Screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MARCH 02, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 030201np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Yesterday, the film "Shakespeare in Love" added 15 British Academy Award nominations to its 13 Oscar nominations in the U.S. One of the categories it's nominated for here is Best Original Screenplay. My guests are the authors of the screenplay, Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.

Stoppard also wrote about Shakespeare in his first staged play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead." "Shakespeare in Love" is a romantic comedy set in the 1590s. The young William Shakespeare is having trouble writing his latest play, "Romeo and Ethel: The Pirate's Daughter," until he finds his muse; a beautiful woman who has disguised herself as a man in order to act in Shakespeare's play.

The play is to be performed at the Rose Theater and the theater's owner, Phillip Henslowe, is in debt to an unscrupulous money lender named Fennyman. In this scene the money lender and one of his henchman are dragging away the frightened theater owner played by Geoffrey Rush.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SCENE FROM THE FILM "SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE")

GEOFFREY RUSH, ACTOR: What have I done Mr. Fennyman?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Theater's have all been closed down by the plague.

RUSH: Oh, that.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: By order of the Mater of the Revels.

RUSH: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theater business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Believe me, to be closed by the plague is a bagatelle in the ups and downs of owning a theater.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: So what do we do?

RUSH: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: How?

RUSH: I don't know. It's a mystery.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (Unintelligible) Mr. Fennyman.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (Unintelligible) by order of the Master of the Revels.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Mr. Fennyman? (Unintelligible) has reopened the playhouses.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Yes, I heard.

GROSS: Marc Norman, let me start with you. You originated the screenplay. Tell us the origin of the idea.

MARC NORMAN, SCREENWRITER, "SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE": Well, I'm proud to say, I love to tell this story, that I got the idea from one of my kids. I have two sons. They're both -- they're twins. They're now almost thirty. They grew up in the house of a freelance writer. They figured out very early it would be a good idea for them to come with ideas for their dad.

When they were young they kind of had kid ideas, but they got more sophisticated as they got older. And Zak was taking an Elizabethan theater course at Boston University and gave me a call from a phone booth one day and said, "here it is. Shakespeare is starting out in the Elizabethan theater business."

And I said, "that's brilliant." Because I really thought it was. It was kind of the combination of imagination and obscurity that kind of appeals to me in that idea. And I told him I really didn't know what to do with it. And I didn't for about three years, and I came up with lots of lousy ideas to kind of expand that notion.

And I kept on throwing them away because I didn't want to just add to the pile of junk that's around Shakespeare in terms of the fiction. I wanted something that I thought was good. And one day I realized I had been looking at it all along and missing it, and what that was was Shakespeare as a professional writer.

Shakespeare as, I wouldn't say a screenwriter, but Shakespeare as a professional writer in a capitalistic entertainment business. Nobody, as far as I could tell, had ever really looked at him quite that way before. And that was kind of the beginning.

GROSS: How have you rewarded your son for this idea?

NORMAN: With a check. I -- we're all in this business, and money is the Esperanto of show business. Everybody understands that language, and that's what he wanted and that's what he deserved. And he was happy with it.

GROSS: Did you give him a share, or how did you come up with how much to give him?

NORMAN: Well, I came up with a figure that I thought would please him, and it did. Let's leave it at that.

GROSS: OK. Now Tom Stoppard, where do you enter the story?

TOM STOPPARD, SCREENWRITER, "SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE": Well, I enter the story because Marc's foundational screenplay -- original screenplay by Marc Norman, "Shakespeare in Love," arrived on my desk one day because -- I don't know what happened in between, but at some point Universal got your screenplay, Marc, didn't they?

And I think Universal had one or two actors interested and they wanted to take it further. And perhaps, though I never asked them, they perhaps thought quite apart from the usual Hollywood law, you know, one writer -- good. Two writers -- better. Three writers -- maybe best, etcetera. I think that perhaps they thought some English input as well, I don't know.

But I read it and it was -- I responded much as Marc did to his son, I thought this was a good idea.

GROSS: So Tom Stoppard, what did you add to or change about the screenplay?

STOPPARD: Well, the story, if one said it in a paragraph, is really very much as it was, isn't it Marc?

NORMAN: That's right.

STOPPARD: I was actually in a position, which I find a happy position, and I've always felt the same way about the relatively few films I've done. I've always, always worked from either a novel or, in two cases, an original screenplay which came my way.

