STAGE TO SCREENS: A Chat with Wicked Nominee and TV Veteran Winnie Holzman
By Michael Buckley
06 Jun 2004
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Top: Winnie Holzman; Bottom: Claire Danes and Jared Leto in "My So-Called Life," created by Holzman
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| photo by "My So-Called Life": ABC | This month we talk to the delightful Winnie Holzman, who's favored to win a
Tony Award for Best Book for Wicked (her first Broadway musical) and whose television credits include three successful series: "thirtysomething," "My So-Called Life," and "Once and Again." In private life, she's married to actor Paul Dooley and mother to Savannah.
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Question: Aside from both being in the running for Tonys, what do Donna
Murphy and Winnie Holzman have in common? Answer: The 1987 Off Broadway musical, Birds of Paradise, in which Murphy played one of the leads and for which Holzman co-authored the book and wrote the lyrics (her only previous New York stage credit). Hopefully, both women will cross tonight's finish line and share something else in common: the 2004 Tony Awards' winners circle.
Speaking from her Manhattan hotel room, four days before the ceremony,
Holzman sounds exuberant. "I'm excited about going to Radio City [Music
Hall], because I have not been there for 20, maybe 25, years,"
explains the Los Angeles resident/native New Yorker. "I hear it looks
beautiful. I cannot wait to see it." And, I tell her, wait till she sees the
stage show. Holzman laughs (as she does frequently during our chat): "I hear
they've got some pretty good people. No movie [as in the past], but some
movie stars." (There's even audience participation.)
Says Holzman, "I can't describe how wonderful it feels to be in New York
with a show on Broadway! The thing Stephen [Schwartz, Wicked's
composer-lyricist] and I always talk about is how people seem to feel so
passionately about it. That's what really gets me; that's the thrilling
part."
Plus her nomination's not bad either. "People say, 'Aren't you excited?' In
many ways, 'excited' is not the word at all. It's fun, for sure; it's lovely
to be feted, but it's a very personal feeling of fulfillment." Might it be
similar to the Fred Ebb lyric for "A Quiet Thing" — "When it all comes
true,/Just the way you planned,/Funny, but bells don't ring..."? This
strikes a chord with Holzman: "It's so funny you should say that. I was
thinking about that lyric last night, and how much I identify with it right
now."
Although Gregory Maguire's best seller is "the inspiration" for the musical,
its plot and tone, observes Holzman, "go far afield" from the novel. "It was
[Maguire's] brilliant idea to take this hated figure and tell things from
her point of view, and to have the two witches be roommates in college, but
the way in which their friendship develops — and really the whole plot —
is different [onstage]."
While Holzman has enjoyed success writing for television, nothing matches
hearing the reaction of a theatre audience, especially in the cavernous
Gershwin Theatre. "It's a barn. Stephen and I walked in there before they
loaded the set, and we were just staring at it. We looked at each other with
terror in our eyes. We were intimidated. But [set designer] Eugene Lee knew
exactly what to do. Once the set was in, we never felt that same fear."
Prior to Wicked, Holzman did not know Schwartz, but their friendship
has developed during the four years they've worked on the musical. "I love
him so much! He's incredible! He says that we met once when I was a
student, when I was in my twenties. But we really met through a mutual
friend who was working at Disney and had the idea that we would write an
animated feature together.
"Over lunch, Stephen mentioned the book 'Wicked.' He had tried for maybe a
year to get the rights to do it on Broadway. I said, 'That would make an
incredible musical.' A few months later, he called and said, 'I've convinced
them to let me do "Wicked." Maybe we should talk about doing it together.' I
live in L.A. and Stephen's in Connecticut. We started talking on the phone
to see if we, or our ideas, were compatible.
"Beat by beat, we started outlining the show — how we were going to unfold
the plot. That took a very long time. I was very fortunate to have Stephen
as a collaborator. He understands musicals intrinsically. He understands
structure, the nature of the beast — and I use that word
specifically. [Laughs] To get an outline we felt really comfortable with
took almost a year. When Joe [Mantello, who directed] came in, a lot of
things changed, but basically that outline is the shape of the show."
The experienced Schwartz (Pippin, Godspell, Working,
Rags) "tried to warn me how intense it would be," Holzman recalls. "I
thought I was listening, but you never really listen to someone trying to
warn you. You have to live it yourself."
Before Kristin Chenoweth was cast as Glinda, notes Holzman, "the part was a
much more peripheral figure. Based on wanting Kristin to do the show, and
how much we felt she brought to it, we started to reshape the whole plot. It
became the story of a friendship. That happened because of Kristin; Idina
[Menzel] had not been cast at that point.
"We really got lucky. We had good producers, the right director, an
incredible cast." They also had the benefit of an out-of-town tryout.
"Stephen wisely had insisted on having three months to rewrite in-between
the time we closed in San Francisco and when we were to go back into
rehearsals in New York. That was crucial; that was the thing that made the
biggest difference in the life of the show. That time is what made the show
work.
"Friends of mine who saw both [the San Francisco and Broadway editions]
couldn't tell what I'd rewritten. But I rewrote on every page. And Stephen
wrote new songs. We rewrote very, very carefully, so as not to disturb the
things that were working.
"Kristin landed perfectly in San Francisco, but Idina's character was not
quite coming forward — and we knew it was in the writing, not in Idina's
acting. We addressed that. A lot of it had to do with her very first
scenes." Continued...
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