MICHAEL RIEDEL
Last updated: 12:35 am
August 7, 2009
Posted: 12:06 am
August 7, 2009
THERE was a twitching on my web this week, and when I crawled out to see what I'd caught, there -- all tangled up and weary from the struggle -- was Julie Taymor's "Spider-Man."
The $45 million Broadway musical -- otherwise known as "The Show Produced By People Who Have No Idea What They Are Doing" -- is in deep, deep trouble.
Production crews at both the Hilton Theatre and the scene shop where the gargantuan sets are being constructed have been put on "hiatus" because the money has run out, several theater sources have confirmed.
At the beginning of the week, production staffers were convinced the whole thing was going to be scrapped.
But a "Spider-Man" spokesman insists: "The production is scheduled to begin previews on Feb. 25, 2010, as previously announced."
If that happens, I'll eat my young.
This show is in chaos, plagued not only by financial problems but also by a nasty internal power struggle.
Sony, which produced the "Spider-Man" movies, and Marvel, which controls the comic-book character, have lost faith in lead producer David Garfinkle, theater sources say.
The two corporations, with the backing of U2's Bono and The Edge, who've written the score, are going to sideline him, sources say.
One source speaks diplomatically of "restructuring."
Another is more blunt: "He'll be out by the weekend."
Garfinkle is a showbiz lawyer from Chicago who has virtually no producing experience. But he managed to get hold of the show when the original producer, Tony Adams, a seasoned veteran, died of a heart attack four years ago.
"David was Tony's lawyer, and then Tony died and suddenly David was the producer of 'Spider-Man,' " one person says.
Garfinkle has never been able to tame Taymor, whose talent for creating thrilling stage images (as she did in "The Lion King") is matched only by her talent for blowing through budgets.
"You've got to be on top of her all the time," says a person who worked with her on "The Lion King."
"She'll spend days and days on one minute of stage time. It will be a brilliant minute, but it's expensive."
At a presentation for group-sales ticket agents last spring, the dynamic Taymor introduced Garfinkle to the crowd. A young, sweet-looking little guy in a suit waddled nervously onstage.
You thought: Here comes her lunch! And by all accounts, she's devoured him.
"So far, she has gotten pretty much everything she's wanted," says a source who thinks that, the way things are going, the budget for "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" could easily hit $50 million.
(Maybe if they lose the pretentious "Turn Off the Dark," they'll save a couple of million.)
The betting is that Sony and Marvel will put Alan Wasser, a respected general manager, in charge of the show, keeping a tight leash on Taymor.
(Watch it, Alan, or you'll be her dinner.)
The "Spider-Man" spokesman insists: "There is no change in the production team."
The show's financial structure is odd. You can invest in the show ($45 million and counting) or in the redesign of the theater ($10 million).
Garfinkle has had trouble raising money for the theater redesign.
Industry insiders also wonder why "Spider-Man" hasn't started a big advertising push yet.
"It's a $45 million show -- they need money, and they're invisible," one person says.
Production sources say there'll be a "Spider-Man" ad blitz in the fall.
Meanwhile, once Garfinkle's been sidelined, Sony will restart production.
That's a relief.
For a minute, I was worried I wouldn't have much to write about this summer.
michael.riedel@nypost.com
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08072009/entertainment/theater/spider_man_needs_rescue_183315.htm
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Andrew Lloyd Webber: ‘I’m a quality control freak’
Aug 1 2009 by Karen Price, Western Mail
So says Andrew Lloyd Webber as he puts the Cardiff cast of The Sound of Music through their paces. Arts correspondent Karen Price is granted a rare audience with the king of musical theatre
IT’S late in the afternoon and Andrew Lloyd Webber is deep in concentration. The king of musical theatre is standing behind the orchestra pit at the Wales Millennium Centre during last-minute sound checks for the new touring version of The Sound of Music.
As a casually-dressed Connie Fisher and her co-star Michael Praed stand on stage singing the chorus of their duet Something Good, the Lord, as Andrew is affectionately known, clearly isn’t happy about the sound.
“It’s just not right is it?” he says to the musical director. “It should be...” And then he cuts off to hum a little.
Watching Andrew at work, you know you are in the company of a hugely-respected master of his game.
Despite the fact he’s responsible for penning the music to some of the biggest productions ever staged – The Phantom of the Opera, Evita and Cats are just the tip of the iceberg – and amassed a clutch of major gongs, from Tonys and Grammys to an Oscar, Andrew isn’t locked away in his ivory tower. Instead he’s very much a hands-on impresario.
“I’m a complete quality control freak,” he tells me when I later join him for a glass of wine.
You also get the impression that he’s very fair, allowing his team to develop while giving constructive criticism.
“It’s a hard key change isn’t it?” he says to one of the sound men before demonstrating a few chords on a keyboard.
As rehearsals wrap up, Andrew is happy with how things have worked out.
“Thank you very much guys,” he says to the orchestra. “You’re a really great band. Have a great one tomorrow.”
And it seems that a word from him, a single note of encouragement, is all they need to carry on with added vigour.
Andrew first travelled to Cardiff last weekend to prepare for the opening night of The Sound of Music UK tour at the WMC. It comes just five months after the London Palladium production, which he produced, closed after a run of two years. Days later he returned to the Welsh capital with the notes he’d made on opening night.
“I thought it would be good to go through the orchestra today to kick it off,” he says as we relax in the WMC’s bar.
“I’ve not really been very close to it (The Sound of Music) in the last few months. Once it closed in London, I was doing other things. It’s in very good shape. It’s great to see Connie back. She’s on good form. I think she was nervous on Sunday night but she came through it really well.
“It’s odd sometimes for me because I didn’t write it but I feel very personally about the music. Tiny little alterations will creep in and I say, ‘You can’t do that’ as if I’ve written the music.”
Andrew, 61, has long been a fan of the Rodgers and Hammerstein production, which initially opened on Broadway in 1959 with Mary Martin as feisty nun Maria.
“I wrote Richard Rodgers a fan letter when I was a kid. In those days, Rodgers and Hammerstein were incredibly unfashionable. We’re talking about 1962 and the birth of The Beatles. Rodgers and Hammerstein? You didn’t mention their names. I knew of them through the movies. The Sound of Music came to London with the worst advance publicity from the opinion makers.
“Noel Coward said it was ‘a ghastly evening with snivelling children’. I saw it and thought it was one of the great scores of all time but something was wrong with the production.
