[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," we're joined by the co-writers of "Wicked" and "Wicked for Good", Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, to discuss their experience adapting this beloved story for the big screen.

Holzman and Fox deep dive into their process of writing an emotionally grounded story set within the fantastical world of Oz.

- We were always talking about, what can you do in a movie that you can't do in a musical?

We started almost every discussion with that.

So it was a lot about closeups, it was about Elphaba can actually fly.

She can go places, that's crazy.

[Winnie] Right, exactly.

[Dana] We can see her as a baby.

You know, Winnie always talks about like, they wanted to do that on stage, but then you've got this child and you're covering them with this like toxic green paint and you're like, you're here for 10 seconds.

[Winnie] Couldn't do that, but never let go of that dream.

[Dana] But never let go of that dream.

And then there we did it.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [typewriter ding] - Okay, let's do the montage version of the origin of this whole project, you know, how you came into to working on it, but I wanna kind of like fast forward so we can get to this movie.

- So, in the early '60s.

No, I'm kidding.

[all laughing] So basically, Stephen Schwartz, the great Stephen Schwartz, the remarkable artist.

- I already heard somebody sing.

- He's incredible.

- He wanted to, desperately wanted to make a Broadway musical out of the novel, which he was captivated by the essential idea of that novel.

This idea that you don't know the true story of what happened in Oz.

You don't realize that this vilified figure is actually a heroine.

And let's see, let's look at the whole story through her point of view.

So basically he brought me into this, lucky me.

And we opened on Broadway 2003.

We took the, I would say the spirit of the novel.

We took certain key things that we fell in love with from the novel without taking the plot of the novel.

But the spirit of the novel, the novels is a political statement in a lot of ways.

And we always knew that there was going to be a movie unless we were a big failure.

And we were obviously not a big failure because our, because Universal was our main Broadway producer.

Okay so, you know, unless things went very badly indeed, we were going to make a movie at some point.

- But that was an unusual trajectory because Universal had bought the rights to the book to make it into a movie.

And Stephen Schwartz pulled it and said, "No, no, no, let me make it into a musical."

- Begged, begged.

- Which is like, that's not a thing.

- Yes, and the movie had been started, but it was gonna be a non-musical movie.

So he convinced them, he's a very convincing person.

And also Marc Platt, who then had just had just stepped down from being the head of the whole studio and had just opened his office as a independent, you know, as a producer on, you know, affiliated with Universal and whose project it kind of was, I believe.

Marc Platt had been in "Pippin" when he was a kid, you know, in high school.

He was really, really taken with the idea, he'd always wanted to produce a musical on Broadway.

So this is how that part of it came together, you know, so when Jon came in and Jon brought Dana in, that was when we went into hyperdrive.

- Universal booked stages to freak us out.

They were just like, "Well, the stages are booked, we're making the movie."

We're like, "There's no scripts."

They were like, "You better write them."

- You said nine months, right?

Is what you originally got to write them, both of them?

- That's my memory of it.

And at that point, with the help of Jon, we had come to a group decision, including Marc Platt, that it could, it was going to be two movies.

And that really made sense to us.

This was a very hard decision and a very lengthy process of long discussions and thought.

But what made sense to us was we didn't wanna cut any of his score.

In fact, as you can imagine, we wanted to add to the score because what's the fun and the artistic excitement of doing, making it into a movie, if we're not to some extent bringing in what we couldn't do on stage, bringing in more, you know, adding to what we have on stage.

- You know, I wanna get into these specific scenes like that so we can kind of tease out these choices and how you stayed true to such a legacy project.

But I'm curious from both of your perspectives of how you ended up meeting the story where it was, like, Winnie sitting with this for over two decades.

You know, you and I talked about this concept of a beginner's mind.

And then Dana, how you come and meet that with a fresh perspective.

You know, how you kind of, whatever research you do or prep that you do to honor the legacy.

- Okay, so just in terms of beginner's mind, and that's a zen term, probably everyone knows it, the field-- - Hot in Hollywood.

- Just the idea of going to an innocent place within yourself where you don't know everything, where in fact you don't know anything.

- Winnie has to go to that place in her mind.

I'm there.

I just, that's where I live.

- That's a beautiful trade, a beautiful trade.

No, for me it was a lot of my, what I considered my job on these movies was to go there and to let myself start again and not be so sure, well this has to happen and this has to happen.

And really to entertain the idea that, let me, let me, I never use this term 'cause I don't know very much about cars, but let me kick all the tires and let me try to understand within myself that I don't really know what, I don't know what these movies are.

So I'm not coming in with a whole lot of baggage of like, "Well, we always did it this way."

