s the holiday movie season continues to grind through blockbusters and Oscar fare, only Phantom of the Opera stands alone as a singular cinematic entity. Adapted from the beloved stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the film recounts the tragic story of the Phantom (Gerard Butler) as he attempts to exert control over a young ingenue named Christine (Emmy Rossum) when she takes center stage at the Opera Populaire. Christine's childhood sweetheart, Raoul (Patrick Wilson), competes for her attention but quickly finds that the hold the Phantom maintains over his would-be lover runs deeper than can be severed easily.
Directed by Joel Schumacher, who enjoys a career renaissance after the success of Phone Booth and Tigerland, Phantom features all-new interpretations of Webber's classic songs, all of which are actually sung by the cast. Rossum, who previously starred in Roland Emmerich's disaster epic The Day After Tomorrow, recently sat down with Science Fiction Weekly, along with Schumacher and Webber, to speak about leaping into a classic musical text and reinventing it for movie audiences the world over.
Emmy, how different was Phantom from your previous work on big-budget Hollywood movies like Day After Tomorrow and Mystic River?
Rossum: You know, it was very different, because I think every film set is different, because of the director and because of the tone of the project. But this was a lot more responsibility for me, because I was 17 going into this, and they normally don't give multimillion-dollar Hollywood musicals to unfamous 16-year-olds. It was a great experience for me to be able to play this kind of character that I could really give a fresh life to, because I had never seen the play and I had come to this uncolored by any kind of interpretation that had come before. And the character had such conflicting emotion, which was great. What was really important to me was that she would be the one real center amidst all this kind of theatricality and spectacle. I wanted her to be the thing the audience would really kind of grab onto and care about, and ultimately that's one of the main reasons they would care about the movie.
How tough was the audition process?
Rossum: Tough [laughs]. I had never seen the show, so Joel sent me the script. He'd been casting for six months, the six months that I'd been working on The Day After Tomorrow. He sent me the script, and I kind of got this interpretation of his vision of the character. I walked into a room on a Wednesday, talked to him, and he said, "Can you screen test on Saturday?" and I thought, "Wow, this is happening really quickly." But I flew to New York—that's where the screen test was—wasn't expecting anything overly elaborate. I walked in and it was a set, and there were two hours of hair and makeup, with hair extensions and a costume and a full 50-person crew with a sweeping camera and Joel in the corner yelling "Action!" So it was really quite surreal for me, and I just remember thinking "I'm never going to get this part, but I'll just do the best job that I can do." I'll walk out and hopefully be able to be proud of what I did. Then they sent the footage to Andrew Lloyd Webber, who agreed to see me, and I sang for him, and then I got it.
How long was that entire process?
Rossum: Ten days. Really alarmingly fast.
How difficult or easy is it to synthesize acting and singing at the same time?
Rossum: I mean, a challenge, I think. I treated the vocal as if it was dialogue. I wanted the same feelings and textures, the same qualities in vocals that would've been in regular dialogue. What I also really wanted to do was—I talked to Andrew Lloyd Webber a lot about this—my voice was developing over the course of the film, as it does for somebody my age, and I really wanted to use the vocal to reflect the maturity that she gains over the course of the story. Like in the beginning of the movie, during "Think of Me," it's very pure and innocent and kind of bell-like, just because she's very young and innocent, and then by the end, by "Point of No Return," it's just very dark, sexy, who knows what's going on inside her, to reflect the fact that she's really become a woman and gained strength over the course of the story and really dealing with a lot of dark sexuality.
What was working with Gerard Butler like?
Rossum: Fantastic. Very hard-working, committed. We spent a lot of time together separately from the rest of the cast, talking about music a lot. Actually, he took me to Royal Albert Hall for a concert, because we both really love music, and that was something we shared in common with our characters. We bonded over that, and we also talked about personal sadnesses and things that we've been through in our lives that we could relate to, because Christine and the Phantom share such a bond. They're kindred spirits, both very lonely, kind of abandoned people, and very musical and creative and passionate, and I think that's something that we talked a lot about.
How would you describe Andrew Lloyd Webber's role in the process of making this film?
Rossum: I think he dealt solely with the musical aspects of the film, and I think Joel dealt solely with the directorial aspects of it, but it didn't at all feel like we had two captains. Joel was definitely the captain of the ship. And Andrew very much encouraged a new, fresh interpretation of the character that came from my heart. He's very musical, he's a little bit shy when you first get to know him, but once you get to know him he becomes the easiest person to talk to. He's kind and gentle and just a lovely guy.
How did Joel make you feel comfortable when you were developing this character?
Rossum: He just gave me a sense of confidence in myself, firstly by casting me. I think it was enormously courageous of him and Andrew. He very much understands that every actor has a very different method, and once we had totally agreed upon a vision for the character he basically said, "OK, go out, find her, do whatever you need to do," and said that to all of us, so we really developed the characters kind of on our own. And I think that's a liberty that's really fun for an actor, to go out and do things for yourself, to develop memories and experiences that are like the character. I know for Jerry [Butler] it was taking movement classes and getting a feel for how the character moved. For Patrick [Wilson], he did a lot of sword fighting. For me it was just kind of delving into the psyche of the character and totally understanding her and then just throwing myself down an emotional rabbit hole.
