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[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome back to the Theatre Podcast. Intimate, personal conversations with the industry's biggest names. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and our guest today is Barry Sonnenfeld, who is the driving force in many different roles behind many of the movies that shaped our current culture, like Big, The Men in Black, The Addams Family Values. He even gives us a wonderful little secret that I'm sure many people don't know about how Forrest Gump got created. He recently directed Schmigadoon on Apple TV+. Everybody, please go watch that. It's so good. It's got so many of our Broadway friends in it. And on a serious note, before we get into the episode, just note that he does talk about a lot of his past experiences as a child sexual abuse survivor.

So there's some seriousness that we get into and how he's dealt with all of that and how it's made him who he is today. Make sure to find me online on Instagram and Twitter at Theatre Underscore Podcast, on Facebook slash Official Theatre Podcast. And now please enjoy this episode with Barry Sonnenfeld.

[1:03] Alan Seales: Today's guest is a filmmaker and writer who broke into the film industry as the cinematographer on the Coen Brothers' first three films, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller's Crossing. He was also the director of photography on Throw Mama from the Train, Big, When Harry Met Sally, and Misery. He made his directorial debut with The Addams Family in 1991 and has gone on to direct a number of films, including Addams Family Values, Get Shorty, and the first three Men in Black movies. His television credits include Pushing Daisies, one of my absolute favorites. You've heard me talk about that before on this podcast, for which he won an Emmy, Netflix's original series of unfortunate events, and most recently the oh so popular Apple TV Schmigadoon. The paperback version of his book, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, is available now. Barry Sonnenfeld, welcome to the Theatre Podcast.

[2:06] Barry Sonnenfeld: Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

[2:09] Alan Seales: I cannot believe that someone of your, I guess, your success and of your amazing, amazing film and TV career decided to write a book about mental health.

[2:26] Barry Sonnenfeld: Well, it's my mental health. You know, about 20 years ago, I, for fun, you know, I lived in Telluride, Colorado, and it was a couple of days of bad weather, and I just decided to write like an essay, a little, it ended up being a chapter in the book, and it was called, it was about my nine days shooting nine feature length pornos. And I wrote it, didn't do anything with it. And then two or three years later, I found it in my drawer, and I said to Sweetie, which is the name I gave my wife, I said to Sweetie, read this. Well, yeah, and we were laying in bed. And one of the great moments of my life is whenever I can make my wife laugh, even if it's in bed. And she was just jiggling the bed with laughter.

And it's a really disgusting, filthy chapter, as you probably know. So that's the end of that. I just wanted validation that I could be a writer. And she was an editor for many years in Texas. So cut to David Granger, who used to be the editor in chief of Esquire magazine, left and became a literary agent. And we went out to lunch, and he said, Do you have a book in you? And I said, I don't know, read this. You know, I sent him the chapter, he said, Give me two more chapters, and we can sell this thing. Hmm. So I wrote two more chapters. One is the chapter called Barry Sonnenfeld, call your mother about being paged at Madison Square Garden by my mother while Jimi Hendrix was warming up at 2:20 in the morning in front of 19,000 people, 90,000 people now in, in, in her defense, I did say I'd be home at 2:20 at two, and it was 2:20 when she called me.

So she had her reasons. Anyway, we took it out to six publishers, all of them wanted the book. And as long as I wrote it, they didn't want it a ghostwriter, because I have a sort of, in the same way, I have a certain tone and style. As a cameraman, and as a director, I have a certain voice as a writer. And so I published the book, right. But my mother being dead, still needed a way to make sure that this didn't get read by as many people as it should have. So she, he was in the forefront of sending COVID to us all, you know, people wonder if it happened from a Chinese lab, secret lab, it came from mom, my mother from her grave, sent COVID into the world to try to and of course, 10 days into my book tour, we had to cancel everything. So now the paperback is out. And let's see how that does. But it got great reviews, the Times and Wall Street Journal. And you know, it got great reviews. So I was really proud of it.

[5:33] Alan Seales: I just like how this came across my inbox. It's Barry Sonnenfeld, call your mother the best book that got ignored at the beginning of lockdown.

[5:41] Barry Sonnenfeld: That's so funny.

[5:43] Alan Seales: Yeah, so I, I love it. And obviously, you're very outspoken about your relationship with your parents and your mom, especially. And we're gonna we're definitely gonna get to that because there's a lot of a lot of juicy tidbits in there that, of course, I'm sure you are not alone in, in, or others are not alone in, can relate to these stories that you've got. But going back to the book for a second, you've got just massive amounts of success in both in cinematography as a director and a DP and, but why even spend the time to do to do something at this point in your career, like something as arduous as writing a book?

