the film for you?
Broderick: I liked that. They came to me with this whole wonderful cast assembled. First, I was just very excited by that. As a second part, then I started thinking about the role. I remember that from rehearsals on I would say, "When exactly does Walter know what's going on here? How much do I push it, or is it pushed on me? Did I pick Stepford?" I wanted to know what I was up to in the story, because it isn't always clear. As I got into it, I think it was important for me to know that, but as an audience it's better to not know how much Walter knows. That's what I found interesting. He could be villainous, but you don't want to give that away too early. So it was a delicate and interesting role to play.
How would you describe Frank Oz's approach to comedy?
Broderick: He's very funny, and he's also very serious about comedy, as most people working in comedy are. It gets very technical sometimes. Very often it gets to be, "Take a pause before this word" or "Make it a question." A lot of times comedy is almost scientific, and I think Frank works that way with comedy. I'm used to that, and that's how I work. I found it quite easy to work with him.
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Also in this issue:
The cast and crew of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
