From its inception by Michael Bennett, ‘Dreamgirls’ has always been an epic story with an ensemble cast. I didn’t change that. The screen version remains, really, a group story.
I do think that’s so much a part of what being a director is – in working with actors – to really try and be sensitive to what each actor needs to get to where he wants to be.
That day I think we really saw each other for the first time. I mean, saw beyond the bag of bones on the outside. You take away her pretty and my plain and what you get underneath is about the same: a couple of lost girls looking to be found.
It is interesting to be here and to see that for certain actors they have to live in a way that you think of nobody living anymore except for in small towns. They have such elaborate double lives.
I had a couple of movies that I was passionately involved with that I could never get made. ‘Richard Pryor,’ I wrote for – gosh – over a year. That was close to getting made for two-and-a-half years after that.
For me, someone like the Eddie Murphy character doesn’t live anywhere; he lives on a stage and when he’s not on the stage he’s on a bus getting to the next stage.