[6:29] Barry Sonnenfeld: It was incredibly not arduous. No one has had less writer's block than me, because I'm writing about my, well, I'm writing about myself. And I'm an only child of Jewish persuasion. So what could be better? So literally, I would go to the computer and write 30, 40 pages a day. In fact, the first draft of my book is was 40% longer, I literally took out about eight chapters, because just like I like short movies, I like relatively short books, I think this is around, I don't know, 300 pages, but the first draft was like 500. So I've got, I've got 40% of a sequel already. But, you know, I also go long times between projects, I have very specific things that interest me, it has, I have to be able to visually stylize it to a certain extent.

It has to be a comedy. Listen, we'll get into this later. But the fact that I did Schmigadoon is amazing, because I really don't like musical theater. So, yeah, yeah, no. In spite of that, I did a fine job. But so I, you know, I often don't work a lot. So it was I had plenty of time to write the book.

[7:56] Alan Seales: That's, that's so cool. I guess, for me, actually, somebody said to me the other day, they said, Oh, you know a lot about such and such, you should write a book about it. And just the sheer act of sitting down and blocking everything else out, and being able to focus on this one thing, it just got to be so overwhelming, because I was I was saying, like, who, how would all the rest of the stuff get done? But I guess the important thing behind this is not writing something just for the sake of writing it, but say, but writing it for a purpose. And for you, it sounds like there's a lot of catharsis, like this, this story between you and your parents, this relationship, like, let's just start as a young kid, right? Like, how, how did they make you who you are now? And, and why, why write something so personal for the world like this to hear about?

[8:50] Barry Sonnenfeld: It's funny, you know, Rob Reiner at Warner Brothers Television, that's where he has his deal, option my book, and we're pitching the book to various streamers. And what we what our sort of logline is, that I become who I am because of or in spite of my parents. And, you know, the other, the other part of the, the pitch is that you become your parent, even if you don't want to. All the things I hated about my father and my mother, I've become that person. And so you, we've already discussed how my mother was very overprotective. Not only did she page me at Madison Square Garden, she told me if I went away to sleep away school, others call it college, she would commit suicide. So I spent three years living at home in Washington Heights, living in sleeping in my aunt's bark lounger, which we had gotten from her when she remodeled because I had turned where my bed was into a dark room.

So then when I was a senior, I realized a senior in college, I realized why don't I go away to another college as a senior, and not only do I get to go away to college, but my mother commits suicide, two birds, one stone, what could be better? So my senior year, I went to Hampshire College. And my mother reneged on her threat. But But in any case, and my dad was equally narcissistic. Whenever we would go out to eat, dad would always ask the waitress or waiter for their name, he would say, why so glum? And I would say, well, because she has to talk to you, dad. And then I've become that guy. And when I go to dinner with my wife and my daughter, one of them will say to me, Sonny, which was my dad's name, because I will sort of engage in discussions that no one wants to engage in with me.

But so the question is, did you know, I will say for Jewish parents, they were, they didn't want me to become a doctor or a lawyer, or, you know, they, they wanted me to be in the arts, my dad said, figure out what would make you happy. And you'll find a way to make a living doing it, which was really good advice. And my mother wanted me to be an artist of some kind. So in spite of giving them what they wanted, I did it anyway.

[11:38] Alan Seales: Huh, I'm trying to figure out, I guess, where my mind wants to go, because I'm going in so many different directions right now. The ability, you said you turned your room into a dark room. So obviously, at some point, very consciously, you were like, I'm going to pursue, was it just photography at that time? Or were you developing film?

[12:01] Barry Sonnenfeld: It was photography, I wanted to be a photojournalist, like Elliot Erwitt, or Gary Winogrand, or Lee Friedlander. I realized that photography is a fairly lonely profession, you work by yourself a lot. And I'm, I realized I was a little bit more socially needy. And when I graduated NYU undergraduate school with a degree in political science, and then spent the year working at Frenchie's color lab, making zebra chrome prints. My mother said, why don't you go to film, graduate film school, it's a combination of photography and writing, and you like to do both. And by the way, it's not, it's not a combination of still photography and writing at all. But, and she said she would pay for graduate school, which was, of course, my mother being a pathological liar, was not true. But I went to NYU for lack, graduate film school for lack of anything better to do. And to get out of Frenchie's color lab where the chemicals were literally carcinogenic.

