Travolta is queen of hairspray

Travolta is queen of 'Hairspray'
Posted 1/18/2007 10:04 PM ET
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
TORONTO — Given Hollywood's recycling addiction, déjà-viewing is more rampant than ever. So USA TODAY issues a challenge to the filmmakers behind seven of 2007's most-anticipated family-friendly sequels and films spun from stage and TV: Tell us what is fresh and different this time around.
Hairspray
Opens: July 20
Stars: John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Christopher Walken
"I used to always say women had the best parts in American musicals," John Travolta says moments before he wiggles into the plus-size persona of Baltimore hausfrau Edna Turnblad for one last time on the set of Hairspray. "Little did I know."
From '50s drag-racing to '60s drag. It has been almost 30 years since a 24-year-old Travolta slid into the role of Rydell High stud Danny Zuko in Grease. Now the middle-aged actor is back in tune and bigger than ever, thanks to a padded bodysuit, as a frumpy mama to a tubby teen dance sensation and unlikely civil rights activist, Tracy (effervescent newcomer Nicole Blonsky).
It's the first movie musical since Dreamgirls to test audience's hunger for toe-tapping entertainment. And New Line Cinema is hoping for a little summer loving when the pop-fizzy $70 million film, about what happens when an all-white American Bandstand-style TV show gets a soul infusion, opens July 20.
But Travolta won't be the whole show. There is a cast member to attract almost every age group. Baby boomers get Christopher Walken, who has been known to cut a mean rug, as Edna's indulgent hubby, Wilbur, and Grease 2 alumna Michelle Pfeiffer as mommy-not-so-dearest Velma von Tussle. Tweeners, meanwhile, will be a-twitter to see High SchoolMusical sensation Zac Efron as Tracy's beau, Link, and kid-TV queen Amanda Bynes as Tracy's lollipop-licking pal, Penny.
But nothing quite beats the promise of Travolta in a dress as a surefire tease. "Everyone keeps saying, 'Oh, my God, never in a million years would you know that was John,' " producer Craig Zadan says.
It's not that the actor, who established himself as a dance-floor icon as disco king Tony Manero in 1977's Saturday Night Fever, has been intentionally avoiding the genre. He came close to signing up for 1985's A Chorus Line and 2004's Phantom of the Opera. But the actor knew he couldn't follow Grease, the biggest-grossing movie musical of all time, with the same old song and dance.
Enter Zadan and producing partner Neil Meron, part of the creative team behind the 2002 Oscar best-picture winner Chicago, which helped rekindle Hollywood's affair with the musical. If their experience with Chicago taught them anything, it was that A-list names such as Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones are an essential ingredient when making the transition from Broadway to screen.
And Travolta, who had deep regrets about turning down Gere's role of Billy Flynn after seeing Chicago, was the one that they wanted for their Edna. "He's the greatest musical film star that we have for this generation," Meron says.
Still, it took about a year of convincing before Travolta said yes. The problem wasn't about playing a woman. It was about competing with his twentysomething self.
"We told him this would be the most unexpected way of returning to musicals," Zadan says. "No one would be able to compare Edna with the characters in Saturday Night Fever and Grease."
Travolta had some very specific thoughts on how to distinguish his fat lady from the previous men-to-femme incarnations by John Waters muse Divine in the original 1988 film comedy and by gravel-voiced Harvey Fierstein in the 2002 Broadway production.
"I thought, well, OK, if I really go for it, instead of the joke of being a man in woman's accoutrements, I should put my actor's hat on and just be the best woman you can be," he explains. "As if a woman had been hired in the first place." The only recognizable portions of Travolta that peep out from the foam latex and silicone are his eyes and dimpled chin.
He has wanted Edna to pack more va-va-voom than in the past. His role models? Such '60s sirens as Sophia Loren and Anita Ekberg.
Although some blogs were both agog and aghast over the initial images of the cross-dressed actor, co-star Queen Latifah can't get enough of Travolta as a full-figured gal.
"Oooh, we love that booty," rhapsodizes the Oscar nominee for Chicago, who showcases her bluesy pipes as record-shop owner Motormouth Maybelle. "Every time he comes out in the costume, we've got to rub on the booty a little bit. It's just such a big round rump."
