Home
Spoken like a true intellectual--a rare, suspect breed in the movie business but not in the world of experimental theater, where Taymor honed her craft. Born and raised in Newton, Mass., she studied mime in Europe before she finished high school. She spent four years in Indonesia after college, fusing traditional puppeteering techniques with her own bold ideas. From the late '70s through the mid-'90s, she racked up a formidable resume of arresting work in nonprofit theater (including a 1994 production of Titus, which she expanded on for the movie version), opera (Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, which you may have caught on PBS), and the occasional short film, including American Playhouse's Fool's Fire, a creepy adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Hop-Frog." Along the way she met her significant other, Elliot Goldenthal, the classical and movie-score composer who has provided music for many of her projects, including Titus. Then came Lion King. The multiple Tony awards and huge box office that followed transformed her from a cult figure to a brand name.
"She's more than a designer," says Disney's president of theatrical productions and feature animation, Thomas Schumacher, who hired her for the show. "She's an artist who thinks in terms of ideas and emotions first, before she creates any images to express them. They're not just pretty pictures. They make dramatic sense because she works from the inside out."
To get Titus made, Taymor also had to work from the bottom up. No studio wanted to spend more than $10 million to make it. "To finance it would have been an extraordinarily risky venture," says Lindsay Law, former president of Fox Searchlight Pictures (he departed in late January to start his own production company). Searchlight, which had its biggest grosser to date in the feel-good comedy The Full Monty ($50 million), passed on a chance to produce Titus--though the Fox subsidiary later picked up U.S. distribution rights. "Julie's vision does not come inexpensively," Law explains. "Her movie doesn't cost what it looks like, but it's still higher than we normally spend."
Taymor turned to an independent production company to raise the $15 million she felt she needed to shoot on location in Italy and Croatia with renowned production designer Dante Ferretti (Kundun, Meet Joe Black) and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli (Single White Female). She found a partner in Jody Patton, investor Paul Allen's sister, at Clear Blue Sky Productions. But while the live-action shoot wrapped a year ago at about $17 million, the budget jumped to $25 million by the time the movie's load of digital special effects were completed last fall--notably some very expensive trick work to turn the hands of Titus' daughter, Lavinia, into two bundles of twigs (don't ask us to spoil the story by explaining why). "Not a simple effect," says Taymor of the handiwork.
Given its opulence, most Oscar handicappers think Titus has at least some chance of nominations in the art direction and costume categories. But to Taymor's "absolute shock," nobody seems to be talking up Hopkins or Lange as likely Best Actor or Best Actress candidates. "They knew this would happen, but I didn't," says the director. "Both Anthony and Jessica said when we were shooting, 'You know, we're not gonna be news.' The whole Hollywood thing, it's so much based on new faces, new buzz. It's a terribly fickle process."
