Ever since Sir James M. Barrie`s classic play hit the boards at the Duke of York`s Theater in London in 1904, audiences who believe in fairies have been clapping their hands.
Reincarnations of ”Peter Pan” have run from the 1924 silent film that starred Betty Bronson to Disney`s 1953 animated version to the stage performances of, among others, Maude Adams, Gladys Cooper, Glynis Johns, Margaret Lockwood, Eva Le Gallienne, Mary Martin, Jean Arthur, Sandy Duncan, Cathy Rigby and even Veronica Lake.
Unknown but to a few, there was also the version Stuart Gordon staged in the late `60s while a senior at the University of Wisconsin that contained, among other things, the flight to Neverland portrayed through a light show projected onto the dancing bodies of seven naked coeds.
”The cops busted us for that,” the now Hollywood filmmaker told this writer awhile back. ”We also changed the persona so that Peter and the Lost Boys were hippies and Yippies, Wendy and Michael and John were suburban kids, Captain Hook was the mayor and the pirates were the police. And when they flew off to Neverland, the way they did it was by dropping LSD. So we didn`t need any harnesses or wires.”
Director Steven Spielberg doesn`t know about the Madison vehicle, but some time ago he became preoccupied with another off-center version-this one juxtaposing, uh, Wall Street and Neverland. The result is ”Hook,” a TriStar production that reportedly started out with a $40-million budget and has ballooned to $70 million, with 7 or 8 of that reputedly going for the sets alone.
Skirting the remake track, the movie presents the premise that darling little Wendy (Maggie Smith) is now 92 years old, and that Peter Pan (Robin Williams) has grown up and turned into Peter Banning, a 39-going-on-40-year-old workaholic merger-and-acquisitions lawyer with a wife and two kids, who are kidnapped by his old nemesis, Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). Also along for the ride is a cracking-wise, 7-inch-tall Tinkerbell (a combination of special effects and Julia Roberts).
No question the script has a contemporary feel. Among other things, the Lost Boys get into a food fight, and Peter Banning is afraid of heights and has a fear of flying.
The entire film industry, which has been in the financial dumpster since the summer, is hoping that ”Hook” will score as this season`s cinematic savior. But, as with any gorilla-size motion picture, there have been the inevitable reports and rumors, from the fact that the script has gone through numerous rewrites to the hearsay that Ms. Roberts tossed shoes around the set and became known to crew members as ”Tinkerhell.” And, as with any movie in which Hoffman stars, there were stories about how the ultimate noodler tried to take over the direction by demanding multiple retakes.
Then there is the matter that Spielberg-who once gave the world ”E.T.”
and ”Raiders of the Lost Ark”-more recently has given it the less-than-dazzling ”Empire of the Sun” and ”Always.”
Shot on the sound stages at both the Culver and Sony (formerly MGM, Lorimar and Columbia) Studios-including the one used for ”The Wizard of Oz”-”Hook” took close to five months to shoot. ”It would have been prohibitively expensive to shoot both on location and in the studio,” says producer Kathleen Kennedy. ”So we made the decision to keep everything on stage, which gave Steven a lot of control so that he could commit to a style.”
Asked if the film taps into the darker side of the ”Peter Pan”
mythology, she laughs. ”That`s not Steven. He doesn`t make dark movies. Peter Banning is your fairly typical overachiever who`s lost touch with his children. It`s not somebody in some horribly dysfunctional family facing his demons. . . . Well, yes, he does work on Wall Street.”
Spielberg himself was once quoted as saying that he is Peter Pan. ”I`ve always felt that I was like the boy who wouldn`t grow up,” he expands in a telephone interview. ”But I was more sensible than Peter because I knew that there`s a certain kind of fun you have to stop having when you assume a responsible place in the family. In that sense, I`m not Peter Pan. But in the sense that I have a real affinity for my childhood, and some of my best memories are about my childhood, and I can relate to children through my memories as a child, yeah, in that sense I`m Peter Pan.
