SHOW BUSINESS
SHOW BUSINESS
A FILM BY DORI BERINSTEIN
Press Notes
With thanks to Playbill
PRESS CONTACT: SALES:
Jeremy Walker + Associates Cinetic Media
160 West 71st St. #2A 555 West 25th St., 4th Floor
New York, NY 10023 New York, NY 10001
212-595-6161 212-204-7979
PLAYERS
Broadway Storytellers
Alan Cumming
Chris Boneau
Nancy Coyne
William Goldman
Rocco Landesman
Avenue Q
Stephanie D’Abruzzo Actor
Robyn Goodman Producer
Bobby Lopez Composer/Lyricist
Jeff Marx Composer/Lyricist
Kevin McCollum Producer
Jason Moore Director
Jeffrey Seller Producer
John Tartaglia Actor
Jeff Whittey Book Writer
The Avenue Q Cast, Crew & Orchestra
Caroline, or Change
Tony Kushner Book Writer/Lyricist
Tonya Pinkins Actor
Jeanine Tesori Composer
George C. Wolfe Director
The Caroline, or Change Cast, Crew & Orchestra
Taboo
Raul Esparza Actor
Boy George Composer/Lyricist
Euan Morton Actor
Rosie O’Donnell Producer
The Taboo Cast, Crew & Orchestra
Wicked
Kristin Chenoweth Actor
Idina Menzel Actor
Joe Mantello Director
Stephen Oremus Musical Director
Marc Platt Producer
Stephen Schwartz Composer/Lyricist
David Stone Producer
The Wicked Cast, Crew & Orchestra
Theatre Critics & Columnists
Ben Brantley The New York Times
Charles Isherwood Variety, now with New York Times
John Lahr The New Yorker
Patrick Pacheco Show People
Michael Riedel New York Post
Jacques le Sourd Gannett News/The Journal News
Linda Winer Newsday
Also
Billie Jean King
Kristin Anderson-Lopez
Cece Rafter
Michael Rafter
Ron and Wendy Marx
Newscasters
Pat Kiernan NY-1
Donna Karger NY-1
Sue Simmons NBC News
Roma Torre NY-1
Award Presenters
Carol Canning John Leguizamo
LL Cool J Rob Marshall
Edie Falco Sarah Jessica Parker
Harvey Fierstein Hugh Jackman
Nathan Lane Brad Oscar
Cyndi Lauper Rene Zellwegger
Chorus Line Choreographers
Rob Ashford
Wayne Cilento
Hope Clarke
Jerry Mitchell
Ken Roberson
FILMMAKERS
Directed & Produced by Dori Berinstein
Executive Producers Mitchell Cannold
Stewart F. Lane & Bonnie Comley
Robin Brown
Co-Producers Alan Cumming
Wendy Riseborough
Associate Producer Tom LaMere
Music Jeanine Tesori
Director of Photography Alan S. Deutsch
Supervising Editor Richard Hankin, A.C.E.
Editor Adam Zucker
Written by: Dori Berinstein
Richard Hankin
Assistant Editor Paola Gutiérrez-Oritz
Production Manager Wendy Riseborough
Additional Footage Provided By: Rob VanAlkemade
Mark Benjamin
Leo Lawrence
Mitchell Reichler
Photo Editor Bruce Glikas
Graphics R!OT Manhattan
John Jenkins
Post Production Sound 701 Sound
Sound Mixing Facility Sound One
Sound Editor Ira Spiegel
Dialogue Editor Marlena Grzaslewicz
Music Editor Mariusz Glabinski
Sound Mixer Peter Waggoner
Music Recorded & Mixed By Johnathan Duckett
Music Associate Producer Buryl Red
Additional Vocals &
Scoring Coordinator Chris Miller
Local 802 Contractor Sandy Park
Music Mix BR Productions
Post On-Line Facility Goldcrest
Post Facility Coordinator Tim Spitzer
Online Editor/Colorist Mike Trinker
Production Associate Leslie Thivierge
Production Assistant Julie Cannold
Assistant to Producer Noah Cannold
Assistant to Director Sammi Rose Cannold
Legal Services Schreck, Rose & Dapello, LLP
Distribution Advisory Services Cinetic Media
NO BUSINESS LIKE IT
“I just think there are enough neurotics who want to work in the theater, and, hopefully, they get their shot.”