“I was only 13. I started putting two and two together years later – Mary Martin was in her 50s but Maria was supposed to be 18.”
Of course, Andrew famously cast his Maria through the BBC series, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? It paved the way for further TV searches for Joseph (Any Dream Will Do) and Oliver and Nancy (I’d Do Anything).
“The reason we went with the television casting was because I couldn’t think of anyone who could fill a big theatre in London,” he says of Maria. “I felt it should be an unknown girl. I talked to one person, Scarlett Johansson, but her movie commitments were so huge.”
So did he do the right thing in allowing the public to play a part in such a vital decision, particularly as he’s a self-confessed control freak?
“I think we did you know,” says Andrew, who’s dressed down in jeans and a pale blue open-necked shirt.
“That first television show casting unlocked a lot of doors. It opened up theatre again to an audience who had simply forgotten it. When we were doing Joseph it really cemented it. We started getting letters from kids who had seen Joseph and were putting their names down to go to the National Theatre.”
Andrew also took musical theatre to a younger audience when he had a cameo role in the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks.
Summer Strallen had already been lined up to take over from Connie as Maria at the London Palladium when she took on a role in Hollyoaks as a would-be musical star. Her TV character auditioned for – and won – the role and Andrew even put in an appearance. But he confesses it wasn’t the greatest moment of his career.
“A friend of mine was producing Hollyoaks at the time and asked if I’d ever thought of the idea of blurring fact and fiction,” he says.
“It was an interesting experiment. I’m not convinced it completely worked though.”
But his TV searches for new leading stars is a different matter, averaging around six million viewers a show. However, plans for Andrew’s next BBC search to find Dorothy for his new stage version of The Wizard Of Oz looks doomed.
The channel wants to broadcast it live from January to April, but in March Andrew will be launching one of the biggest projects of his career, the West End follow-up to his smash-hit Phantom – Love Never Dies.
Following criticism in the past that Andrew was using licence fee payers’ money to promote his own projects through the series, he believes this one could create a real furore as Love Never Dies will be released right in the middle of the run.
Now the plans appear to be up in the air, especially as ITV have also approached him about broadcasting it.
“I felt it was extremely difficult to go ahead with the BBC who want to do The Wizard Of Oz,” explains the father-of-five, who was knighted in 1992 and created a life peer five years later.
“Last year there was a bit of criticism in the Press about the BBC using licence payers’ money to promote me promoting a musical even though it (Oliver!) was not my musical.
“Personally, I think it’s nonsense.
“The BBC have said we cannot mention Love Never Dies. If every paper is mentioning it and there’s no mention of it (on the programme) it looks curious.
“The Phantom Of The Opera has been seen by 100 million people around the world. I don’t want one of you lot (journalists) saying I’m promoting it (Love Never Dies) indirectly by doing The Wizard Of Oz.
“On ITV it doesn’t matter as it’s not using licence payers’ money. I just want to enjoy putting it on at this stage of my career and don’t want the waters muddied by unnecessary negative PR.”
He points out that the five finalists from I’d Do Anything now all have leading roles on stage – in shows he has no connection with: “The value of television should be proved by that point.”
He adds that many other high-profile people chosen to front BBC shows also have “day jobs”.
And he believes The Apprentice star Sir Alan Sugar will also find himself in hot water now that he’s been offered a job as the Government’s “enterprise champion”.
“I believe Alan Sugar is going to be in this situation and may not be able to continue. Just how Jeremy Clarkson does it (presents BBC2’s Top Gear) and then does a huge great stadium tour based on Top Gear I don’t know.
“On one occasion, the girls on I’d Do Anything said they wanted to do a programme of my songs. If the BBC can’t because of editorial guidelines and they can’t be seen to be promoting ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber’ on television, there’s almost no point in doing a programme. When I was on American Idol they did two programmes devoted to my songs.
“ITV have approached me. They could make a really good programme because they don’t have constraints but I don’t want to lose contacts at the BBC because they’ve been very good to me.
“There’s no way we can do The Wizard Of Oz on the BBC at the time they can do it, but I have to produce it (on stage) next year otherwise I will lose the rights.
“I would rather not do it at all than compromise it.”
Compromise is certainly not a word in Andrew’s book.
Brought up immersed in music – his father was the organist William Lloyd Webber and his brother is the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber – his work is clearly his passion.
Although the TV search for a new Dorothy may be up in the air, he has very clear ideas about what he wants from The Wizard Of Oz.
“I think The Wizard Of Oz needs about half a dozen new songs,” says Andrew, who has been married three times.
“Obviously Over The Rainbow would be there. They have given me the rights to add some numbers where I think they need to be.
“For example, there’s no song for the Wizard or no song for Dorothy until she gets to Over The Rainbow. There’s nothing about her home or Toto (her dog). It’s been tried in theatre several times now and has never worked. I think, and I may be wrong, that people have tried to take what’s in the film and put it on stage. It needs to be done as a stage show. The Sound of Music may be dated now but it’s an incredibly crafted piece of theatre work which started in the theatre.”
While many famous people who have achieved remarkable success can come across as aloof during interviews, Andrew is genuinely warm and friendly and keen to hear about my love of musical theatre too.
He also has a sense of humour and when an announcement comes over the WMC tannoy calling for a the owner of a certain car to remove their vehicle because it’s causing an obstruction, he jokes: “It’s mine! Tell them to tow it away and chuck it in the docks.”
Back to the subject of The Wizard Of Oz and he says he believes a TV search for Dorothy could prove the most successful of the lot.
“When you’re finding a Dorothy, everyone’s got a view. One of the things about Dorothy is she’s a really exciting character to cast. She’s a teenage girl in small town America who wants to get out. She’s got to have a bit of attitude.
“She’s got to have a bit of an edge. She goes on a journey but then wants to go back home. We have got to have someone who wants to go on that journey. It’s a very interesting role because it goes so deeply into the middle-American psyche.
“People are obsessed with the whole story of Dorothy, hence the success of (stage show) Wicked.”
While he’s still working out his plans for The Wizard Of Oz, when it comes to Love Never Dies everything has been completed.
He’s now counting down the days to the London premiere next March, which he says will be one of the biggest nights of his career.
“It’s finished and recorded and done and dusted from my point of view. I have to keep it under wraps now. It’s odd to have something this far ahead finished.
