By Nick Haramis

Award-winning composer Mark Mancina, left.

Ten years ago, Timon and Pumbaa first took the stage in Julie Taymor's musical production of Disney's The Lion King. Mark Mancina collaborated with Lebo M and Taymor to create the distinct tribal sounds that eventually went on to dominate Broadway. Mancina has also created a number of groundbreaking film scores, including Speed, Twister, Training Day, Moll Flanders, and more recently, this Thanksgiving's August Rush, a highly anticipated release starring Keri Russell, Freddie Highmore, Robin Williams, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Terrence Howard.

Taymor has also been busy over the last decade. After directing Titus and the Oscar-nominated Kahlo biopic Frida, she secured her position in the pantheon of vanguard American filmmakers with this fall's ode to the Beatles, Across the Universe, starring Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, and Bono. She is currently at work on a musical interpretation of Spider-Man, alongside Bono and the Edge. To mark the 10th anniversary of Simba's circle of life, Julie Taymor and Mark Mancina reunite after many years to discuss rock musicals, apartheid, and the death of mainstream music.

Director Julie Taymor, left.

MARK MANCINA: It’s just the two of us? Interviewing each other?

JULIE TAYMOR: Yeah, didn’t they tell you? It's better this way. I haven’t spoken to you in years!

MM: I just missed you in France.

JT: Yeah, I was in Paris for The Lion King. Actually, I was surprised it came out as well as it did, because in all these countries it’s very tricky—with the humor, in particular—to translate and adapt to local dialects and local color; literally, the color of the various neighborhoods and classes. We always hit upon this dangerous point of, “Is it racist?” With the hyenas, especially. I’ve always felt that it’s a non-issue. If you're really worried about that then you’re the racist, because the point is that Mufasa is one of the play's most noble characters and he's not white. This version was a little tepid, with the hyenas. I thought they should have taken more chances, but as a whole the piece worked really well. There’s a kind of—dare I say it—euro-trashy sound when you hear the French doing Elton John songs. Has your daughter seen The Lion King?

MM: Twice, and each time she sees it, she gets more and more out of it.

JT: Personally, my favorite production is from the South African company. It has a moral spine. It’s very political. They give a much more specific meaning to exile, because of the political travails there and the situation with women. The woman who plays Nala uses the part as a platform for her political views. When she says the hyenas have taken over the pride land, she’s being very specific. She really means it. Many of the kids come from the townships—no shoes, they don’t even really speak English—and they only know it from television or whatever they’ve heard. It’s very local. The other beautiful thing is that we have an Afrikaner Pumbaa and a Soweto township Timon, which means that when they’ve been in the boondocks, they’ve missed apartheid. Every Wednesday, they bus in thousands of school kids from the townships, who have never seen theater like this before. That’s why we’re doing this, that’s why we gave up our royalties.

MM: It’s sort of like returning home.

JT: That’s what it felt like. It was like returning to the cradle of humanity. The only weird part is that it’s being put on in a casino. You walk outside and you see people whose lives are about gambling and that’s always pitiful and sad.

MM: The Lion King was one of the deepest experiences I’ve ever had. It really inspired me to go further into musical theater, but to be honest, I couldn’t get connected with people who were willing to make musical theater a little more contemporary.

JT: You should definitely be doing that. You’ve been sucked into Hollywood, living out there. Having The Lion King live in its tenth year in eleven countries is thrilling. With a movie, you’re always worried that it won’t last a month.

Keri Russell, in August Rush, above.

MM: I read the script for August Rush and said, “I have to do this.” I mean, it’s about composing.

JT: Tell me about August Rush?

MM: Well, let me think back because it was one of those long, arduous, changed it a bazillion times kind of films. August Rush is about a little boy who is accidentally orphaned, grows up on the streets, and has to make his way. He can busk and get around town, but from the beginning of the movie, you realize that his intention is to find his parents. We wanted to focus on this. He communicates to them through music, and that’s all he really cares about. His mother is a classical cellist and his father is an alternative rock musician, so I was able to take all of their influences and throw them into him.

JT: I love that. I’m working on Spider-Man right now.

MM: When I heard that, I said to my close circle of friends, "She’s going to take the music to another level." Even Spring Awakening, which is supposed to so fresh, is just an alternative pop album.

JT: Popera.

MM: People are so hungry for something accessible and current.

JT: Musicals used to the pop of the day. Real rock music is something I haven’t heard on Broadway since Tommy. Even the way I used music in Across the Universe was pretty traditional. I didn’t write those songs for the musical, but I wrote the movie for those songs, so it works in the same way. They push the story along. There are only thirty minutes of dialogue in the film.

MM: This was one of the few times I’ve seen the Beatles' songs done this well. Most of the time, when people do something like this, it really lands short.

JT: It was hard. We didn’t want to be only one chromosome away from the original, because then people just want the original.

MM: You showed that these are real love songs. JT: But love isn’t idealized. I think young people can relate to that better than a perfect Romeo and Juliet coupling.

MM: There’s melancholy in your songs that makes them powerful. I have to see the movie again, though, because I was really focused on the arrangements.

Film still from Taymor's Across the Universe, left.

JT: Aren’t the actors amazing? No one ever knew Evan Rachel Wood had that kind of incredible voice. Eighty percent of that is live. I really dislike lip-syncing in movie musicals and it’s been done forever. But I think now we expect such realism, and if you push that button and they’re on pre-record, it’s just dead.

MM: It's wooden, yeah.

JT: The drama had to come first, not just to show off a good rock orchestration.

MM: I hear so much bombastic scoring these days, which is why I’ve shied slightly away from movies. I got a little bit spoiled working on August Rush, actually. I experimented. It made me think of you. We used really organic instruments like giant rubber bands being spun around people’s heads.

JT: The reason I shuffle between movies and opera and live theater and musicals is because there’s nothing like a live space. People look at Across the Universe and say, “Well, what’s the difference between their war and our?” The difference is that people at that time couldn’t sit behind a desk, safely blogging their protest. And this is because the electricity and energy between humans when they’re face to face—the pheromones—makes it an entirely differently event. That’ll never die. Look at rock concerts. People still want to be in a stadium with 5,000 other people. There’s something religious, awe-inspiring about the experience. The theater becomes like a synagogue, a church, or a mosque.

MM: Even now, people are replacing 85-musician orchestras with technology, but it’s never as good. With August Rush, I kept thinking, “How would you feel, if you knew your mother and father were out there, and you couldn’t find them?” I tried to stay true to that emotion.

JT: When we were doing Across the Universe, we were met with a wall of sound—horrific digital sound. The Beatles played with out of tune guitars, and we didn’t want perfection either. I’m so tired of this Botox music, this airbrushing of sound, in which there are no wrinkles. That’s why, I think, ’60s bands are still having such success. It’s about individuality. With pop, you can’t tell the difference between one female singer and another. MM: It’s about integrity. So much music is so obviously manufactured for a mass audience.

JT: And I think “American Idol” has really hurt music. It’s a horrific, disgusting style. The poor people singing, doing that elaboration, because that’s what they’re told.

MM: And of course, the audience thinks that’s the goal. And that couldn’t be further from the goal.
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