Tagline: Never forget, never forgive.
The story of “Sweeney Todd” is of a wrongfully imprisoned barber in Victorian England who sets out to seek revenge on the judge who imprisoned him. The plot is foreshadowed in the first lines of the opening number: “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. / His skin was pale and his eye was odd. / He shaved the faces of gentlemen / Who never thereafter were heard of again.”
Johnny Depp and Tim Burton join forces again in a big-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s award-winning musical thriller “Sweeney Todd.” Depp stars in the title role as a man unjustly sent to prison who vows revenge, not only for that cruel punishment, but for the devastating consequences of what happened to his wife and daughter.
When he returns to reopen his barber shop, Sweeney Todd becomes the Demon Barber of Fleet Street who “shaved the heads of gentlemen who never thereafter were heard from again.” Joining Depp is Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney’s amorous accomplice, who creates meat pies. The cast also includes Alan Rickman, who portrays the evil Judge Turpin, who sends Sweeney to prison and Timothy Spall as the Judge’s wicked associate Beadle Bamford and Sacha Baron Cohen is a rival barber, the flamboyant Signor Adolfo Pirelli.
From the dark, Gothic imagination of director Tim Burton (“Batman,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) and starring Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Johnny Depp (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy) comes “Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” a bloody tale of music, murder, melodrama, meat pies and one man’s desperate desire for revenge.
Arriving back in London after escaping from 15 years of false imprisonment in Australia, Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) vows to kill the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) and his nefarious henchman Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall), who shipped him off to the other side of the world on a trumped-up charge in order to steal his wife, Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), and his baby daughter from him.
Adopting the guise of Sweeney Todd, Barker sets up shop in his old Barber Shop above the pie-making premises of Mrs. Nellie Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), who tells him that his wife poisoned herself after Judge Turpin took advantage of her. But when a rival barber, the flamboyant Italian Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), threatens to expose Sweeney’s real identity, Todd kills him by cutting his throat. Not knowing what to do with the body, Mrs. Lovett sees this crisis as a potential solution to her ailing business – and suggests using human flesh as the filling for her pies.
Sweeney discovers that the Judge has turned his amorous affections towards Johanna (Jayne Wisener), Sweeney’s now teenaged daughter, who has become Turpin’s ward. Imprisoned in his house, Johanna is noticed one day by Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), a young sailor who rescued Sweeney from the sea. Hopelessly in love, Anthony vows to rescue Johanna and marry her himself.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Lovett’s pies soon become the talk of London, and as business booms, she dreams of respectability and a life at the seaside with Sweeney as her husband and her young charge, Pirelli’s former assistant Toby (Edward Sanders), alongside as her adopted son. But Sweeney has only revenge on his mind – to the detriment of anyone or anything else.
Prologue: A Tale of Sweeney Todd
“I think the reason `Sweeney Todd’ has endured for 150 years is that it’s a really good story… a very gripping tale. It’s a story about revenge and how revenge eats itself up,” says Stephen Sondheim, the creator of the acclaimed stage musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” which has been adapted into a film directed by Tim Burton. “In that sense it’s a tragedy in the classic tradition about someone who goes out for revenge and ends up destroying himself.”
“Beyond the fact that it has the arguably has the greatest score of any musical in last 50 years, the reason why Sweeny is such a classic is that for all of its murder and mayhem, it is about lost love,” adds Walter Parkes, one of the film’s producers. “It combines our most violent impulses with our most tender. It is from the collision of these qualities that it derives its overwhelming power.”
What sets “Sweeney Todd” apart from other stories is the solid emotional core of the story. “The key to `Sweeney Todd’ is emotion,” says screenwriter John Logan. “It is a very passionate story about a man who is wronged, who seeks revenge. And, in the process of achieving that revenge, goes mad. It’s also about a woman who’s in love with him, who yearns for him but can’t make a connection with him. And it’s about a young girl, raised by a brutal stepfather, trying to find love and happiness. All these emotional through-lines collide in `Sweeney Todd,’ and the fact that it’s heightened by music and singing makes it all the more lushly romantic. But at heart it’s a very passionate, dark love story.”
Although there are some who claim that Sweeney Todd really existed and was responsible for 160 murders in 18th century London, it’s more widely accepted that he’s a fictional creation who first came to prominence in a story called “The String Of Pearls: A Romance,” written by Thomas Peckett Prest and published in The People’s Periodical in November 1846. According to legend, Todd would cut his customers’ throats while they sat in his barber’s chair, then send their bloody corpses down a chute into the cellar below, where they were chopped up and used as the filling for meat pies by his accomplice in crime, the widowed baker Mrs. Nellie Lovett – pies that were then sold to an unsuspecting public.
A year later, Prest’s story was adapted as a play that bore the subtitle “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” Pretty soon, Todd’s notoriety was rivalling that of another infamous 19th century London serial killer – Jack the Ripper.
While the Todd story has been the inspiration for many theatrical shows, as well as a number of films for both cinema and television, it was British playwright Christopher Bond’s 1973 stage play, “Sweeney Todd,” that first introduced the Barker/Turpin revenge plot now considered part and parcel of Sweeney’s legend. Then, in 1979, using Bond’s play as his template, Stephen Sondheim, the legendary American lyricist and composer – one of a very select group to have won an Academy Award®, a Tony, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Pulitzer Prize – brought the story of Sweeney Todd to a wider audience, with his and Hugh Wheeler’s acclaimed stage musical, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
Debuting on Broadway on March 1, 1979, and starring Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” was quite unlike anything then seen on stage. Bloody and terrifying, with a score inspired by the work of legendary soundtrack composer Bernard Herrmann (“Psycho,” “The Birds”), it initially startled audiences, but quickly became recognized as Sondheim’s masterpiece, with the production swiftly transferring to London and later being revived on Broadway in 1989 and 2005.
“It was so original,” observes one of the film’s producers, Laurie MacDonald. “Witty, and dark, and yet ultimately moving and tragic. And the music is so otherworldly and beautiful.” She and her producing partner, Parkes, were so taken by it that, when they headed production at DreamWorks Pictures, they secured the film rights from Sondheim.
“There’s a strange kinship that exists between the lovers of Sweeney Todd that borders on the fanatic,” Parkes adds. “It’s almost an instant barometer of a shared sensibility.”
“I saw the original Broadway show three times with Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou,” recalls Logan. “I’d never seen anything like it in my life. I fell in love with it and it’s stayed with me until now.”
