Hollywood’s famed Sunset Strip,
1987. Rockers wail and heads bang inside the packed and pulsating walls of a
rock ‘n’ roll institution, The Bourbon Room. Heart strings are plucked and
electric guitar sparks fly to the beat of some of the greatest hits of the
`80s…the “Rock of Ages.”
The
Broadway hit now goes from stage to screen with Warner Bros.' epic musical
“Rock of Ages” under the direction of Adam Shankman (“Hairspray”). Shankman,
who grew up in Los Angeles, felt right at home in the setting. “My dad was a
music business manager, and his office was on the Strip,” he says. “I knew a
lot of artists. I was choreographing music videos in 1987 and it was a world
that I really understood and loved, so turning back that clock was an
opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
At
the core of the film is a boy-meets-girl love story woven into classic,
only-in-Hollywood dreams of fame. Shankman’s sister and producing partner,
Jennifer Gibgot, elaborates, “Like so many people in L.A., the young lovers in
‘Rock of Ages’ have come here hoping to make it big and thinking it’s going to
be easy. But it turns out to be a lot harder to stay on the path, to keep
believing in the thing that led them there in the first place.”
Julianne
Hough and Diego Boneta portray the young couple with stars in their eyes at the
center of the story. They are joined by an all-star cast that includes Alec
Baldwin, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Mary J. Blige, Malin Akerman and
Catherine Zeta-Jones. And playing the rock god of “Rock of Ages,” Arsenal lead
singer Stacee Jaxx, is Tom Cruise.
For
Shankman, the journey began when he went to see “Rock of Ages” on the stage. He
recalls, “The audience was having the best time I’d ever seen at a show.
Everybody knew the lyrics to all the songs and was out of their seats and
singing along and having the time of their life. That enthusiasm, that sheer
emotion, convinced me to make the movie.”
It
wasn’t his only reason for revisiting the era, however. “I thought it would be
an interesting challenge to make a movie musical that guys would drag their
girlfriends to for a change.”
Shankman’s
“Rock of Ages” is based on the Broadway smash, which earned five Tony Award
nominations and is still entertaining audiences on the Great White Way as well
as in touring productions around the world. The show’s book was written by
Chris D’Arienzo, who is also a writer and executive producer on the film.
The
story, about pursuing your heart’s desire, is backed by incredible songs and set
on the iconic Sunset Strip, a place emblematic of the time, a place where
fantasies could become reality, and did. Where a band from nowhere could
perform at the Whiskey or The Roxy and wind up with a record deal.
Writer
Justin Theroux enjoyed working on the screenplay for the jukebox musical, an
opportunity he describes as “a totally different experience. In a weird way,
you write backwards from the point of view of the song. The song is always the
emotional center for the characters in any given scene, so it’s fun to try to
get them to that specific destination. The song does a lot of the emotional
heavy lifting for you, but you have to build ramps up and down, to and from,
that centerpiece.”
Writer
Allan Loeb also took pleasure in fiddling around with the script’s musical
moments. “At times there are two songs playing off each other, going back and
forth between the different storylines, with a lot of intercutting, to enable
the song to serve more than one set of characters,” he details. “So the
challenge was to shuffle the story and the verses, while also allowing for the
choreography, until everyone explodes into a mash-up of the songs’ choruses.
That’s how they did it on stage and how we handled it in the screenplay, and it
was great fun to write.”
Says
Shankman, “What’s often the most difficult and compelling thing about a musical
like ‘Rock of Ages’ is that half of a song is played as performance and the
other half as dialogue or inner monologue. I think the writers did a great job
of turning a terrific stage show into a real cinematic experience. I’d like to
see the movie-going audiences jumping out of their seats just like the theater
audience did, and I think this story and these characters and this rockin’ music,
performed by our unexpected and unbelievably talented cast, just might get them
on their feet.”
“Rock of Ages” is distributed
worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
No comments:
Post a Comment