by lizzy4depp
We are sure most of you know by now that Johnny and Tim Burtons new movie, Sweeney Todd is getting ready to premiere next month. Among all the excitement, we thought that a lot of you would be interested in learning a little about the story of Sweeney Todd and some of the planning that has preceded the opening of this original endeavor that Johnny has chosen to partake in.
The story of Sweeney Todd is legendary among those in London and holds a kind of mystery not unlike Jack the Ripper. The actual Sweeney was born in London’s East End in October of 1756. He was arrested and served a five-year prison term when he was wrongly accused of stealing a pocket watch. He gained his barber skills in prison when he learned the trade from another barber named Plummer. After he was released he took a few pounds he had stolen in prison and set up his shop next to the St. Dustan’s Church. Sweeney’s shop stood right down the street from his longtime girlfriend Margery Lovett’s bar where she made her famous meat pies. The first murder happened right on the streets of London, where a man was seen arguing with a barber. The barber was seen to take out his white coat; he slit the other man’s throat with a barber’s blade and ran off into the fog. The story of Sweeney’s shop tells of customers who would go for a barber visit and never return. They would be seated in the revolving chair that stood over a trapdoor to a cellar. Sweeney would slit their throats with his razor and they would fall below to the basement. His lover discovered a tunnel that ran from his shop underneath to hers. She hatched a plan to dispose of the bodies by grinding up the meat and putting it into her famous pies. Sweeney was executed by hanging on January 25th 1802. He was hung by the rope outside the Newgate Prison. His body was given over to medical research, which has the ironic ending, as his bodies ended up like his victims, with his insides on a plate. His girlfriend Margery Lovett did not hang because she was found in the prison poisoned to death. It is not known if she killed herself or was murdered.
This story as a whole seems just down the right alley for Tim Burton, except for the fact that the story he chose to tell was not adapted from the historical accounts only but, after the Broadway musical written by Stephen Sondheim. The dark musical of Sweeney Todd has been well known and performed for years in the musical arena. Tim Burton has had the idea in his mind for at least four years, when he went to visit Johnny at his home in the south of France and gave Johnny the musical soundtrack as a gift. He didn’t reveal his intentions at the time but Johnny said that he was puzzled by the gift. Of course as Johnny as stated before, Tim called him to pitch the idea and Johnny said yes without hesitation, he didn’t ask who would be singing or how much music the film, if any, would even contain. As Johnny said in an interview this week, “It was frightening, really frightening! When Tim asked if I’d be into it, he said, ?do you think you can sing?’ and I said ?honestly, I don’t know.’ I’m not tone deaf so I knew I could stay in key to some degree, but I didn’t know if I could sustain a note or belt one out.” As most performers do, everyone expected Johnny to hire a voice coach and to start practicing right away. Johnny would not follow that path and as he normally does ventured off on his own road. He listened to the soundtrack intently over and over. “When I was finishing Pirates, the third one, I had a good two-hour drive to and from work and that was what I did every day. I would listen to the score nonstop, just constantly. Various versions, and then the musical without any vocals. I saturated my noggin with it.” As almost all actors and performers do, everyone expected Johnny to hire a vocal coach as soon as possible, but again Johnny went his own way. He locked himself in a recording studio with his good friend Bruce Witkin (who played in the Kids with Johnny) and recorded a demo. He didn’t even turn the demo over to Tim until late October and with filming scheduled to begin in two months, people started to get worried thinking that Johnny had finally gotten himself in to deep. When Tim received the demo and people finally heard Johnny’s musical voice, most everyone seemed surprised. One of the few that were not surprised was Mr. Sondheim himself, who had approved Johnny for the part without even thinking twice about his musical ability saying, “He’ll do just fine.” Johnny studied and prepared for the character as he always does, by using his understanding of the human condition and interpreting it in his own unique way. As with all his character interpretations, he studied every detail of Sweeney’s persona. From the eyes, “I thought they needed to be far away and very close at the same time. They needed to have experienced too much, you know. That’s where the darkness came in, heavy rings of purple and brown, this kind of awful fatigue and rage like he’s never slept.” to the hair, “The idea was that he had this hideous trauma. That streak of white hair became the shock of that rage. It represented his rage over what had happened. My brother had a white spot growing up.” Johnny’s singing will certainly take center stage, but any fan of Johnny’s shouldn’t be surprised at all, for he is of course, a genius of many hidden talents and as time goes by these gifts are uncovered piece by piece like finely aged wine.
Source: ew.com