-- William Goldman in “SHOW Business”
Dreams are centrally located on Broadway, in a twelve-block strip in the city’s mid-section, bordered on the south by the Nederlander Theater on West 41st Street and on the north by the Broadway theater on West 53rd. Within that narrow stretch of skyscrapers and cement, they land in droves, season after season, generation after generation – dreamers of any age, armed with unbridled and unprotected hopes of making their own individual statement on the theatrical stage.
Is the risk and heartbreak as big as this all-consuming passion? Not if you make it, baby!
“SHOW Business” is a feature-length documentary that examines the annual influx of ambitious, star-crossed hopefuls, scrambling for the high-board to make their big leap into everlasting limelight. It could be any season, because this phenomenon continues as faithfully and ritualistically as swallows’ return to Capistrano. This one just happens to be 2003 – 2004.
It was the year that a temp and an intern named Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx caught a wild comet of an idea – addressing realistic human foibles as an irreverent puppet show – and it carried them to the Tony podium for the season’s Best Musical. And, with it, the show carried a couple of unknown puppeteers, John Tartaglia and Stephanie D’Abruzzo, into the running for Best Actor and Actress. It was also the year that Tartaglia contended with a London unknown, Euan Morton, who managed a stunningly accurate impersonation of the young Boy George in “Taboo.” When that show failed, Morton’s work visa was cancelled, and he had to return home to England and square one.
Close but no cigar.
It was the year a big-noise musical named “Wicked” huffed and puffed its way onto Broadway, and critics muffled a yawn, but a sleeping public susceptible to Wizard-of-Oz-wonderment was aroused and turned the show into a $1-million-a-week cash cow. And it was the year “Caroline, or Change,” didn’t change Broadway’s preference for “Business” over “SHOW” – holding fast despite the best of intentions of its hopeful angels.
Indeed, Goldman’s notions about neurotics on the Great White Way is the parting-shot in “SHOW Business, as well it should be: Goldman, is, after all, The Boswell of Broadway--a rep made largely on the basis of one book, “The Season,” published in 1969, the year he turned Oscar-winning screenwriter (for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”) and started devoting himself to screenplays and novels.
“The Season” in question was 1967-1968, and, for 18 theater-obsessed months within that time frame, Goldman explored with laser-like intensity every aspect of shows that made it to Broadway (or at least gamely made the bid). It was a landmark close-up of the ups-and-downs, ins-and-outs, gives-and-takes of putting on a contemporary commercial entertainment. So thorough was it, so good at making good on its own lofty ambitions, that it has never been equaled. In fact, nothing like it has been attempted in any medium.
Nothing till now. Producer-director Dori Berinstein tells essentially the same story of theater at high tide, only with a camera--lots of cameras, in fact, that ground away for more than 250 hours during the Broadway season of 2003-2004. Footage was shot on virtually every Main Stem attraction, then pared down in the editing room to the backstage dramas of four major musicals, all racing for survival, riches and the Tony.
Berinstein readily admits her debt to Goldman, whose book blueprinted the way she wanted to go: “‘The Season’ was my first inspiration, and that’s what I set out to do, knowing that, to tell the story of the season in a feature-film format, we’d have to narrow
it down and find stories to tell that captured the pervasive struggle, passion, glory and risk that is Broadway.”
The quartet in question came to the fore with their own individually colored baggage--the
$3.5 million “Avenue Q,” the $7.5 million “Caroline, Or Change,” the $10 million “Taboo” and the $14 million “Wicked.” As Tony races go, Berinstein lucked out with one that had the most jaw-dropping finish in many a year. One of the above shows expired before the nominations came out, another lingered only three months after the awards, and the other two are still going strong, expanding into road companies and at least one possible TV series.
