Speaker 1: Originals. This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 2: In twenty eleven, after many delays, one of the most
Speaker 2: publicized musicals in all of theater history finally opened on Broadway.
Speaker 2: It had a brand, it had tons of buzz, and
Speaker 2: it elicited some strong reactions. It was quite the talk
Speaker 2: of the town.
Speaker 1: There were bugs.
Speaker 2: The show kept stopping. I mean, the hubbub about the
Speaker 2: show was everywhere.
Speaker 3: The new actor injury or technical malfunction every week was
Speaker 3: so bizarre.
Speaker 2: The musical was Spider Man Turn Off the Dark, and
Speaker 2: for a show that aimed to rise above all of
Speaker 2: Broadway musicals in terms of scale and ambition, its downfall
Speaker 2: would turn out to be long and treacherous.
Speaker 4: My husband and I were in the audience tonight Chris
Speaker 4: Tierney fell and it was awful.
Speaker 2: We honestly thought we'd watched someone die on stage. That
Speaker 2: fall didn't just traumatize the audience, it echoed a warning.
Speaker 2: The ambition of Spider Man Turn Off the Dark was
Speaker 2: swinging dangerously close to the edge. Welcome to very special
Speaker 2: episodes and I heeart original podcast. I'm your host Danish
Speaker 2: Schwartz and this is Spider Man Turn Up the Pod.
Speaker 2: I am so excited about this episode. This has been
Speaker 2: a subject that has actually been my obsession for a
Speaker 2: very long time. Jason, I feel like you know that
Speaker 2: this is the subject that I like bring up in
Speaker 2: conversation that has just like warped my brain in a
Speaker 2: way that has altered my physical chemistry permanently. I'm talking,
Speaker 2: of course, about the Spider Man Turn Off the Dark Musical,
Speaker 2: a musical I never saw, but that astounds me and
Speaker 2: delights me to this very day, nonetheless.
Speaker 5: And not just you. We used a quote from this
Speaker 5: episode in our trailer a couple months ago, and I
Speaker 5: think more than any other potential episode that people heard about,
Speaker 5: this is the one we get the most inquiries about
Speaker 5: when is the Spider Man? And then they often have
Speaker 5: some story. Sometimes it's not even a good story, like
Speaker 5: oh I almost went. I knew someone who went, like
Speaker 5: people just want to be associated with this musical, and
Speaker 5: I'm so excited we get to tell this story today.
Speaker 2: My best friend did see it on Broadway, and she
Speaker 2: went to one of those magical performances where something went wrong,
Speaker 2: and so she has a great story about how, during
Speaker 2: like one of the swinging scenes, the actor who played
Speaker 2: Spider Man, Reeve Carney was suspended for like a full
Speaker 2: ten minutes, just above the audience, like the house lights
Speaker 2: went on, and this poor guy had to just stay
Speaker 2: there and he was sort of still doing like pew
Speaker 2: pew like sort of still staying in character. Like ten
Speaker 2: minutes is a long time.
Speaker 1: Oh heck were you guys? Are both theater kids correct?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, is that not obvious?
Speaker 5: I was the star of the fifth grade play, but
Speaker 5: that was the peak of my acting career.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine either one of you standing on stage
Speaker 1: for ten minutes and you have nothing to do, nothing,
Speaker 1: You're just standing there.
Speaker 2: Quiet, suspended above the audience in character.
Speaker 5: Full minute unbelievable with lots of danger. So I never
Speaker 5: got to see this show. I was living in the
Speaker 5: New York area during the entire run. I regret it immentally.
Speaker 2: Now I can't believe you didn't see I'm so jealous.
Speaker 2: I was too young, I did not live in New York,
Speaker 2: and I did not have disposable income. That's my excuse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to see it too. I also really
Speaker 1: would love to if I could. And this is like
Speaker 1: an imaginary thing, but you know, the choreographer Bob fosse
Speaker 1: All that jazz. That guy, right, I would love to
Speaker 1: be able to talk to him about this show, you know, like, hey,
Speaker 1: well after you were gone, they did Spider Man. I
Speaker 1: just like see him ask questions.
Speaker 2: I would love to see Stephen Sondheim's face during a
Speaker 2: production of this show. For anyone who has not gotten
Speaker 2: to see the show, and obviously it's no longer running
Speaker 2: so you can't. You can go to YouTube and look up.
Speaker 2: I hope it's still up. So I'm saying this, but
Speaker 2: there is a David Letterman performance of the Broadway show
Speaker 2: of them singing a song called a Freak like Me
Speaker 2: Needs Company, and you can see David Letterman's soul leave
Speaker 2: his body during the performance. Over the course of the performance,
Speaker 2: you can track it. You see the life draining from
Speaker 2: his eyes.
Speaker 1: Speaking your souls leaving their body. Any story for me
Speaker 1: that involves the youtubo's guitarist, the Edge, walking out of
Speaker 1: a room and then walking back into a dead man,
Speaker 1: I'm just like tell me this story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I didn't expect deaths, and I knew there were injuries, but.
Speaker 1: This is all surprised. The story dispacked with surprise.
Speaker 5: All right, why don't we get into this one? And
Speaker 5: we will catch up on the other side.
Speaker 2: As with many recent Broadway shows, the jumping off place
Speaker 2: for the Spider Man Musical was a movie, specifically the
Speaker 2: two thousand and two Toby McGuire Spider Man Film, which
Speaker 2: not only got solid reviews but raked in over eight
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars. With Disney properties like Beauty and the
Speaker 2: Beast and The Lion King leaping successfully from the screen
Speaker 2: to Broadway, Marvel was keen to map a similar course
Speaker 2: for Spidey's newly invigorated brand. Marvel placed spider Man's Broadway
Speaker 2: future in the hands of charismatic producer Tony Adams and
Speaker 2: his business partner, entertainment lawyer David Garfinkel. The two convinced
Speaker 2: no less than Bono and The Edge of U two
Speaker 2: to compose the songs for the as yet unwritten show.
Speaker 2: For the director, Bono and the Edge pushed to bring
Speaker 2: on Julie Taymour, whose production of The Lion King became
Speaker 2: the most profitable musical of all time, grossing eight point
Speaker 2: two billion dollars worldwide. Julie Taymour was universally hailed as
Speaker 2: an uncompromising visionary, and her clout had now earned her
Speaker 2: creative control over the forthcoming Spider Man musical. To that end,
Speaker 2: Taymoor would not only direct, but co write the script
Speaker 2: or in theater, lingo the book. In two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: the call went out for prospective writing collaborators to submit
Speaker 2: a sample scene. Playwright and TV writer Glenn Berger was
Speaker 2: one of many who submit it, but instead of a scene,
Speaker 2: he wrote a rambling conceptual treatise. It read, as he
Speaker 2: tells it, like he was on drugs, but good drugs.
Speaker 6: Maybe it wasn't the most exquisitely structured piece of writing
Speaker 6: I've ever done, but it was enough for me to
Speaker 6: get an interview, and by the ending of the interview
Speaker 6: it became clear that the thing that they actually wanted
Speaker 6: was a scene. So I said, oh, yeah, absolutely, a scene.
Speaker 6: Great idea. So I said, I'll have it to you
Speaker 6: tomorrow morning, and I sped back home upstate and spent
Speaker 6: the night writing a scene. And actually I knew that
Speaker 6: next morning at dawn birds or twittering, and I press send,
Speaker 6: and I kind of knew that I nailed it, actually,
Speaker 6: And so it wasn't surprising when later that afternoon Julie
Speaker 6: called me and said, yeah, yeah, you Got It.
