Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History (32 page)

Julie called me minutes later. She was sweetness and light. She wanted me to talk to Rob, to make sure the design team was working
on the “Arachne decals” that she wanted the Geeks to affix to the Geek Wall over the course of the show. And she wanted me to talk to Edge about revisions to the lyrics. “Because Edge doesn’t listen to me anymore,” she said resignedly.

No. She didn’t mention any recent telephone calls she might have had. No mention of a cataclysmic call from her producer just minutes ago in which she was asked to leave the show.

Nope. Instead she described the decal: a spider logo with an “A” above it, about a foot wide, red against a black background. . . .

Did I dream Michael’s call? Was Julie in denial? Or as Riedel reported the day before, was she just truly exhausted? As soon as she entered a rehearsal room, all the vitality was there. But that’s the thing about exhaustion—it doesn’t stop you cold. Not at first. What exhaustion might do first is convert your passion into a mania, sending you trudging down an increasingly narrow tunnel, where perspective sloughs away and clear-eyed self-assessment goes out the window. By late February, not just Julie but all of us were like Tom Simpson trundling wobbily up Mont Ventoux in the 1967 Tour de France. “Go on, go on,” he said, not realizing he was going to die before reaching the top of the hill.

At any rate, Julie had stopped listening to Michael Cohl. She believed any “softening” of
Spider-Man
ticket sales could be attributed to Michael’s Broadway inexperience. He was botching the marketing, just like Sony botched it with
Across the Universe
. She was making passionate appeals to me: “If we don’t stick together, Michael is going to sink the show.”

But that night, as I was being driven back to my apartment from the theatre, Michael and Jere revealed that we were to meet at Edge’s apartment tomorrow to interview Phil McKinley. Jere said, “Glen, there are people who say your loyalty is with Julie. That we shouldn’t trust you, because you’re a double agent in all this.”

I tried and failed to think of a good response. Protesting to these guys in the car that I wasn’t a double agent would make it sound like my loyalties lay with
them
. I didn’t like that, either. It made me sound like a turncoat. I recognized this role, but I was miscast. It was the same role played by Judas (which Julie would be calling me regularly to her friends come April). Except if I was Judas, that made Julie Taymor Jesus Christ, the Lord Our Savior, when we were just a couple of folks working on a play. But then, why did I feel like I needed a shower?
Because, justify it all you want—but your dear friend is in peril and you’ve given up trying to save her.
We reached my apartment.

“So we’ll see you tomorrow,” Jere said as I got out of the car. He then added, with a crowbar in his voice, “And keep your mouth
shut
.” And with that, he slammed the car door. The SUV drove away.

And I was alone.

“Perverting my upstanding studies, converting counselors into renegades . . . he confederates with the king of Naples . . .”

To think she once had such faith in me, she commissioned me to rewrite William Effing Shakespeare. . . .

•     •     •

Philip William McKinley was in Edge’s TriBeCa apartment describing himself to Michael, Edge, Jere, and me as “a team player” and “a people person”—traits that he stressed would be ever so important during this “transition” in order to keep the company intact. He saw the show, and he read Plan X, and agreed that it was the sensible way to proceed. Phil touted his extensive experience with flying systems and large-scale theatre machinery. Although Phil had only one Broadway credit, he directed seven different productions of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
He had thrown up plenty of elaborate shows in just three weeks. And he had worked with tigers, elephants, fire, and alcoholic little people, so he was confident he could handle whatever
Spider-Man
threw at him.

In Edge’s former apartment, fifty-two months ago, Tony Adams slipped into a coma. I was looking at Phil describing his ideas to change Julie Taymor’s staging, and I couldn’t imagine what Tony would have said about all this. Just who
was
this guy who thought he could step into Julie’s shoes? Did he understand he wasn’t to tamper with the Taymor aesthetic? “It would always be about serving Julie’s vision,” Phil insisted.