Although director Tim Burton didn’t see the original Broadway production, he did attend an early performance in London while he was a student there. “I’m not a big musical fan, but I loved it,” he recalls. “I didn’t know anything about Stephen Sondheim. The poster just looked kind of cool, kind of interesting. It’s like an old horror movie but the music is such an interesting juxtaposition, being very beautiful while the imagery is kind of old horror movie. And it was interesting to see something bloody on stage, too. I went to see it twice because I liked it so much.”
A film version of “Sweeney Todd,” seemed like a logical step to Sondheim, since its genesis was, in part, a movie — with a score by Bernard Hermann. “I’ve been a movie fan since I was a kid,” admits Sondheim. “I’ve always like melodramas and suspense movies. There was a movie I saw when I was 15, `Hangover Square,’ with a Bernard Hermann score. It’s a flamboyant Edwardian melodrama about a composer who goes crazy when he hears a certain sound and goes out and murders the nearest beautiful girl. I remember just loving that score, and I thought it would really be fun to scare an audience and see if you could do it while people are singing.”
Act One: Adapting Sweeney Todd to the Screen
When Parkes and MacDonald acquired the movie rights to “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” they turned to long-time collaborator and the writer of the studio’s Academy Award-winning “Gladiator,” John Logan. Before Logan began writing the script, he spent six months studying Sondheim’s score, “just by myself, to be absolutely familiar with what the beast was,” he reveals. “I also read the original Chris Bond melodrama and compared it to the Hugh Wheeler book for the musical, and really got to know the music backwards and forwards. Then I went to New York, and Stephen and I worked through it.”
Adapting a three-hour stage musical into a two-hour movie clearly meant changes. Some songs were exorcised completely, others merely truncated. “We cut out verses, but also expanded certain areas,” Logan explains. “A fair amount of work was done cutting and shaping.”
Story wise, too, he made substantial changes. “We wanted to keep it very tightly focused on Sweeney Todd’s journey, so other secondary or tertiary elements fell away. In the show, Johanna, Todd’s daughter, sings a lot more; she and Anthony are more musical characters, but I felt that the focus of the story really needed to be on Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, and Toby to a certain extent. I wanted to focus on that triangle as much as I could.”
For Stephen Sondheim, a film version of “Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” offered the chance to change certain lyrics that, as well as to write new ones that tally with certain structural and narrative changes imposed by the script. “Stage time and movie time are different,” Sondheim explains. “You accept on the stage somebody sitting and singing for three minutes about one subject, but in film you get the idea very quickly and you suddenly have two and a half minutes too much. The problem is how do you keep the integrity of the score and yet cut things? But John maintained much of the score and still kept the cinematic value of the songs going.”
Contractually, Sondheim had approval over the casting of Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, as well as the choice of director. “He’s a formidable character,” notes Burton of the legendary composer. “He’s very intelligent, very passionate, he’s a genius at what he does, but the thing that I have really respected and felt very grateful for is him letting it go. It’s not a stage thing. It’s a movie. Go for it. I felt very supported by that.
“The other thing that impressed me and immediately made me like him was, when I first met him, he was talking to me about how he wrote this like a Bernard Herrmann score,” Burton continues. “And what’s really interesting, when you take away the singing, and it happened when we were recording it, it is like a Bernard Herrmann score – it’s really amazing. As soon as he said that I thought, `I’m in, completely.'”
“He’s a perfect fit,” says Sondheim of Burton. “In many ways it’s his simplest film, his most direct film, but you can see that he’s telling a story he really likes. It’s a story that has enough incident in it so he doesn’t have to invent extracurricular stuff. He has enthusiasm for the piece and he just goes-forgive me- straight for the jugular.”
“Tim is the perfect director for `Sweeney Todd,'” agrees producer Richard D. Zanuck. “There is such an affinity between the subject matter and Tim’s style and sensibility. He is a stylist but also at his heart he’s a dramatist who just wants to tell a simple, human love story. Tim Burton was born to direct the movie of `Sweeney Todd.'”
Act Two: The Cast
“‘Sweeney’ has had a long and successful career on stage, and yet, in a way you’ve never had the opportunity to get emotionally close to Sweeney,” says producer Parkes. “It’s the nature of the stage. You don’t have close ups. But when you bring Tim, and particularly Johnny(Depp), to the mix, you have an opportunity to get inside Sweeney emotionally. In a way, it almost redefines the way you look at the play.”
While on stage Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett have usually been played by actors in their 50s and 60s, Burton was determined to skew the cast younger for his film. “It just felt that part of the energy on this was to make them a bit younger, in their 40s, and have the kids be kids, so the ages were a bit more appropriate to what the story really was, and it’s not a teenager being played by a 30-year-old,” he explains. “That, to me, was an energy that was very filmic as opposed to a stage thing when you could get away with it.”
“Tim very much wanted there to be a potential for romance, two people who had a moment and lost it,” observes producer Walter Parkes. “I think Helena does as much as Johnny to deliver that. There’s a moment at the end where she sings one of my favorite songs, `By the Sea,’ in which she is imagining the life she and Sweeney and little Toby could have if they could just let this all go. It’s so poignant and so beautiful because it’s simple, direct, unadorned and legitimately emotional — and made all the more so because you know this cloud of tragedy is hanging over these three peoples’ heads.”
“The absolute core of Mrs. Lovett is that she’s in love with this man who never notices her,” says Bonham Carter. “He doesn’t even look at her, except when she comes up with the genius idea of how to dispose of his bodies when, suddenly, she’s visible. And she is a good partner, a good foil for him, because whereas he’s a total introvert, she’s extroverted. She’s practical and, I think, a lot cleverer, frankly. She was Sweeney’s landlord 15 years ago, when he was married. So when Sweeney comes back from Australia and finds her, she gives him back his old room, above her pie shop. But the thing is, she’s always been in love with Sweeney. And I don’t think he gives two hoots about Mrs. Lovett. He’s so obsessed with avenging his wife’s death. But there’s something quite crucial she fails to tell him…”
“When we first meet Sweeney Todd he’s a very mysterious character,” says Logan. “He doesn’t say a lot but you know from his eyes that there is something haunting him, that he has a secret, that his past is haunting him, literally haunting him. As the story goes on, we learn what led him to this very dark place. He’s just escaped from penal servitude in Australia. He was floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean, trying to make his way to London because he is on a mission of revenge. He wants revenge on the people who essentially destroyed his life.”