Speaker 2: Eager to get started, Berger relocated to New York City. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: producer and show cheerleader Tony Adams was hammering out the
Speaker 2: official deal. On October twentieth, though, tragedy struck. Adams had
Speaker 2: just gotten Bono's and Taymor's signatures on the contract and
Speaker 2: went to secure the Edges. The Edge left the room
Speaker 2: to get a pen, and when he came back, Adams
Speaker 2: was slumped over the table. He'd suffered a stroke. Two
Speaker 2: days later, he was dead. The show was now in
Speaker 2: the hands of Adam's partner, David Garfinkel. While Garfinkel was
Speaker 2: extremely well connected in showbiz circles, he had never before
Speaker 2: produced a play or musical. Nevertheless, a reading was planned
Speaker 2: for mid two thousand and seven. Bono and The Edge
Speaker 2: started writing songs, leaning heavily on their distinctive rock style,
Speaker 2: while also incorporating faux classical vocal harmonies and typical musical
Speaker 2: theater razzle dazzle. Glen Berger worked on the book, building
Speaker 2: dialogue out of the treatment he and Taymor had created.
Speaker 2: The first act of the show was to be Your
Speaker 2: Classic Origin Story, as laid out in the comic book,
Speaker 2: and two thousand and two film Bullied teenager Peter Parker
Speaker 2: gets bitten by a genetically modified Spider, is sheathed in
Speaker 2: the iconic form fitting red suit, and becomes the titular superstar,
Speaker 2: great power, great responsibility, you know the deal. However, the
Speaker 2: intention was to marry that well known tale with Taymoor's
Speaker 2: many bold theatrical new ideas. One of these editions was
Speaker 2: a geek chorus, a pun on the ancient theatrical device
Speaker 2: of a Greek chorus. Spider Man's geek chorus consists of
Speaker 2: of four talkative nerds who would move the action along
Speaker 2: by relaying Peter Parker's thoughts and narrating portions of the events.
Speaker 2: Here's cobook writer Glenn Berger.
Speaker 6: The idea is that the geeks are generating this sort
Speaker 6: of fan thick version of Spider Man based on the
Speaker 6: one hundred and fifty comic books that they've read, and
Speaker 6: they're arguing about it. What's the best scenario for the
Speaker 6: fights that they've read or they can come up with,
Speaker 6: And then when the girl geek, miss Arrow, introduces this
Speaker 6: character of Arakney from Greek mythology, this character ends up
Speaker 6: sort of taking the show away from the geeks. That's
Speaker 6: the idea at least.
Speaker 2: The myth of Arakney was referred to in the first
Speaker 2: issue of the Ultimate Spider Man comic book series. Basically,
Speaker 2: Arakney was an arrogant weaver of tapestries transformed through godly
Speaker 2: intervention into the world's first spider. Tamoor conceived this character
Speaker 2: as the show's primary villain and planned for the show's
Speaker 2: second act to end with a jaw dropping battle between
Speaker 2: a Rakney and our web slinging hero. In the fall
Speaker 2: of two thousand and six, the four creatives Bono, the Edge,
Speaker 2: Julie Taymoor, and Glenn Berger gathered at Bono's New York
Speaker 2: City penthouse to read through the first draft of the
Speaker 2: script and listen to early versions of the songs. In
Speaker 2: this intimate setting, it seemed like the show was off
Speaker 2: to a great start, and as the meeting progressed, the
Speaker 2: excitement mounted.
Speaker 6: When Bono relaxes, he takes off his sunglasses, you know,
Speaker 6: and they came off, and they were on the coffee table.
Speaker 6: The rest of the day. Bono and Edge just had
Speaker 6: these just germs of ideas for you know, some of
Speaker 6: the big songs that we wanted for the musical like
Speaker 6: Rise Above. And then their next song was this bouncing
Speaker 6: off the Wall song, which is just goofy, you know,
Speaker 6: throw yourself around the room type of song, and Julie's
Speaker 6: sort of demonstrating how she imagines the choreography to go.
Speaker 6: So she begins this nutty dance with her, you know,
Speaker 6: arms flying all over the place, and Bono understands what
Speaker 6: she's getting at, and so he's getting up and getting
Speaker 6: excited about it too, and you could just feel this
Speaker 6: this real, lovely, lovely little electricity, and things got cooking.
Speaker 2: According to Berger, this joyous collaborative work session was when
Speaker 2: he learned what the full title of their show would be.
Speaker 6: Bono he had a friend whose daughter didn't like when
Speaker 6: it gets dark when she goes to bed, and so
Speaker 6: she likes to leave the lights on. But instead of saying, daddy,
Speaker 6: you leave the lights on, she says, could you turn
Speaker 6: off the dark?
Speaker 2: Since internationally famous rock stars Bono and the Edge were
Speaker 2: constantly distracted by things like making best selling albums and
Speaker 2: playing sold out arena tours as you do, they still
Speaker 2: had a lot of songs to complete. As the two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven reading, which would be attended by theater
Speaker 2: VIPs and Marvel executives drew near.
Speaker 6: Bono and Edge did have their work cut out for
Speaker 6: them to have a completed score in time for our
Speaker 6: first workshop presentation in July two thousand and seven. Definitely
Speaker 6: only about four or five months before that. They didn't
Speaker 6: really have anything completed completed, but musicians, you know, they
Speaker 6: just need a deadline.
Speaker 2: A company of actors performed the script and songs in
Speaker 2: a rehearsal room without sets, props, costumes, or special effects.
Speaker 2: Despite the bare bones nature of this presentation, the the
Speaker 2: show seemed to be in good shape. Oh man.
Speaker 6: The feeling after that reading was we were sitting pretty
Speaker 6: we were set. Obviously there were some things to work out,
Speaker 6: but we had a hit man. The songs were killer.
Speaker 6: The uh, you know, the script. It would get some tweaks,
Speaker 6: of course, but it was basically there, and that was
Speaker 6: the consensus. I mean, everyone was feeling such relief. Actually,
Speaker 6: you know, I mean the idea then is that you
Speaker 6: build on that. But I think that was probably our
Speaker 6: peak moment in the evolution of the entire show.
Speaker 2: Enter the technical elements, since flying sequences were so pivotal
Speaker 2: to the Spider Man story, aerial designers got to work
Speaker 2: right away. They came up with a plan that would
Speaker 2: allow two performers to simultaneously spring into the air and
Speaker 2: duke it out while suspended. It was based on the
Speaker 2: koreening cameras used at football games, with multiple wires allowing
Speaker 2: for movement in any direction. However, it hadn't been used
Speaker 2: on humans, and it certainly hadn't been used on humans
Speaker 2: performing live in a Broadway theater. In the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: musical Peter Pan, the flying scenes were accomplished by humans
Speaker 2: pulling ropes backstage to counteract the actor's weight on stage,
Speaker 2: but Spider Man's aerial magic would be controlled by automation.
Speaker 2: You know, technology, that fool proof thing. Most musicals do
Speaker 2: a brief run in another city before officially opening in
Speaker 2: New York. It's known colloquially as an out of town tryout.
Speaker 2: Here's playwright and Broadway actor Eric Ayoa, who saw Turn
Speaker 2: Off the Dark several times during its run.
Speaker 7: So shows out of town tryout is when they take
Speaker 7: the show literally, they take it out of town to
Speaker 7: try it out. You've been in a studio, you've been
Speaker 7: rehearsing it. It's a very closed experience. And now you're
Speaker 7: taking in that last part of the puzzle. The audience.
