the pink panther exclusive
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the pink panther exclusive
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Beyoncé Made The Song Her Own
 While Mortimer’s comedic skills impressed Levy, he says it was her overall adorableness that convinced him to cast her as Nicole. “Nicole has always been our Audrey Hepburn character, a gamine with innate lovability, someone who is beautiful and winning but not seductive. She is very much the friend to Clouseau, the one person besides Ponton who stands by him in good times and bad. The fact that towards the end, she and Clouseau reveal a certain chemistry is a nice bonus and that was Steve’s invention.”
Kristin Chenoweth, who is cast as the flirtatious Cherie, the P.R. representative for the soccer team, was equally charming but, unlike Nicole, definitely not an innocent. “Cherie is a bit promiscuous,” laughs Chenoweth. “Let’s just say she wears a short skirt that has a lot of cherries on it and cherry earrings too.”
Chenoweth is well known to Broadway audiences, having won scores of awards, including the Tony, for You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown and, recently, to film audiences for her role as one of Nicole Kidman’s best friends in Bewitched.
During production, she juggled her role in the film with her performance in the hit Broadway musical “Wicked,” for which she earned another Tony nomination. “I knew that if I got the part, I would be doing double duty between ‘Wicked’ at night and The Pink Panther during the day. But it was worth it to work with a comedy genius like Steve Martin. Working with him was great. He is so in the moment that every single take was good.”
While Chenoweth does not lend her amazing voice to the film, she did treat the director and the cast and crew to a musical parting gift. After she completed her last scene, Levy asked her to sing a song. Chenoweth obliged and in her legendary soprano, belted out the classic standard “You’ll Never Know.”
Music became a vital tool during the making of the movie. Between takes, Levy invariably played the famous Henry Mancini Pink Panther theme. “I’d use the song for inspiration because it’s one of the most brilliant, memorable themes in movie history and it sets the tone perfectly. It’s swanky, cool, knowing, a little ironic and, above all, playful. It always heightened the mood of whatever we were doing.”
Typically, Levy popped a CD into a portable player on the set. When that wasn’t available, he used a cell phone ring tone and, when all else failed, he’d sing it.
The Pink Panther also allowed Levy to venture into another musical world. At the climax of the movie, the character Xania sings an iconic song as mayhem ensues around her. The song, “A Woman Like Me,” is the result of a unique collaboration between director and Beyoncé. “The song is a huge part of the climactic sequence and we needed something that worked dramatically,” says Levy. “We also wanted something that was musically cool, that reflected Beyoncé's style and taste. We sent out word to the musical community and we received a flood of songs from some of the country’s top songwriters. After listening to them, “A Woman Like Me” bubbled to the top.”
Adds Beyoncé, “It had the strength of a Tina Turner song but the drama of a Bond tune. It definitely fit the character. She’s talking a lot of noise in it, stuff like, ‘Do you think you can handle a woman like me?’ Xania is like that.”
“When we got in the recording studio, Beyoncé made that song her own like nobody else could. She was on fire,” says Levy. “To see her in a recording studio is like watching the Queen. She just laid down track after track, no deliberation, no equivocation. Then she doubled and tripled her own voice, basically laying in six-and seven-part harmonies with herself. It was amazing.”
Beyoncé certainly knows her way around a recording studio; she’s been singing professionally since the age of nine. Music to her, is like comedy to Martin — second nature. “I know when I’ve got it,” she says. “It’s a gut thing. I can’t tell you how I know. I just do.”
In addition to offering her the opportunity to act opposite such comedy veterans as Martin and Kline and to exercise her vocal chops, Beyoncé also relished the opportunity to wear fashions designed for her by costume designer Joe Aulisi.
“The clothes?,” she says. “Oh my God! Joe Aulisi came to one of my concerts prior to the start of the movie and showed me some of the sketches and I couldn’t wait to try them on. The character of Xania is an international star and very fashion-forward, so, naturally, the wardrobe was fantastic. Everything had this vintage, 1940s kind of feeling, a Parisian feel — very Josephine Baker, but with a contemporary sensibility. Everything fit so well. You could tell it was custom-made. The little details were extraordinary, from the earrings to the little butterflies and the shoes, especially the polka dot shoes they made for me. It was all exceptional.”