[15:10] Barry Sonnenfeld: And Schmigadoon, Big, Men In Black, Addams Family Values, When Harry Met Sally, and so

[16:35] Barry Sonnenfeld: I said, CM to CM? And he said, yes. So we got together and he described how his life had been ruined by this event. His sex life was a disaster. He had multiple marriages and divorces. So I took the subway up to my dad. Dad was about 94 at the time. And I said, Dad, did you hate Kelly, which was my mother's name? Did you hate her so much that you were willing to let your only son be molested just so Kelly had someone to hang out with? Because dad never came home, you know, for dinner. He was always having affairs with various women in the lighting business. But Mike had a car. My mother didn't know how to drive. So Mike had a car. So he would take her to the Paramus Park Mall and antique shopping and stuff like that.

So dad said, let me tell you three things. First of all, child molestation didn't have the bad connotation back then that it has now. That's a bad answer. Second of all, yeah. Second of all, your mom was so upset because of all the affairs I was having. I thought I'd give her some joy with letting Mike live with us. And third of all, I never thought Mike molested you. I only thought he was playing with your penis. And I said, I said, that's OK with you. And he said, well, I play with my penis. It feels good. And I said, right. But that that's a choice you're making about yourself and your own penis. And he said, you know, I never thought of it that way. And I said, all right, dad, see ya. And that was it for dad.

Yeah. So no, they were both horribly narcissistic. And so, yeah, there's comedy, there's pain, there's anxiety, there's fear. But there's also a wife and a kid and a career and it's all worked out. So I ain't complaining.

[18:52] Alan Seales: Well, yeah, it worked out. And I wonder, do you have the answer now of it, you are who you are because of them or in spite of them? Have you figured that out yet?

[19:03] Barry Sonnenfeld: You know, I think I have to give them some credit. I really do. So I'm going to say it's both. In spite of them, I mean, you know, Scott Rudin, who I worked with on both Adam's Family and Adam's Family Values, used to literally every day he'd say to me, how are you not gay? Given just my life and my parents and and how much I hated my mother. So that was always a joke around the set all the time. But yeah, no, I give them some credit, but they weren't good parents. They were really good people and were beloved by many, many, many, many friends. They had hundreds of friends, both of them, and were sought after for advice and stuff. They were just bad parents.

[20:06] Alan Seales: Well, okay. So then is this experience that we are having right now, is this sort of a bittersweet for you? Or I guess is a necessary evil? Because if you don't like your parents, if you don't like talking about this, then you're literally going on a press tour to talk about this. So what are you going through?

[20:18] Barry Sonnenfeld: I don't mind talking about it at all. I didn't mind writing about it. And listen, I'm a narcissist myself. As I mentioned earlier, somehow we become our parents. My mother, in spite of all of her insane overprotectiveness, I vowed that wouldn't be me. We adopt Chloe and Chloe's 28. But when Chloe flies from LA to Japan, I am on flight aware for those 12 hours watching her plane. And I'll literally all night long and I will wake up my wife and say, I swear this is true. Sweetie, her plane just went from 34,000 feet to 32,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific. Why would they change altitude in the middle of the Pacific? Something is wrong. Sweetie, who almost got her pilot's license and soloed on her 40th birthday, explained to me why planes change altitude. Turbulence avoidance. Turbulence avoidance was very much her excuse. So in any case, I've become a slightly less horrible version of my mother.

[21:48] Alan Seales: I think there's a level of self-awareness that you have to have, I guess, going into this. I am truly sorry that all of this happened to you. It sounds like you've dealt with it in a rather, I was going to say constructive, but in a way that it at least has allowed you to get from point A to point C and have a successful career in the meantime.

[22:13] Barry Sonnenfeld: And I want to talk about that career because you're going into film, or you're going into still photography. And then you glossed over this at the beginning, but one of your first gigs was, was it Nine Pornos in Nine Days or Seven Pornos in Seven Days?

[22:28] Barry Sonnenfeld: Nine for nine.

[22:29] Alan Seales: We're going to take a short break. Stay tuned for more of the episode.

[22:40] Barry Sonnenfeld: Yeah, so Nine Pornos in Nine Days. And so you're getting that gig and getting into porn I hear is a somewhat easier thing to do as a crew member. It's good for experience. I've got a couple other friends in the TV film business who kind of went down a similar path, but coming from there, then I guess, what was that turning point? Was it really just like meeting the Coen brothers randomly? Or how did this sort of fall into your lap?

