Michael Kantor: So one question I forgot to ask John was the, you know, the immortal question, which comes first in terms of your work?
Fred Ebb: Um, well, he probably answered it, didn’t he?
Michael Kantor: No, I forgot to ask him that.
Fred Ebb: Well, the fact is, the answer we give, which is the truth, is that we work in the same room at the same time and some writer once, writing about our work procedures, said then they go into a room and what comes out is a puree of my words and John’s music, and that’s about right. We build a song together, lyrically and musically.
Michael Kantor: What makes Broadway fun?
Fred Ebb: I don’t know, it’s glamorous, it was everything I thought about when I was young and I wanted to do it. I used to get standing rooms for 55 cents and it seemed to me this incredible world and now to be part of it’s fun.
Michael Kantor: The thrill of walking into the theater and the show being magical.
Fred Ebb: I don’t know, I mean it’s a very singular thing. I can tell you my reaction and I don’t know how everybody else feels.
Michael Kantor: Let’s hear what I
Fred Ebb: I find it thrilling. You walk in, you hear that guy rap on a baton and then raise his arm and music starts and curtains go up and lights happen and lights go down and I think it’s all wonderful. And I’ve always thought it was wonderful.
Michael Kantor: Do you remember writing One Good Break? Was that number in some way based on your own feelings about working with George Abbott and rising out?
Fred Ebb: No, it’s very specific to the piece. I think if you really broke it down, it would sort of be a testimony to my own feeling, but I didn’t think of that when I was writing it. I thought Flora might say that, and that’s why we wrote it, really.
Michael Kantor: Just briefly, ever so briefly, set up what’s going on in the show when she begins singing that. Why would she have sung that at that point?
Fred Ebb: Well, she’s applying for a job, Floor is applying for job and she’s been rejected a number of times and now she’s filling out an application. To get this job, and so sort of a testimony, her feeling, and what she feels would get her the job, she thinks is just one good break, and how she can succeed in the world would require that one good brake.
Michael Kantor: Thank you. What do you remember about working with? What did you call George Abbott? What do remember about work with him?
Fred Ebb: I found him, actually he was a wonderful, wonderful man, and he didn’t really require you to do all that, it just seemed natural. Being such a giant of the musical theater always, as I’d known it, you could never call him George, although Hal Prince called him George. That always impressed me a lot, but I could never do that.
Michael Kantor: What kind of guy was he?
Fred Ebb: Terrific. Mr. Abbott was about as terrific as you can get. He taught you all the best things you have to know. Be on time. Don’t whine. Do your assignment. Do it cleanly. Come in and present yourself. All the things I’ve learned that are good things, I think I learned from Mr. Abbott and then quite a few from other people I worked with.
Michael Kantor: You know, people talk about the George Abbott show. How would you characterize one of his shows?
Fred Ebb: Well, generally, they were sort of frisky, funny, musical comedies. That seemed to me what he liked the best. He was a great lover of comedy, I think. And so when he did things like Never Too Late and shows of that nature, plays of that nature. They were all funny, at least that I remember. I don’t know. He also is a man who wrote, I think, or directed All Quiet on the Western Front. And I feel that’s incredible of him and a whole other side to him that I never saw very much of.
Michael Kantor: Why is Liza Minnelli a great Broadway performer?
Fred Ebb: I think she’s great because everybody wants to take care of her, and when she comes out on the stage, there’s something immediately loving and tender about Liza and vulnerable, and you kind of want to help her, although she doesn’t need help. And then she puts her two feet on the ground and she belts them out, and that’s a wonderful Sort of brave and fabulous thing for me. I’ve always loved that about her and I love writing for her because it’s the songs I like to write and she sings them better than anybody.
Michael Kantor: What was the first song you wrote for Cabaret? I’m gonna pause just a second. Okay, go ahead.
Fred Ebb: “Willkommen” was the first song we wrote for Cabaret. I always try to write the opening song first. And in that particular show, we did. Of course, it was more complicated when we started. We had a whole series of vignettes to depict Berlin life. And one of the parts of that vignette was an emcee and a a cabaret singing Willkommen, and then we extracted that to be the umbrella for the whole show.
Michael Kantor: How did you look to find the right language for that show?