Speaker 7: Are they reacting, are they laughing? Are they bored?
Speaker 5: When they leaning?
Speaker 7: When are they falling asleep? What's not clear. The best
Speaker 7: shows and the best teams are the ones that actually
Speaker 7: use their out of town wisely and listen to the
Speaker 7: audiences and to what they're hearing, and perhaps take some
Speaker 7: of those bad reviews and use that to fuel a
Speaker 7: better version.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, Spider Man's innovative technical demands were making an out
Speaker 2: of town tryout impossible. Producer David Garfinkel made the call
Speaker 2: they would start rehearsals for the Broadway production Cold, One
Speaker 2: of Broadway's biggest houses, was booked, the eighteen hundred seat
Speaker 2: Hilton Theater. Design meetings took place day and night. Enormous
Speaker 2: comic book style sets were being built, and a lot
Speaker 2: of money started getting spent. No one would officially confirm
Speaker 2: the budget at that time, but insiders estimated it at
Speaker 2: forty million dollars. On February twenty fourth, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: The New York Times announced that Spider Man Turn Off
Speaker 2: the Dark would begin preview performances in January twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Casting began for all thirty one roles. Movie star Evan
Speaker 2: rachel Wood, who had performed in the two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven reading, accepted the role of Peter Parker's love interest
Speaker 2: Mary Jane, and Alan Cumming was on board to place
Speaker 2: Spidey's nemesis, the Green Goblin. Though opening night was discreetly
Speaker 2: delayed until February twenty ten to allow for massive renovations
Speaker 2: to the theater, Excitement swelled amongst the creative team and
Speaker 2: the newly cast actors, that is, until they found out
Speaker 2: the production had run out of money, like completely. In
Speaker 2: an interview with Sixty Minutes, Bono claimed he found out
Speaker 2: things were in such bad condition when he read about
Speaker 2: it in the New York Post. Luckily, Bono, being Bono,
Speaker 2: knew a few people. He convinced Michael Cole, former chairman
Speaker 2: of Live Nation, to take the producing rains. In regards
Speaker 2: to the show's finances, Cole said, quote, I can summarize
Speaker 2: in one word, bankrupt. Turn off the Dark shut down
Speaker 2: entirely for the remainder of two thousand and nine. While
Speaker 2: Cole struggled to secure funding, Evan rachel Wood and Alan
Speaker 2: Cumming both bowed out for on screen jobs, and work
Speaker 2: didn't resume at the theater until March of twenty ten,
Speaker 2: while the show struggled to regain its financial footing. Rehearsals
Speaker 2: officially began that August. Director Taymor shuttled back and forth
Speaker 2: between the rehearsal room and the theater, which had been
Speaker 2: renamed the Foxwoods, where sets were getting installed and the
Speaker 2: aerial team was mapping out how to get, among other things,
Speaker 2: Spider Man to ride the Green Goblin mid air like
Speaker 2: a surfboard. A lot of scenes were so complex they
Speaker 2: couldn't be worked out until the start of tech rehearsals,
Speaker 2: which was a scary prospect. But what else could be
Speaker 2: done in the same sixty minutes piece. Taymor owned that fear, saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm scared. If you don't have fear, then you're not
Speaker 2: taking a chance. But what I do have is a team.
Speaker 2: If your collaborators are there, which is what answers the
Speaker 2: fear question, and they all are as an passioned as
Speaker 2: you are and believe in it, your fear is mitigated.
Speaker 2: Soon enough it was time to begin the all important
Speaker 2: tech rehearsals. Given the show's enormous scale, it made sense
Speaker 2: that things were going to go slowly. What worried co
Speaker 2: writer Glenn Berger though, was just how slowly.
Speaker 6: After four days we were getting through forty two seconds
Speaker 6: of the show for every hour of Tech.
Speaker 2: And to make matters worse, it was only a few
Speaker 2: days into Tech when the first injury occurred. A dancer
Speaker 2: playing one of several flying Spider Man was supposed to
Speaker 2: flip backwards while being hoisted into the air by cables
Speaker 2: and land on a ramp that was lowering into place
Speaker 2: behind him. On September twenty sixth, the ramp didn't lower
Speaker 2: to the proper degree. The off kilter landing fractured the
Speaker 2: dancer's foot and broke his toe. Then, during a presentation
Speaker 2: for sales agents and ticket brokers on October nineteenth, another
Speaker 2: dancer was performing the very same move.
Speaker 6: I remember seeing him WinCE when he made the landing,
Speaker 6: and I could tell that something might be up.
Speaker 2: Something was up, all right. The dancer had broken both
Speaker 2: his wrists.
Speaker 6: So alast two injuries now. And really the other thing
Speaker 6: that no one was really saying out loud, but it
Speaker 6: was in the back of all our minds, was I
Speaker 6: hope this doesn't leave the theater, because it would be
Speaker 6: good if this got out.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately it did. People were talking about Spider Man, and
Speaker 2: not in the kindest terms, But no one seemed to
Speaker 2: take more delight in Spider Man's misfortunes than New York
Speaker 2: Post columnist Michael Reid, who said of the show quote,
Speaker 2: I've got my foot on its neck and I'm having
Speaker 2: too much fun to take it off. Reedel gleefully reported
Speaker 2: any Spidy gossip that crossed his desk, proclaiming in mid
Speaker 2: November that the budget was now up to sixty five
Speaker 2: million dollars. Here's dancer Bethany Moore, who months later would
Speaker 2: wind up getting cast in the show.
Speaker 4: It's not like people were scared to audition. Everybody wanted
Speaker 4: in on this big blockbuster show.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you had.
Speaker 4: Some like little titis in the background, but the overall
Speaker 4: was like, they're doing what they can with what they got.
Speaker 2: I just hope everybody's okay. With increased safety measures in
Speaker 2: place and the New York Department of Labor coming by
Speaker 2: to sign off on the dangerous stunts, the rehearsal process
Speaker 2: slowed even further, do either to safety concerns or a
Speaker 2: need for more time or bow. With the official opening
Speaker 2: night was moved yet again to January two, thy eleven.
Speaker 4: Everything was so high tech, the pit lists and the
Speaker 4: air pressure needed for those, and everything was computerizing. If
Speaker 4: it was off a half an inch of that, emergency
Speaker 4: stops would happen.
Speaker 2: But hey, the Act one finale, where Spider Man rides
Speaker 2: the Green Goblin like a surfboard, that at least was
Speaker 2: looking really cool. Suddenly, before anyone was fully prepared, the
Speaker 2: first paying audience was filling the Foxwoods Theater for the
Speaker 2: first preview performance. It was November twenty eighth, twenty ten,
Speaker 2: and all those people who'd been whispering about the show
Speaker 2: on the outside were about to find out if it
Speaker 2: lived up to the hype. The show kept stopping. I
Speaker 2: think there were four or five holds the first night.
Speaker 3: All I remember is hearing about a new actor injury
Speaker 3: or technical malfunction every week.
Speaker 7: The Spider Man, who was supposed to repel down into
Speaker 7: the aisle missed his mark by a few inches, and
Speaker 7: I ended up having most of Spider Man's torso on
Speaker 7: my lap, which wasn't the worst thing in the world.
Speaker 2: The first preview of Spider Man Turn Off the Dark
Speaker 2: ran three and a half hours. Technical issues brought the
Speaker 2: show to a halt five times. In certain moments, actors
Speaker 2: dangled helplessly over the heads of the waiting audience while
Speaker 2: technicians troubleshot the problem. Still, given the size of the undertaking,
Speaker 2: the fact that there were only five holds was seen
Speaker 2: by some as a win. Let's hear from dancer Bethany Moore.