“The Season was a roller coaster with highly anticipated shows closing early and little shows coming out of nowhere to take Broadway by storm,” Berinstein adds, “There was no way to predict where the Season was heading. Consequently, it was necessary to capture everything. Editing, as a result, was a massive and extremely difficult process. Narrowing down our primary storytelling to four musicals was excruciating. So many extraordinary moments are on the cutting room floor – so to speak. I can’t wait until we assemble the DVD!”
In shaping these backstage sagas into an interlocking whole, Berinstein had the help of two crackerjack editors--Richard Hankin, who is no stranger to unwieldy footage, having edited the Oscar-nominated and Sundance-winning “Capturing the Friedmans,” and Adam Zuker, who recently displayed his theatrical expertise cutting “Broadway: The American Musical” into a TV miniseries. “It’s not unusual for documentaries to shoot hundreds of hours of footage and end up with a movie that’s around 100 minutes,” Berinstein says.
She and her editors assembled a wall-to-wall all-Broadway score, and composer Jeanine
Tesori (a Tony nominee for “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Caroline, or Change”) was brought in to do new arrangements of classic show tunes. Disparate versions of “Cabaret” bookend the film--a brassy out-there version for the half-hour-to-curtain opening sequence and a slow, wistful rendition for a coda section at the end. She also did a sexy, edgy, delirious “Lullaby of Broadway,” which Idina Menzel, the Tony-winning star of “Wicked,” delivers over the end credits.
For the “Chorus Line” number that begins “Step. Kick. Kick. Step. Kick,” the guys doing the barking are five of Broadway’s top choreographers (Jerry Mitchell, Rob Ashford, Hope Clark, Ken Roberson and Wayne Cilento). “It’s either music directly from the four shows or other shows of the season, or it’s classic Broadway. There’s a rock version of
‘Cockeyed Optimist’ from ‘South Pacific,’ arranged by Jeanine for the Pop Star Kids.”
Having been down this Broadway path before and walked off with three Tony Awards herself--for 1999’s “Fool Moon,” 2001’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and 2002’s
“Thoroughly Modern Millie”--helped to give Berinstein a sense of direction for her film.
Almost 400 people were accorded filmed interviews for the picture, coming from a variety of places and perspectives in the business, thus permitting a balanced overview of Broadway. “It was a question of getting different storytellers from different vantage points. With Rocco Landesman, you have a theater owner and prolific producer. With Chris Boneau, you have an expert publicist. With Alan Cumming, you have a brilliant Tony Award-winning actor. With Nancy Coyne, you have a master marketing exec. To help us chronicle what’s going on and bring up key points along the way, we needed people who were real leaders in what they do.”
The result has been called “a triumph of access.” Not only does this portrait have breadth, it has considerable depth as well, thanks to the candor of the people Berinstein approached to go on the record. And how does she account for this unprecedented cooperation from the theater community?
“Theater people are proud of and love what they do. I believe they understood that we aspired to capture the magic, the sweat, the risk and the heart behind their work and share it with the rest of the world. And they believed more people would come to see live theater as a result.”
Actor Cumming, being a co-producer on the film as well, was involved in the project from the beginning. “Originally, the conceit was that Alan was going to be our narrator,” says Berinstein, “and we shot a tremendous amount with him throughout the year. We have amazing moments on the cutting room floor with Alan that will make their way onto a DVD. When we put the film together, we realized that having a “narrator” diluted the emotional impact of our storytelling. It was much better to let the story tell itself. Alan agreed.”
Finding a title that properly conveyed the ground covered was no easy proposition, admits Berinstein. “We landed on ‘SHOW Business’ because we felt that the film did address very much the concept that exists not just in theater but in all the arts. You have The SHOW--the big, glamorous, beautiful, heart-felt, passionate SHOW, with everybody trying to make the best art they can--and yet you have to balance that out with the reality of ‘How much is this going to cost? Will people come to see it? How do we handle the critics’ response?’ The clash of the two, ‘SHOW’ and ‘Business,’ is something we address in the film, so that’s how we found our title.”
Speaking of critics, Berinstein recognized that their relationship to the Broadway season – often as full of drama as what happens on stage every night – was a key element to her film. And her approach to the fourth estate was simple: she gathered a group of key critics and columnists for lunch at various points in the season and photographed them discussing the offerings-so-far and stirring the cauldron. “They met four times: at Orso’s, Angus’s, Joe Allen’s and Sardi’s.”
