Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1513564
51 W I N T E R Q 4 I S S U E F E A T U R E film debut. "I couldn't have been luckier to have had as phenomenal a post team as I did," Baza- wule added. "Jon is one of the best. He's cut tons of brilliant movies. Same was true for Julian and Renee. They all brought some- thing special to the big, massive moments and also the intimate moments." CineMontage recently spoke with Poll, Slater, and Tondelli to learn more about how the post team worked diligently to capture the full range of emotions in all the mo- ments of the film, scheduled for a Christmas release in theaters. CineMontage: How did you first get involved and what was it like working on this movie? Poll: My agent called me and said, "War- ner Bros. wants you to meet the director for 'The Color Purple.'" I said, "Call the studio and tell them this is a mistake." I got on the phone and said the same thing to Blitz [Bazawule]. He laughed, and we had a two- and-a-half hour interview in the middle of a very busy workday on "Father of the Bride." It was just a great first dose of Blitz, be- cause Blitz does things in a more thoughtful, thorough way. He does everything that way. Tondelli: I'd worked with Julian on a few movies that we were doing back-to-back, and I'd worked with Jon for 26 years. He asked me to help him do this movie. I said we should get Julian, and everyone fell in love with him. That's how we got started as far as our crew went. Working with Blitz was just a wonderful experience for me. He's a novelist, he's a musician, he's a painter, he's a filmmaker, he's a composer. He had such a clear vision of what he wanted, and it's just so delightful to work with people like that because you can oer things and he'll listen to them and say, "What if we did it like this?" He was so involved in the process for me on so many levels. He would spend mornings with Ju- lian and then afternoons with me. It was just so great to have soup-to-nuts with your director before you go on the mix stage where he's heard every single thing, he's signed o on it, and he remembers. Slater: He's such a mature film director and I cannot wait to see what he does next. He had such a vision of taking the embryon- ic feel from the movie and the musical and kind of turning that into a new thing for a modern-day audience. He's the best kind of director because he has a very clear vision of where he wants to go, but equally, he's open to suggestions and understands ideas from other people can also be really useful. CineMontage: How did he describe his vision for the film in terms of tone? Poll: He said when he first heard about "The Color Purple" and read the script, he thought, "How do I wrap my head around this? Why are we remaking this movie?" What really drew him to it were Celie's fantasies, which are very prevalent in the book right upfront. He said, "I see a lot of the musical sequences coming out of her fantasies." The second musical sequence in the movie, "She Be Mine," really sets the table. At one point, someone had suggested taking that out, but it gave you your way into the movie and understanding how far this could go. There's a chain gang, women washing clothes, she's singing about having her baby, and it really set the stage. Another big part of pitching the fantasy was the scene with the giant gramophone, which he had done a pre-visualization for. In fact, he thinks that helped him convince Fantasia to do the film, because this was close to Fantasia's life. This is really dicult territory. When she saw that, he said, she saw he had a dierent take. CineMontage: What made the film's sound unique as compared to the stage musical? P H OT O : C O U R T E S Y J O N P O L L P H OT O : L E E C LO W E R Julian Slater. BUDDIES: Director Blitz Bazawule, left, with Jon Poll.