Speaker 4: I had seen the show a few weeks before auditioning
Speaker 4: for it, not knowing that it had anything to do
Speaker 4: with my future, and though I was kind of confused
Speaker 4: with some of the more musical theater moments, the spectacle
Speaker 4: was unlike anything I had seen. It was like on
Speaker 4: par with the Circusolay kind of thing, where they're flying
Speaker 4: with silks in the beginning, and the Chrysler building coming
Speaker 4: out into the audience like a pop up book.
Speaker 2: To make sure that the moments that didn't yet work
Speaker 2: were raised to the level of those that did, the
Speaker 2: producers once again decided to move the opening date, this
Speaker 2: time to February seventh, twenty eleven. There was time to
Speaker 2: keep working and everyone intended to. Of chief concern was
Speaker 2: the second act, which was mostly about Spider Man's relationship
Speaker 2: with mythical Spider Goddess. A Rackney co book writer Glenn Berger, explains.
Speaker 6: The idea was comin. Back one was going to be
Speaker 6: this grand battle between Spider Man and the Green Goblin,
Speaker 6: and it was going to be amazing, and there's no
Speaker 6: way you can top it, but we were going to
Speaker 6: top it by having Act too be this incredible battle
Speaker 6: above the heads of the audience, inside this giant web
Speaker 6: that was going to funnel down from the ceiling over
Speaker 6: the heads of the audience, and there's going to be
Speaker 6: this crazy, scrambling spider fight and it was actually going
Speaker 6: to Act one, but the web funnel that we were
Speaker 6: counting on didn't work, and so we had to scrap
Speaker 6: it before even the first preview, and that was a
Speaker 6: million bucks that you went to a landfill.
Speaker 2: Other moments in Act two were just plain overwhelming, not
Speaker 2: necessarily in a good way.
Speaker 7: There was this moment that was almost like a fashion
Speaker 7: runway of villains. They all came at once, and I
Speaker 7: was like, whoa, whoa, whoall we could really keep this
Speaker 7: Green Goblin centric.
Speaker 2: Questions about plot clarity, however, paled in comparison to what
Speaker 2: happened next. On December twentieth, twenty ten, a dancer named
Speaker 2: Chris Tierney, who did some of the show's most impressive
Speaker 2: stunt work, was improperly connected to the safety apparatus that
Speaker 2: suspended him mid air in a live recreation of a
Speaker 2: comic book style leap in front of that night's audience.
Speaker 2: Tierney made the leap, and, with a sickening sense of dread,
Speaker 2: felt the cable go slack with these split second physical
Speaker 2: intelligence required of a professional at his level. Tierney twisted
Speaker 2: himself around so he wouldn't land on his head. Mercifully,
Speaker 2: he landed on his back after falling thirty feet straight down.
Speaker 2: He broke three vertebrae and four ribs and fractured his elbow, scapula,
Speaker 2: and skull. The very next day was supposed to have been,
Speaker 2: at one point, the show's triumphant opening. Instead, Tierney's life
Speaker 2: threatening fall was making headlines, and a bootleg video of
Speaker 2: the catastrophe was starting to be spread. First, the theater
Speaker 2: community took note, with an original Rent cast member writing
Speaker 2: on Facebook quote they should put Julie Taymore in jail
Speaker 2: for assault, and Tony Award winning actor Alice Ripley tweeting quote,
Speaker 2: does someone have to die? Where is the line for
Speaker 2: these decision makers. I am curious, but soon attention crossed
Speaker 2: over into the mainstream.
Speaker 3: Now you're all familiar with the Broadway musical Spider Man.
Speaker 6: It's been having its troubles and what had to close
Speaker 6: down for a while.
Speaker 2: Late night shows poked fun at turn off the Dark,
Speaker 2: as did Saturday Night Live repeatedly.
Speaker 1: We specialize in assisting clients where sustained injuries while working
Speaker 1: at or attending the Broadway musical spider Man too perform.
Speaker 2: Publications from The New York Times to The Onion dissected
Speaker 2: the show's misfortunes. Joan Rivers started opening her stand up
Speaker 2: act with a moment of silence for quote those Americans
Speaker 2: risking their lives daily in spider Man the Musical. Here's
Speaker 2: playwright Eric Ulloa again, who saw the show several times
Speaker 2: during its run, speaking about the aftermath of Tyranney's fall.
Speaker 7: Of course, when it happened, it was all over the news.
Speaker 7: I'm like, every local news was on that. And then
Speaker 7: the weird thing is like and here is just part
Speaker 7: of societal collapse. Ticket sales went up. Ticket sales went
Speaker 7: up because it became this weird thing that like you
Speaker 7: may see someone maimed on Broadway.
Speaker 2: Previews and rehearsals eventually resumed. Opening night was moved again
Speaker 2: to March fifteenth, but by this point the New York
Speaker 2: critics had had it. They made a controversial move publishing
Speaker 2: reviews of Turn Off the Dark on the show's previous
Speaker 2: opening night February seventh. In his New York Times review,
Speaker 2: drama critic Ben Brantley said, quote, only when things go
Speaker 2: wrong in this production does it feel remotely right, if
Speaker 2: by right one means entertaining, before musing that it may
Speaker 2: be one of Broadway's worst shows.
Speaker 6: So it became clear to some of us working on
Speaker 6: the show that things needed to be changed in a
Speaker 6: more drastic fashion than we were changing them in the
Speaker 6: preview period. And so these two camps ended up forming
Speaker 6: and bought on Edge and Me to begin with, we're
Speaker 6: sort of trying to strike a middle ground to find
Speaker 6: a way to move things forward. Cut this and move this.
Speaker 2: Inspired by offhand observations made by a crew member, cobook
Speaker 2: writer Glenn Berger had begun reinvestigating the show's structure. His
Speaker 2: collaborator didn't exactly approve.
Speaker 6: Julie was in the camp of let's implement the original vision.
Speaker 6: And if people start introducing other fixes and visions, you know,
Speaker 6: that have been generated on the fly at the eleventh
Speaker 6: hour before this original vision gets done, not only is
Speaker 6: it going to you know, collapse morale, and not only
Speaker 6: is it vetted in the same way that this original
Speaker 6: vision was vetted, but really is it going to be
Speaker 6: as good?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 6: Can't we just stay the course and see what we have?
Speaker 6: And so don't introduce this option, don't want to hear it.
Speaker 6: So it becomes suddenly it becomes Spyer's Spy.
Speaker 2: In early March, director Julie Taymor gave a TED talk
Speaker 2: discussing her career. She opened the talk with an oblique
Speaker 2: reference to Spider Man, saying, quote, anybody who creates knows
Speaker 2: there's that point where it hasn't quite become the phoenix
Speaker 2: or the burnt char and I am right there on
Speaker 2: the edge. But she didn't say anything about stepping back
Speaker 2: from the fire. If anything, she seemed as keen as
Speaker 2: ever to keep going. She wouldn't have the opportunity to
Speaker 2: do so. Exactly one week after her TED talk, the
Speaker 2: New York Times announced Tamor had been fired the producers,
Speaker 2: along with Bono and the Edge had responded positively to
Speaker 2: Glenn Berger's outline for a potential restructuring of show, and
Speaker 2: they just couldn't find common ground with Tamor on implementing
Speaker 2: these changes. Adjustments included moving the Green Goblin fight from
Speaker 2: the end of Act one to the end of the show,
Speaker 2: making Spider Goddess Arachne less of a major villain, and
Speaker 2: losing the Geek chorus completely. To help implement this overhaul,
Speaker 2: a new book writer was added to the mix, Roberto
Speaker 2: Agire Sikassa. As both a playwright and writer for Marvel Comics,
Speaker 2: he seemed ideal. The New York Times bombshell articles announcing
Speaker 2: all these shakeups also stated that performances would be shut
Speaker 2: down while the show retooled. Opening night would be delayed
Speaker 2: a sixth time a sixth time to June fourteenth, twoenty eleven.
