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Interview: Gregory and Jeff Sherman

The story that’s told in The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story is fascinating in itself.[rssbreak]

It’s the history of songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman, whose decades-long partnership produced the music for such family favourites as Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, among others.

As successful as their partnership was, their personal relationship was nonexistent. The siblings barely interacted outside of work, raising their families in separate orbits. (Now in their golden years, they live on opposite sides of the world – Robert in London, Richard in Los Angeles.)

But just as interesting is the story behind the film. The Boys was directed by the Shermans’ sons, cousins Gregory and Jeff, as a tribute to their fathers.

In Toronto to promote the film – along with Richard, who could be heard down the hall playing a Poppins medley on a grand piano – the cousins explain the rather incredible circumstances that resulted in their movie.

They have only vague memories of knowing one another as children.

“We kind of really met each other and spoke for the first time in 2002, at the opening of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in London,” says Jeff. “And, of course, the families were seated at opposite ends of the balcony. Afterwards, we got together and talked all night – ‘What do you understand about what happened?’ – and we tried to figure it out a little bit.”

“We said, ‘When we get back to L.A., let’s keep in touch. Let’s not let time continue to pass,'” adds Gregory. “And about six months later, somebody approached me and asked, ‘Have you ever thought about doing a movie about your dad and uncle, because I have this woman who has independent financing, and she’d really be interested.’

“So I called Jeff, and the second time we were ever in the same room we were pitching the idea of doing this, never having spoken to each other about it before, but finishing each other’s sentences. We kind of had this stereo version of the story, the left and right channel, but it was all basically focused on the same goal, which was to give our dads their due and let people connect the body of their work to the men themselves.”

Both directors interviewed their subjects in separate sessions. Given the reality of the family schism, I figure that must have been difficult.

“Not really,” says Jeff. “They both wanted to tell the story, and they were open. You know, there were certain areas they didn’t want to talk about.”

“Quite honestly, I didn’t know my uncle at all growing up,” Gregory says, “so if there was awkwardness or anything like that, I was oblivious to it because I was so excited to get to know him. These are questions I would have wanted to ask anyway. We would go for an hour or so, and you forget that cameras are rolling. It was really just getting to know my uncle. I was thrilled. And then with my dad, it was more sport. It was kinda fun just to see if I could get him to emote.”

Throughout the conversation, there’s an elephant in the room, and it isn’t Dumbo. Frustratingly, the film refuses to explore the nature of the Sherman brothers’ split. The cousins won’t go into it either, so I ask why.

“We felt like the actual details are irrelevant to the bigger picture,” Gregory says. “They were very different guys, they had very different lives and very different issues, and as a result there was a lot of conflict. Who said what to whom, and who did what when is ultimately irrelevant. They just didn’t get along in a family situation, and it was best that they remain separate.”

“Hayley Mills said it in her interview,” adds Jeff. “She said, ‘They’re spending that much time together in a room being creative, they need time apart.’ So there are a lot of things at play here, but I think it really just boils down to two guys who – I don’t know if you have siblings, I don’t know, you might not really want to hang with them that much. They’re already hanging together all day long.

“They were disparate personalities with really different points of view,” Gregory adds, “and different constitutions. The joke around the Disney lot was that they were Tigger and Eeyore. And if you had to be Eeyore, strapped in a room with Tigger for 60 years, you’d want to toss him out the window. So we got it. We understood it. And we had a little bit of our own dynamic that we understood even better, having done this film together.”

Another, smaller elephant is the question of Uncle Walt’s alleged anti-Semitism, a subject broached in recent biographies but apparently contradicted in the film by his obvious affection for a couple of Jewish songwriters from New York.

“My dad has gone on many times to dispel that,” says Gregory firmly. “Walt had an issue with some of the studio heads when he was trying to break in [to Hollywood]. But he had no problem with any human being who ever walked the face of the earth. He was a lover of all people, and he was especially wonderful to our dads. I mean, there was zero-point-zero of any of that. It just didn’t exist.”

Jeff backs him up.

“We interviewed Sam Goldwyn [Jr.], who was my dad’s best friend growing up. Sam Goldwyn Sr. was one of Walt Disney’s best friends. They had lunch two or three times a month, they went out with their wives – I think it was just built up that he was anti-Semitic. I don’t think he was. I think there maybe could have been factions in Disney that might have been – I don’t know – but it certainly wasn’t coming from him.”

normw@nowtoronto.com

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