Edge wanted time to consider. There would come the day when the new director would be introduced to the
Turn Off the Dark
company. The first impression needed to inspire confidence and hope because otherwise it would inspire rebellion. Michael reminded us that we didn’t have the luxury of time to deliberate. The new opening date needed to be announced within the week. But in the meantime, Michael said he had apprised Julie’s lawyer, Seth, of the situation. Michael confirmed that George Tsypin, Rob Bissinger, and—significantly—Danny Ezralow were all “on our team.”

“Okay,” wrote Edge. “Wait for the fireworks.”

And so there we were. On the brink of actually going through with an unprecedented restructuring of a Broadway show. And then?

I got wobbly
. It started because the show that night—with my much-improved Geek scene, and new curtain call music devised by Paul Bogaev—worked maddeningly better than I had ever seen it work. And then, backstage after the show, I took the temperature of the cast, and they were all anticipating the opening on March 15 with such eagerness it hurt. The producers waited too
long to make a move. There would be morale collapse and defections if Michael postponed again.

Seth Gelblum was arranging a meeting,
a very serious meeting,
at his offices on Saturday morning. Bono wouldn’t be able to attend—he didn’t come back to New York until the following Tuesday. But I entreated Edge, Michael, and Jere in an e-mail to see the show before the meeting. Because maybe we had no choice but to go with the show we had. I swore to them that Julie now seemed amenable to cuts and a certain amount of rewriting. In other words,
she was listening
.

Upon reading my note, Michael Cohl got livid. “If you write another e-mail like that, you’ll be in some deep shit. In fact, we’ll
all
be in deep shit.” He said the ovation the night before was still “our same old ‘popcorn standing ovation’—
poof!
and it’s over.”

Miramax mogul Harvey Weinstein (a former partner of Michael’s and producer of Julie’s
Frida
) had recently given Michael some advice: “Julie’s a genius, and you don’t have to listen to her.” It took a simultaneously magnanimous, arrogant, and pragmatic son of a bitch to come up with that calculation. But judging by Michael’s attitude over the past two weeks, he had embraced it. Our show was blowing past the old Broadway record for most previews because of Michael’s commitment to get Julie’s vision to the stage. But that commitment was coming to an end.

Nevertheless, Michael agreed to attend the show that night. Edge too. It was another full house. I sat next to Julie, who seemed to understand how much was riding on this performance. The direction of the next morning’s decisive meeting depended on the audience’s reaction tonight.

And it was the most technically disastrous show since December. Midway through “Spider-Man’s Debut,” one of those Murphy’s Law grouses showed up. The “rotate line” got hung up
on the “rotate arm.” First time that ever happened. A frustrated audience experienced
TurnOfftheDarkus Interruptus,
watching an empty stage for
twenty minutes
before Randall made the decision to disable the fly rig and cancel most of the flights in the show.

Not that I stuck around to endure it. Five minutes into the twenty-minute stop, I fled downstairs. Julie followed. So now we were alone in the little assistant director’s room as an audience of two thousand sat upstairs watching absolutely nothing.

She looked at me with an inscrutable expression. “So let’s have it.”

The voice she selected for this occasion was her special reserve blend of contempt and sarcasm, with notes of suppressed fury. Not my favorite.

“Plan X. Tell me the whole thing.”

It was the first time I ever heard her say “Plan X.” She made the phrase sound as stupid as the phrase actually was. She asked me again, but I didn’t understand the question. She had already read the entire thing, so why was she insisting I recite it, other than to be dickish?

“You
do
know at this meeting tomorrow you’re going to have to defend your ‘plan.’ Michael and Jere are ready to shut down the show to do your ‘plan.’ So let’s have it.”

“I really don’t want to do this now.”

“If you believe in your ‘plan’ so much—”

“I’m not—prepared—at this exact moment—”

“Well, we’re
all
talking about it tomorrow, so you better
get
prepared. Really. I would like to know where ‘everyone’ thinks this show should be going. Don’t you think I’m owed that much?”

Why was she pretending to be so thick? She read it! She told me so! Over a week ago!

She said if the opening was postponed again, T. V. and Reeve
would both bolt, “so good luck finding another Arachne and Peter.”

