Sonnenfeld on "Addams Family"

Weird Addams Family at It Again

by Nancy Harrison

MORTICIA, Gomez and their gruesome relatives are being resurrected from the graveyard of the 1960's television program"The Addams Family."

In a new film with that name, the cheerfully morbid family, as eccentric and larger than life as ever, lives on in that Gothic mansion that enshrines the macabre.

The director of the movie is Barry Sonnenfeld of East Hampton, who joined the project somewhat reluctantly.

"It took me a long time to figure out what the film was about," said Mr. Sonnenfeld, who is 38 years old. While the script was being rewritten, he said, "I used to get depressed because I didn't think the film was about anything. But it slowly dawned on me that it was about family and romance and nonconformity."

The finished product, he emphasized, "is not a 90-minute version of the televison show." Dark Humor, Ideal Family

The film makes its statements through dark humor. Morticia (Anjelica Huston) encourages her children to kill each other, the way only a loving mother could. And in a romantic interlude, her husband, Gomez, asks her whether she is unhappy, not whether she is happy.

"In the film, the Addams family is actually my ideal family," Mr. Sonnenfeld said. "For me, they represent the right way to bring up kids. They let their kids be anything they want. They set up rules, and as long as you obey those rules, you can try to kill your brother or your sister. They are moral and very good.

"What we did not want to use was the television show's humor, which tended to be incredibly broad. It was much more like a setup, and then a punch line and then a drummer hitting a cymbal. The laughs in the movie are more verbal, although there is still physical humor, too."

The film and television program are based on the characters created by Charles Addams, who lived part-time on the East End before he died in 1988. The Addams family drawings appeared in The New Yorker magazine beginning in the 1940's. Liberation of 'Thing'

Paramount Pictures scheduled the premiere of the film for last night in the East Hampton Cinema as a benefit for the Hampton Day School in Bridgehampton, where one of Mr. Sonnenfeld's daughters is a student.

In the film, Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) is the brother of Gomez (Raul Julia) instead of his uncle, as he was in the television series, and Thing, the disembodied hand, has been liberated from its box.

The plot revolves around the return of Uncle Fester, who has been missing for 25 years. Stricken with amnesia, he is drawn into the family lawyer's scheme to steal the Addams fortune. When they temporarily lose their home, the Addamses stick together, moving into a small motel suite.

The producer, Scott Rudin, approached Mr. Addams with his idea in 1986.

For Mr. Sonnenfeld, who had logged eight years as a cinematographer, "The Addams Family" marks his debut as a director. The son of an art teacher and a lighting salesman, Mr. Sonnenfeld grew up in Manhattan and attended the High School of Music and Art, where he played the French horn. He majored in political science at New York University before transferring to Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., for his senior year.

After a trip cross-country, Mr. Sonnenfeld was at a loss for what to do next. "I didn't know what I wanted to do," he recalled. "I liked to take still photographs, and my mother suggested that film school might be something I might enjoy. For lack of anything better to do, I applied to the N.Y.U. film school." Early Movies With the Coens

After graduating from New York University's Graduate Institute of Film and Television, Mr. Sonnenfeld shot industrial films and directed music videos. At a party, he met Joel Coen, then a struggling director, and gave him work on several projects.

Eventually, he helped Mr. Coen and his brother Ethan raise money for their first movie, "Blood Simple," on which Mr. Sonnenfeld worked as director of photography. The Coens later collaborated with Mr. Sonnenfeld on "Miller's Crossing" and "Raising Arizona." The brothers' most recent film was "Barton Fink."

Mr. Sonnenfeld also worked on "Big," "When Harry Met Sally" and "Misery." Several Hollywood agents had suggested that he try directing, and Mr. Rudin asked him to direct "The Addams Family" after two other directors, Terry Gilliam of "The Fisher King" and Tim Burton of "Batman" turned down the project.

At first, Mr. Sonnenfeld wanted no part of the film either, thinking the script was "too jokey." He changed his mind after Mr. Rudin had promised that the script would be changed.

Miss Huston and Mr. Julia were the first choices to play Morticia and Gomez, but Mr. Sonnenfeld had other actors in mind for Uncle Fester. After Danny DeVito and Bob Hoskins refused the part, Mr. Lloyd was hired. Re-creating the Mansion

The mansion depicted in the cartoons did not exist, but more than 100 people called Mr. Sonnenfeld, professing to know its whereabouts. Mr. Addams's widow, Tee, said the Addams Family house was "a composite of all these Victorian houses that Charlie loved."

