There was no shortage of directors on the London set of Nine. They came in all sizes, shapes and dimensions: the real, the reel and the creatively imagined.

Rob Marshall from Chicago, the movie that brought musicals back into box-office favor, was the real muscle behind this $80.5 million musical remake of 8 1/2, and even he was obliged to do a deep bow to his film’s cinematic roots.

Hovering over Nine are the reel ghosts of 8 1/2—Marcello Mastroianni pretending to be Federico Fellini in the throes of filmmaker panic, careening into production without inspiration or script. For relief, their Guido takes a sharp left into Libidoland, consoling himself by conjuring up all the women he’s loved (in his own fashion).

“One of the joys of this,” declares Marshall, “is that it isn’t the sort of normal musical. It follows something very different. It doesn’t take a narrative trajectory. It’s in a man’s mind, moving in and out. And the great thing about the source material is that it moves between fantasy and reality and memories seamlessly. That’s why I wanted to make it as a musical—because I knew, then, that we could bring music to it.”

Such a free-fall fantasy world helps the musical numbers go down better on film. “One of the toughest things about doing a musical on film is, ‘Why do people sing?’ It’s that very awkward moment where all of a sudden you open your mouth to sing, and it has to feel organic. It has to feel somehow right, and that’s what I look for.

“When I started to look for a piece, I was looking for something I could find a strong conceptual idea behind. The beauty of 8 1/2 is different than something like Chicago, which is really satire. This does move into something more serious. It begins a little lighter in tone, but, as we worked on this from the beginning, we weren’t afraid to move into that other area. You know, this is a serious problem for this man. It’s all falling apart for him, and he needs to learn to deal with that.”

Michael Tolkin, who with the late Anthony Minghella adapted Arthur Kopit’s musical book of Nine, agrees about the movie’s gradual change in emotional tone. “At the start, he’s got a comic dilemma—there are moments of humor along the way as he is stumbling through his life—but essentially it’s a serious story,” he says.

“By the time we were finished working,” Tolkin continues, “we probably watched sections of 8 1/2 30 times, the whole movie all the way through maybe 15 times. I had grown up with 8 1/2, but it wasn’t until I watched it with Rob that I really saw it. He’d say, ‘Notice it keeps going into fantasy whenever Marcello taps his nose.’ That became, I think, a point for how we constructed the relationship between reality and fantasy.

“I knew that movie cold, and I didn’t know what was really going on in it. In the unpacking of Fellini and his story, we became unafraid to say that this person had abused every single relationship in his life, every muse in his life, to the point where he has destroyed every possibility of his career. And that’s not comic.”

Then there was the Guido apparition that appeared on the set in the brooding, rumpled form of Daniel Day-Lewis. (He sings! He dances! He chain-smokes!)

Penélope Cruz, who plays his mistress in the movie, was the first to spy him. “While I was rehearsing my number, I saw this man dressed in a suit in a corner just watching,” she remembers. “For the two hours I was there, I did not recognize him, and they said, ‘No, that’s Daniel.’ I said, ‘Why is he here?’ And they said, ‘He’s always here. He’s always here watching the others, and he’s always on the set.’”

So she went over and said hello. In time, she found him to be a favorite acting partner—up to a point: “A few times, I tried to make him part of my game of self-criticism after a take. ‘Daniel, I think I was terrible. What do you think?’ He said, ‘I’ll never engage in that game with you. Let’s do the next take.’ That was a big lesson for me—about someone who never looks at the monitor. He’s always in the present.”

Nor did he escape the attention of Kate Hudson, who spotted him in a corner at the back watching her rehearse her big “Cinema Italiano” number. “After the number, he’d write, ‘The number was great. Love, Guido.’ As you’d write anybody a note, he was just writing to me as Guido. It was great, and what a keepsake! I still have it.”

But, she adds, “I had a scene where we got to get drunk at a bar, so we had a blast. The Guido I got was the one who had to come out of himself. We were laughing, stools were flying everywhere. I didn’t get The Agonized Guido. But, all in all, a man in character off-set—his presence is easy. It’s not lost. You never feel like it’s phony. You feel a part of it. He brings you into it, writing those notes to you as his character. It’s not coming from an abrasive ego. It’s coming from an artistic process.”

As Guido’s largely abandoned and greatly cheated-on wife, Luisa, Marion Cotillard drew on the absence of Day-Lewis. “What is very interesting with Luisa,” she notes, “is that you have the face of this woman who’s handling things. Then, when the distress is too much to take—because she’s an actress, too—she has things inside of her that have to come out. It’s everything but sexy. It’s anger, it’s sadness. So, really, my reference for the character is her pain.”

Day-Lewis’ immersion into the role didn’t rattle Nicole Kidman, who plays the director’s movie-star muse, Claudia. “I suppose I didn’t find it odd because maybe I have a little of the same thing with the in-character work,” she shrugs. True, “we didn’t talk that much as Daniel and Nicole. When we shot our scene, we barely spoke. We were sitting in that little room together, and I felt comfortable enough to have a nap in front of him. It was just that we’d be very silent around each other. Now, we talk.



“I have to say the way Daniel is able to do that work also is a director’s issue because it is very important that his work is not ridiculed, that it’s not made fun of, that it’s not analyzed too much, and Rob was amazing like that because he allowed the character of each actor to blossom and live, so he created a space for everybody to do their own work. That sounds easy, but it’s very hard, and he molded us.”

Having crossed professional paths before with Day-Lewis, Judi Dench was the most comfortable with his “An Actor Prepares” eccentricities. “What is terrific about having worked with somebody is that you create a shorthand,” the dame explains.