I didn’t doubt they’d quit. Reeve had never really shaken out of his funk that began the night Chris Tierney fell. And both he and T. V. were devoted to Julie, for good reasons. The chances were high they’d do what she asked them to do.

I started with the beginning of the show, how it was basically the same, but she interrupted almost immediately and methodically dismantled my logic. With a lot of stuttering, I responded that maybe I should skip to the second act, and describe that first. She shook her head slowly, out of pity.
God, how this woman can intimidate me.
By the time I was five plot points in, she had shot fifty holes in the plan. Every word out of her mouth was actually saying,
“You’re out of your depth, boy. You got a taste of power but you’re just a callow mediocrity.”
You could insert the myth of Icarus here. Or Phaethon—the boy who took the reins of his father’s solar chariot but couldn’t control the flame-breathing horses, and who had to be killed by Zeus before he burned up the Earth.

I hadn’t actually
thought
about Plan X for almost two months. I mean sure I had thought about the fact of it, but
the details
? I could barely remember them. The plan had been in a state of suspended animation since January 8. For the last fifty days I had done nothing but do Julie’s bidding, clarify the big points of the plan to Edge, and urge people to have meetings that never transpired.

I was too unnerved to evaluate what Julie was saying. I couldn’t tell if she was using little more than specious reasoning and intimidation to dismantle my outline. But I
should
have been able to tell. I was unprepared for this, but
why
was I so unprepared? I realized, aghast, that I had pulled a “Sam” and, like that stagehand,
I skipped a crucial step. Ever since the day I first devised Plan X, I imagined three steps needed to be followed. Step One: Get the producers interested in a preliminary version of the plan. Step Two: Gather trusted Tech people and possibly an additional writer in a room to work out all the details. Step Three: Get the producers to pull the trigger.

And in this small, airless room, I was listening to my own stammering voice and realizing . . .
we skipped Step Two
. We hadn’t all met and worked out the details. And now
Turn Off the Dark
—this entire enterprise—was about to leap off the edge with its unclipped safety cable dragging behind it.

Where
was
I?

Julie was looking at me with her arms folded. She was wearing a smirk.

What IS this place? I have arrhythmia. My arms are prickling. I thought I was so smart. I was going to save the show. But there IS no show!
Spider-Man the Musical
was never
Spider-Man the Musical.
I see that now. It’s always been nothing more than a diabolical machine built by the gods to teach humility. And I’m trapped in the dead center of its workings . . .

I staggered out of the room, out of the building, and down the street. I wandered into a hotel lobby. It was late, but I called my agent, Joyce Ketay. When I called her excitedly back in 2005 to tell her how I had just landed this incredible Spider-Man gig, practically the first words out of her mouth were “Be careful what you wish for.” I was so mad at her. Could she
be
more of a downer? It was like having the Delphic oracle from
Oedipus Rex
for an agent. And now, almost six years later, it was like . . . having the Delphic oracle from
Oedipus Rex
for an agent.

She extracted enough from my agitated babble to get the lowdown. She said I shouldn’t be expected to defend anything at the
meeting the next day. “Plead the Fifth,” she said, because the meeting should really be between the producers and Julie as to how to proceed.

Plead the Fifth. I can do that
. I went back to the theatre, slightly calmer. The fubar-of-a-performance, which had just ended, had only strengthened Michael Cohl’s resolve to stop listening to Julie. I found him in the lobby.

“I can’t defend Plan X tomorrow.”

“Glen, no one’s asking you to defend anything.”

“Really?”

“You know what I think? I think you have battered-wife syndrome. Why else would you still be defending Julie? I think you’ve had your wings clipped for so long, you don’t even realize it. Go home. Get some sleep.
Stop writing e-mails
.”

I promised him. I was heading toward the door when Michael said one more thing to me.

“Glen.
How do you want to fail?
Because that’s what it comes down to. We’re not asking you to ‘defend’ anything. But you have to ask yourself how you want this thing to end. Do you want to be able to say we tried everything? Because if you want, we can just call it a day right now. So give whatever answer you want to give tomorrow. But it’s a simple question.
How do you want to fail?
”