"I wanted to experiment wildly and widely"
Wicked book and screenwriter Winnie Holzman talks adapting her world famous musical.
During a panel on book writing led by Broadway Maven David Benkof, Wicked screenwriter and book writer Winnie Holzman was asked whether she considered the screenplay for the films a rewrite of the musical.
“No, I did not think of it as a rewrite,” she replied. “We thought of it as something new that was going to be infused with the spirit of our show, that was going to hold the spirit of our show close and not deny the show, but as its own thing.”
“We wanted people to experience it as a movie,” she says. We didn’t want people to say, Oh they took the show and they just shot it.” It wasn’t about just opening up settings, either—Oh, now they’re outside, and now their classroom is bigger. “That’s boring,” Holzman said. Rather, it was about “deepening the experience.”
In keeping with that, Holzman pushed herself to be as open as possible to new possibilities. Working with screenwriter Dana Fox, who director John C. Chu brought in to help Holzman and composer Stephen Schwartz think about this new version of Wicked, Holzman says the three of them “went very far afield at times…places that are not in the movie, just because I wanted to experiment.”
“I wanted to almost lean over backwards and experiment wildly and widely,” she said, “to make sure that I wasn’t cleaving too intensely to the way it was.”
Holzman delighted in some of the surprises that emerged along the way. She points to the new line in the attic of the Wizard’s palace: Galinda tells Elphaba to go back and apologize, and Elphaba responds, “Over my dead body.”
“I just loved that line for that moment,” Holzman said. “I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it for the show.”