Among the print pundits who participated were Linda Winer (of Newsday), Jacques le
Sourd (of Gannett News Service), Patrick Pacheco (of Show People), Charles Isherwood
(then of Variety, now of The New York Times) and Michael Riedel (of New York Post).
“You can’t tell the story of a Broadway season without including the press. That is a crucial part” -- the theater press plays an integral part of every season [as “essential to The Theater--as ants to a picnic,” didn’t Addison DeWitt once observe?]. “Also I wanted to capture the in-the-moment drama of what’s happening on Broadway as it unfolds – the critics and columnists were excellent storytellers and addressed the issue of art, show and business head on.”
That’s why they call it “SHOW Business.”
THAT WAS THE SEASON THAT WAS
Of course, when producer-director Dori Berinstein documented an entire Broadway season, she had no idea that what she was filming would be such a dramatic, surprising and exciting year as 2003-2004 was. That was the season that:
*Rosie O’Donnell decided to become a Broadway producer and dragged across the
Atlantic a modest little musical that had caught her fancy in London. By and about Boy
George, it was plainly marked “Taboo,” but she did it anyway, believing that, given her wealth and high public profile, she could will the show into place. Unfortunately, she had not figured on friction among the show’s creators that tied her hands and doomed the project. Nor were matters helped by a hostile press, which reported (sometimes gleefully) every backstage body-blow. (One montage in the film flips through a blitzkrieg of bitchy headlines, to the tune of Boy George’s plaintive lament, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”) Through it all, O’Donnell high-roaded it, even after this ambitious caprice had devoured her whole $10 million investment.
*A pleasant, if decidedly bizarre, little enterprise about puppets that fornicate and have
sexual-identity issues--“Avenue Q”--surfaced Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theater and, buoyed by a better-than-average reviews, bolted for Broadway to try and make a go of it there. As composer Robert Lopez notes in the film, “It started out as a joke, sort of--puppets singing funny songs--and it turned into something that actually has a heart.”
An impish ad campaign kept the show afloat until Tony time when it went into election-year overdrive, urging voters in big red, white and blue lettering to “vote with your heart.” Nobody thought it would work (and, in a sense, it didn’t because Tony voters are not so simply swayed), but it turned out to be--in one of the most startling Tony upsets ever--the little “Q” that could. As producer Robyn Goodman so eloquently put it when she picked up the prize for Best Musical: “It certainly doesn’t suck to be us tonight.”
*A veritable armada of deep-pocketed producers rallied behind the commercial lost-cause called “Caroline, or Change” and brought it up from The Public Theater downtown to Broadway, no doubt with dreams of a Pulitzer dancing in their heads. Tony Kushner, its author, had, after all, brought most of them the Pulitzer with his “Angels in America,” so they were right to hope that lightning would strike twice. It didn’t and closed at a loss after five struggling months, only to reopen again in Los Angeles to rave reviews. It’s the show in which Tonya Pinkins went Public again, resurfacing in the star spot after a bitter divorce and child-custody battle sent her scurrying out of the limelight. An act of personal courage, her performance of a black maid in backwoods Louisiana of 1963 was bravura work and widely regarded as a shoo-in for a Best Actress Tony. Again, it didn’t happen.
*At a whopping $14 million (that looked it!), “Wicked” was the year’s most expensive and anticipated musical event--so its stumble with reviewers when it left the starting gate was doubly conspicuous, but the paying customers quickly countered those critical yawns, and the show has been raking in a million or more every week since opening. The secret of its success? That it purports to be the backstory of The Wicked Witch of the
West from “The Wizard of Oz,” and audiences are drawn like magnets to that beloved source by L. Frank Baum. Sympathetically reinvented, that witch is named Elphaba after the author’s initials and played lime-green by Idina Menzel, whose first spray-painting (a ritual she endured for more than two years) is caught here by the cameras. It was a bitter pill for “Wicked” to lose to “Avenue Q,” which was capitalized at a quarter of the cost.
