Like his predecessors, original author Bret Easton Ellis uses crime as a means of commentary on the excesses of contemporary society. The tale of Broadway’s latest musical murderer, starring Benjamin Walker, is guaranteed to make a killing. Quoth Baron Lloyd-Webber, “It’s about kids discovering themselves through music.” December 6, 2015 Will FriedwaldĮntirely contemporary work is based on the 2003 movie about a rocker who whips a classroom of tweens into a band. Yet just because the property, plot and characters may be familiar doesn’t mean that these upcoming shows can’t be highly original and tell their well-known stories in fascinating and innovative ways. The musical has traditionally been at the top of the cultural food chain: from novel to play to movie to Broadway show. “I have kind of made a name for myself directing plays featuring unpleasant behavior,” says Frears, who jokes of Goldman’s habit of working over lunch: “This is why you work with Bill Goldman.
That’s important.” (Goldman is a devoted Knicks fan.) Though Goldman had never seen Frears’s work before, Frears, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, is convinced that his background of making “theater with scary themes”-including The Pillowman, The Water’s Edge and Rainbow Kiss-won him the job. Goldman decided to work with Frears because he is “a perfectly civilized guy,” he says. I was so proud of myself for making you laugh.” “I’d come to sing for my supper that day,” Frears, 42, recalls, smiling at Goldman, 84.
The pair initially met at one of Goldman’s favorite haunts, Café Boulud, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and had what was the first of five years’ worth of lunches at the restaurant, working on the Broadway script over espressos and ice cream. I just hadn’t seen Misery, because to be honest, the trailer scared me too much.” “I’d seen almost every other movie he’d ever written.
“I had read books Which Lie Did I Tell? and Adventures in the Screen Trade, and they made a huge impression on me,” he says, gesturing toward Goldman’s library, where several copies of the writer’s own books dot the shelves. Even though Frears had to plow through King’s novel and the Goldman film adaptation with a crying infant in his arms, he says he couldn’t pass up the chance to meet one of his idols.
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