Monthly Archives: November 2010

Once upon a time, the way a Broadway show worked was that they previewed out of town. They'd take the show to New Haven or Philadelphia or Washington or just about anywhere for a month or three…anywhere but Broadway and everyone understood how that worked. Audiences understood they were paying to see a work-in-progress; that there would be mistakes and weak segments that would later be trimmed or rewritten. Reviewers understood that the show was not to be reviewed because it was not done yet. It might very well stink in tryouts but that didn't count…and famously there were shows like Oklahoma! and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum that were written-off as flops in early previews but managed to get everything fixed by the time they debuted in New York and the critics came to render their judgments. The whole point of previewing in another city was to do all the testing and repair work and revision without the whole world watching.

I feel bad for the folks behind the Spider-Man musical now previewing in New York. Their first preview on Sunday had, if not the whole world watching then certainly a lot of the theatrical community and potential customers. I don't recall any legitimate newspaper ever publishing an article reporting on the disasters and bad reaction to any other preview…but here's The New York Times and The New York Post was even worse.

Of course, the folks behind Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark have no one to blame but themselves. They chose to put money into special effects instead of outta-town tryouts, plus they've been hyping the show in every possible direction, calling as much attention to it as possible. They're also charging not just full Broadway prices for previews but high Broadway prices…and scalpers are getting $300-$500 for choice seats. If I paid a thousand bucks for a pair of tix to see a new show, I don't think I'd be too forgiving of the kind of mistakes that usually mar preview performances, nor would I be that tolerant of material that obviously needs to be rewritten.

On Facebook this morning, I saw a bunch of folks cackling over the snap assumption that the show is a disaster. One said, "No one is praising the story and that's the kiss of death." I don't think so. No one has ever praised the story in any of those Cirque du Soleil shows and most of them have done pretty well.

Ah, but I hear you wishing I had a Comments section so you could write, "True but people don't go to Cirque du Soleil shows for the story." Which is true but I also don't think people always go to a Broadway show for the story. No one went to Smokey Joe's Cafe for a story. There wasn't one and that show ran for over two thousand performances on Broadway and is still popular all over the world. Do people go to Mamma Mia because they say, "Hey, let's go see a show about a woman who isn't sure which of three men fathered her daughter who's about to be married"? Or do they go because they say, "Hey, let's go see a show full of neat ABBA hits"?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than to suggest that a lot of the old rules are already not applying to Spider-Man. Many of them sure aren't applying to The Addams Family, which got pretty bad reviews but is still packing 'em in at the Lunt-Fontanne. (It'll be interesting to see how much that changes when Nathan Lane departs the cast next March.) Even if it gets similarly bad notices, I suspect Spider-Man will keep selling tickets because there's a grand affection for the title character and no one is suggesting they're not bringing him to life vividly on or over that stage…and because it's all such a talked-about spectacle. One assumes they'll get the technical problems all solved and the running time will get down to normal…and then it'll be one of those, "What? You haven't seen it yet?" shows. Whether it'll sell enough tickets to turn a profit, I dunno…but they're going to sell a lot of tickets, at least for a while. (This article suggests the Foxwoods Theater is already thinking they might need another tenant soon. That kind of talk feels way premature to me…but then again, I haven't seen the show…or the precise math on what it's going to take in terms of grosses to keep the doors open and the actors flying.)

Whatever happens, we'll be talking for some time about what it means about how the theater is, for better or worse, changing. For some reason, that discussion interests me more than the show, itself.

Jeffrey Toobin looks back on the infamous case of Bush v. Gore. The utimate case of "activist judges" at work.

What do all the Wikileaks revelations about U.S. foreign policy tell us? I don't know. Let's go read Fred Kaplan.

One of the times I chatted with Milton Berle, someone (not me) brought up the subject of him stealing material from other comics. He semi-exploded on the topic, saying it was just an act, a fictional flaw he'd milked for laughs the way Jack Benny had allowed the world to think he was cheap. He stole jokes when he started out, Berle said, but everyone did, and they stole them from each other. ("The guy I stole a gag from stole it from someone else and he stole it from someone else…") Once he became an established pro, he claimed, he never knowingly stole anything from anyone. This view does not seem to have been shared by any of his friends and peers, but let's leave that aside for now.

