Taymor takes on `Titus'

Julie Taymor could have played it safe.

She might have paused to savor the dazzling New York and London reviews, the stratospheric ticket sales, and the Tony Award she won for directing the recent Disney stage musical, "The Lion King."

And for her major film debut, Taymor could have tackled material less daunting than the little-known, bloody, and often-maligned Shakespeare tragedy, "Titus Andronicus."

But spend five minutes with this brash, brainy artist, and it's clear that playing it safe is about the last thing on her fertile mind.

You can easily imagine the articulate, determined Taymor commandeering a powerhouse cast (led by Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange) and a mob of extras (including a contingent of Zagreb police cadets) through a tough, four-month shoot on more than 100 locations in Italy and Croatia - to get precisely the audacious screen epic she envisioned.

In Seattle last week to promote "Titus" (which opens today at Seattle's Cinerama), Taymor was a fount of outspoken opinions, and raring to defend her provocative film.

She'd already fought a restrictive "NC-17" rating for the film. (After some cuts in a Roman orgy scene, it's been rated "R.")

But "Titus" didn't need much defending to an enthused Seattle crowd, at a preview screening and talk by Taymor last Tuesday. (In attendance was co-producer Jody Patton, but not Patton's brother, Cinerama owner and "Titus" executive producer Paul G. Allen. )

"It was a very exciting event," reported the slim, dark-haired, black-clad Taymor the morning after. "There's nothing like having 800 people watching a film together, and feeling these waves of emotion rippling through the crowd."

But Taymor, who is 47, was concerned that older movie and Shakespeare buffs might be put off by the whole idea of a vivid epic about ancient Romans and Goths at their vengeful, kinky, blood-letting worst.

"We're drawing younger people to `Titus,' but I don't want others who'd like this to get put off by the press using words like `bloodiest' and `grisliest.' Yes, this is about the violence. It's shocking and pushes the envelope much more than any modern play I've read or seen."

"But," Taymor stressed, "it's far less violent than lots of movies we all condone, like `Braveheart' and `American History X' and `Saving Private Ryan.' And it's a very contemporary work, which raises very important issues for our time."

Taymor first explored those issues - of how violence begets violence, how it enthralls and destroys - in an Off Broadway staging of "Titus Andronicus" in 1994.

Look at photographs of that striking, cross-epochal production, and you'll spot many potent images that return in the screen version.

"Once I directed it in the theater, I felt it was a movie," explained Taymor. "I love theater, and I will always do theater. But it's a more intimate experience. And it's just so extraordinary to have a film like this, of a 400-year-old Shakespeare play that isn't one of his famous ones, playing all over the country. You reach so many people."

Taymor has been reaching people in various media for a long time.

In the mid-1970s, while in her early 20s, the Massachusetts-bred designer, director, puppeteer, playwright and actress spent four years in Bali, studying Indonesian theater forms and guiding her own East-West troupe, Teatr Loh.

Back in America, she drew critical praise for her eye-popping designs of such mythic stage works as "The Stag King," and for "Juan Darien," a captivating puppet-and-live action "carnival mass" Taymor concocted with her frequent collaborator and life partner, composer Elliot Goldenthal.

Much praised for her ability to devise magical and meaningful stage panoramas, Taymor won a McArthur Foundation "genius" grant and two Obies. She's also become a prominent opera director, staging works by Strauss, Wagner and Mozart.

And she directed a quirky first film for PBS: "Fool's Fire," based on an Edgar Allan Poe tale.

But it was her stunning theatricalization of Disney's animated musical, "The Lion King," that opened up big-screen doors for Taymor - including one that led to the $25 million "Titus," funded largely by the Allen family and produced by Patton's Clear Blue Sky film company.

Taymor said "Lion King," which will soon play in Toronto and Los Angeles, "allowed me to remain true to what I do and show people that it can be good for box office. It was a totally enjoyable experience and Disney was very supportive."

Turning from the family fun of "Lion King" to the internecine mayhem of Shakespeare's first tragedy, was a nervy next move.

It helped that Taymor secured Hopkins, a Shakespeare veteran and major star, to play Titus, an ancient Roman military leader who swings from triumph to tragedy to madness to serial murder.

And it didn't hurt that Oscar winner Jessica Lange signed on as Tamora, an imposing Goth queen who vows revenge on Titus for killing her son - thereby instigating a horrific round of murder, rape, dismemberment and cannibalism.

Lange has won praise from the movie's critics. Relates Taymor, "She'd never done Shakespeare before, but she's such a gutsy, talented woman. With Tamora she gets to be a mother, a warrior queen, a sly empress and a vixen. Her age is spectacular, she's exquisite and terrifying. She has two young lovers, and great hairdos - what could be better?"

For Hopkins, the rigors of the long filming led to an angry public outburst about quitting acting.

"That was blown way out of proportion by journalists," Taymor said dismissively. "Look, it was a grueling shoot and hard for him. His character is in 70 percent of the film. But he loves this movie, and is so proud of it. And I think it's the best thing he's ever done."

The actor's flashy turn as Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs," Taymor contends, "was a one-note Johnny compared to what he does in `Titus.' He's wonderful."

This is one perfectionistic director, however, who admits she challenges her actors to the max - because "you don't create fire from two pieces of cotton."

And whipping up a blaze of ideas, visual imagery, poetry, humor and emotional intensity from this twisted tale is what Taymor aimed to do - and share with a mass audience.

"I think there's a tremendously wide audience for this," she said. "We will never deny our fascination with violence. It's part of telling stories, it's part of being artists and always has been. We need art to exorcise our demons. That's our job, that was Shakespeare's job - to put out there what is real but unspoken, so it can be released and understood.