I Wanna Be a Producer: How to Make a Killing on Broadway...or Get Killed

By John Breglio

What does a “producer” actually do? How does one travel from that great idea for a show to a smash hit opening night on Broadway? John Breglio cannot guarantee you a hit, but he does take the reader on a fascinating journey behind-the-scenes to where he himself once stood as a child, dreaming about the theatre.

Part memoir, part handbook, I Wanna Be a Producer is a road map to the hows and wherefores, the dos and don'ts of producing a Broadway play, written by a Broadway veteran with more than 40 years of experience. This comprehensive and highly informative book features practical analysis and concepts for the producer – and is filled with entertaining anecdotes from Breglio's illustrious career as a leading theatrical lawyer and producer. Breglio recounts not only his first-hand knowledge of the crucial legal and business issues faced by a producer, but also his experiences behind the scenes with literally hundreds of producers, playwrights, composers, and directors, including such theatre luminaries as Michael Bennett, Joe Papp, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Patti Lupone, August Wilson, and Mel Brooks. Whether you are a working or aspiring producer, an investor, or are just curious about the backstage reality of the theater, Breglio shares his knowledge and experience of the industry, conveying practical information set against the real-life stories of those who have devoted their lives to the craft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
• Release date: Jan 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9781495063701

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by John Breglio

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2016 by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Finishing the Hat and Move On from Sunday in the Park with George

Words and Music by Stephen Sondheim

Copyright © 1984 RILTING MUSIC, INC.

All Rights Administered by WB MUSIC CORP.

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

Vienna

Words and Music by Billy Joel

Copyright © 1979 IMPULSIVE MUSIC

All Rights Administered by ALAMO MUSIC CORP.

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by F. L. Bergesen

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Breglio, John.

Title: I wanna be a producer : how to make a killing on Broadway or get

killed / John Breglio.

Description: Milwaukee, WI : Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2016. |

Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015051499 | ISBN 9781495045165 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Theater—Production and direction—Handbooks, manuals, etc. |

Breglio, John. | Theatrical producers and directors—United

States—Biography.

Classification: LCC PN2053.B63 2016 | DDC 792.02/32023—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015051499

www.applausebooks.com

To Nan

But you know when the truth is told

that you can get what you want

or you can just get old.

You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through.

When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?

Vienna from The Stranger by Billy Joel

Contents

Foreword by Oskar Eustis

Preface

Introduction

1. The Idea: Free as the Air

2. Get Thee to a Lawyer

3. The Eye of the Tiger

4. The General Manager: An Unsung Hero

5. Securing the Rights

6. In Pursuit of the Holy Trinity

7. Collaboration: A Conspiracy among Artists

8. The Authors’ Collaboration Agreement

9. Royalty Pools

10. Enter Amortization: New Twists in the Royalty Pool

11. Workshops: Their Use and Abuse

12. The Approved Production Contract

13. Not-for-Profit Theaters vs. the Commercial Theater: An Uneasy Alliance Born of Necessity

14. What’s a Commercial Hit? (Or, I Don’t Know It When I See It!)

15. Finding the Money: A Gathering of Angels

16. The Director and Choreographers

17. The Designers

18. The Producer’s Deal

19. Auditions and Casting

20. The Star

21. A Tale of Two Divas

22. Getting a Theater

23. A Theater Mystery

24. The British Invasion

25. Rehearsals and Previews

26. Advertising, Marketing, and Press

27. Catharsis: Opening Night

28. The Opening Night Party

29. The Choices We Make

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Photos

Foreword

You are in good hands with John Breglio.

For over forty years, since the early 1970s, John has lived and worked at the heart of the American theater. Lawyer, producer, consigliere, and friend, he has helped countless producers and artists find their way through the confusing and often treacherous thickets of the Broadway world. In this book, he is offering you the same wisdom, clarity, and precision that he has given to some of the greatest and most ground-breaking leaders of the field, from Joe Papp and Marvin Hamlisch to John’s great friend and colleague, Michael Bennett.