And I always felt that meant that somebody else had done the hard part and I was there to do the part which I really loved doing, which is dialogue. And which really came much more easily to me than inventing stories. So "Shakespeare in Love" was really the best example of that happy situation for me.

And if you're looking for exactitude and everything in a nutshell, I think I'm right in saying that the dialog itself is by William Shakespeare and by me pretty much. And the actual structure of what happens is what I inherited.

GROSS: Now one of the premises of "Shakespeare in Love" is that Shakespeare has a writing block. Did he ever, do you know?

NORMAN: I don't even think it's a writing block. I mean, I know people are saying that, but for me it's not a writing block. I really don't believe there is such a thing as writing block. I think what Shakespeare's problem is is that he wants to write something better than he has before and he doesn't know how to get there. That's not exactly a block.

He could write "Romeo and Ethel: The Pirate's Daughter" if somebody put a gun to his head. He just doesn't want to. He doesn't want to take the time. He knows he could do better, but he doesn't know how to get there. And that's, I think, his problem.

Historically, did he have a writer's block? I can't imagine Shakespeare ever having any kind of block. He was a machine of play writing as far as I can tell.

STOPPARD: To write anything at all you have to really have a sort of inner enthusiasm and desire -- appetite -- to do it. And it's that enthusiasm, that appetite, which in turn depends on your own need to go further, do better. I think that if you're into pot boiling, just sort of run-of-the-mill recycling, that's when you can't raise the energy just to get going at all.

But when you're struck by a notion which, you know, captures your imagination and you catch fire a little bit, then you don't have that huge impediment towards doing it. And people think that writer's block is somebody who is desperately keen to write something, but doesn't quite know what to do next. I don't feel it like that.

NORMAN: My favorite -- my favorite quote about screenwriting comes from Christopher Isherwood (ph) who said, "a screenwriter is a man who is being tortured to confess who has nothing to confess." What I take that to mean is the hardest thing for a screenwriter or a professional writer to do is come up with passion for his job.

There is a job that has to be done. Where is he going to get the passion from? Where is he going to get something to confess? Shakespeare wants to write about love and doesn't know anything about love. He, like most young poets, is better at words than meaning. And he needs the meaning. He's got the words. But he knows the words are empty without some kind of emotion behind them. And that's hopefully what the picture is about.

GROSS: Nice point. You know, he sets out to write "Romeo and Ethel," which of course sounds very funny to our ears because we know of "Romeo and Juliet." And there's something so mundane sounding about the name Ethel. Did you go through a lot of names? Did you try "Romeo and Janice" and "Romeo and Lucy" and "Romeo and Linda" before saying "Romeo and Ethel," that's the ticket.

STOPPARD: Yeah, it was just a stroke of genius.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: To me, "Shakespeare in Love" is in a way a spoofing of a kind of Hollywood bio-pic, particularly of the songwriter type of biography story. Where, say, the songwriter is crossing the street and they hear a car horn honk and suddenly that honking car horn becomes transformed in their mind into a song.

NORMAN: And must capture that sound.

GROSS: Yeah, and becomes like the most famous song and everything. And this seems to be, in a away, a spoof of that type of Hollywood approach to biography.

STOPPARD: I think ours is more accurate.

LAUGHTER

NORMAN: Well, certainly, I did a fair amount of research before I started writing. And one of the wonderful things I found going into the history of Elizabethan theater was that it was show business. I mean, it's not what we think of as kind of this rustic cute "Masterpiece Theatre" kind of industry. It was show business.

They invented it -- everything we think of show business in terms of its cliches. The star system contracts; backstabbing; rivalries. All that they invented. They had it. And in a really remarkable short amount of time. I mean, the first theater dedicated to putting on plays was in London 10 years before "Romeo and Juliet."

GROSS: Did you do a lot of research into the Elizabethan theaters. You have two competing theater owners in "Shakespeare in Love?"

STOPPARD: Well, that's a stroke of luck -- I wasn't there. Because Roundabout at this time -- the archaeological remains of the Rose Theater were accidentally discovered by some people who were building an office block south of the Thames. And, you know, I live just upstream, and as a result of that discovery one or two books were published.

And there was one particularly illuminating one. So there was suddenly some available material which was really specific to the setting of Marc's story.

GROSS: How did the theaters compete back then, do you know?