To play his Sweeney Todd, director Tim Burton had only one actor in mind. “Johnny Depp plays Sweeney Todd as only Johnny Depp can,” says producer Richard Zanuck. “Talk about a risk taker. The bigger the risks, the more attractive a role is to Johnny. He’s built his whole career on pictures and roles that most actors have turned down or would turn down. He’s the master of disguise. He’s the master of doing something unique every time out. He has a different look, a different personality, and in this case, he’ll have a voice that people will be absolutely astounded by.”
Considered to be one of his generation’s finest actors, Depp’s stock has skyrocketed in recent years thanks to his starring role as Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” a global box office smash for which he received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Actor, which was followed by two enormously successful sequels. “I’ve always admired Johnny because of his choices as an actor, and because he’s always done things according to his own lights,” says Bonham Carter. “He’s never done anything according to any sort of pattern or formula or to create a career, or because he was relying on his looks. I think, in a funny way, we’re a bit similar, in that we don’t have much respect for what we look like, we rather like camouflaging and getting away from ourselves.”
“Sweeney Todd” marks Depp and Burton’s sixth film together, after “Edward Scissorhands,” “Ed Wood,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Corpse Bride.” “They are like any good team with almost an unspoken way of doing things, and can practically read each other’s minds,” says Zanuck. “Johnny looks to Tim for guidance and Tim looks to Johnny for taking what he has outlined and pushing it a little further. They really love each other and would do anything for each other. It’s a deep friendship, and they’re both lovely people, fun to work with and hard-working. And they’re both at the top of their game. So the combination is wonderful in terms of freshness and inventiveness.”
“Every time Johnny and I work together we try to do something different — and singing for a whole movie is not something we’re used to,” says Burton. “You never just want to feel like, `Okay, that was easy. What’s next?’ Johnny and I are always wanting to stretch ourselves, and this was a perfect outlet for that.”
In late 2001, before Burton was even attached to direct “Sweeney Todd,” he visited Depp at his house in the south of France and gave him a copy of the Angela Lansbury stage production on CD. “He said `I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this. Give it a listen,'” Depp recalls. “I gave it a listen and thought, `Wwell, that’s interesting.’ Then, five or six years later the question comes. `Do you think you can sing?’ The answer I gave him was, `I don’t know. I’ll see if I can.'”
“I know he’s musical,” says Burton, “because he was in a band. But I think I saw him so clearly as Sweeney Todd, in a way. And I know he wouldn’t just do anything with me just to do it. That’s all I needed and I just knew he could. It was just a feeling I had that he could do it.”
In the 1980s, Depp had played guitar in a band in Florida called The Kids, although he says he never actually sang an entire song. “I was the guy who would come in and sing the harmony, very quickly,” he laughs. “It would be all of like three seconds and then I was out, and I could find my way back to the dark and continue playing guitar. So I had never sung a song, certainly not. I said to Tim, `I’m going to go into the studio with this pal of mine and I’m going to investigate and try and sing the songs, and if I’m close then we can talk about it, or I’ll just call you and say, you know what, I can’t do it. It’s just impossible.'”
To find out whether he could sing or not, Depp called his former bandmate Bruce Witkin, who had been the singer and bass player in The Kids, and the pair went into Witkin’s Los Angeles studio to record Depp singing “My Friends.” “That was the first song I ever sang in my life,” Depp explains. “It was pretty weird and scary.” But Depp trusted his friend to be honest enough to deliver a verdict on whether he could sing or not. “I was like, `Do you want the good news or the bad news?'” Witkin remembers. “He goes, `Well, give me the bad news.’ And I said, `The bad news is you’re going to have to do this.'”
“I was in my office on the phone,” recalls Zanuck of the day he first heard Depp’s singing voice. “Tim bursts in and lays down a little cassette player and his headphones and he walks out. So I got off the phone, put them on, and listened to Johnny sing for the first time. I went into Tim’s office, and we both just stared at each other with great relief. We had the biggest smiles because we knew we had a great voice with Johnny Depp, and we knew he could really pull this off.”
“It’s very sexy,” says Bonham Carter of Depp’s singing voice. “It’s very sexy singing, and it sounds like him, that’s what’s exciting. He really sings from the gut, and it’s a very emotional role. So it’s very naked and very sexy and very touching and brave and beautiful, very beautiful, and soulful.”
Agrees Burton: “Johnny’s got a nice timbre to his voice. It’s coming from within and that’s what’s so great about it.”
For Depp, the key to Sweeney Todd was to think of him not as a killer but as a victim. “Sweeney’s obviously a dark figure,” he reflects, “but I think quite a sensitive figure, hyper-sensitive and has experienced something very dark and traumatic in his life, a grave injustice. But I always saw him as a victim. I mean, anyone who is victimized to that degree and then turns around and becomes a murderer, can’t be all there. I always saw him as a little bit slow. Not dumb, just a half-step behind. The rug was pulled out from under his perfect life, his perfect world. He was in a 15-year hellhole. The only reason he came back was to eliminate the people who had done him wrong.”
“Johnny Depp’s performance is quite remarkable,” says Sondheim. “Sweeney’s desire for revenge and the simmering anger and hurt that he feels carry the story forward, and Johnny finds the most remarkable variety within that narrow set of emotions. The intensity is at a boil all the time and he never drops it. It’s real anger.”
“He’s incapable of feeling happy,” says Depp, “unless this corner has been turned and he’s that much closer to his objective, which is slaughtering the people who have wronged him.”
Sweeney’s favored instrument of death are his cutthroat razors, the shiny implements that are also his tools of trade as a barber, and which we learn Mrs. Lovett held on to while Todd was in jail in Australia. “I think it’s an indication of how much she loves him because she could have easily sold those razors,” says Bonham Carter. “They’re worth a lot. But she doesn’t. She keeps them. I think she’s been holding on to the hope that he might return. His razors are a completion of his self.”
Once back in Sweeney’s hands, they become both his lifeline and his means of revenge, and he serenades them in the song “My Friends.” “These blades are his family,” explains Depp. “They’re an extension of him, the only love in his life now that his family’s gone.”
“When Johnny picks up the first razor and holds it, it is a pure moment of love,” remarks Logan. “And when he sings to his razors, it’s a love song, and he holds them very close. He keeps them in a special sheath, a special holster, the entire movie.”
Sweeney’s one connection to the real world is Mrs. Lovett, who “is one of the great dramatic creations of 20th century theater,” says Logan. “She’s a counterpoint to Sweeney, because Sweeney is very grim and brooding and very, very, very serious about what he’s doing. Mrs. Lovett brings life and energy and has a sort of twinkle in her eye. Together she and Sweeney are an unstoppable combination.”
