Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History (34 page)

But I didn’t.

I made myself some coffee.

•     •     •

“You don’t have a soul.”

Julie had arrived back in New York. And after two weeks sitting like unexploded ordnance in her inbox, Plan X finally got read. And that’s why Julie was calling me at three thirty in the morning and telling me I didn’t have a soul.

“I was still holding out hope,” she told me. “I thought maybe it will make sense, who knows, maybe I can get behind it. But, Glen, it’s
incoherent
. It’s a cut-and-paste
mess
.”

And then it started—the offensive. But I was prepared this time, my insecurities ushered into bomb shelters to wait it out until the shelling stopped. Her critiques now sounded facile. Maybe they were brilliant, but I didn’t hear it, because I was sick of it. I only had to push back a little before her dramaturgical bullet points were abandoned in favor of the
personal
. The thermonuclear. As soon as a relationship is built, we carry around the codes to atomize it. And this was the moment. The cover was off, and now nothing was between her and that big red blinking button.

Press it.

We would never talk again. Or no—one more time we’d talk. But it was months later, and it was like a brief meeting of ghosts. Our friendship was now a Superfund site and I was too tired and teed off to even care. The next day, Julie was fired. And within a week, Julie was being satirized as a narcissistic fruitcake by Kristen Wiig on
Saturday Night Live
.

Rule #1: In every theatrical production, there is a victim.

Rule #2: Don’t be the victim.

Berger’s Corollary:
Until everything is played out, don’t assume you know who the victim is.

Carl Jung once noted: “The work in process becomes the poet’s fate . . . It is not Goethe who creates
Faust,
but
Faust
which creates Goethe.”

On screens less than three months before, Julie had Prospera lament to her daughter how she was deposed and they were sent into exile by conspirators, “to cry to the sea that roar’d to us.” And every night at the Foxwoods, audiences watched an artist brought low after her artistic creation was destroyed. Arachne was punished for remaining true to her Art, whispering wretchedly to Peter in the title song: “I am the queen of dreams / Banished to a shadow prison . . .”

Almost six years before, I asked Julie, “Why did Arachne try to kill herself after her tapestry was destroyed?” Instead of the explanation found in most versions of the myth—that Arachne hanged herself from shame over her conduct toward Athena—Julie said Arachne made the noose because her artistic impulse had been thwarted.

In fact, Julie said Arachne wasn’t punished for
thinking
she was more talented than the goddess of weaving, she was punished for
actually
being more talented. In other words, Julie had unwittingly reinterpreted one of the most iconic myths about hubris as
not
being about hubris at all. Was that a symptom of hubris? Or was it simply one artist sympathizing with another? In their respective stories, Prospera and Arachne were banished. But when the time was right, both of them struck back. Their patron goddess became the very deity whose image Athena wove on her tapestry during that ancient weaving contest:
Nemesis,
the goddess of
vengeance
.

•     •     •

Edge and Bono were in a music studio in Midtown. They had begun working with legendary producer Steve Lillywhite to cut the
Turn Off the Dark
cast album (Lillywhite had been producing U2 albums ever since their debut album,
Boy,
thirty years before). But that night—hours after Julie was officially dismissed—Edge and Bono were working on a new version of “Rise Above” with twenty-seven-year-old British up-and-comer Alex da Kid. They were intent on turning the song into a number one hit in two months’ time.

Bono and Edge had already thoroughly revamped “Bouncing Off the Walls.” The verses were sung to a new melody. It wasn’t as raw, but it was more tuneful. And the new lyrics were more intelligible. The lads had taken the criticism of their songs to heart and produced a song that was simultaneously not as good and also probably better.

The boys also demoed an entirely new song to replace “Spider-Man Rising,” and it was . . .
new
. It—well, it sounded at first-listen like something out of a spaghetti western remixed for a European late-1970s discotheque. It sounded like that at second-listen too, so I guess that’s what it was.