If you have ever wanted to produce, if you have ever been interested in the nitty-gritty of what creating a Broadway show demands, this book will be an indispensable aid. Nowhere else are the details, especially the contractual details, of commercial producing laid out with such clarity and completeness.

John spent the bulk of his career as a lawyer at Paul, Weiss, training under the legendary Bob Montgomery. By the mid-1970s he was the leading theatrical lawyer in the country, a position he retained for the next thirty years. During that time he put deals together for hundreds of Broadway shows, and represented artists, producers, investors and non-profit theaters. From A Chorus Line to Fences, John was at the center of many of the most significant theatrical productions of our era. He knows what went into making those shows successful, and in this book he is passing that wisdom on.

After producing the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, which he lovingly put together in 2006, John left Paul, Weiss two years later to pursue his dream of producing full time. He has since added a decade of producing experience to his long service as a theatrical lawyer; that experience, too, has given him insights that few others possess.

This is not a gossipy book; John has too much class, and too much respect for his clients and friends, to write a tell-all memoir. But it is, inevitably, a personal book, and is filled with recollections and memories of theatrical figures great and small. Reading it, one comes to know the John Breglio I have known over the past decade: funny, smart, loyal, humane, and generous. When I returned to New York as Artistic Director of the Public Theater in 2004, John was a constant source of support, advice, prodding and clarity. To my great surprise, and great good fortune, I found that the Public’s lawyer was the most reliable moral compass I had in charting our course. Although John left the law a year later, I have called on him often in the decade since, and he has always been generous with his time and brilliant with his insights.

I have benefited enormously from what John has had to tell me; I know you will, too.

Oskar Eustis

Director of the Public Theatre

Preface

I grew up in a family where no one ever cursed. We were observant, but not strict, Roman Catholics. Unlike many of my Irish American friends, my brother, sister, and I didn’t attend parochial school, and none of our relatives became priests or nuns. But we went to church every Sunday and ate fish on Fridays. I also went to confession every month to be absolved of my venal sins (as opposed to a mortal sin, like murder). These were second-degree transgressions such as fighting with your sister, lying to your parents, or thinking impure thoughts. (I didn’t know what an impure thought was until the age of eleven, when an older friend, Peter, clued me in.)

Anyway, cursing was just a lowly sin, but I never had to confess to it because neither my parents nor we kids ever thought about saying anything more than nuts to express frustration.

My parents loved popular music, especially musical comedies. They could see that it was in my DNA as well. I think the pomp and theatricality of the church served as a catalyst for my attraction to drama and music at an early age. My mother often told of searching the apartment for her six-year-old son only to find me behind the heavy damask curtains in the living room ringing a bell, genuflecting with a blanket around my shoulders, and muttering chants straight from a Sunday Mass. At first she worried that I was headed for the priesthood, but she soon realized this was my private fantasy playing out against the backdrop of the only dramatic event I knew—a church service, with its staging, music, costumes, and lighting.

I tell you this so you can appreciate the dilemma my parents faced when, several years later, they considered taking my sister and me to see our first Broadway musical, Damn Yankees. By this time we had moved to Garden City, Long Island. Things were looking up for the Breglios, as they were for many families who in the 1950s made their exodus from the outer boroughs of New York City to the new suburbs farther out on the Island.

Leaving aside the title of the show, they must have also been concerned about exposing their nine-year-old son and thirteen-year-old daughter to the show’s content. Keep in mind, in those days, Broadway musicals were mostly meant as adult entertainment, in the best sense of the phrase. Ultimately, given my sister’s and my infatuation with music and the theater, their determination to introduce us to musicals as soon as possible overcame their ambivalence. What’s more, I think my father had his heart set on seeing the leggy star of the show, Gwen Verdon.

Still, when they told me we were going to see the show, I wondered whether I’d be allowed to say the title out loud. I soon figured out it was fine. After all, I’d only be referring to the play they were taking me to. So off we went in our new pale green Chevrolet Impala on a hot summer’s evening in August of 1956.

