Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (l-r)
The busy producing team of Neil Meron and Craig Zadan got a little busier recently when the duo, who head up Storyline Entertainment, were tapped to produce a little show called the Academy Awards next spring and the recent announcement that Seth MacFarlane would host created a stir in the Hollywood community.
But creating a stir is what Meron and Zadan do best, with high profile projects in film (Chicago), television (Smash and Bette Midler’s Gypsy) and theater (How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying). It’s no surprise then that this weekend at the Outfest Legacy Awards in Los Angeles, they’ll receive the Visionary Award from none other than Darren Criss, who is also performing at the event.
AfterElton grabbed some time on the busy calendar of Meron and Zadan to talk about what the award means to them, their plans for Oscar night, Smash Season 2 and what’s been the key to their long and successful business relationship.
AfterElton: So much to talk about, but let’s start with Outfest. This isn’t your first award, but does this one feel a little different just because it’s coming from Outfest?
Neil Meron: I think being honored by your own is always the most impactful, so to be honored by a group that supports the continuation and the preservation of gay/lesbian/transgender/bisexual films is…
Craig Zadan: What about questioning, Neil?
NM: Yes. Exactly.
CZ: I’m still questioning. [laughs]
NM: Yes. You’re right. It’s significant, and it’s very emotional if that answers it.
CZ: I’d say that it came as a complete surprise to us because we’ve always been fans of the organization, and we’ve always really loved and admired the film festival and admired, as Neil said, the preservation of gay films. It was a total surprise when we got the call saying they’d like to honor us. We just went, “Wow.” We were really humbled by it and it’s been an incredible year for us with Smash and getting the two GLAAD awards this year and getting the Academy Awards to produce. It’s sort of like this is the topper. This is like, “Wow.” And the thing that makes it even more joyful for us is the fact that our adorable, wonderful, sweet, talented Darren Criss is going to perform and present the awards. We’re so grateful to him that he’s going to do this because it comes from a very, very emotional place for us. We think so highly of him.
Bette Midler agreeing to do Gypsy was a big career changer for Meron/Zadan
AE: When you think of the word legacy, is it something you guys ever set out to do when you first were starting out, or is it suddenly you looking back ten or twenty years and going, ‘Wow. There is quite a legacy of work that we’ve done?’
NM: I think Craig feels the same way. We’re just so focused on the present and then on the future that sometimes we forget about the past. These events make you reflect and think, “Wow, there is a body of work.” It’s kind of amazing when you look at it and you go, “Really? We did all that?” because we’re so focused on the present and the future.
CZ: It’s one of those things where we get up individually each day and go to work and have rough days and good days... and days that people are disrespectful and days that people are nice to us. We have days like everybody else that goes to work each day. We're so focused on what we’re doing at the moment that whenever we’ve been honored or have been given any kind of award and you look at a reel of your work, you do, for the first time, sort of say, “Oh my God. I forgot we did all that, and what amazing projects that we’re so proud of.” It’s great to be able to have a body of work to leave behind.
AE: What was the one project that you think was a turning point in your career, whether it opened more doors or just took you to a different level in your career?
NM: I think it was doing Gypsy with Bette Midler. And I think that seemed to have been a turning point because I think prior to doing Gypsy we were only thinking about a career in features and then having the opportunity to work with Bette Midler and have her agree to do Gypsy for TV and having it land as big as it did, kind of opened the door for us to have a TV career which eventually led us back to feature films where we were able to bring some more notice to the movie musical genre. We’re always eternally grateful to Bette Midler for saying, “Yes.”
CZ: And I guess in terms of looking back on the TV work, the movie that I’m most proud of is the Judy Garland movie because think that when we made that movie and looked at it, we thought, “This is as good as it gets,” and I don’t really know how to make a better movie than that movie in terms of writing, direction, acting, sets, costumes, cinematography, editing…I just think it’s as perfect as it gets in terms of doing a miniseries on television, so very, very, very proud of that.
In terms of features, Chicago is such a turning point because not only was it an important movie for us and the first movie/musical that got the Oscar in 34 years, so it was such a ground-breaking movie. And a movie that we can look at in retrospect and say kind of wouldn’t change anything if we had to do it over again. It’s so good and we’re so proud of it and it was like the coming together of really great work on everybody’s part.
AE: You mentioned the Oscars and of course I want to ask about that. Is that something you petitioned for, or did they just come to you out of the blue? And was it a big decision to say ‘Yes?’
NM: Actually it’s something that Craig and I had talked about ten years ago and we were actually very interested and wanting to do it, and then we just kind of moved on, thinking that it would never happen. We were happily involved in all of our other projects, with season two of Smash and doing some more TV stuff and developing features, and then we got a phone call. So we were not campaigning or petitioning. It was one of those calls out of the blue saying, “Would you like to do it?” Since we'd always wanted to do it, that was an easy “Yes” for us.
Oscars galore went to the film version of Chicago and star Catherine Zeta-Jones.
AE: Can we expect a gayer Oscars, or are the Oscars pretty gay to begin with?
