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Catsmay be thestrangest Broadway musicalof all time, and now its one of thestrangest moviesof all time.
Hes a very good sport about it all, and hes got an answer for everything except the feet.
Sir, explain yourself.Where to start?
I have actually a very vivid recollection of that experience.
But this journey specifically started when I was walking through Soho on postproduction onLes Misseven years ago.
I knew Steven Spielberg had optioned it in the mid-90s.
Well, why had it never been made?
Was it that people hadnt figured out what the cats would look like?
And then you still have nonmoving ears.
And then youre like, So youre only going to CGI the ears?
If youve done that, then whats the point of doing it selectively?
So all roads led me back to the visual-effects route.
Then two years ago, it was like, Its possible, but its insanely expensive.
And so the window opened up to do it.
What clues are there in the original show?
In ours, there would be this cat Victoria, based on a non-singing character in the musical.
Itd be a coming-of-age story.
Shes abandoned at the beginning of the film; shes literally a cat in the bag.
She comes out of the bag in the wasteland.
And as she finds her feet, we find our feet.
So she becomes a proxy for the viewer.
And her compassion then ends up enabling the way the film ends.
Youve added this narrative element, but did you ever consider not having a story?
One of the most notable things about the musical is theres no real plot.
Its like an insane carnival.I felt like there was a little implied story [in the musical].
The idea that the cats are competing through song to be the Jellicle choice was implied but not explicit.
Part of what Lee and I were doing was making explicit what lay beneath the surface.
Even with Victoria, its implied that shes the ingenue cat.
She does this famous solo dance, the White Cat dance, which is definitely a coming-of-age dance.
I felt there were lots of clues there, and I wanted to tease them out.
You said you sawCatswhen you were 8 and were very taken with it.
I imagine the 8-year-old who sawCatsis different from the adult who now sees the show or the film.
How has your perception of the musical changed over the years?
One of my key aims was to give kids that experience that I had.
But of course, as you say, Ive also got the adult perspective.
I think theres a very strong theme in it of the importance of home, of finding home.
In Victorias case, its finding her tribe but also finding a mother figure in Judi Dench.
One of the great story themes is the unsettled traveler trying to find a sense of home.
Ive also said that its about the perils of tribalism.
But theres also a weird latent eroticism toCats, right?
But it was quite sexy, the show in 81.
So one way is to acknowledge that pitfall comedically early on in the movie.
Also, I feel that films take a path often related to whom youve cast in your central role.
It seemed to be less urgently about sort of exploring her sexuality or navigating that.
Also, I was very conscious it was for a family audience.
A theme Ive sensed in your films is transformation.
If you think … by the end ofLes Mis, its kind of about the art of dying well.
AndCatshas possibly that underlying theme of how do we handle the final transformation of our lives?
But no, I think youre right.
Im very interested in transformation.
And Im very interested in forgiveness.
I mean, you know, inDamned United, its Taylor having to forgive Clough.
Bertie inThe Kings Speech, he has to learn to forgive himself because thats key to being a stammerer.
And inLes Mis, its the priest forgiving Valjean.
Thats a theme Ive always come back to in my work.
I like how the scale inCatsnever makes any sense.
If a cat was standing on hind legs, whats the difference?
And its about two and a half to one.
So everything is built two and a half to one.
But it was never meant to be that literal.
Obviously, if were cats, the world would be bigger.
So it has that trick of perspective.
The look on peoples faces when they visited our set was one of childlike wonder.
That also speaks to the artificiality of the environment.
It all still feels like a set, though not in a bad way.
The film opens with the image of a cat formed in the night sky backlit by the moon.
That was an idea I came up with during the editing.
Its a statement that were in another world.
A lot of filmmaking in the mainstream is hidebound by a certain literalism and realism for very good reasons.
But the fun thing about the musical form is the ability to be in a more heightened space.
The colors and the way New York suddenly feels have a nice association to me.
And even the look of back-projected skies.
Theres definitely a part of me thats referencing the way Hollywood used to do world creation.
I had to go back to the Cowardly Lion andThe Wizard of Ozto see a human playing a cat.
You dont care that the costume and makeup arent very convincing, because hes fabulous and endearing.
I definitely thought a bit aboutAvatarand what James Cameron had done.
He was in that world where the only course of action was full replacement.
This kind of synthesis [that were doing] wasnt technically possible.
And the tribe inAvatarare a feline tribe.
So that was interesting to look at some of the design choices hed made.
It was quite free in terms of associative space.
Did you look at any Busby Berkeley musicals?I did.
Eliots poetry even in the 80s seemed pretty anachronistic.
By 2019, it would be seriously anachronistic.
So it was fun to reconnect some of the music to kind of where its meant to be.
So we then had to pare it back, and Lee made me do something quite interesting.
So there is this audio recording of me for two hours going, And then the camera goes here …
So I pitched it as a visual thing, not to music, just out of my head.
It existed as a visual narrative.
In a traditional film, you usually block the scene yourself.
But in the dance world, its a true collaboration with this other incredibly talented person.
So you get an influx of new ideas about how to do this and that.
Then some of it was just …
So there was a hands-on aspect to the blocking, which I quite enjoyed as well.
AndLes Mishad, for example, the Anne Hathaway single-take sequence.
And then I tried to use classical photography more for the way particular numbers were structured.
So the Rebel Wilson scene becomes classical in a kind of Busby Berkeley style.
So it was threading between those two styles.
[Laughs]
I dont even know what the question is.
Because then the reality of dance would get lost.
So that was a key thing.
The idea that some cats were clothed, and some not, really came from the musical.
Because in the musical, the characters with songs, the practical cats, are defined by some element.
Whats your biggest moment of doubt on a project like this?There are many, many.
Because a lot of work we were doing was still quite tried and untested.
Im proud of what this insanely vast team has done.
Thereve been two and a half thousand people working in our team.
And you could imagine the quality control when one character is handled by four different cities.
If youre still doubting, that means youre not happy and you shouldnt move on.
When youve stopped doubting, then you move on.
So you live in a close relationship with the doubting voice all the time.
When I shoot, Ive got the monitor, and Ive got what the actors doing.
And then Ive got, in my head, the way I see it.
And so Im kind of watching two screens, the actual screen and the screen in my head.
You said Taylor Swift was the first person you cast.
How did that happen?She had auditioned forLes Mis.
She rather brilliantly auditioned for Eponine.
I didnt cast her, but I got very close to it.
Ultimately, I couldnt quite believe Taylor Swift was a girl people would overlook.
So it didnt quite feel right for her for the most flattering reason.
But I knew she was curious to work on a musical.
When this came up, I wrote to her and just said, Would you like to meet?
Would you like to see the world Im creating?
And I did a presentation.
Eve Stewart had these wonderful paintings she did of the world.
I had a ten-second clip of a dancer with fur, lifelike.
That was my pitch.
She loved it and was very gracious and really supportive from then on.
How did her character come about?In the show, its performed by two women.
Apparently, it was originally designed for one person.
I called Taylor up.
Do you mind if you do it by yourself?
She was obviously totally happy with it.