Almost sixty years later, I remember every moment of that night. As we walked into the 46th Street Theatre (now the Richard Rodgers) I sensed that I was entering a sanctuary not unlike a church, but definitely more fun. Everyone was dressed up—all the ladies wore hats and the men wore suits, white shirts, and ties. The theater was dimly lit and seemed mystical. The walls were painted red with gold gilt and, in my memory, cherubs and angels were carved in the ceiling. I assumed there wouldn’t be smells and bells (a phrase first heard from a WASP friend years later) as we had in a High Holy Mass, but the red plush seats were a lot more comfortable than pews.

The usher eyed us a bit suspiciously as she checked our ticket stubs since we seemed to be the only children coming into the theater, but the absence of other children only made me feel particularly grown-up. We were shown to our seats upstairs in an area my father referred to as center mezzanine. He told us with some authority that it was the best place to see a musical because it gave the clearest view of the direction and dancing. My five-foot-two mother also preferred being upstairs. She said the orchestra seats were meant only for tall people whose view wouldn’t be blocked by the person in front of them. They were both right.

After I riffled through the Playbill and finally found the title page about a third of the way through, the lights dimmed and the overture began. The acoustic sound of the orchestra (no amps then) was like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was exhilarating and overwhelming. By the time the curtain rose, I was on such a sensory overload that my heart was pounding and my palms were sweating.

I won’t belabor what I witnessed for the next couple of hours except for two things. When Ray Walston, who played the devil (my Catholicism was coming in handy), crossed his legs in his opening scene and revealed bright red socks, the audience roared with laughter at what is still today one of the most brilliant sight gags ever. Even I got the joke at the age of nine. But what struck me most, and has stayed with me all these years, was hearing for the first time some 1,200 people burst into spontaneous, loud laughter. Like the overture, it was a sound unlike any I’d ever heard.

My other distinct memory is of a scene later in the show, when Verdon, playing Lola, the devil’s assistant, stripped down to a shimmering black, tight leotard as she seduced the young protagonist, Joe Hardy, and sang the signature song from the show, Whatever Lola Wants. I’m sure, at that moment, my parents had second thoughts about having taken an impressionable prepubescent boy to see this risqué show. But when they looked at my face, they surely realized I was transfixed—I was being transported into another realm. After that scene, saying damn seemed quite innocent by comparison. I also realized I wasn’t even remotely in a church.

From then on, the theater, particularly musical theater, took me over with a vengeance. As soon as my mother thought she could deal with my going into Manhattan alone, I used my allowance to travel by bus and subway to see show after show. These were usually solo escapades since most of my teenage friends had little or no interest in Broadway plays and couldn’t afford to spend as much as $4.60 on a theater ticket—the price for the best seats in the house, by the way.

Fast-forward to years later in New Haven, Connecticut. I was a freshman at Yale when the nearby Shubert Theatre was still playing tryouts of new plays and musicals. A new show, The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd, starring Cyril Ritchard and Anthony Newley, was coming to town ahead of its Broadway opening. I rushed to get my single ticket—still having trouble finding theater companions—for the opening night weeks in advance. I specifically requested a center orchestra seat right off the aisle, near the front. By some miracle, that’s what I got. I arrived early. Although I had seen dozens of shows since I was a boy, I had never been to an opening night. I wanted to have that experience even if it was out of town.

Sadly, entering the disheveled Shubert Theatre in 1965 wasn’t anything like going to see Damn Yankees ten years earlier. There was paint peeling off the ceiling, the seats were worn thin from too many years of neglect, and there was an occasional missing light bulb. What was most disillusioning, however, was that the theater had empty seats scattered all around both downstairs and up. On opening night! There wasn’t exactly a buzz in the audience, but I tried to erase all those disappointments from my mind and focus instead on watching the opening of a new musical never seen anywhere before.

When I sat down, there was one seat vacant in front of me. Probably for a critic, I thought. I had read somewhere that they always came late, perhaps in Moss Hart’s book, Act One. The audience was restless and the curtain was late. After all, this was New Haven, not Broadway, where everyone would have been happy just to be invited to an opening night.

