Interviewer: How would you say Broadway, producing on Broadway, has changed since the days of David Merrick?
Rocco Landesman: It’s funny you should ask since Merrick inhabited this office here. He had the whole thing painted red and this is where he worked. One of the big changes, obviously, is that what he did, which was to have four or five or six shows running at the same time, isn’t possible now because there’s not that many hits. It’s become increasingly a business of hit and flop that the show either establishes itself as something that everyone has to see, or it closes fairly soon. So you can’t have a number of moderately successful shows having long, continuous runs. You can’t have a bunch of shows having a reasonable amount of success. That kind of category doesn’t exist anymore. You either establish yourself as a smash that everyone has to see or you close. That’s a big difference.
Interviewer: What about the idea that Merrick was this solo guy who, you know, for 42nd Street, he bought out his other guys and said, I’m going to do this alone. Speak to that change. That’s changed. That’s a big change, too.
Rocco Landesman: I could do it alone too if it cost four or five hundred thousand dollars to do a musical as it was in David Merrick’s day. Now when it costs ten to twelve million dollars to a show, it’s very hard for any one person to do it. You need a group of producers and investors, most likely corporate support and sponsorship. You need all kinds of ways to raise money for a show and that usually involves a larger group of people than you might like. So the idea of the sole impresario, the singular vision who’s creating these shows and running them is pretty much a thing of the past now. The last probably is Cameron McIntosh. He’s really the last of the Mohicans I think.
Interviewer: Why has it gotten so expensive? Very quickly, 10 to 12.
Rocco Landesman: It’s very simple. The theater is a handmade enterprise. There are no economies of scale or economies of technology. Film, television, most other art forms, CDs, DVDs. There are all kinds of economies of scale and technology. A show is produced every night, live and fresh and new, by the people who are on stage that night. There’s no way to streamline that process. Costumes, sets are handmade, created for the particular show. There’s no way to kind of make that whole process more efficient. It’s a highly labor-intensive process. And the cost of labor is one thing that keeps going up and We just don’t have the efficiencies of scale and technology that you have in other forms of art.
Interviewer: Realistic
Rocco Landesman: the real estate becomes more and more valuable. We have played our role in these escalating costs as well because we have to pay real estate tax and property, you know, the property values have to be reflected in the rents we get to some degree.
Interviewer: They have 35 Broadway theaters. It’s a very small group that kind of runs old Broadway, isn’t it? Tell us who owns the Broadway theaters, and do the owners have different interests or artistic inclinations in terms of the musical or…
Rocco Landesman: Well, there are three main theater operating groups, as you know. We’re the smallest of the three, Schubert being the biggest, and then Niederlander, and then Jude Jampson. Increasingly in recent years, we’ve become not only landlords, but also producers of shows. So our interests, it seems to me, are more and more aligned with that of the independent producers, because we are producers like they are. We’re investors in the shows. Were, in many cases, the originator of the shows. So our interests are not necessarily always in opposition. There’s a tremendous affinity of interest among all of us, I think. We’re increasingly the lead producers in shows. Here at Jujamson, we have a whole producing operation with an in-house director, an in house dramaturge. And I think that’s a big difference than when the theater operators were simply just landlords.
Interviewer: Again, our last episode’s 1980 to the present, and every year on Broadway has its landmark. It’s Oklahoma or Showboat or West Side Story, what have you. What do you think’s the most important show in this era and why?
Rocco Landesman: I’m not going to give you an objective answer because I’m the producer of the producers. I think the producers is an important show because I think it marked a return to the book musical, to the old-fashioned concept of musical comedy, that you have a book that is itself funny with characters that are engaging and the score is integrated into that. It’s not a sung through, you know, operetta. It’s a real book musical and a comedy. And I think that that’s going to be the harbinger of more of that kind of show, at least I hope it is. I think the Andrew Lloyd Webber operetta era is maybe winding down a little bit, with all due respect to him. I think we’re taking musical comedy back, which has, after all, very American roots.