[23:06] Barry Sonnenfeld: Well, what happened is, you know, I took my dad's advice, which was figure out what you want to do in life, and you'll somehow make a living doing it. And during graduate film school, and in the same way I did Schmigadoon, without having any love for musical theater at all, I went to film school without having any love for film. It didn't interest me. I was not a film buff, like the Coens were film buffs. You know, they made Super 8 movies and all that. I never did anything like that. For me, film school was a way to avoid three more years, you know, figuring out what to do in life, because I was back in college instead of looking for a job or working at Frenchies. So, while at film school, I discovered, because of my still photography background, that I was, A, the sought-after cinematographer.

There were two, me and Bill Polk. Polk went on to shoot the original Spider-Man, and he shot Men in Black 3. So, he's one of the top cinematographers now. So, when I got out of graduate film school, I decided to buy a used 16 millimeter camera. This is pre-video. Now everything's shot on video, but then even pornos were shot on film. And that's not why I bought the camera. I bought the camera because I thought, if I owned a cameraman, if I owned a camera, I could call myself a cameraman without being a dilettante. I actually was a cameraman, right? So, a buddy of mine bought, and I bought this camera. He knew he had this porn connection. So, we got nine days of not only salary, but nine days of renting our camera, which paid for half of the camera in the first nine days we owned it, which is why I agreed to shoot these pornos with him.

And it was a horrible experience. It's a very long chapter, but it's that chapter I wrote that made Sweetie laugh. And by the way, if someone's interested in the book and starts to read that chapter and is so disgusted that they have to move on, just move on. It's the only disgusting chapter in the book. But in any case, I owned this camera. I was at a Christmas party, and there were only wasps from Darien, Connecticut, except one other guy on the other side of the room who looked vaguely like Howard Stern, sort of a tall guy with curly hair. And we sensed we were the only two Jews in the room. And we started to talk, and he said he had just written a screenplay with his brother, Ethan. Joel was the only one at the party.

And they were going to shoot a trailer as if it was a finished film and use that trailer as an investment tool showing it to, you know, dentists and doctors all have investment clubs and stuff like that. So I said, well, I own a camera. And Joel said, you're hired. So over the president's weekend, many, many decades ago, Joel, Ethan, and I shot the trailer for Blood Simple. We used friends to be, you know, dress them up in cowboy hats and this and that. And we shot the famous scene where the bullet holes go through the wall, and you see, you know, streams of light. We did that at our friend Hilary Ney's loft. And it took us a year, but we raised the 750 grand to make Blood Simple. And on the first day of the set, Joel, it was the first day that Joel, Ethan, and I had ever been doing anything professional in the film business. I had never been a cinematographer on a movie. Joel had never directed. Ethan had never produced. In fact, I had the assistant cameraman come over the night before,

[27:20] Barry Sonnenfeld: Because it's the first time I had ever seen a 35mm camera to show me where the on-off switch was. So, we make the film. No one likes it. The investors hate it. Half of the investors walked out at our investor screening, but we got accepted to the New York Film Festival. And I remember being with Joe and Ethan at a diner on 66th and Broadway saying, hey, I think the critic screening for Blood Simple at the festival is on right now. Let's go take a look. And Joe and Ethan said, no, we've seen it too many times. No, don't make us. And I said, come on, come on, let's do it. So, we go across to Alice Tully Hall. We go to where the screening is. And as we're walking down the hallway, and we've never had a good screening in our lives, we're hearing laughter.

And Ethan says, it must be a different movie. Maybe you got the time wrong. And we get closer and Joe goes, yeah, I don't think this is Blood. They're not screening Blood Simple. And we opened the back of the theater, and they were screening Blood Simple. And for the first time, people got it. And that night, you know, the New York Times would come out at like 7pm, you know, and I lived at 71st and Broadway. It was called, I called it the Bagel Nosh building, until they sold it to Hot and Crusty. So now it was, then it became the Hot and Crusty building. But back then, it was the Bagel Nosh building. And I went, there was a news stand on the corner. I went, I opened the Janet Maslin review. And Janet says, these guys are amazing.