Then it happened. Bounding down the aisle, in black tie and patent leather evening slippers, came none other than David Merrick, Broadway’s most notorious and successful producer. Somehow, I had forgotten that this was his show. He took his seat directly in front of me. Seconds later, the houselights dimmed and the overture began. Nothing goes on in his theater until he’s ready, I thought. During the show, he barely moved. And, not unlike the transfixed nine-year-old boy I had once been, he seemed oblivious to everything except each line spoken and each song sung on the stage. So this was what it was like to be a producer.

I appreciate that these vignettes may not be particularly unique. Anyone who has ever become infected with the theater bug can recount every detail of his first sighting of a Broadway show. When you are exposed to one for the first time, you’re either possessed or not. Either you know it’s something that must be part of your life, or you can take it or leave it.

I knew, from the age of nine, that somehow the theater would have to be part of my life. I didn’t know in what guise, but details didn’t matter then. The intoxication was so strong, I can recall saying to my college roommate, I’d be happy just to pull the curtain.

None of us can foresee how we will get from here to there in our lives. Little did I know that becoming a producer myself would require that I first act as an entertainment lawyer and consigliere to artists and producers for more than thirty years.

Introduction

I’ve never considered myself a writer. As a lawyer, I’ve filled reams of paper, writing memos and letters on behalf of my clients, but writing a book such as this one called for a different skill. Moreover, by writing a how-to book, I was taking on the role of a teacher, an equally daunting proposition. I’ve guest-lectured and even taught a graduate school course on producing, but I wanted to avoid writing an academic text book.

While struggling to come up with a palatable solution, I was reminded of a quotation from a George Bernard Shaw play: I’m not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead—ahead of myself as well as of you.¹ Perhaps his advice might show me the way. Having spent four decades witnessing the business from so many perspectives, I hoped to offer a road map of the hows and wherefores, dos and don’ts of producing a Broadway play, interspersed with relevant memories from my own career.

One thing I knew for certain: theater people bring to their work a passion and dedication unparalleled in most other professions. I thought I could share my knowledge and experience of the industry with those who might want to produce and with others who are curious about the backstage reality of the theater. I will consider this book well worth writing if I have conveyed practical information set against the real-life stories of those who have devoted their lives to the theater.

Some Fundamentals

Dramatic Plays vs. Musicals

Plays are divided into two types: dramatico-musical (commonly referred to as musicals) and dramatic (commonly referred to as straight plays).²

Although the basic principles and issues that apply to producing on Broadway pertain equally to both types, generally speaking musicals are more complex, particularly from a legal and business point of view. For one thing, musicals are anywhere from four to five times more expensive to produce than straight plays and can cost more than twice as much each week just to pay the bills. There is usually one author—the playwright—for a straight play. For musicals you normally have three authors: bookwriter, composer, and lyricist, although one person may perform two or all three roles (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; book, music, and lyrics by Jonathan Larson). Additionally, the director in a musical often collaborates with the authors early on in the creative process and can become, in effect, another author.

Whereas straight plays are usually based on a playwright’s original idea, musicals are more commonly derived from another work—a novel, movie, sound recording, or the life story of a celebrity or other well-known personality. Consequently, writing a musical requires, at the very outset, the acquisition of copyrights and other rights held by the owners of those other works.

As for the economics overall, a play employs a coterie of creative personnel and staff to get it up onstage; a musical requires a legion of people.

Collaboration

As I’ll discuss in more depth in chapters seven and eight, musicals also depend on the success of the artistic give-and-take among the authors. The playwright holds supreme in the production of a straight play. Even the director ultimately bows to the playwright’s concept and vision of what he means to convey to the audience. On the other hand, with musicals, it is of paramount importance that all the authors work closely and communicate regularly with one another from the very outset. Added to this mix is the participation of the director or, preferably, the director and choreographer (roles often performed by one person), who ideally should contribute to the work as early as possible in the creative process. Without a good working collaboration among those responsible for the primal elements of a musical—book, music, lyrics, direction, and choreography—the show will fail, regardless of the brilliance of any one of those elements.

