A musical by Barton Fink

SUSAN SARANDON is belting out “Piece of My Heart,” really throwing herself into it, as if she were in a karaoke bar or driving across country. As the cameras look on, her fists are clenched, her face turns red, her eyes bug out.

Accompanying her on an organ in a church in Brooklyn, N.Y., is British actor-comic-transvestite Eddie Izzard, his hair in a ‘70s shag. His manner is both agreeable and grave, like a choirmaster, which is precisely the role he’s playing.

“You know you’ve got it if it makes you feel good.” Oh yes, indeed.

Welcome to the world of “Romance & Cigarettes,” in which characters express their thoughts through the words and music of popular song, a la Dennis Potter’s “Pennies From Heaven.”

It’s a measure of how pioneering this movie is -- and weird and mysterious, even to its creators -- that it inspires comparisons that are alike and utterly different.

“It’s kind of like Pedro Almodovar decided to do ‘The Honeymooners,’ ” Sarandon says.

“It’s sort of Charles Bukowski meets ‘The Honeymooners,’ ” says the film’s writer-director, John Turturro. “It’s a pretty, it’s a pretty -- I don’t know what it is. All I know is that everyone who’s read it really likes it, so that was something. But I didn’t think too much about it except that I thought it would be great to do something that was really entertaining but at the end is not just a conceit, not just a style, but has a certain content, has an underbelly. It’s heightened, but it comes out of real feelings.”

“Romance” is about a middle-aged blue-collar worker, Nick Murder (James Gandolfini), who has, according to one of the producers, a “hot, dirty, sexual relationship with a tart,” Tula (Kate Winslet). Nick’s wife, Kitty (Sarandon), discovers this, kicks him out of the house and decides to track down Tula with the aid of her wimpy cousin Bo (Christopher Walken). Also on hand are their two daughters, Baby and Constance (Mandy Moore and Mary-Louise Parker), niece Rosebud (Aida Turturro) and pal Angelo (Steve Buscemi, who couldn’t find the time to do the part until he was threatened with kidnapping by a pair of “Romance” gaffers who were also working with him on “Sopranos” reshoots).

The film’s development was almost as outlandish as its characters’ names or its very premise. Its release has been strange too. For months it appeared to be in limbo, a victim perhaps of its unconventionality or of Sony’s purchase of its original distributor, United Artists. It will finally be shown at the upcoming Venice and Toronto film festivals, although a release date hasn’t been set.

All of this seems in keeping with Turturro’s eccentric persona. On the set, he’s animated, almost manic, though without the paranoia that often accompanies those qualities in the people he plays as an actor. At one point he says to no one in particular, “My mother asked me how many cups of coffee I had. I said, ‘Not that many.’ ”

A native of Brooklyn and a graduate of Yale Drama School, Turturro has specialized in fringe characters -- memorably the groveler in “Miller’s Crossing,” the game-show cheater in “Quiz Show,” a nitwit con in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” He’s a member of Joel and Ethan Coen’s unofficial repertory company and seems to share their oddball worldview. He’s also directed two indie films, “Mac” (1992) and “Illuminata” (1998).

Turturro says he started kicking around ideas for “Romance” in the ‘80s but only began putting them down on paper while shooting the Coens’ 1991 release “Barton Fink.” Turturro was literally working on this screenplay on camera as his character Fink, a blocked highbrow playwright, supposedly typed away at a Wallace Beery wrestling script. (“Maybe Barton Fink should take the credit,” Turturro says.) Over the years he accumulated more material before taking a year off, in 1999, to knit the whole thing together.

One outgrowth of his efforts was a sketchbook -- a bible for the “Romance & Cigarettes” crew -- that he filled with drawings that are surreal, lurid and more than occasionally carnal.

The musical numbers that he incorporated were an outgrowth of a musical sequence he staged for “Illuminata.”

“When I did that, something popped in my brain,” he says.

With the assistance of the Coens, Turturro staged a reading in 2001 that went so well he was encouraged to seek financing, which he ultimately received from MGM/UA and Icon Entertainment. The Coens signed on as producers and helped with casting.

