\n<\/p>\n
Tonatiuh<\/strong> had been rehearsing Kiss of the Spider Woman<\/em> for more than a month by the time their costar Jennifer Lopez<\/strong> arrived in New York. Choreographer Sergio Trujillo<\/strong> and director Bill Condon<\/strong> had set aside six hours for her first day, gearing up for an ambitious shoot modeled on lavish, golden age Hollywood musicals. \u201cThey were like, \u2018This is your mark and then that\u2019s your mark and that\u2019s your mark,\u2019 and she goes, \u2018Yeah, okay,\u2019\u201d Tonatiuh recalls. The music started and Lopez hit every mark except for one. She asked the crew to rewind the track before going at it again. \u201cAnd then she nails it perfectly. I think she finished that entire rehearsal in an hour and a half. I\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019ve been here for a month and a half\u2014and you just killed that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Lopez had been itching to work on a traditional movie musical, and immediately signed on when Condon brought her Kiss of the Spider Woman.<\/em> It\u2019s no surprise she showed up raring to go. But this is no ordinary musical. In fact, \u201cIt\u2019s trying to do something different from anything you\u2019ve seen,\u201d Condon tells me. \u201cThis feels like a unicorn movie to me. It\u2019s very hard to actually distill and describe.\u201d<\/p>\n This is partly due to the singularity of Condon\u2019s movie, which has lived in the Oscar-winning filmmaker\u2019s head since he was writing the screenplay for Chicago<\/em> more than 20 years ago. But it\u2019s also a testament to the vibrancy and elasticity of its source material.<\/p>\n Kiss of the Spider Woman<\/em> originated as a 1976 novel by Argentinian author Manuel Puig, depicting the dynamic between two cellmates\u2014Luis Molina, a queer outcast imprisoned for \u201ccorrupting a minor,\u201d and Valent\u00edn Arregui, a political prisoner trying to overthrow the nation\u2019s dictatorial government\u2014who form an unlikely if tenuous bond. To pass the time, Molina describes some of his favorite films for Valent\u00edn. Those passages were first realized as mini films in a 1985 movie adaptation, directed by H\u00e9ctor Babenco and starring William Hurt, Raul Julia, and S\u00f4nia Braga<\/strong>\u2014who portrayed the fictional leading ladies of Molina\u2019s cinematic diversions. A few years later, Chita Rivera played those same parts to great acclaim in the Tony-winning 1993 Broadway adaptation of the novel, whose score was written by John Kander,<\/strong> of Cabaret<\/em> and Chicago<\/em> fame.<\/p>\n Which brings us back to Condon, a writer-director with credits as varied as the dramatic indie Gods and Monsters,<\/em> the big-budget musical Dreamgirls,<\/em> and the final two Twilight<\/em> movies. His vision for Spider Woman<\/em>\u2014melding elements of the book and the musical with his own chaotic sensibility\u2014felt like a culmination after decades of making movies in all shapes and sizes. \u201cI did put an awful lot of myself into both characters,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the case of Molina, his love of old Hollywood forms, I started to think of it at one point as my explanation for an eclectic career where I have been drawn to different genres\u2014some of which are not the most respectable.\u201d<\/p>\n His varied experiences also taught him how to get this movie made. In an era of great risk-aversion in Hollywood, Condon knew he\u2019d need to mount the project independently. Even so, it all came together remarkably fast. He finished the screenplay in the fall of 2023. Lopez soon signed on, and Ben Affleck<\/strong> and Matt Damon<\/strong>\u2019s production company, Artists Equity, did too. Within about a year, the movie was financed, cast, shot, and edited in time for a world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it premieres Sunday night and hopes to find a buyer.<\/p>\n Condon\u2019s take on the story inserts snippets of a newly devised fictional film that Molina adores\u2014starring his idol, a glamorous star named Aurora (Lopez). Rehearsals kicked off in New York before Tonatiuh, Lopez, and Diego Luna<\/strong> (who plays Valent\u00edn) started filming on New Jersey soundstages. The musical shoot was completely separate from the prison shoot, which took place down in Uruguay. \u201cI wrote it as two movies, and we made it as two movies,\u201d Condon says. \u201cThat left us the means to make a lavish Hollywood movie musical\u2014because it was only 35 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n