Who didn’t absolutely love 10-year-old Tami Stronach in 1984’s “The Neverending Story?” Tami is back 40 years later with “Man and Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps.” It’s a much-needed nod to the fantasy movies we grew up loving. Tami talks about the new movie and her memories of “Neverending Story.” The new movie is showing via Fathom Events nationwide on July 28 and 30.
Find out where “Man and Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps” is playing near you.
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Here are some highlights from the Stuck in the ’80s interview with Tami Stronach.
Steve Spears: It is such a joy to see you back on the big screen after so many decades away. How did Man and Witch come about?
Tami Stronach: “Man and Witch” came about with lots of gentle nudges from every corner. I sort of felt like a million fingers on my back tapping me. The most persistent one was probably my husband (Greg Steinbruner) who wrote the screenplay and gave it to me on my birthday and was like, let’s make this. And then we sent it out into the world and amazing people signed on. We got the funding relatively quickly for a film. And then there was a Falkor on my, literally a block away from my building, the Limahl song was on Stranger Things, at the Comic-Con conventions lines for NeverEnding Story got longer, not shorter. So it just kind of just felt like this convergence and I just went along for the ride.
Well, you gotta tell your husband from me that I love the script.
Oh, thank you.
And his performance in this is amazing. The sheep character that keeps quoting movie lines, I could not stop laughing.
Oh, I get that.
When the sheep quotes Lawrence of Arabia, “I long for the vanished gardens of Cordoba.”
He made this for you. He made this for you.
Seriously, I think I’ll probably be the only one who got every line that he put in there.
He did say it when he was writing. He’s like, there’s somebody out there that’s gonna get all of these, and there’s gonna be a lot of people that are just really confused.
It just feels like such a good time for this project. I mean, all the fantasy movies and the TV series that are so popular these days, they remind me of the ’80s when we had Dark Crystal and Labyrinth and Willow, and of course, NeverEnding Story. It must have, it feels like it must have been a natural fit for you to return to the same genre that you made so notable in the ’80s.
Yeah, that was definitely a conscious choice. We thought if we were going to be insane enough to take something like this on, we should probably try to bring me back inside the genre that people wanna see me in, but then we also wanted to subvert expectations a little bit because obviously I’m not 10 anymore. [laughter] And so, the witch is a much more, she’s complicated, she’s lovable, but she’s also really difficult. She’s pretty bruised, so it was fun. It was like, how do we lean into things that people expect, and then how do we subvert things that people expect and kind of dance, play with that?
A lot of familiar names too for ’80s fans are in this movie. Obviously, Sean Astin, Christopher Lloyd, Jennifer Saunders. It must have been a fun movie to cast.
I was pinching myself the whole time. I’m a huge fan of all these people. Like Christopher Lloyd, that was an incredible experience filming that scene with him. Shohreh Aghdashloo, I was watching her on everything. And Jennifer Saunders, I’m telling you, that woman is so talented. She just, it was so informative for voiceover work, the way she is sort of technical. The goose had a rhythm that the puppeteer gave them, and the puppeteer was speaking on set in order to match the beak movements with the words. And so for a comedian to be funny, which is all about timing, and then to be locked in to the timing of someone else, it’s just an incredibly tall order. Normally, you would base it off of the comedian’s voice and then have the puppeteer do it to that track, but that’s just not, that wasn’t possible for us. So she was just… All the voice, all the voice actors had this incredible challenge, and they’re the best. So they all did it. And it was amazing to watch them figure out how to do that inside this very rigid structure.
I think its people like Sean Astin and Christopher Lloyd, I know they do the Comic-Con circuit. I’m wondering, are these people that you’ve bumped into over the course of the last few years and had a chance to sort of meet and shake hands and say, “We’re working on something and might be a good idea that we… Let’s do this together.”
Absolutely. The Comic-Con circuit has been critical to how this film came about. This film was really me going to Comic-Con and seeing that there’s so much interest and going, okay, well, I guess if we made something, maybe somebody would go see it, and then meeting Sean in the Green Room, and he’s such a nice guy and having that contact. I’m so grateful to the whole Comic-Con circuit, I feel like it really facilitated, in a large way, how we were able to find some critical people and also have the confidence to take on this quixotic quest.
