Harvey Fierstein

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest is the one and only Harvey Fire Steve,
who's got a brand new memoir. I was better last night, Harvey.
Why did you write it because of COVID? Had nothing
else to do. I'm sitting at home. They shut down

(00:29):
the theaters, they shut everything down. I'm sitting at home.
I said, well, I owe a couple of quilts. I
make quilts, as you might know from reading the book.
So I said, I owe a wedding quilt. I owe
a baby quilt. So I said, let me just go
ahead and make these quilts and catch up, which was great.

(00:50):
I made five quilts in a row. It was great.
Everyone loved their quilts. Who doesn't love a nice quilt,
because you know, as opposed to give him somebody a painting.
You give somebody a painting, they gotta put it on
the wall, They got to throw it in the closet
when you're not there. You know, they gotta hide it
under the bed or something. But you give him the quilt,

(01:11):
you let the dog lay in and if you hate it,
you know, you put it in the car and land
and use it in the back of the car for
when people get cold, they faded and if they love it,
they put it on the bed. So everybody loves the quilt.
No no, no, no, no, no, no, slow down. How
did you get into quilting? And how long does it
take to make one quilt? Oh? Usually I can turn

(01:35):
out too quilts a year, but with COVID and nothing
else to do, I was just putting out. Um and
how did I get into quilting? A show on PBS.
There was a show on PBS many years ago about sewing,

(01:58):
and um. I always was sort of interested in sewing.
My father sewed because he was in the business of
how he was in the baggage of business. He was
in the schmount To trade. He he managed a factory
for the Guinea family, the miss Rockies and the Guineas,
and so he knew how to sew. We had a
professional sewing machine in our basement. My mother sewed. UM.

(02:20):
I always thought it was kind of cool. Maybe you
could make a piece of clothing or something. I don't know. Anyway,
I started watching a sewing program and all of a sudden,
I'm making quilts, which was a lot of fun. Um,
and I've been doing it's close to thirty years. Okay,
so in thirty years, what you learn now that you
didn't know that? In terms of making quilts, Um, you

(02:43):
start out. When you start out, you do those traditional
quilts and the traditional pattern he cut triangles and stuff
like that as you go along. Well, also the the
whole art quilt movement that has changed. There's a whole
art quilt movement now. Um people do incredible work. Um,

(03:04):
stuff that's never meant to be on the bed. It's
meant to be on wall, and so it's totally freeing
this this. I don't die fabric, but many people die fabric.
People paint on fabric, people use three dimensional stuff and
all that I don't do. I'm I'm like, put it
on the bed. People want something to put on the bed.

(03:24):
I put it on the bed. The wildest I ever
do is I'll make matching pillowcases. Oh, matching pillow gaze.
My nephew just called me and said, can I get
matching pillow gases for this? And I said, sorry, no,
you gotta get in line. Okay, when you do quiote,
how long will you quote it one time? And will
you multitask watch TV? Or is it to require complete concentration. No.

(03:48):
I used to leave the TV on all the time,
and I found I wasn't really listening to it or
watching it or anything. So why bother? So it doesn't
really matter. I do turn the TV on, but it
really doesn't matter. You get into a whole rhythm. Now.
Remember I'm not I'm not quilting by hand. I'm quilting
by machine. So you're cutting fabric, You're you're falling in

(04:14):
love with different fabrics, you're putting fabrics together. Okay, so
lockdown begins. You're quilting. You find you have a lot
of time on your hands. How do you end up
writing the memoir? An agent said to me when I said,
I'm going to kill myself. I can't take another quilt.

(04:34):
I've delivered by five quilts, and and I must say,
three years later, I still have two more quilts cut
out on my tables downstairs, waiting to be sowed. But
I just had had enough um and I said to
my agent, you know, is this gonna end? And he
said probably not. Why don't you write your memoir? And

(04:56):
I said, I don't write prose. I mean I write articles.
I write opinion piece and stuff like that, but a
book is like it's a book. I said, I don't write,
and he said, well, why don't you try? And I thought, yeah,
why don't you? What the funk? No one's gonna know. Uh.