And so then when things are, for instance, opened up, is one way to say it, or just rethought, reimagined, I'm really, I can really be there with everyone else and I'm not clinging, you know, 'cause that's part for me of how I wanna be as a collaborator.

I think part of Stephen's passion originally and why he wanted so much to convince Marc Platt to make it a musical is, you know, part of it is he obviously writes musicals, but part of it is, you know, that movie which, that 1939 movie, which so influenced us as children and, you know, influenced, if I dare say the artists we would become, you know, the storytellers we would become, that movie is a musical.

So it's like the idea of going to Oz and it's not a musical seemed diminished.

[typewriter ding] - Talk more about that legacy.

You know, how you pulled all of that up from the '30s, from the play, from, you know, the iterations that you had with the screenplays you were working on using legacy as like an anchor.

- We were always talking about what can you do in a movie that you can't do in a musical.

We started almost every discussion with that.

So it was a lot about closeups, it was about Elphaba but can actually fly.

She can go places.

That's crazy.

- Right, exactly.

- We can see her as a baby.

You know, Winnie always talks about like, they wanted to do that on stage, but then you've got this child and you're covering them with this like toxic green paint and you're like, you're here for 10 seconds.

[Winnie] Couldn't do that, but never let go of that dream.

- But never let go of that dream.

And then there we did it and then we got to do it.

- It's a deeper way of knowing her if you see her as a child.

Also, we didn't have that much time to set up the sister's relationship.

- There was this idea of you just desperately wanted to see little Nessa's hand and the little green hand, like baby hands.

And we knew we needed that.

And we thought if you see that, like you're on board with these people for the rest of their relationship and you care so deeply and when the stuff starts to go bad, it's like, but the hands, the little hands.

- And that's what we didn't have on stage.

- And you couldn't have that on stage.

- Exactly, once you're bringing in a scene from their childhood, then it's like, how can you get the most out of that scene as Dana's saying.

So another most that we wanted was how can we set up that, how much the Wizard means to her?

Because one of the most emotional things in the show is that she's ultimately betrayed by this figure who she genuinely adored and looked up to as a father figure.

As a father figure.

Because her own father was so rejecting.

So, again, this is kind of, this is kind of sketched in on stage and this was our opportunity.

[Elphaba] This is all about our wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Do you know how we got here?

[Nessa] Nope.

- From the sky, in a balloon, see?

Then he built a city made of emeralds because he loves emeralds even though, they're green.

- So the pop-up book, the idea was how can we really make a moment where you feel, where you feel her connection to that Wizard and how much she thinks about him, what she's dreaming of for him, so that it's not, you know, we do that on stage with "The Wizard and I,I the song, which is, you know, more than wonderful obviously, but... but this is a movie.

So how can we visually, I think I can safely say Jon just made so much of that pop-up book.

- We had it in the script and they shot it.

I don't remember if it was in the movie, you can tell me.

- Yeah.

[Erin] It came down to that and something bad and they went something bad.

- Yeah, when they go to Emerald City.

- When they go to Emerald City - She sees the book again as an adult.

- She sees the pop-up book.

- I wanna talk a little bit about Jon and these differences from the play to the film.

I love that you brought up the pop-up book.

And then I think also one of the big first differences I saw was the arrival to Shiz, which, you know, you're coming in on this water.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ - Here's how Jon worked, I think, I mean, I'm gonna try to understand.

Stephen and I wanted to start the movie, what we called the scene of the crime.

[Glinda] The direct result of a bucket of water thrown by a female child.

- Like you're omnisciently in that castle and you're seeing that something, pardon me, but something bad happened there and there's a puddle of water.

[Glinda] The Wicked Witch of the West is dead.

- 'Cause that's how the Witch is killed in, you know, in that famous movie, she's killed by a bucket of water thrown by a female child.

So it's-- - Spoiler alert.

- So it's a murder scene, basically.

So we always knew we wanted to start the movie there.

So Jon jumps off from that, that we want, we wanted to have this puddle of water.

- I think what Jon does in his brain is he starts to get all these images.

I don't wanna speak for him.

- Yeah.

- But I have worked with him a bunch and he gets images in his head and they start to become ideas.

But then he loves the collaborative process.

- He expand on them.

- And then-- - Yeah.

- So I think with the water, one of the things that started happening is in our exploration of, I was sort of the person in the group who would ask these questions.

- That was needed.

That was needed.

- Where I'd be like, "No, no can, like what are her powers?"

And they'd be like, "Oh, you know, 'cause of the thing."

And I'd be like, "But can you say the words, what are her powers?

Can she only fly?"

"No, she can also do spells."

Okay, but only if she has the Grimmerie?"

"Yes."