NORMAN: Well, they competed the way studios compete now. People have a certain amount of money that they're willing to spend on entertainment, and which theater are they going to go to? Which movie are they going to go to? The one with stars -- the Elizabethans figured out that if you had a star in your company people would come to that play.

Do you have lots of sword fights and lots of excitement? People will come to that play. The basis of competition was the same then as it is now.

GROSS: I understand that some of the theaters during the time of Shakespeare were closed on account of the plague, because people would catch it from each other if they were in...

STOPPARD: ...there was actually a real plague in the year in which our story is set. I mean, you're quite right, they were periodically closed all for all kinds of reasons and that was one of them.

NORMAN: But more than that, the city of London -- the city fathers -- hated plays and were always looking for an excuse to shut them down. They felt that they were lewd. They felt that they drew the young apprentices away from their work. Their work didn't get done because they were going to plays in the afternoon. And they were always looking for reasons to shut the plays down.

And really the only reason that the playhouses survived was because of Elizabeth. Elizabeth liked plays. And the company -- there was sort of a legal fiction in those days -- that the companies had to perform plays to rehearse their actors so when they went to command performances for Elizabeth they'd be good. They'd do well.

STOPPARD: What's interesting is that even now, right up to now, the profession of actors, trails little wisps of rather kind of romantic outsideness. They are outsiders and so on. And that comes right from where this movie lives. The actor as vagabond. Theaters were innards. I think Marc just made that point, that the first purpose-built theater in London was extraordinarily late. I guess it was in the 1570s, Marc?

NORMAN: '84.

STOPPARD: Oh, well done. Really. Up until then, you know, we're talking about -- you couldn't even call it being on tour. They trailed around. They set up shop wherever they could. And I think that the notion of actors and theater folk in general being riff-raff survived right into 20th-century romantic fiction. And (unintelligible) to this very day. There are people who would not like their daughter to marry an actor. And the whole notion of chorus girl's marrying Dukes is all that.

GROSS: My guests are Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman. Their screenplay "Shakespeare in Love" is nominated for an Academy Award. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

GROSS: The movie "Shakespeare in Love" is nominated for 13 Oscars. My guests are the screenwriters, Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.

I wonder if while writing "Shakespeare in Love" you were thinking about what it might have been like if you were writing for audiences in Elizabethan times.

NORMAN: Well, I'll tell you a little story about that. In the course of the research I found a lawsuit between a theater company and a writer. This was about 20 years after "Romeo and Juliet." By then the business had gotten -- it was such a big business that companies had to have writers under contract exclusive to them.

And the lawsuit was about the fact that the writer had been paid in advance for three plays in a year. And he hadn't turned them in, and the company wanted their money back. And the writer's defense was well, there was a plague and I couldn't work.

And the theater company said, oh, come on, a plague isn't going to stop you from writing. So they want to trial and I think they settled it though. What was interesting was that his contract was appended to the trial transcript. And what it said was that this writer was exclusive to this company. He had to write three plays in a year.

He had to be available to do rewrites on other plays the company owned. He had to be able to do prologues epilogues on other plays that the company owned. He had to be available to do jokes and songs and additional material on other plays the company owned.

And I showed this to my wife and I said, "I signed this contract with Disney last year." They invented the contracts.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: That's funny. What about the audiences? Do you think that they were probably responsive? How sophisticated do you think they were? Could you have done a lot of in jokes and be confident that the audience would get it? Did they have art houses?

STOPPARD: It's almost mystifying isn't it? That, as it were, in one jump you got into a kind of theater which is extraordinarily complex. It has quite broad humor, I mean, very broad humor in some cases. Combined with the highest poetry. Very literary theater.

And as far as one can judge it had overall popularity. Not every play did of course, but there was a need for the theaters which were being built. And there were two or three theaters built within a short space of time. And they could contain quite large audiences.

I mean, when you think how small London was these were large arenas. And it's rather -- I said it was mysterious -- but it's also rather wonderful that the language of Elizabethan theater did bind together the groundlings and the rich people in the boxes and the actors on stage.

NORMAN: And that concept really influenced both of us in writing the screenplay, because we couldn't be less than Shakespearian. Shakespeare was obviously writing for the entire spectrum of his audience, and the movie could do no less.

The movie had to have high poetry. It had to have dogs and sword fights and pie fights. I think my take on Shakespeare is a very shrewd entertainment entrepreneur who knows his audience specifically. Knows exactly what they want. Knows exactly how to give it to them, and does it over and over again with a sort of an astounding ability.

