LOS ANGELES— Adam Shankman is a card-carrying member of the Directors Guild of America, as he was eager to prove to the Bagger when we ran into him the other night. “Read it and weep,” Mr. Shankman said, adding in another emphatic word we can’t use as he pulled the guild card out of his wallet at the group’s awards ceremony.
Getty Images Adam ShankmanIn addition to being an officially paper-worked director (he did the film version of the “Hairspray” musical), Mr. Shankman was a producer of the Oscars last year, known for his desire to modernize the show – he tried to get it on Twitter, of which he’s an avid user – and occasionally clashing with the Academy as he worked, Odd Couple-style, with his co-producer, Bill Mechanic. A choreographer by background, Mr. Shankman was responsible for a lengthy dance number (using people from “So You Think You Can Dance,” on which he was a judge) that replaced the best score performances, to some chagrin.
This year, “I’m talking to the producers a lot,” Mr. Shankman said, “and I’m dying to see how it turns out.”
The producers, Don Mischer and Bruce Cohen, are old friends of his, and are coming to him for advice, not the other way around, he said. Was he a part of the decision to hire James Franco and Anne Hathaway to host?
“I was not,” he said. “I’m fascinated by that decision. They are both really, really smart people. I know after last year’s show there was some talk about, is it the right thing to do to try to play to the younger audience, at the possible risk of alienating your core, which is an older demographic? But clearly they’re trying to court it” – the younger crowd — “now.”
Mr. Franco and Ms. Hathaway have kept mum about what they’ll be doing, but it is clear they will be singing and dancing. Mr. Shankman said he recommended a choreographer, Jamal Sims, a veteran of movies, award shows and last year’s Oscars. “He’s worked with me for years and years,” Mr. Shankman said. What style will we see? “He does everything, but he was hip-hop, and I know it’s not hip-hop,” Mr. Shankman said. “That’s what I did. I don’t see James doing hip-hop.”
Oh, between the gender-bending take on “Three’s Company,” the Yale Ph.D. and “General Hospital,” Mr. Franco could pull it off, we said.
Mr. Shankman had other ideas.
“I think she should come out with one arm,” he said, “and he could be naked, holding Jake Gyllenhaal’s hand. That’s the way to open that show.”
Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved
