Master of the house: The Wedding Planner's Adam Shankman lucked into his first movie job. Now he's directing Steve Martin and Queen Latifah in Bringing Down the House - film - Interview

"Well, you know she has to die, because she won't put on a tight dress," quips Adam Shankman, referring to the death of Mandy Moore's Christian teen character in 2002's surprise hit romance A Walk to Remember. The sweet-natured film was the out director's sophomore effort after The Wedding Planner, a movie that helped turn Jennifer Lopez into the ubiquitous J. Lo and Shankman into a bankable commodity with his own production deal with Disney. Next up is the Steve Martin comedy Bringing Down the House, costarring Queen Latifah--fresh from her acclaimed turn in Chicago, directed by another gay man, Rob Marshall.

For Shankman, it's all a very long way from dancing in Janet Jackson's "Escapade" video. "I did that, and I also worked with Paula Abdul. I even did an MC Skat Kat video," says Shankman, chuckling about the animated feline rapper who once wooed Abdul in MTV's regular rotation. Shankman studied at Juilliard but dropped out to dance in musical theater. "Juilliard didn't really acknowledge theater dancing as dancing," he comments. "To them, it was some sort of clownlike bastardization of the arts." Shankman wound up in music videos and then took the potentially dangerous step that put him on the road to directing features. "I lied my way into a choreography job [on a 1989 music video for rapper MC Shan] with [director] Julien Temple," he reports.

Shankman got his big break in the storied showbiz way: Somebody else fell by the wayside. "I was sitting in an office talking to a friend," he recalls, "and the doors flew open and someone said, `We've lost our choreographer!' And I said, `I'm a choreographer,' to which they responded, `Who've you worked with?' and I said, `Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul.' Then they ran me down to Julien Temple's office. He was in a pinch and didn't have time to care if I was lying or not. I ended up doing so much film choreography, I didn't have time to dance anymore."

Shankman helped the likes of Marlon Brando, Sarah Jessica Parker, Antonio Banderas, and the Boogie Nights cast to move as though it came naturally. Brendan Fraser even made the rising dancemaker a "contract point": Shankman is Fraser's exclusive choreographer. Says Shankman: "It's always amazing to me that filmmakers can have a script and just gloss over the details of the line `and then they danced.' But they do."

What also amazed him was the lack of preparation and inability to work with actors he saw while working with certain directors. "I was frustrated by their disorganization," he says. "I didn't understand how, when they were getting this privilege, this great job, that they could be sloppy and ill-prepared."

His frustration led to directing a short film, Cosmo's Tale, which led to the Sundance Film Festival. That in turn led to making notes on a script his sister Jennifer Gibgot (now his partner in their production company, Offspring Entertainment) handed him, which led to a studio meeting. Ten minutes into the meeting he was hired to direct The Wedding Planner, a movie about straight people that came out of the oven sprinkled with Shankman's gay sensibility. "Being gay as well as being Jewish absolutely informs what I do. And that movie was definitely a bonbon," says Shankman of the fairy-tale romantic comedy. "A Walk to Remember was a sadder food. Melting butter maybe. The funny thing to me was that here I am, this big gay Jew, making `the Christian movie.' I'm very proud of it too. You can think it's syrupy, but I think it's affirmative, and I'll always want to see positive movies like that. Of course, I like to see things getting blown up too."

If Shankman decided he wanted to make more macho movies, would his gayness stand in the way? "No," he says decisively. "Behind the camera it means nothing. I've never had the sense that I was shut out of anything by straight people. My movies come in on time and under budget, and thank God they've done well." His diverse slate of projects includes a TV pilot for Fox called Splitsville and a yet-untitled documentary about GLBT high school students.

Asked why some queer film-industry players still choose the closet, Shankman responds, "That's about them and their own issues. It's not about the industry. I suppose that if you're working for someone who is incredibly homophobic, then you'll have a problem. But it's needless to do so."

Until that action-movie day comes along, Shankman is satisfying his gay sensibilities with the comedies he's directing. "There's a hilarious moment in this movie where Queen Latifah gets into a catfight with another woman," he enthuses. "I promise you haven't seen anything like this since Dynasty."

White writes on film for E! Online.

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