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FF: Thank you for giving us Christopher Walken dancing to Delilah. That's got to go down as one of the top ten cinema moments of all time!

John Turturro: *laughs* Really? That's fantastic!

FF: I understand there's an interesting story behind the whole conception of this film?

JT: Yeah, it started as I was practicing my typing for Barton Fink. I thought maybe I should be writing some things when they were filming me. Just so I had things I was thinking about besides all my research and besides the scene. I had a lot of time to prepare for it. I had read so many books about the turn of the century and about how I would have grown up and writers and I thought it would be good for me to be actually working on stuff. And so I worked on this, and other stuff too. I would write ideas down, the title I wrote, some of the first scene.

I thought, "Wow, this is interesting, but I'll never do it." This was before I directed Mac. I thought, "Maybe someday I'll revisit it." When I did Illuminata, my second film, I did a little dance sequence where the guy is fantasising that all these people are celebrating his play and chanting his name. When I did that I was like, "Wow, that's exactly the way I think."

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 I grew up in a small house and there was no privacy. You put on music to kind-of escape your surroundings or fantasise or to help articulate the way you felt. I started telling the story of this film to one of the producers at Green Street Film while I was editing it. They were just dying laughing so I thought maybe it was worth exploring. I kept putting things aside and a couple of years later I'd done five movies, including O, Brother so I said, "I'm going to take off for this year, stay home and not work." I gathered my notes after a couple of months. I knew I had a beginning and an end and I just laid down the first act.

FF: Was it an easy write?

JT: It basically wrote itself. The only roles I had written were for Chris [Walken] and Aida [Turturro]. And besides Man Without Love and A Girl That I Married was actually Delilah. I really wanted to make that work.

But I just listened to music and whatever songs I felt were most appropriate I put in. Also songs I felt had the right... not guttural, but... Janis Joplin, for example, has something in common with, you know, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Jones, James Brown. There's something that they share. Besides raspy voices! *laughs* There's a muscularity to it, a visceral quality to the singing.

Actually, while I was writing it I listened to a lot of saxophone and Ella Fitzgerald. She was like the subtext of the film. She's not in it, but she sings all of these torch songs.

FF: You mentioned you always used to think in music growing up - so there's a lot from your own experience living in Queens?

JT: The house, the plane, the music. I didn't grow up with sisters, I grew up with brothers. But a lot of people, wherever they were from, I grew up around - my first neighbours were from Liverpool - people from Ireland, Scotland, Italy. There were a lot of different people around us. And in those days men got away with a lot more. The dynamics of that were a very common thing. I used to grow up listening to the women. And later on I learned that a lot of them were alive, they were all widows. The men were dead. I was going to make a documentary about these five women in Queens including my mother.

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Filmmaker: You must be happy that Romance & Cigarettes is getting a U.S. release after it was in the wilderness for a few years.

Turturro: Yeah. I feel like I've been flying without an air traffic controller and I've finally been brought in. [laughs] Life is bizarre, so what else is new?

Filmmaker: I believe your problems began when Sony executives screened the film, and just didn't get it.

Turturro: They didn't see it with an audience, and for a movie like this, that's an impossibility. If it had a brand name on it, like “A Pedro Almodovar Film,” they would have said O.K. But the truth of the situation with this movie is that when you put it in a room it plays like gangbusters. The whole idea is that it's different, and that was the calling card to get people to see it. I'm not angry about [Sony's reaction], but it does make you scratch your head a bit when people who buy films don't think they need to see it with a group.

Filmmaker: Where did your inspiration came from for this film? It's not what we expect from you as a director.

Turturro: To me, the film is very much me. [laughs] It's probably more me than anything I've ever done. There's a real nakedness to it, and I promised myself I'd be uninhibited as much as I possibly could be [laughs], and try to get everyone else to do that. There are things in life that you witness that can be painful or harsh, but when you digest them you say, “Wow, there's something universal there.” My idea was to put that into a form that was entertaining. I think if you're laughing at something, you're open, and you could also be very moved.

