What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.
Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence.
I didn't grow up with Broadway music. My mother played Perry Como, while I listened to Andy Williams records. Later on it was Cream, Grand Funk Railroad and lots of R&B like the Isley Bros. and Parliament.
Cheech: Olive, I think you should know this: you're a horrible actress. [Cheech shoots Olive dead]
Olive: Don't tell me you still think the world revolves around... Stage Manager: You. Olive: ...you.
I will Basquiat the canvas of your body like a Broadway Junction wall…and Gordon Parks you for those dark midnights when your scent fades.
I'm not going to be rockin' n' rollin' when I'm 50 years old. But you can be in your prime on television, compose songs, or write a Broadway play when you're 50.
The biggest audience for Off Broadway is mostly coming in on a train - either Upper East Siders or Metro-North. I go to the theater, and everyone around me is over 50. How interested will they be in my kind of work?
By 1949, there was no more work for me out there, and I went to New York in 1950 and just did whatever I could. Mainly television. Some Broadway. A lot of dinner theater work, which is not a very satisfactory medium.
It's tourists in New York. Everything is geared towards that. It's so hard on Broadway now for them to get people in there. They have to compete with so many other entertainments, so they have to bring a star in which puts people there out of work.
I think the fact that I grew up in show business had a real effect on my personality. If you were born in New York during the golden age of television, and you grew up on Broadway, that marks you.
When 'Catch Me If You Can' was published back in 1980, I never dreamed that it would become a bestseller, much less a major motion picture and now a big Broadway musical. What's amazing about the book is that it has never gone out of print.
(reporter interviewing Broadway dancer Tommy Tune:) 'Do you think that greats like Fred Astaire possessed some kind of magic?' (pause) 'No. Magic possesses them'.
I know, it's weird that I've never done a musical. I turned down two of them. 'The Lion King' and 'The Producers.' I turned two of the biggest Broadway musicals down, am I a mess?
When I still lived in Manhattan, people-watching was my hobby, and I spent many Sunday afternoons eating up the scene from a window seat at a Starbucks on Broadway.
My first Broadway show wasn't until I was a freshman in high school. It was my first trip to New York. I came with a group of theatre kids, and we saw four shows. The very first one was 'Contact.'
If Broadway shows charge preview prices while the cast is in dress rehearsal, why should restaurants charge full price when their dining room and kitchen staffs are still practicing?
I'm a kid that went to theater school. I thought I was going to be making my living doing plays regionally or in New York or on Broadway, and maybe if I got lucky I would do a movie here or there.
I understand people who boo us. It's like going to Broadway show, you pay for your tickets and expect to be entertained. When you're not, you have a right to complain.
Now that I'm on Broadway, it's like NASA engineering with the costumes. I was very grateful for the slightly more high-tech ones in my show, 'Venus in Fur'; our costume designer Anita Yavich is kind of a genius.
I wasn't straining at the bit to become a movie star any more than I had plotted to get out of vaudeville and into Broadway musicals.
