Saw the play The Pillowman yesterday. I don’t see many plays. But the night before, I was at McManus with Eliza, Tanouye, Thunder, Birch, and Gavin. Gavin and Eliza were raving about The Pillowman, and how it was closing this Sunday. So Tanouye and I, the unemployed, drunkenly swore to wake up the next morning, go to the half-price ticket booth and see the matinee showing. Which we did.
As far as drunken promises go, that’s a pretty highbrow one — to go see a critically-praised play. Usually drunken promises involve Atlantic City, or always being friends forever, or moving to Austin, Texas. But at 12:30 I stepped out of the train station, and Tanouye and I waited in the line for the Tkts booth.
Standing there, you can look around at Times Square and see the huge billboards promoting the big shows — mostly musicals. It’s disheartening to me to see how many shows are either revivals of older shows (Fiddler On The Roof, Chicago) , or shows that are based on an already-famous person/thing/movie (Lennon, Mama Mia!, Monty Python’s Spamalot, Hairspray). It makes the billboards look desperate to me: “Come see Lennon! You know, JOHN Lennon? You know him! You already like him! Right? Right? You feel comfortable, teeming masses? We don’t want to upset you with a new idea! PLEASE PLEASE come see this!”
I would hate to be pitching an original muscial (or movie or play for that matter) — when it seems like 90% of them are just cannibalizing an already-existing thing. I would bet that if you took a well-written completely original story, and made all the characters just arbitrarily have celebrities’ names, that you could get someone to put it up — just because the existence of familiar names would sooth advertisers and potential audiences. “Come see The Pillowman! Watch the travails of an author named TOM CRUISE as he’s interrogated by a policeman named DONALD SUTHERLAND and also trying to relate to his brother who is named DEBBIE HARRY.”
Anyway, the play was great! And I felt for one afternoon that I am a Person Who Does Things. A Person With Interests. And there were celebrities in the cast (who were really good), but the story was brand-new. A good day.
On my iTunes now:
Child Star by The Unicorns from "Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?"
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Sep 15th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
Anthony said he saw you in the bathroom!
Sep 15th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
This is true. The surreal part of that was I had JUST seen someone who sort of looked like Anthony as I walked downstairs to the bathroom — except that someone was not Anthony. So I was thinking to myself “Why’d I think that person was Anthony–” and then I saw the Actual Anthony. He said hello and I said “This is weird,” figuring I’d explain it to him next time I saw him, or maybe to the whole world via the comments section of this blog.
Sep 15th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
They have a new-fangled digital system where they read your ticket with a bar-code scanner instead of tearing off the stub when you enter.
I wonder if, many years from now, my grand-children will be looking through my belongings and come across the whole ticket from “The Pillowman.” Too bad, they’ll think to themselves, he purchased this ticket to a wonderful play, but decided not to see it.
Then, looking closer, they’ll say According to his autobiography, The Man Who Would be King, that was the date that Anthony King saw “The Pillowman,” so grandpa not only missed a chance to see Billy Crudup, but he missed a chance to meet Anthony King in the bathroom.
Why my future grandkids decided not to read my bestselling book, The Collected Comments of Erik Tanouye to Will Hines’ Blog is beyond me, but that’s the only explanation for why they didn’t know that I actually did see the play that day (although, ironically, I missed a chance to see Anthony King in the bathroom). I did, during my visit to the bathroom, suspect that the man at the stall next to me was staring at me as I urinated. It was disconcerting, but I can’t be sure because I didn’t want to turn to look at him to confirm that he was staring at me, so I only had the suspicion that I saw him in my peripheral vision.
Sep 15th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
I also had a strange experience in the bathroom. I had just seen someone else I knew, but who I had not seen in quite a long time (eons?). Then I turned to see Will unexpectedly, but because I was so preoccupied with my other surprise run-in, I gave Will a very pleasant and completely unsurprised, “Hi Will.”
I too planned to explain why I seemed so unsurprised to Will the next time I saw him (for I was so preoccupied I did not even notice the strangeness of his response), but now I have done it in this blog comment (and also in my memoirs, which I am already writing (Tanouye, I prefer “memoirs” to “autobiography.”)
Sep 15th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
Anthony, please direct your complaints regarding use of the term “autobiography” to my future grandkids.
Although good luck, because they don’t listen to a thing I say.
Sep 15th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
I didn’t mean to scare you, Erik. I was just… mystified. By your nuts.
Oh, “Pillowman” was great too.
Sep 16th, 2005 at 12:11 am
What an amazing life you lead Will Hines. You are the peaches balls. The Bungalows Sack. The hole ass.
Sep 16th, 2005 at 12:29 am
Angie Dickinison was a terrific piece of tail.
Sep 16th, 2005 at 8:29 am
Erik,
the most fascinating thing about the future you painted is that it implies at some point these theaters will all start tearing tickets again instead of using the new-fangled bar code readers. Or that your grandkids only go to nostalgia themed theaters that still tear tickets and are unaware of the change in Broadway’s ticket processing.
Sep 16th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
check that, spectacular piece of ass.