“The next stage is the production. We will announce the cast in a few weeks’ time. The album’s finished and I’m very pleased with it. The cast are well-known in theatre terms. Someone has played the Phantom before and the girl has played a lead on Broadway. I think there will be quite a lot of people who would like to record the songs before the show opens.”
Andrew says plans to resurrect his beloved Phantom – which opened in the West End in 1986, with his then wife Sarah Brightman as Christine, and had grossed more than $5bn worldwide by 2007 – have been in the pipeline for a long time.
“I thought about it a long, long time ago and couldn’t make it so abandoned it. I started thinking about it again two years ago.
“I was working on something completely different with Ben Elton and explained to him what the problem was.
“He said, ‘I can give you an outline which I think will unlock it completely.’ Ben and I put together a synopsis which showed promise.”
Even hugely successful people suffer with nerves it seems, and Andrew admits he will be nervous about the reaction to Love Never Dies.
“This one is unlike anything I’ve done before. It’s the continuing story of something that’s not only been the biggest thing in my career but the biggest thing there’s been in entertainment in the last 20 years. To that extent there will be a huge spotlight on it. I’m slightly relieved to have recorded the album first. People will have the chance to see what they think of the music in advance of everything else.”
While he’s not revealing the names of the cast, one person who’s definitely not in it is Katherine Jenkins.
“I know her very well,” he says of the Neath-born singer.
“We have never worked together. She’s a very interesting girl – very beautiful and a wonderful personality with a great voice. It’s just that everything happens at different times.
“She would not be quite right for me for Love Never Dies – she’s a mezzo soprano, not a soprano.
“She has recorded my songs and I would love to do something for her. She’s pretty special. There’s nothing I’ve got that’s immediately right for her. She would probably be pretty good in My Fair Lady.”
Someone else Andrew admires is Simon Cowell, whom he’s worked alongside on American Idol.
But he didn’t get to see Cowell’s massive hit Britain’s Got Talent this year, which produced singers Susan Boyle and Shaheen Jarfargoli, the Swansea schoolboy who went on to perform in front of millions at Michael Jackson’s memorial service.
“We’ve talked about doing something together but we’ve never actually quite worked out what,” he says of Cowell.
“There’s a huge difference between Simon and myself. Simon’s absolutely superb at doing television. He’s brilliant at what he does.
“That’s his job. He’s also a superb A&R man. I’m a composer of musicals and musical theatre is my job. The television offers I’ve had have surprised me. Some of them have been absolutely huge, particularly in the States.
“But I can’t lose sight of the fact I employ 100 people in London all in one company and that’s my job.
“I can’t give up my real love which is to write for musical theatre.”
Although parallels can be drawn between Britain’s Got Talent and Andrew’s TV searches – after all, they are both about unearthing new raw talent – he says they are also very different beasts.
“The difference between Britain’s Got Talent and what I do is there has to be a physical production at the end of it.
“I’m a complete quality control freak and I don’t want people spending money and getting a production and they don’t like it.”
Although most people would kill to be able to say they wrote the music for theatre greats like Phantom, Jesus Christ Superstar, Starlight Express and Aspects of Love, are there any musicals which Andrew’s not been involved with that he wishes he could put his name to?
“Most of Rodgers and Hammerstein, West Side Story, My Fair Lady,” he says, ticking them off on his fingers.
“I heard the score of Hair again the other day and it’s really much better than I remembered it. If I had written Porgy & Bess, one would have been over the moon. But I just love musicals.
“I must be honest, there’s no score I’ve heard in the last 20 years that I wish I could have killed to have written. Nothing has come out for a long time now which you could truthfully say, ‘yeah that’s going to be there for a long while’.
“Sometimes you get things that are critical successes but not popular successes. I’m very proud of something like Sunset Boulevard, which got me a lot of Tonys, and The Beautiful Game with Ben Elton. It won the London Critics’ prize but lasted 11 months.
“It’s hard finding something today that’s going to be the next Cats or Les Mis, apart from The Lion King and Wicked.
“I would have loved to have produced Wicked but as a composer I don’t think I would have gone there. Although there are some fabulous things in the score, it’s not very me. I would have liked to have written Wicked for the pay cheque,” he laughs.
Five years ago, The Phantom of the Opera was released as a film and, of course, Madonna famously played Evita on the big screen, but Andrew admits he doesn’t think musicals work well in the cinema any more.
“I’ve not really had any of mine transfer to film that I’ve been happy with so far. The history of musicals in cinema in the last two or three decades has not been great. There are exceptions. One has to honourably accept Mamma Mia! It’s a wonderful film but even that has not really done quite as well as the big old musicals used to do in film.
“I think there has to be an era of movie musicals soon. I don’t think anyone yet has come through as a young director who can really do for them what some of the great theatre directors in the past have done for stage musicals.”
Although it seems that Andrew spends most of his time immersed in music, he also has two other great loves – art and architecture. In fact, the day after our meeting, he’s planning his perfect day off – visiting historic sites around South Wales.
“It goes back to my childhood,” says Andrew, who has amassed a collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, many of which went on show at the Royal Academy in London six years ago.
He tells me that while growing up he would visit places like Ewenny Priory in the Vale of Glamorgan and Cardiff Castle with his parents and take notes about the architecture.
“I’ve got my old architectural guides and my childhood notes and I’m going to Ewenny Priory and Margam Abbey tomorrow,” he says. “I know all of Cardiff’s major buildings. If I’ve got time I will go around Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch too.”
He was first introduced to William Burgess’ designs at Cardiff Castle as a boy.
“I was nine-years-old and my life was changed. The Victorian arc was the most important thing I’d seen.”
Today the roof of his country home is modelled on that at Castell Coch, a building he has also featured in his work.
“I did a video with my ex-wife Sarah Brightman in there. It was for the song Him which made about number 47 in the charts for a week. It’s not something I go into too much depth about,” he laughs.
Andrew often mixes business with pleasure.
“One of the most wonderful things about the TV casting programmes is going to see the families (of the contestants). On the one hand I actually love going to see them but it also takes me out of London to places I would never go to because of the day job. I have the best day. I pop in and do a little bit of filming and then I just take off. I went to Rhyl and there are some fantastic churches all around there.”
So is he a frustrated architect?
“Yes, I would like to be an architect,” he smiles.
But for now it’s all about Maria, Dorothy and proving Love Never Dies.
