Producing powerhouse Harvey Weinstein joined TheWrap editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman on Tuesday to discuss his latest Oscar hopeful, the Rob Marshall-directed musical "Nine."
The Weinstein Company's co-chairman kicked off TheWrap's post-screening Q&A by joking about how he makes sure to get to P.F. Chang's when he's on the West Coast, since they don't have them in New York.
An audience member shouted out that there's one in White Plains, New York, which he was glad to hear.
“I'm going to get Nora Ephron to make a movie about them,” he joked. “'P.F. and Chang.'”
Asked if there would be a part for “Nine's” Penelope Cruz, he deadpanned, “She's gonna play Chang.”
Getting down to business, Weinstein admitted, “I never really liked musicals until I saw how cynical Bob Fosse was" with "Chicago," which the producer said he saw "as a kid, in 1970-something, "and I said, 'Wow, if you can do a musical with this kind of attitude, this is the kind of thing I want to do.'”
Weinstein first collaborated with Marshall on the movie version of "Chicago," which won six Oscars.
"After Rob did 'Memoirs of a Geisha,'" Weinstein continued, "I wanted to do another musical with him. I kept getting offered different things, like 'Rent,' all sorts of things, but I didn't want to do anything without Rob, because I wanted to try to challenge both of us.
"Rob and I talked about doing 'Kiss of the Spider Woman,' which was a musical Kander & Ebb did. We met with Arthur Laurents to maybe remake 'Gypsy.' We talked to him, told him our ideas -- he said he didn't like any of them. It was great to sit there with Rob Marshall after he'd won the Oscar and have Arthur Laurents tell us that we were absolutely wrong about everything. It's a good humbling experience, trust me.
"And then we both said, 'Let's do "Nine,"' because it was Italian, it was about our industry. But it's just something that's a different kind of musical, I hope it's a different kind of musical."
Asked how the film was able to attract its big-name cast, Weinstein said simply, "First of all, when you say Rob Marshall is making a musical, a lot of people are interested. Everybody in the world really came out and auditioned for the film."
And he really meant auditioned -- including Oscar winners Cruz and "La Vie en Rose's" Marion Cotillard.
"I introduced Marion, who I had known before she did Piaf, to Rob. And at one point she was going to do the Judi Dench part. That was originally written as a French producer, so we were going to make it younger and have Marion do that," he said. "But there was just something so indescribably amazing about her, so we asked her to audition for Luisa.
"And Penelope Cruz, I've known her since her first movie, 'All the Pretty Horses,' which we did.