Interviewer: How did you feel about that British invasion and the Cameron Mackintosh shows, cats, Miss Saigon, et cetera?
Rocco Landesman: Well, Cameron is a brilliant producer and has been a role model for me, not that I’m in his league, but he is, as I said before, one of the last of the guys with a real singular vision of how he thinks a show should be produced, what he thinks it should look like, how it should play, and he’s very active as an engaged, creative producer. There aren’t many of those types around anymore. In terms of my own career. I remember when I started out, I was an originating producer of Big River. My wife and I thought up the show. We hired all the people that were going to be involved in it. We supervised every aspect of it. We were really creators of that show. When I did the producers, we were really presenters. The show had already been created by its creative team. It already existed in large part. And my job was to facilitate. Its production on Broadway, not in any way to help create it. It’s a big difference. I think it’s a much more satisfying thing to create and produce your own show than to simply present someone else’s as successful as that might be. I mean, the producers have been a joyride. It’s been a great thrill. But it’s not my show in the sense that Big River was my show. I think there’s a difference. And Cameron’s one of the last people who still does his shows.
Interviewer: Speak to, if you would, though, for a time period, there was a different kind of show, right? You mentioned it a little bit earlier. It’s not musical comedy. It’s playing all over the world for sort of more tourist-oriented audiences. Speak to how it felt on Broadway, as that was Duerger.
Rocco Landesman: Well, shows have increasingly become franchises. They’re not just a show running in New York. They’re a show that’s going to run in New York, and then it’s going run on the road in the United States, and it’s gonna be in Australia, and England, and Europe. We’re going through that process now with the producers. You’re also going to have merchandising. You’re gonna have all kinds of subsidiary income and offshoots. It’s become much more a traditional franchising business than it is about the creation of a singular show. And that’s a difference. I suppose it’s good in the sense there’s more money to be made out of the project, but it’s more and more of a commercial enterprise, I think.
Interviewer: When did big corporations start getting involved on Broadway, and who are those?
Rocco Landesman: I think they vary from time to time. They can be movie companies.
Interviewer: We can just start with big corporations.
Rocco Landesman: Big corporations are increasingly a major factor in the Broadway theater. They can be movie companies like Miramax, the wine scenes were producers of the producers. They can big theatrically oriented companies like Clear Channel which has a major theatrical division but also major presence in radio stations and billboards and so forth and are major players in the theater. I think you’re having more and more. Of a corporate presence on Broadway.
Interviewer: What do you think these corporations want with Broadway and how do you think it’s affecting ultimately what shows up in the 35 theaters that are here?
Rocco Landesman: Well, I think, as you’re talking about creating commercial franchises, that’s going to be more and more of interest to corporations because they’re going to start to perceive how it’s not just one show in one place, but can be, like as The Lion King is an example of that, can be a major franchise to be exploited in many, many different ways all around the world. I think the effect of that in the long run may be less idiosyncratic and special kinds of shows. The tendency will be to want to reach a broader and broader audience, which means much more homogenized product, much safer product. I think that if you’re looking for worldwide exploitation of a commercial franchise, you’re not going to want anything too off beat or too risque or too challenging.
Interviewer: Isn’t that, I mean, you think of all the great breakthroughs where all these risking Broadway’s tradition is to be non-traditional. So isn’t that sort of scary?
Rocco Landesman: Yes, it’s a somewhat chilling proposition, I think. The fact that you’re looking more and more to a tourist audience in New York, and you’re looking for a much broader potential audience worldwide. And as you start to look to that, I think you find, to some extent, a lower and lower common denominator. And that’s worrisome. There’s no other way to say it. I don’t think that’s a healthy trend.
Interviewer: Beginning with the renovation in New Amsterdam, this whole area has changed so much. How do you feel about the new 42nd Street and the fact that some of the theaters are named after corporations?