GROSS: If you're just joining us my guests are Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, the authors of the screenplay for the movie "Shakespeare in Love;" nominated for lots of Academy Awards.

Now you had to, in "Shakespeare in Love," mix Elizabethan language and contemporary language; Elizabethan ideas and contemporary ideas. Because the movie is really a wedding of the two. Did you come up with certain almost ground rules to guide what was OK and what was out of bounds in terms of the writing for the movie?

STOPPARD: Speaking for myself, I never worked from rules like that. The problem...

GROSS: ...what I mean by rules is that sometimes a movie or a play will have it's own inner reality and you have to set the terms of what that reality is.

STOPPARD: No, I understood that. But somehow the process is much more instinctive -- instinctual -- which word do I mean? You'll tell me sometime. And I think that the problem always seems to be much more local. What should the next line sound like.

And it's only when you look back that you think, oh, I see there's kind of a pattern here. There's a private language and a public language. But you're working on your nerve ends really because some of the remarks made in the film have no business to exist in the 1590 -- whatever year. They simply shouldn't exist.

And yet, there's no sense of dislocation. And I think that, as Marc said, you know, one is trying to bind everything together in a particular spirit which includes high poetry and low humor.

GROSS: Marc, anything you want to add about that -- about the inner reality?

NORMAN: What I found -- the question you asked was about the dialog.

GROSS: Yeah.

NORMAN: What I found that it really was a question of taking Elizabethan cadences, kind of the rhythm of the speech, but not sticking with Elizabethan words because so many of those words are archaic and we weren't out to do "Masterpiece Theater." We weren't out to do something that was a challenge for people to understand.

As a matter of fact, from the beginning I wanted this to be a very commercial picture. I wanted this to play in malls. I didn't want this to play in an art house. And so it was a question of finding a language that smelled Elizabethan, but worked perfectly well for a contemporary audience.

GROSS: Want to give me an example of a line that you think fits that description?

NORMAN: Nothing comes to mind.

GROSS: Tom Stoppard, want to give it a shot?

STOPPARD: Naturally, I'm really thinking of a line, Marc, which to my grief -- which I feel to this day -- somehow never made it to the final cut because it's exactly the center of the Broadway writer's experience where everybody's gathering towards "Romeo and Juliet."

"And a man we've never seen or met before says to his neighbor in the audience, `I hear they had trouble with this play.'"

LAUGHTER

And I suppose Madden probably thought that this was a very esoteric in joke from Marc and the people like me. But in fact -- well, you laughed. To me, that was the quintessential Broadway moment.

GROSS: Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman wrote the screenplay "Shakespeare in Love." They'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. Their screenplay "Shakespeare in Love" is nominated for an Academy Award. The movie has a total of 13 Oscar nominations. This romantic comedy is not only about love, it's about the ups and downs of the theater world in the 1590s.

I think one thing that "Shakespeare in Love" is actually pretty serious about is the transformative power of good theater. Transformative both for the performers and for the audience. Do you think?

STOPPARD: Well, we like to think so, yes. And I think one of the nice things about the film is that it does a tremendous job on behalf of the theater. I mean, I'm almost surprised by it -- it came up and surprised me. But people know less about how theater is put on than one imagines they do, or perhaps they just never think about it at all.

And you walk into a theater, and most people have had that experience, you're not looking for transformative power to descend upon you. And at the same time, you're aware that the theater is a very pragmatic art form. It's got these physical limits. What you can do. What you can't do. How big the stage is. What you're going to see. What you can't see. What you're going to hear. What you can't hear.

And, you know, it's a severely constrained art form. And because of the constraints and the pressure the people who are truly creative in the theater can transcend these bounds. And that's when an audience feels similarly transformed.

And I think that the way the film shows a play when it's in pieces and when it's somehow a practical problem, and the way that that transmutes and develops into something which takes you out of yourself where you completely believe in a pair of lovers. All of that.

I think that -- this isn't a brag, it's an observation. I can't remember a movie which did -- which quite did that before. And I think that's one of the reasons that the film has struck something of a chord.

NORMAN: I agree with Tom. And I would say in some ways it's a tribute to our director John Madden. Because he had to show that on film. We had the idea and the script, but he had to show it on film. And I think he does a superb job of that. The way I see it happening is that three-quarters of the film we in the audience are pretty much watching the backstage story.

