EBB: [
laughing
] That might have been fun, huh?
KANDER: Of course we said no. We kept getting these requests from Harvey to meet with us because I guess Harvey feels he can talk anybody into anything. We continued to say no. Sam Cohn, who was chortling with joy at this point, called back to tell Harvey no, and he reached Harvey’s second-in-command or assistant. Sam said, “No, the guys do not want to meet with Harvey.” This is like the definition of what happens with a powerful one-man organization like Miramax. The response was a tremulous “Well, Harvey’s not going to like that.” But we were finally able to prevent anyone else’s song from being in the credits.
EBB: Being played over the credits can make a song eligible for an Academy Award nomination. This is a new rule. Even though it’s not in the body of the picture, if an original song plays over the end credits, it is eligible. None of our other songs were eligible, because they were already in the stage version.
KANDER: Yes, they decided that they wanted a new song especially for the movie, to play over the credits so they would have something for Academy Award consideration. I have two words for that: Ha! But we did write a new song, “I Move On,” at the request of the director, Rob Marshall, and the screenwriter, Bill Condon, to replace the song “Nowadays.”
EBB: Or, actually, to come after “Nowadays” and run over the credits. Then they wanted “I Move On” to end the movie.
KANDER: It was a last-minute scramble because they wasted so much time trying to talk us into sitting around the kitchen table with Janet Jackson. Originally, the bows in the movie were taken over the overture. When it turned out that for a song to be eligible for an Oscar it had to be the first thing that you hear after the movie is over, I had to write an orchestral piece for the bows based on the song “I Move On.” You would have to listen very carefully to know that the final piece is based on that song that runs over the credits, but it is and that is what makes it eligible. I don’t think we actually have a prayer to get an Academy Award, for a good reason. Harvey is going to push hard for the song by U2 from
Gangs of New York,
which Miramax also produced. For the same reason I would be very surprised if Rob Marshall gets an Academy Award because Harvey is going to push hard for Scorsese. That’s a hundred-million-plus movie, and not a particularly well-received film, so Harvey is going to fight for that one to get the directing and original-song awards.
Chicago
cost about half as much as
Gangs
to make. A lot of this has to do with Hollywood politics and tells you a little bit about that mentality. I don’t think of it as malicious. What they did may be stupid and tasteless, but I don’t think they were doing it to say, “Now we’re going to do this with the music, and the songwriters are going to be miserable.”
EBB: It had nothing to do with Kander and Ebb. It was all about marketing and selling a movie that cost millions of dollars. Behind the scenes it was a very complicated, terrible story and a great pity that the whole thing happened, between Janet Jackson and even our credit at the end of the movie. Originally, we were not high in the credits. Music and lyrics appeared far down on the list. That was a struggle to have changed. The lovely part for us now is that the movie is being recognized and is so well received, and for that we can only be wildly grateful. But the way the song was treated and the way we were treated personally—that was not a pleasant experience.
KANDER: We weren’t badly treated so much as not treated. The best thing about it was that both Rob and Bill Condon were very solicitous about our feelings as far as the direction and writing.
EBB: They were both perfect gentlemen. Everything in the movie besides “I Move On” was also in the show. But there are songs in the show like “Class” that are not in the movie. “A Little Bit of Good” and “My Own Best Friend” were also left out of the movie.
KANDER: Every song that’s not there in the movie is not there for a dramatic reason. There was no other consideration. After all their push to have us write a song for sixteen-year-olds, it turns out that “All That Jazz” has become so popular that they are releasing that song as the single. For some reason, this album has skyrocketed.
EBB: It’s been quite extraordinary in every way. If you were looking to have a last laugh, here it is. But I’m getting surprisingly little satisfaction. I’m delighted but it’s been so hard and tough. I’m not enjoying it as much.
KANDER: We differ on that a little. I get more fun out of it than you do. I’m conditioned to get more fun out of things than you are. When Albert and I were on our way to Washington to be with Chita for her Kennedy Center Honor last year, we arrived the night before, and I had been saying on the plane that at least we were going to be away from any telephone calls from Miramax. After arriving, I went into the shower, and when I came out there were two calls from Miramax and one from Sam Cohn about this soundtrack song.
