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Hometown fans and film workers shredded their garments and tore their hair when producers decided to shoot Hairspray the movie musical - based on the Broadway musical, based on the 1988 John Waters film - in Toronto instead of Baltimore.
But, as filmgoers will see Friday, the moviemakers have done more than build a duplicate Baltimore in sets and sound stages: They put a sheen on Charm City. Though it's debatable that they had to go north to do it, maybe it took outsiders' eyes to bring out the Emerald City in East Baltimore.
"Baltimore is our Oz," co-producer Craig Zadan says over the phone from Los Angeles. "This is the place the heroine is obsessed with and loves and adores."
New Line Cinema's $75 million movie musical turns the City that Reads into the City that Sings and Dances. And the design team heightens Highlandtown just enough to make it seem like a dream even in harsh noon light.
The film's story hasn't changed since Waters cooked it up 20 years ago. Set amid the social tumult and towering hairstyles of 1962, Hairspray is still about ebullient, obese Tracy Turnblad, who changes hometown views of attractive body types - and, more important, helps integrate Baltimore's answer to American Bandstand (The Corny Collins Show, based on The Buddy Deane Show). Tracy lives in Highlandtown with her rotund home-laundress mom, Edna, and her charmingly obtuse dad, Wilbur, who owns a joke shop.
The movie's Highlandtown streets are wider than the actual Formstone canyons, while the Hefty Hideaway storefront pops your eyes with period dazzle. And as MGM boasted in its Oz days, the cast features "more stars than there are in heaven": John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Queen Latifah, Zac Efron and the breakout female lead, Nikki Blonsky.
But if director-choreographer Adam Shankman and the other non-Baltimoreans involved can project Highlandtown as Emerald City, they haven't forsaken any of the fun and funk of Waters' Remembrance of Platter Parties Past. They just do it with extra brio: Shankman says the motto on his set was, "Go big or go home."
As a director, Shankman quickly became known for crass but phenomenally lucrative big-star comedy vehicles such as The Pacifier and Cheaper by the Dozen 2. But his choreography credits were more promising and all over the map: everything from Addams Family Values to TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Hairspray was different; when it came along, it made Shankman feel, "I need to do this movie. It's like a one-way ticket inside my brain."
In 2005, he actually was producing the teen dance drama Step Up in Baltimore when he landed the job to shoot Hairspray.
"I immediately texted John Waters to introduce myself," Shankman recalls. Waters shot an e-mail right back. They made a date for lunch the next day in Fells Point.
Unlike some American movie-lovers, Waters didn't for a nanosecond doubt Shankman's ability to pull off the movie.
The musical's composer and co-lyricist, Marc Shaiman, had told Waters that Shankman was the man for the job. So when they met, Waters gave Shankman the freedom to be himself.
"You're fabulous. Go be fabulous," Waters instructed. Waters said Shankman should take what he wanted from the original or from the Broadway show, and depart from them wherever he wanted - thus avoiding a film that pallidly echoed its predecessors the way the movie musical of The Producers did.
Shankman was raring to go. He says he'd considered his previous movies the way he did his early jobs as a dancer - as gigs - but this movie would be "Adam Shankman splattered all over the screen. As a gay Jew growing up in a WASPy section of Los Angeles [Brentwood], I identified with Tracy as an outsider." And he, too, was a teenager whose parents didn't want their child to elevate dancing over high school.
Waters says it took a choreographer-director to do this movie right. Shankman's Hairspray credo was to keep his steps true to the early-'60s dance moves of the Pony, the Mashed Potato and the Madison.
"I just have the kids do them really, really aggressively and throw in enough high kicks so that it looks different," he says.
But, as filmgoers will see Friday, the moviemakers have done more than build a duplicate Baltimore in sets and sound stages: They put a sheen on Charm City. Though it's debatable that they had to go north to do it, maybe it took outsiders' eyes to bring out the Emerald City in East Baltimore.
New Line Cinema's $75 million movie musical turns the City that Reads into the City that Sings and Dances. And the design team heightens Highlandtown just enough to make it seem like a dream even in harsh noon light.
The film's story hasn't changed since Waters cooked it up 20 years ago. Set amid the social tumult and towering hairstyles of 1962, Hairspray is still about ebullient, obese Tracy Turnblad, who changes hometown views of attractive body types - and, more important, helps integrate Baltimore's answer to American Bandstand (The Corny Collins Show, based on The Buddy Deane Show). Tracy lives in Highlandtown with her rotund home-laundress mom, Edna, and her charmingly obtuse dad, Wilbur, who owns a joke shop.
The movie's Highlandtown streets are wider than the actual Formstone canyons, while the Hefty Hideaway storefront pops your eyes with period dazzle. And as MGM boasted in its Oz days, the cast features "more stars than there are in heaven": John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Queen Latifah, Zac Efron and the breakout female lead, Nikki Blonsky.
But if director-choreographer Adam Shankman and the other non-Baltimoreans involved can project Highlandtown as Emerald City, they haven't forsaken any of the fun and funk of Waters' Remembrance of Platter Parties Past. They just do it with extra brio: Shankman says the motto on his set was, "Go big or go home."
As a director, Shankman quickly became known for crass but phenomenally lucrative big-star comedy vehicles such as The Pacifier and Cheaper by the Dozen 2. But his choreography credits were more promising and all over the map: everything from Addams Family Values to TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Hairspray was different; when it came along, it made Shankman feel, "I need to do this movie. It's like a one-way ticket inside my brain."
In 2005, he actually was producing the teen dance drama Step Up in Baltimore when he landed the job to shoot Hairspray.
"I immediately texted John Waters to introduce myself," Shankman recalls. Waters shot an e-mail right back. They made a date for lunch the next day in Fells Point.
Unlike some American movie-lovers, Waters didn't for a nanosecond doubt Shankman's ability to pull off the movie.
The musical's composer and co-lyricist, Marc Shaiman, had told Waters that Shankman was the man for the job. So when they met, Waters gave Shankman the freedom to be himself.
"You're fabulous. Go be fabulous," Waters instructed. Waters said Shankman should take what he wanted from the original or from the Broadway show, and depart from them wherever he wanted - thus avoiding a film that pallidly echoed its predecessors the way the movie musical of The Producers did.
Shankman was raring to go. He says he'd considered his previous movies the way he did his early jobs as a dancer - as gigs - but this movie would be "Adam Shankman splattered all over the screen. As a gay Jew growing up in a WASPy section of Los Angeles [Brentwood], I identified with Tracy as an outsider." And he, too, was a teenager whose parents didn't want their child to elevate dancing over high school.
Waters says it took a choreographer-director to do this movie right. Shankman's Hairspray credo was to keep his steps true to the early-'60s dance moves of the Pony, the Mashed Potato and the Madison.
"I just have the kids do them really, really aggressively and throw in enough high kicks so that it looks different," he says.
Highlandtown hair
For Waters, lunch was merely a prelude to an aesthetic immersion. As Shankman recalls, he "threw me in his car and said 'I have to show you this.' He took me on the whole Highlandtown tour."