Rocco Landesman: Well, again, it’s a trade-off. The neighborhood’s become much nicer in every sense of the term, and to me, that’s good and bad. It’s safer. It’s cleaner. But it has, I think, lost some of its edge, some of the darker aspects that we associate with Times Square, which I always am drawn to and find appealing. I think the area’s been cleaned up. And while, for the most part, that good, there’s a part of the old Times Square that I miss. I do.
Interviewer: How did 9-O hold?
Rocco Landesman: You got a second part to that question that…
Interviewer: That I maybe didn’t answer. The corporate theaters, there’s four American Cadillacs.
Rocco Landesman: This is a trend that we have resisted. We’ve renamed two theaters. We named one for Walter Kerr, the great New York Times drama critic. And we’ve named the other one for Al Hirschfeld, the great caricaturist. To me, it’s not that exciting to name theaters after corporate entities. I think they should be named for people who have made a significant difference in our history. And as of now, we have no intention of going down the renaming route. I’m happy to have the theaters named after people.
Interviewer: But so the naming is really a sign of what? Just that.
Rocco Landesman: It’s a sign of the constant necessity. The point of view that it’s a necessity, to maximize profit, to view everything you have as an exploitable asset. Everything is a potential money earner. So you have a property, whether that property be a physical property like a theater or a property like, like a show, intellectual property, it’s viewed as an asset to be exploited, marketed, and the profit potential in it maximized. And it seems to me… Is one way to treat a work of art, but maybe not the best way for its fullest use.
Interviewer: How do you think 9-11 affected Broadway?
Rocco Landesman: I think it hurt the tourist industry in New York in general, which hasn’t helped. And to the extent that it roiled the financial markets, it hasn’t help with theater investment, people putting money in shows. Almost all of the trends in recent years have been toward safety, a flight to safety. Investors are increasingly looking for proven properties. Situations that they feel are low risk. Maybe the potential return will be less, but at least the risk is less. I think it’s the reason you’ve seen so many revivals in recent years. We know what these shows are already. They’re already proven. And there’s a limited amount of risk in bringing them back, so the producers, the investors, are drawn to a scenario where the risk is minimized. And something like 9-11 or any kind of upheaval, uh… Just accentuates uh… This need for safety uh… In in people’s attitudes again not necessarily a terribly positive or or healthy thing from the point of view of the development of the art
Interviewer: What makes you really mad about the current Broadway system? I’m sure you’ve got to have some particular ax to grind that if only this were different, we’d all be better off.
Rocco Landesman: That’s something I have to think about, I think. You know, the biggest problem we have now is the cost of production, is that it’s very hard to take chances when it costs $2 million to put on a play, $10 to $12 million to do a musical. We’re putting together a play now on a very controversial subject. It’s about a Palestinian suicide bomber. It’s a play called 16 Wounded. If this cost $400,000 to put on… You could put together a couple of people, you put it on, you take your chances. It’s controversial. A lot of people aren’t going to like it. At $2 million, people are starting to say, well, I don’t know if we’re going to get our money back. This is pretty risky. This may not work in terms of the risk-reward. The cost of production is, I think, having a real inhibiting effect on the kinds of shows that are being produced. And that’s worrisome to me. And it means also that more and more shows are produced by large committees of people. You have to produce by consensus. And I think inevitably the kind of chance you’re going to take, the degree to which you can be bold and daring, is going to be diminished.
Interviewer: But is there one area, whether it’s union demands or musician issues or the city’s role in giving? Jerry Schoenfeld was on about skyboxes and how I know you’re into sports. Sports people get these breaks. What is it? Isn’t there a?
Rocco Landesman: I don’t have Jerry’s speeches on those subjects. I do think that one of the things that irritates me that’s commonly done now is all of the polling and audience analysis and PR work that’s done to try to identify the audience for your show. To try to tailor your product to some extent toward what that audience is going to want. I feel like half of my time producing a show now is spent at marketing and PR meetings and audience analysis assessments and I wish all of that would just go away and the producer would produce from the seat of his pants according to what he is passionate about and what he believes in because I think ultimately that’s what creates great works.