Beyoncé’s wardrobe ranged from what Aulisi calls a Belle du Jour dress — a summery white frock with a low cut V-neck and a billowy skirt that literally stopped traffic in New York City — to an incredible, diaphanous ball gown that was all glittery bronze sequins hand-sewn to a sheer sheath that hugged the actress’ figure and highlighted her caramel colored-skin.
“Beyoncé is a designer’s dream,” says Aulisi. “We made six outfits for her and she was just a joy. Overall, the inspiration for her character was definitely Josephine Baker who, like Xania, loved diamonds and jewelry. So, we began with that idea and that’s how the gown for the ballroom scene evolved. Our hope was that she would look like a freshly uncorked bottle of champagne, which was how we came up with the beading.”
Aulisi’s costumes also played a significant part in establishing the character of Clouseau. The wardrobe helped Martin explore and define the character, Levy claims. “Sometimes an actor will find the character from the outside in and other times from the inside out. I remember Steve saying early on that to do Clouseau, he would have to figure out the walk, the posture, the accent, the voice, the mouth, the eyes. He always knew that he would only feel comfortable playing if he figured from the outside what the physical aspects were. So, the walk, the mustache, the expression and in particular, the wardrobe were critical to helping him find the character.”
In the original Pink Panther, Clouseau was very well tailored and also looked impeccable, according to Martin. “I always wondered how that matched up with a bumbling inspector, but it actually does, quite a bit,” he says. “Closeau doesn’t think he’s inept at all. He considers himself to be a man of the world, confident, capable, urbane. At first, we tried a lot of different outfits and eventually we modeled our main suit design on a kind of 1960s mod look. All the costumes were brilliantly interpreted by Joe Aulisi.”
In addition to designing wearable clothes, in the case of Clouseau, Aulisi says he wanted to add humor to the wardrobe as well. “The fun part was finding subtle things for each character. In the case of Steve Martin, we prepped by trying to find out what worked for Steve while still honoring the original Pink Panther films.
I found some great research photos that included some by the great French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, who took wonderful photos of ordinary people, but they were always slightly askew, their actions quite bizarre. I thought that would fit Steve’s personality and his Clouseau very well. We also referenced a contemporary cartoonist, Jean-Jacques Sempe, who covers Paris life and whose humor is very French and very modern. Drawing on those two artists, we worked out Steve’s look — slightly 1960s period, but we changed the proportions so that the jackets are a little too tight or short, the pants are a bit balloon-y, made from very soft fabrics so that they blow in the wind and are also too short so that we see his striped socks and enormous, long pointy shoes. The idea was to be believable, but to add humor, to be a little off-center.”
Martin also occasionally donned Clouseau’s signature trench coat in the film, but even that took on a modern twist. “We decided that he would wear the beret – because it looked very amusing on Steve and was a better fit than the old hat,” says Aulisi. “We used the trench coat because it has become so emblematic of a detective, but we shortened it, stylized it in the back, so it became a little pointy and again, a little off-center.”
Martin’s wardrobe, in fact, reflects not just Clouseau’s “off-center” personality but his entire milieu. As production designer Lilly Kilvert notes, Clouseau’s world is “recognizably real but it’s a heightened reality. Everything is slightly softened, prettier and old-fashioned. It is a simple tableau, a place where an innocent like Clouseau could exist. The Pink Panther lives in its own period, it’s not the past, it’s not the present, it has its own benign quality, and I wanted to give both New York and Paris a kind of buffed quality so that they were still themselves, but slightly less edgy and real, more our dream of Paris and our dream of New York.”
This approach meant that Dreyfus’ offices were picturesque and lavishly Gallic, with high ceilings, important paintings, ornate moldings and masculine, tasteful and refined furniture, in tones of brown and ochre. Because all sorts of Clouseauinduced mayhem take place in these regal chambers, Kilvert had to design the sets with the calamity in mind. The sets, which were built on the stages of the Kaufman-Astoria studios just outside of Manhattan, were designed with walls that could be removed and re-set quickly, to accommodate both the movement of the camera and the evolving comic chemistry between Martin and Kline. “It took about eight weeks to build the sets and basically, they were all constructed with ‘wild’ walls,” says Kilvert. “Dreyfus’ offices had density and gravitas, in terms of their look, but at the end it was just scenery that had to work for the camera.”
 Next Page: Shooting in New York and Paris |
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