Interview with the Producers Matt Weaver and Carl Levin

Transcription

1 Interview with the Producers Matt Weaver and Carl Levin You both have successfully produced motion pictures, why did you want to produce for the theater? MATT WEAVER: Well, Carl and I always had a passion for the material. You know, we think the 80s music will stand the test of time like Motown and Country it s a whole genre of music not a fad. Carl has little business background in terms of theater. But I think we were both purely passionate about this music and it felt like a logical choice to be up on the stage. CARL LEVIN: The process of creating live entertainment for the theater was much more enjoyable personally for both of us. For theater and Broadway we got to control the look and feel for how the marketing experience went down. But what made it more enjoyable is coming to the show each night and seeing the audience s reaction. You just don t get that jolt of energy when you re screening a film. Tell us about the struggle you had financing Rock of Ages. CARL: It was extremely stressful because Matt and I had a lot of passion for the material and we saw what the end product can be, but we didn t have a lot of followers until we opened on Broadway. People started to see that this was a great project. It was a lot of selfsacrifice Matt and I didn t take a salary for four years. We had to pay for the first production basically using our credit cards. The joke is I m now just starting to pay off some of those cards from four years ago. MATT: Carl would make a great American Express commercial, because we literally financed the first production by putting it on his Amex. CARL: When we were trying to raise money it was a bad time. Coming out of the last administration and going into the Barack Obama one there was a lot of uncertainty. And we were going around asking for millions of dollars and most people were saying no. I give credit to our two lead investors who believed in our project. They helped us get over the finish line. MATT: We knew what we had. The show had a history, some poor reviews and not a lot of traction early on. But the one consistent thing with the show is audiences always go crazy. We always knew that. I don t really blame people two years ago in the worst economy ever we were pitching a show that had White Snake and Poison in it. So I can understand on paper how it didn t look good. All the traditional theater investors in New York gave us the

2 Heisman [a rejection in the form of a stiff-arm like in the famous trophy]. You know, there are no hard feelings. The way great shows happen people get behind them and believe in them. We had blinders on. Again, we believed so passionately about the music that nothing that was going to stop us. Rock of Ages went from an L.A. nightclub to Vegas to Off-Broadway, why did you think it would work so well on Broadway and become the hit it has? What was the key? MATT: We felt these were Broadway songs. I mean, these are 80s rock songs, but if you listen to them they are emotional and they tell stories and they wear their heart on their sleeves. Half of our show is these big soaring power ballads. That was it. I think we just saw these songs as a perfect fit for Broadway. Where did you find book writer Chris D Arienzo, who wrote your very clever and funny script? MATT: Our director Kristin Hanggi found him. You know, Carl and I knew Kristin from L.A. She had done a show called Bare and we basically put this little CD together and gave it to Kristin. She had just finished directing The Pussycat Dolls Live on the Sunset Strip so she had that world on her brain. She was the one who said we should first do it at a nightclub. And she went out and found Chris D Arienzo. Have any of the rock stars whose songs you are using seen the show? CARL: We ve had a lot of support from the artists in the show. Early on, one of the things a producer, Janet Billig Rich, did was private presentations for many of the people in the industry and many times the artists would come along. I think in the beginning many of them wondered if we were going to make fun of their songs. As Matt says, we put these songs on a pedestal and the artists are getting a kick out of 30 years later hearing a song they wrote in a garage and never expected to be on Broadway! Or the Tony Awards, at Radio City, on the biggest stage in America in front of millions being transformed. Why should people who love Broadway musicals want to see Rock of Ages? CARL: We don t feel like outsiders, we offer them everything they can get in other shows. We think we have all those qualities in one show. We have a fantastic story, some of the most incredible songs of all time and we add an experience in the theater that I don t think a lot of other people have. It was very important that the show felt like a hybrid part rock n roll show, part theater experience and I don t think you get that in any other show on Broadway. But you walk into the Brooks Atkinson Theatre you know we ve got billboards throughout to make you feel like you re in Sunset Strip, you can order a drink in your seat, you re handed a lighter. We want everyone to have a good time. Pretty much the only rule is you can t talk during a book scene. But if you want to get up and sing or get up and dance you can do that. We think there s an experience and atmosphere inside our theater that you can t get anywhere else. MATT: I think for the theater purists, there s a reason we were nominated for a Tony for Best Musical because it is a very traditional book musical. If you look at a show like 42nd Street and put Rock of Ages in the same sentence you will probably see so many parallels. I mean, it s about a girl from a small town who comes to a big city to make it big. It is a love story with big, over the top production numbers. I m talking about both shows. I think our book writer was very smart on how he set the story in the decadent 1980s and his language is very