“There were a lot of people who wanted the role,” says Richard Zanuck. “A couple of major stars who wanted to do it came in and exposed themselves, singing the score with just a piano player. There were about eight in all. We did several auditions in London, several in New York, and there were major people who didn’t come in but made their own recordings and sent them in.”
Bonham Carter (“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”) has been enamored of Sondheim’s musical since she was a teenager. “I remember sitting in my drawing room looking at the score, going through the lyrics and listening to it,” she says. “I got completely hooked on the music. I’ve always loved Sondheim. He’s such a genius to be able to write both lyrics and music.” But her love extended further than just an admiration for Sondheim’s music and lyrics.
“I wanted to be Mrs. Lovett since I was thirteen,” she laughs, “and I went around, apparently, in Mrs. Lovett hairdos.”
Even though she’d wanted to play Mrs. Lovett since she was a teenager, Bonham Carter didn’t know if she could really sing the role. “I’ve always wanted to be in a musical but I never thought I could sing, except in the bathroom,” she says. And so Bonham Carter gave herself three months to learn. “I went to this amazing teacher named Ian Adam,” she explains. “He died recently, but he was quite famous for making actors who can’t necessarily sing, singers too. Ninety percent of what he does is give you confidence and a self-belief that makes you able to open your mouth and produce a sound. From June to September of 2006, I sang every single day and I learned pretty much the whole score because I was very, very keen. I thought my only chance was to act it as well as I could. I knew Sondheim loved Judi Dench’s performance in `A Little Night Music’ because it was the most well-acted. I thought `If you go for the truth of the lyric, that’s your only chance.'”
Although Burton had worked with Bonham Carter on “Planet of the Apes” and later “Big Fish” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the idea of casting her as Mrs. Lovett brought a unique set of complications, not the least being the perception he was giving her the part because she was his girlfriend. “I was very nervous about it, because it’s a big role. And it wasn’t just me. It was Sondheim who had to okay it,” he reflects. “With a role like this, you’ve got to be able to really, really deliver.”
“Despite the close relationship between Tim and Helena, he was absolutely not biased,” insists Richard Zanuck. “I’d never seen anyone deal with someone he’s so close to and be as objective as he was.”
Without knowing Burton’s choice, Sondheim watched all the candidates’ audition tapes and also opted for Bonham Carter. “He said, `I think she is far and away the best,'” recalls Zanuck. “Not voice-wise, because there were some real skilled singers, but voice and personality and look and everything, she was Mrs. Lovett.”
“That was probably the best day of my professional life to be absolutely honest,” Bonham Carter recalls. “I was in complete shock and, to be honest, Tim was, too.”
“She’s very brave,” says Depp. “I mean, without question, that’s the toughest part in the movie and she beautifully made it her own. She made Mrs. Lovett kind of vulnerable and horrific and funny and sweet. There’s a lot of angles on that woman that Helena brought to her.”
“I saw her as totally amoral, full of zest and full of life, and a survivor,” says Bonham Carter. “Somebody who was as zestful and vital as Sweeney, was depressive and introverted, and very canny and a wannabe middle-class person. But the main thing that motors her, and the main thing that defines Mrs. Lovett is that she’s tragically in love with somebody who doesn’t love her back.”
“I think she’d rather he didn’t think about killing so much and maybe he were slightly more romantic and paid more attention to her,” says Depp. “Eye contact is not one of his strongest points, even with Mrs. Lovett, bless her.”
“There’s something very sad and haunting and emotional and delusional about that kind of a character,” explains Burton. “That’s why they make such a perfect couple, really. It’s a relationship movie.”
But Mrs. Lovett’s affections aren’t directed solely towards Todd. There’s also Toby (Edward Sanders), Pirelli’s young assistant who becomes her charge. “I think she’s got a mother obsession,” says Bonham Carter. “She thinks that she’s Mother Lovett, as it were, that she’s Mother Nature, and she’s got this maternal instinct towards people, a bit towards Sweeney, and definitely towards Toby. She’s a frustrated mother. I made a bit of a thing of maybe she was a mother once and she lost her child. That might have sent her over the edge. But she’s with Toby because she’s a frustrated mother and because Toby looks up to her. Toby listens to her. Sweeney doesn’t. So she’s pretty lonely. But Toby thinks she’s a lady. And that’s the other thing she’s always wanted – to be a lady and be posh. Toby sees her as she likes to be seen.”
To play Judge Turpin, the object of Sweeney Todd’s unquenchable revenge, Burton needed an actor of substantial stature. “The Judge is a pivotal role,” says Zanuck. “He’s the reason for Sweeney being sent off to prison, and when he lands back in London, he’s the one guy Sweeney wants to get. We needed someone who would be an equal opponent of Johnny. He had to sing. He had to be very nasty. And nobody can be meaner, while doing very little, than Alan Rickman.”
“Alan has always been one of my favorite actors, and I didn’t realize this until later but he has a wonderful singing voice,” says Burton. “He’s also got a strange Vincent Price quality to him. He doesn’t have to have a line of dialogue or be saying something to register a feeling. He’s able to be bad, but you also kind of understand because there’s a strange vulnerability about him as well.”
“He’s amazing,” says Depp, “because he can be unbelievably creepy and then, in the same shot, turn his head and be super-sweet and have these puppy dog eyes. Rickman’s really something.”
Although singing was part of his training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London, Rickman had never sung on film before. “I played the male lead in the end of finals musical and, during my early days in rep, I was in the chorus of `Guys and Dolls,'” he reveals. “I’d always enjoyed singing, but never thought anything like this would come along. It’s quite good to meet those Waterloos when you least expect it.”
For Pirelli, the flamboyant barber who rumbles Barker’s new identity but also hides a secret of his own, Burton cast the talented British comic actor Sacha Baron Cohen in his first film since his breakout success with “Borat: Cultural Leanings of America Make For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan.” “Pirelli is the competing barber in town who has a great confrontation with Sweeney in one of the town squares,” explains producer Laurie MacDonald. “He is a big comic character, so that obviously played into Sacha’s gifts, but I think what people will be really surprised to see is how beautifully he sings and how strong he performs in this other world.”