“Love Is a Crime” sung by Anastacia went on the soundtrack even though it’s not in the movie. That’s what those calls were about, to let us know that even with our refusal to allow the song on the soundtrack, they were going to go ahead and include it anyway. Finally, when I called Sam back, I asked the crucial question: “Is there anything that we can do legally to stop it?” He
said, “No,” and at that point, we realized that we had done our best and couldn’t prevent it from happening, so we let it go. I think Harvey had made a commitment to the guy that was running Sony at the time to allow them to use this song on the album. His name was Tommy Mottola. I think a lot of the monetary support came from Sony, and when this happened with the soundtrack, I think almost immediately Tommy Mottola was let go from Sony. So the person to whom Harvey had made the commitment was no longer in charge of Sony. It was all very baroque.
EBB: I am thrilled to hear about the record hitting the charts, but I don’t have the kind of joy I would have had otherwise if all this hadn’t happened along the way. But it did happen and I don’t have the charity in me to forget it. I mean, there were endless phone calls just to have our names appear where they should have been in the first place. Our position came down to what Miramax was required to do to acknowledge the music in the credits. We were in the twenty-eighth position on the end credit. We fought and fought and eventually moved up to twelve. Words and music in a movie musical like that where so much of it is the score? There was too much anguish for me to get over it easily.
KANDER: One of the great joys with the success of this movie for me goes back to the original reception for
Chicago,
which was critically mixed, if anything. The fact that the piece has made its journey relatively intact over twenty-seven years to a point where it has suddenly become such a phenomenon, I think that’s delicious.
EBB: It’s astonishing. You know what’s funny, I rarely buy or read
The New Yorker
, but at Christmas I received a subscription, and the very first issue that came had the review of the movie, and it was one of the very few bad reviews. I happen to think it was an idiotic review written by a man who didn’t seem to know his ass from his elbow. But it was a bad review nevertheless.
KANDER: One of the other bad reviews of the movie was in
Variety,
and it reminded me of the original review in
Variety
of
Cabaret
on the stage, part of which I committed to memory: “It is unlikely there will be much of an audience for this sort of thing.”
EBB: Reviews like that are kind of notorious, aren’t they? They are history-making when they’re so wrong. The longer I live, the more convinced I am that you just have to get over things, when things go wrong or people disappoint you. You need to get over bad reviews. As Cher said when she slapped Nicolas Cage’s face in
Moonstruck,
“Snap out of it!”
KANDER: That was a marvelous moment, and just when he said, “I love you.”
EBB: You get over death, you get over love, and you go on. Listen to me. [
laughing
] I’m the old philosopher now.
Colored Lights
R
ecently, Kander and Ebb contributed new songs to Liza Minnelli’s comeback tour and to a workshop for a new musical,
Curtains,
undertaken for the Nederlander Organization. This show was written by Peter Stone and is being directed by Scott Ellis. The songwriters also worked on regional tryouts of
Over & Over
(Joseph Stein’s adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s
The Skin of Our Teeth)
and
The Visit
(Terrence McNally’s adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play). Directed by Frank Galati and starring Chita Rivera,
The Visit
received encouraging notices during its run at Chicago’s Goodman Theater in the fall of 2001.
The Visit
had originally been scheduled to open on Broadway the year before with Angela Lansbury in the lead, but the star had to withdraw because of her husband’s failing health. It was then scheduled to open with Chita Rivera at the Public Theater in New York early in 2004, but that run was also delayed. At the time that Kander and Ebb conversed about this project and the current state of Broadway, they had not yet been able to find a theater for the show. The musical was at first considered too dark to be commercial. A macabre comedy of revenge, the book tells the story of Claire Zachanassian, the wealthiest woman in the world, who returns to her hometown after many years and tempts the impoverished townspeople with an offer of money for the murder of a man who once disgraced her.
EBB: Nobody wanted to do
The Visit
after Angela Lansbury left. The producer, Barry Brown, had raised eight and a half million dollars on Angela’s name, so we had to replace Angela with a name of similar stature. Glenn Close turned us down and Judi Dench couldn’t do it. It turned out that Shirley MacLaine also had a conflict, though she was interested at first. Years ago I worked on the TV special
Gypsy in My Soul
with Shirley more or less by myself. You weren’t directly involved in that show.
KANDER: No, I wasn’t. You liked Shirley, didn’t you?
EBB: I thought she and the show were terrific. She was funny. She was real and genuine. She embraced the gypsies on the show, and they loved her. It was a joy to work with Shirley, and we laughed incessantly. For reasons I don’t remember, she started calling me “My Little Something.” She would say, “Hello, Little Something,” and I knew that was me.
