And All That Jazz

By Jess Cagle

Renee Zellweger never thought she had much of a future as a song-and-dance gal. "In fifth grade," she recalls, "when the music teacher picked people to sing, I wasn't invited." But that was only the beginning. "I didn't make the musical in college," she says ruefully. Even as she mentions this poignant fact--between takes on a Toronto sound stage--she is surrounded by chorines with sequins on their shoes and feathers in their hair who are getting ready to sing and dance behind her.

And now the woman who didn't make her college musical just may play a pivotal role in reviving the whole movie-musical genre. Zellweger stars in Chicago, a big-screen version of the Broadway hit that opens Dec. 27 and is already generating big-time buzz. With last year's hit Moulin Rouge still on Hollywood's mind and Chicago about to break, the studios are gearing up for a new era of movie musicals. Being talked about is a new screen version of Guys and Dolls, Grease 3, with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and a big-screen version of choreographer Susan Stroman's Contact.

"Moulin Rouge had a big impact," says Chicago's co--executive producer Craig Zadan, who with his partner Neil Meron scored huge ratings with TV versions of shows like Gypsy and Annie. "If Chicago is also a hit," predicts Zadan, "then stuff in development will go into production much faster."

Hollywood is realizing that audiences didn't tire of musicals. They tired of bad musicals. When good ones came along--Cabaret in 1972 and Grease in 1978--audiences proved more than willing. While Chicago doesn't have the stylistic daring of Moulin Rouge, it is a crowd-pleasing reimagining of a show that is kept current by its up-to-the-minute cynicism, its skewering of the media and its heroines' obsession with stardom.

Zellweger stars as Roxie Hart--a doe-eyed jazz-age babe who goes on trial for killing her extramarital lover and becomes a media darling in the process. And, yes, she can sing--and so can her unlikely co-stars. Catherine Zeta-Jones' sultry Welsh purr masks a singing voice that is pure Broadway belt, and the moment she opens her mouth with the familiar first song, All That Jazz, the movie takes flight. Richard Gere seems more awake than he has in years as Billy Flynn, the slick lawyer who in one number plays puppet master to a chorus line of reporters. Gere not only sings but tap-dances too.

In fact, Zeta-Jones got her start in the musical theater, appearing in London's West End in both Annie and 42nd Street. "She's a gypsy," says director Rob Marshall. "Those are her roots." Same with Gere, who appeared in rock musicals early in his career and was an understudy in the original Broadway production of Grease. Still, Gere had to gear up for Chicago. "I was a rock musician and a blues guy," he says, "so for this film, I had to find another place in my voice. It was work." Zellweger endured the most intense vocal training, but she came to the movie with one very important quality ready-made: her winning, vulnerable persona. "You have to like her," says Marshall, "even though she kills somebody."

While Moulin Rouge seemed to pave the way for this film, Chicago has actually been in the works for decades. Soon after the original production opened on Broadway in 1975, director Bob Fosse began planning a movie version. When Fosse died in 1987, says producer Marty Richards, "I took the script, threw it in a drawer and said, 'That's the end of that.'" Then eight years ago, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein wondered what had happened. "He had seen it as a young person and was passionate about it," says Richards. When a revival of Chicago opened on Broadway in 1996 and became a huge hit, that passion was put into action. Madonna and Goldie Hawn were originally attached to star. But when director Nicholas Hytner (The Crucible) came aboard in 1999, he suggested that Hawn was too old for the part of the ingenue Roxie, and Weinstein bought out her contract for an estimated $1 million.

Various writers tried unsuccessfully to adapt Chicago for the screen, and Hytner eventually dropped out. Madonna also moved on, and Chicago languished until 2000, when Rob Marshall--a former Broadway choreographer who had directed Annie on television--came up with a new concept. The show would be reshaped so that all the musical numbers would take place as elaborate vaudeville routines in the dreamy imagination of Roxie. "The hardest part about musicals is that scary moment when characters start to sing," says Marshall, who recruited screenwriter Bill Condon (Oscar winner for 1998's Gods and Monsters) to write the script. As the prison matron (Queen Latifah) speaks, Roxie's eyes begin to dance; suddenly, Latifah metamorphoses into a full-bodied chanteuse whose rendition of When You're Good to Mama brings down the house. When Roxie's husband (John C. Reilly) takes the blame for her crime, Roxie's warm thoughts become a love song.

It should come as no surprise that Chicago--a seemingly indestructible show-biz property--has become a vibrant film. The tale--based on the crimes of a couple of real-life celebrity murderesses in the 1920s--was first fictionalized in a 1926 Broadway play, which became a silent movie in 1927, then a film starring Ginger Rogers in 1942. The current Broadway revival of the musical recently celebrated its 2,500th performance. This new big-screen version of Chicago restores the old routine of hit Broadway musicals becoming Hollywood movies. In recent years Broadway has taken from Hollywood without giving back, turning movies like The Producers and Hairspray into splashy hit shows. By finally making its way back to the screen, Chicago helps even the score.