“We got him before we saw `Borat,’ and before he became a household name,” notes Zanuck. “He asked to come in. We met him for the first time in a recording studio. I didn’t realize how tall he is, about six-five or six-six, and very handsome. He told us he’s always loved this show, and that he had sung early on in his life in choirs, so we asked him to step into the booth. He wasn’t prepared to sing from `Sweeney Todd,’ but he sang practically all of `Fiddler on the Roof’ and did it in such a way that Tim and I were literally on the floor, buckled over. He was so funny, but despite all the laughter, we realized this guy had a great voice. He had the part right then and there as far as we were concerned. And he’s wonderful. Sacha is extraordinary in the picture.”
Depp agrees, saying, “Sacha is someone I’d admired greatly for a number of years, all the way back to Ali G. The guy came in and won us all over in no time. He was a pleasure to watch and a pleasure to work with. It’s like meeting the new Peter Sellers. He’s clearly an incredibly gifted actor.”
Playing Judge Turpin’s nefarious henchman Beadle Bamford is Timothy Spall, one of Britain’s most respected film, television and stage actors, who starred in the “Harry Potter” series as Peter Pettigrew. Like Rickman, Spall is a graduate of RADA and had sung there as well as in Mike Leigh’s Gilbert & Sullivan musical comedy “Topsy-Turvy.” “My character, he’s a nasty piece of work, really,” says Spall of Bamford. “He’s a small-time sort of parish official who has adopted authority because of his association with the Judge, who he’s ingratiated himself with in many ways. He’s sort of his bodyguard, his henchman. He’s a procurer of various things, seemly and unseemly. Also he’s a pretty violent piece of work. He’s not very nice.”
Rounding out the rest of the cast were a coterie of talented newcomers all making their feature film debuts: A-level student Jamie Campbell Bower (Anthony), Jayne Wisener (Johanna), who’s in her second year at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, and schoolboy Edward Sanders (Toby), as well as Laura Michelle Kelly, a veteran of London’s West End whose theatrical credits include the musicals “Mamma Mia,” “Mary Poppins” and “The Lord Of The Rings,” in which she starred as Galadriel.
Act Three: Music and Songs
“The music is so important,” says Zanuck. “The story is being told through the singing. We were determined that every cast member use his or her own voice. Everybody sings themselves.”
And yet apart from Laura Michelle Kelly, who plays the Beggar Woman, not one member of the “Sweeney Todd” cast was a professional singer.
“Stephen Sondheim writes the most complicated music in the history of the musical theatre, so for these performers it’s like a mountain climber climbing Mount Everest without oxygen and without Sherpas,” explains John Logan.
To give all the actors something to rehearse to, music producer Mike Higham, who had previously worked with Burton on “Corpse Bride,” created a version of the score without any singing.
“To be able to hear the various layers, the string section, the horns, to hear them almost isolated, was a real eye-opener,” remembers Depp who laid down most of his songs as demos in Los Angeles before recording them again in London. “I didn’t realize it was that complicated. Even when I saw it on stage, it didn’t seem that complicated to me, or listening to the CD. But when you hear it without the vocals, there are these really incredibly dissonant chords.”
“When the harmonies happen, they’re so beautiful because it sounds so unlikely,” says Bonham Carter. “But what I love is that there’s always an emotional sense. I’ve got `Wait,’ which is a lovely lullaby. It seems rather simple, but underneath it’s horrible. The piano sounds so disturbed but that, of course, is the character of Sweeney’s state of mind. A lot of themes and the unease and the fact it never resolves itself is a reflection of Sweeney’s mind, heart and emotional landscape.”
The music was recorded over a four-day period at London’s Air Studios and the 64-piece orchestra assembled for the film was the largest orchestra ever to have played Sondheim’s score. “We added 30 violins, some more horns, a tuba, just to give it a bigger, fatter, wider sound,” Higham explains. “This is definitely its own unique thing.”
The recording sessions were overseen by Stephen Sondheim and conducted by his musical supervisor Paul Gemignani. “To sit there with Tim on one side and Stephen Sondheim on the other was a fascinating experience for all of us,” remembers Zanuck. “This was his arena because he can hear a flute that’s slightly off, the same way that Tim can see out of the corner of his eye an extra one hundred yards away down the street.”
Once the score was laid down, the songs were next. But before any of the tracks could be recorded, the cast was required to rehearse for Sondheim who flew into London for a few days to hear them. “That was really nerve-wracking,” recalls Bonham Carter. “I’d been cast by him, then I had to sing for him. But thankfully, he was fine.”
Adds Timothy Spall, “I can sing, but I’m not a singer. To have to sing in front of him was a bit like doing `Hamlet’ in front of Shakespeare, really.”
Though Sondheim was naturally concerned about the musical adaptation, he was just as focused on the performers themselves. He explains, “I prefer actors who sing over singers who act. That doesn’t always do the music good, but it does keep the story going and that’s what I believe is important.”
The songs were recorded over a period of six weeks throughout November and December 2006 at Air Studios and Eden Studios, London. “I did the majority of songs in demo form in the studio in Los Angeles,” Depp explains, “then came to London and re-recorded them with the orchestra music. The process felt oddly natural to me, music being my first love and all.”
It was Bonham Carter, however, who had not only the most songs to sing, but arguably the most complicated ones too. Her character’s signature song, “The Worst Pies in London,” required her not only to sing but to make an entire pie from scratch while doing it. “It’s a brilliant song,” she notes. “Sondheim did write it as a bravura piece for the actor. It’s very complicated. It’s incredibly fast and it’s really brilliant at setting up her character because it sort of captures her as somebody who just goes off her tangents, is all over the place, frenetic, it just speaks to how she thinks. But equally, it gets over the fact that she’s running a pie shop, it’s not doing any good business and she’s down on her luck. And she makes a pie at the same time as singing all this, so it’s quite hard work.”
Bonham Carter even took lessons in pie making from a period pie maker, and the movements of her character making the pie had to be factored into the recording sessions. “In film, when you do anything, you have to do it exactly the same because of continuity,” she continues. “You have to do every single thing on the same lyric. I think I’ve sung that song so many times now, probably nearing 500 times, factoring in when I started singing it, the auditioning, and then recording it and making the different choices.”
With the story of “Sweeney Todd” told mainly through music and lyrics as opposed to dialogue, the recording sessions became more than just about the cast getting the songs musically correct. Because the actors would be singing to their pre-recorded tracks on set, they had to find their performance in the recording booth and commit to it there and then, rather than months later during filming. “It’s a very different discipline,” says Depp. “The second you laid down the song you made your choices, you committed months in advance. At the same time, you’ve got to match yourself to it on set, but make it bigger, make it better.”
