The Sweeney preproduction team was headquartered at Pinewood Studios, near London, where Burton now lives. But Depp chose to hole up at a West Hollywood recording studio. He felt he had to find the voice — and thereby the character — by making demo recordings on his own. The guy at the mixing board was an old friend named Bruce Witkin, who founded a small label called Unison Music. ''He's a brother,'' says Depp. The two were bandmates in the Kids and had lived together as teenagers in Florida, where Depp grew up.
Like buddies cramming for a test, Depp and Witkin found a groove. ''It was an enormous help and comfort,'' says Depp. ''It meant everything in finding Sweeney.'' The preproduction team, however, was getting antsy. Filming was set to start in February of 2007 and, as of late October in 2006, Depp hadn't sent anyone a sample of his singing. Says producer Richard Zanuck: ''Nobody had heard Johnny's voice. Millions of dollars, committed on an assumption. We all said to one another, 'Johnny is a smart guy. He would never put himself in this position if he didn't think he could do it. He must be able to sing.' But nobody could prove that!'' Finally, on Nov. 2, Burton received a CD with Depp performing ''My Friends,'' a song Sweeney croons to his beloved razors. Burton was elated. ''He was really supportive,'' Depp says. ''It was the reaction I was praying for.''
Just as Depp had unusual freedom to shape his vocals, Burton was given great latitude in dreaming up his extremely gruesome visuals; the studio consented to an R rating from the start, though it would limit the audience. The director saw the picture as an homage to old Universal horror flicks (Frankenstein, The Black Cat), creepy silent-film melodramas (any number of Lon Chaney spine-tinglers), and Hammer horror films (pulpy fare from the '50s and '60s). Both Burton and Depp say there are major nods to Peter Lorre's Mad Love performance in Sweeney. Oh, and that shock of white in Depp's hair? A sign of Todd's trauma — and possibly a nod to Humphrey Bogart's skunk stripe in his lone horror picture, The Return of Dr. X., a Burton favorite. (Plus Depp says he's got a nephew with a white streak.)
Burton felt Sweeney should be deliberately grotesque — a Mario Bava gorefest with ballads. ''It just goes with the story,'' he says of the geysers of plasma. ''I'd seen different Sweeney Todd productions on stage, and when they skimped on the blood, the production lost something. Everything is so internal with Sweeney that [the blood] is like his emotional release. It's more about catharsis than it is a literal thing.'' Audiences may or may not see it so intellectually when the viscera hit the camera lens.
NEXT PAGE: ''Even in a recording studio, wearing a schmatte, she is as beautiful and sexy as they come,'' says Stephen Sondheim of Helena Bonham Carter. ''She knew what she was doing, more than the others.''
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