Shirley kept in touch with me over the years, and when we were first working on
The Visit
and Angela Lansbury decided not to do it, Shirley somehow got hold of the script. Obviously, she was offered the part, but you and I knew nothing about that until she called and left me a message saying, “Little Something, you’ve done it again.
The Visit
is a masterpiece.” I kept the tape so I would always have that recording. She went on to say, “This show is brilliant. It’s marvelous. It creates a terrific problem in my life because in order to do it I’ll have to give up some other projects I had planned on doing, but it will probably be worth it because the show is just great. Can I meet with you?”
We both happened to be in California. So I called her back and we went to dinner, a Chinese meal in Beverly Hills. She was all into this project. She knew that we didn’t quite have the money yet, and now that Angela was not doing it, raising
the money might be a problem. Of course, Shirley knew that if she did it we could raise that money overnight. I told her I thought the best thing she could do was come to New York to meet the director, Frank Galati, and the writer, Terrence McNally. She agreed that she would come to New York, and we parted that night wonderful friends, hugging and kissing in my driveway.
Now a week passes. The Democratic Convention came to Los Angeles, and Shirley was all over the papers. She was at all the meetings, all the rallies and fund-raisers, but nowhere was there any indication that she would be going to New York. In the meantime, I had told our producer that I thought she was going to do the show, and naturally we were thrilled because Shirley’s name would generate the money for us. At last a phone call came. She told me, “Fred, two projects—not one but two-with which I have been involved have finally found financing and are go projects. I feel that since I developed them with the writers, I owe it to them to stay here and work on these projects. So I’ll have to pass on
The Visit.”
I thought that was such a capricious change of heart. But as it turned out later, you said that you were not in favor of casting Shirley anyway.
KANDER: I just didn’t think she was right for the role.
EBB: She might or might not have been good in the part. I guess we will never know now.
KANDER: It would have been a different show. I remember meeting her once—was it at your house or Liza’s house?
EBB: Mine.
KANDER: You introduced us, and Shirley looked me up and down and said, “You’re not in show business, are you?” I didn’t know what to say at first. I sort of understood what she meant, and I said, “I guess not.” She was perfectly pleasant, but she had me sized me up really fast. To paint a different kind of star picture, after working with Angela Lansbury on
The Visit
, I think Angie is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met. None of that
big deal attitude, nothing even remotely flaky. We had a splendid time with her, and then her reason for not doing the show in the end was the best reason in the world.
EBB: I couldn’t agree with you more.
KANDER: Her husband, Peter Shaw, was very ill and they had been married more than fifty years. She was not going to allow herself to be away from him for more than two weeks.
EBB: I supported that move, but at the same time my heart was breaking. I still think she did the right thing.
KANDER: During our weeks with her, there was not a single moment of “I can do whatever I want.”
EBB: I never experienced that with Shirley either. I adore her, but I was disappointed in the way she dropped the project.
KANDER: I was relieved. We were going to have a star-controlled show, and that made me not look forward to it.
EBB: But everything has worked out for the best.
KANDER: Chita Rivera is the definition of Claire in
The Visit.
She is the perfect person to play that role. We started this project before Angie was involved, and in my mind it was never a piece that was being written specifically for her. Not that she’s not a terrific lady or wouldn’t have been wonderful. There were three people that I always thought could really play the part. One was Angie, one was Judi Dench, and one was Chita. I still feel that way. Glenn Close was talked about, and I heard names of other people who were approached, people who I thought were all wrong for it. As far as I’m concerned, we got one of my top three performers and nobody will ever be better in this part than Chita. She gives the performance of a lifetime.
EBB: Oh, it was bliss working with Chita, and she gives as good a performance as I’ve ever seen her give. The production at the Goodman Theater was a lovely experience for us even though the World Trade Center disaster happened while we were in Chicago and during that time I was going in and out of the
hospital. But the show was terrific and the direction flawless. It is a show where whether it works now or not—which we are about to find out—you can have no regrets. You can’t look back and say—
KANDER: Somebody did us in. Nobody’s doing us in on this show.
EBB: No, not a gripe in the world from me. We’ve waited and now we’re coming in with what may be a truly sterling production. It will be up there, and if they like it, they like it. But the theater has changed so much that producers can’t take the kind of chances that were once taken with us.