NM: I don’t know what a gayer Oscars is. I can say that our goal is to do the most entertaining Oscars that we could possibly do. We’re looking for ways to jam a much entertainment value into those three hours as possible. And we may be really successful at it or we may not be, but we’re going to try. We have really, really exciting ideas about what we don’t need in the show. What we can take out and buy us more time for entertainment. I think that we’re going to take risks that if we fail, we fail, but we’re not going to do a show where people are going to go, “Well, it looks like every other Academy Awards.” I don’t think it’s going to look like every other Academy Awards.
AE: Why was Seth MacFarlane the right choice to host? That announcement sure created a lot of buzz.
NM: Oh, we love that there’s so much buzz. That’s what we counted on. We think that Seth is the right choice because he really understands their traditions of the past and he is a forward thinker, so to have that combination in a host is just incredible. And he’s fast on his feet. He sings, he dances, he is charming, he is irreverent and so all those qualities make a great host.
AE: He’s not bad to look at either.
NM: He’s adorable. I like it.
CZ: The thing is that in going with the concept that Neil and I came up with for the show, we actually wouldn’t be able to fulfill our concept without somebody who could do incredible comedy, sing and dance, so he actually is somebody that could make our concept come alive. And there are a million other people that could have been hosts... who would have been wonderful hosts... but would not have allowed us to do the show that we want to do. So we’re now capable of really going all out, and we love out of the box casting.
What did the producers learn from the first season of Smash? (Sorry, Ellis...)
AE: Let’s talk about Season 2 of Smash. What can we expect with the second season?
NM: I think season two is just moving forward from season one. It’s going to be Bombshell’s rocky road to Broadway. We are also introducing a younger, fresher, sexier cast in terms of having Jeremy Jordan and Andy Mientus and Krysta Rodriguez and having some very exciting guest stars like Jennifer Hudson, Sean Hayes, Daniel Sunjata and Jesse Martin. And the return of Bernadette Peters…we’re taking the world that began in season one and expanding it to off-Broadway... to the concert stage.. and we’re basically just broadening our world, making it sexier, making it younger and also going deeper into our characters and relationships that were established in season one.
AE: Were you guys happy with season one or what did you think of the response? I know it was definitely plusses and minuses as far as what the critics and audience were saying.
NM: As with any first season show, there are incredibly amazing things that happen and there was so much that was wonderful. We learned a lot and we decided that we would take the wonderful with us to season two and add even more, and we were able to adjust storylines and unfortunately lose some characters, but in losing characters we were able to add some new people to broaden our world. So the lessons of season one were finding out what worked and using that to inform what season two will be.
AE: I also want to ask about the 54 miniseries (written by Gary Lennon) you have over at the Starz network. What’s the status?
CZ: Unfortunately Starz has changed their direction in terms of what they’re going to do, and this does not fit into what they want to do, so they basically have said, “We love the scripts. We think that the show is fantastic, but we’re not doing shows like this anymore.” So we’re in the process of showing it to other networks. We’re very optimistic that we will get it set up somewhere else and get it made at another network. First of all, we never give up on anything. We get everything made eventually, so it will get made and it will get made properly. We love it and we’re passionate about it, but it won’t be at STARZ, which is okay.
Darren Criss, who they cast in How To Succeed In Business, will present their Outfest Award.
AE: What, if anything, is there left on your bucket list?
NM: The Bucket List…an expression that came from a movie that we produced.
CZ: Look, at one time we wanted to be in all arenas and now we are. We wanted to be on television both in the series arena, which we are with Smash and Drop Dead Diva. We wanted to be doing TV movies, which we did with [the Lifetime remake] Steel Magnolias just recently. We wanted to be in the miniseries business, which we’re about to start a big miniseries for the History Channel momentarily. We wanted to be in feature films and we did the new version of Footloose this past year and we’re got two big feature films, one at Fox and one at Universal, that will happen very soon which we’re really excited about. We wanted to be on Broadway and we did Promises, Promises with Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth, and we did How To Succeed in Business with Dan Radcliffe, Darren Criss and Nick Jonas, so we got to be in all arenas. I guess if there’s one thing that’s left that we haven’t done yet that we really want to do and we are focusing on it as well is we want to develop some original musicals for Broadway. We did two revivals, but we want to do some originals. And we want to produce some great plays, which we haven’t done.
AE: You guys have been partners for so long. What is the key for having worked together so well for so long?
CZ: I think it has to do with having basically the same tastes, like wanting to do the same projects. We both wanted to do the Judy Garland movie. We wanted to do Chicago. We wanted to do Smash. We wanted to do How To Succeed on Broadway. The stuff we’ve done, we wanted to do, so we shared the same passion for the same projects. We also set out to not only have characters that are gay characters in our projects-- which we have a lot of gay characters in our projects-- but we also set out to do gay-themed movies like Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story, Wedding Wars, which was the first movie that was ever done on gay marriage.
NM: I think it’s still the only movie.
CZ: The only movie. There’s never been another movie about gay marriage except for our movie…What Makes a Family, which was about gay adoption, so we’ve tackled a lot of the big social themes, and we had plans that we wanted to help to sway people in a sociological way. We think that we’ve contributed in our own little way, to doing that.
AE: Congratulations again on the Outfest Legacy Awards this weekend.
CZ: Thank you. We’re really excited. It should be a great night.
NM: Thank you. Yeah, and Darren presents and performs. That’s the icing!
For more information on the Outfest Legacy Awards, go to the Outfest website. Smash returns for its second season in 2013 on NBC.