Interviewer: Let’s talk about the producers. Describe just how big a hit it’s been. Tony awards and waits for tickets. Is it possible that one show, like in the beginning, can change Broadway a certain way?
Rocco Landesman: Well, I talked earlier about the way I thought it was important artistically. For me, it’s been a new experience to be associated with a hit of this magnitude. I don’t know if there’s ever been one, at least for its early years in the history of Broadway, not just winning all the Tony Awards, but having the kind of demand for tickets that we’ve had, and we’ve created the premium ticketing, which hasn’t been too popular. But to some extent, it’s just a ride. The public makes the show a hit, and we try not to screw it up. In fact, sometimes at our meetings, we’ve said to ourselves, OK, how can we not screw this up today? You kind of just want to not get in the way of it. You want to produce it well, of course. You want market it well. But to some extent, it’s a phenomenon that takes on a life of its own. And it’s been a great run. Oh, the people. Involved with it have been such great people. Mel is an amazing character. Stroh, she’s so talented and special. Tom Meehan, the whole group that’s done the show, it’s been a joyride. It really has.
Interviewer: In one point you did offer this special VIP ticket, speak to that, how much did that cost and what does that say about the changing economics or what does it say about broad
Rocco Landesman: The VIP ticket, it’s a company we formed called Broadway Inner Circle, is something that had to be done. What was happening was that when you had a big hit, all the money was being made by the scalpers and nothing by the people who created the show or the people invest in the show so that it could exist. And there’s something really wrong with that. People who had nothing to do with the show’s creation were reaping all the benefits from it. And we felt that there had to something we could do to that to repatriate those monies into the hands of the people who created the show and who who deserved it. So we felt that if there was going to be a premium value on the ticket anyway, and we were finding from our research that tickets to the producers were going routinely on the internet for 1,500, two thousand dollars a pop, we felt it that was unconscionable that that those people had nothing to do with the success of the show. And not to mention that the taxes are being evaded, royalty payments are being invaded. We felt that we should to some extent legitimize that process and repatriate those funds to the people who deserve it. And the most important thing we did about the VIP ticket is that we stamped the price of the ticket on the ticket. So that became the legitimate price. So that if a corporation bought it, that was their legitimate write-off. If there was an expense, it was a legitimate expense. The whole process became legitimized on the one hand. And on the other hand, the proceeds went to the the people deserve the proceeds, the people created the show. It seemed to me a very open and shut simple case. It’s been controversial, but I don’t know why it should be. It seems to me the case for it is inarguable. I don’t feel the slightest bit ambivalent about doing that, and I would do it again in a second.
Interviewer: What does it say about Broadway, that there is this, you know, Broadway was a popular start for them. You know, you think kids from Brooklyn would come in and see a show and now there’s a $480 or what have you ticket. Is Broadway good?
Rocco Landesman: Well, the point is that there’s a $480 ticket anyway, or $1,000 ticket, or a $1 500 ticket. It’s a question of who gets the money. I do think that our pricing structure in general is one of the tragedies of our business. It’s better in England. When I go to London, I do see school teachers in line to buy tickets to shows. I see individuals just buying tickets for themselves, you know, who aren’t on expense accounts or aren’t just in town for the weekend on a special junket or something. We have priced ourselves into a position where, you know, basically a certain elite or rich group of people can buy tickets, that’s unfortunate. It reflects the reality of the cost of production
Interviewer: Trend and going to London and prices are cheaper. What can you do as a producer to try and bring prices down? Is there anything you can do?