I’m so happy that you kind of embraced the nostalgia of the ’80s. I know some actresses and actors, once they sort of move beyond those parts, tend to wanna put them in the background and put them in a closet, but I’m glad you have reengaged with them.
I feel like it’s really moving to hear from people what The NeverEnding Story meant to them. So for me, I just feel really grateful to be part of something that gave people courage to try something that they wouldn’t have ordinarily tried. Or a lot of people who felt really lonely as a kid identified with Bastian, and they say that seeing this film just gave them this little boost where the world was sort of harsh on them. And so I was shy to embrace it for a long time, and it was really my contact with fans of the film that made me go like, wait a minute, what am I doing? This is so meaningful and I’m so lucky to be a part of this. And the whole point of storytelling is to connect, right? So if I have this other opportunity to connect and learn about what it meant to other people, like why wouldn’t I connect?
Absolutely. What’s the most common question they ask you, the fans when they meet you?
So a lot of them ask me about Moon Child, like what Bastian says. And then for the people that have read the book and seen the film, the film kind of indicates that Bastian calls out his mother’s name and they say, why was Bastian’s mother called Moon Child? And so obviously, that’s a discrepancy between the book and the script because in the book, he calls out Moon Child, and it’s not a reference to his mother’s name. It’s like an entirely sort of self-created name that he uses. So anyway, I feel like that confuses people and they always want clarification.
I tried to get my wife to watch NeverEnding Story last night. She didn’t watch, she’s 50 years old. She didn’t watch it back then. And she’s like, “Are there any sad parts?” I’m like, “Oh, oh.”
Oh, yeah. [laughter]
I’m like, “No, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to watch this tonight.”
I always go get popcorn, like when I’m invited to see it in various places, I find a way to go get popcorn right before when our task is thinking, like, I get so hungry. Who is that?
Yeah, I was… I was just cringing during Man and Witch going, please don’t have a swamp of sorrow moment here. I really can’t.
No, no. It’s much more, it’s lighthearted.
So many movies from the ’80s are getting remakes these days. Usually not with a whole lot of success, but every once in a while you see a good one. Why do you think The NeverEnding Story isn’t one of them?
The Ende Estate (Michael Ende, the author of the book) would not release it to anyone to make for a long time. Many, many people tried, they just wouldn’t. But now See-Saw Productions have secured the rights to do a remake and there will be a remake. So your question is right on time.
I have to ask about The Dance of a Thousand Steps. That took some choreography. Greg was on board with all that?
I will not reveal everything about The Dance of a Thousand Steps, but that dance, so the production had sort of two phases. We were originally gonna do it in New York, and then all shooting shut down for the pandemic. So we decided to move to Scotland. And then right after we rented our house and moved our whole family there, everything shut down in Scotland too, but it did give us a little bit more time to reimagine it. So The Dance of a Thousand Steps, had a wonderful choreographer in the initial phase called Chase Brock, who is a good friend. And he made many, many sections, like 30 short little clips, but then he wasn’t able to continue when we kind of rebooted everything in Scotland. And Michael Hines, the director, wanted me to choreograph it, but I called Chase and I asked him for permission to take a couple of inserts from the original one. He didn’t want credit, which I don’t know why he didn’t, but I’m giving him credit right here, right now, ’cause the really fun, charming finger section is a Chase Brock little segment, which I love. And then we sort of added the robot onto it because you gotta have the robot.
Any future movie plans in the works?
Yes. We do have Man and Witch sequel banging around our brain. And it’s really gonna depend on the appetite of people out there. I’m not sure that general audiences are aware of how challenging it is for indie films to get into a theater. The industry has really changed and smaller films, mid-budget films are just getting phased out because the economics of making just enormous blockbusters, the return is so much better on the investment. So it really is about people coming out and supporting smaller things. And if people do that, we will go back and make another one.
Fantastic. I just want to end by saying, I really, I really enjoyed it and it was a much needed break in the kind of movies that we normally have to watch these days. I keep coming back to joyous. I feel like that’s the best word for it.
You just feel like there’s a lot of difficulty in the world and a lot of the things that we see are really cynical. And it’s kind of takes a sort of bravery to just be earnest, you know? And we wanted to… Yeah, we just wanted to be a little bit earnest and celebratory and for people to leave the theater feeling a little bit of hope. That’s it. That’s the whole agenda.
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