3 modern sometimes equated to a Judd Apatow movie. But the themes are universal, they re about love and pursuing your dreams and taking risks and making bad choices. What about people in the younger generation who don t usually see Broadway musicals why would they enjoy Rock of Ages? MATT: One of the biggest reasons they all know this music, and this was a discovery for us. I don t think we thought about younger people. When I say younger people I m talking about late teens and 20s, but they all know this music. They ve either heard their parents playing it for the last 20 years or they can see it every day on Rock Band or Guitar Hero. So that was a discovery for us. But if you come to the theater every night there are many, many people in that age range coming to the show and loving it. It s part rock concert, part theater experience. It just feels different. That s one of the most common things we hear from people, they walk into the Brooks Atkinson and it doesn t feel like a Broadway Show. Any name yet for audience members who keep returning to Rock of Ages? CARL: I think they ve just labeled themselves Groupies. We have this loyal base of super fan. Some people have come to the show 10 times, 20 times, 200 times. It s amazing to me because they have so much passion. Seeing it for the 200th time, they love it as much as their first. They are very vocal. They re on chat rooms, telling all the friends. We just love them. If you were to use one word, how would you describe Rock of Ages? MATT: Joyful, Exhilarating! CARL: Rock-tacular. What was the first play or musical you each saw? MATT: I think I might have seen Annie with Andrea McArdle. CARL: That s hilarious. That was also my first musical, to but it was at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles. What is your favorite musical of all time? CARL: Rock of Ages MATT: We love it. When I go to New York, I only go to see Rock of Ages! Interview with the Producers Janet Billig Rich and Hillary Weaver Hillary, you have produced many plays in Los Angeles, what got you interested in wanting to produce the rock musical Rock of Ages? HILLARY: I produced Pussycat Dolls Live on the Sunset Strip at the Roxy and it was an uber hit. Every hot celebrity came out to see it and it was the first time I could get my husband (producer Matt Weaver) to see something I produced without having to drag him. So that was really exciting, because finally I was sharing something with my husband and he was into it. So that kind of sparked it and the director was Kristin Hanggi, who became the director of Rock of Ages. So Rock of Ages was sort of born out of the Pussycat Dolls Show because we got to work at the Roxy for two months and got to know all the people that work at the rock club. So that was the impetus for the whole thing. And Matt, being in

4 the movie business, was just so excited about the idea. The thought of working with my husband really excited me so what can I say? - I LOVE to rock! Janet, you are an experienced music executive what got you interested in wanting to produce a stage musical? JANET: Well first, I love musical theater. And when Rock of Ages was being created they needed someone to clear the music and I have a music clearance business. But more than that, I ve worked with Matt Weaver for a number of years on many different projects so I quickly became enmeshed with the overall creative process of Rock of Ages. And as all the music in Rock of Ages is from many different artists, I became much more involved in the overall creative process. It s been a great ride and I ve been able to be part of an amazing team creating great musical theater by building upon all my experience and relationships from twenty years of working in the music business. Hillary, you ve produced a lot of plays in Los Angeles, what s the difference between producing in L.A. and producing on Broadway and now a national tour? HILLARY: Well, number one: audiences actually come to New York to see shows. In Los Angeles it is a bit more challenging. I enjoy the process of observing and seeing what makes the Broadway world tick. Janet, what has been the difference for you from working on a rock show and working on a stage musical? JANET: There are so many differences it s astounding. We ve been at this for five years and still every week we say to ourselves, This isn t how it s done in rock. The theater world operates under its own set of rules, ones that have evolved from a very long time ago. In the rock music world, it much more free form, with if it feels right, let s try this, but in the theater world the process is much more rigid. I like to think that Rock of Ages has brought some rock sensibility to the theater world. HILLARY: Yes, there were so many times we wanted to do something cool or outside of the box and Janet and I were considered going rogue. It was simple things like, let s take a picture of the band and they would come back to us and say that picture is going to cost you $12 thousand dollars. And Janet and I would think, in our world we could have done that for two hundred bucks. We just didn t understand how important it was to follow the union and their rules coming in. JANET: There aren t rules in the rock world like that. No template that you have to follow. Why do you think these rock songs of the 1980s work so well to tell a story? Did you know this was going to work? JANET: We knew from the beginning it was going to work. If you look at the world of 80s bands it was very theatrical from the spectacle of their concerts to the dramatic stories the lyrics tell. Ironically, this wasn t the music that I listened to back then, but these songs really were the soundtrack of the times. And now you see how much of the cultural fabric it was and still is as you hear it in stores, the radio and across the media in advertising. So I was really a perfect test case. Even if you didn t rock it out with big hair in 1987 the songs still resonate with you today. That s why we all knew that this would be the perfect music for a Broadway musical.