Fred Ebb: You do research, you look at all the movies that are available to you, and there were quite a few. And recordings of the music of the period, they were very helpful to me. The sort of naughty, decadent, seeming songs of Berlin in that day was a great… A guideline for me in order to create our own voice and write in our own style for that period. Well, clearly we weren’t there, so you have to look it up, really.
Michael Kantor: Did you feel like there was any sort of corollary between, you know, middle of the 60s and civil unrest here as, you know against what you were writing about?
Fred Ebb: I think Hal did. Hal brought a conscience to the whole show. And every day when you’d come into rehearsal, there’d be something on the bulletin board that would speak of something contemporary that we could relate to the piece we had undertaken. And I found that very helpful. I don’t know that I would have thought of it myself, but Hal is very, very smart and a terrific conceptualizer and director. I would follow him over the cliff, and I’d just listen.
Michael Kantor: Could you tell, I mean, in a way, this was his moment of emergence as a director. As a producer, he’d done all these traditional pieces, but here, in a way he changes Broadway. Could you tell you were doing that at the time?
Fred Ebb: No, I had no idea. People told me that it was a landmark musical. I never thought of it that way. And I certainly wasn’t writing. I wanted to make a success and make a hit. We’d come off a flop, which was Floor the Red Menace. And I think when you have two in a row, maybe it would be tough for you. But Hal, even after Floor, the Red Menace, offered us a cabaret, or actually a musical version of I Am a Camera. I didn’t think that was such a terrific idea, but again, it was Hal, and you follow Hal. And we naturally agreed to do it, and then it became this wonderful landmark thing, and I didn’t t know that. I just did the best I could.
Michael Kantor: Did you get a sense, you know, looking at how when you first met him and on Family Fair early in his career that he was going to have the impact on Broadway that he’s since had?
Fred Ebb: I don’t think anybody even knows that for sure. I think if I had a bet on it, he’d be a pretty good bet. I don’t remember what I thought at the time, except he was somebody I respected deeply and wanted to work with and liked. So all those things contrived to making a good collaboration.
Michael Kantor: What’s cabaret really about?
Fred Ebb: I think it’s about surviving. I think that’s about people dancing on the edge of a cliff. Not quite falling over. And I think it’s about awareness. I think it’s a about tenderness and beauty and And, oh, it’s been a whole lot of stuff. Oh, my, everything, validity. The minute she walked down the stage, the show became authentic. And would she appear in anything that wasn’t a true depiction of the times that she had seen and oh, everything. She was just grand and a wonderful, wonderful person and a brilliant artist and I always loved her. And to think we were writing for her was almost more than I couldn’t take. And that’s what she brought in. She stamped it. This is authentic, Lenya said to me, and that meant a lot.
Michael Kantor: So, just to go back to Lada Alenia, who was she and why was that important to the show?
Fred Ebb: Who was she? Oh, she was a great figure of German theater, Viennese theater, I think. All of that Middle Europa stuff. And she was this incredible artist, and the widow of Kurt Weill, who was a great hero of mine. And I’d always loved Weill’s work. And I was insane about Ladi Lenya. I had an album. Where she sang all Kurt Weill’s songs. It must have been white with the playing of it, I did. And then you meet these people. It’s really amazing. My life has been amazing. I mean, there was Mr. Rabbit, who had been just an icon, and here was Lottie Lanier, and Hal was not so much. I mean we were sort of contemporary, so, but these people who were there before I was, It was just amazing to me to work with them. And when she said that was good, Kurt would have liked that. She said to me a couple of times, I mean, I went on a big high, you almost don’t care what the critic says. And the fact that she was singing your material.
Michael Kantor: What themes and plots and stories in musical theater are you most turned on by?
Fred Ebb: Well, as an example, Kiss of the Spider-Woman turned me on enormously, because it was very difficult, and it was not typical in any way of what was going on. And it was a subject I was immediately drawn to and understood and felt I could do. A lot of shows I don’t think I could do, I mean. They’ve been written by other people very successfully. I don’t think I could have done them.
Michael Kantor: Pardon me. What was your initial feeling about Chicago? Where did that idea come from?
Fred Ebb: I thought I could do that. It came from Bobby and Fossey and Gwen Verdon. They wanted to do it for a number of years and were not able to collect the rights. And their take on it was based on a old, old play like 1929 or something by a lady named Maureen Dallas Watkins. She was now in a monastery or something, really weird. I’m not sure what it was. And they couldn’t get the rights. And they asked me if I knew how to adapt, because it was a very straight play, sort of a melodrama actually, if I had any ideas of how to musicalize it. And so I came up with the vaudeville concept, which I felt I could handle. And it was, you know, strong. It was a presentational way of doing the material. And Bobby liked it, and Gwen liked it. And I was more or less hired. We were hired, Johnny and me. And, uh.