The Coen brothers are going to have a long career in the film business. And like the last couple of chapters are about my cinematography, and she mentions me by name. And that was, that was everything. I don't meet Joe, or was it? See, that's the other thing. What if I never met Joe, but instead, that same night, I found a treasure chest with $100 million in gold coins on the sidewalk. Or I don't do that, and I get hit by a bus going home. So in a way, that's why you can't look back and why you have to get over all this stuff and just move on with your life. You can't, for years, for decades, I'd go, if I had only done that movie instead of this one, if only I hadn't done that, and then I stopped, because everything can change. So that's how I got started, just accidentally running into Joe at a party and owning a camera.

[30:04] Alan Seales: That is insanely cool. I love that story. And I've heard that a lot, too, from other guests, is that they are where they are, because they started something without knowing how hard it was. So they just did it, they found themselves in it and had to finish it. Or they just kept saying yes, when the opportunities presented themselves. And it's really, really cool. And I think about that a lot, too, that where I am now or where somebody is now is always traced back to something seemingly very simple and innocuous at the time. It's just running into somebody, literally running into somebody, walking somewhere or getting a text that gets you an idea or whatever it is that just blows up and keeps going and going and going.

And so I really appreciate how you just continue to say yes and to grow and to build on the last thing. And learning from mistakes and looking back to get perspective, I think, is important. But it's hard, speaking from experience, too. It's hard to let go. But I'm very happy that it sounds like you have in a way that, in a cynically comical way, allows you to move forward and make some really great projects. Is there anything you look back on that you almost got that would have changed your life in a different way? Because you hear about things of like, so-and-so turned down the role of Han Solo because they thought it was a silly movie, right? Like it would have changed their career completely.

[31:31] Barry Sonnenfeld: Well, but here's what we just talked about. Yes, I mean, for a long time, I was beating myself up because at the end of Adam's Family, Gary Lucchese, who was the head of Paramount at the time, sent me. He said, I'm not going to send you the scripts. We've spent years trying to develop this movie. We have eight scripts, and they're all no good. I'm just going to send you the book. The book was Forrest Gump. I read the book, and I said, well, here's what we want to do. Yes, I want to direct it. Here's what we want to do. We're going to change the main character from someone who's big and fat and like a really strong sort of person who plays football really well, and that starts him on the journey.

We're going to turn him into sort of a thin guy and make him a runner, and I'm going to send the book to Tom Hanks, who I knew from Big, and I wrote Hanks a letter saying, how many kids you got? Two. Two little ones. Oh, good, and I said to Hanks, you probably won't want to do this because it's too much like your character in Big. It's another man-child kind of thing. I was the cinematographer on Big, and Hanks loved it, signed on. I was a director. I hired Gary Roth to write the script, and then Sherry Lansing, who took over at Paramount, said, we want you to do Adam's Family Values, and I said, okay, I'll do it only if you wait for me on Forrest Gump, and she said she would, but the producer, whose husband ran Warner Brothers at the time, didn't want to wait, and she had her husband call up my agent and threaten that if I didn't give up directing Forrest Gump, that he would make sure I never worked in the business again.

How many times have we heard that, and my agent at the time said, you don't want to mess with this guy. Let's give up Forrest Gump, so yes, I can say was, do I wish I had directed Forrest Gump? Well, A, maybe my movie would have been better. Maybe my version would have been worse. It definitely would have been shorter, but if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have been in L.A. doing post-production on Adam's Family, no, shooting Adam's Family Values, when we decided to adopt, and we met the adoption lawyer in Los Angeles. I wouldn't have been in L.A., et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We never would have adopted Chloe, who's now 28 and a lovely, lovely person, so you can't ever, I think you can't ever say, because you take any of those actors who could have been Han Solo and this, yes, but there might have been a crane accident on the 16th day that killed that person, or if he had done that, he never would have moved on and done that next other big thing, because every decision you make, everything from like what time you're going to go to the grocery store, and the fact that you forgot milk and have to go back a second time, affects the whole rest of your life, so you just gotta move on.

[35:12] Alan Seales: I'd love these little tidbits, because now, of course, I would have said, oh, I'm sure Robert Zemeckis was the one who got Tom Hanks involved with Forrest Gump, but no, no, like, it was Barry, it was you, yeah, there's so much of this that happens, and God, Hollywood is so complicated, and okay, I want to bring this, of course, because this is a podcast about theater, to Schmigadoon a little bit before we wrap up here. I incorrectly assumed you like musical theater. You know, my parents, even though we were very poor, and our electricity was constantly turning off, and we would not have phone service, and we would have to avoid Lou the Butcher, because we owed him too much money for strip steaks, or Romanian steaks, when my parents got any money, they invested in Broadway shows.