Rocco Landesman: Well, one of the controllable areas probably is in the labor area, where there have been real escalations above and beyond the rates of inflation in terms of what our labor costs And as I said, it’s such a labor-intensive business, so much of our costs are the costs of live labor. And I think at some point the unions are going to have to take a long view of this and understand if we’re going to have an industry. Everyone’s got to pitch in and try to make productions doable and affordable.
Interviewer: Let’s go back to producers. Is there anything groundbreaking about producers or is it really a traditional show?
Rocco Landesman: I think it’s very much a throwback show. It’s a brilliant show, but it’s a throw back to the days of vaudeville and an earlier era of musical comedy where it was about the book, it was the jokes, about the characters, about the dramatic action. In that sense it’s an old fashioned show and thank goodness for it.
Interviewer: And in a way, I made Along Came Bialy, but I want to be a producer. Any one of these numbers, don’t they sort of pay homage to Broadway, but also ridicule? Doesn’t it?
Rocco Landesman: Yes, I mean, The Producers is ostensibly a satire, send-up of Broadway types and again, supposedly holds Broadway characters up to ridicule. And we all know it’s exactly the opposite, that it’s a love letter to Broadway, to Broadway’s tradition, to its history, to everything that’s gone before. It’s very much Mel Brooks’ tribute to the history of Broadway. I don’t think there’s any question about that.
Interviewer: Stephen Sondheim, how do you characterize his career after Sunday in the Park?
Rocco Landesman: Well, it’s hard for me to evaluate that. I did one of Steve’s shows, which was Into the Woods, and that had a pretty long and successful run. The thing that’s impressive about Sondheim is that he’s so restless. He’s so unwilling to do what he did before. He’s unwilling to be typecast in any way. So as soon as you think you’ve figured out where he’s going or what he is, he changes it and he’s constantly surprising you. Maybe the last person in the theaters we know it, who’s not interested in success, as we define it, success per se. Everyone else is interested in getting a certain kind of imprimatur of being successful, whether that’s defined by making money or the length of your run or whatever. Steve Sondheim is perpetually interested in pursuing his own artistic agenda, whatever it is at the moment. And he defines success, I think, entirely artistically and within his own vision. I don’t think anything else enters into it for him. It makes it tough, I think, for his commercial producers, because they sometimes define success a little differently. But I have to take my hat off to him, because he’s maintained that integrity through his entire career.
Interviewer: That’s great. His shows don’t usually make money, as you point out. Why do you think he’s so influential?
Rocco Landesman: I think he’s influential because he’s great, because he is a major, major figure, maybe the most important composer in the history of the American musical theater. And people inside the theater, people who know theater, who appreciate it, know that. It’s why, in spite of his shows not making money, there’s always a line being formed to produce them. People want to be a part of the history of the musical theater, and Stephen Sondheim. Right now is the history of the musical theater. I mean, he’s that important. And I think people want to be a part of that.
Interviewer: Rock music, I know you have some experience with that. Is rock music, what makes it viable on Broadway?
Rocco Landesman: Well, as you know Mike better than anyone else, Broadway music used to be popular music. It used to the music you heard on the radio. Now what you hear on the radios is rock music or country music. You know, hurt Broadway to open itself up to some of those sources. I think that if there’s, you know a single contribution that I’ve made it was to bring Roger Miller who was a country music composer on to Broadway and to make the point that Broadway shows don’t have to be written just by show tune writers. Just by people who are, you now, card carrying practitioners of the musical theater. And I think. To the extent that you have other artists working on Broadway besides the regular show tune writers, it’s a healthy thing, whether the show is Tommy or Kate Mann, which I was really rooting for because Paul Simon’s such an important rock composer or the success that Billy Joel’s had now. I think those are very, very important trends. And I think if the Broadway musical’s going to survive and flourish and evolve into the next century, you have to have those kinds of composers on Broadway. You have to.
Interviewer: So your theory has been that it’s not, that Broadway needs to be a certain, you know, Marvin Hamill said, Broadway’s a blue suit. You can try, you can’t really gussy it up. It’s a bluesuit, and people want a blue suite, and, but you’re.
