A silent movie with singing

WHEN Richard D Zanuck ran one of the major Hollywood studios, 20th Century Fox, he greenlit one of the most loved movie musicals of all time - The Sound Of Music. It was one of the first pictures he put into production on becoming Fox president and was a giant hit. "I tried to follow that magic with three flops - Hello Dolly!, Star! and Doctor Dolittle, which did little.

I vowed never to go near a musical again," he recalls.

It took Tim Burton, one of cinema's most imaginative directors to make him change his mind. The legendary Zanuck's name is on screen as producer of Sweeney Todd, the film of Stephen Sondheim's musical about the demon barber of Fleet Street.

"Having seen the show on Broadway years and years before, I thought it was a wonderful piece, but it wouldn't make a picture," says Zanuck. "When I heard that Tim was passionately involved in it and wanted to do it, that was enough for me.

He was the only person I would have wanted to do this picture."

The show is hardly Rodgers and Hammerstein, reaching the screen with an 18 certificate in this country thanks to its orgy of throat-slitting and cannibalism as Sweeney kills his customers and Mrs Lovett bakes them in her pies.

Burton, known for such quirky and dark movies as Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, first saw the musical on stage 28 years ago. "I was still a student, I didn't know if I'd be making movies or working in a restaurant. I had no idea what I'd be doing," he recalls.

"I didn't go to the theatre much, didn't even know who Stephen Sondheim was. I didn't know anything about the show, I just wandered into the theatre and it just blew me away because I'd never seen anything that had a mixture of all those elements. I actually went three nights in a row because I loved it so much."

He has regular collaborator Johnny Depp as his Sweeney and real life partner Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs Lovett.

The actress, whom Burton met when he directed her in Planet Of The Apes, reckons it was harder to get cast because of her relationship with the director.

"He told me that I looked right for it, but he had no idea if I could sing. So I said I'd try and learn, and he said,it'll always be good for you to try and having singing lessons'.

"I had to be righter than right, just for my sake. I didn't want to feel I'd got it because I'd slept with him. At the end of the day, Stephen Sondheim had the final say."

One of the things Burton loved about Sondheim's musical was that you listened to the soundtrack and it told you the story, which is reflected in the movie version. "We didn't want it to be what I'd say was a traditional musical with a lot of dialogue and them singing. It felt like a silent movie with singing," he says.

"That's why we cut out a lot of choruses and things, and extras singing and dancing down the street. Many of the characters, because a lot of them are repressed and have their emotions inside, the music was a way to let them express their feelings. That was the structure we used for it.

"When I first saw the show the imagery, which is quite dark and harsh, set with the music, which is quite lush and beautiful, was something I'd never seen before and was the reason I wanted to do it." Depp has said it was liberating have music on the set all the way through filming, as performers sang along to the pre-recorded songs. "Everybody just moved differently," says Burton. "I saw Johnny act in a way I'd never seen before, walking across the room or sitting in the chair, picking up a razor or making a pie, whatever.

"They all did it in a way that you could sense was just different than if there hadn't been music."

There haven't been too many 18 or Rrated musicals but it was never a thought to make it for a lower rating. "It was an amazing thing, you go to the studio and say you're going to do an R-rated musical with lots of blood and no professional singers, and it's about a serial killer and cannibalism and they go great'. That was unheard of, I've never had that happen in my life before," says Burton.

"That gave me hope that there are still people in Hollywood who are willing to try different things. So that was a very positive thing.

"The first meeting I went into I said blood is a part of the story', because I'd seen productions where they'd tried to skimp on it, be more politically correct and the productions really lost something.

"That was the first thing I said to them and they accepted it. And, in terms of the show, it was three hours long, but we weren't out to film the Broadway show.

We were out to make a movie so we tried to keep the pace like those old melodramas. Because it's such a simple story, you kind of get what the story is, so it felt like the pace needed to be more what it is.

"Sondheim himself is not a real big fan of movie musicals, so he was really open to trimming it down and honing it down to a more pacy shape."

* Sweeney Todd (18) previews in cinemas today and goes on general release tomorrow