“He said, ‘This is what I want to do next. It’s a savage musical,’ ” says John Penotti, president of Greene Street Films, which is also producing the project. “Then he acted it out for us for an hour and a half.” For the lead, Turturro had in mind someone in his ‘60s -- not Gandolfini, who’s 43. But Gandolfini came in to read for the role at the Coens’ suggestion and Turturro changed his mind, in part because Gandolfini can play older than his years.

Unfortunately, working around Gandolfini’s schedule for “The Sopranos” delayed the project for nearly two years. In the meantime, Turturro went through the arduous task of securing rights for the music he planned to use.

“It was extremely bold of him to write the script before clearing the music,” Penotti says. “Without it, there’s no movie. He’s very passionate and persuasive. He willed the film into production.”

Complicating matters was that he needed permission not only from the songwriters but from the singers too -- favorites of music lovers of a certain age (among them are Engelbert Humperdinck, Bruce Springsteen, James Brown and Tom Jones). He made sure the vocalists or their representatives also signed off, because he wanted the songs to have the intensity only the original singers could give them.

“What’s difficult about this movie is you’re trying to find a way not to be doing an MTV video,” Sarandon says. “You’re trying to find the style of the piece. It’s more like the music is supposed to be an extension of a scene as opposed to just a performance.” For Sarandon’s part, her singing voice closely parallels her speaking voice -- it’s in tune but not especially memorable. As a result, she has been dubbed in the final product; Janis Joplin -- and Dusty Springfield, who sings the first few stanzas -- will sing instead. And that’s fine by Sarandon, who said she wouldn’t want her real voice used anyway: “Oh my God, that’s a horrible thought!”

There will be a mix of dubbing and genuine singing throughout, Turturro says, “lip-syncing or singing along with the songs, like you sing along in the shower. James actually has a really nice voice, and he will be singing in the movie. So will Kate Winslet, so will Aida

Indulging the imagination

THE fantasies these characters have are not exactly tame. Cousin Bo lip-syncs to Jones’ “Delilah” (“Why, why, why, Delilah?”) in a diner while dreaming of murdering his wife. Nick imagines Kitty having sex with her first husband (played by Tony Goldwyn) on Nick’s grave.

Another case in point is a scene that failed to make the final cut, in which Izzard dances down the main aisle of the church to the strains of “Prisoner of Love,” sung by Cyndi Lauper. As the crew prepares to film, the church echoes not with the sounds of a sermon or prayers or choral music but barking production assistants, rustling newspapers, muttering cellphone users, clattering equipment and snoring crewmen. The overall effect is busyness, not holiness.

“If my mother could see me now,” a crew member says, “she’d be saying a novena.”

Since Izzard has not arrived on set, Turturro demonstrates what he wants to the camera crew. Everyone stops, watching slack-jawed as Turturro, lounging in front of the altar, is roused from a reverie by the opening strains of the song and begins to drift down the aisle in time to it, and then starts to step to it. As he does this, he’s holding a portable monitor, which shows what he’s doing from the camera’s perspective -- it’s almost like a mirror -- and keeping up a sporadic stream of chatter to the camera crew retreating on a dolly track in front of him.

Now Izzard, wearing a fuchsia jacket, and his dancing partner, a nun (played by choreographer Tricia Brouk), have arrived. Turturro dances yet again, this time with the nun, as Izzard leaps from pew to pew, as if jumping from car hood to car hood, while also watching on the hand-held monitor. He then takes Turturro’s place, and they do a take. Izzard is much more pensive, more reserved, than Turturro, and definitely less nerdy. He shimmies down the aisle, reaches for the nun, who’s been praying in a pew, and they ad-lib a few steps. On the second take, Izzard is far more provocative -- channeling his inner drag queen. His steps with the nun, already sexually charged, are done with a tango-like intensity. He stares at her fixedly, almost obsessively, while she looks away demurely. (Later, Sarandon will describe the scene this way: “It’s very funny and very weird and it’s dirty.”)

The crew applauds, and Izzard shakes a few hands. Then he makes his way to the monitor, where Turturro has the two takes played back.

“You seem very alone,” Turturro says approvingly to Izzard, slapping him on the back. When Izzard leaves, Turturro has one of his own demonstrations played back on the monitor. It’s not better, just different -- goofy grace rather than campy elegance. The script supervisor laughs.

“You know what?” says Turturro, “I’ll dance in another film.”