Speaker 2: Julie Taymor's replacement was Philip William McKinley, who had directed
Speaker 2: the Hugh Jackman Broadway vehicle The Boy from Oz, as
Speaker 2: well as several actual circuses. As McKinley got to work
Speaker 2: overseeing the changes, preview performances resumed. At this point. It's
Speaker 2: worth noting that most Broadway shows have about thirty preview performances.
Speaker 2: By March twenty eleven, Spider Man had blown well past
Speaker 2: one hundred.
Speaker 6: The risk to upsetting the Apple car is that, you know,
Speaker 6: a whole lot of apples gets filled out of the cart.
Speaker 6: And there were things both anticipated and not anticipated when
Speaker 6: Julie left the building, and so several people who we
Speaker 6: thought would be retained, like Danny Ezralo, the choreographer, ended
Speaker 6: up just remaining banished out in California. And there were
Speaker 6: dancers who, you know, when they were becoming upset that
Speaker 6: the new choreographer was making them learn all these new
Speaker 6: dance moves, which was confusing to the dancers because they
Speaker 6: thought all of this was a script problem, not a
Speaker 6: dancing problem. But a few of the dancers, a couple
Speaker 6: of them, said well bye, goodbye. At this point, the
Speaker 6: show had been running in previews for what like seven months, right,
Speaker 6: and so it wasn't unusual for there to be turnover
Speaker 6: after seven months. It was just unusual that there was
Speaker 6: turnover after seven months for a show that still hadn't opened.
Speaker 2: Dancer Bethany Moore, again, I got a call from my agent,
Speaker 2: and she says, Bethany there's a last minute replacement call
Speaker 2: for Spider Man.
Speaker 4: Can you make it in two hours? And so I
Speaker 4: called my agent back and I was like, I will
Speaker 4: be there in two hours. So I put my hair
Speaker 4: in a messy ponytail, grabbed some shoes, a shirt off
Speaker 4: the floor. Look looking back on it, I looked kind
Speaker 4: of like a rock star. I walk in there and
Speaker 4: Chase Brock is in there, and I love his stuff.
Speaker 4: It's very quirky and actor driven, and so I'm just
Speaker 4: loving this. I feel like I'm doing Thriller and Rup
Speaker 4: Paul's Drag Race in one combination, and I am thrilled.
Speaker 4: I left feeling great. I was like, I didn't book it,
Speaker 4: but I had a great time. This was so much fun.
Speaker 4: My phone rings just hours after leaving, and it's a
Speaker 4: two one two number, and we always have a joke
Speaker 4: if we don't know what two to one two, it's
Speaker 4: Broadway and I answer it and I couldn't feel my face,
Speaker 4: I couldn't feel my hands. And with my agent saying,
Speaker 4: you've got it and you start tomorrow. So I left there,
Speaker 4: went straight to the place where I was working in
Speaker 4: Hill's kitchen, I said, I quit. I I'm on Broadway, Bye, Sorry,
Speaker 4: and wow. We started the next day.
Speaker 2: Bethany Moore was the last performer cast in the lead
Speaker 2: up to the show's actual opening. All the upheaval meant
Speaker 2: that Bethany, who was brand new to the show, and
Speaker 2: the rest of the beleaguered cast who'd been at it
Speaker 2: for months and months, we're now performing version one point zero,
Speaker 2: aka the Julie Taymor version, while rehearsing a very different
Speaker 2: version two point zero. During the day.
Speaker 4: We would learn a new dance in the same song
Speaker 4: that we had been performing at night in our previews,
Speaker 4: so we would have to remember what we rehearsed in
Speaker 4: the morning, not do that at night because it hadn't
Speaker 4: been tecked. But then you had to go back the
Speaker 4: next day and teck the one that you'd done before,
Speaker 4: so you couldn't do the show that you had.
Speaker 2: Done that night.
Speaker 4: We would be backstage and we'd look at each other, like,
Speaker 4: how does it go? What are we doing tonight? If
Speaker 4: you saw a whole where there was a light, you're like,
Speaker 4: that's probably where I should be.
Speaker 2: When they had to hold mid show for technical issues,
Speaker 2: the cast had a little fun.
Speaker 4: It became almost like a game, so our stage manager
Speaker 4: would sometimes put on single Ladies, and everybody we ended
Speaker 4: up having to learn the single eighties dance, or making
Speaker 4: our own version up and doing it in the ridiculous
Speaker 4: costumes that we happened to be wearing at that time.
Speaker 2: And when a flying spider man got stuck dangling over
Speaker 2: the audience's heads.
Speaker 4: He'd pretend to be swimming up there doing the backstroke,
Speaker 4: and he would also wave.
Speaker 6: At the kids.
Speaker 2: Oh, and the kids loved it.
Speaker 4: They just thought that was the coolest thing.
Speaker 2: The budget was now seventy million dollars. Finally, on April seventeenth,
Speaker 2: the company played their last performance of Version one point zero.
Speaker 2: The actors comprising the Geek Chorus promptly lost their jobs,
Speaker 2: and the show shut down once again, so that the
Speaker 2: remaining cast and crew could go back into three weeks
Speaker 2: of tech. In Sunnier News, Chris Tierney, the dancer who
Speaker 2: had been seriously injured after falling, recovered and rejoined the
Speaker 2: company in April. Version two point zero, which began previewing
Speaker 2: in may have its fans and its detractors. A lot
Speaker 2: of director Tamor's stylish flourishes were gone, but the more
Speaker 2: straightforward plot was certainly easier to grasp. Moving the Spider Man,
Speaker 2: Green Goblin Aerials showdown to the end of the show
Speaker 2: instead of the end of Act one made for a
Speaker 2: satisfying climax two, because the general consensus is that the
Speaker 2: scene was a knockout.
Speaker 4: Even when we would be putting somebody in, like an understudy,
Speaker 4: into the Green Goblin fight or something, we would all
Speaker 4: go sit in the audience. All the lights are up,
Speaker 4: nobody's really in costume, and we couldn't get enough. Even
Speaker 4: the cast. We would sit there and watch, like this
Speaker 4: is amazing. You try to record it on your little
Speaker 4: phone and it never captured it. Because I wanted to
Speaker 4: show how cool it was. You just had to be there.
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody can deny that they were not
Speaker 4: in awe of those moments.
Speaker 2: Though the glitches never entirely went away. Turn Off the
Speaker 2: Dark was finally on track to open, but the fact
Speaker 2: that things were starting to go more smoothly didn't turn
Speaker 2: people's attention away. If anything, the mockery intensified.
Speaker 4: I didn't really have time or the capacity to care
Speaker 4: or see what other people were talking about at that point,
Speaker 4: which probably in retrospect, was a good thing.
Speaker 2: Spider Man was ineligible for the twenty eleven Tony A
Speaker 2: Wary Words because it hadn't officially opened, but it was
Speaker 2: used as a punchline throughout the ceremony. Bono and the
Speaker 2: Edge gamely chuckled from the audience while host Neil Patrick
Speaker 2: Harris challenged himself to make all the jokes about their
Speaker 2: show he could in thirty seconds. This included gems such as.