Rocco Landesman: That’s complete nonsense. To say Broadway’s a blue suit is to doom it to oblivion, it seems to me. Broadway has to change and evolve. Otherwise, it really will die and we’ll just be doing revivals. I think that there are affinities between other forms of music and Broadway, country music being, I think, the most obvious example. Country music is all about the words, whereas rock music is much more about the beat. Country music is about the lyrics, about a story, about character, just as Broadway is. I think there should be many, many more country composers writing for Broadway, because there’s a natural affinity between those two forms. And I think that there should people from all aspects of musical composition working on Broadway. I think it’s critical.
Interviewer: What do you say to people who say Broadway used to be an essential part of American culture, now it’s a tourist trap, pandering to people who don’t speak English well, using spectacle to sort of take them.
Rocco Landesman: I wouldn’t say that about the producers. I think the producers is a show for which the audience has to be pretty highly literate. I think when a character comes on and said, I didn’t know that the Third Reich meant Germany, a certain percentage of the audience better know that too, otherwise it’s not going to be funny. And I think there is a certain category of Broadway production that’s Starlight Express or whatever that’s geared to… To tourists, but a lot of the shows that seems to me are the most vital and exciting, currently the producers, Hairspray, are new works that engage the audience in the present tense, engage audiences of all ages and all demographics. I don’t think it’s a fair statement.
Interviewer: Does Broadway know how to market itself, like the movies, TV, or is it sort of behind the
Rocco Landesman: I think more and more it does know how to market itself, like the movies and like TV, but I’m not sure that’s such a good thing. I’m sure that focus groups and audience analysis are the best way to proceed when you’re producing a Broadway show. But yes, increasingly Broadway is adopting the techniques of other companies in the entertainment industry in marketing their shows, no question. I’m just not sure if that’s a great thing.
Interviewer: Late seventies to bring in these new audiences, in particular black audiences and kids back to the theater, were successful.
Rocco Landesman: I think that comes and goes. I think Rent had a very young audience. I think Hairspray has a very young audience, Tommy did when that was done downstairs at the St. James. I think it cycles in and out and goes back and forth according to what shows are on. I do think in general the Broadway audience is an older, wider, more liberal, better educated audience than MTV’s or others that I can think of.
Interviewer: Growing up, what did Broadway mean to you?
Rocco Landesman: I remember taking the train to New York from St. Louis, and I saw my first musical, which was Anyone Can Whistle, a Sondheim show with Angela Lansbury and Harry Guardino and Lee Remick. And I remember I loved the show. I just thought it was the most magical thing. And I was so excited about it, and I took the train back to St. Louis, and I was rushing to tell my parents I saw the most amazing musical on Broadway, Anyone Can Whistle. I’d seen it in previews. And they said, well, I’m glad you like it so much. Is now closed. It had closed from the time I’d seen it when I got back to St. Louis, but it was thrilling to see a musical work, a musical of that quality in front of a live audience, and ever since then I’ve loved the musical theater. I knew Broadway originally largely through the caricatures of Al Hirschfeld. To me, that was Broadway. Those figures represented Broadway stars and what Broadway was, and it’s one of the reasons I felt. Really privileged to be able to name a theater for Al Hirschfeld. He was Broadway to me when I was a kid.
Interviewer: What do you think the musical says about America? Do you think that’s changed? But everyone says, oh, it’s a uniquely American art form. What does that mean? Why?
Rocco Landesman: Well, I think that there is something inherently optimistic about the Broadway musical. I mean, there’s something about singing out that just feels American to me. Even if the show may have a sad ending, there is a kind of exuberance in the kind of proclamation you make in a great musical comedy song. And that feels American to me. It feels ebullient and it feels optimistic in a way I think that’s particularly American.