Principal photography began on February 5, 2007 at Pinewood Studios in England, where Burton had previously filmed both “Batman” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” On set, the cast was required to lip-synch to the playback of the songs, a difficult enough discipline even for professional singers. “You’ve got to act it as if it’s new and yet you are obeying something you’ve done in the past,” Bonham Carter reveals. “Don’t look as if you’re remembering, illustrating or demonstrating something – you’ve got to be in the moment or try and do something to keep it alive. In some ways, I thought I wanted to do it live, but the sound wouldn’t be as good.”
“Watching Helena and Johnny, I’m amazed,” says Laura Michelle Kelly, a professional stage singer making her movie debut in “Sweeney Todd.” “I wouldn’t have imagined that it was the first time they’d had to sing in public view. Everyone was so confident. It helps to be able to express a lyric as opposed to singing it with no meaning and they’ve taken to it like ducks to water. Most people find Sondheim the hardest thing to sing, what with the tempos and the changes and the lyrical melodies; all of them are difficult. Some people try for years to do what they’re doing just naturally. I learned a lot watching them.”
For the film, Burton was determined to remove anything that smacked of being too “Broadway” in terms of the orchestration or the acting. “On Broadway you’re sitting in an audience and a song ends with a ta-da, cue for applause, and you don’t want to do that in a movie,” he insists. “On one level you say you’re doing a silent movie so there’s a certain amount of acting style that you might say is a bit broad, but at the same time you try and cut out completely any Broadway kind of singing, although there are a couple of moments. So it was a weird dynamic to find. Being broad like you might be in a silent movie or an old horror movie without being Broadway.”
“This is not a recording of a Broadway show, this is a movie,” says Logan. “Tim has been hyper-conscious of anything that smacks of being too emotive, too presentational, too `cute’ in terms of the actors over-performing or playing to the back balcony, because there’s a certain amount of scope to the score that could allow a performer to overact, to play too large; it’s a very large story with very sweeping emotions and full-bodied music. Tim has been wonderful about keeping it real, keeping it honest and making sure these are real people going through this terribly difficult story and not shying away from the really harrowing emotions. As a theater fan and a movie fan, I think he’s doing the perfect thing, saying, `We respect the stage play, we love the stage play, it will always be there in our hearts, but this has to be first and foremost a work of cinema.'”
Act Four: Designing Sweeney ‘s World
Burton’s films have always been lauded for their amazing set designs and stylish visuals. The man charged with bringing his vision of 19th century London to life was the two-time Academy Award®-winning production designer Dante Ferretti.
One of the masters in his field, Ferretti first gained international recognition through his work with the late Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini on six films before making his mark in Hollywood, collaborating with Martin Scorsese on several films including “The Age of Innocence,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator,” with Brian De Palma on “The Black Dahlia” and Neil Jordan on “Interview with the Vampire.”
“I’ve seen Dante’s work since the Fellini days and there’s just an energy about working with somebody who’s worked with Fellini,” Burton notes. “It roots you in the fact you’re making a movie and not just doing it as a business. He’s an artist. You walk by his room and he does his own drawings. There’s some real energy to that, and the history and all the stuff he’s done, that was exciting to me.”
For his part, Ferretti always thought Burton reminded him of Fellini, not least because of Burton’s artistic nature, always drawing, always sketching. “I always thought so, I always thought he reminded me of Fellini,” says the Italian-born designer. “Because he is so creative, he always makes a little sketch, exactly like Fellini. They are very close to each other.”
Burton wasn’t interested in creating a historically accurate recreation of 19th century London for “Sweeney Todd.” “We decided not to be real hardcore because it is kind of a fable and it’s slightly stylized,” he explains. He sent Ferretti a DVD of “Son of Frankenstein” as a guide to the look he was after in the movie.
“He said, `I want to do a London that’s a little bit like an old black and white Hollywood movie,'” recalls the production designer. “Not too many details, like black and white in color, just a few colors. It’s very graphic. Tim is really creative. He has a very clear idea what he wants. He’s a great, great director and if you look at all his movies, the look is one of the most important things.”
Adding to the movie’s distinct look was the use of brightly colored flashbacks to explain the characters’ backstories or fantasies. “The original music and lyrics talk about Sweeney losing his wife and having her tragically taken away by Judge Turpin,” says producer MacDonald. “But the movie gave us the opportunity to visualize that, so we actually see who Sweeney was before and how he was forged. These vibrant punches create a sharp contrast to Ferretti’s stark design and convey the juxtaposition between who Sweeney was and what he has now become.”
Renowned for creating amazing fantasy worlds using traditional filmmaking techniques – building sets on soundstages and back lots rather than using CGI – Burton had initially planned to shoot “Sweeney Todd” in the manner of “Sin City” and “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” using minimal sets and props, and filming his actors against green screens. “Part of the reason was the budget,” he explains. “But when I really thought about it, being on a set helps me, it helps the actors, it helps everybody. And at the end of the day, people are singing. And singing on a green screen, you’re so far removed from any reality that it would have been a really scary nightmare. I think that made it even more important to have sets on this one, because of the singing.”
Producer Zanuck says the difference in cost between building sets and using the green screen method was minimal. “We realized that for substantially the same as doing it digitally, we could, if we did it intelligently with set extension and a little green screen, build sets,” he reveals. “And Tim certainly feels much more comfortable and so do the actors.”
While Ferretti welcomed the decision to build sets, it would ultimately mean more work for him and his team. Under the initial green screen scheme, the set for Judge Turpin’s house was planned to have been little more than a simple window and door shot against a green screen. Swapping to a more traditional method meant building an entire house set, along with a tree-lined street and an enormous painted backdrop. In all, Ferretti designed and supervised the construction of more than a dozen full sets at Pinewood Studios. A shortened pre-production period and a relatively tight budget required much ingenuity on Ferretti’s behalf to not only create the large number of sets required by the script, but also build them on the small number of soundstages available to the production at Pinewood. Ferretti’s solution was ingenious and remarkably cost effective. By incorporating movable walls and interchangeable storefronts, he designed sets that could be reused, and so the St. Dunstan’s Market, which was built on Pinewood’s S Stage, transformed very easily into Fleet Street, saving the production both time and money.
