PopSyndicate.com

The next day, I met with Turturro briefly at the Hotel Palomar in Dallas to discuss the film. Below is a transcript of the interview.

We start the questioning off with the niceties; since we both lived in Queens, N.Y., for awhile growing up. We compare notes on high schools and subway stations. We talk about other famous Queens residents, local boys done good, among them James Caan and Christopher Walken (who has a role in this film). But we are really here to talk about Romance & Cigarettes, the musical love story which takes place in ... Queens (of all places!).

Pop Syndicate: So nice to see you again! That was quite a wild ride last night. The audience really enjoyed themselves.

John Turturro: Thank you.

PS: You’re very welcome. This is like a new genre of film.  I call it the com-dram musical. You really touched on everything.

JT: All these elements were used in early plays, in the Greek plays. And since I’m from the theater ... I really haven’t done many Greek plays, but I’ve done a few and there’s a few plays that I particularly like and have been offered. I was offered Oedipus years ago, but I didn’t do it. I did some adaptations of Aristophanes. There were all kinds of bawdy music, choruses in those plays.  And music has always been in place (in theater) for a long time.  In fact, when you hear the choruses in those early plays, it’s like poetry set to rhythm. I wasn’t trying to invent, I was basically trying to be real - like lots of painters who painted brilliantly, realistically and then started to explore outside of that and sometimes it wasn’t exactly realistic. It can be more real than something that is just trying to capture life the way it’s perceived. But even a great painter like Caravaggio did things in his paintings that were sort of hyper-real and his compositions were off.  You see in certain paintings how he started to lose his definition and go somewhere else and sometimes by abstracting something, you can actually be closer to reality.

PS: And you want to keep it fresh, you don’t want it to get stale.

JT: No, sometimes it’s something that’s very nice and very interesting. Sometimes when you think you capture something, it doesn’t capture it actually - that’s when it’s real!
PS: (I smile in agreement) I understand. You had the concept for this many years ago, and it’s taken awhile to get to the screen. Was there some sort of dispute with MGM?
JT: There was no dispute; my first distributor loved the film! They were completely behind it.  We got stuck in a merger, like a lot of companies. Once you’re stuck in a merger in the movie business, a new regime comes in and they say we don’t care about any of this stuff. You’re very lucky if you survive a merger.  It’s not anyone’s fault.  It’s just that they come with their own interests. Basically everybody I worked with was fired. Hundreds of people. They were gone (he smacks his hands). I thought it was going to happen over six months.  It happened in three weeks.
PS: Whoa!  The interesting thing is that musicals have really flourished since then. There’s been a proliferation of them on screen. And you were maybe on the forefront of that.
JT: Right! But my thing is more in the tradition - well, not in the tradition of Hairspray or anything like that.
PS: No, no.
JT: Those are really kind of Broadway.  Hairspray was adapted from a movie, so that’s a whole different thing. Like Chicago. That’s a different thing. Then movies like Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Moulin Rouge ...
PS: Which your film is being compared to.
JT: Different explorations. I actually thought Hedwig and the Angry Inch was the best musical I’ve seen.  When I was doing my film I was very encouraged when I saw it.
PS: I’ve heard Romance & Cigarettes referred to as a “pop opera.”
JT: Yeah.  It’s closer to opera. And I like opera.
PS: How about the soundtrack? Are you going to release one?
JT: Yeah, we’re working on that.
PS: Because boomers will love it.  Everyone can appreciate that music!
JT: That’s exactly right. Musically, growing up we heard music that our parents listened to and what we listened to, and so it was a combination of that.  Sometimes I think you see the director is of a certain age and they’re trying to put in hip music and a lot of times, you know they are not from that world and the way they use it is not really that organic.
PS: They just sort of plugged it in.
JT: Right, they plugged it in.
PS: There were some great tunes, some I haven’t heard for 20 years. But I knew every word.
JT: You’re just hearing it in a different context.
PS: The selections were all perfect. So I know the film screened at the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals. In Venice you received a nomination. Bravo!
JT: We were in the competition. In Italy, the film ran in movie theaters for seven months.
PS: That’s impressive.
JT: They made a lot of money there.  They distributed it closer to the way United Artists was going to have it distributed, which is kind of a medium-sized film, not a huge one. Not an art film.  So we’ve done well in a lot of other countries, too.  We’re in our third month in New York and we’re still doing really solid business. Per screening, we’re doing better than most movies.
PS: I’m glad you’re bringing it here to Dallas. I just want to get off-track here for a second. Speaking of awards, you did win an Emmy for playing Adrian’s brother on Monk.
JT: Yeah, I’ve won other awards too!
PS: That program speaks to me because I have OCD tendencies.
JT: You and a lot of people. Tony (Shalhoub) and I have worked together a lot.
PS: Did you enjoy doing TV?
JT: Yeah, yeah. The reason I don’t do TV as much is because there is such little time. If you do a TV movie, you have some time to prepare. I’ve done three, actually four TV movies over the last four years and I had a couple of great appearances working on television, and I think Tony does a terrific job. But I think most shows kind of run their course eventually; I think it’s very hard for a show to really be fresh after a couple of years. I think it’s impossible.
PS: I agree. Back to Romance & Cigarettes. It must have been very difficult to direct James Gandolfini. Especially since you didn’t know at the time that he was going to be finishing up with The Sopranos.
JT: (With a smile) Well, I knew he wanted out.
SP: But just in terms of having to remind folks that he’s not Tony. People will see him forever as Tony.
JT: I knew James before he was on that show.  He did a play with Aida (Turturro). He had a small part.  I don’t believe that, you know, I believe in actors.  When he did the reading of my script, I said, “Wow! He’s fantastic!” He’s still a working-class guy.  The only thing we worked on is singing lessons. He has a bigger voice than he uses - he uses a kind of nasal part of his voice, masked for Tony Soprano, and I wanted him to open his voice up and keep it at a lower register. Which he did most of the time, but sometimes he went into that other register. But I think he was relieved not to play a dominant guy. And in real life I think he’s a lot closer to the person or place in the movie and he did a terrific job.
PS: I think you did a terrific job! Thank you for your time.
JT: Thank you!

As a final note, he was most gracious taking photographs with me and my parents. He even answered a question or two of theirs. And then a real coup - he signed a bowling ball for my son with the inscription, “Don’t F_ _ _ with the Jesus.” If that doesn’t ring a bell, it’s a reference to his character, Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski. 

John Turturro is a true renaissance man. He can act, write and direct. In Romance & Cigarettes he even sings and dances. And the man has a sense of humor! Check your local newspaper listings for Romance & Cigarettes. You can read my review of the film at PopSyndicate review of Romance & Cigarettes.

0