The Apple (1980 film)
The Apple is a 1980 science fiction-musical film written and directed by Menahem Golan. It stars Catherine Mary Stewart as a young singer named Bibi, who, in a futuristic 1994, signs to an evil label named Boogalow International Music. It deals with themes of conformity versus rebellion, and makes use of biblical allegory including the tale of Adam and Eve.
Principal photography took place in late 1979 in West Berlin. The film was panned by critics and has been considered to be one of the worst films ever made.
Plot
In a cut two-song prologue of the film named "Paradise Day," Mr. Topps creates heaven and carves the first human, Alphie, out of a rock, sending Alphie to Earth to meet Bibi.The two take part in the 1994 Worldvision Song Festival. Despite being the most talented performers, they are beaten by BIM and its leader, Mr. Boogalow, who use underhanded tactics to secure a victory. The duo is approached by Mr. Boogalow to sign to his music label, but they soon discover the darker side of the music industry. Bibi is caught up in the wild lifestyle BIM offers, while Alphie risks his life to free her from the company's evil clutches. Alphie eventually convinces Bibi to run away with him, and the pair live as hippies for a year before being located by Mr. Boogalow who insists Bibi owes him $10 million. Alphie and Bibi are saved by the Rapture, and all good souls are taken away by Mr. Topps who arrives on the scene in a flying apparition of a Rolls-Royce.
Cast
, Femi Taylor, and John Chester in their film debuts as dancersProduction
Development
Conception
In 1975, Coby Recht, a successful Israeli rock producer, was signed to a major label for the first time, that being Barclay Records, which was founded and led by French producer Eddie Barclay. As Recht described working with Barclay, "he really believed in me. But there was something there that I couldn't trust. I don't know why, but the guy looked to me like a villain." His experience with Barclay, as well as being a "moral guy" who never liked what went on in show business, inspired the story of a musical Recht and his wife Iris Yotvat were conceiving for six weeks while in Paris, and the antagonist Mr. Boogalow was based on Barclay. Recht explained that it was "supposed to be 1984, but with music."Writing the musical in 1977, Recht and Yotvat had 17 demos recorded before the first draft was even submitted to a company. It was originally planned by Recht and Yotvat to be a Hebrew stage production, but the show "was so expensive that nobody could really raise it up for the stage," Recht explained. He was then informed by a friend that filmmaker Menahem Golan was having a brief visit in Israel. Recht had known Golan since he was nine, performing in shows at an Israeli-based children's theater where Golan directed. Recht called Golan on a Friday for a face-to-face meeting about The Apple, which involved Golan spending four hours listening to demos of songs from the musical. Golan finally decided to direct and produce a film version of The Apple, instructing Recht to be in Los Angeles immediately. Yotvat said, "That was marvelous. That was just fantastic to think that it was going to be a movie all of the sudden. It was just amazing."
Rewrites for the film and song translation
In 1979, Recht and Yotvat went to Los Angeles, where they resided in a villa that Golan offered, while Recht occasionally went to Golan's house in Cheviot Hills to have meetings about the film. Golan spent three weeks writing six screenplay drafts of The Apple. According to Recht, Golan rewrote the story and all of the songs to the point where they were completely different from what Recht and Yotvat originally wrote, which "frustrated" the two. Golan's version of the plot was more comical and contradicted the Orwellian tone of the musical Recht originally envisioned. Yotvat said that Golan was turning the script into "something that was kind of corny," and Recht stated Golan was making the story "out of touch" and "out of date." He also disliked Golan's criticisms of Recht and Yotvat's plot not having any "action." Recht said in a retrospective interview, "It's a small movie. It's rock and roll. And then he said to me, 'Eh…Rockin' Horse, Rock n' Roll.' So what can you do?"George S. Clinton, who had a previous career as a songwriter and recording artist, joined the project to translate the lyrics from Hebrew to English after being recommended for the job by Golan's secretary Kathy Doyle. Clinton worked with Golan, Recht and Yotvat on the translations at Golan's house on afternoons. Recht and Yotvat had a much more favorable time working with Clinton than with Golan, who translated the Hebrew lyrics into English. As Recht explained, "working with George was great, I loved it because we were both lyricists." After the translations were finished, the songs were tracked on a tape recorder and taken to Golan's home studio for the demos to be recorded, which Clinton sang on.