That day we spoke, he denounced the charge as a smear on the part of jealous, less successful comedians and noted that, when you're Mr. Television, the number one comic on TV, every other comedian is, by definition, a "less successful comedian." The one he singled out as most often spreading the slur was Bert Lahr and he said approximately the following to me. (This is my memory; not a recorded quote.)

I did a movie called Always Leave Them Laughing and it was my movie. It was at the peak of my stardom so I owned a hunk of it and I had every kind of script and cast approval you could possibly have. I had final cut and I even directed part of the movie because the director took ill. It was about a younger comic, played by me, who steals an older comedian's act and his wife. You see, I wasn't afraid to play a joke stealer because I knew it was just a character. It wasn't me. Anyway, it was my idea to cast Lahr as the older comic. I thought he'd be great in the part and he was. He was a terrific comedian and actor. However, after the film came out, Lahr was suddenly telling everyone that I tried to cut him out of the picture, that I ruined his best scenes. Bert's son wrote a book about him [Notes on a Cowardly Lion] in which he repeated these charges. They're bull but don't take my word for it. Read the book. See what Lahr said about the movie and what he says I did. Then watch the movie. It's on The Late, Late Show every ten minutes. You'll see that Lahr is terrific in that movie. Yeah, one or two of his scenes hit the cutting room floor. Ten or fifteen of mine got cut. Scenes get cut out of every movie. But you watch the movie and see if Lahr isn't great and if I'm not supporting him in every scene we have together, letting him be great. He's got this great dying scene and I could have horned in on it, had them cut away to my reactions more and stuck in a lot of dialogue for my character but I didn't. Because it was Bert's scene and it worked best to let it be his scene. But like I said, don't take my word for it. Read the book, watch the movie and if you believe I tried to hurt his performance, then all the things they say about me must be true. I will stake my reputation on that.

That's almost exactly what Mr. Berle said, and "I will stake my reputation on that" is verbatim. But he was wrong that Always Leave Them Laughing is on TV every ten minutes. It airs almost never…but guess what. It's on Turner Classic Movies tomorrow morning…at 6:45 AM on my satellite dish, which probably means 9:45 on most systems.

The last time it was on was a few years ago. I posted much of the above on this site, then TiVoed and watched the film. Berle was right that Lahr was terrific in it…a great chance to see that fine performer not dressed as an animal. So I think I tend to side with Uncle Miltie on this one.

What's weird though is the role Berle chose for himself in this, really his only starring movie role. He's right that he was at (or at least near) the peak of his stardom at the time. Texaco Star Theater went on TV in June of 1948 with Berle as one of four rotating hosts. In the fall, he was named its sole host and the ratings skyrocketed. During the show's summer hiatus, he made Always Leave Them Laughing and it was released on November 26, 1949. He probably could have done any kind of movie he wanted and what did he choose? This man, who was so sensitive about people thinking he was a pushy and unethical guy who stole gags and girl friends decided to play a pushy and unethical guy who stole gags and girl friends. True, the character in the movie reforms at the end but even with that, it's odd to decide to play the kind of person you're afraid people think you are. Isn't it?

As I mentioned below, Leslie Nielsen used to always wield this little rubber device called a Handi-Gas that emitted fart sounds. In fact, he bought them by the gross and gave them out to people. I got one…and then later was schooled in its usage by my pal Bob Logan, who directed Leslie in his movie, Repossessed and was tutored on the set. (I never employed mine in public and when I went to lunch with Logan, I had to disarm him and make him leave his in the car.)

Anyway, I wanted to post a photo here of the Handi-Gas but I couldn't find one. They must have sold millions of these things…and that's just to Leslie Nielsen. But I can't find any real trace of them on the 'net and I have no idea where mine is. Maybe in some box in storage. Anyway, if you have a photo, let me know. It just strikes me as interesting that digital technology obviously made the Handi-Gas obsolete. There are dozens of little battery-powered fart machines one can buy…and now there are apps for the iPhone and other such devices. I hope that when Nielsen is buried, someone has the bad taste to get one of those devices, set it to make its noise every minute or so — and put it in the coffin. Leslie would have wanted it like that.

Bruce Bartlett takes a sledge hammer to the Republican theories that if you "starve the beast" (i.e., reduce the dollars your government collects in taxes), government spending will shrink accordingly. This is one of those beliefs that reminds one of the definition of Insanity. It never works so they want to try it again and again and again, expecting different results.