"Okay, got it."

Like, it was like a lot of weird stuff like that, that was very specific.

Because when you're doing a movie, you have to world build in a way where you know every single answer.

You don't necessarily have to say it in the movie, but as the writer, you have to know it so that you know what the rules of the world are that you're working with.

And so I think one of our big discoveries was this idea that we got excited about when Elphaba was born, that all these objects would go shooting up into the-- - Right - Ceiling.

And that was when it clicked for Jon that like, the whole thing for her was about gravity and about the idea that gravity was always weird around Elphaba.

Well what if we turn the water upside down?

And what if it's dripping and you don't know that it's upside down at first - And you don't even know what that is?

What is that?

- And you don't know what it is.

- So it starts with a mystery of like, "What am I looking at?"

- What am I even looking at?

- And that's thematic because the whole idea of "Wicked" starting from our musical, starting from Gregory's novel is what you think you have seen, there's more to it.

What you're looking at, what if you looked at it from another angle in a fresh way with new eyes?

- And that's classic Jon of like, we sort of, you had this idea about the water puddle.

- And that, I mean, to me, see, I didn't think of that in all those iterations earlier before you came in, I was imagining them coming by train to Shiz.

But the idea that they arrived by water, that is so brilliant because of what we were talking about.

- It's on the surface versus what's under the surface.

- It's what's under the surface.

And also water in Jungian psychology and maybe in other psychologies, represents the subconscious and a sort of a dream-like state.

Like it's not your, it's not naturalism, it's not ordinary life anymore.

So if we get to Shiz by water, we're going to another realm.

And that's how we enter the whole movie, really.

- I went back and looked at the play.

- Yeah, it's very close.

- It's like word for word.

- It basically is.

- With like the filmic rendering.

- Right, exactly.

- I wanna point to the scene in particular because of one of these like legacy points and themes of secrets versus truth.

And when you reminded me, you know, the original artwork was, you know?

- The poster.

- Yeah, the poster of telling a secret.

In this bonding scene, you have first Glinda saying, "I can keep a secret."

You know, when she's asking her about the-- - Well, when they're first in the dorm room together.

- Right.

- How did you do it?

Tell me please, I can keep a secret.

Fine.

Be that way.

But it really is rather selfish on your part.

You know, I asked really nicely and I saved you the whole- - I don't know, I've never known.

[glass shatters] [Glinda gasps] [gentle music] There, enjoy the air.

- That first dorm room scene doesn't exist on stage.

That's not in the stage musical.

And that's an example of something that where we had such a luxury of time since we knew we were gonna divide the story and do two, we knew we had time to set them up a little more.

So in other words, the fact that, well, we're skipping over a big hunk, which is that obviously if you know the show, the way that Elphaba gets into Shiz, the fact that it's tied to Morrible and that that's the start of their relationship in a deeper way is, I mean-- - Morrible was kind of a bigger change I think too.

- Yeah.

- Because we, you know, we wanted to make sure people-- - We thought-- - Felt like she was a mother figure.

- Yes.

- Again, because then of course the betrayal is so much more painful if you don't know right away that she's evil and you kind of think, "Oh, she's the only one that actually understands Elphaba for real."

- And you.

Come with me.

- Of course.

- Not you.

You.

[dramatic music] I would like to teach you privately and take no other students.

- That was a hard leap because you know, you know that the audience of the play knows that that's not true.

So we were like-- - Right, exactly.

- Oh wow, we're gonna like retrain their brains and really-- - Let's be convincing.

- Yeah, like really try to convince them.

- And also-- - That maybe this time she's good.

- Yes, exactly.

And you know that, you know, and you alone know, Dana, how many versions we did of that scene.

I mean, 'cause in other words, we knew we wanted it to be different in this way that we were gonna, we were going to make more of Morrible relating and Elphaba relating to Morrible, Morrible relating to Elphaba.

We wanted to do, we wanted it to be different than it is on stage.

But yet it has to end up the same way where there, where they're pushed together as roommates.

♪ There's been some confusion for, you see, my roommate is ♪ ♪ Unusually ♪ ♪ And exceedingly peculiar ♪ ♪ And altogether quite impossible to describe ♪ - Blonde.

[dramatic music] ♪ What is this feeling, so sudden and new ♪ ♪ I felt the moment I laid eyes on you ♪ ♪ My pulse is rushing ♪ ♪ My head is reeling ♪ ♪ Yeah, well, my face is flushing ♪ ♪ What is this feeling, fervid as a flame ♪ ♪ Does it have a name ♪ ♪ Yes ♪ ♪ Loathing ♪ ♪ Unadulterated loathing ♪ - The fact that they're college roommates is in Gregory's novel.