Auditions
Approximately 50% of the demos for the English versions of the songs were finished by the time work on The Apple moved to London, where two months worth of auditions, rehearsals, and recording and mixing of the score took place. The auditions for The Apple were held at Turnham Green for about a week, with around 1,000 people auditioning. As Clinton described them, "We had auditioned a lot of different people, and it was crazy. I mean, people came from all over to be there, and there were so many people." In fact, one of the people who auditioned for the film, who was from Wales, became so impatient while waiting that he yelled at Clinton and the other people auditioning to "finish the god damn song."Around 200 people attended the dancer auditions, one of them Catherine Mary Stewart, a performing arts school attendee who was informed by the other students about the auditions. Recht took particular notice of Stewart. He recalled, "all of the sudden I saw her and I said to myself: This is Bibi. This is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the script." Stewart explained in a 2012 interview that while she had vocal training in her performing arts school, she didn't have the same "professional" singing skills of other members of the film's cast. Despite this, Recht wanted her for the part of Bibi, and thus, she was cast for the role. Recht described Stewart as "shocked" and "trembling all over" when she got the part.
Recht lied to Golan that Stewart "was a great singer" to convince Golan to cast her Bibi. Golan eventually noticed her poor singing, and he, as Stewart explained, "sent me to a voice coach who actually thought I was fine for the movie, but kind of got cold feet." Thus, Mary Hylan, a "terrific professional singer from L.A." as Stewart described her, served as Bibi's singing voice for the film. Clinton first noticed Hylan singing at a Christmas party in 1978, and "she just blew me away," he recalled.
Filming
According to Recht, he and Yotvat initially planned The Apple to cost $4 million to produce, "but when we were in London, Menahem used to go like every week to Berlin and come back with another million. And then we got to $10 million." This led Golan to shoot scenes with settings that looked bigger than what Recht wanted, which he was dissatisfied with. Principal photography took place from September to December 1979 in West Berlin, where the production was moved in exchange for government subsidies from West Germany. The Apple editor Alain Jakubowicz claimed that, as with Golan's previous works, the original footage was around 1 million feet long, or four hours worth, and "five to six" cameras were used to shoot the musical sequences. The opening concert sequence was shot at the main hall of Internationales Congress Centrum Berlin and was filmed for five days in a row. The sequence for the track "Speed" was filmed at the Metropol nightclub, which held the Guinness World Record for biggest indoor laser show. The outside hippie scenes were filmed at Schloss-Park, close to Königstraße. Some scenes in the film were shot in a factory that formerly produced poison gas during World War II.File:Nigel Lythgoe.jpg|thumb|left|Nigel Lythgoe, who later became notable for his work on the singing competition show American Idol, choreographed The Apple.
A majority of the extras for The Apple were students at Berlin American High School. Ray Shell, who portrayed Shake and described making the film as "big fun," was replaced by a stunt double for his dancing shoots four times, and a scene for a song titled "Slip and Slide" was cut from the final product due to Shell's poor dancing. Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick served as choreographers for The Apple, Warwick featured in the film dancing in the sequence for "Coming." Lythgoe described making The Apple as "really, really depressing on some days" and "very, very stressful," adding that most of the cast and crew "didn't really like the script. I mean, we really didn't." Lythgoe and Warwick later both started working in singing competition shows like American Idol, which led to conspiracy theories by multiple people that The Apple predicted their later work. Lythgoe shrugged these off: "There were a lot of singing competitions going on at the time. So it never really hit me that 'the search for talent' was Popstars and Pop Idol and American Idol, as much as just thinking that The Apple was kind of a Eurovision-style song competition.
Conflicts between Golan and Recht took place when filming started; Recht was still in London mixing the songs, and Golan constantly made phone calls demanding him to be at the shoots in Berlin. When he went to Berlin to go to the shooting location, the first thing he saw was Golan filming the uncut "Paradise Day" sequence that took a million dollars alone to make: "He was shooting this part that never ended up on the screen because it was terrible. It was terrible. There was like fifteen dinosaurs on the set. I couldn't believe my eyes." The scene was filmed at an exterior location at CCC Film's Spandau Studios, a studio which was also used as the location for Boogalow's penthouse. Joss Ackland, who portrayed Mr. Topps, recalled that the scene consisted of a combination of both real and "phony" animals and the Mr. Topps character was in a crevice making Alphie and singing the song "Creation." Multiple problems occurred shooting the sequence, such as the dinosaur pieces falling down and a tiger running from the set. The uncut scene also involved both Mr. Topps and the devil character Mr. Boogalow doing a dance together, which involved Boogalow actor Vladek Sheybal falling on a river.