The Sound of Music is at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, until August 29. The box office number is 0870 040 2000
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/showbiz-and-lifestyle/2009/08/01/andrew-lloyd-webber-i-m-a-quality-control-freak-91466-24280490/
So says Andrew Lloyd Webber as he puts the Cardiff cast of The Sound of Music through their paces. Arts correspondent Karen Price is granted a rare audience with the king of musical theatre
IT’S late in the afternoon and Andrew Lloyd Webber is deep in concentration. The king of musical theatre is standing behind the orchestra pit at the Wales Millennium Centre during last-minute sound checks for the new touring version of The Sound of Music.
As a casually-dressed Connie Fisher and her co-star Michael Praed stand on stage singing the chorus of their duet Something Good, the Lord, as Andrew is affectionately known, clearly isn’t happy about the sound.
“It’s just not right is it?” he says to the musical director. “It should be...” And then he cuts off to hum a little.
Watching Andrew at work, you know you are in the company of a hugely-respected master of his game.
Despite the fact he’s responsible for penning the music to some of the biggest productions ever staged – The Phantom of the Opera, Evita and Cats are just the tip of the iceberg – and amassed a clutch of major gongs, from Tonys and Grammys to an Oscar, Andrew isn’t locked away in his ivory tower. Instead he’s very much a hands-on impresario.
“I’m a complete quality control freak,” he tells me when I later join him for a glass of wine.
You also get the impression that he’s very fair, allowing his team to develop while giving constructive criticism.
“It’s a hard key change isn’t it?” he says to one of the sound men before demonstrating a few chords on a keyboard.
As rehearsals wrap up, Andrew is happy with how things have worked out.
“Thank you very much guys,” he says to the orchestra. “You’re a really great band. Have a great one tomorrow.”
And it seems that a word from him, a single note of encouragement, is all they need to carry on with added vigour.
Andrew first travelled to Cardiff last weekend to prepare for the opening night of The Sound of Music UK tour at the WMC. It comes just five months after the London Palladium production, which he produced, closed after a run of two years. Days later he returned to the Welsh capital with the notes he’d made on opening night.
“I thought it would be good to go through the orchestra today to kick it off,” he says as we relax in the WMC’s bar.
“I’ve not really been very close to it (The Sound of Music) in the last few months. Once it closed in London, I was doing other things. It’s in very good shape. It’s great to see Connie back. She’s on good form. I think she was nervous on Sunday night but she came through it really well.
“It’s odd sometimes for me because I didn’t write it but I feel very personally about the music. Tiny little alterations will creep in and I say, ‘You can’t do that’ as if I’ve written the music.”
Andrew, 61, has long been a fan of the Rodgers and Hammerstein production, which initially opened on Broadway in 1959 with Mary Martin as feisty nun Maria.
“I wrote Richard Rodgers a fan letter when I was a kid. In those days, Rodgers and Hammerstein were incredibly unfashionable. We’re talking about 1962 and the birth of The Beatles. Rodgers and Hammerstein? You didn’t mention their names. I knew of them through the movies. The Sound of Music came to London with the worst advance publicity from the opinion makers.
“Noel Coward said it was ‘a ghastly evening with snivelling children’. I saw it and thought it was one of the great scores of all time but something was wrong with the production.
“I was only 13. I started putting two and two together years later – Mary Martin was in her 50s but Maria was supposed to be 18.”
Of course, Andrew famously cast his Maria through the BBC series, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? It paved the way for further TV searches for Joseph (Any Dream Will Do) and Oliver and Nancy (I’d Do Anything).
“The reason we went with the television casting was because I couldn’t think of anyone who could fill a big theatre in London,” he says of Maria. “I felt it should be an unknown girl. I talked to one person, Scarlett Johansson, but her movie commitments were so huge.”
So did he do the right thing in allowing the public to play a part in such a vital decision, particularly as he’s a self-confessed control freak?
“I think we did you know,” says Andrew, who’s dressed down in jeans and a pale blue open-necked shirt.
“That first television show casting unlocked a lot of doors. It opened up theatre again to an audience who had simply forgotten it. When we were doing Joseph it really cemented it. We started getting letters from kids who had seen Joseph and were putting their names down to go to the National Theatre.”
Andrew also took musical theatre to a younger audience when he had a cameo role in the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks.
Summer Strallen had already been lined up to take over from Connie as Maria at the London Palladium when she took on a role in Hollyoaks as a would-be musical star. Her TV character auditioned for – and won – the role and Andrew even put in an appearance. But he confesses it wasn’t the greatest moment of his career.
“A friend of mine was producing Hollyoaks at the time and asked if I’d ever thought of the idea of blurring fact and fiction,” he says.
“It was an interesting experiment. I’m not convinced it completely worked though.”
But his TV searches for new leading stars is a different matter, averaging around six million viewers a show. However, plans for Andrew’s next BBC search to find Dorothy for his new stage version of The Wizard Of Oz looks doomed.
The channel wants to broadcast it live from January to April, but in March Andrew will be launching one of the biggest projects of his career, the West End follow-up to his smash-hit Phantom – Love Never Dies.
Following criticism in the past that Andrew was using licence fee payers’ money to promote his own projects through the series, he believes this one could create a real furore as Love Never Dies will be released right in the middle of the run.
Now the plans appear to be up in the air, especially as ITV have also approached him about broadcasting it.
“I felt it was extremely difficult to go ahead with the BBC who want to do The Wizard Of Oz,” explains the father-of-five, who was knighted in 1992 and created a life peer five years later.
“Last year there was a bit of criticism in the Press about the BBC using licence payers’ money to promote me promoting a musical even though it (Oliver!) was not my musical.
“Personally, I think it’s nonsense.
“The BBC have said we cannot mention Love Never Dies. If every paper is mentioning it and there’s no mention of it (on the programme) it looks curious.
“The Phantom Of The Opera has been seen by 100 million people around the world. I don’t want one of you lot (journalists) saying I’m promoting it (Love Never Dies) indirectly by doing The Wizard Of Oz.
“On ITV it doesn’t matter as it’s not using licence payers’ money. I just want to enjoy putting it on at this stage of my career and don’t want the waters muddied by unnecessary negative PR.”
He points out that the five finalists from I’d Do Anything now all have leading roles on stage – in shows he has no connection with: “The value of television should be proved by that point.”
He adds that many other high-profile people chosen to front BBC shows also have “day jobs”.
And he believes The Apprentice star Sir Alan Sugar will also find himself in hot water now that he’s been offered a job as the Government’s “enterprise champion”.