It's one of the jewels that Stephen and I plucked from Gregory's novel.

And you know, it's just, you know, that was a brilliant idea.

The fact that they're college roommates.

But in the novel, it's a different story and it's a different relationship.

They don't really go on to become friends.

[typewriter ding] - Just the scene where we had to get them in, we had to establish Nessarose and Elphaba as adults.

We had to meet Elphaba as an adult.

We had to establish Morrible's relationship with Elphaba.

We had to show that Shiz was a real place, do world building there.

- And even a little of the animal story.

- There's so much source material.

And I think maybe there's a misconception that you can just easily translate this.

But I mean, from the creative process you were doing so much like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

- It was very, very-- Yeah, it was very difficult and it was all very intentional.

And then I think in the first movie in particular, it seemed easy after the fact.

It's sort of like, "Yeah, they did the play.

It was great."

And we were like, we were like, "I got hives, I got an autoimmune disease and I'm so tired."

But like, sure it's the play.

- Well because-- - But I think the second-- - It holds true to the spirit of the play.

[gentle music] [Dana] We were on Zoom, but we had the little index cards, digitally.

And then Jon started doing this thing where he created these digital Post-it notes.

One he set in pink and the other set in green.

And next to every single scene, the pink card was about what Glinda was experiencing emotionally.

And the green card was about what Elphaba was experiencing emotionally.

And I will never do a movie again without doing that.

Because you should, in every single scene, you should be able to say to yourself, what is this person going through emotionally?

Because structure is nothing, if not the emotional journey of the characters.

That's literally all structure is, don't ever let anyone tell you it's math or it's like any kind of architecture.

It's not, it's psychology and emotion, that's it.

- And the choices they make.

- And the choices they make because of their emotion- - Out of the emotion.

- Yeah, outta their emotion.

- Exactly.

[typewriter ding] - Your big climax and you've alluded to this already, like all of the things that are happening with something bad, moving into Madame Morrible, who's almost this maternal figure, you know, the paternal figure in the Wizard.

- Yes.

- And then coming and having Elphaba get to be offered everything that she's ever wanted.

- You have no real power.

- Exactly.

That's why I need you.

- Think of your future, dearie.

- Stay back.

- Elphie, listen to them.

Please.

- Good advice young lady.

Listen, Elphaba if you can pull this off first crack outta the box.

Oh.

Oh my golly.

I can't even imagine.

And I meant every word about you having a home here.

It's gonna be you and me, and hey, if it'd make you happy, possibly your friend.

- Really?

- Why not?

- I appreciated how in the film that got super slowed down, and we gotta sit with her.

- Yeah, and I remember him saying to us, let's-- - Slow way down, - take even more time.

Because I felt it was already slowed down, but he was saying even more time, even more time.

And that was all to get inside of her.

And he wanted to just like see, you know, see, absolutely be able to show the moment when it's dawning on her, how betrayed she's been.

And he wanted her, he wanted to be inside the moments when she's realizing, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, I can't go along with this.

I can't go along with this."

And it's like a growing, growing, almost like a bad dream-- - Storm inside.

- Yeah, storm is a good word.

- And this theme of home comes up here too.

- Yeah, home.

In other words, what you just said before, Morrible's become the mother figure.

He's always been a father figure to her.

And Morrible has become that.

So that naturally is gonna lead your mind to thinking, so if she stayed with them, she would be home.

Like that would be a form of a home.

One that she never had since her mother died when Nessa was born and her father was so rejecting.

- And I think so many of us, we think like, "I might take that deal," you know?

Like if I had to give up just a little bit, be a little unethical or a little bit morally not who I am, but I get a home and I get someone to care about me and a dad who loves me.

- And you can justify it, yeah.

- You could really justify it yourself.

- You justify it because for, I mean, this leads us a little bit into the second movie, obviously, but for Glinda, you know, this is what she's always wanted too, big time.

And in her mind, she's going to be able to do it and still be a good person.

You know, I can do this.

And who among us, you know, hasn't been there where you think, "But it's me.

You know, it's me.

I can handle these people.

I can still be a good person.

I know right from wrong.

I'm gonna be okay.

I mean, this doesn't have to be as bad as it might look."

The story of "Wicked", the story we're telling is the same story that we started writing in the late '90s that-- - But that it's about are you going to find the courage inside you to stand up and do what's right, even if it costs you a lot.

- Right.

- I guess that's just something that you have to ask over and over throughout history.

Because, you know, no one wants to have to answer that question.

- Right.

- So circumstances have to force you to ask yourself that question.

- Well said, well said.

[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching "On Wicked: A Conversation With Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project, that also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittcliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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