The making, unmaking, remaking and survival of these four musicals are explored with remarkable candor in “SHOW Business,” a feature-length documentary which, because of the unprecedented cooperation its creators received from the theater community, looms like the ultimate in inside-Broadway movies. But this quartet hardly constitutes the whole picture of the season. Punctuating the narratives of these shows, pitched in like confetti, are other openings, other shows. The 2003-2004 stage season was also a time when:
*Hugh Jackman took Broadway by storm, playing a fellow Aussie (the late Peter Allen) in “The Boy From Oz” and doing it with such spectacular panache and showmanship that he put the kibosh on the critical carping about the musical’s bio-book. He never missed a performance and sold out constantly. A Tony was the least the community could do.
*In contrast, Donna Murphy set some kind of dubious record for poor attendance because she was ailing during the re-run of “Wonderful Town.” Eventually, the producers brought in as replacement Brooke Shields, who--surprise, surprise--charmed the pants off critics.
Actresses of color completely dominated the Tony Awards--three blacks and a green.
Phylicia Rashad became the first African American to win the Tony for Best Actress in a
Play, and Audra McDonald became the first to win four Tonys (a distinction she shares with Angela Lansbury and Gwen Verdon). Both were cited for the Sean Combs-driven revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.” A sleeper contender for Best Featured Actress in a
Musical, Anika Noni Rose, emerged victorious, but Tonya Pinkins who played her mother didn’t come through as predicted, losing to that lady in green, Idina Menzel.
*In non-musical matters--and there were nonmusicals on Broadway (not many and not nearly enough, but some)--it was the first time that two Pulitzer Prize winners came up for the Best Play Tony in the same year: Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics” and Doug
Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife.” The winner was the latter, a one-man, multi charactered, fact-based saga about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (born Lothar Berfelde), a gentle but resilient German transvestite who survived both Nazi and Communist regimes. It was the first time a solo work received the Tony for Best Play. Jefferson Mays, who executed all of the roles, won the Best Actor prize. It was reported that when his name came out of the envelope, Christopher Plummer (nominated for his “King Lear”) exited in a huffy hurry.
That was the kind of year it was, and wasn’t it – and aren’t we -- lucky to have Dori Berinstein’s cameras around to catch it?
-- Harry Haun
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Dori Berinstein is a three-time Tony-winning Broadway producer with an extensive film and television producing and directing background.
SHOW Business marks Dori Berinstein’s debut as a feature film director. For television, she was the frequent director and executive producer of the star-packed, Variety/Talk Show “The Isaac Mizrahi Show” (4 seasons) and the director and executive producer of “Eavesdropping,” Alan Cumming’s series of TV specials featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, Julianne Moore, Megan Mullally and Liv Tyler.
Berinstein is currently prepping her 11th Broadway show, “Legally Blonde,” based on the MGM movie. Dori’s previous theatrical productions include: Best Musical winner “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “The Crucible” with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, “Fool Moon” with Bill Irwin and David Shiner, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” starring Gary Sinise and David Henry Hwang’s “Golden Child.”
Dori is also the co-founder of Camp Broadway, a behind-the-scenes theater camp aimed at giving kids a life-long love for the arts.
For film, Dori executive-produced and/or supervised over 15 feature productions including Isaac Mizrahi’s award winning documentary “Unzipped” (co-executive producer) and “Dirty Dancing.” With her expertise in special f/x filmmaking, Dori supervised production on 30 state-of-the-art special f/x, interactive, animated, 3-D, Computer-Generated film and video projects for Walt Disney Imagineering, Warner Bros. and Sonoy, including Jim Henson’s MuppetVision 3-D.