“I believe Alan Sugar is going to be in this situation and may not be able to continue. Just how Jeremy Clarkson does it (presents BBC2’s Top Gear) and then does a huge great stadium tour based on Top Gear I don’t know.
“On one occasion, the girls on I’d Do Anything said they wanted to do a programme of my songs. If the BBC can’t because of editorial guidelines and they can’t be seen to be promoting ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber’ on television, there’s almost no point in doing a programme. When I was on American Idol they did two programmes devoted to my songs.
“ITV have approached me. They could make a really good programme because they don’t have constraints but I don’t want to lose contacts at the BBC because they’ve been very good to me.
“There’s no way we can do The Wizard Of Oz on the BBC at the time they can do it, but I have to produce it (on stage) next year otherwise I will lose the rights.
“I would rather not do it at all than compromise it.”
Compromise is certainly not a word in Andrew’s book.
Brought up immersed in music – his father was the organist William Lloyd Webber and his brother is the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber – his work is clearly his passion.
Although the TV search for a new Dorothy may be up in the air, he has very clear ideas about what he wants from The Wizard Of Oz.
“I think The Wizard Of Oz needs about half a dozen new songs,” says Andrew, who has been married three times.
“Obviously Over The Rainbow would be there. They have given me the rights to add some numbers where I think they need to be.
“For example, there’s no song for the Wizard or no song for Dorothy until she gets to Over The Rainbow. There’s nothing about her home or Toto (her dog). It’s been tried in theatre several times now and has never worked. I think, and I may be wrong, that people have tried to take what’s in the film and put it on stage. It needs to be done as a stage show. The Sound of Music may be dated now but it’s an incredibly crafted piece of theatre work which started in the theatre.”
While many famous people who have achieved remarkable success can come across as aloof during interviews, Andrew is genuinely warm and friendly and keen to hear about my love of musical theatre too.
He also has a sense of humour and when an announcement comes over the WMC tannoy calling for a the owner of a certain car to remove their vehicle because it’s causing an obstruction, he jokes: “It’s mine! Tell them to tow it away and chuck it in the docks.”
Back to the subject of The Wizard Of Oz and he says he believes a TV search for Dorothy could prove the most successful of the lot.
“When you’re finding a Dorothy, everyone’s got a view. One of the things about Dorothy is she’s a really exciting character to cast. She’s a teenage girl in small town America who wants to get out. She’s got to have a bit of attitude.
“She’s got to have a bit of an edge. She goes on a journey but then wants to go back home. We have got to have someone who wants to go on that journey. It’s a very interesting role because it goes so deeply into the middle-American psyche.
“People are obsessed with the whole story of Dorothy, hence the success of (stage show) Wicked.”
While he’s still working out his plans for The Wizard Of Oz, when it comes to Love Never Dies everything has been completed.
He’s now counting down the days to the London premiere next March, which he says will be one of the biggest nights of his career.
“It’s finished and recorded and done and dusted from my point of view. I have to keep it under wraps now. It’s odd to have something this far ahead finished.
“The next stage is the production. We will announce the cast in a few weeks’ time. The album’s finished and I’m very pleased with it. The cast are well-known in theatre terms. Someone has played the Phantom before and the girl has played a lead on Broadway. I think there will be quite a lot of people who would like to record the songs before the show opens.”
Andrew says plans to resurrect his beloved Phantom – which opened in the West End in 1986, with his then wife Sarah Brightman as Christine, and had grossed more than $5bn worldwide by 2007 – have been in the pipeline for a long time.
“I thought about it a long, long time ago and couldn’t make it so abandoned it. I started thinking about it again two years ago.
“I was working on something completely different with Ben Elton and explained to him what the problem was.
“He said, ‘I can give you an outline which I think will unlock it completely.’ Ben and I put together a synopsis which showed promise.”
Even hugely successful people suffer with nerves it seems, and Andrew admits he will be nervous about the reaction to Love Never Dies.
“This one is unlike anything I’ve done before. It’s the continuing story of something that’s not only been the biggest thing in my career but the biggest thing there’s been in entertainment in the last 20 years. To that extent there will be a huge spotlight on it. I’m slightly relieved to have recorded the album first. People will have the chance to see what they think of the music in advance of everything else.”
While he’s not revealing the names of the cast, one person who’s definitely not in it is Katherine Jenkins.
“I know her very well,” he says of the Neath-born singer.
“We have never worked together. She’s a very interesting girl – very beautiful and a wonderful personality with a great voice. It’s just that everything happens at different times.
“She would not be quite right for me for Love Never Dies – she’s a mezzo soprano, not a soprano.
“She has recorded my songs and I would love to do something for her. She’s pretty special. There’s nothing I’ve got that’s immediately right for her. She would probably be pretty good in My Fair Lady.”
Someone else Andrew admires is Simon Cowell, whom he’s worked alongside on American Idol.
But he didn’t get to see Cowell’s massive hit Britain’s Got Talent this year, which produced singers Susan Boyle and Shaheen Jarfargoli, the Swansea schoolboy who went on to perform in front of millions at Michael Jackson’s memorial service.
“We’ve talked about doing something together but we’ve never actually quite worked out what,” he says of Cowell.
“There’s a huge difference between Simon and myself. Simon’s absolutely superb at doing television. He’s brilliant at what he does.
“That’s his job. He’s also a superb A&R man. I’m a composer of musicals and musical theatre is my job. The television offers I’ve had have surprised me. Some of them have been absolutely huge, particularly in the States.
“But I can’t lose sight of the fact I employ 100 people in London all in one company and that’s my job.
“I can’t give up my real love which is to write for musical theatre.”
Although parallels can be drawn between Britain’s Got Talent and Andrew’s TV searches – after all, they are both about unearthing new raw talent – he says they are also very different beasts.
“The difference between Britain’s Got Talent and what I do is there has to be a physical production at the end of it.
“I’m a complete quality control freak and I don’t want people spending money and getting a production and they don’t like it.”
Although most people would kill to be able to say they wrote the music for theatre greats like Phantom, Jesus Christ Superstar, Starlight Express and Aspects of Love, are there any musicals which Andrew’s not been involved with that he wishes he could put his name to?
“Most of Rodgers and Hammerstein, West Side Story, My Fair Lady,” he says, ticking them off on his fingers.