“This is our first time with Dante and he’s exceeded our expectations,” says Zanuck. “We didn’t have a lot of money and we couldn’t build everything we wanted. He’s taken certain sets and made other sets out of them, by just changing the structure. There are sets behind sets because we couldn’t afford to have a lot of stages. It’s extraordinary what he’s done. You’re going to feel like you’re in London at that time period, and obviously we have set extensions that are done digitally so you’ll get the feeling that it’s a big outdoor picture.”
“There’s something miraculous when, as a writer, you write INT. PIE SHOP and then you see what Dante and Tim have created,” explains screenwriter Logan. “I know Dante very well because he did `The Aviator’ and I knew he would bring his fine love of detail to this world. In the screenplay, I said the barber shop looked haunted and that’s what every square inch of this world looks like. They are very unsettling sets to walk through because they’re dark and they have strange broken angles and you never quite know what might come round a corner, whether it’s Sweeney Todd with a razor, Mrs. Lovett with a pie or Jack the Ripper. They’re frightening sets, which is appropriate because it’s a horror movie.”
For the actors, the detail in Ferretti’s work was nothing short of inspiring. “I loved the sets,” says Bonham Carter. “I loved walking onto Fleet Street. The atmosphere helps you considerably if your environment invites your imagination to travel. And I loved my shop.”
Another crucial element for the actors was Colleen Atwood’s wardrobe because “the costumes are another character in the movie,” Burton explains. “I’ve worked with Colleen many, many times, and she gets that. She’s as important as any designer in terms of helping the tone of the whole piece. Her costumes help the actors find who the character is and that helps their performances.”
The job on “Sweeney Todd” was particularly challenging because of the limited color palette used for all the present-day scenes, but by playing with various textures and styles Atwood achieved the feel Burton was seeking. “Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett are strong,” he says. “When you see a picture of the old Frankenstein or Dracula, or any classic movie monster, you want to have that kind of strength of image. And so that was always the goal: if you ever saw the two of them it would create a new version of those images.”
In keeping with that sensibility, Burton wanted “Sweeney Todd” to look almost like a black and white film, devoid of virtually all color. “The first idea was to make the film as close to black and white as possible,” explains director of photography Dariusz Wolski. “Tim showed me a lot of old horror films. We both like film noir. We like old black and white movies. So that was the general approach, to make it very moody, very dark, a lot of contrast, very graphic. Dante built sets that were very monochromatic, very stark. Then I came in with the lighting. We looked at a lot of photographs of Old London. We tried to make the film look like an old movie with contemporary technology and a modern way of making an old-fashioned film.”
Later, in post-production, the Polish-born cinematographer used a Digital Intermediate process to strip out even more color. “What we’re doing in this film is a combination of make-up, wardrobe, set design and me treating the film, pulling the color out,” Wolski explains. “We’re trying to make this movie almost black and white, except for some faded colors here and there. And blood.”
Given that Sweeney’s method of murder is cutthroat, it was inevitable that “Sweeney Todd” would be awash with blood, although Burton’s film is, of course, following in the footsteps of the stage production. “The first time Tim and I met, the first thing we talked about was when we first saw `Sweeney Todd’ and how much we remember the blood,” notes Logan. “At the first throat-slitting, the razor goes wide, the blood arched across the stage, the light hit it and it was this unique red.
“In reality when you slit someone’s throat it is a messy business and we don’t shy away from that,” Logan continues. “We are in no way coy about what Sweeney Todd is doing because to understand the tragedy of Sweeney you have to understand the degradation which he inflicts on himself and other people. You have to understand he is, in fact, a homicidal maniac and yet your heart breaks for him. That is the genius of `Sweeney Todd,’ and we thought it was very important not to shy away from the reality of the blood. So when he slits a throat arterial blood sprays and people are coated with it.”
“Tim was reared on horror movies,” laughs Bonham Carter, “that was his treat every Saturday night and Johnny loves them too. And they’ve definitely looked back at their old favorites for a lot of inspiration. It is a horror movie. But Tim’s quite mischievous. There’s a lot of schlock, which he finds incredibly funny, and a lot of gore, which again he finds incredibly funny. There’s a lot of black humor in it. And hopefully it’ll be scary but at the same time it will be very funny, I hope, in a perverse way and very entertaining.”
“‘Sweeney Todd’ is, in the classical dramatic sense, a blood tragedy,” concludes Logan. “Obviously it plays homage to Grand Guignol, it plays homage to the `Penny Dreadfuls’ of Victorian London. But it’s important to say that the blood in `Sweeney Todd’ is not sadistic, it is not unnecessary; it is absolutely a part of the world that these characters inhabit, so to shy away from it would be dishonest and coy in a way this story is not and this filmmaker is not. The truth of this is, people are being killed, this central character is motivated with so much desire and passion that he has to kill people with his hands and their blood gets on his hands and on his face, and he is coated with it figuratively and literally.”
Epilogue
The first audiences to be treated to a view of “Sweeney Todd,” were at the Venice Film Festival in September where Burton was awarded the Golden Lion for career achievement. Eight minutes of the film were unveiled, including Depp singing the song “My Friends.” The reaction to the footage was excellent and wildly enthusiastic.
“I pray it’s going to be at least half as enjoyable and exciting and thrilling as making it has been,” says Bonham Carter. “It should be great. It’s a true marriage of Sondheim and Tim, because they’ve both got very similar sensibilities and the same black humor. And the romance of the music also, and the tenderness too, because both Tim and Johnny are both very tender.”
“There’s always a possibility it might upset the purists because it’s not the show, and there are numbers that are not in it,” muses Burton. “I’m trying to be as pure to it as possible, but I don’t know how the purists will respond to it, but then again, how many purists are there? A movie like this is a strange gamble because it’s an R-rated musical, it’s got blood in it and people that go to Broadway shows don’t usually go to see slasher films and people who see slasher films don’t usually go to Broadway shows.”
For fans of the original musical, Sondheim does acknowledge that some material was cut. But, he adds, “I urge them as much as possible to leave their memory of the stage show outside the door, because unlike all other movies of stage musicals that I know, this really is an attempt to take the material and completely transform it into a movie. The nice thing about `Sweeney Todd’ is that this is not a movie of the stage show. This is a movie based on the stage show.”