With Deepest Gratitude
Mitchell Cannold
Stewart F. Lane & Bonnie Comley
Robin Brown
Sidsel Albert Dale Clayman
Gladys & Nathan Berinstein Scott Kurnit & Abbe Heller
Beverly & Dan Cannold Carolyn Levin
Scott & Gail Cannold Neil & Illana Nowick
Nancy & Roger Strong
Amy Jacobs Jan Svendson Amy Wigler
Ken Greenwood Alan Eisenberg Michael Kantor
Debra Gibgot The Tony Awards Kristin Caskey
The American Theatre Wing Lincoln Center Theatre
Angus McIndoe Manhattan Theatre Club
The BMI Engel Musical Theatre Workshop MCC Theatre
Broadway Cares / Equity Fights Aids The Nederlander Organization
Broadway On Broadway The New York Film Commission
CBS Orso
Drama Desk Awards The Outer Critics Circle Awards
Drama League Awards Playbill
The Edison Café The Public Theatre
Fat Witch Brownie Radio City Music Hall
Gypsy Robe Roundabout Theatre Company
Hudson Scenic Sardi’s
Joe Allen The Shubert Organization
The Jujamcyn Theatres TKTS/Theatre Development Fund
Michael Kantor & Thirteen/WNET The League of American Theatres
The Tony Awards & Producers
Barlow-Hartman Public Relations Pete Sanders Group
Boneau / Bryan-Brown Howard Rubenstein & Associates
Richard Kornberg & Associates Sam Rudy Media Relations
Judy Katz Public Relations Serino Coyne, Inc.
Phillip Rinaldi Publicity Keith Sherman & Associates
The Publicity Office SPOTCo. Inc.
TMG – The Marketing Group
PLAYBILL
The New York Times
NY-1
Thirteen/WNET New York
Jerry Bock Paul McKibbins
John Buzzetti Alan Menken
John Breglio Idina Menzel
Paul Button Jodi Peikoff
Elena Byington The Popstar Kids
Ted Chapin Mick Rossi
Nancy DiTuro Stephen Schwartz
Fred Ebb Mark Sendroff
Berk Fink Marc Shaiman
Boy George Jennifer Silver
Marvin Hamlisch Jack Tantleff
Sheldon Harnick Richard Ticktin, Esq.
John Kander Vicki Traube
Matt Kapuchinski Deborah Vaughn
Lawrence E. Kleban Scott Whitman
Michael McElroy Bernie Young
AFTRA
The American Federation of Television & Radio Artists
COBUG
Coalition of Broadway Unions & Guilds
Actor’s Equity Association
American Federation of Musicians, Local 802
AFM
Association of Theatrical Press Agents & Manager, Local 18032
Dramatists Guild of America
American Guild of Musical Artists
International Alliance of Theatrical State Employees, International
Makeup Artists, Hair Stylists Union, Local 798
Motion Picture Projectionists, Video Technicians, Theatrical Employees & Allied Crafts, Local 306
Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers
Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ Theatre Division
Theatrical Protective Union Stage Hands, Local 1
Theatrical Teamsters, Local 817
Theatrical Wardrobe Union, Local 764
Treasurers & Ticket Sellers Union, Local 751
United Scenic Artists, Local 829
International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600
International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 30
Motion Picture Editors Guild, Local 700
Motion Picture Studio Mechanics, Local 52
We give a standing ovation and deep thanks to the cast, crew, creators, producers, orchestra members, ushers, stage door crew and ticket takers
from each of the 2003/2004 Broadway Productions
Avenue Q Caroline, or Change Taboo Wicked
Anna & The Tropics Frozen Prymate
Assassins Golda’s Balcony A Raisin In The Sun
Avenue Q Henry IV Retreat From Moscow
Barbara Cook’s Broadway I Am My Own Wife Six Dance Lessons in
Big River Jumpers Six Weeks
Bobbi Boland King Lear Sixteen Wounded
Bombay Dreams Laughing Room Only Sexaholic
The Boy From Oz Little Shop of Horrors Sly Fox
The Caretaker Master Harold & The Boys Taboo
Caroline, or Change Match Twentieth Century
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Never Gonna Dance The Violet Hour
Drowning Crow Oldest Living Confederate Wicked
Fiddler On The Roof Widow Tells All Wonderful Town
“SHOW Business” is proud to honor and benefit the tremendous work of
BROADWAY CARES / EQUITY FIGHTS AIDS
With appreciation to Phillip Birsh and Playbill for the use of the PLAYBILL Trademark.
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