“I heard the score of Hair again the other day and it’s really much better than I remembered it. If I had written Porgy & Bess, one would have been over the moon. But I just love musicals.
“I must be honest, there’s no score I’ve heard in the last 20 years that I wish I could have killed to have written. Nothing has come out for a long time now which you could truthfully say, ‘yeah that’s going to be there for a long while’.
“Sometimes you get things that are critical successes but not popular successes. I’m very proud of something like Sunset Boulevard, which got me a lot of Tonys, and The Beautiful Game with Ben Elton. It won the London Critics’ prize but lasted 11 months.
“It’s hard finding something today that’s going to be the next Cats or Les Mis, apart from The Lion King and Wicked.
“I would have loved to have produced Wicked but as a composer I don’t think I would have gone there. Although there are some fabulous things in the score, it’s not very me. I would have liked to have written Wicked for the pay cheque,” he laughs.
Five years ago, The Phantom of the Opera was released as a film and, of course, Madonna famously played Evita on the big screen, but Andrew admits he doesn’t think musicals work well in the cinema any more.
“I’ve not really had any of mine transfer to film that I’ve been happy with so far. The history of musicals in cinema in the last two or three decades has not been great. There are exceptions. One has to honourably accept Mamma Mia! It’s a wonderful film but even that has not really done quite as well as the big old musicals used to do in film.
“I think there has to be an era of movie musicals soon. I don’t think anyone yet has come through as a young director who can really do for them what some of the great theatre directors in the past have done for stage musicals.”
Although it seems that Andrew spends most of his time immersed in music, he also has two other great loves – art and architecture. In fact, the day after our meeting, he’s planning his perfect day off – visiting historic sites around South Wales.
“It goes back to my childhood,” says Andrew, who has amassed a collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, many of which went on show at the Royal Academy in London six years ago.
He tells me that while growing up he would visit places like Ewenny Priory in the Vale of Glamorgan and Cardiff Castle with his parents and take notes about the architecture.
“I’ve got my old architectural guides and my childhood notes and I’m going to Ewenny Priory and Margam Abbey tomorrow,” he says. “I know all of Cardiff’s major buildings. If I’ve got time I will go around Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch too.”
He was first introduced to William Burgess’ designs at Cardiff Castle as a boy.
“I was nine-years-old and my life was changed. The Victorian arc was the most important thing I’d seen.”
Today the roof of his country home is modelled on that at Castell Coch, a building he has also featured in his work.
“I did a video with my ex-wife Sarah Brightman in there. It was for the song Him which made about number 47 in the charts for a week. It’s not something I go into too much depth about,” he laughs.
Andrew often mixes business with pleasure.
“One of the most wonderful things about the TV casting programmes is going to see the families (of the contestants). On the one hand I actually love going to see them but it also takes me out of London to places I would never go to because of the day job. I have the best day. I pop in and do a little bit of filming and then I just take off. I went to Rhyl and there are some fantastic churches all around there.”
So is he a frustrated architect?
“Yes, I would like to be an architect,” he smiles.
But for now it’s all about Maria, Dorothy and proving Love Never Dies.
The Sound of Music is at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, until August 29. The box office number is 0870 040 2000
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/showbiz-and-lifestyle/2009/08/01/andrew-lloyd-webber-i-m-a-quality-control-freak-91466-24280490/
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Bono the inspiration behind Spider-Man musical name
Is there no end to U2 frontman's talents!
By ANTOINETTE KELLY, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, July 21, 2009, 10:01 AM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:12 PM
U2 Bono and The Edge are two men of many talents!
The Irish rock stars - currently clawing their way round the world with the 360 Tour - are the brains behind the new Spider-Man musical set to light up Broadway next year.
Bono and the Edge penned the music and lyrics for the musical, which will star Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane Watson and Alan Cumming as the Green Goblin.
And not only did the boys get the words and music together, but Bono also came up with the title "Turn off the Dark."
The title was inspired by a story Bono heard of a child who would ask his father to "Turn off the dark," instead of "Turn on the light."
The Edge says he was drawn to the material because super heroes and rock stars come from the same place.
"Every rock & roll star probably started out as the geek who got bullied on in school, and eventually their form of revenge was to write songs or learn to play guitar,” he says.
"In many ways the audience for a rock and roll band, and the audience for comic books are the same," says the Edge. "It's kids, like ourselves, 15 or 16, like ourselves, out in the suburbs, in our case Dublin city, but it could be any city in America or in Europe.
"It seems, at that moment in your life, that there is this world out there that you can't get access to and the only way you can connect to that is though music or comic books or movies."
Roll on the previews in February 2010!!
http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/Touching-story-inspires-Bono-to-name-Spider-Man-musical.html
By ANTOINETTE KELLY, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, July 21, 2009, 10:01 AM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:12 PM
U2 Bono and The Edge are two men of many talents!
The Irish rock stars - currently clawing their way round the world with the 360 Tour - are the brains behind the new Spider-Man musical set to light up Broadway next year.
Bono and the Edge penned the music and lyrics for the musical, which will star Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane Watson and Alan Cumming as the Green Goblin.
And not only did the boys get the words and music together, but Bono also came up with the title "Turn off the Dark."
The title was inspired by a story Bono heard of a child who would ask his father to "Turn off the dark," instead of "Turn on the light."
The Edge says he was drawn to the material because super heroes and rock stars come from the same place.
"Every rock & roll star probably started out as the geek who got bullied on in school, and eventually their form of revenge was to write songs or learn to play guitar,” he says.
"In many ways the audience for a rock and roll band, and the audience for comic books are the same," says the Edge. "It's kids, like ourselves, 15 or 16, like ourselves, out in the suburbs, in our case Dublin city, but it could be any city in America or in Europe.
"It seems, at that moment in your life, that there is this world out there that you can't get access to and the only way you can connect to that is though music or comic books or movies."
Roll on the previews in February 2010!!
http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/Touching-story-inspires-Bono-to-name-Spider-Man-musical.html
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Phantom 2 will be fantastic promises Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber has confirmed that soprano Sierra Boggess and baritone Ramin Karimloo will star in the world premiere in London of his Phantom Of The Opera sequel, Love Never Dies.
He told me that the £10million (probably more) show will open at the Adelphi Theatre 'early next year', adding that 'if it's any later, I'll go crazy!'
The show's award-winning designer, Bob Crowley, will test 'magic' scenes involving a life-sized automaton version of Christine Daae, the Phantom's beautiful protegee, at the Adelphi in September or October.
