It's Delightful. It's Delicious. It's De-Lovely!

It's De-Lovely, Winkler says, hews pretty closely to the biographical events in Porter's life, but liberties were taken with the chronology of Porter's songs to serve the drama of the tale. "I wanted to use the music as I felt the emotions required rather than stick to what he wrote when he wrote it," he says. Once Cocks used the lyrics to figure out where the songs fit in the story dramatically, it was up to music supervisor Steven Endelman to make them work musically.

"Irwin put the gauntlet down," says Endelman. "He said, 'I don't want old, nothing too new.' He wanted pop, jazz and Broadway all in one go, so that was the challenge for me." Endelman--who had previously worked on another musical biopic, Bride of the Wind, about Dutch classical composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma--was a fan of Porter s music, but he "wasn't a Cole Porter zealot," he says. "I wasn't somebody who was going to say, 'Oh my God, we can't do that because it's going to be sacreligious to the written note of Cole Porter.'"

Thus Endelman rearranged, for example, the usual rumba-like rhythm of "Begin the Beguine" into a much slower, melancholy lament that punctuates a tragic moment in the film for Cole and Linda. But none of the Cole Porter experts consulted for the film had objections to the new interpretations. "In fact, they were so pleased with what was done musically" says Endelman.

The filmmakers went after a variety of recording artists to perform Porter's songs in the film, looking to attract as wide a demographic as possible. But they were pleasantly surprised that many artists were actually clamoring to be in the film.

"I didn't think that that many contemporary pop singers really knew that much about Cole Porter," says Winkler. Of course, there were obvious choices like Diana Krall (who performs "Just One of Those Things" and "I Get a Kick Out of You"), who's included Porter in her repertoire for years, and Natalie Cole ("Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye"), whose father, Nat King Cole, popularized quite a few Porter tunes. But the Porter song-book also stoked the enthusiasm of big names from the pop-rock world like Sheryl Crow ("Begin the Beguine") and Alanis Morissette ("Let's Do It [Let's Fall in Love]").

"I knew that Alanis had actually sung this kind of material years ago as a kid," Endelman says. "She walks in and she goes, 'OK, Steven, I can give you Jagged Little Pill, or I can give you Broadway. What do you want?' I said, 'Well, I'd like it to be down the center, a bit of this and a bit of that,' and that's what we did."

It's De-Lovely also brought out the unlikely but altogether smooth crooner in both Elvis Costello (Krall's new hubby), who does a raspy, rollicking "Let's Misbehave," and Britpop superstar Robbie Williams, who sells the title song with bouncy panache. "His father was a singer, so he'd grown up with this kind of material," says Endelman. Williams had a bit of a warm-up, having recorded a swing album in the mode of Sinatra and Martin (even dueting with Nicole Kidman) a few years ago.

But the singers' enthusiasm was sometimes tempered by apprehension. "There was a point where a lot of artists were very nervous about doing it because the songs are so complicated," says Endelman. The range can be so tough, and the lyrics operate on both a superficial level and a subtextual level where Porter "puts in so much personal information and thought, and he does it in such a sophisticated way. Unless you really are studying it, you may not get it." "Let's Misbehave" and "Anything Goes" were like Porter's mantras, Endelman says, and the lesser-known gem "Experiment," which Kline performs in the film, "is such a great lyric for that character. He's telling you in that one moment in the film--he's looking at his wife, he's looking at the audience [of partygoers]--and he's going, 'Listen, this is me.'

"What also struck me about his music is that most of them are love songs, but they're not gooey love songs--they're questioning. 'Do you love me as I love you?' 'Don't Fence Me In'--think about it. What does that say about Cole Porter, about wanting to not be restricted?"

You're the Nile,

you're the Tow'r of Pisa

You're the smile on the Mona Lisa

I'm a worthless check,

a total wreck, a flop

But if, baby, I'm the bottom

You're the top!

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Porter is "one of the finest lyric and music writers of the 20th century," says Endelman. "He's so prolific, and you don't realize how many wonderful songs he wrote, in a way, until you see the movie--and we only touch on the great songs." Winkler ranks Porter, Berlin and Stephen Sondheim as the three greatest Broadway lyricists/composers ever in musical theater, and Endelman sees a clear lineage between Porter's and Sondheim's ingeniously witty lyrics.

"It's really hard to beat Cole Porter," he says. "He's so brilliant at setting his own lyric, because the nuances of the lyric come across so well in the melody line. In terms of sophistication, he's the top." Adds Winkler, "A friend of mine who is the widow of Sammy Cahn, who was a great lyricist, said to me, 'Every lyricist makes a mistake now and then. Cole Porter never did.'"

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