I spent the month of May rewriting. Mike was editing his brilliant miniseries Angels in America. My limp turned out to be a snapped tendon in my ankle, and so in early June I had an operation and spent the rest of the summer in a wheelchair with a bright pink plaster cast. I wanted to be able to walk for our rehearsals in the fall.
Meanwhile, John and I work on more songs at what we now call Killer Rabbit Studios on Ventura Boulevard. They have even put a neon sign up for us. Sara Ramirez and Tim Curry join us, adding their voices to our demos. We come up with another “Spanking” song. It will meet the same fate as its predecessors.
Mike always takes August off for a summer break on Martha’s Vineyard. In early September he is joined by Casey. I am still immobilized, but Tania drives me around Utah with my leg up in the back of a gold Lexus with Lily riding shotgun.
Mike calls from the Vineyard. He is relaxed and friendly. He has Casey with him. They are working for a few days. Sounds good. But as he reveals what they are doing my heart sinks. They seem not to be just working on the dances and the transitions between scenes. It seems they have had some “great ideas for the play.” One he lets me have briefly. They have agreed that there are no great numbers in act 2 (?) and they want to end act 1 on “Find Your Grail” and boot the next two numbers into act 2. My heart sinks. Oh no. He will call me tomorrow with the details.
I have a sleepless night. I have now spent ten drafts finding the best shape, and the best act break, and after a couple of days with the choreographer, Mike wants to change it. It makes no sense to me. Act 2 is already way too long. If he cuts it the way he proposes, he is going to end up with a forty-minute first act and an act 2 of two and a quarter hours.
The French Taunter is clearly the comedy climax of act 1, and we have to send them into the bars for intermission, still laughing at that. The plot is simple: the French taunting causes the British knights to run away, to flee for their very lives. The English are utterly dispersed and King Arthur starts act 2 all alone (apart from Patsy) in a dark and very expensive forest. Now he must somehow find his knights and then seek the Holy Grail.
I am so anxious I wake up at four. After wrestling with my thoughts for an hour, I call John Du Prez in England and we have a long talk. Is it normal, I wonder, for the choreographer and the director to rewrite the book? After my long talk with John, I realize I have to speak up and defend my text. There is only a month to go and we can’t start ripping apart the work of three years. If only we can try what we have first, I don’t mind changing anything afterwards, but this feels like panic.
I haven’t had any comments at all from Mike on my new script that I rewrote in May after they gave me all their notes. I simply don’t know what he thinks about the current book. I got neither a call nor an email from him about it, or any of the new songs we sent. We arrange a conference call to discuss all this. It lasts an hour and a half. At the end I have lots of notes. Mike and Casey have an idea of Arthur at the end of a long table and he only gets the idea for the knights of the Round Table at the end of the dance, when he goes to Vegas, ends up in his underpants broke, and then sings “I’m All Alone.” I hate it so bad I can’t keep my mouth shut. I have to say why I feel it is a bad idea. The “Knights of the Round Table” is a classic Python bit—you can’t just have them sing “We’re knights of the long table.” In any case. John and I tried this all before when we were starting off and we even wrote a song for it….
What Shape Shall Arthur’s Table Be?
The universe’s a marvelous thing.
It’s made entirely out of string
And everything, and all you see
Comes from a tiny wrinkly pea.
But one thing still obsesses me
When we sit down to take our tea.
How can we sit down equally?
What shape shall Arthur’s table be?
Shall it be oval, cubed, or square,
Rectangular, triangulare?
Shall it be T-shaped? Like a Vee?
What shape shall Arthur’s table be?
Should it be pointed like a star?
A long line like a sushi bar?
Clam shaped, ham shaped, like a tree?
Or perhaps a table shaped like me?
Should it be something like a duck
Or like a toad? No, that’s bad luck.
How can we sit down twenty-three?
What shape shall the damn table be?
Shall it be oval, cubed, or square,
Rectangular, triangulare?
Shall it be B-shaped, like a bee?
What shape shall Arthur’s table be?
Elliptical or like a tube?
Oblong? Pear-shaped? Like a cube?
Hollow like the letter P?
Or F? Or Y? Or G? Or C?
Rhomboid, ovoid, diamond shape?
A flag? A bag or like a drape?
Egg shaped, something like a pig,
Or elephant? No, that’s too big.
To avoid all jealousy
Everyone should sit near me.
The perfect shape it must be found.
The shape of the table should be…
Something very dear to me,
Something very near to me,
Something over there I see,
Something just behind the tree….
[They see the moon.]
That’s it!
The moon’s the answer, I’ll be bound!
The perfect table shape is found.
King Arthur’s knights shall be renowned
For dining at the Table Round!
In the end John and I came to the conclusion that, as it wasn’t that funny, we should just buy the myth and not start playing about with it, because we’ll weaken it if we make jokes about just everything. They listen and move on. I think it is a good conversation; we have some areas of agreement. I understand their concern for a big dance number in act 2. Sadly neither of them likes “Spanking” at all.
“Who are these girls?” worries Mike. “What are they doing there?”
How do I answer such a question? Later I ask my daughter.
“Who are the girls of Castle Anthrax?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “They’re funny….”
Well quite.
Mike calls later in the day and we talk for another hour and a quarter. He is very concerned. He has never experienced this, someone so resistant to his ideas, even when he wrote with Elaine May. I say I have never worked with a director who didn’t tell me what he thought of the script or let me have any notes. What am I supposed to do—intuit how he feels? We are both very forthright.