'I don't want to wait till next year and find that we're held up by some illusion,' the composer said. 'We'll set it up and fix any problems in the autumn.'
Creating the automaton, and ensuring that it works, has been one of the problems that caused Love Never Dies to delay from an initial, hoped-for opening this year.
Another factor was finding enough sets of performers to play the two main leads on three continents simultaneously. One idea had been for Love Never Dies to open in London, New York and Shangai at the same time. Lloyd Webber conceded that it's unlikely that will now happen.
'Where will we find three voices like that?' Lloyd Webber wondered aloud, as we listened to Ms Boggess's soaring soprano voice during a playback session at a recording studio in Battersea, South London.
Lord Lloyd-Webber and his long-time collaborator, music producer Nigel Wright, were playing me excerpts from the Love Never Dies concept album. 'She's pretty wonderful,' he added. And she is.
'It's the first time that the leads on an album of mine have gone on to open in the actual stage show. When Sierra and Ramin open in London, Broadway will want to see the original stars, so you can't say to London: "OK, listen to them for two weeks and then New York gets them."
'I personally feel that what will now happen is that Sierra and Ramin will open in London early next year and then go to New York in the autumn of 2010. I think once the album comes out, hopefully before Christmas, a lot of singers will come out of the woodwork and we'll find new Christines and Phantoms for the other productions,' he explained.
My sense of Love Never Dies is that it's the best score Lloyd Webber has produced, and that once he hands it over to director Jack O'Brien it can be moulded into the best musical London has seen in years.
However, Lloyd Webber, looking wistful as we listened to his powerful melodies, wondered whether there would be an audience for Love Never Dies.
To be sure, nothing's a dead certainty in this business, but I will be mightily surprised if Love Never Dies doesn't excel, both artistically and commercially.
'I'm just going to hand it over to Jack in January and start rehearsals,' Lloyd Webber said.
I laughed and surmised that he wouldn't be able to 'just hand it over'. But that's why O'Brien's a good choice. He's tough.
The show is set on Coney Island, New York, around 1907 - ten years on from the final actions in Phantom Of The Opera. A mysterious figure, Mr Y, has established a freak show attraction called Phantasma.
He works with former Paris Opera ballet mistress Madame Giry (sung on the album by Sally Dexter) and her daughter Meg (now famous as bathing beauty the Ooh La La girl), sung by Summer Strallen.
Christine, an opera star, is married to Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny (John Barrowman on the record), and the mother of a ten-year-old son, Gustave. She is invited to perform at the Phantasma amusement resort.
Lloyd Webber explained that in those days, showmen always liked to present 'opera totty of the day, like Katherine Jenkins now'.
I won't give any more away, except to say that by the show's dramatically heartbreaking end, there won't be a dry eye in the house.
By the way, I asked why Ms Jenkins couldn't take over from Ms Boggess in London and he explained that Boggess's range was soprano, and that she can go right up the scale: 'Her B-flat is sensational!'
Jenkins is a mezzo soprano and her voice wouldn't suit his score.
Essentially, it's a musical about obsession, love and a composer's life work. It may also, I suspect, be the final original masterpiece of Lloyd Webber's career.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1197158/BAZ-BAMIGBOYE-Beyonce-wants-soul-sister.html
He told me that the £10million (probably more) show will open at the Adelphi Theatre 'early next year', adding that 'if it's any later, I'll go crazy!'
The show's award-winning designer, Bob Crowley, will test 'magic' scenes involving a life-sized automaton version of Christine Daae, the Phantom's beautiful protegee, at the Adelphi in September or October.
'I don't want to wait till next year and find that we're held up by some illusion,' the composer said. 'We'll set it up and fix any problems in the autumn.'
Creating the automaton, and ensuring that it works, has been one of the problems that caused Love Never Dies to delay from an initial, hoped-for opening this year.
Another factor was finding enough sets of performers to play the two main leads on three continents simultaneously. One idea had been for Love Never Dies to open in London, New York and Shangai at the same time. Lloyd Webber conceded that it's unlikely that will now happen.
'Where will we find three voices like that?' Lloyd Webber wondered aloud, as we listened to Ms Boggess's soaring soprano voice during a playback session at a recording studio in Battersea, South London.
Lord Lloyd-Webber and his long-time collaborator, music producer Nigel Wright, were playing me excerpts from the Love Never Dies concept album. 'She's pretty wonderful,' he added. And she is.
'It's the first time that the leads on an album of mine have gone on to open in the actual stage show. When Sierra and Ramin open in London, Broadway will want to see the original stars, so you can't say to London: "OK, listen to them for two weeks and then New York gets them."
'I personally feel that what will now happen is that Sierra and Ramin will open in London early next year and then go to New York in the autumn of 2010. I think once the album comes out, hopefully before Christmas, a lot of singers will come out of the woodwork and we'll find new Christines and Phantoms for the other productions,' he explained.
My sense of Love Never Dies is that it's the best score Lloyd Webber has produced, and that once he hands it over to director Jack O'Brien it can be moulded into the best musical London has seen in years.
However, Lloyd Webber, looking wistful as we listened to his powerful melodies, wondered whether there would be an audience for Love Never Dies.
To be sure, nothing's a dead certainty in this business, but I will be mightily surprised if Love Never Dies doesn't excel, both artistically and commercially.
'I'm just going to hand it over to Jack in January and start rehearsals,' Lloyd Webber said.
I laughed and surmised that he wouldn't be able to 'just hand it over'. But that's why O'Brien's a good choice. He's tough.
The show is set on Coney Island, New York, around 1907 - ten years on from the final actions in Phantom Of The Opera. A mysterious figure, Mr Y, has established a freak show attraction called Phantasma.
He works with former Paris Opera ballet mistress Madame Giry (sung on the album by Sally Dexter) and her daughter Meg (now famous as bathing beauty the Ooh La La girl), sung by Summer Strallen.
Christine, an opera star, is married to Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny (John Barrowman on the record), and the mother of a ten-year-old son, Gustave. She is invited to perform at the Phantasma amusement resort.
Lloyd Webber explained that in those days, showmen always liked to present 'opera totty of the day, like Katherine Jenkins now'.
I won't give any more away, except to say that by the show's dramatically heartbreaking end, there won't be a dry eye in the house.
