Word: madonna
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...that.'" Then eight years ago, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein wondered what had happened. "He had seen it as a young person and was passionate about it," says Richards. When a revival of Chicago opened on Broadway in 1996 and became a huge hit, that passion was put into action. Madonna and Goldie Hawn were originally attached to star. But when director Nicholas Hytner (The Crucible) came aboard in 1999, he suggested that Hawn was too old for the part of the ingenue Roxie, and Weinstein bought out her contract for an estimated $1 million...
Various writers tried unsuccessfully to adapt Chicago for the screen, and Hytner eventually dropped out. Madonna also moved on, and Chicago languished until 2000, when Rob Marshall--a former Broadway choreographer who had directed Annie on television--came up with a new concept. The show would be reshaped so that all the musical numbers would take place as elaborate vaudeville routines in the dreamy imagination of Roxie. "The hardest part about musicals is that scary moment when characters start to sing," says Marshall, who recruited screenwriter Bill Condon (Oscar winner for 1998's Gods and Monsters) to write the script...
...After Madonna and Goldie and just before the casting search got around to Britney and Christina, Chicago has finally become a movie--the first one with two stars whose surnames begin with Z, as in pizazz, for Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger are perfectly paired as show-biz archetypes. Velma (Zeta-Jones) is the born entertainer, oozing charisma. Roxie (Zellweger) is the rest of us: the type with no gifts but an almost obscene ambition to make...
Chicago has so much razzle-dazzle that viewers may end up both raised and dazed. It's remorselessly inventive, trying anything fast and sassy to keep you watching. In other words, it's the most honest display of showpeople's need to be noticed this side of a Madonna concert. --By Richard Corliss
When Stella McCartney quit Chloé in the spring of 2001, the fashion world wondered how the label would cope with the loss of her celebrity. A good deal of her personal fame - she's Beatle Paul's daughter, hangs out with people like Madonna and is a high-profile antifur campaigner - had rubbed off on the French fashion house. Her successor and friend, Phoebe Philo, was regarded as a talented designer, but she was not exactly a household name. The fashion world loves nothing better than a catfight; speculation immediately began about a competition between the two women...