But at the end of the picture when the show is about to go up and the Londoners are filing into the theater, I think somehow we shift our allegiance to them. We kind of join them as spectators and sit in the audience of the Rose, and wonder how this thing is going to come out.

And I think part of our pleasure is -- I think we share the pleasure of the audience. That we've seen something remarkable happen before our eyes. That's kind of what the picture's about. We've seen it happen before our eyes.

And Tom and I have both had the experience of working on shows that seemed absolute disasters, and the curtain goes up and somehow people transcend themselves. Somehow people get their act together and do things that you never expected. It is part of the transformative magic of theater, and it happens for the performers and it happens for the audience as well.

STOPPARD: There is a long line of American film which concerns itself with the making of a musical.

GROSS: Oh, the backstage musical -- all the (unintelligible) Berkeley (ph) films. Yeah.

STOPPARD: And I think that that's, you know, we're in similar territory there.

GROSS: Mmm-hmm.

STOPPARD: But the emphasis is much more on the joy of song and dance. I mean, especially dance. And I think that because "Romeo and Juliet" and indeed "Shakespeare in Love," simply are the spoken word. It perhaps concentrates the sense of that process. That's an almost unintelligible statement. Is it noon yet?

GROSS: I get what you're saying. Absolutely.

STOPPARD: You're so kind.

GROSS: Instead of like the chorine who wants to become the star, and it's about singing and dancing, this is a backstage thing about language.

NORMAN: Yeah, I think there is kind of a secret agenda about the movie. I mean, obviously it's about the theater. Obviously it's about writing. I think the secret agenda is it's about creativity and how it happens and how mortals like Shakespeare turn out things of genius. And I think that's kind of compelling for an audience. I think we haven't seen many movies about that.

GROSS: My guests are Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, who wrote the screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love." Now Marc Norman, when you had this idea for "Shakespeare in Love" did you have a hard time convincing producers that there was money to be made here?

NORMAN: Of course. I mean, do you have to ask?

LAUGHTER

We went to Universal Pictures because we had a relationship with Universal Pictures. And this was at a point where I had no idea what the story would be. And I had to go in and pitch something, and I'm proud to say it was my best tap dance.

Screenwriters all know this phrase called "tap dancing." It's when you go in and try to get a job for something you have no idea how you're going to complete. And to my credit I did a great tap dance, and to their credit they bought it and said, OK, we'll take a shot on this. And I have to give credit to Universal, they are the ones who allowed it to happen.

GROSS: What was your tap dance?

NORMAN: OK, I'll try to remember it. It was, you're 24 years old. You're married to a woman three years older than you. You have a couple of kids. You had to marry her because you got her pregnant. You are working for your dad in a business you hate. If you live in a little country town and it's boring.

You go one night with all your relatives to a theater to see a show that's coming through town and a company that's passing through town. And they put on a show, and you're sitting in the audience, you're looking at the show and you think I should be doing that.

And the next day when the company leaves you go with them. And the town is Stratford-on-Avon, it's Shakespeare and it's 1584. And they said OK.

STOPPARD: Actually, that's a good -- that's a nice happy ending to your tap dance. A friend of mine who was pitching a movie pitched this really wonderful romantic story about twins and exchanges of identity. And it was a tremendous pitch. And they all got very excited.

And then his punch line was that it was "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare he wanted to shoot.

LAUGHTER

And they got very unexcited.

GROSS: Well, you know, after you did this pitch and they bought it what happened when you went back later and said, well, it's actually going to start where I said it was going to end, and the focus of the story is going to be quite different from what I told you?

NORMAN: I never had any problem with that. They liked the script. They saw how it -- they probably knew I was tap dancing and they probably figured, well, we've got some extra money, let's take a shot on this guy.

GROSS: Now in Philadelphia, anyway, "Shakespeare in Love" in the art house. And I think it's now playing in Cineplexes and malls as well.

NORMAN: I'm glad to hear that.

GROSS: I'm asking. I'm not -- I know it started in the art house. I think it's spreading beyond that in parts of the country or am I wrong?

NORMAN: I think you're right. It's getting into wider and wider release and I really happy to hear that, because as I said earlier I never intended it to be an art house movie. Shakespeare wouldn't have written a play for an art house audience. There wouldn't have been enough money in it. He wouldn't have limited his audience

GROSS: Was there a moment when you knew it was crossing over from just kind of art house success to a wider popular success?

