When it comes to winning Best Picture, Chicago had it coming.
You have to embrace the theatricality of it.'"
Here, Marshall walks us through how he built the killer number.
Everett Collection
“I wanted to work from the rhythm of a tango,” explains Marshall.
What is she hearing?'
And I would think that you’re hearing everything amplified.
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It became all these sounds that then developed into a tango rhythm."
“So it’s inherent in the piece.
But I kept seeing if I could find conceptual differences.
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With ‘Cell Block Tango,’ it was all done with women and bars on stage.
I chose to do it with an actual tango, so that they could tango with their victims.
“I thought, ‘Well, we can start there and then depart.'”
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Marshall also wanted to translate “Cell Block Tango” into something significantly sexier.
For that, he turned to costume designerColleen Atwood.
So, it’s a female empowerment number.”
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That was Marshall and co-choreographer John DeLuca’s idea.
“We were in rehearsal and I said, ‘How can we represent blood?
How can we represent the death?'”
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Choreographers are authors because there’s nothing on the page.
You’re writing the story of the number.
But choreographers, you have to write what’s happening."
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One of the most striking is “Squish,” who’s husband runs into her knife ten times.
As this story is told, a very long red scarf emerges, signifying a gushing blood.
“She literally knifed him 10 times,” Marshall says.
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Another nuance of the scarves was the ability to convey the tragedy of the one innocent in the mix.
“We decided to use a white scarf.
I thought, How beautiful.
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We can say she’s not guilty with white.”
Marshall wasn’t exactly sure how this would work or if the dancers would be up for it.
“It had to go down his throat,” he explains.
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I remember saying, ‘Scott, can you swallow or put a red scarf in your mouth?
Are you going to choke or something?’
He said, ‘No, of course I can.’
Dancers will try anything."
Real or imagined?
Marshall made sure he over-prepared to give himself lots of options in post-production.
“I filmed it all so that I would have the choice,” he says.
“I brought that to the sequence,” he explains.
“All the monologues that were done on stage were just monologues to the audience.
But I felt that we could dance these monologues.
“I did realize I can’t go too far,” he says.
“We decided to do it upside down.
We tried all kinds of crazy things.
It’s also happening behind her, so it’s not too explicit.
You have that fine line in terms of taste.
You don’t want to go too far.”
“We tried some lifts,” he continues.
Let’s leave a little to the imagination.’
I like the shape of what it became, with her upside down with the legs.
We tried to keep it dance-like, but not too vulgar.
It’s right on the edge.”
“I thought we could have tiers of them.
I really wanted the whole jail to be going.
Of course, we had to go red because we’re talking about murder.
It was exciting to have those silhouettes of those women.
It was so archaic 20 years ago.
We were just up there doing it, dancing like crazy on these huge, high platforms.
That would never happen now.”