Filmmaker: What was your musical background growing up?

Turturro: I grew up in a very small house which was bursting with music. My mother was a very good singer, and her brothers were jazz musicians and she sang with them for a while, and my older brother's a big musician. We just had tons and tons of music in our house. To people of modest means, music is a powerful form of transportation to go to the realms of fantasy.

Filmmaker: What were your influences while you were conceiving the idea for the film?

Turturro: I was told about Dennis Potter, whose work I knew about but never had seen. I saw a little bit of his stuff, and I said, “Wow, he's really onto something!” I didn't want to do it exactly that way so I didn't watch too much, but I read some interviews with him and was very touched by some of the things he said. Then someone gave me a Charles Bukowski book they wanted me to adapt called Women. I read that and I was laughing because it was the dirtiest.... It would be rated Triple X!

Filmmaker: I've read Women, and it would definitely be difficult to adapt.

Turturro: It would be problematic to do it, but it reminded me of people — like my father, who was a builder — and I liked that postman, garbageman poetry. It reminded me of popular music. So I sat on [those ideas] for about ten years, and then one day said, “There's something here.” I took a year off, I wrote it, I took it to Joel and Ethan [Coen] and they really liked it. They really like the film and are proud of it, and so am I.

Filmmaker: In the film, you really embrace the surreal aspects of musicals, even more than the classic Hollywood model, and then juxtapose that with very realistic elements.

Turturro: Musicals are surreal, and they were popular during the Depression, when people were so poor. This movie is a love story, and music is how most people get through the day, even very successful people. I think it's a great form. In early Greek plays, they used song and a chorus and dance, and they were serious plays.

Filmmaker: How did you bring together such a fantastic cast?

Turturro: I wanted people who were very grounded and not cerebral actors, and I didn't want people who were so great musically. I wanted really earthy people, and the Coens recommended that I check out James [Gandolfini]. I thought he was a little young at first, but he did a reading with us and he was brilliant. I always thought of Kate [Winslet], because Kate is from a working class family and she was so uninhibited in that strange Jane Campion movie, Holy Smoke. I needed someone who could play this girl and show you her crude side but also her tender side. I don't see how her performance could be better.

Filmmaker: How did the cast respond to the script?

Turturro: Everyone read it, and everyone liked it. We rehearsed it like a play: we did acting exercises, we did all kinds of things to make people feel foolish and relax with each other, because you can't achieve that by being professionals — you've got to get into the realm of the amateur.

Filmmaker: How easy was it to get the cast to sing?

Turturro: Well, Kate sings. I sent them all to singing lessons, and I figured that they would all sing along, like you would sing along with the radio. James was a little nervous, but James actually has a very nice voice. Everyone just embraced it. We had two choreographers and then I would come in and rechoreograph it because I wanted it to be more like regular movements and not Broadway choreography. I looked at that one big song that Ann-Margret had in Tommy, and that was an inspiration. Ann-Margret was an inspiration for Kate's whole look — and she was someone I had a thing for when I was a kid.

Filmmaker: What was it like working with Christopher Walken? He's not only a great actor, but also a very talented dancer.

Turturro: Chris is a huge talent. Now we think of him in a more eccentric way, but he's also done tremendous stage work, where he's moving and emotional in things. I told him I would love to make a movie with him about a clown, and he goes, “Oh, yeah. Clowns are scary.” He's a lovely guy and I love working with him. He would say, “I don't want the choreographer to tell me things.” I said, “OK, do you want to try stuff?” He said, “No, you do it and then I'll watch you. If I like what you do, I'll steal it from you.” He made me dance, and he'd be “Oh, I like that, I'll do that.” We get along very well, but he has the things that he needs. He doesn't like to drive and act anymore, I don't know why. “You got to be parked, that's the only thing.” He likes the old rear-projection system. http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/directorinterviews/index.php