By the way, I asked why Ms Jenkins couldn't take over from Ms Boggess in London and he explained that Boggess's range was soprano, and that she can go right up the scale: 'Her B-flat is sensational!'
Jenkins is a mezzo soprano and her voice wouldn't suit his score.
Essentially, it's a musical about obsession, love and a composer's life work. It may also, I suspect, be the final original masterpiece of Lloyd Webber's career.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1197158/BAZ-BAMIGBOYE-Beyonce-wants-soul-sister.html
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
First look: What a weird 'Wonderland' Burton's made
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
You might have gone down the rabbit hole before. But never with a guide quite as attuned to the fantastic as Tim Burton.
PANORAMIC PICS: See more exclusive art from 'Alice in Wonderland'
Those who have grown curiouser and curiouser about what the offbeat reinventor of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might conjure up in his version of Alice in Wonderland can feast their eyes on this array of concept art and publicity images, due to hang in movie theaters this week to promote the March 5, 2010, release.
"It has been Burton-ized" is how producer Richard Zanuck describes the director's vision of the Lewis Carroll classic. Many elements are familiar, from the enigmatic Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) to the fierce Jabberwock (Christopher Lee). But none has been presented in this sort of visually surreal fashion.
"We finished shooting in December after only 40 days," Zanuck says. Now the live action is being merged with CG animation and motion-capture creatures, and then transferred into 3-D.
The traditional tale has been freshened with a blast of girl power, courtesy of writer Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast). Alice, 17, attends a party at a Victorian estate only to find she is about to be proposed to in front of hundreds of snooty society types. Off she runs, following a white rabbit into a hole and ending up in Wonderland, a place she visited 10 years before yet doesn't remember.
Among those who welcome her back is the Mad Hatter, a part tailor-made for Johnny Depp as he collaborates with Burton for the seventh time. "This character is off his rocker," Zanuck says.
Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska, 19, best known for HBO's In Treatment, has the coveted title role. "There is something real, honest and sincere about her," Zanuck says. "She's not a typical Hollywood starlet."
There is the usual Burton-esque ghoulishness (Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen, whose favorite retort is "Off with their heads," has a moat filled with bobbing noggins), but Zanuck assures most kids can handle it. "The book itself is pretty dark," he notes. "This is for little people and people who read it when they were little 50 years ago."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2009-06-21-alice-in-wonderland_N.htm
Stripped of all dignity
For a man so obsessed about his body, there was nothing more humiliating for Michael Jackson than when police strip-searched him while investigating the allegations that he had molested 13-year-old Jordie Chandler.
The boy had given a detailed description of the star's body and the detectives needed to check if it was true. Jackson was warned that if he refused to cooperate, he'd be arrested and taken away in handcuffs.
After the police arrived at Neverland, it took lawyers an hour to persuade him to leave his bedroom. Finally, he came into the living room clearly agitated, wearing a brown dressing gown. He blocked his face with his hands, as if thwarting the paparazzi.
He was told to stand on a platform in the middle of the room. 'Please don't make me do this,' he pleaded. 'Sir, we have no choice,' said one of the detectives.
Staring at a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on the wall, Jackson removed the dressing gown, to reveal a bathing suit. 'You'll have to take that off, too, sir,' said the detective. Michael slipped off the bathing suit . . . under which he was wearing boxers. 'Sir, please,' the detective said.
Crying softly, Michael took off the boxers and stood, stripped not only of his clothes, but of all his dignity. All eyes peered at him to see if he was circumcised, as Jordie had claimed (he wasn't). 'Oh my God,' Michael whimpered. He looked as if he was about to faint.
The police circled him slowly, making notes about his body, the colour of his buttocks and private parts. A photographer took pictures before Jackson jumped off the platform. 'That's enough,' he said, before fleeing the room.
He was persuaded to return by his lawyers after 15 minutes of cries, shrieks and pleas. A plaintive wail resonated through the house. Michael Jackson had been broken. He pounded his feet against the floor.
Again, he stood naked. More pictures. Then videotape. 'Please, can we stop now?' Michael pleaded.
One of the doctors produced a ruler, at which point Jackson's doctor intervened. 'That's it,' he said firmly. 'Mike, get dressed.' Jackson ran from the room, shaking and screaming: 'How could this happen to me?'
Extracted from Michael Jackson: The Magic And The Madness by J. Randy Taraborrelli (Pan, £8.99). Randy Taraborrelli. To order a copy, tel: 0845 155 0720
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196633/How-Jacksons-surgery-desperate-bid-look-like-father-hated.html
The boy had given a detailed description of the star's body and the detectives needed to check if it was true. Jackson was warned that if he refused to cooperate, he'd be arrested and taken away in handcuffs.
After the police arrived at Neverland, it took lawyers an hour to persuade him to leave his bedroom. Finally, he came into the living room clearly agitated, wearing a brown dressing gown. He blocked his face with his hands, as if thwarting the paparazzi.
He was told to stand on a platform in the middle of the room. 'Please don't make me do this,' he pleaded. 'Sir, we have no choice,' said one of the detectives.
Staring at a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on the wall, Jackson removed the dressing gown, to reveal a bathing suit. 'You'll have to take that off, too, sir,' said the detective. Michael slipped off the bathing suit . . . under which he was wearing boxers. 'Sir, please,' the detective said.
Crying softly, Michael took off the boxers and stood, stripped not only of his clothes, but of all his dignity. All eyes peered at him to see if he was circumcised, as Jordie had claimed (he wasn't). 'Oh my God,' Michael whimpered. He looked as if he was about to faint.
The police circled him slowly, making notes about his body, the colour of his buttocks and private parts. A photographer took pictures before Jackson jumped off the platform. 'That's enough,' he said, before fleeing the room.
He was persuaded to return by his lawyers after 15 minutes of cries, shrieks and pleas. A plaintive wail resonated through the house. Michael Jackson had been broken. He pounded his feet against the floor.
Again, he stood naked. More pictures. Then videotape. 'Please, can we stop now?' Michael pleaded.
One of the doctors produced a ruler, at which point Jackson's doctor intervened. 'That's it,' he said firmly. 'Mike, get dressed.' Jackson ran from the room, shaking and screaming: 'How could this happen to me?'
Extracted from Michael Jackson: The Magic And The Madness by J. Randy Taraborrelli (Pan, £8.99). Randy Taraborrelli. To order a copy, tel: 0845 155 0720
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196633/How-Jacksons-surgery-desperate-bid-look-like-father-hated.html
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