“It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek,” said Edge. It sounded like nothing else in the show, and it was another indication to me that we were entering a new and weird epoch of the project’s life. The composers and I left the studio together, and I hitched a ride downtown with them, Edge eagerly discussing dramaturgy all the way down.

I turned to Edge and Bono. “This is all so bizarre.”

Edge shrugged apologetically. “Yeah, we don’t do normal well.”

Bono informed me that Michael and Jere were checking with the investors. They might need a “high-wattage” name to collaborate
on the new script. Someone who might do no more than contribute some suggestions and credibility. They reached out to Aaron Sorkin (writer-producer of
The West Wing
), but he politely declined. In the meantime, I should proceed to work with this Canadian fellow, Jim.

By March 8, after a couple of marathon sessions in my sublet (the baffled owner of the apartment had been told I’d be out of there by Christmas), Jim and I were within striking distance of having a full outline from which we could start generating pages.
It was going to work.
I reported to Michael that “the Canadian” was just the fellow I needed—we were speaking the same language. It was a functional, focused collaboration.

And it was about to go away forever.

That night, at the March 8 performance, director Chris Ashley was going to see
Turn Off the Dark
for the first time. The artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse (and last seen on Broadway as the Tony-nominated director of
Memphis
), Chris indicated that he would make a decision right after the show about taking the “creative consultant” job. Bono mused aloud that, with Phil McKinley out of the running, “we better hope Ashley says yes because otherwise, we’re in trouble.”

With the Tuesday show over, the composers and producers filed into the VIP room with Chris Ashley—all five of them looking anxious and grim. They shut the door behind them. They emerged twenty minutes later. They said nothing, but they were striding down the backstage hallway toward the exit with springs in their steps and broad smiles. Jere slapped me on the back. As Edge passed by me, he gave me a wink. Chris Ashley was going to be the new director of
Turn Off the Dark.

Twelve hours later, Phil McKinley was the new director of
Turn Off the Dark
.

Apparently Chris Ashley had called Michael the next morning with cold feet. Probably because the man was sane and intelligent. Consequently, onstage that night, just before the Wednesday evening curtain, Michael Cohl addressed the cast, with Bono and Edge at his side. He told them that Julie would be taking “a leave of absence,” and he told them about the new “creative consultant.” And Michael then told them that we were opening June 14.

“Have a great show!”

The audience was filing into the auditorium, but whether there actually
would
be a show that night was suddenly uncertain. Many of the younger performers were preparing to change back into street clothes and simply go home. They were sick of being yanked around, and many of them were literally sick from being worked day and night without some proper time off.

The more seasoned members of the company—Isabel Keating, Jeb Brown, Ken Marks—were no happier about the situation than anyone else. But they knew that although it was the hoariest cliché of them all, and although
Turn Off the Dark
seemed to be testing the truth of the adage in ever more perverse ways,
the show must go on
. And they—with quite a bit of urgency—commiserated and negotiated with their less experienced comrades until the show had a quorum again. And the curtain rose on the most mixed bag of a milestone: an unprecedented one hundredth preview of
Turn Off the Dark
. And it was performed in front of an audience completely unaware that the most dramatically compelling part of the evening had already happened.

•     •     •

“Just talk with him. He’s here to help. You’ll work it out.”

The search for a superstar writer figurehead had petered out. But the producers still needed someone to assuage skittish investors
and intrigue a dubious public. So Marvel had put forward the name of a writer who had written stories for Marvel Comics (the
Fantastic Four
and the
Sensational Spider-Man
titles, among others), in addition to being a playwright and a writer on HBO’s
Big Love
for its last two seasons. He was also no stranger to rewriting superhero musicals. The previous summer—when
Spider-Man
was just going into rehearsals—his newly overhauled script for the 1966 Broadway musical
It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s Superman
went up at the Dallas Theater Center.

“Wait.
Roberto?
But I thought you didn’t like his notes,” I moaned to Michael.