Speaker 5: Spider Man's the only show on Broadway where the actors
Speaker 5: in the cast they're actually in castsoo.
Speaker 2: This was two days before Spider Man's for Real this
Speaker 2: time opening night. Co writer Glenn Berger had barely spoken
Speaker 2: to Julie Taymour after she'd been fired, but she was
Speaker 2: very much on his mind in advance of this momentous occasion,
Speaker 2: which had been years in the making.
Speaker 6: Literally we were about to open. I'm looking at the
Speaker 6: show and everything that I felt was of worth came
Speaker 6: from her. We had been talking for years of about
Speaker 6: what the show was about, and the anthem was rise above,
Speaker 6: you know, and it was about being the better person
Speaker 6: and finding ways to move forward. You can talk about it,
Speaker 6: you can talk about it all the time, but do
Speaker 6: you live it. It's one thing for artists to like, Oh,
Speaker 6: these are nice sentiments and I'm gonna put them in
Speaker 6: a show. But how much of what an artist writes
Speaker 6: do they mean? Do they live? So in that spirit,
Speaker 6: I also hadn't slept in like nine months. I called Julie.
Speaker 6: I knew she wasn't going to pick up. I left
Speaker 6: the message basically saying, look, everything that's good, it's yours,
Speaker 6: and you should come and you should see the show,
Speaker 6: and you should take the bow and accept the plaudits
Speaker 6: that would be coming to you. Because there was a
Speaker 6: lot of work.
Speaker 4: Opening night, it felt a little dream like because everybody's
Speaker 4: energy was buzzy because it was finally happening.
Speaker 2: At the end of the show, late audition director Philip
Speaker 2: McKinley stood on stage giving shout outs to the cast,
Speaker 2: crew and creators before calling Julie Taymor up from the house.
Speaker 2: She received a bouquet of roses and embraced her former
Speaker 2: collaborators with big smiles all around. After a record breaking
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty three previews, a record breaking final
Speaker 2: budget of seventy five million dollars, notorious injuries, collaborative rifts,
Speaker 2: and numerous delays, Spider Man Turn Off the Dark had
Speaker 2: survived its gauntlet of setbacks and controversies and was finally open.
Speaker 2: The question now, how long would it stick around?
Speaker 1: I saw it well the first act. It was so bizarre,
Speaker 1: weirdest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 6: I would actually love to see it again.
Speaker 2: Theater fans and columnists speculated that Spider Man Turn Off
Speaker 2: the Dark wouldn't return its massive investment, nor would it
Speaker 2: last through the end of twenty eleven. While it's true
Speaker 2: it never returned its investment, it did remain open on
Speaker 2: Broadway for two and a half more years. In early
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, turn Off the Dark had Broadways all time
Speaker 2: highest grossing week, raking in two point nine million dollars.
Speaker 2: By the time the twenty twelve Tony Awards rolled around,
Speaker 2: the now eligible Spider Man received two nominations, one for
Speaker 2: George Seepen's eye popping forced perspective sets and another for
Speaker 2: Aiko Ishioka's dazzling costumes. Playwright and Broadway performer Eric Uyoa
Speaker 2: remembers what was beautiful about the show vividly, even all
Speaker 2: these years later.
Speaker 7: There was no dearth of great ideas in this show
Speaker 7: that you know, really interesting choreography that mimicked the idea
Speaker 7: of comic books and action sequences. I remember the sets
Speaker 7: were gorgeous. I always think of Spider Man as like
Speaker 7: some incredible giant opera that happened.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: Sometimes I can go to an opera and while it
Speaker 7: may not interest me, or it's just much too long
Speaker 7: and I don't maybe understand the language or whatever it is, like,
Speaker 7: I hate can leave and go. But Dan, that was
Speaker 7: pretty to look at. And that's what I can say.
Speaker 7: You know, with Spider Man as that it did always
Speaker 7: look great. You know, the money was there, God knows
Speaker 7: the money was there.
Speaker 2: In early twenty twelve, Spider Man's producers agreed to pay
Speaker 2: Julie Taymor nearly ten thousand dollars a week for her
Speaker 2: contribution as original director. By April twenty thirteen, the remainder
Speaker 2: of the legal disputes were resolved, and, as always happens
Speaker 2: in showbiz, everyone moved on to other projects. Cast member
Speaker 2: Bethany Moore left Spider Man Turn Off the Dark in
Speaker 2: June twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: I left to go do into the Woods in the Park.
Speaker 4: It felt strange to go from Spider Man to.
Speaker 2: Sondhaig Initially, co writer Glenn Berger had no idea what
Speaker 2: would be next for him.
Speaker 6: So I found myself washed ashore, you know, at the
Speaker 6: end of it. And you know, my agent said, Glenn,
Speaker 6: you've been telling me what's been going on for all
Speaker 6: these months and years, and I've been on the edge
Speaker 6: of my seat the whole time. You need to write
Speaker 6: a book. And that was the last thing I wanted
Speaker 6: to do, was write a book. But she was right.
Speaker 6: Someone had to write it, and I was kind of
Speaker 6: the one who was perfectly placed to write it. And
Speaker 6: I'm a writer, so I wrote it.
Speaker 2: Berger's book was published in twenty thirteen. Few can argue
Speaker 2: that the title song of Spider Man, the inside story
Speaker 2: of the most controversial musical in Broadway history, is hyperbolic.
Speaker 6: Everybody ideally should write a memoir about ten years of
Speaker 6: their life. When I was writing the memoir, every day
Speaker 6: I would sit down with my coffee and be very calm,
Speaker 6: and I start writing, and within an hour, I'm shouting
Speaker 6: at the screen. I'm saying, Glenn, don listen to that.
Speaker 6: You have to, you know, And I'm feeling clammy, I'm sweaty,
Speaker 6: I'm agitated, my heart's racing, and at the end of
Speaker 6: the day, I say to myself, tomorrow, don't do that.
Speaker 6: Keep it chill man. What I realized is that I
Speaker 6: hadn't just recorded these memories in my head. I recorded
Speaker 6: them in my body, which is what we do, and
Speaker 6: so I kind of gave into that and just allowed
Speaker 6: myself to purge. It was like a sauna.
Speaker 2: Producer Michael Cole's son, filmmaker Jacob Cole, shot footage of
Speaker 2: the show throughout the lead up to opening night, creating
Speaker 2: a documentary that has yet to be publicly shown. According
Speaker 2: to one unnamed source, it will quote never see the
Speaker 2: light of day. On August fifteenth, twenty thirteen, there was tragically,
Speaker 2: one more major injury during the performance. A hydraulic lift
Speaker 2: was rising from below the stage. It stopped due to
Speaker 2: a blockage. A company member's foot was caught between the
Speaker 2: hydraulic lift and the stage door. The only way to
Speaker 2: free him was to saw out part of the stage.
Speaker 2: The performer later sued the producers for negligence, though the
Speaker 2: producers stated that the injury was due to human error. Eventually,
Speaker 2: OSHA investigated claimed the producers had failed to secure protective
Speaker 2: machine guarding and find them after weeks of declining ticket sales,
Speaker 2: Spider Man Turn Off the Dark closed on January fourth,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen. The Foxwoods Theater, formerly The Hilton, is now
Speaker 2: called the Lyric and is currently home to another brand
Speaker 2: name star Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Oh and
Speaker 2: sidebar because of course he's wrapped up in this too.