“You know each other and therefore are spared the initial thing of having to act with somebody you don’t know. A lot of the time at the beginning of rehearsal is getting to know just how that person works, how they react and understanding about them, which in a way takes up time that you should use playing that character or being that person. Because Daniel and I have worked together, we didn’t have that. And much of our relationship in the film is exactly what we’re lucky enough to have, so that was there for us to draw on. And we did draw on it.”

That style of sustaining a character beyond camera range was something even a mother like Sophia Loren might have a little trouble loving. “I love Daniel, very much indeed, and I really admire the kind of work he does,” she admits in a careful and measured manner so that you can hear from afar the unspoken “but” coming.

“When he starts to make a film, he’s completely concentrated in what he has to do, and his mind is in constant thought about what he has to do next. For an actress, he was very intimidating because he was somebody who was not reachable sometimes, and then at the same time he was with you all the time. He’s very strange.”

Less spooked (perhaps because she comes from an altogether different creative universe) was singer-songwriter-designer Stacy Ferguson, better known by her stage name Fergie. She’s Saraghina, the lusty prostie who introduces a nine-year-old Guido to the ways of the world with her show-stopping musical mantra, “Be Italian.”

“The first person I met on the set was Daniel, and I think it was 15 minutes later I was standing by the piano and I had to belt out the song right in front of him,” recalls Fergie. “I’d admired his work for years, and I just had to push through it and say, ‘Well, what the hell?’ What was I gonna do? That’s how I handled the audition. I was very hungry for this role. I wanted it. I went after it. I was like a really good student.”

All the same, she kept her distance from Day-Lewis. “I didn’t want to invade his space too much because I respect everybody’s way of working.” And too: “My character toward Guido is basically him as a nine-year-old boy, and I didn’t want to get trapped treating Daniel like a nine-year-old boy. But he’s very charming. I’d go in my dressing room and find this little note, and it would be on Guido stationery.”

The film’s Tony-winning composer, Maury Yeston, was highly impressed at how Fergie nailed the part with a pneumatic drill in an instant: “She claimed the role. From the first millisecond of her singing, we all went, ‘That’s it. No other choice.’”

John DeLuca, who helped Marshall produce and choreograph the movie, almost clucks contentedly over the talent they managed to recruit: “I’m proud of the cast we assembled, not only because of their dedication and hard work but their joy in what they brought to each character. They each claimed their part. That’s what happens when you’re auditioning. You’re waiting for that person to come and claim it.”

A sense of trust and sharing fortified the cast further, says DeLuca. “They actually allowed each other to watch the numbers, which was great. It’s very hard to perform in front of your peers. I’d always see them hanging out watching the other person rehearsing, and I’d always ask that person if it was okay, and they’d say yes—because they were all in the same boat. The support for everybody was great.”

They even got used to Day-Lewis’ daily hovering over the set—his little game of getting into Guido’s head—and started addressing him accordingly. “I don’t mind what people call me,” the actor allows, adding for a laugh, “within reason. I’m only too happy if they choose to call me by my character’s name, but it’s not written on the call sheet or anything, ‘By no means call him Daniel, God forbid.’ It’s not like that.

“Everyone has a way of working, and my way of working is individual to me just as Marion’s is to her and Fergie’s is to her and Judi’s and so on and so forth. All you can do is be true to your own way of working. But that can only be of any use in the company situation when you’re not making demands on the people you’re working with. It has got nothing to do with that. Like all of us, I’m just interested in the world that we are trying to create. It takes time and energy to enter into an unknown culture, to see the world through different eyes. Just from my point of view, it makes better sense, I suppose, for me, once having entered into that world, to stay there because I like it. That’s all. There’s really nothing mysterious about it.”

Why, one wonders, at age 57, would Day-Lewis break out into song for the first time since choirboy days? The answer lies in director Marshall’s powers of persuasion.
“Rob convinced me—really against my better judgment—that I would be able to do this thing,” he says. “I really tried to think of every excuse I could not to, because I felt he needed somebody else—I think I gave him a few names, in fact—and he said, ‘No, I think you can sing.’ I said, ‘Well, let’s put it to the test.’ Paul Bogaev, our musical director, came over to the place where I was staying, and, quite clearly, I was incapable of singing then, and Rob still had to convince me it would be okay. So I really sort of took it on blind trust but had severe doubts about it. I knew I’d enjoy the work, but I had no idea what the result of the work would be.”

The whole project was fraught with risk, from the top down. “I have to give a lot of credit to Harvey Weinstein,” Marshall admits. “Nine was not a ‘commercial hit’ musical on stage. It was just a beautiful musical on stage that was acclaimed, but it’s not that other kind of thing. And in this day and age when we see so much of Broadway being really entertainment-driven, this takes chances. Harvey understood that, but he was excited about forging new territory in terms of musicals on film. That’s why I was interested in it. I wanted to do something different.”

To give you an idea where these two are coming from, Weinstein produced and Marshall directed the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 2002, Chicago, the smash hit that popped the whole musical genre out of cold storage.

“Chicago was such a surprise on every level for me,” admits Marshall. “I didn’t expect any of it. Getting the Oscar for Best Picture—that was sort of overwhelming. I was just making an attempt to protect the musical film. That was my mantra as I was working on Chicago. Everyone said it was a dead genre, and, of course, I didn’t believe that. I really feel it’s all about the execution and the ideas behind it. It has opened the door for musicals. There have been many more over the past few years than in the years prior to Chicago. That’s such a gift, and I’m thrilled that I get a chance to do it again. And I’m sure I’ll do it again.”