You probably never heard of Bravo Giovanni, Broadway, in fact, Scott Rudin, for my birthday one year, got me in the LP cast recording of Bravo Giovanni, which is amazing that he found a copy, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, here's what happened. My agency, William Morris, sent me the scripts, and Lorne Michaels was producing, and that was interesting to me, and I sent this, there are three people who I rely on, my wife, Beau Welsh, who's a production designer I work with all the time, and Rose Lamb, who produces the television stuff I do in Canada. I sent them the scripts, all three, Beau, my wife, and Rose loved them, thought they were funny, thought I should do them, so I said, all right, I'll do it.

So I had a Zoom call, actually it was a Blue Jeans call, this is another conference service called Blue Jeans, and with Cinco and Andrew Singer, who was the producer from Broadway Video, and they hired me. In fact, I said, I'll do it, but I, only if we shoot it in Vancouver, which ended up being amazing, because it was the only community that wasn't totally shut down by COVID. I mean, we did have lots of precautions, but we shot 43 days, COVID free, but, you know, I did some research, you know, Cinco, Paul, who is very talented, told me what movies I should watch, and I would call him up and say, hated that one too, don't get Carousel, don't get Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, don't get Brigadoon.

There were three musicals I loved, but they were all kind of unusual musicals. One was Monty Python's Meaning of Life, hardly considered a musical. Hair, the Milos Forman Hair, which I thought was fantastic, and I'm a huge fan of Pennies from Heaven. Not a traditional musical, because at least you know why people are breaking into song and dance, you know, because they have an internal, they're living out the music of their time kind of, but I don't get why anyone would stop what they're doing and start singing and dancing. But I did know that the way, the proper way to shoot musicals, and not everyone does it this way, is to see the whole body.

[38:48] Barry Sonnenfeld: Yeah, you need a wide shot. You need a wide shot. And that's why the Cats movie, side note, I couldn't stand it because I'm like, just fricking stay on a wide shot for long enough for me to see what's going on. Right. And you know, I would say a lot of musicals over the last film musicals are all about inserts and quick cutting. And the secret to song, dance and comedy, by the way, is wider shots. Like, I think close-ups kill comedy. There's nothing worse than cutting to the close-up for the punchline. Play it out in a two-shot so you see action and reaction. You see Cary Grant in a bathrobe, Catherine Hepburn calling him Mr. Bones, which isn't his name, but you see her prattling on and him trying to get a word in edgewise in a two-shot, and that lets the audience decide what's funny.

In dance, every time you cut to a close-up or you cut to an insert of feet, you're saying to the audience, that's not really our guys dancing. And we had such great dancers on the show. Those core 25 dancers were incredible. It's all about seeing head to toe. You look at make them laugh, you know, from singing in the rain. I was about to say, the singing in the rain, one of the first scenes I was watching with Aaron Tveit, Cecily Strong, where he's doing his, oh my god, I think I'm in love with you now song, looked exactly like singing in the rain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the dance, yeah. So I knew how to shoot it. And it was funny and I love the cast and I love the experience. So it all worked out.

And I also really loved working with Broadway Video, who are just really professional and great. And I really enjoyed Lauren's whispered sarcasm. He was never on the set, but he's really smart. Oh man, yeah. All the people are incredible. And I mean, I've known Ari DeBose for such a long time before, from the So You Think You Can Dance days.

[41:00] Alan Seales: She was actually recording a radio play with me from her hotel while she was filming Schmigadoon. So, I remember how long ago it was. I reach over here and I pull up my magazine cover with Kristen Chenoweth on it, Encore Magazine. And I want to go back to, of course, she's in Schmigadoon, but was she already attached to it before you came on or did you bring her on? Because working with her on Pushing Daisies, which literally I said in the bio, Pushing Daisies still is one of my all-time favorite shows. I absolutely love what I want to call surrealness. Just the way it was shot and the way the set was, it was just perfection. I think it was ahead of its time. I'll leave that there.

[41:43] Barry Sonnenfeld: Yeah, no. Yes, I love Chenoweth. The first time I worked with her was in 2006 on a movie called RV with Robin Williams and Cheryl Hines. And she played the wife of Jeff Daniels, who I also loved. In fact, when I interviewed Jeff, I was on the phone and I said, hey, do you know how to play the guitar? And he said, yeah. I said, banjo? He said, yeah. I said, are you able to play the banjo, sing and play the harmonica at the same time? And he says, ah, I get where this is going. Yes. And then I had Chenoweth. I met Chenoweth. She came into audition. We talked for 10 minutes and I said, man, I hope you are good because I so want you to do this. She has so much energy. And she was good. And we became very good friends.

