BROADWAY MUSICAL DIRECTOR RECORDS SONGS LIVE

Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark has broken Broadway Box Office records for a single week, and says on stage he leaves the musician part of himself behind.

Tony award winning The Lion King director Julie Taymor brought her Broadway musical chops to the big screen in Across The Universe reinterpreting The Beatles music as the soundtrack to the story of young love amongst the turmoil of the 60s.

Julie says ninety percent of the music was shot live on location in New York City and Liverpool instead of lip synching to capture the reality in the acting that you can’t get in a studio recording.

“The thing that we really wanted to try and do was as much live singing as possible because people are used to music videos and all of that looping, all of that dubbing. We want this to feel like they are singing in those locations and they are.”

Julie worked with composer Elliot Goldenthal to cast actors who would convey emotions through song. Evan Rachel Wood as Lucy is an accomplished actress but more importantly a self-taught singer who became obsessed with musicals after seeing David Bowie’s Labyrinthe. Jim Sturgess as Jude had just left the rock band he played with in London when he got the call to audition and just showed up guitar in hand, winning the role.

“We didn’t want musical theater voices and we didn’t want popular voices so Elliot in particular, Elliot were very keen on how, not too much vibrato, what kind of voices. Jim just fits in right away. Jim’s been in a rock band, he’s an actor. Jim and Evan both did both and they’re the two main leads. And Jim just sings those songs with such an incredible ease you just feel that the character is talking to you.”

Julie is going back to the Broadway boards working on a musical of Spider-Man with music courtesy of U2’s Bono and The Edge. Across The Universe is currently playing in theaters.