It’s like an action film that moves from one shoot-out to the next great in theory, and great in practice if you have a story to justify it, or the style to pull it off. Rock Of Ages is so in thrall to including every memorable rock ballad that it barely pauses for breath between each one. And they give him lots of musical set pieces. All Rights Reserved.They give him plenty of melodrama – in the form of a bland romance between said small town girl (Julianne Hough’s Sherrie Christian) and Diego Boneta’s rock-star-wannabe Drew Boley – yet very little laughs. I put a few ringers in there, let's put it that way.Ĭopyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. At the end of the day, I knew it was going to be fine. Alec I had heard sing on 'Saturday Night Live.' Russell I'd heard sing in 'Get Him to the Greek.' Catherine Zeta-Jones has an Oscar. The rest of your cast is surprisingly musical as well. He was hitting these notes that were unbelievable, and in the movie, he has to sing 'Paradise City,' which is so high, but he just wrestles it to the ground. So I listened in from the other side of the door of his first vocal lesson and immediately knew it would work. But we did have this agreement that if we put him with a vocal coach and he just couldn't sing, we would make it go away and just never discuss it again.

But he just likes challenges, and I think being a father and seeing Suri love music and Katie love dancing, it was in his consciousness and he jumped at it.

My idea was that it would be huge for the world's biggest movie star to play the world's biggest rock star. On a different occasion, I needed for one of my movies to clear a poster of 'Top Gun,' so I called him to ask if he could clear it and he followed up with, 'When are you going to make a musical with me?' In my head I was like, never, but then this opportunity came up so I offered it to him to see if he would bite. I was literally shaking at the time, because I was amazed that Tom Cruise was talking to me about filmmaking. He had once come up to me with a big handshake and told me that 'Hairspray' was was one of Suri's favorite movies and he was fascinated by how I had created the tone of the movie. How well did you know Tom Cruise coming into the film? It's trying to ground it into reality and space and time that makes musicals a challenge. Audiences are just used to people singing and dancing all the time, so it's not so far-fetched. What's changed in the last decade is that reality talent competition shows like 'Idol' and 'The Voice' is bringing these singing talents into our homes on such a regular and widespread basis. How much have shows like 'The Voice' and 'American Idol' opened Americans up to watching musicals? But this play had that magic ingredient of joy. The play is very presentational and there's a narrator. I mean, it took a lot of work to try to ground it as movie. The audience was so into it and immersed in the joy of the story and the concert element of it. It was that experience of seeing the original play. What made this one particularly appealing to you? Musical adaptation seems to come and go in Hollywood.

Rock of ages movie cast