Michael Kantor: How did the vaudeville idea inspire working out the show?
Fred Ebb: Well, it enabled you to present characters in a fresh and unusual way by drawing an analogy between them and their vaudeville counterparts so that when Roxy sings at the beginning she’s Helen Morgan, Billy Flynn becomes Ted Lewis, Burt Williams is Amos when he sings Uh, Mr. Cellophane, and, uh… Velma becomes Texas Guinan, and it was a great signpost for me. And I could research all of that, which I did.
Michael Kantor: What was Fosse like working on that show?
Fred Ebb: He was tough. He was one day elated, always very kind to me. I must say that I walked in on rehearsal one day and Bobby wasn’t one to like give you a lot you know and so he was not a very you know demonstrative fellow and he was rehearsing the company and razzle-dazzle I think and I heard him say although he didn’t know I heard of saying look these are excellent words and I want you to say them loud and I want to say clear this guy is wonderful who wrote this. And I wasn’t meant to hear all that, but boy, it sure got to me. And that’s what he meant to me, he was that encouraging another icon, somebody I had, whose work I had known and who was now my pal and my collaborator.
Michael Kantor: John pointed out though that it was different when you were creating the show than when you were rehearsing the show. He had it, definitely had a dark side.
Fred Ebb: Oh, yes, he did, certainly. And he could turn on you. I mean, he was known to turn. I saw him turn on people. And once he turned on us when the show was about to open, it was a quick moment, and it happened, and then it was over. But it did happen. And you realize, Bobby, I sort of had to do that sometimes, just lash out.
Michael Kantor: What do you think it was in him that brought that to the work?
Fred Ebb: I don’t know. I don t know. He’s a very complicated man and for me to assume I understood it or to pretend I understood would be a conceit I don’t t have.
Michael Kantor: We see him as a young dancer with a sort of buoyant D-Shucks quality, and then later on something else happens.
Fred Ebb: Well, he’s dark, you know, all that jazz is dark. And his work, Lenny, is dark and he is dark, Bobby is. He’s got that element in him. And I think the original Chicago, which now a very sunny up piece, but originally Bobby had a very dark version of that material and brought it to bear on the piece.
Michael Kantor: Do you think that had to do with his health at all?
Fred Ebb: No, more or less I think his emotional life, whatever that was, clearly it was trouble. And he may have had a hard time deciding if he was happy or not. I think that was it. He would come in one day and be happy, and the next day be down, and it was very mercurial and it happened all the time, and very disconcerting.
Michael Kantor: The show opens. How did that feel?
Fred Ebb: The original show.
Michael Kantor: It was overshadowed by another show.
Fred Ebb: Yeah, Horace Line had opened and that was a big hit that season and Bobby immediately said they can only buy one hit a season and we were kind of a hit but it wasn’t enough for Bobby and probably not enough for me either. I thought we’d get more than we got. Babi had an ending in mind that Roxy and Velma would get together. I, who worked with him on the book, also felt that was the way for the show to end. We just needed a song and a way to do it, and we were sent off to write that song. We wrote it out of town. It turned out to be nowadays, and then Bobby added the dance the two girls do together at the end of that, and it was all very felicitous, I thought, it worked fine.
Michael Kantor: Great. What about All I Care About, you know, when Jerry Orbeck sang that? We have a wonderful clip of that. What’s going on? Can you help us set up understanding what he’s singing about there?
Fred Ebb: Well, it’s understanding Billy. He’s a phony, and he comes down and sings a phony song about a phoning emotion. And he doesn’t mean it for a minute, and you can tell. And a lot of girls are surrounding him, flicking fans, and it’s kind of stupid. And he’s just a very enjoyable character.
Michael Kantor: There’s a lot of sort of, maybe not phony emotion, but phony stuff going on in the show itself. Where’s the truth in the shot?
