The tortuous creative process of making a movie is a lot like making sausage.
You’re up to your elbows in fat and grease as you grind away the meat before turning it into something tasty. It ain’t pretty, but neither was the making of “Gone With the Wind.”
Producer David O. Selznick, director Victor Fleming and script-doctor Ben Hecht combined to create an all-time film classic in 1939.
All it took were frayed nerves, ego battles, brutal introspection and exhaustive effort to go along with copious amounts of bananas and peanuts.
Put it all together and you have the play “Moonlight and Magnolias,” at The Studio Theatre in Tierra Del Sol. It runs Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. until June 30.
The play – written by Ron Hutchinson and directed by Trudy Bruner – mixes slapstick comedy with social commentary. Bruner’s direction imbues this cast with a knack for getting laughs while confronting issues of racism, anti-Semitism and the unending conflict between commerce and art.
Timmy Walczak plays Selznick like a Roman Candle bursting all over the stage. Walczak moves like a cross between Mick Jagger and LeBron James, slashing, jumping, twisting and turning throughout the play.
Walczak captures Selznick’s insecurity, as well as his frenetic drive and determination.
“I’ve been carrying this film in my gut,” Selznick says, adding: “I can taste this movie.” Walczak off stage described Selznick this way: “He’s the madman running the asylum. For him, it’s not about art, but about giving people what they want to see.”
Mark Ferrera is Ben Hecht, the rumpled ex-Chicago newspaper man thrust into the role of fixing the screenplay for a book he never read. He has five days to complete the job.
Ferrera’s Hecht burns with cynicism and conscience as he is determined to bring a Jewish sensibility of justice to his work and the movie.
“If there’s anybody who can understand the legacy of prejudice, it’s us Jews,” a frustrated Hecht tells Selznick, while complaining about the stereotypical racist portrayal of African-Americans in the movie.
Riley Clermont’s Fleming is the tyrannical director, who likes calling the shots and bumps heads with Hecht throughout the production.
Clermont, tall and angular, physically throws himself into the role with abandon as he assumes characters from “Gone With the Wind.” A highlight comes when Clermont decides to lie down at center stage playing the role of Melanie Wilkes suffering through child birth.
Last but not least is Susan Williams Varela, in the role of Miss Poppenghul. She is off-stage for much of the play, but makes regular appearances as Selznick’s secretary and care-giver.
Varela is the glue that keeps these three crazy guys and the play together. She exudes a zany charm, somewhere between Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett. Varela sports a 1930s puffy hairdo, and vintage two-piece blue and gold dress.
It’s Varela – wife of singer and executive producer Fernando Varela – who supplies the bananas and peanuts to the emotionally-spent and overworked hungry trio, as if feeding animals at the zoo.
It’s also Varela who keeps things moving, while cleaning up the mess the fellas left behind. In one memorable scene, an exhausted Varela, wearing a shawl, rumpled dress and one high-heel shoe, ambles around in zombie-like daze.
“That scene reminded me of Carol Burnett, when she played a cleaning lady,” Varela said, adding that she enjoyed acting in The Villages. “I’m very excited to be on this stage doing this play. It’s great to be with our talented friends from Orlando. It’s a joy to be working together.”
This is an impressive ensemble cast, and they were right at home in the intimate surrounding of The Studio Theatre before about 150 people. The three male actors are part of a group known as The Comedy Underdogs out of Orlando. The comedy group will be doing Improv shows at the theatre through July 1. They enjoy the atmosphere.
“This is what live theater is all about; it’s a cozy place with the kind of atmosphere where you can feel what everybody in the audience feels,” Ferrera said after the show.
That was especially true during one memorable scene where the three male actors start slapping each other around as if playing The Three Stooges.
Movement is part of the essence of this “Moonlight and Magnolias.” All three actors were constantly moving in and around the stage, tossing papers, eating fruit and flinging peanuts at each other. The set features Selznick’s office, with a nearby piano and table off to the side.
Hecht works at his typewriter on the table to make the script come alive. Selznick is the true-believer of turning Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling book, “Gone With the Wind,” into a hit film.
“It’ll never work,” both Hecht and Fleming say, adding that “no Civil War movie ever made money.” Not only that, but Margaret Mitchell isn’t giving Selznick much help.
“She suggested that Groucho Marx play Rhett Butler,” Selznick says. The part went to Clark Gable, while Vivien Leigh played the female lead, Scarlett O’Hara.
Eventually, “Gone With the Wind” became one of the most successful and profitable movies of all time. Selznick sensed there was something immortal with “Gone With the Wind.”
“…the movies are a place where the dead can walk,” he says during the play. The movies are also, he added, a place “where you can live forever.”