Interviewer: So, you know, Sondheim was measured by Oscar Hammerstein and so on. There was a clear path for a young person. Now someone watches MTV. How do you get those different voices into Broadway?
Rocco Landesman: I think we have to invite some of those MTV writers and people doing popular music today to come into Broadway to write, just as Paul Simon or Billy Joel have done. Unfortunately, there’s not enough Broadway production and enough of a guarantee of employment to have kids coming out of school and deciding they’re going to make their career in the Broadway theater. I think that we have draft them from somewhere else, which is another reason I think it’s so critically important that we get writers who are not just Broadway Chautune trained. Uh… To write to write for uh… Musical theater
Interviewer: I don’t know you that well, but I get the sense that you can speak to what a gamble Broadway is.
Rocco Landesman: Why would you say that? Yes, I think a producer or an investor in a Broadway show has to have a certain type of personality. First of all, you have to be able to risk losing everything you put into it. That goes without saying, and it’s the first thing that’s said on every prospectus. You’ve got to be willing to lose all of your money, and most often you do. I owned racehorses for many years, and the success percentage is about the same in horse racing. As it is in theater. About 15 to 20% of horses earn their keep on the track, and about 15 to twenty percent of shows recoup their investments. It’s a very small percentage. So you have to love and be passionate about the show that you’re doing, and you have be a big boy about it and understand that you may lose everything you’re putting in. It’s not a business for the timid or the conservative.
Interviewer: Speak to that rush, though, where, I mean, when do you know if it’s going to pay off or not? And you’ve got people put a lot in, a lot of money on the table, right?
Rocco Landesman: Usually you have a pretty good idea opening night of how successful the show is going to be. Again, we’re increasingly in a business of hits and flops. There’s not a big middle area. There’s no a gray area. You’re either black or white. And I think you tend to know when the show opens, when you see the reviews, when you what kind of rush there is at the box office, whether your show is gonna be a hit. We felt we knew in the producers when it was trying out in Chicago because there was such a surge of ticket buying interest. But you know pretty quickly, which is one of the great appeals of the theater, you get a pretty quick turnaround. It’s not like buying a stock and you might find out in six years whether it’s worked out. You usually find out a few days.
Interviewer: What’s the most exciting time for you? Is it the overture? Is it that moment that that review comes out? What gives you the- To me the-
Rocco Landesman: But to me the most exciting time is when the show first goes into rehearsal, and you begin to see the thing take shape. You see the actors starting to embody the roles. You see that the whole enterprise start to take on a physical reality. And that’s a very thrilling process. I remember in my first show, which was Big River, as I heard Roger Miller’s songs being sung by the actors at the American Repertory Theater, and I began to feel this is really happening. This is real. This show has a has a physical reality, and that was a big rush, that was big thrill for me, and that’s the part I like best. At that point, of course, anything is possible, and everybody who has a show at that stage thinks they have a great big hit. It’s only later that reality sets in and you realize that maybe not this one.
Interviewer: Speak to that, you said anything is possible. Give us something for our introduction to the whole series. Isn’t Broadway a place where, you know, Melissa Winokur, who’s this over with, anything in a way?
Rocco Landesman: Anything goes. I think that nothing’s likely, but everything is possible. And that’s what makes the theater so very, very exciting. It’s the one arena where something can happen very quickly. A reputation can be made overnight or sometimes destroyed overnight. And there’s a thrill in that. There’s a rush in it. It’s a perfect arena for someone who likes to gamble.