Speaker 2: Expelled Congressman George Santos once claimed to be a producer
Speaker 2: on the show, As with a number of other things,
Speaker 2: the former congressman has said this is not true. All
Speaker 2: these years later, questions remain about how the Spider Man
Speaker 2: Musical failed to become something more lauded. The fact that
Speaker 2: initial producer Tony Adams died, leaving the show in the
Speaker 2: hands of producers who hadn't much or any experience in
Speaker 2: theater is often mentioned. The lack of an out of
Speaker 2: town tryout surely helped increase the risk from a low
Speaker 2: simmer to a five alarm fire. Given the show's extremely
Speaker 2: ambitious tech. It all seemed possible on paper, but in practice.
Speaker 6: You're told that it'll work, and you're told by engineers
Speaker 6: or whatever, this will be just as good. It will work,
Speaker 6: I mean, like all the ridiculous dysfunction, which at least
Speaker 6: was limited to a musical on Broadway.
Speaker 2: There's also been much speculation about how much leeway Taymor
Speaker 2: got from the producers, how they should perhaps have strong
Speaker 2: armed her into making clearer or more cost effective choices.
Speaker 2: And yet here's Julie Taymour, a certified MacArthur genius at
Speaker 2: the top of her game, someone who has only ever
Speaker 2: gotten praise for being an uncompromising visionary. It's hard to
Speaker 2: believe she was ever apt to compromise. Early on, Tamor
Speaker 2: had had the instinct that the show shouldn't be done
Speaker 2: in a Broadway theater at all, but more of an
Speaker 2: arena with circus performers and acrobats. Throughout the process, She'd
Speaker 2: even told those involved with the show quote, let's not
Speaker 2: even call it a musical, it's a circus rock and
Speaker 2: ry drama. Perhaps taking it out of the Broadway frame
Speaker 2: would have made more sense, after.
Speaker 7: All, wouldn't that be great Spider Man arena tour featuring
Speaker 7: songs from You two written directly for that arena tour.
Speaker 2: The setbacks, the injuries, the shod in freud. One journalist
Speaker 2: called it spiden freud of going after the big brand name,
Speaker 2: the big rock stars, the big theater auteur, the glee
Speaker 2: of watching them all no pun intended fall. All of
Speaker 2: that is, of course compelling, but it doesn't reflect those
Speaker 2: behind the scenes who did excellent work. Nor does it
Speaker 2: reflect the people in the cast, those Broadway troopers who
Speaker 2: were far less famous and well compensated than Bono or
Speaker 2: the Edge or Tamor. Long after the creatives left the building,
Speaker 2: the cast had to continue actually doing the show night
Speaker 2: after night, directly in the glare of the spotlight, and
Speaker 2: yet not ever really spotlet during the long, uphill battle
Speaker 2: to get Spider Man across the finish line. Maybe the
Speaker 2: biggest question in all of this is how did they
Speaker 2: get through it?
Speaker 4: I think the biggest lesson that I learned from Spider
Speaker 4: Man was learning to love, like, actually love a project,
Speaker 4: even if you aren't the biggest fan of the musical.
Speaker 4: And this is going to happen several times during a career.
Speaker 4: If you're lucky enough to book enough musicals, You're not
Speaker 4: always going to love the show, but you have to
Speaker 4: love what you do as a part of that show.
Speaker 4: And put on my Spider Man sweatshirt and my hoodie
Speaker 4: over my head, and I'd walk up the stairs around
Speaker 4: half hour and I would see all the kids coming
Speaker 4: in in their little Spider Man t shirts or full costumes,
Speaker 4: and I would hear this little girl in a Spider
Speaker 4: Man two too, like Santo got me these tickets six
Speaker 4: months ago. When I'd finally hear, I'm like, oh man,
Speaker 4: we do something really awesome. It's magic to them, and
Speaker 4: we get to be a part of that magic.
Speaker 2: Not every Broadway show will become an unqualified artistic or
Speaker 2: commercial success. In fact, the truth is very few ever are.
Speaker 2: No show is guaranteed a lengthy run, nor are Broadway
Speaker 2: theater investors ever guaranteed anything close to a return on
Speaker 2: their investment. Certainly, no musical is going to appeal to
Speaker 2: every fan of musicals, nor even less likely, every critic.
Speaker 2: But you never know what's going to connect with someone watching,
Speaker 2: what's going to influence the next generation, what moment of
Speaker 2: live stage magic might inspire someone out there to attempt
Speaker 2: that uniquely perilous high wire act. The art of making theater.
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 5: Great story lived up to the high one thousand percent, Saron,
Speaker 5: I know you're going to cast this. Before you do,
Speaker 5: I just I don't want the movie version of this.
Speaker 5: I do want that unauthorized documentary that they talked about
Speaker 5: might exist. I definitely want to see that. I just
Speaker 5: want to see this show. Can we get the people?
Speaker 5: This could be a huge thing. They would to gather
Speaker 5: these people. Put this on again. Everything they're remaking everything,
Speaker 5: remake this.
Speaker 2: They're still on Broadway. Let's get Reeve Carney back. What's
Speaker 2: you working on?
Speaker 1: I also would like to see like a cubist version
Speaker 1: of like all the various bootleg cameras and all the
Speaker 1: videos there are and stitch those together.
Speaker 5: All right, go for it?
Speaker 1: Casting? What do you got before? Are you casting?
Speaker 5: Also?
Speaker 1: I coined a word with this show? All right? So
Speaker 1: the Spider Man Show inspired me because I was like
Speaker 1: trying to describe something about a scene to myself and
Speaker 1: I was like, well, then all the Spider Man And
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, spider Man, is that the plural
Speaker 1: for multiple Spider Man? And I started thinking about, you
Speaker 1: know the collective nouns for animals. Right, there's like a
Speaker 1: murder of crows, a crash of rhinos, a bloat of hippos, right,
Speaker 1: So I was like, what would be the collective noun
Speaker 1: for a group of Spider Man. So I came up
Speaker 1: with an amazement of Spider Man.
Speaker 2: An amazement of Spider Man. That's claps to Seren.
Speaker 1: That's why I thought it worked right. But my best friend,
Speaker 1: he was a huge Spiderman fan, so I had to
Speaker 1: kind of a running headstart on this one.
Speaker 5: That's good. It wasn't James Lipton, the one who coined
Speaker 5: a lot of those or helped on Earth a lot
Speaker 5: of those collective believe.
Speaker 1: That's the story. But I don't know that could be
Speaker 1: an episode. Did you guys have any very special characters?
Speaker 2: You know, I respect Julie taymor is just vision. I
Speaker 2: love someone doing something big and new in theater. Look,
Speaker 2: if you're going to take a familiar property and you're
Speaker 2: going to bring it into a new arena, make it
Speaker 2: pun intended a big swing, and so I respect Julie
Speaker 2: Taymore for her vision.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. No, you know, we had some fun. I don't
Speaker 5: think there's any way not to with this story. But
Speaker 5: those people all put a huge amount of time and
Speaker 5: thought and talent into this, And when something is going badly,
Speaker 5: Glenn kind of explains, like that first time they realize that,
Speaker 5: Oh Jude, I hope this doesn't get outside the theater,
Speaker 5: and that is just such a terrifying human moment. It
Speaker 5: definitely felt for him and Julie and everyone involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, completely. I think my very special character has
Speaker 1: to be former Congressman George Santos, who once claimed to
Speaker 1: be a producer of the Spider Man Show.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, he should bring it back.
Speaker 1: He really should, you know, he should take he should
Speaker 1: go to Broadway. I think really he's missed his mark.