Fred Ebb: The truth is, Billy’s truth, that it’s a vaudeville honey and you’re a phony celebrity, and that celebrities are, in fact, killers today. More people on the street would be likely to tell you who Al Capone was than they could tell you who the Secretary of State is. And I think that’s really the message of the piece, that we have phony royalty here. And, uh… And know any better you know great britain has a queen and uh… Somebody to really uh… Be reverent about. We don’t. So we tend to pick odd celebrities and very often they’re murderers and killers. People are familiar with them, more than they’re familiar with who the vice president is or, you know, as I said, the secretary of state. I don’t know. But it seemed to me that was important too.
Michael Kantor: Razzle Dazzle. How does that say something about John’s music? Seems like the right description.
Fred Ebb: Well, John always has the right music. I mean, he sets things just wonderfully. And again, there’s a wonderful vamp in it. You know, da-dum, ba-dumm, ba, da, da. Sets you the whole song up. Like New York, New York. He’s just, I think he’s incredible. And then the writing of the lyric was not hard, considering the philosophy of the show. Which that, you know. What if your hinges all are rusting? What if, in fact, you’re just disgusting?
Michael Kantor: Razzle Dazzle. Give us a sense of how it goes and what joy you find in it.
Fred Ebb: I liked writing it, in a funny kind of way I believe it, you know, that, uh… A lot of what we do is flim flam. I do believe that.
Michael Kantor: My question was, isn’t that what the Broadway musical is all about?
Fred Ebb: Well, somehow, yes, and sometimes, not always, certainly. And I think there’s sort of a reductio ad absurdum in the piece, but I like it. I think it sounds good and I like the words and the moment in the pieces is very important that Billy say that and put the audience straight as to what we’re really about and saying it to Roxy, I think is important too.
Michael Kantor: Help us lead into it the way you did a moment ago. What’s it come out of?
Fred Ebb: Well, they’re about to go into the trial, and Roxy’s nervous. And Billy says to her, it’s all going to be all right, because it’s a circus kid. And I’m very good at this. And it won’t matter about what you know to be true and what you’re know to not true, because eventually it’s only a question of how you present it and how you razzle dazzle them. And I think that’s important. It’s sort of the theme of the piece in many ways. Because at the end, those girls are really victorious. And they’re throwing roses at the audience. And they were a couple of killers, really.
Michael Kantor: Would you sing a couple bars for us?
Fred Ebb: What do you want here?
Michael Kantor: Just believe right into razzle-dazzle.
Fred Ebb: Give them the old razzle-dazzle, razzledazzle them. Give them a show that’s so splendiferous, row after row will grow vociferous. Give them be old flim flam flummocks, bead and feather them. How can they tell the truth behind the roar? Give them an act that’s un- no. Give them a fake, an often-agle, they’ll never know. You’re just a bagel, a razzle-dazzle of mine. And they’ll make you a star. I think I got that all wrong, but the tune was right.
Michael Kantor: It was great to meet you. What does Fred bring to a song like that? You touched on it earlier, but it’s as though the Broadway energy is in his veins.
Fred Ebb: Yeah, well, I grew up here, and I grew up on Broadway musicals. I would go to them whenever I had a chance or a dollar 10 or 55 cents or whatever it would cost to even stand through them. And I just love them. And I think my love of them may be apparent in my work. I certainly hope it is, because I would like that to be part of what I do. I feel it is, you know, the fabric of it. A part of this wonderful world.
Michael Kantor: Was there a particular vaudeville act or show that just clearly in your head this is what you wanted to do?
Fred Ebb: I don’t think so. There were shows that I’d seen that I loved, and many of them were by Mr. Rabbit. And I loved that Broadway kind of musical, even though they were empty-headed, and I’m not just sure we took a great turn for the better when we started thinking. I mean, it’s not that I’m anti-thinking, and this will sound preposterous, I’m sure. But I love those old empty-headed shows as well, and I think there’s room for them. I think a lot of people just go to the theater to have a good time, and not necessarily to think. And then I’ve written a lot of think pieces, and I’m very fond of them also.
Michael Kantor: What about Broadway My Street? What does Broadway mean to you?
Fred Ebb: It means having a good time. It means hearing pretty songs that you can hum on the way up the aisle and maybe have a life the next day. I love all that. And I love writing with that sort of in mind, although they never can really be in mind. But I like the way Johnny writes, because those melodies are also memorable to me. That’s what I like.
Michael Kantor: How do you think, apart from economics, the musical has changed most significantly since when you started?