Interviewer: What good case is there for…
Rocco Landesman: Well, I think there’s only one case to be made for a revival, which is not the case that the investors usually make, which was, this was a successful show then, surely it has to be a successful shows now. I think that’s not a very interesting or compelling reason to do a revival. I think the real reason you’d want to do them is because you have some new take on the material. There’s a revival that we’ve been very engaged with going on right now at the roundabout of Big River, and isn’t just Big River being done again with different actors. It’s a completely new approach to the show. It’s being done by a company where half the actors are deaf. It’s done in American Sign Language. The sign language becomes a form of gesture and choreography, and it becomes a new form. It’s new way of communicating on stage. That’s very thrilling to me. That’s a complete new take on that show, and I felt very, very excited about bringing the show in because I knew it was a new way to do the show, not just the same old thing over and over again. That is boring to me. Just to bring the show back because it’s already been successful, essentially that enterprise is just for making money. There’s nothing else to be done except to do it again because it made money before and maybe it can make money again. That to me is not a very compelling enterprise.
Interviewer: What about the idea that, you know, Kiss Me Kate, no one’s been able to see it for 50 years. What about that, just that there’s…
Rocco Landesman: That’s fine, and there are people who do it. And I wish them well. It’s not the thing that gets me the most excited.
Interviewer: Um Do you think, you did the producers, there were nine names above the title.
Rocco Landesman: I thought there were 13. Well, we’re not even into these. All right. Not even into this.
Interviewer: Um, just speak if you would to the fact that, you know, I’m sure you would have wanted to do that show alone or what have you and that it is absolutely, you know, there’s no way around that corporate presence and maybe, does the corporate presence have a, you know, isn’t there some guy making a call and it’s up to you and you represent?
Rocco Landesman: Well, I’m the lead producer of the show, and I made that a condition of my signing onto it as a producer, because I felt at the end, someone had to be the last phone call, or someone had have a decisive voice. And otherwise, you do, I think, have chaos. But in the case of the producers, it really has been a true collaboration among the producing entities. There are really, I thing, four general partners who work together and make the important decisions about the Mel, by the way, is one of those. And Each of the, in the case of the producers, each of the producing entities brought something to the party that was essential. Richard Frankel and Tom Pertel in that group brought their managing and marketing expertise. The Clear Channel people had all the road venues and could take the show on the road and had the expertise in that area. I had the theater where I was playing on Broadway. So, um… Each of the entities contributed something significant. And it’s been a very manageable process, because even though there are many, many names listed, they’re just a few, I would say, managing general partners.
Interviewer: Everyone bemoans corporate this, isn’t a corporation just a Tom Schumacher or a so and so who has to make a call?
Rocco Landesman: If the corporation’s a Tom Schumacher, that’s fine, because he’s an enlightened guy with taste and an artistic track record. Not every corporation is Tom Schomacher. Many of them are committees of people that are going to find or look for the most homogenized product they can find, the broadest appeal, and go for that. So I think, yes, corporations can be one person, or they can be… Something much more pernicious.
Interviewer: What do you think about the future? Do you think that the trend of going back to these traditional musicals is gonna happen? Do you thing shows are gonna get bigger or smaller? Or do you thing, what do you thin?
Rocco Landesman: It’s hard to see them getting much bigger because of the cost restraints of what it cost to put that many people on stage. I think people look more and more for shows of the size of Smokey Joe’s Cafe, which have eight or nine people in them, which you can run for $250,000 a week. I think there’ll be a tendency to try to find those kinds of shows because there really are increasingly cost restraints on the business. Beyond that, I think it’s almost impossible to say artistically what trend we’re going into. I hope that the producers will bring back a lot more book musicals now.
Interviewer: Apart from the shows you’ve produced, do you have a favorite, you know, West Side Story or what have you that you just always thought was something that you…
Rocco Landesman: Interesting question. I love Sweeney Todd. I think that’s a thrilling musical. That’s certainly one of my favorites. I loved Guys and Dolls. It’s one of the most perfect musicals ever created.
Interviewer: I’ll come back to Sweeney for just a quick second. Is it a peak of Sondheim’s?
Rocco Landesman: It’s my favorite Sondheim show. Everybody has a different one, of course. Frank Rich loves Follies. I love Sweeney Todd. I think especially the lyrics, but the songs altogether are brilliant. The story is haunting and disturbing. And it’s just a great show.
