Transcript www.hollywoodjesus.com

HOLLYWOOD JESUS
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
SYNOPSIS
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
"Hairspray" is originally
based on the 1988 John
Waters comedy about starstruck teenagers on a local
Baltimore dance show. The
new version of the film will
be based on New Line's hit
Broadway adaptation of the
film, which debuted in 2002,
and went on to win eight
Tony Awards including Best
Musical, Best Score, Best
Book and Best Director.
Travolta will play Edna
Turnblad and Queen Latifah
will play Motormouth
Maybelle in the film. Marc
Shaiman and Scott Wittman
will contribute new songs to
their Tony Award winning
score.
Cameos
TRIVIA AND NEWS
John Waters
as "the flasher who lives
next door“
Jerry Stiller
as Mr. Pinky - the owner of
the Hefty Hideaway
Paul Dooley
as Mr. Harriman F. Spritzer the president of UltraClutch Hairspray
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
Ricki Lake
as William Morris talent
agent at Miss Teenage
Hairspray 1963
The kids of the Corny Collins Council, including Zac
Efron (center left) as "Link Larkin", James Marsden
(center) as "Corny Collins", and Brittany Snow (center
right) as "Amber von Tussle"
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
CAST
Nikki Blonsky (center left) stars as "Tracy Turnblad",
Amanda Bynes (center) as "Penny Pingleton", and
Elijah Kelly (center right) as "Seaweed"
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
CAST
Elijah Kelley (left) stars as
"Seaweed J. Stubbs" and Taylor
Parks (right) stars as "Little Inez"
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
CAST
CAST
has been honored twice
with Academy Award®
nominations, the latest
for his riveting portrayal
of a philosophical hitman in Quentin
Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.
He also received BAFTA
and Golden Globe
nominations for this
highly acclaimed role
and was named Best
Actor by the Los
Angeles Film Critics
Association, among
other distinguished
awards.
Nikki Blonsky
Hairspray marks the professional
debut of eighteen-year-old Nikki
Blonsky, who was born and raised in
Long Island, New York. She received
all her dramatic and musical training
at Great Neck South High School,
which is a four-time Grammy
Foundation Signature School.
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
John Travolta
DIRECTOR
ADAM SHANKMAN
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
(Director, Choreographer,
Executive Producer)
Adam Shankman is a master of
comedy yet is still able to
capture the sensitivity of each
story, thus making him one of
the most loved and
commercially successful
filmmakers of his generation.
Shankman produced the
Sandra Bullock film,
Premonition, as well as Step
Up for Walt Disney Studios.
In 1962 Baltimore, "pleasantly plump" teenager Tracy
Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) has only one passion –
dancing. Her dream is to appear on The Corny Collins
Show, Baltimore's hippest dance party on TV. Tracy
seems a natural fit for the show except for the
problem that she doesn’t fit in.
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
Her plus-sized figure has
always set her apart from
the cool crowd, which she
is reminded of by her loving
but overly protective plussized mother, Edna (John
Travolta). That doesn’t stop
Tracy because if there is
one thing she knows, it's
that she was born to dance.
As her father Wilbur
(Christopher Walken) tells
her, "Go for it! You’ve got to
think big to be big."
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
After wowing Corny
Collins (James Marsden)
at her high school
dance, Tracy wins a spot
on his show and
becomes an instant onair sensation, much to
the chagrin of the
show’s reigning
princess, Amber von
Tussle (Brittany Snow),
and her scheming
mother, Velma (Michelle
Pfeiffer), who runs the
WYZT television station.
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
Link
Amber
Even worse for Amber is the fact that it's not just the
audience who loves the new girl in town; Amber's
sweetheart Link Larkin (Zac Efron) seems to be
smitten with Tracy's charms as well. This dance
party gets personal as a bitter feud erupts between
the girls as they compete for the coveted "Miss
Teenage Hairspray 1963" crown.
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
Tracy
EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
Penny
At school, however, a short stint
in detention and raisedeyebrows caused by the
budding relationship between
her best friend Penny Pingleton
(Amanda Bynes) and Seaweed J.
Stubbs (Elijah Kelley), opens
Tracy's eyes to a bigger issue:
racial inequality. Throwing
Seaweed caution to the wind, she leads a
march with Motormouth
Maybelle (Queen Latifah) to fight
for integration and winds up
with an arrest warrant instead.
Tracy is on the run now and literally - goes underground to
Penny’s basement.
Spiritual Connections
Cultural change always begins on the outside and works its
way to the center. Here is a film that celebrates the outsiders
of the hairspray-era. It cheers those who dared to be who they
were before it was “okay”. The critics love it with a 97%
approval. The film will leave you smiling too, as you
optimistically ponder who the outsiders in today’s world
might be. Even Jesus and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were
outsiders and cultural misfits. --David Bruce
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
The story is set in 1962, the dawn of the civil-rights movement,
and interracial couple Penny Pingleton and Seaweed (Amanda
Bynes and Elijah Kelly) are faced with a racist “white only”
world. The prejudices of the day are masterfully embodied in
very nasty, very racist and very thin Velma Von Tussle
(Michelle Pfeiffer) who, as the TV station's manager, has a
major problem with the one "Negro day" allowed each month
on “The Corny Collins Show” (Baltimore's American
Bandstand clone). John Travolta portrays the size 60 mom of
the hefty heroine, high schooler Tracy Turnblad (newcomer
Nikki Blonsky), whose dream is to dance on the Collins show.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
Spiritual Connections
Why does John Travolta play
the role of a woman?
Harris Glenn
Milstead
-a true
outsider
Harris Glenn Milstead (1945 –
1988) was best known for his
drag persona, Divine. He
played the role of Edna
Turnblad in the original, but
died in a month after the film
opened. John Travolta
reprises Divine’s role as
Edna, as a salute to the late
cult icon.
It is another way that this
delightful film celebrates the
outsider.
Spiritual Connections
“To me, the outsider is God, ... If
you take extreme fundamentalist
Muslims, who believe it's sent
down from Allah that destroying
the infidel is their duty, and then if
you take the extreme
fundamentalists on the Christian
right, God got disenfranchised
somewhere in that deal a long,
long time ago. The minute you
start saying 'I'm the only one
that's right,' you have lost it, as
far as I'm concerned.”
--Rodney Crowell, alternative
country musician.
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
HAIRSPRAY
–Is God an‘Outsider’ too?
“For years, I felt miserable about being an outsider, but then I
suddenly embraced it, ... I saw the value of being an outsider.
It was liberating. You didn't have to worry about trying to fit in
or losing your insider status. It also encouraged you to
challenge and provoke the status quo.”
--Alex Kapranos, the guitarist and singer of the Scottish band
Franz Ferdinand.
HOLLYWOOD JESUS
Photo © 2007 New Line Cinema.
Spiritual Connections
BEING COMFORTABLE
AS AN OUTSIDER