The film makers selected a house at Yale University, but when it burned down, they built a facade of a house at an abandoned dump in Burbank, Calif.

The $30 million movie took 106 days to shoot and months to edit. In all, Mr. Sonnenfeld spent most of two years away from his wife, Susan, and step-daughters Sasha and Amy. What Success May Mean

"If 'The Addams Family' does really well," he said, "it will give me a very important option, which is that the next film that I do, no matter what it is, will have to be shot in New York City, Long Island or New Jersey. I want to be able to spend time with my family."

Mr. Sonnenfeld is directing commercials for American Artists in Manhattan, and he is considering three film projects for Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures, all of which will be shot close to home.

"I told Paramount Pictures," he said, "that if they wanted me to do the sequel, it has to be entitled 'Gomez by the Sea: The Addams Family East Hampton Adventure,' " he said. "But somehow I have a feeling that is not going to happen."

Source

Harrison, Nancy. “Weird Addams Family at It Again.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Nov. 1991, www.nytimes.com/1991/11/17/nyregion/weird-addams-family-at-it-again.html.

The Teenager Is Always Right

by Susan Vaughn

Director Barry Sonnenfeld wanted to drop an old-fashioned musical number, a real showstopper, into the middle of The Addams Family. So he filmed a scene in which Uncle Fester and Gomez unleash a spirited rendition of ”The Mamushka,” written by Broadway legends Betty Comden and Adolph Green with composer Mark Shaiman. But in the movie’s final cut, Gomez and Uncle Fester sing only briefly. Why was the rest of the song snipped out? Perhaps the blame lies with a couple hundred Valley Boys who considered ”The Mamushka” a real showstopper. Their negative reaction to a preview of the movie evidently helped shape its final form.

So it goes in the demanding, secretive world of test screenings, where ”typical” American moviegoers get to tell the Hollywood bigs how to improve their products before they’re released. Test-audience members are often white males, 16 to 32 years old, who are recruited in L.A. suburbs, usually from colleges and shopping malls.

Like prospective jurors, collared passersby are asked a few preliminary questions: Are you or any of your relatives in the entertainment business? (Say no if you want to be included.) What movies have you seen in the last six months? (The correct answer depends on the film being tested.) After the show come questionnaires: How would you rate each performance? Is the film too violent? Is the pace too slow? Did you like the ending?

Both the process and the results are closely guarded. Officials of the two major screening firms — the National Research Group, which tests for most of the major studios, and Charles Walker & Associates — would not be interviewed for this story. Nor would execs at any of the major studios, except Universal, which uses its own testing staff.

It’s not that test screenings aren’t effective. They usually are. Among the legends of last-minute nips and tucks based on audience reactions are Fatal Attraction, which was given its famous bathtub-scene ending when audiences objected to Glenn Close’s manipulated suicide, and Field of Dreams, in which a scene was reshot so Kevin Costner could meet his father and call him Dad.

But there is growing criticism of test screening, based not so much on what its audiences say but on who they are. ”It just doesn’t make sense to test a movie that will have Hispanic or black appeal on a mostly white audience,” says Tony Middleton, manager of marketing and research for Universal. Trying to find ”a wider, more varied audience,” continues Middleton, is why Universal started in-house testing.

Such a desire is not universal in Hollywood, however, since 16-to 32-year-old males still represent most studios’ target audience. One former test-marketer reports being quietly admonished for a choice of audience candidates: ”They told me, ‘We’re not prejudiced ourselves, but the studios get antsy if we get more than 2 percent minorities in the responses.”’

Beyond race, there’s the question of taste. Should The Addams Family musical number have been trimmed? ”The short attention span of teenage boys shouldn’t deprive the rest of the audience,” argues author Mason Wiley (Inside Oscar). ”This sums up what’s wrong with Hollywood movies: They don’t make movies people want to see anymore.”

Source

Vaughn, Susan. “The Teenager Is Always Right.” EW.com, Entertainment Weekly, 6 Dec. 1991, ew.com/article/1991/12/06/teenager-always-right/.