ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES is an absurdist blue collar melo-musical featuring a Rockstar cast. James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Walken and a scorching Kate Winslet sing and dance their way through a tale of a dysfunctional family that is way beyond tuning up.  While the characters (not the actors) have less than perfect voices and moves, it is all made up with an enthusiasm for life and music. 

Director John Turturro (“Mac,”Illuminata”) recently sat down with us to discuss the project. Topics include Bukowski, “The Catfight” between Kate Winslet and Susan Sarandon, singing underwater and what he thinks would be the ultimate Christopher Walken role.

Where did you get the idea for this picture? 

I have no idea. Some of the ideas were just kickin’ around in my head. Sometimes you just observe things.  I have written some other stuff. I had co-written my first movie and hadn’t shot it yet. I had done all this research for Barton Fink and I was wondering “What would happen when they were actually filming me writing. Well, now that my typing had been improved.” I watched some movies about writers and everyone is always smoking and drinking. You know, you write stuff, there is all the excitement and nausea of the blank page. I thought it would be good if I was back in my trailer  with the old  typewriter and I would write down ideas. Some of them were based on observations and some them were just things that tickled me.

I wrote down the first scene with the toe and the Englebert Humperdink credit song. Just a “black comedy” was the idea. There are certain things you can mine some comedy out of even if something is really black.  In my second film, I did a fantasy musical sequence where a playwright writes a play and he thinks everyone is singing his name.     

I grew up in a small house with a lot of variety of music bursting. My brother was into hard rock – Hendrix and Marshall amplifiers. I listened to records my whole life just all kinds of jazz saxophonists, a lot of R&B and rock-n-roll.  There was always dancing and and a lot of fantasizing and I thought it would be really cool to do.

Someone told me about Dennis Potter, of who I was aware of but had never seen.  I was like “Ahhh, so he’s got the idea already.”  I watched a lot of “Lipstick on Your Collar” and “The Singing Detective.” I didn’t watch all of him. He’s very strict, he uses one period of music and they definitely lip-sync. What I loved was the seriousness that he was exploring in some of these things. So I did read a book of interviews with him where he talks about his Dad’s family. He talks of the “potency of cheap music,” not in a derogatory fashion.  

I grew up near an airport but we never traveled because it was too expensive. Lots of families would go to the airport, not just us, and watch the planes take off. On a Sunday, people would do that.  They would fly over our house much louder and much lower so you couldn’t hear a word. I was thinking about that and how music is really emotional transportation. Little by little ideas came up.

After MAC, I was offered a Bukowski book to adapt called “Women.” And it was a filthy book, no plot just a big fat guy having sex with a different groupies. I liked it but  kept saying it was  XXX .. how you gonna do this? I was looking at some of his poetry and I was looking at lyrics of Etta James songs…and they look exactly  the same. I thought “This is a world I know.”  If you have someone like Bruce Springsteen who writes songs about working class people who have a little more money than Bukowksi’s characters and they cif ollaborated with me on this kind of a movie. Joel and Ethan (Coen) had heard I had written something and they wanted to read it. They liked it said “We would like to help you.” 

The helped me get final cut. I couldn’t get that on my own.

Everyone has an imagination and sexuality. I was interested in exploring this world of the profane, the sacred, the spiritual and the animal. I wanted to something very sexual but wasn’t without feeling.   

There was on character that really popped out for me. I saw the character of Freiberg (A Dion wannabe) and thought “This is someone he grew up with.” Who is Freiberg?

Doesn’t EVERYBODY know Freiberg? Doesn’t everyone know Freiberg--- the KING of the block with the band? Everyone had a band growing up. Ya know my brother had a more serious band than my band but ya know there were always these guys who were “The Star” of the block. So he’s a combination or amalgam of a few different people that I knew. It just made me laugh.  

There was a guy who was actually named Freiberg but he wasn’t like that. We thought he looked like Mick Jaggar. My father would see Mick Jaggar on television, he would say “THERE’S FREIBERG! FREIBERG’S ON!” So I still think of Mick Jaggar as Freiberg. He had the full mouth and the whole thing. So you have all these associations, ya know. Those worlds are small, everyone played in the streets and in the basements. I was gonna use that “Down in the Basement” song by Etta James but we didn’t need it. It is a spirit in the movie. Ya know “Down in the Basement” is where everything happens.

My father kept telling me “This was really your part!”  No .no. But Bobby (Cannavale) did a great job. He’s a delight to work with 

How did you get this cast together?

I wrote something and I can, obviously, get scripts to people.  People can get scripts to me too. People aren’t going to do things in which they are not interested. But people were really like “Wow this is different!” A lot of people did the initial reading that eventually did the film. Kate Winslet I wanted to do the film because I had seen Holy Smoke  and I thought she was so raw in it, that I thought she could also flip the character, illuminate the character. Some people can only play one thing. James (Gandolfini) was interested in doing it, but he was strapped on “The Sopranos.” He wanted to make it… James doesn’t want to do anything basically . The guy really wanted it. HE said “It’s just because I am on the show” and I said “Well, your being on the show helps me economically but after you read it, I thought you were too young. But he was the perfect person for it.”  

