Clint Eastwood Talks Jersey BoysPosted by Wilson Morales
June 23, 2014
Currently out in theaters is the musical ‘Jersey Boys,’ which is based on the Tony Award-winning musical and starring John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Vincent Piazza, Michael Lomenda, and Christopher Walken.
Clint Eastwood‘s big screen version of the Tony Award-winning musical tells the story of the four young men from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who came together to form the iconic ’60s rock group The Four Seasons. Their trials and triumphs are accompanied by the hit songs that influenced a generation, and are now being embraced by a new generation of fans through the stage musical.
Interesting enough, prior to the film’s opening and during a press conference in which Eastwood as well as the cast were present, it was bought up that Eastwood got on board with this project shortly after plans to do a remake of ‘A Star is Born,’ starring Beyonce, fell through.
Here’s the portion of the conference in which Eastwood talks about taking adapting a hit musical to film.
How in the world did you decide to do “Jersey Boys”?
Clint Eastwood: It seemed like something to do. It’s funny because I hadn’t seen the play but I’d heard a lot about it over the years. Somebody said would you be interested in doing that, and I said I’d certainly be interested in looking at it. Then they sent me a script and it was by a very good writer, but I found out later through a series of events that that wasn’t the script of the play, so then I asked, where can I find that? A friend of mine, a gent said, I represent the guys who did that, Mr. Elice and Mr. Brinkman, so I said maybe I better look at that, because I figured only in Hollywood would somebody give you a script of something else when they have a script that’s a hit. So I looked at that. I liked it very much, and I went and saw three different versions of the play in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and saw all these wonderful actors and thought, what a nice project to be doing. And that’s the last thing I have to say this evening.
Have you ever met Frankie Valli? How challenging was it to make the film from the Broadway play?
CE: Well, I met Frankie Valli years ago, in passing. I was never a fan of music of that particular era. I came along before all that, but I did like the Four Seasons a lot. I thought their music was far superior (to the other groups of the day). I think ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ is one of the real classic songs of that era and would have been a classic song in the 40’s, 50’s, or 30’s, or any time in history. All of their stuff was very energetic music and great fun. They have great fun songs and certainly superior for that particular time in history, so it was a challenge to do it, a pleasant challenge, and to work with actors who had actually formulated, had a great influence on the play, on its run throughout the country. It was great to be using the original people.
What were the challenges in bringing this from the stage to the big screen?
CE: I didn’t think it was too much of a challenge. You can open it up, the stage play. I think it’s a wonderful play and it had a lot of excitement in it, but I could push it more from the realistic angle. There are a lot of things that you can do in a movie that you can’t do on the stage. They have to keep things moving and be very practical, so you just try to open it up and give it a certain realism maybe.
The movie tells the story of the Four Seasons from the viewpoint of each of the performers in the group, who were all Italian-Americans from New Jersey. How did you relate to them?
CE: Well, I try to relate to the whole thing. I went to a school which was about half Italian American in an era that was quite interesting in Oakland, California, so I understand something about that community. The film touched on this, that you don’t forgive a lot of things. Maybe clichés, maybe not, but the Italian-American community where you get on the bad side and you’re on the bad side forever. I don’t know if that’s true nowadays, but there is sort of a historical feeling about that that I related to. Tommy DeVito has a street named after him. There’s a little bit of a culture thing going on still with those guys. There’s no street named after me.
In one scene, the television is on and there’s a scene with you from your television series “Rawhide.” How did that come about, and did the struggle of the Four Seasons resonate with you and your struggles as a young actor?
CE: You’re talking about my Hitchcock moment? OK that was actually Erich’s (Bergen) idea… (The group is sitting down watching television and ‘Rawhide’ is on.) I started thinking, ‘Yeah, it could be,’ because after all, that was about the right timing, so I thought maybe… Then I put it out of my mind, but somebody who works for me just went ahead and did it (put it in). Afterwards I said, ‘Ok, I’ll live with that.’
Can you talk about casting your other leads?
CE: I got a standing ovation for actually going to the men’s room when I was at the Broadway show. That’s the first time and probably the last time that will happen. Anyway, I enjoyed the play so much, and by that time I had seen Michael (Lomenda) from the San Francisco one. Erich partly I attributed to Bob Gaudio, because I said, of all the people who have played you, who do you think was the best?
Erich mentions he was second after William Holden…
CE: But he was deceased at that time. We couldn’t get him. (Laughs). And Vince (Piazza) … I had never seen ‘Boardwalk Empire’ at that particular time, but he did come in and do an audition, and he was just spectacular in the audition. So I said, okay I think we’ve got the guys here. I’d seen three boys and a lot of good actors in all of them, but it seemed like the group just all came together. Like Michael said, 1200 performances, that’s experience you just cannot buy.