”A lot of the criticism that`s come down on me has been: When am I going to grow up? When am I going to start making serious movies? My feeling is that the world is full of serious filmmakers. I enjoy the kinds of films I`ve been making, and even when I`ve attempted to make a serious film, there`s a kind of, well, odor that comes from me that`s unavoidable, that`s going to clash a bit with `The Color Purple.` Inevitably, there`s going to be a sweetness to the harshness when you compare it to the novel. It`s just who I am. It took me a while to realize that I`m never going to be as good a director as Dustin Hoffman is a character actor-meaning that I`m not going to be able to change my style as quickly and painlessly as Dustin can. And I envy him for that talent.”
The about-to-be-44-year-old director says that the Peter Banning character in ”Hook” has ”a total lack of imagination, absolutely no sense of who he was and, to add insult to injury, has no sense of humor. We really tried to stack the deck against him so that his character curve would be monstrous. He`s very representative of a lot of people today who race headlong into the future, nodding hello and goodbye to their families. I`m part of a generation that is extremely motivated by career, and I`ve caught myself in the unenviable position of being Peter Banning from time to time. I`ve seen myself overworked, and not spending enough time at home and I got a couple of good lessons from making the movie.
”People are always asking me, `Gee, did you typecast Robin Williams because he`s kind of like Peter Pan in real life? ` I tell them, `Yeah, but look at the first 40 minutes of the film when he`s playing a Type A, uptight arbitrager.”`
”It was difficult to play that part in that I`d try stuff and they`d say, `That`s wonderful, but it`s too imaginative, too playful,”` says Williams (who begins his phone interview by asking, ”Hello? Bulgaria?” and then slips in and outs of various accents, from Cockney to Nazi). ”I mean, Peter Banning is an anal, disconnected, very successful stiff who is all pretense and not a lot of subtext because basically he`s denied who and what he was, for reasons I can`t go into or I`ll blow the whole story.
”Actually, I based Banning on different role models, including my father. He was a management consultant in the automobile business, traveling all over the Midwest, and he worked his ass off and wished he could spend more time with his family. One of the points of the movie is that the time when you are raising kids is precious. Don`t force them to grow up in this rapid world: `Dammit, you`re 6, get a job. Get ready to go to a good college.` (Squeaky voice.) `But, Dad, I`m in daycare.`
”Now, when I move on as Peter Pan, there`s charm, but there`s also the lethal aspect. He likes killing. He killed 14 men, and his crowing is not so much a sweet noise as a battle cry. He`s cute and innocent, but he`s also totally self-involved. Which is a part of not growing up.
”The flying was painful, but fun. With that harness, they cinch you in there, and it cuts off your blood in many different areas, some of them more vital than others. I did most of it, except for the flips. I`m just not flexible enough. They had a great stunt man. I would have to do 60 years of yoga to get to that point. I did do all my own swordplay, which I loved. It was choreogrpahed, and we`d show Steven something and he`d say, `Keep that piece, lose that, keep that . . . .` It was like Legos.”
Spielberg says he wanted the character of Captain Hook to be scary. ”I certainly didn`t want him to be a fop, although Dustin and I did want to use some of Charles II in his character. He`s a class act, but he`s also a tough guy. I mean, he wants to kill Peter Pan, not spank him. Dustin assumed the role with glee; he`s both frightening and funny. The thing he really enjoyed the most in the story was Hook`s being a better father to Peter`s kids than Peter ever was. He becomes Hook the parent.”
As to the Hoffman-interference allegations: ”There were two reshoots on the movie, both of which I inaugurated. I said, `Dustin, you found your character on Thursday. I`d like to go back and reshoot on Monday.` He`s one of the most cooperative actors I`ve ever worked with, so the ugly rumors weren`t true. He admits he`s a perfectionist who just wants to be heard; he also says the director has the last word. Actually, we did a lot more takes in this movie than my usual average-5 to 7-because initially we were searching for who these characters were. So we started out with 20 or 25 takes, and eventually dropped down to normal.”
He adds that the Julia Roberts rumors were also false. ”My theory is that the press turned on her because her marrige to Kiefer (Sutherland) was canceled. She took it very personally, and it brought us all down for a while. Julia is one of the best actresses in this country, as she proved in `Dying Young.` She`s also only 23 years-a young 23, not a wise, sage 23. I think when she gets a few more scars, more bumps, she`s going to be fine.” (”It`s just so cruel,” adds producer Kenndy. ”I don`t know where things like her throwing shoes come from. Plus, most of the time during the filming, she was hanging on a wire.”)