Flora
was a big flop, and I doubt that if today we wrote a
Flora
we could then bounce into a
Cabaret.
We will get on with
The Visit,
but we still have to wait in line, and if Billy Joel comes up with a rock musical, he may get a theater before us.
2
KANDER: It may take us longer to get a show on these days—
EBB: How much longer can it take? My God, it’s already been two years. I had wanted to come right in.
KANDER: Being impatient is one thing.
EBB: [
langhing
] Another one of my virtues.
KANDER: Considering the way Broadway is today, I have to agree with Steve Sondheim when he says that
The Lion King
is not a show that makes him want to write. I don’t go to see
The Lion King
and then suddenly find I can’t wait to dash home to work with you.
EBB: No, not like when you went to see
Pajama Game
and you wanted to write like Adler and Ross, or you saw
Guys and Dolls
and you wanted nothing more in the world than to write like Frank Loesser.
KANDER: Or
Forum
. I don’t despair about the changes on Broadway the way that Steve does because I think some people from our generation are still writing, along with younger new talents, and there is room for all of us. However, I think more than anything else the financial character of Broadway has changed to such an extent that it’s only the most commercial kind of enterprise that can get on, like when you have people who have as much money as Disney has. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but if
Cabaret
were a brand-new show and if Hal wanted to do it today, even with all his clout he would have a terrible time getting it on.
EBB: You know what I miss? The atmosphere of working in the theater as it used to be. For the most part, that’s gone. There is more tension now and enormous pressure to succeed.
KANDER: I think that is true not so much in rehearsal but in the business of the theater. When we started working with Hal and Mr. Abbott, a musical could open for $150,000, play a year, and make its money back. Everything didn’t have to be an event and there were producers who actually produced. It used to be that there were a lot of tryout cities for shows that were bound for Broadway. New Haven. Boston. Atlantic City during the thirties. It’s a different system now. Almost everything that comes to Broadway these days has been done first at either a regional theater or an Off-Broadway house, rather than starting out as a production on the road destined for Broadway that goes to several cities.
EBB: The mechanics of getting a show on is entirely different now, as is raising money.
KANDER: There’s a big difference between the two systems. When you did a show that was destined for Broadway, you did the production that would go into a Broadway house, and you would play in relatively Broadway-like theaters out of town. Now when you go to a regional theater or a place like the Manhattan Theater Club, everything is much smaller, and so it can’t be exactly
destined for Broadway. You can’t do a big musical this way. You could not do
The Producers
at a place like the Manhattan Theater Club.
EBB: It’s all so very corporate now. You don’t have the independent, gutsy producers like Hal Prince anymore.
KANDER: I don’t want this to sound like one of those “good old days” laments because I don’t feel that way about most of life. But a great deal has changed between the conglomerates and the enormous expense of doing anything on Broadway. Today when you have a two-man show and you have an award for the producers, fifty producers walk up on the stage. I miss the easy vitality of the theater that we went into. Oddly enough, I don’t think we lack talent. There’s always new talent coming up. But the atmosphere has changed. It stems from the business because for investors to get their money back, a show now has to run for years at capacity in a theater that’s often much too large for the material, and that’s a shame. I miss the fact that Hal could write to his investors and say, “I’m doing a new show budgeted at such and such. Do you want to come in with me?” And they would support him without even knowing necessarily what it was.
EBB: Yes, even if there were no stars. Now investors look for stars. Television names. Movie names. That didn’t seem to mean anything before.
KANDER: But the fact is that a show that would have cost $150,000 then now costs $8 or $9 million. I mean, millions of dollars! So when critics write about the theater and say, “What’s happened? Where are all the great talents that we used to have?” the answer is, they’re all over the place, but where do they get a chance to work?
EBB: It is dismaying for me to see something like
Mamma Mia
and have to wonder where is everything we’ve ever learned about the theater. Why has so much of that gone out the window?
KANDER: I didn’t react as badly as you did to that show. I
didn’t think it was all that wonderful, but I saw it as a mindless happy time for the audience.
EBB: And a million dollars gross a week. Mindless is not necessarily good. Mindless used to be
Lend an Ear
or
Touch and Go.
That kind of smart “new faces” revue. It was never this kind of empty-headed dumbness that we see so much these days.
KANDER: There was plenty of empty-headed, Freddy.
EBB: But that was all that succeeded last season. It wasn’t like at the same time we had a
Guys and Dolls
or one of those.