And the collaboration doesn’t end there. All the great musicals integrate the literary and musical material seamlessly with the designs of the show. Imagine the original productions of Dreamgirls, The Phantom of the Opera, or Sunday in the Park with George without Robin Wagner’s spare design of revolving towers, Maria Björnson’s sumptuous color palette, or Tony Straiges’s ingenious scenic adaptation of Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, respectively.

For musicals, by virtue of the greater number of artists involved in creating the work, the producing chores become more complex, not only in dealing with more personalities (and temperaments) but also in managing the legal and business elements associated with the production of the show.

The Business of Producing

What’s often forgotten is that every show is a new enterprise essentially built from the ground up by bringing together hundreds of theater professionals for the purpose of presenting a new work of art. A show’s business foundation consists of the contracts between the authors and the owners of the underlying literary and musical material, and a team consisting of a producer, lawyer, general manager, stage management and crew, and advertising, marketing, and press agencies, all of whom provide the supporting framework. This book will examine in detail all of these contracts and the relationships that are established between the business and artistic sides of the equation. Not unlike any other business, the theater has its own words of art whose application we will consider whenever appropriate.

Developmental Work

Every show needs to be given sufficient time for the authors and other creative personnel to shape and experiment with a new work before it’s presented on Broadway as a finished piece to the critics and the public. Readings, workshops, and out-of-town regional productions are prerequisites to reaching that final goal. Thanks to the unique alliances that have developed over the past six decades between the not-for-profit and commercial theaters, these smaller venues more often than not serve as the breeding grounds for most Broadway straight plays and musicals.

Financing

Producers must bring their own money and best salesmanship skills to raise the financing necessary to realize the artists’ intentions for the play. If you are not experienced in raising money, this book will introduce you to the customary financing vehicles employed to solicit funds from the public and to related federal and state securities laws and regulations. Gaining the trust and confidence of your investors can be achieved only by providing for experienced management and preparing financial documents that contain realistic projections and expectations.

• • •

My objective throughout this book is to be comprehensive but not exhaustive or exhausting by getting into minute details. Although a few chapters might seem heavily technical or analytic, contained within each are concepts that will serve you well as a producer, in spite of the gory details. Every show is unique—you can never have enough knowledge or experience in the quest to do your job well.

Ultimately, my goal is to give the business of producing the respect it deserves. It is a profession that requires numerous skills, both business and creative. It demands relentless fortitude and optimism, and it should never be assumed casually without recognition of the enormity of the task.

1

The Idea

Free as the Air

You’re in the shower or driving your car and you have an idea. You’re pretty sure it’s something no one has ever thought of before. What’s more, you think it’s a great inspiration for a Broadway musical.

That’s one way a musical may get its start. The idea doesn’t necessarily have to originate with you, the producer. It can come from anyone—a composer or lyricist, a director, an actor, or even your mother-in-law. But it’s your job as the producer to make it come alive.

Musicals are either original or based on another work, such as a novel, a movie, a straight play, or someone’s life story—Les Misérables, the Victor Hugo novel; The Producers, Mel Brooks’s movie; La Cage aux Folles, the French straight play by Jean Poiret; Hamilton, the life story of Alexander Hamilton.

Probably the most famous original musical is A Chorus Line, first conceived by the legendary director and choreographer Michael Bennett. In 1974, Bennett and a dozen other Broadway dancers met in a rehearsal room on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and spent the next twelve hours recording anecdotes and memories from their childhoods and professional careers. In the beginning, Bennett didn’t know what would come out of these sessions; it might be a documentary film, a book, or perhaps a play. He knew only one thing: he would call it A Chorus Line.