NORMAN: No. I'm really surprised. I don't know what Tom would say, but I'm very surprised at the success of it. I had one clue that it worked as a picture. It worked on its own terms when last year we started previewing it with audiences in New York -- recruited audiences.

And they seemed to get it. The feeling I had when the lights went up was the audiences had gotten what the picture was trying to do. How that translated into box office success, we couldn't say. There's no correlation.

STOPPARD: That's right. Well, I have little experience. I didn't go to the previews but when a friend of one of my sons showed up one day and said that his friend who was an ex-boxer had loved "Shakespeare in Love," I thought, oh, well, we've cracked it.

GROSS: Now Marc Norman, when you were trying to get "Shakespeare in Love" off the ground and you were known in part as the author of the screenplay of "Waterworld," which was a really expensive flop, did that stand in your way?

NORMAN: First of all, let me correct it. I did an uncredited rewrite on "Waterworld."

GROSS: Oh.

NORMAN: And I won't -- this is not to quibble, but just to say that I'm not totally responsible for "Waterworld."

GROSS: Right. No. No. So you were one of the doctors who was supposed the movie.

NORMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Right. OK.

NORMAN: I was one of the doctors that couldn't save the patient. And interestingly enough, in this town -- by this town I mean Hollywood, L.A. -- having a writing credit on a movie that doesn't do well or even is a colossal flop isn't particularly a problem because the industry knows that flops happen. Flops happen to the best of people.

And that there is no particular reason behind it, and that probably the guy who went in to do the last rewrite was under a lot of pressure and it's really not his fault. So no, it's not particularly a handicap. It is at large, I mean, I've gotten a certain amount of kicks in the shin from reviewers who said "Shakespeare in Love" from the putative writer of "Waterworld." They're not quite familiar with how the business works.

STOPPARD: In any event, "Waterworld," in the end wasn't exactly -- I wouldn't call it a flop. It actually did OK finally.

NORMAN: For you Tom.

STOPPARD: It got beaten up by the critics of course. That's what you mean.

NORMAN: Yes. It was savaged by the critics and actually made some money. Not to say that that gives it merit.

STOPPARD: No, we're not saying it gives it merit. But there are flops and flops.

GROSS: Right. Marc Norman, I have what might be a difficult question for you to respond to now, but I'm wondering if you felt at all slighted when it was suggested, this is swell, but let's bring in Tom Stoppard to work on it too?

NORMAN: Quite the opposite. When I heard that Tom was interested in working on the script, I thought, well, what's the appropriate response when the foremost playwright in the English language wants to work on your screenplay? The appropriate response is, sure. I was very delighted and I was very delighted by what he did to the script and what he added to it. He did things that never would have occurred to me.

GROSS: Name one.

NORMAN: Marlowe. Marlowe is a good example. I was terrified of Marlowe. The more I learned about Marlowe the more I thought Marlowe was like Kudzu -- like crab grass. If Marlowe got in the script he'd take it over. It would wind up being "Marlowe in Love," because he's such a volcanic personality. Tom rightly said, no, Marlowe belongs in it and put him in.

GROSS: And Tom Stoppard, why did you want Marlowe in there and explain who Marlowe is?

STOPPARD: Well, Christopher Marlowe was another playwright of course, but he was from a very different background. He was one of the University wits. And there's a certain amount of snobbishness between the educated playwrights and the ones who have been down at heel.

And perhaps came from, not the street as we understand it, but you know what I mean. And Marlowe was a successful playwright, and of course he's a great writer in his own right. But as it happens he died young, and he was murdered or he was stabbed to death in a tavern down river in London.

And in some ways -- as it happened actually in the very year in which Marc had set the story. It seemed that one should try to wrap it in some how and hope that he didn't take over the movie. And it worked out quite interestingly because one got a plot where Shakespeare, for a while, thinks he's responsible for Marlowe's death.

And so that's who Marlowe is. But the whole thing of collaboration and the different forms of collaboration in the movie business, sometimes they're sequential. As in this case, where one writer follows another writer. And, I mean, I think it is an odd business, perhaps we are all the victims of our own traditions.

But it will be very odd in the theater, and I've, over the years, found it less and less so in the movies. I've got used to it I could say. But I remember -- there's a movie script of mine, and you know what they always say about me -- I mean, they've been saying it since, as a rough guess, 1964 that I am really a rather cold and dry or I'm capable of -- I don't put enough juice and heat and warmth into these sexy loving relationships which are supposed to be in these movie scripts.