“Just talk with him.”

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and I had gone to London together back in 2004 as part of an exchange program sponsored by Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic. I hadn’t seen Roberto since, but I remembered him as an amiable, gangling comic-book fan with Clark Kent glasses and a keen appreciation for solid dramatic structure. My plan was to meet him at a Midtown coffeehouse and invite him to join the Canadian and me. ’Twould be a merry band—we’d drink, confabulate, and do the good work that needed doing. We didn’t have to make the process miserable—those days were behind me.

I walked into the coffeehouse. I saw him all the way in the back, sitting on a couch, working on a script, engrossed. He looked relaxed and amused at what he was typing. I remember vividly the last time I looked like that while writing. It was 1991.

“Roberto!”

“Glen Berger!”

We found a table and I spun my vision for the next month. The fact that he had worked in television would come in handy. I evoked the idea of the writer’s bullpen—that egalitarian room where instead of the personality, it was the strongest
idea
that prevailed
(on its best days, at least). I mentioned the “showrunner”—the television writer who had final say on creative decisions. I was sure we’d come to consensus ninety-nine percent of the time, but—

“Glen? Um . . .
why
do you think we’re meeting right now?”

Roberto had a concerned look on his face.

“What?”

“I’m listening to you talk and . . . I’m a little confused.”

Why is he looking like that? Something is very wrong.

I was sent to this meeting with the understanding that Roberto would be coming onto the project as a script consultant for a script that I would be writing. I. Me. And now I was learning from Roberto that
Roberto
had been sent to the meeting with the understanding that Glen Berger had gotten canned, and
he,
Roberto, was rewriting the new
Spider-Man
script. Roberto. On his own.

We were off to just a fantastic start.

A couple of decades ago, when I worked as a temp, I was sent to work the register at a florist’s shop for the day and, within an hour, I had somehow wound up with my arms around a voluptuous young Brazilian woman. I was giving her dancing lessons, in fact, when suddenly her fiery, jealous lover burst through the door. As I desperately tried to defuse the situation, a snickering camera crew came out from the back room and informed me I had just been filmed for the
New Candid Camera
.

That
was the memory that came to me as I sat with Roberto in that coffeehouse. Because I was feeling more and more like the unwitting subject of a never-ending
Candid Camera
episode produced by Franz Kafka. Somehow I convinced Roberto that I hadn’t been canned. And Roberto insisted he had no ego invested in the project—he didn’t even anticipate his name showing up in the program. I said I would send him the latest structure, and we’d all have a chat about it. And as we left the coffeehouse I said, “And
listen, man.
Any
problems—just call me. Communication on this show has been sucky, and it would be great if that started improving.” Roberto said he heard me.

An hour later, Michael was yelling at me on the phone. “I told you to
talk
with him! To find a way to collaborate!”

“What? WhadIdo?!”

Michael said he just received an angry call from Roberto’s agent.

“You told Roberto he’d be your
errand boy
?!”

“What?! I didn’t say that!”

“You said someone needed to be the runner. Go out on coffee runs.”

“Coffee runs?!”
I’m losing my mind.
Wait—
“I
did
say ‘show-runner,’ but—”

“So you
did
say it!”

“Michael! That’s completely different! A
show
runner is like the head writer, it’s—”

“Glen—”

None of this boded well.

“Michael, now that we’re on the subject of ‘head writer,’ who
is
the head writer now?”

“There’s no head writer. You’re collaborators. Work together.”

“Well yeah, but . . . even if we agree
practically
all the time, there still has to be one person who—”

“Phil. Everyone answers to Phil.”

But Phil McKinley isn’t a writer. Seriously, none of this boded well.

Two years before getting the
Spider-Man
gig, I wrote a musical that was based on
The Tempest
. Only, in
my
version, it was revealed that the “treacherous” Antonio character was actually the one wronged by the imperious Prospero character.