Bill Condon & Tonatiuh interview: Unlocking the 'Kiss of the Spider Woman'

Legendary film director Bill Condon is no stranger to staging a lavish production to fulfill his artistic vision. Whether it’s the grand scope of the cinematic version of “Dreamgirls” or the quiet impact of “Gods and Monsters,” he knows how to command an audience’s attention.

For his latest project, Condon has married his two strengths and crafted a musical reimaging of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” that skews closer to the project’s theatrical roots. Diego Luna and newcomer Tonatiuh play Valentin and Molina, political prisoners in an Argentine prison with little in common and only the fantasy of movies to keep the pain away. In this cinematic fantasy world is where both men escape to long for famed actress Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez), the enigmatic and mysterious spider woman that will bridge both halves of the film’s narrative.

We recently spoke to Condon and Tonatiuh about their approach to this new “Spider Woman” and their love of blending drama with movie musicals. This is a transcription of that conversation.

Q: I originally saw this film at Sundance and you’ve obviously been traveling with it since then. Did you change anything since that initial premiere?

Bill Condon: The only thing since Sundance is that Lionsgate and Roadside picked it up, so you have all these logos at the beginning so it runs about a minute longer. But it allowed us to use this Jennifer Lopez vocal to open the film called “The Prologue” that was in the play and we originally only used a snippet of it back at Sundance.

Q: When you have that many studio and production logos playing before the movie starts, is there ever any disagreement over who gets to have their logo play in a certain order?

Condon: There can be. But I begged them to do it this way and they were all cool with it which was nice. Because sometimes you go to the movies and you see these cheesy sixty second logos and they don’t get you in the mood at all. I must say it lifts everything to have our movie open with this score and her vocals, I like it.

Tonatiuh: And at Sundance these longer openings help calm people down. There’s all this frenetic energy at Sundance to get to your seat and this helps that.

Condon: What I find interesting is that in the theater, every night is different. I find here the experience of seeing a movie with an audience changes especially because of the materials that are out there. The trailer, the interviews that Tonaituh and Jennifer Lopez have done, people come in with more information. The thing that is scary and also amazing about a place like Sundance is that you know nothing about a movie before it begins.

Q: I love that energy!

Condon: I love that energy too.

Q: Had you seen the original Hector Babenco film before signing on to do this version?

Tonatiuh: Not before. Once I got the audition tape and submitted it I re-watched the movie to get a better understanding of the world I was stepping into. I think all good artists are thieves so once I got cast I asked Bill to give me a syllabus of the musicals he was planning to reference in the movie.

Q: What was in that syllabus?

Condon: The Judy Garland version of “A Star is Born” for sure but also some more obscure ones. “It’s Always Fair Weather,” “The Bandwagon,” not that those are obscure but they represent the period of our movie. It’s so different and we essentially made two totally different movies. The musical was all choreographed and pre-recorded. The thing about musicals is it’s sort of like making a Hitchcock movie, once you get to the set it can almost be done. You just have to live up to what you imagined. In the prison section it was basically a two character play and that’s the opposite of a Hitchcock movie. It’s a Robert Altman movie.

Q: Lighting seems to be a very important part of this film. In the prison scenes, the lighting is more dark and intimate and in the musical section you’re filming in open spaces that allow light and color to shine. But in the film’s finale those two aesthetics seem to blend together. Was that a conscious decision?

Tonaituh: Everything in this movie is meticulously thought out and it was exciting to see those two worlds come together in the finale. Just as it was exciting to see our cinematographer Tobias Schleissler shoot Jennifer Lopez come to life in the prison cell as the spider woman for the first time.

Q: How closely did you work with Diego Luna before filming began to capture the intimacy of your prison scenes together?

Tonatiuh: We both got proper table read time to hammer out the script and ask as many questions as possible. But the first time Diego and I saw each other on set was the first time we saw each other in full costume. We didn’t know how this dance was going to go until we started dancing.

Q: Yeah, you could end up stepping on each other’s toes.

Tonatiuh: (laughs) Exactly. It’s a two hander. We were stripped of our families and our comfort so we relied on each other a lot. It got to the point where I didn’t want to say goodbye because I needed this person so much.

Q: Bill, is there a film of yours that you feel is underrated and would want more people to seek out?

Condon: What a great question. This may seem like a bad answer but I’ll say, “Kinsey.” That’s the one. That’s a movie that hasn’t had a life I wish it would. It’s odd because that was the first time I had come against the far right. They tried to shut down the movie when it was in production and really came after us. That movie has a really soft spot in my heart.

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” opens in theaters nationwide October 10.