Even though it is not based on a book, movie, or other copyrighted material, even A Chorus Line is based on source material—the interviews recorded in that rehearsal room. To permit the bookwriters, Nicholas Dante and James Kirkwood Jr., and the lyricist, Ed Kleban, the freedom and legal right to use this material for the show, Bennett obtained written consent from each dancer to do whatever he chose with the material in exchange for one dollar. (Bennett would later voluntarily give all the dancers who participated in the interview sessions and the subsequent workshops a share of his income from A Chorus Line in recognition of their contributions to the show. We’ll talk more about this in chapter eleven, Workshops.)

Protecting Your Idea

Unfortunately, no matter how brilliant or original you may think your idea is, it cannot be protected legally from anyone coming up with the same idea.

In a landmark US Supreme Court case in 1918, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, Ideas are . . . free as the air.¹ As a further embodiment of that maxim, the copyright law of the United States provides that the law does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation. What the copyright law does protect is the manner in which these things are expressed. For example, if a producer obtains permission from the owner of the rights in a novel to adapt it as a musical, then the actual expressions—the book and lyrics—created by the bookwriter and lyricist will be capable of being protected by copyright.

Over the years, major motion picture studios have had to defend countless lawsuits in which a plaintiff has alleged that his idea was stolen by a studio. To prevail in such a case, the plaintiff would have to prove that the studio had contractually agreed to compensate him for the use of his idea even though it wasn’t capable of copyright protection. This is something to which no studio would ever agree. In fact, as a rule, studios, and many writers and producers, will not accept unsolicited manuscripts or ideas from unknown third parties for fear that at some point down the road that person will claim his idea was stolen. Most such allegations are considered nuisance claims, but often they have to be defended with all the attendant legal costs and expenses.

Along a similar line of reasoning, titles are not generally protectable, except in certain circumstances. Let’s assume someone wants to produce a musical entitled Rent. Prior to the opening of the now world-famous musical of the same title, anyone could have used the word rent as the title for a musical. It was, as Justice Brandeis said, free as the air. However, the situation today is quite different. If anyone now tried to use the title Rent for a new play or musical, the owners of the estate of Jonathan Larson (the composer, lyricist, and bookwriter) would most assuredly commence a lawsuit seeking to prohibit its use. And they would prevail.

That’s because the musical Rent has now achieved a level of protection which would undoubtedly be recognized by courts of law. Allowing someone else to use that title for another musical would confuse the public and permit that musical to compete unfairly in the marketplace with the Tony Award–winning play. In effect, the new musical with the same title would be trading on the success and popularity of the 1996 show.

To achieve this level of protection the title itself must have established secondary meaning, which means that whenever one reads or hears the title, one associates it with the title of the famous work. Hearing the words gone with the wind immediately conjures up Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War saga. The same holds true for Gypsy, Wicked, The Lion King, and The Sound of Music—all titles of famous musicals comprising simple English words. These titles have all established a secondary meaning beyond the actual meaning of the words themselves.

To prove secondary meaning, the owner of the play, movie, or other literary work is required to prove that a reasonable person, when hearing the words of a particular title, will identify those words with a specific copyrighted work. That kind of recognition is based on the degree to which the specific work has achieved a high level of success, not only nationally but globally as well. The factors taken into account are the length of its run on Broadway and elsewhere throughout the world, box office success, Tony and other awards, critical acclaim, and widespread advertising, marketing, and merchandising.

Another factor to keep in mind is that secondary meaning, once attached to a title, applies only to a specific industry or business. Although the owners of Rent could prohibit another play or movie from being produced with the same title, they could not prohibit a moving van company, for example, from using the word rent as part of its business name. No reasonable person could confuse one use with the other and, consequently, there could be no confusion or unfair competition between the musical and the moving company.

Here’s a real-life example of title confusion.

The Elephant Man vs. The Elephant Man

In 1977, the playwright Bernard Pomerance wrote a straight play entitled The Elephant Man. It was originally produced at the Hampstead Theatre in London, later in New York by the York Theatre Company at Saint Peter’s Church, and then on Broadway, at the Booth Theatre, in the spring of 1979. It was produced by Richmond Crinkley and the team of Elizabeth I. McCann and Nelle Nugent.

The play told the true story of Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the play), who lived in Victorian England in the late nineteenth century. Merrick was