So she was in RV, Pushing Daisies, obviously, Schmigadoon. She did an animated voice for an animated movie I was involved with. So it was my suggestion to bring Chenoweth on, in fact. And her four-minute song with no cuts is just amazing where she literally sings for four minutes while walking around the entire set of the town of Schmigadoon is just extraordinary. So she didn't want to let me down. And the table read before we ever started to shoot the movie, she had all those pages memorized, performed it at the table read, and it stopped the entire table read. The entire cast just stood up and gave her a standing ovation. She's got an amazing work ethic. She's just extraordinary.

[43:38] Alan Seales: Are all of the singers singing live or are they singing back to track?

[43:43] Barry Sonnenfeld: So both Cinco and I wanted to record as much as possible on the set live. All the songs were prerecorded with the actors' voices. So we had prerecords. And what we did is everyone had earwigs, which are tiny little headphones that are hidden in the actor's ears. So we recorded them live as they sang to the instrumental playback, knowing we had a choice of using the live performance or the prerecord, or we could also always post record. And the movie you're seeing, the six episodes, 80 percent is 85 percent is live recording. Where it isn't live is when either there are 25 dancers and you would record too much rustling feet and dresses, or in the case of Jane Krakowski singing. Are you OK? That's.

[44:51] Alan Seales: I'm here. I'm in Brooklyn. You hear sirens all the time. Yeah.

[44:57] Barry Sonnenfeld: Or in the case of Jane Krakowski, because we had a big fan blowing air, so it looked like she was dancing that had to use her prerecord. In the case of Chenoweth singing that four-minute song, we did three takes. The first two takes we recorded live. The third take, I wanted to make sure we had a take where she only was concentrating on her acting. So the third take she sang to playback in the room, you know, and what happened was we used the visual take of that third take where she's singing to playback in the room. But we use her vocals from the first two takes because she's totally in sync in every take because she's had earwigs in the first two takes. So we use the live recording from take one and two, along with the picture of take three.

[46:02] Alan Seales: Wow. Oh, I love filmmaking. Putting all those pieces together is so much fun. You know, post-production is the most pre-production is fun because you get to you think you can pull off anything and you have no pressure because there's no crew getting paid tens of thousands of dollars an hour while you're trying to figure out where to put the camera. So pre-production is fun. Post-production is fun because you get to make the movie better. You throw out all the stuff that didn't work. You wanted a beautiful sunset, but it was raining. What are you going to do? And the hard part is production because that's where the pressure is and the cost and you want another take, but you still have 16 other setups and it's already five o'clock.

So the pressure is really hard in production, but post and prep are all fun. I guess being on the other side of the camera, I like the production part. I like showing up. I do have the final episodes of Pushing Daisies that were never aired. I don't know if I'm supposed to have those or even if I'm supposed to tell you, but I'm glad I did. Will, can you bring that back, please? That was such a great show. Everybody who hasn't seen it, please go out and check, find Pushing Daisies. Don't you think Brian should write a musical? Brian Fuller was a creator, that amazing writer. And then you can have Chenoweth and all those people in a Broadway musical of Pushing Daisies. Lee Pace, that's where I discovered Lee Pace. Such a great guy. I've got a Lee story for you, if you have a minute.

[47:44] Barry Sonnenfeld: Yeah, go ahead. No one wanted to be in Pushing Daisies. Everyone turned us down, male and female leads. And Brian, who had worked with Lee on Wonderfalls, at the last minute said, well, why don't we just bring Lee in and have him audition for Warner Brothers and ABC? Because we were just running out of time. So, Lee shows up in LA at Burbank, where I'm staying, and comes in to audition with me and the three producers, including Brian Fuller and Cami Patton, who's the casting director. And Lee comes in and reads this scene with her. And we're going to literally the next day, take Lee to Warner Brothers and ABC. He reads. And I don't normally sweat, and I am sweating because he's no good. And he finishes the three-page scene.

It felt like it took him 28 minutes. And I said, Lee, you just got to talk a lot faster. My whole thing is, if actors talk really fast, it prevents them from being able to act. And I hate to see acting. I just, I do not want to see acting. And if they talk fast enough, they have no time to do any acting. So I said, Lee, you got to do it like 1000 times faster. And he said, is it because I'm hiding something or because I'm nervous? Or I said, I don't care. You figure it out just faster. All right, so he does it a little fast. I go late, like, wait. Anyway, this goes on for hours. And at 2 a.m., I said, all right, let's call it a night because we have to be at Warner Brothers 9 a.m. And I know we're not going to hire Lee because he's just talking way too slow.