Fred Ebb: Well, economics is a big part of it. I mean, it now would cost a fortune to go to the theater. 75 bucks a seat. Babysitters, dinner out, I mean, you’re spending a lot of money to come see something. And that’s why I think critics have the weight they have, because theater buying, theater buying public has to have some assurance that they’re seeing something good. And the only way right at the moment they can do that is if a critic tells them it’s I guess they fulfill a certain function.
Michael Kantor: What about?
Fred Ebb: Although I hate them.
Michael Kantor: What about the fact that the Broadway musical is clearly an American, it’s American. It’s not something that emerged in England or France. Why is that? What do you think it says about us?
Fred Ebb: I don’t know. I’m not a historian in any way and I’m not a scholar in that sense. And I don’t know why it should be so American. I guess because other people in other countries don’t do it as well as we do. I think this country’s always been a little advanced. In most every… And in musical comedy, we’ve just been ahead of everybody else and a little bit brighter and a little bit more ready to experiment, maybe. And maybe just richer, but we can afford to do it.
Michael Kantor: What’s the secret to writing a good lyric or a memorable lyric?
Fred Ebb: I think, uh… Its ability to communicate. I think its simplicity, the way it can be touching, the way we remind someone of an experience they’ve had or can relate to. I like when lyrics are like that. I think the finest lyric writer was always Irving Berlin and the finest lyrics were the simple ones, like all alone, I’m so all alone. There’s no one else but you. All alone by a telephone, wondering how you are, where you are and if you are all alone too. I mean, that’s perfect. It just couldn’t be better. And it’s simple and everybody can remember that. And it is touching. And there’s all sorts of images in there just by the telephone is an image that moves me. I just think it was great. I’d love to write like that.
Michael Kantor: What’s a concept musical and how do you feel about it?
Fred Ebb: Well, it’s an overall umbrella, and everything in the piece feeds that concept. Hal Prince is the champ of the concept musical, and they’re wonderful. And I’ve profited a great deal from writing a few of them, maybe more than a few. And I believe in them. I think they’re important. I think that they’re helpful to an audience to understand a piece and absorb it better, and to the writer, because he keeps feeding that concept and therefore writes better, I think.
Michael Kantor: What do you think is Howe Prince’s genius or strong suit?
Fred Ebb: Hal is just a wonderful innovator. And Hal has set the standard for many musicals that are now being done. Hal does them better. And I think Hal’s incredibly bright and clever and staged. Here’s a lot of sabbying about what a show looks like, what it says, and how to get that meaning across. And Hal, in working with Hal, Hal always makes you better than you are or even think you Hal is a great litmus paper about what you should be doing and how do it well.
Michael Kantor: Do you have a favorite Steve Sondheim show?
Fred Ebb: I just, yeah, I think it would be Gypsy. I think Gypsy’s incredibly, I don’t know if that can be called the Steve Sondheim show, but I think that’s an incredible musical. Every moment in it counts. Every moment is just wonderfully thought out. And I love the score. I think the score is brilliant, and I should say now maybe West Side, because No, that’s not all, Stephen, either. I don’t know. I just think he’s terrific.
Michael Kantor: Do you have a sense of any shows as landmarks that you saw and felt, wow, this is where things are changing?
Fred Ebb: You know, West Side would be one, Gypsy would be another, and I, those seem to me just absolutely perfect musical. And deep and sensitive and thrilling. And I think when she thinks everything’s coming up roses at the end, I mean, there aren’t many moments in a musical that can match that one. And if your show could all lead to, any of them lead to a moment like that. For a star like Merman, nearly having a nervous breakdown on the stage, I just almost jumped out of my chair. It was so thrilling to me.
Michael Kantor: I ask this question, John, what’s the biggest thrill that you get working in the Broadway musical realm? Is it opening night? Is it when a song moves out of a show into the American sort of consciousness? What, what really…
Fred Ebb: I think that when you’re in rehearsal and they hear the orchestra for the first time and a whole cast that’s always on your side goes to hear something that’s been orchestrated and the look on their faces and the thrill of it all, I think, that’s maybe my favorite moment.
Michael Kantor: What about on a show, a show tune rather, and it used to happen a lot, becomes part of American popular culture?
Fred Ebb: Well, that’s nice. But I don’t think you can sit down and say, this is going to be a hit, or this is gonna be a showstopper. I think you just do your work, and the chips fall where they fall. I think there’s some very good songs in shows of ours that have no life whatever, and some not so hot songs, which are more or less more popular. I don’t think there is any way of knowing. I think just do what you do.
