BOSTON GLOBE: From stage to screen, “Strange” plays on

Boston Globe
By Christopher Wallenberg
August 26, 2009

Near the end of the Broadway run of the Tony-winning musical “Passing Strange,’’ the man behind the show, the singer-songwriter Stew, was baffled to learn that there would be no filmed recording of a project that he and his creative team had spent five years making.

As the show’s lyricist, co-composer, book writer, and on-stage narrator, Stew (born Mark Stewart) had never worked as hard on a project in his life.

“My band can make a record for $3,000, and it will last forever. Broadway theater producers put $5 million into a show and then let it go the next day? We just didn’t understand that at all,’’ he says. “I mean, I was ready to sneak in some friends with cameras to shoot the play before it closed, just because I couldn’t walk away from it without documenting the experience.’’

Sitting next to Stew in a Manhattan conference room is the man he has to thank for helping to immortalize “Passing Strange’’ for the big and small screens. That would be Spike Lee, the director of “Do the Right Thing’’ and “Malcolm X,’’ whose cinematic version of the play, “Passing Strange: The Movie’’ opened in New York on Friday and is available on-demand on the Sundance Selects channel starting today. [...]

Read the entire article online at Boston.com