And he's doing too much acting. And something happened between 2 a.m. and 9 a.m. where the synapses lined up. He came in to both Warner Brothers and then to ABC and was perfection. And if you look at that pilot, which I directed, no one has ever talked that fast except for like, in a Preston Sturgess movie. He's amazingly how fast he's talking, how flat he is, how he gives no emotion. It's exactly what I wanted. And I thought it was going to be a disaster that night. And somehow overnight, he became literally perfection.

[50:28] Alan Seales: Wow. Well, yes. I love it. I love everything about that show. So bring it back. And if you're going to let me know, I'll break it here first.

[50:32] Barry Sonnenfeld: Okay, great. So let's wrap up here with three standard closing questions. I ask everybody to round out my episodes. The first one just very simply is what motivates you?

[50:44] Barry Sonnenfeld: Fear. I'm motivated by fear, anxiety and tension. As I tell people, there's no upside to optimism. So I'm just, you know, I got a lot of, I got some energy. Am I supposed to say my family?

[51:02] Alan Seales: No, you're supposed to say whatever you want.

[51:06] Barry Sonnenfeld: Fear and anxiety.

[51:07] Alan Seales: All right. So what advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[51:11] Barry Sonnenfeld: Okay. First of all, don't take the beginner's job and work your way up. Decide what you want to be and become that right away. I was never a camera assistant. I was never a gaffer. I was never a loader. I decided I was a cameraman and I just became a cameraman. In my case, by buying a used camera and getting lucky.

[51:36] Alan Seales: Figuring out where the on-off switch is.

[51:38] Barry Sonnenfeld: Figuring out. Yeah. Once I learned that, it's all easy. So what I would say is, in all honesty, figure out what you want to do in life and just go right for that. You know, so that's my advice. Figure it out and you'll find out how to make it work.

[51:58] Alan Seales: All right. So the final question, this is the hardest one. I'm going to modify it a little bit because you're a cinematographer too. So if you can only see one show or movie for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[52:07] Barry Sonnenfeld: Dr. Strangelove.

[52:10] Alan Seales: All right.

[52:13] Barry Sonnenfeld: Dr. Strangelove, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. If I had to watch one musical the rest of my life, well, if it was a film musical, it would be, what's the one we were just talking about?

[52:28] Alan Seales: Singing in the Rain?

[52:32] Barry Sonnenfeld: Oh, Pennies from Heaven. If it was a film musical, I would say Pennies from Heaven. If it's a Broadway musical, I'm going to have to go with Book of Mormon.

[52:41] Alan Seales: All right. Good choice. I'm a South Park fan and Matt Stone, Trey Parker fan too. So I enjoy that humor. All right. So everybody, please check out Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, available on paperback now. It's just a dark and hilarious book that hopefully will teach you a little bit about Barry's life and give you some perspective on your own. And are you on social media anywhere we can catch up with you?

[53:11] Barry Sonnenfeld: Just on Instagram as BSonnenfeld. I'm not a Facebook or Twitter guy. I think that Facebook is the end of the planet. In fact, my Emmy speech in 2007, when I won the Emmy for Pushing Daisies, my speech was, love television, fear the internet. And that's 15 years ago. That was my speech.

[53:40] Alan Seales: I think that was right when Facebook basically launched publicly.

[53:42] Barry Sonnenfeld: There you go. That's all I'm saying.

[53:45] Alan Seales: Well, you can get more of me at thetheaterpodcast.com. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at theater underscore podcast. I am on Facebook slash official theater podcast. Please leave a rating and a review wherever you are listening. Thank you to Jukebox the Ghost for the intro and outro music. And Barry, thank you for this chat. Thank you for all your hard work. You have made some of the most iconic movies that have influenced so many, so many people. And it is truly an honor and privilege to have had this chat with you.

[54:14] Barry Sonnenfeld: You should be my agent. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. It was easy. It was a pleasure. I loved watching the lights behind you changing color as we're chatting. Although maybe they're not changing.

[54:25] Alan Seales: They are. They are good. Thank God.

[54:27] Barry Sonnenfeld: I built that. That was a COVID boredom project.

[54:29] Alan Seales: Oh, COVID boredom project is hilarious.