And, you know, they sort of thing that Tom can do this, then we'll get so and so who can do that and she or he can mess around with Tom's scripts. And for that reason I've never felt proprietorial about movie work in the same sense that I do feel it about my theater work.

GROSS: My guests are Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman. Their screenplay "Shakespeare in Love" is nominated for an Academy Award. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

GROSS: If you're just joining us my guests are Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman, authors of the screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love."

I'd like for you to share some early Shakespeare memories with us back from your, maybe, high school days when you first started to read Shakespeare.

NORMAN: My memories are those of those dozing. I think, like most of the world, I dozed through Shakespeare because I was a teenager and some adult was telling me this is a demi-God of the English language, you better appreciate him. And there was no proof.

I was reading a text of a play -- I don't know whether it was probably "Julius Caesar" or something -- and it was in a language I didn't understand. It was in a style I didn't understand. It was not performed. It was on paper. In a way Shakespeare never would have intended anybody to receive the play.

And I just didn't get it. And it really took me a while to begin to appreciate Shakespeare. Well, first of all, I had to see some plays. Once I started seeing performances it began to make sense. And then the more I became a professional writer the more I understood the size of his achievement in terms of being a professional writer and doing what he did.

STOPPARD: I got taken to see Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" when I was at school, you know, it was a bunch of school boys taken to the local cinema. And I found it pretty boring. The next "Hamlet" -- I mean, I was about 12 then, I would say. And I didn't see a "Hamlet" again for, I don't know, eight years.

And it happened to be Peter O'Toole's "Hamlet," not the one he did at the National Theater later, but when he had just left drama school he came to the Bristol Old Vic where I was working on a local paper. And I saw his "Hamlet." And that completely and utterly transformed my sense of what "Hamlet" was and what Shakespeare was.

And then another time -- I mean, in the same period of my life -- the first thing I saw may have been "Comedy of Errors." The idea that Shakespeare -- that he didn't have to apologize for Shakespeare. That a Shakespearian comedy could make you laugh if it were done well. It could make you laugh as much as any contemporary comedian can make you laugh.

That was a revelation to me. I'm ashamed of how late I had that revelation, but -- so my experience is similar to Marc's. You start off somehow intimidated and perhaps the people who are introducing you to, not just Shakespeare but to any great writer, perhaps they did it in the wrong way or the wrong time, or perhaps your head's in the wrong place. It very often goes wrong for a while and then comes right.

NORMAN: I think what -- I think the way Shakespeare was presented to me is the bust of Shakespeare. The man who kind of stops below the collar bone. The man who's on the pedestal. And being kind of a goady teenager I pushed back. I resisted that.

The idea behind the movie was to knock that bust off the pedestal into the dirt and kick him around for a little while. But then at the end restore him back to the pedestal with maybe a little better idea of why he belonged there. It was kind of one of the intentions behind the film.

STOPPARD: I was going to ask Marc a question, rhetorical almost. How can you resist not saying at that moment that it's also the impulse to show what was below the collar bone and indeed below the waist.

LAUGHTER

NORMAN: Well, this is a public supported -- this is government supported radio.

STOPPARD: Family...

NORMAN: ...family fare.

STOPPARD: OK. Right.

GROSS: They all live below the waist too.

NORMAN: Well no, but Tom's point is well taken. I mean, the notion of showing a Shakespeare that begins from the collar bone and goes down to the feet is kind of novel.

GROSS: Tom Stoppard, I'm wondering what about the Peter O'Toole "Hamlet" transformed your idea of Shakespeare.

STOPPARD: It's energy. It's clarity. The fact that it was a story with it's own momentum. The performance itself, which I found enormously exciting, and the sheer quality of the writing. I mentioned I was a journalist at the time, and this "Hamlet" was only on there for three weeks maximum.

And I saw parts of it five or six times. I used to play truant from some evening job and rush back to catch what was left of O'Toole's "Hamlet" that evening. It was -- it was just a sense of there being now a breakdown of division between high art and theatrical force. The division between what it was that you are supposed to study in school and the thing which was really happening to you as you sat in a theater.

GROSS: Marc Norman, as you say, most people's picture of Shakespeare is that bust of Shakespeare.

NORMAN: That's right.