“You and I have been friends for a long time,” he says, “but I don’t see how I can go on.”
I don’t back down.
“I don’t see how I can go on if the choreographer and you are allowed to pull to bits the structure of the show that I have worked on for three years, without giving it a go.”
We have both shown each other the door. He’ll walk, I’ll walk. It feels better.
We discuss more details. I think I succeed in making it clear that I am not against his ideas at all, far from it, but I must resist things I think are wrong or less good than what we already have. I also say I need to hear a lot more about what he thinks about the text. I explain the plot of act 2 again, how the English are scattered and lost and Arthur must regain his knights. That’s why “I’m All Alone” works where it is: it comes out of a real emotion, his anxiety that his quest is failing and he has lost everyone. Mike says he didn’t realize that, I hadn’t made this clear in the text. I think it’s there, but I promise to emphasize it. I think he understands my plea to keep the act break where it is.
The main issue seems to be there is no big production number for dancing in act 2: there are smaller numbers and cabaret numbers and quartets. But act 2 has an awful lot of funny stuff in it. The big dance number we wrote was “A Spanking Tonight,” but both Mike and Casey are very coy about it. Tim Hatley gets it completely and I’m convinced the audience will love it, but Broadway anxiety is everywhere. They seem unconcerned about Chicago—it’s all about what the New York critics will think. It paralyzes people and they rush to find bad solutions to problems that don’t exist.
Still, and most importantly, Mike and I patched up our relationship. I feel good that I said what I think, and I stood up for my writing. It felt like good therapy to me. I hope it was good for Mike, too, and we’re not heading for a Garry Shandling relationship. Perhaps all will be healed. We promise to stay in touch and talk. I guess we’ll see.
Mike is out here for the Emmys and is everywhere with his utterly brilliant cast and writer of the miniseries Angels in America. They deservedly sweep the board, winning eleven awards.
56th Prime-Time Emmy Awards
Outstanding Miniseries: Angels in America
Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries: Mike Nichols
Well, what a difference three weeks makes. Things couldn’t be better. After Mike and I had our talk, things immediately improved. There was much to-ing and fro-ing of phone calls and emails with people letting each other know what they were doing and what their concerns were. This became so healthy that the meetings with Casey, Mike, and John at our LA home last week were a virtual lovefest. We discovered that not only were we all on the same page but that it was an illuminated manuscript.
The meetings began with Casey and Glen Kelly (our piano dance arranger) playing through the various numbers as we ran through the text. Glen is an extraordinarily fine player and John and I were both thrilled with his arrangements of “Mud” and “Burn Her.” In fact, most of the music was well received, even the shocking news that the “Critic Song” had shifted into the minor key. I wrote it as a sort of Noël Coward number, but now they have switched it into Fiddler on the Roof. Mike says for him this removes all the stigma from the number and there will be a great Tevye moment for David Hyde Pierce. I suggest that since David is also a concert pianist he should actually play live, great big Rachmaninov arpeggios, which Glen immediately ran to the piano and performed. Very impressive he was, too. Everyone liked this idea.
There was a little tension around the still missing big number in act 2. John and I had worked on a long and what I thought was a funny intervention by the pope and his cardinals, but when we played it for them, Mike and Casey did not like it at all. They also remained adamantly opposed to the “Spanking” number. I listened hard and suddenly came up with an idea. Since we are going into “He’s Different” anyway, what if that thought now leads into the big number in act 2 and it’s all about Lancelot and whether indeed he might be gay. Instant unanimous enthusiasm all round for this idea and I improvised a sort of Peter Allen “Rio” number:
His name is Lancelot.
He wears tight pants a lot.
He likes to dance a lot and dream.
No one would ever know
That this outrageous pro
Bats for the other team.
During the number Lancelot will be transformed into an outrageous costume. We will watch him come out. This could be an hilarious moment for Hank. First he is puzzled, then in denial, then he gradually comes round. And out. We all love this idea and I created the lyrics overnight. John took no time setting them to a spanking tune. Well, not spanking obviously, but Casey now has a great dance number in act 2 to work on. Mike said the lyrics were great and he loved the whole song. For our plot this now sets up a romance between Lancelot and Prince Herbert, whom he has just rescued.
I thought your son was a lady.
I can understand that.
John and I had a few minor grumbles over the cutting of King Arthur’s song about the Lady of the Lake, which I personally loved, but I think Mike has a point: it is too relaxed and lacking in grandeur for the first appearance of our diva, the Lady of the Lake. In fact, after a long talk with Tim Hatley, I realized that this is going to be a great stage moment and we really don’t need another song before “The Song That Goes Like This.” So we cut it.
The other song we cut was the “Knights of Ni.” This is a song we have dicked about with quite a bit but have never particularly solved. Ours is far too Disney. No one likes it. Casey and Glen Kelly played their version, which was frankly not good either; and so after a few minutes I suggested we cut the number since it wasn’t doing anything and simply move on to Sir Robin. This seemed like a good idea and that’s what we have gone with.
One of the most useful ideas was when I finally realized (duh!) that the Lady of the Lake should end up with King Arthur, and not Sir Galahad. It is far more appropriate and it works a treat, especially now she tells him her real name.
Wait, I can’t just call you Lady. Do you have a name?
Everyone has a name, Arthur.
What is yours?
My name…is Guinevere!
Holy shit!
So with great food, great weather, and our great house to work in, it was a lovefest. Mike’s miniseries had become the most awarded at the Emmys, everybody loved him, he had been thanked royally by everyone, so he was beaming and happy.