What particular characteristic that Christine has do you relate to?
Rossum: I don't know if this is going to sound too....I'll just say it. Compassion. It's something that I was taught as being very important in my house. One of my best friends was born with a cranial facial deformity, and she's had 24 operations to try to get herself to look as normal as possible, is what she thinks. It's never been anything that's frightened me or disgusted me in any way. It was something that I really related to the character about. I think that she looks at this man and really sees a very passionate, musical, caring person, somebody that she can very much relate to, somebody who she needs when she's younger and has no mentor, and really grows up with him. That's something that I could really tap into and relate to. The first time she sees him it's with so much understanding for everything he feels and so much compassion, and I think that that is something that's such a wonderful and admirable characteristic. I just thought, "Hey, here's a great girl, I want to be her."
Andrew, what was the challenge of translating your material from the stage to the screen? How do you feel this one overcame any of those obstacles?
Webber: Well, I think that the main thing was that, obviously, Joel and I approached this very much as a film. When we started to collaborate on it, we realized very obviously that there are things that the cinema can do that theater can't, and the other way round. I suppose the most difficult thing was that we both decided that we wanted to go with a very young girl for Christine, partly because that's how the book is. She's only 16 in the book. We were able to do that because you can't be physically able to see a girl that age in the theater for any length of time. So we had that advantage. Other than that, we looked at the construction of the stage show and basically really translated it into the script. We obviously made quite a big change by dropping the chandelier at the end of the film. There's quite a big change also in the intention of that, because in the stage show it's a sort of gesture against Christine. In this, of course, she's destroying his whole world, because he's humiliated. I think that's a very powerful change, which gives a reason for the beginning. You can get away with so much in the theater that you don't question. You can have an auction in the beginning and then just go wreck the chandelier, but in the film I think you have to have a reason for why that whole process turns out.
How did it feel to go back to the process of recreating Phantom so many years after its run ended?
Webber: It had been 17 years since I worked on Phantom. It was quite simple, it was quite easy. What we did not want to do was a film version of the stage show. We wanted to make a film in its own right. That obviously meant that things like the Phantom's backstory, we wanted to know about that, and that's a joy to do because several things can go in sequences there. We did the film first, and where the music didn't exist I wrote the music to picture.
How is this film different from the one you were going to make over a decade ago?
Webber: Well, we did do a screenplay at the time, and a few ideas from that screenplay found their way into this. But as I think probably Joel would say, we all had quite a bit more experience, and certainly one of the things we would not have been able to do then would've been to do what we've done with the recording. Up until now, musicals had tended to be prerecorded. The technology exists now where we were able to record them as we went along, so, although we went back over some of the vocals, there was no prerecording. I would think that would make a huge degree of difference from an acting point of view. That would've been the big difference from what would've happened then.
What do you think Gerard and Emmy bring to their roles?
Webber: Oh, I think they were extraordinary. They're just a beautiful couple. There's a sexuality in this that I've rarely seen in the theater, although I must say I think Michael [Crawford] and Sarah [Brightman] had it. I think Sarah did particularly. Because she was a dancer she was able to use her body in a way that was extraordinary. But I think you get very much with Emmy the awakening of the girl's sexuality. And I believe we assume that there had been a relationship with her when she was much younger.
Where you afraid of casting relative unknowns instead of big names?
Webber: I think Joel would've cast a big name if he thought that the person was right, but he was very keen to cast young people. I just said, "Look, I'm with you, Joel, provided they really can sing." That was my big stipulation. I don't think you can get away today with your principals being dubbed, and so of course they're not.
How does your relationship with something change once it becomes such a huge pop-culture phenomenon, like Phantom?
Webber: I think it's always felt like it's mine. I don't think my attitude toward it has changed at all, really. I know it's very unlikely that I'll ever have a success as big as that again, because it was so extraordinary, what happened with it, but it doesn't really alter one's feeling about it.
Joel, are you relieved that the movie is finally done?
Schumacher: We had to lock the movie June 1, so it was actually done then. I mean, we had to not just lock it—we locked it April 1, but the whole movie had to be complete by June 1. It seems so long ago, but it's nice to [be done].
Is it good that it took 15 years to adapt this?
Schumacher: Well, I think for me, when I first said to Andrew, you know, when he first asked me to do it, which was amazing, I'd only made four movies. He'd seen The Lost Boys. And I'd done 18 by the time I went back to do it, so hopefully I've learned something. And also, technology moved forward a great deal, and I think we were also more removed from the success of the show than we would have been if we made it in 1990. That would have been looming over us a lot more.
What specific obstacles did you face in translating it from stage to screen?