As Travolta devised his character makeover, the producers, along with director/choreographer Adam Shankman (Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier) and writer Leslie Dixon (Mrs. Doubtfire), devised a blueprint for how to handle what is becoming an increasingly popular scenario: A hit movie is reborn as a smash Broadway musical that then boomerangs back to the big screen with songs attached.
Their refrain? Less is more. On stage, everything is heightened, from Day-Glo sets to cartoony costumes, to ensure that even the cheap seats catch each gag and double-take. But movies are a much more intimate medium that doesn't need to try so hard. In other words, the beehive hairdos are more Empire State Building than Sears Tower.
"We basically wanted to de-camp it," Meron says, "to take the exaggeration out of it and find the true heart of Hairspray."
Other new ingredients in the reformulated Hairspray:
•TheHigh Schoolhop Probably the savviest hire was the kid who could be the next Travolta: Efron, 19, the fresh-scrubbed star of one of the TV phenoms of the decade, the Disney Channel's High School Musical. Says Zadan, "He's the hottest young star in America."
Adds Shankman: "Bigger things are waiting for him. He is a real actor, and he gives a real performance in this." And Efron also carries his own tunes — another voice was mixed with his on the High School Musical soundtrack.
He gladly opted out of the current Musical tour, although he is doing the sequel, to hang with such idols as Travolta and Walken.
"It keeps you on your toes knowing there is so much firepower in this movie," the California-based actor says, his squeal-inducing floppy brown hair dyed Elvis black and lacquered atop his head. "It's a blessing to be involved in this."
The director had one peeve about the lad: His Osmond-esque grin. "Something was too Mickey Mouse Club about him. I told him not to smile too broadly." Instead, his Link has a cocky quirk of winking at everyone he meets. "Even Edna," Shankman says.
The role was tailored to suit Efron's style. "On stage, Link sings a slow ballad, It Takes Two," the actor says. "But they've amped it up and gave me a rock 'n' roll song, Ladies' Choice. He's a rebel who represents a whole new generation slicking back their hair and shaking their hips."
•The ingénue bop The filmmakers were determined to cast an unknown to follow in the dance steps of Ricki Lake, who has a cameo, along with Waters and Tony winner Marissa Jaret Winokur. Little did they know their perfect Tracy would be found scooping ice cream at a Cold Stone Creamery in Great Neck, N.Y.
Blonsky, 18, a 4-foot-10 dynamo who can sing everything from Patsy Cline to opera, beat out a couple thousand hopefuls to nab her dream role.
"When she walked out her first day on the set," Shankman says, "it was if she had been doing this for 30 years. Like watching a Barbra Streisand being born."
Ever since seeing Hairspray on Broadway as a 15th birthday gift, Blonsky felt destined to be Tracy.
"When the girl entered and started singing Good Morning, Baltimore, I nudged my mom and said, 'I could totally do that. That's me,' " says the trained vocalist, who gets to perform a new Marc Shaiman-Scott Wittman tune, I Can Wait.
In a way, she has lived Tracy's story. "I always wanted to be out there, just singing," she says. "I needed that one shot. All my life, I've never been the thin girl or the tall girl. I've just always been Nikki. And I'm comfortable in my skin."
Not that Blonsky didn't have to do any homework. The day before she met her movie mom, she watched Grease for the first time after being encouraged to do so by Efron.
"I was like, 'Oh, my God, I'm going to meet this man tomorrow!' But John instantly made me feel comfortable. He opened his arms and said, 'Come to Mama.' "
•The director cha-cha When the Broadway version's director, Jack O'Brien, and choreographer Jerry Mitchell dropped out because of other commitments, the producers scrambled to find a replacement.
Turns out, Shankman, a trained dancer who has choreographed 50 or so movies, was itching to get back to his musical roots and eagerly took on both duties. "Of all the directors we talked to, he was the most passionate," Meron says.
"This is what I was meant to do," Shankman says. "To be able to use my entire skill set and realize this crazy story with this kind of cast."
In other words, he says, "I'm not Chris Columbus doing Rent."
Where Grease and Hairspray diverge for Travolta is in the fact that, unlike 34-year-old Stockard Channing as Rizzo, the younger cast members are all age appropriate.
"A lot of these kids were brought up on Grease," he says. "So for me to do this movie, I give them a reason to be excited, and they give me the energy back."
And what has he learned from his time in a woman's shoes — not to mention bra?
"You get treated differently. You put on a zaftig body, and men just go up to it. They check me out from head to toe and back. When I'm John, I barely get a second look."