Speaker 1: Now you ask about casting, Okay, I thought about this
Speaker 1: one and it was pretty straightforward, right, So I gave
Speaker 1: myself only one rule, which was I was trying to
Speaker 1: cast the fallen Spider Man, you know, the Chris Tianny,
Speaker 1: the dancer. I excluded all the cinematic Spider Man, and
Speaker 1: so I went with Donald Glover, who's technically like kind
Speaker 1: of on the edge of Spider Man. I think he's
Speaker 1: played him, but he hasn't played him in person. So
Speaker 1: Donald Glover, Now Julie Tamoor, I thought Jessica Chestin.
Speaker 2: I swear to god, I also think I was also
Speaker 2: thinking Jessica Chestin to.
Speaker 1: See she's had the same vibe, right, Okay, then so
Speaker 1: for Bono, I thought Ben Stiller, but if he's not available,
Speaker 1: Kate Blanchett perfect.
Speaker 2: She can do anything, honestly, she could also be Tamed.
Speaker 1: She could play both, and.
Speaker 2: She could also be Spider. She could be Reeve Carney Goblins.
Speaker 1: Just now, for the Edge, I thought Paul Rudd, just
Speaker 1: in a surprising, you know, deeply character driven role. And
Speaker 1: then for the journalist Michael Ridle, I would pick possibly.
Speaker 2: Oh what about Nathan Lane.
Speaker 1: Nathan Lane would be great. Oh my god, but he
Speaker 1: has had such Broadway energy. I mean it was almost
Speaker 1: almost too small of.
Speaker 5: A part for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, so how.
Speaker 1: About Matthew Brodericks.
Speaker 2: Just keep it Broadway, I mean, keep it Broadway Broderick
Speaker 2: can play it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. So there you go. There's my casting.
Speaker 5: Did you have a Glenn Berger, the guy who wrote
Speaker 5: the book.
Speaker 1: I thought Glen Burger should play Glenn Burger. He was
Speaker 1: so good as himself. He's the one. Like it's like
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson has to play Jackie Robinson in the movie.
Speaker 1: Glenn Burger plays Glenn Berger.
Speaker 2: I think I'm Mike Glenn Burger. I was picturing like
Speaker 2: a Bill hatern Bill Hater with glasses, you know, when
Speaker 2: Bill Hater wears glasses.
Speaker 5: I like that call though, Yeah, did anyone have any
Speaker 5: other tangent on a run through?
Speaker 1: I did have one thing, which was I tried to imagine, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're this theater kid. You want to go
Speaker 1: to Broadway, right, You've always dreamed of like being on Broadway.
Speaker 1: You're this dancer. Then eventually you get there, right, and
Speaker 1: then what happens? Some tech comes up to you and
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, hey, you know those cameras they got
Speaker 1: these days that fly over the football field and they
Speaker 1: got all those cables and motors like you. They guys like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what if we did that with you? And the guy's like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? Like that's our plan? You're gonna
Speaker 1: love it? Like this is you get the Broadway. And
Speaker 1: then if it's not that, then you like, let's say
Speaker 1: you're one of the dancers who falls, right, So then yeah,
Speaker 1: you're worried you're gonna be buried and just in a
Speaker 1: Spider Man costume because they can't get it off your
Speaker 1: body because the bones or whatever. It's just like a
Speaker 1: tragic scene. I'm like, these poor dancers, they had a
Speaker 1: dream and then it turned into this.
Speaker 5: I did like listening to the dancer Bethany explaining what
Speaker 5: it was like totally the audition call, Like, even in
Speaker 5: the midst of the bad headlines, this was the biggest
Speaker 5: thing on Broadway. Of course you take that call.
Speaker 2: Oh, I would do it today if they were like Dane,
Speaker 2: We're doing a revival of Spider Man Turned off the Drug?
Speaker 2: Do you want to audition? Is a dancer? I don't
Speaker 2: even know how to dance, And I'm like, I am
Speaker 2: in that room that show. I'll be a Rackney in
Speaker 2: the first version.
Speaker 1: Do it do all the shoes totally less dancing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you know what I kind of wish I
Speaker 2: kind of wish we could have gotten Julie Taymoor's fully
Speaker 2: unadulterated circus vision, like taking place in like a crazy
Speaker 2: site specific tent.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that would have been great.
Speaker 1: Also, I was thinking about when they're having all their difficulties,
Speaker 1: you know that people like in Vegas and Circuslay were like,
Speaker 1: call me, I can help you with this, Like we
Speaker 1: do this all the time.
Speaker 5: This is what we do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, call us.
Speaker 5: None of us saw this show, But have either of
Speaker 5: you ever seen anything insane happen in live theater?
Speaker 1: I've never seen like an actor get arrested on stage
Speaker 1: or anything that wild. But like, I've seen the audience
Speaker 1: do some wild stuff, like you know, really poorly behaving
Speaker 1: audience members, not just like you know, way past answering
Speaker 1: a phone call, like getting in a food fight with
Speaker 1: like you know, with the drinks that they should not
Speaker 1: even have in the theater.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: So I've seen that, but it doesn't feel like that's
Speaker 1: not the actors. I feel like I'm associating.
Speaker 2: All right, you want to hear my crazy story?
Speaker 1: Yes, have you seen?
Speaker 2: Did you end up seeing The Music Man with Sutton
Speaker 2: Foster and Hugh Jackman two times? So here's the thing,
Speaker 2: and you'll know there's a scene in that and you're like,
Speaker 2: star power, Hugh Jackman, Son Foster, what charisma. There's a
Speaker 2: scene I think in the second act, and it's sort
Speaker 2: of a slow scene where he pushes her or she
Speaker 2: pushes him, and they break like they make the joke
Speaker 2: that like she pushed him a little too hard, and
Speaker 2: then Hugh Jackman sort of steps out a character and
Speaker 2: is like, ah, what's that thing? You're like, Oh, that's
Speaker 2: so charming. We get this like winning movie star moment.
Speaker 2: How casual we got the show where they broke. They
Speaker 2: do that every single show. They build in in the
Speaker 2: rehearsals of the show. They built in a moment to
Speaker 2: break specifically, so it feels special and intimate for the audience.
Speaker 5: The first time I saw it it was so endearing,
Speaker 5: and then, like I said, I saw it twice thought, Ah,
Speaker 5: these they're just really good.
Speaker 1: Actors, brilliant. That is so amazing.
Speaker 2: They're such good acting. He truly is the greatest showman.
Speaker 1: I can totally see that.
Speaker 5: That says it all. On another high flying adventure here
Speaker 5: on the Very Special Episodes podcast. We'll be back next week.
Speaker 2: See you next week.
Speaker 5: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 5: This episode was written by Joe Kenosian Broadway Joe. We
Speaker 5: call him more on him in a Moment. Our producer
Speaker 5: is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by Chris Childs.
Speaker 5: Additional editing by Emily Meredof. Story editors are Josh Fisher
Speaker 5: and Marissa Brown. Mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Original
Speaker 5: music by Elise McCoy, Research in fact checking by Austin
Speaker 5: Thompson and Joe Kenosian. Show logo by Lucy Kintonia Very
Speaker 5: Special Episodes is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett, and
Speaker 5: me Jason English. I am your executive producer and we'll
Speaker 5: see you back here next Wednesday. If you like today's episode,
Speaker 5: go check out a show called Let's Start a Coup
Speaker 5: the plot against FDR. That was a six episode series
Speaker 5: co written and co hosted by Joe Kenosian, who wrote
Speaker 5: today's story. Lots of character voices. It feels like a play.
Speaker 5: We ever take that to our first call is the Edge.
Speaker 5: Very Special Episodes is the production of iHeart Podcasts.