GROSS: And, you know, the long white hair or powdered wig, whichever it is. He's an older man the way we see him in that pose. And of course in "Shakespeare in Love" there's a cute actor playing Shakespeare. Did you specify in your script "young cute actor?"

NORMAN: No, but obviously he was going to be a young man in love, which is essentially a comic part. I mean, that's a traditionally comic role. The young guy who has a messed up love life. One of the things the picture has done has been established that Shakespeare is a very sexy guy, which was part of the plan.

GROSS: Well, congratulations to you both on the success of your movie. And I want to thank you both very much for talking with us.

NORMAN: Thank you.

STOPPARD: Thank you.

GROSS: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay "Shakespeare and Love," which is nominated for an Academy Award. One of 13 nominations the film has received.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, DC
Guest: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard
High: Screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. The two wrote the screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love" which has been nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay. Norman's other screenwriting credits include "The Aviator" and "Waterworld." Stoppard is also the playwright of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" and "Travesties." His screenwriting credits include "Brazil," "The Empire of the Son," and "Billy Bathgate."
Spec: Entertainment; Movie Industry; Lifestyle; Culture; Marc Norman; Tom Stoppard

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MARCH 02, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 030202NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Kevin Whitehead
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:52

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says every jazz band loves the rhythmic quality known as swing, which pushes the music forward even at slow tempos. Swing is created through small variations where musicians place their accents a little ahead or behind the beat. Kevin says the trouble is folks don't always agree on what swings and what doesn't.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- THELONIOUS MONK PERFORMING)

KEVIN WHITEHEAD, JAZZ CRITIC: The late Thelonious Monk. One musician who redefined what we recognize as swinging rhythm. When Monk came along in the 1940s few jazz fans thought he swung. Nowadays, most every fan knows he does, hearing how he took the tiny hesitations and surges of rhythm that create swing and magnified them and blew them up.

When Monk played with a rhythm section he'd use an overtly swinging bassist and drummer for contrast. But what if a bass player and drummer took the same liberties with time as the pianist? That would sound something like this trio from Boston.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- PANDELIS KARAYORGIS TRIO PERFORMING)

WHITEHEAD: Pandelis Karayorgis on piano. Nate McBride on bass. And Randy Peterson on drums. Their CD, "Heart and Sack," is on the Leo Lab label. The trio's time keeping is so loose sometimes it sounds like each player hears a slightly different tempo in his head. But just when you've given them up for lost, they all land in one place and head in one direction. For a little while anyway.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- PANDELIS KARAYORGIS TRIO PERFORMING "MISS ANN," COMPOSED BY ERIC DOLPHY)

WHITEHEAD: That tune is "Miss Ann" by Eric Dolphy, another musician who knew something about quirky timing. Now there's nothing bad about this. Other musicians who play games with time and rhythm include greats like Earl Hines, bluesman John Lee Hooker, and Bahaman guitarist Joseph Spence.

What I like about Pandelis Karayorgis' trio is their brand of quirky timing walks a tightrope between swinging and not swinging. Although, to some jazz fans it will sound like they're not even in the tent. Listening to them can be like watching the tightrope wobble; thrilling because it's dangerous as they flirt with disaster.

Better to make music that plays for high stakes than to just play it sure and safe.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead is the author of "New Dutch Swing." He reviewed "Heart and Sack" by the Pandelis Karayorgis Trio on the label Leo Lab.

I'm Terry Gross.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, DC
Guest: Kevin Whitehead
High: Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews "Heart and Sack," the new release by the Pandelis Karayorgis Trio.
Spec: Entertainment; Music Industry; Lifestyle; Culture; Pandelis Karayorgis Trio; Kevin Whitehead

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: That tune is "Miss Ann" by Eric Dolphy, another musician who knew something about quirky timing. Now there's nothing bad about this. Other musicians who play games with time and rhythm include greats like Earl Hines, bluesman John Lee Hooker, and Bahaman guitarist Joseph Spence.

What I like about Pandelis Karayorgis' trio is their brand of quirky timing walks a tightrope between swinging and not swinging. Although, to some jazz fans it will sound like they're not even in the tent. Listening to them can be like watching the tightrope wobble; thrilling because it's dangerous as they flirt with disaster.

Better to make music that plays for high stakes than to just play it sure and safe.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead is the author of "New Dutch Swing." He reviewed "Heart and Sack" by the Pandelis Karayorgis Trio on the label Leo Lab.

I'm Terry Gross.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, DC
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.