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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Director Jon M. Chu said the movie adaptation of Wicked, in theaters Friday, wanted to focus on a closeup of star Cynthia Erivo during the climactic performance of the song "Defying Gravity." Erivo plays Elphaba, the green magician who becomes dubbed The Wicked Witch of The West in The Wizard of Oz. She sings "Defying Gravity" the moment she learns to fly.
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"I knew we were going to want to be on her face on that one," Chu said after a screening in Los Angeles. "We need to be that close with her."
Stage productions of Wicked use wires to raise the actor in the air. A movie could add visual effects to the wirework, but Chu did not want to overdo it.
"Every word is gold, and yet the audience also wants to experience what it feels like to be flying with her," Chu said. "No other person has been able to do that in this show before."
On stage, "Defying Gravity" is performed right before the intermission. It is the climax of the film, leading to Wicked Part Two, which will come next year.
In addition to serving as the show's signature song and greatest spectacle, "Defying Gravity" is an emotional turning point. Elphaba learns the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) has no real magic and plans to use hers, so she chooses to fly off alone.
Chu scheduled "Defying Gravity" for the end of production to give Erivo time to train for it.
"That's not including the emotional work that she had to get Elphaba to," Chu said. "This is the end of the movie. This determines whether one movie and two movies work."
However, by last summer when Wicked was about to wrap, the Screen Actors Guild went on strike. Chu advised Erivo not to hold onto Elphaba's emotional state, anticipating a long strike.
"At three months she calls me and says, 'I haven't let it go. I can't let it go. I want to be there,'" Chu said, adding that when production resumed in December, "she dropped right in and she was like 'I'm [expletive] ready.'"
Erivo sang the song on the set while performing flying stunts in a harness.
"She had been training, spinning and doing the loop de loop," Chu said. "That takes a lot of muscle memory."
By the time he filmed "Defying Gravity," Chu already had learned to hold back on some of the flashy technical camerawork in other scenes. There are plenty of such moments in the musical numbers, but Chu let other moments play subtly.
Chu credited cinematographer Alice Brooks with encouraging him to trust the performances in those moments. For example, at a school dance, Chu scrapped his ideas for camerawork when Glinda (Arianne Grande) joins Elphaba in an emotional choreography.
"I'm like, 'Oh yeah, she cries and we're gonna whip around here,'" Chu said, adding that Brooks suggested "Just let it sit and let Cynthia take the wheel for a second."
Although Wicked employs modern visual effects and camera technology to bring the land of Oz to life, Chu said the original 1939 The Wizard of Oz remained an influence. Chu's goal was to incorporate modern "toys" into classical Hollywood style.
"We wanted to make a throwback to the Golden Age of Hollywood," Chu said. "Our love for movies came from movies like this where you could just be swept away into a land and at the same time have this intimacy of something real."
And yet, Chu saw the themes of Wicked as transcending the old story. Traditional narratives said green witches are villains.
"It's about awakening from that sometimes," Chu said. "It's unveiling the curtain and seeing the storyteller."
"The man behind the curtain" is famously the real wizard who told Dorothy to pay no attention to him. Chu said Elphaba and Glinda question the conventional stories behind their magical world.
"Those questions are uncomfortable and they are scary," Chu said. "At some point, you have to hear each other and maybe even forgive each other for some things."
Chu said Wicked is about Elphaba forging her own path once she sees behind the wizard's curtain and realizes she has no place on the Yellow Brick Road.
"I love that she's like, 'You know what? Where we're going, we don't need roads,'" Chu said, quoting Back to the Future.
UPI's review of Wicked posts Tuesday.