Schumacher: Well, one of the biggest ones is that in the show the chandelier ends the first act, which is in the middle of the show—the crashing of it—and I said to Andrew, you know, if we crash the chandelier in the middle of the movie and burn down the theater, I don't know what I'll do. Are they singing in tents after that? And in all fairness, it was his suggestion that maybe we needed to move the chandelier, and I thought that was a really good idea. That was one, and I also thought it was very important to tell the Phantom's backstory and everybody's backstory, how they got there, what Miranda Richardson's character's relationship is with the Phantom. You know, all of those questions that don't seem to pop up in the musical, but movie audiences, I think it's important to know a lot of the history of these characters and how they got there. I thought it was also important to expand Patrick Wilson's part, because in the show it's very minor, very peripheral, to make him a real person, and because Patrick's such a stunt stud—he did all his own stunts, he rides the horse bareback, he does the jumps, he did all of the sword fighting himself, he jumps out of the second-story balcony when it's on fire. Andrew calls him the Annoyingly Perfect Patrick Wilson.
Did you research musicals and musical theater before stepping behind the camera?
Schumacher: No, I didn't. I probably should have, but I thought I should probably do this as if it's just a story. This is a young, tragic love story, and it has to have great sets and great music and great costumes and all of the sword fights and horses and carriages; it has to have all that. But that's potatoes. I'm a storyteller; what's the story that I'm telling? And I said to Andrew, "I'll do the movie if Christine can be very young." Because if you do the research, the ballet girls are very young, but also I wanted her to be innocent so that her relationship with Patrick Wilson would be the awakening of romantic love for the first time, and the relationship with Gerard Butler's character, the Phantom, is more dark, obsessional, awakening of sexual, destructive love. The good kind. And the way we're torn every day between the good love and the bad love, and I said, "If there are famous people in this movie, that's fine, Andrew. But I don't want to be saddled with anybody I don't"—it wasn't who I wanted, it was how can I make this story work for you? I said she must be young, the guys must be young, and if they are famous, fine. If they are unknown, fine. And he said, you can have anyone you want, but they have to be able to do their own singing. OK, that was the deal, we shook hands, and that's how it happened.
I focused on telling the story using the lyrics of the songs to act and not just do a performance, and I couldn't really find any musicals that were applicable, so I looked at period films instead that I always knew had a great sense of period. George Cukor's Camille, with Greta Garbo, Vincente Minelli's Madame Bovary, tons [of movies], like 50. But what was most important was The Leopard. No one does period better than Visconti, and also Piero Tosci is the greatest costume designer that's ever lived. But you also, when you watch Visconti movies, you are there. You are in that thing. In the Paris Opera at its peak, they had 750 people working there and living there, so that gave me the idea that I could give you this upstairs-downstairs world, so that you would feel this whole fabric of this bohemian, wild opera.
Anthony Pratt, the set designer, credits you with creating the look of the theater.
Schumacher: Definitely the arms are stolen. I mean, I just took that right out of Beauty and the Beast—but ours is in color [laughs]. If you're going to steal, steal from the best. No, what I said to him was I thought the theater—because we spent so much time in the theater—I said we should make the theater a person, so that the audience feels that it has a personality. So I said, why don't we make the theater a very beautiful, voluptuous woman. But then, he's the person that designs it. That was just the direction.
Did you go to the Opera Garnier for inspiration?
Schumacher: I went to the Paris Opera in 1988 or '89 when Andrew first asked me to do it, and I did several tours of it. The problem with the Paris Opera is, A, it's so huge that if you tried to replicate it the sets would be so big that you would be way over here, just to show how big it is, and then be in close-up. It would be a waste of time. And also, extremely municipal and cold. It's not voluptuous at all. It's a state theater, and that's what it feels like. Also, because in the show it's called the Opera Populaire, it's not called the Paris Opera, it gave us room so that we didn't have to copy the Paris Opera, but certainly the whole idea of canals and subterranean catacombs, that all exists in the Paris Opera, and it's connected to the Seine, and it does carry a lot of water. It goes down for many, many levels, all of the way to the river, and what happens is that it's all fluorescent-lit now. But you can only imagine with a candle or a torch how frightening it would be to be down there. It's still frightening now, because you don't know where you're going. It's a huge maze of these catacombs, and you could live there for a hundred years and no one would find you. I mean, it really is easy to, and the light is from the water. It's pretty amazing, and that's where those ideas came from.
Production designer Anthony Pratt said you contributed most of the ideas for the look of the film.
Schumacher: Well, he's just being kind. My job is to hire people far more talented than I am and give them a direction, so we had Anthony Pratt doing the sets and Alexandra Byrne doing the costumes, and then Jenny Shircore, another genius, doing the hair and makeup, and the choreographer is Peter Darling, but it all comes together with John Mathieson, our cinematographer, because that's the magic. His use of candlelight and gaslight, and he designed a lot of lighting things that would seem like they were old-fashioned things on the stage, and he's a historian as well as a cinematographer, so he really threw himself into it. So I give them a direction; I mean, if I say, "For the masquerade ball, let's do it all black and white and gold and silver, and then we'll put Emmy in pink and the Phantom in red," that's an idea. But what they do with it is all them. That's just a concept.
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