I wanted visceral actors and some of the actors I knew and some I didn’t. People are looking to do different things. If I got a script like this I would want to do it, absolutely. I would say “Wow” I’ve never done this. There was one or two people who read it and said  “I don’t know if it’s for me” and I was like “Fine, forget it.” For this script I really wanted people to respond to the material. I think it had to do with the people who read it out loud. Steve Buscemi read it out loud and then he couldn’t do it because he had a commitment. I tried to recast it, I read a lot of people, even people from the music world. When Steve read it, it was so funny because you felt like “Is he bullshitting? Is he really the expert he says he is?” His scenes (with Gandolfini) have a real Norton and Kramden kind of feel to them.    It’s like “The Honeymooners” having sex. “The Honeymooners” written by Charles Bukowski.. music by Springsteen.

Did you consider someone’s singing skill? 

I didn’t really care. If someone was horrible I would have just drowned them out. I said “You are never gonna carry it because everyone just imagines their favorite and singer and they just sing along. Sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Music is a form of escape, its’ fantasy. To have them sing alone what is fantastical about that?

When I have seen it in movies.. let’s say Ewan McGregor, he sings very nicely. He’s very expressive. But most people can’t be that expressive if they are not a trained singer. That was always the idea. I didn’t know Kate could sing so well.  She recorded “the underwater” song so beautiful.. I choose for her not to echo it. One voice was more haunting underwater; the other voice was more accomplished. But if I had known Kate could sing so well I probably wouldn’t have bought that performance. Maybe when we release the soundtrack maybe Kate will let me put her (first) version on it, which is excellent. 

How did you shoot that underwater scene?

I shot it underwater.  

How can one entire song be shot that way? You didn’t hide behind quick cuts…

She trained with a mermaid. She calls herself a mermaid because she is a professional mermaid and she taught Kate how not to swallow water and mouth the song.  She taught her not to swallow. Sometimes we had to hold her or weight her down. Kate got to the point where should could do five lines in a row. It was fantastic. That’s her.. I mean.. that’s not green screen. That’s her underwater. 

You direct a catfight between two actresses that have 10 Oscar nominations between them (Kate Winslet vs. Susan Sarandon). Were you intimidated.. did you use this as motivation?

Well, at that time Kate didn’t have five Oscar nominations. It was a year later. But I kept saying Susan has won and you haven’t. So there. 

I tried to do a stunt thing and it just didn’t work. Kate is much younger than her and I didn’t want her to hurt Susan. Kate is bigger. I kept trying it and they said “Just let us do it.” So I did and they did a really good job with it. They both, well Susan, was just exhausted. But that was the spirit of the whole film. We were at Agent Provocateur shooting and I had all these expensive panties wrapped around my head as a headband. And that is how we did it. And Chris (Walken) was in there having a good time.

We had a good time. It was Kate’s first day actually. Susan has always been used to playing the lover when she was younger. They were mirror images of each other. So you could feel a little… ((sic)animosity), which I did not try to diffuse. When it over, I said “Okay we can all go have lunch together.”  

It was fantastic. Women in the movie got to do stuff in the movie that they never get to do. Usually their parts are boring in the movies, that’s reality The talent pool here is so fantastic you unleash this capacity which is endless for the variety of emotions. There was a lot of female energy on the film. I loved it. I love working with women.  They were so thrilled that they were the dominant people in the movie. They guys were making believe they were dominant, which guys do. I do too. Movies keep selling that other thing all of the time. It just bores me. It came out of that.

What is like working a director/producer capacity with the Coen Brothers? 

Fantastic, they really, really helped me get it off the ground. In the editing stage, I did a rough cut and they gave me notes. And they would say “John, we really like it, but there are some things you need to take out.”  Of course I was like “Well, I think I need this” and they would say “Why don’t you just try it without it?” Every single thing they told me made the film better. Every single thing.

When you make so many movies and they are such wonderful craftsmen. Joel was an editor. I have tremendous confidence in him. What they taught me was that not everything had to be eloquent transitions. They just took to long.. there were so many imaginative things and they said “You don’t need that” if the film is functioning. Maybe you need a break here.. so it isn’t “funny, funny, funny.” We think this is really terrific but you don’t need to keep going. The first cut was two hours, then we took twelve minutes out .. they helped me take out about nine. Then we took another eight out at the end.  I would have kept going and they were like “Oh.. NO more!” The more you work with something the shorter it could be. Most directors, if they see their movie ten years later… half the movies goes. So they were great in the editing room.  

Ethan came into the editing room and he wasn’t feeling well and I was cutting the first scene. And he started laughing and I was like “It’s not funny” and he yells “The wallpaper (in Gandolfini’s living room) is funny” All these pictures in Paris and stuff. In those houses in the 50’s everyone has these pictures of Italy, France or London, these foreign places that you are never going to go to.

These guys have their feet on the ground and they believe in what they do. Not to the point where they think they are brilliant, but “well , hey I think it’s pretty good.” You appreciate it when you have friendship like that with people.   

You just finished a movie with Robert DeNiro. What’s that like?

He’s directed me and I knew him years ago. I auditioned for RAGING BULL when I was a kid. I’ve known him for a long time, it’s like working with my eccentric uncle. It’s also weird because you have all these “things” about him in your mind of him. I’d like to direct him. He’s a real worker. 

I’ve had a good year.

Tell us about Christopher Walken...

I love Chris, he walks to the beat of his own drum. He is always present. Elvis did not die, he is in Chris.. and Chris knows that. Working with Chris is hilarious.  One thing he won’t do.. drive and act. “Yeah I don’t do that.. use a rear projection. I won’t do that it’s dangerous.” You see this guy now, you forgot what a great dramatic actor he is. He’s a true triple threat.  I said at one point “Why don’t we make a movie with you as a  children’s birthday clown?”

He said “Now that’s scary.”

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