Michael Kantor: What’s Cheetah Rivera’s special talent?
Fred Ebb: Oh my God, she can do anything. Cheetah’s just the best. She can do absolutely anything. And I think for us, the special talent is she gives you exactly what you wrote. She doesn’t embellish it. She doesn’ think she’s smarter than you are, or hopes to make things better. She just does it. And anything you do, or any dance you give her, she can accomplish. Any song you give, she could sing. I think she’s just remarkable in every way, and my body besides.
Michael Kantor: Why do you feel that your collaboration has lasted so long? What is it about working with John Kander that is so wonderful?
Fred Ebb: I think John is smart. I think there’s no pretension in the guy. I just think he’s incredibly bright. And he’s musically so gifted that he makes everything I write sound better than it might have sounded in the hands of someone else. And I think vamps that he creates for songs, musical settings that he gives my words. I just, without question, the best that it could be. And I’m so pleased and proud that he thinks enough of me to keep working with me because that’s how I feel about him. I just think he’s the best, and I’m lucky to have him.
Michael Kantor: And is there some part of, you know, theater as a collaborative art form? What is it that has to click for that collaboration to work?
Fred Ebb: Respect. I think the mutual respect people have for each other, and that’s what makes it clear. If you respect your collaborators and they respect you, the piece is going to be better than it might have been when there’s no harmony, when there is disrespect, when there is friction. I don’t believe in that. I do think David Merrick believed in that, that he thought good shows come from friction. I certainly don’t believe that at all, and I’ve never known it to be true either.
Michael Kantor: Who was David Merrick and what was his role on Broadway?
Fred Ebb: I think he was quite an important man, and I think he did a lot of wonderful pieces. And I think got things on, and he helped them to run. I think it was incomparably funny. I thought the ad he took out where he found people with the same name as critics, who then praised the show as layman. So Walter Kerr says. That he loves the piece. And actually, Walter Kerr was like an accountant somewhere. I thought that was just pricelessly funny. I thought his war with the critics was funny. I thought, I just loved him. I thought he was flamboyant and colorful and helpful to a lot of young people who were writing. And I just liked him. I liked him a lot.
Michael Kantor: What was so powerful?
Fred Ebb: There’s a sexual overtone in The King and I that’s never realized in anything that’s spoken or certainly happening. And when they sing Shall We Dance, and the king puts just his arm on Anna’s waist, and they, I’m gonna cry, and they dance to that. It makes, it’s magic. It’s the kind of magic I’d like to do. And it’s just the best damn thing. And it’s musical theater at its very finest. And for everyone, whether they get it or not, whether they realize that that touch means more than it might seem to mean, I don’t care. I got it, and I love it, and I could watch that my whole life, that particular moment. And if I ever want to aspire to anything, it would be that, and many other things, you know, in the theater as you go along. But that one stands out to me, because even when I was young, which I was when I saw it. That spoke to me. And I was thrilled by the tune, by the words, by the action, by the look of people waltzing like that. I just thought it was just great.
Michael Kantor: What a bad guys and doll.
Fred Ebb: Well, that killed me also. That’s a whole other way. But that spoke to me as a New Yorker, because I knew sort of prototypically all those people. And I just thought it was wildly funny and immensely gifted. And Adelaide’s Lament to me may be the best comic song in our whole literature. And this is downright funny. And it’s intellectual. And it’s observed, and it’s true, and its fabulous. And I thought Frank Lessa was fabulous. And those songs and that whole score is just a testament to how brilliantly he wrote and captured everything.
Michael Kantor: What do you say to people who say musical comedy is gone and we miss it?
Fred Ebb: Screw them. I don’t care what they say. It’s not and it won’t be and they’ve been burying us for years and it’s never been true and I don’t believe it ever will be and it’s not worth defending. I mean your work defends it. The good work we all do who toil in the musical theater will prove them wrong and it And you know, ever since… Was it me and Julia that had that song in it about the theater is dying, the theater is fading away, and Oscar Havocine said it all this many years ago. And we’ve lived through that and come through when we are where we are. And I really will go on. I just do. I can’t be bothered defending it. I let my work defend it.
Michael Kantor: Thank you, thank you so much.
Fred Ebb: Thank you.