“I’m most excited about the people who have never heard of Stephen Sondheim, who have never been to a Broadway show in their life, who are going to get to see this majestic piece of work,” says Logan. “They’re going to get to hear a score unlike anything that has ever been composed by an American composer. They’re going to get to see a story that is unique, that they don’t know. And they’re going to get to understand why we, who love `Sweeney Todd,’ have loved it for so long and so passionately. In a way, they will get to be John Logan or Tim Burton watching this for the first time and being inspired with a passion that has lasted now 25 years. At its heart, `Sweeney Todd’ is a horror musical. It is a horror movie with music that supports it. It is also, I think, a riveting character drama and a wonderful black comedy. It is an exercise in Guignol. But above everything else, it is pure entertainment. It is the genius of Stephen Sondheim, the genius of Tim Burton, the world of Sweeney Todd, coming together to create something unique and very entertaining.”
The Legend of Sweeney Todd
“Walking into this production I said to the studio, `You know, guys, there’s going to be a lot of blood in this movie,'” recalls director Tim Burton, who clearly understood that such a twisted tale needed to be as packed with gore as one of Mrs. Lovett’s infamous pies; after all, Sweeney Todd was a truly horrific figure.
Though some claim he never existed, others have documented a concise history of the 18th century’s legendary “Demon Barber” of Fleet Street. To the tabloid press who adopted him, the “Penny Dreadfuls” that exploited him and the theatrical stage, which immortalized him, “Sweeney Todd” is proof positive of the maxim (acknowledgments to John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”) “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Sweeney Todd was reputedly born in 1748, the only child of poor, alcoholic silk workers. At that time London was plagued by disease, pollution, poverty and corruption, and young Todd grew up working alongside his parents in the clothing mills. His mother and father disappeared under mysterious circumstances and, at age 14, Todd was arrested for a petty robbery and sent to Newgate Prison; this was actually considered merciful, as most child thieves were hung for their crimes.
Living among killers and crooks, Todd allegedly became the apprentice of a prison barber and fellow-convict, Elmer Plummer. Since barbers also performed certain surgical duties (hence the origin of the blood-red stripe on a barber pole), Todd learned his trade, aspects of anatomy, and how to pick the pockets of his reclining customers. These skills served him well upon release, but greed, jealousy and unbridled anger overtook the young man and his killing spree began.
Todd soon opened up shop at 186 Fleet Street next to St. Dunstan’s Church, beneath which lay forgotten tunnels and catacombs holding dead parishioners. Todd advertised his services by displaying jars of teeth, hair, and blood in the window, while in the center of the room lay his most ingenious and sinister device of all: the barber chair.
To disguise his crimes, Todd reportedly created a trap door that swung a full 360 degrees. He attached a barber chair on each side, so that when a lever was pulled the customer’s weight caused the occupied chair to flip upside down, dropping the victim onto his head in the basement many floors below. As the panel continued its rotation, leaving an empty barber chair in its place, Todd would race down into the basement. If the fall hadn’t killed the customer, he used his razor to finish the job. Todd then stripped the body of all valuables and hid it amongst the ancient corpses under St. Dunstan’s. This plan worked for a while, but as the killings continued, Todd started to run out of places to hide his victims.
Meanwhile, Todd met the money-hungry widow Margery Lovett. The two became lovers and partners-in-crime after Todd set up Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop in Bell Yard, which was connected to his barbershop via the underground tunnels. Todd used his surgical skills to butcher the bodies, delivering the meat to Mrs. Lovett for her pies while hiding the skin and bones in the church catacombs.
As Todd’s bloodlust flourished and Mrs. Lovett’s pie business boomed, a foul stench rose up from the bowels of St. Dunstan’s. Authorities investigated and it didn’t take long to connect a string of missing men with piles of rotting corpses and a trail of bloody footprints leading from under Todd’s business over to Mrs. Lovett’s. That’s when the public hysteria began.
The Media and Penny Dreadfuls
Todd was arrested without incident, but when authorities arrived at Bell Yard for Mrs. Lovett, her pie-eating customers learned both about the murders and that they had consumed some of the victims. The crowd tried lynching her on the spot, but Lovett was quickly taken to Newgate Prison. She confessed to her and Todd’s dark dealings before committing suicide, while Todd was granted a trial, found guilty, and eventually hung; all told, Sweeney Todd is believed to have murdered over 160 people.
The public voraciously followed these larger-than-life events, and newspaper publishers took advantage of this sudden interest to increase their print sales. Reporters combined rumors with facts, sensationalizing the story in such a way that Sweeney Todd soon became prime tabloid fodder and the stuff of urban legend; indeed, it’s because of these numerous retellings that there are no accurate descriptions of Todd’s actual appearance.
The obvious popularity of these real-crime stories, combined with a growing number of reading adults, inspired the creation of penny part magazines, so named because they contained serialized tales sold for one cent. Due to their graphic subject matter and as a comment on the writing quality, they soon became known as Penny Bloods, and later Penny Dreadfuls. The most popular of these Penny Dreadfuls was Thomas Peckett Prest’s 1846 story entitled “The String of Pearls,” featuring a Demon Barber named Sweeney Todd. Between Prest’s story and Todd’s history within popular culture, it wasn’t long before this blood-soaked tale was adapted for the stage.
The Grand Guignol Tradition
“George Dibdin-Pitt was one of the most popular playwrights of his day,” explains Stephen Sondheim. “He made Sweeney Todd into a play in the late 1840s and it became a big hit.” While the story certainly spoke to the public’s fascination with horror and the macabre, Pitt’s Sweeney Todd also amazed audiences by styling itself like a French Grand Guignol melodrama.
Named after Le Theatre du Grand Guignol, which was founded by Oscar Metenier in 1897, Grand Guignol plays are known for their grisly stories and lavish special effects. Now considered a quaint form of entertainment that became obsolete with the success of horror movies in the 1960s, at the time of Pitt’s Sweeney Todd production it was a stunning sight for audiences. That success inspired numerous other adaptations over the years, but it wasn’t until the early 1970s that playwright and actor Christopher Bond wrote a version with significant changes. Bond inserted the Judge Turpin revenge plot, transforming Sweeney Todd from a simple thieving serial killer into a complex, haunted man.
“In 1973 I was in London and that’s the version I saw,” Sondheim says. “I’ve always been very fond of melodrama and I just thought this play would make a really good musical. So I asked Christopher Bond permission and then I wrote the musical.”
Production notes provided by Paramount Pictures.
Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee, Jamie Campbell Bowen, Jayne Wisener
Directed by: Tim Burton
Screenplay by: John Logan
Release Date: December 21, 2007
MPAA Rating: R for graphic bloody violence.
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $52,898,073 (34.7%)
Foreign: $99,625,000 (65.3%)
Total: $152,523,073 (Worldwide)