5 HILLARY: These songs affect people in such a visceral way --- these are the songs that several generations have grown up listening to. So you went to your prom, you heard them when you had your first kid, the first song you played in your rock band. You had Family Rock Guitar Night and these were the songs you played. So it affects people of so many different generations and that s what connects with our audience. The show s really great and the dancing is a ten. The costumes are a ten. And the look of the show is a ten. Then you combine all that with the songs that are so effective emotionally, it gets people going. What makes Rock of Ages different than other jukebox musicals? JANET: Well for one reason we really are a jukebox with music from so many different artists. There s no slogging through the b sides, our show is all the hits. Yet, there was a struggle to finance the Broadway production. Why do think that happened? HILLARY: Because on paper it didn t look good. JANET: And we had to overcome something. Because this period of music sometimes isn t given the respect that other times get. Maybe because it s hard to take a guy in spandex with huge hair seriously. But the simple fact from the very beginning is that when the audience sees it they go crazy. The vibe is infectious. What the book writer Chris D Arienzo did was to turn these songs on their head. Musically, we ve always stayed really authentic to the rock we ve never gotten cheesy with it. We ve always been so clear that this is a rock show. It s got to feel and be authentic. Our players have always played it real, so I think that s why it really connects with people. Janet, was it a challenge getting the rights to all these hit songs you use in the show? JANET: Absolutely. None of the negotiations was easy. You re talking about each song for each artist it s most likely their biggest song and it s the jewel in their crown so for Styx, for Journey, for Pat Benatar, for Night Ranger, for Whitesnake, for REO Speedwagon. We wanted to use their biggest songs ever. So while the band may or may not be relevant today these artists and songwriters still know the value of their songs. To give those songs to us which at the time was an unknown quality we could make a joke of them, they didn t know and as Hillary pointed out Rock of Ages doesn t read well on paper. Your first communication with these artists is often an or a phone call trying to explain that the show is going to be great it s going to be awesome. I m sure people have said that about some giant failures in the past. The challenge for us was getting people to come out and see what we were doing which is why we had so many workshops early on. Once we got people in the room we always got approval. We never had anyone deny us once they saw one of our workshops. And was Broadway always your goal? HILLARY: Well, it was always my goal. I might not have verbalized it, but I always knew. Of course, we talked about Broadway five years ago before it happened. JANET: But I remember saying years ago, We re taking Whitesnake to Broadway Journey s going to Broadway. They ve always belonged on Broadway, they re so theatrical. We d say that all the time to keep ourselves hyped-up, especially when we were talking to people especially rock people. I feel like believing it made it happen.

6 HILLARY: I knew from my experience you can t make it unless you make it in New York. You re not going to have a national tour, a world tour from my experience that was the road that you were actually supposed to take. Hillary, your director, Kristin Hanggi made her Broadway directing debut with Rock of Ages. Where did you discover her? HILLARY: In 2001, Kristin Hanggi and I were total theater rats at the Hudson Theater and I was producing a play that Mark Ruffalo was directing and it was kind of a big thing in this 99- seat theater. At our theater we shared a wall with the musical Bare and it was being directed by this wunderkind, a 22-year-old who just graduated from UCLA. Their haze always seeped into our theater, so at first we didn t like them, but after our first meeting in the back alley of the theatre, we got each other immediately and from that point on we worked together four times before Rock of Ages. She is definitely part of my family. And throughout all the years of development, she remained your director HILLARY: We re loyalists. Kristin put blood, sweat and tears into Rock of Ages not getting paid more than pennies. We saw what she put up on stage and she delivered every single time. Why bring someone else in when we knew that what she did was great? It s not being loyal to someone because you know them, it s being loyal because they deliver every single time 110 percent. I ve been working with Kristin since 2001 and I did everything in my power to get her to Broadway. When she got the Tony nomination (for best director of a musical), I cried. She was a first-time director going to Broadway and the Big Money People in New York wanted us to hire a more experienced director. Sometimes you ve got to put your money on the newbie. There are some more experienced directors who might be successful and win awards, but they might not be right for your project. To go with someone who might have credits, but we don t know what they will bring to our show, when we know what Kristin brings. We knew what she was going to bring to the show and we knew we loved it. She knew that Rock of Ages was a hybrid and you want to relate it to your audience -- she got it from the beginning. And that was a huge part in keeping the rock part of the show. Why should the traditional lover of Broadway musicals want to see Rock of Ages? JANET: Simply put, it works as a show on every level as a great theatrical musical experience. HILLARY: People who love musicals and love Broadway connect with this show. That s the magic. Thirty-eight percent of our audience has never been to a Broadway musical before. JANET: We re people that love musical theater, so anytime you can broaden the audience and bring new people in to enjoy this great art form, it s good. In a couple words, how would you each describe ROCK OF AGES? JANET: Mama Mia for Dudes. HILLARY: Big Hair, Big Dreams. You ll have nothing but a good time.