(05:17):
And and with the computer and all that, you don't
have to get the spelling right. And and if you
get editor, he'll fix what you what you can't say right?
Try it. So I sat down and I wrote, um,
not not what the preface is, but you. But in

(05:38):
the very first chapter, I tell a story about being
in third grade or second grade. I think, um, where
where we were doing Sleeping Beauty? And I tell and
I and I told that story. I wrote that story
out phil Amina, who played the wicked witch in in
Sleeping Beauty. She and I are still friends. I don't

(05:59):
give up friends, eazy. They gotta die on me, that's
or or say something nasty, nasty and death. Those are
the ways out. So Philomina and I are still friends,
you know. Sixties something years later. And I take that
little story and I sent it to Philomena, figuring she'll
get a laugh out of it. In return, she sent

(06:21):
me the photograph that's in the book of of Me
and Drag, which is what the story was about getting
into dragons seven years old? And UM, I said, if
she kept that photograph for all these years and that
story was important enough for her to remember and me
to remember, it might mean something to somebody else, I'm

(06:44):
going to keep going. So I kept going. I wrote
probably three chapters, four chapters, gave it to my agent.
My agent gave it to a literary agent, who said,
this is good. I said, what do you know? I
could write? You know, well, do you know Tony Awards

(07:05):
didn't necessarily have to write? Uh? There was there was, Uh,
there was the best musical, the best book of a musical.
Once went to UM a show that had no dialogue
at all. It was it was an all Dan show.
I forget what the name of the show, but uh,
you gotta so. Uh. She sent it out to like

(07:27):
nine publishers, and every one of them made a bid
to buy it somebody, you know. So I I picked
an editor that I thought would be the right editor.
I picked the guy who edited the two big Stephen
Sondheim volumes of lyrics. I figured, if he's good enough

(07:50):
for Steve, he's good enough Harvey and uh. And I
also liked other works of his. But that's really how
I saw it. And he was and he's with Coop,
and you can't really do better than connob though they
they paid the least of all the offers, but you know,

(08:10):
it's only money. So that's how I chose him. And
he turned out to be a fabulous editor who basically
just kept saying, go, go, go, go go. He changed
very little in the in the book, made one or
two suggestions. I mean literally, he was just this wonderful,
wonderful cheerleader for me, um to just keep me going.

(08:35):
And uh, I got this book, which turned out to
be a New York Times best seller, hit me with
a brick. So you talked about the computer correcting, spelling, etcetera.
When you wrote it. How much did the editor change,
like construction intense or was it really pretty much the

(08:58):
way you wrote it? It's the way I wrote it.
It's it was really sort of surprising, I think because
I used the theatrical mindset writing it. I used how
I would tell a story in a play or a movie,
so um so that gave me the structure. I allowed

(09:19):
each chapter to be its own story. I mean, it's
not an anthology by any means, but I allowed it
each one to stand on their own, hopefully. UM. The
only structural thing he wanted to change was there's a
story at the end of the book about my mother

(09:39):
and I that he wanted me that that took place
when I was fourteen. He wanted me to put it
at the beginning of the book when I was fourteen,
and I said, no, you're you're, you're, You're wrong. It
belongs where it is. It's it's um because it was
actually inspired by something that happened between my brother and

(10:01):
I in present time, and and I knew that that
was the way that I wanted to end the book.
I wanted that memory. I wanted that that memory between
my brother and I, that memory between my mother and I,
to bring me to that moment um, which I thought
was a good ending for the book. Now, a book,

(10:25):
to write, the whole book is not something you can
do in a day. But when you wrote this memoir,
which of course reflects your life, which is linear with
ups and downs. When you do your creative work and
you do this book, do you start out not knowing
where you're going to go? Or do you have the
bones of it and you're just filling in having never

(10:46):
written this stuff before. Um, I had no idea none.
I knew my life, I knew I knew where I
was born, and I knew where I was at the
present moment, and I knew most of what I remembered
a lot of what went on between. So I guess
that means you know the structure in some way. But no,

(11:10):
I didn't know what stories there was several. What I
would do is I would sit down at the computer
every day and write a chapter. I basically wrote a
chapter a day. Um, sometimes they went back and edit it,
but but I basically wrote one of those chapters every day.
And I think, how many chapters are in this stupid thing? Uh?

(11:35):
Too many? There are fifty nine chapters, so so you know,
at least two months. But I probably probably took me
about four months to write, which still is pretty fast.
But when there's nothing else going on in the world,
you know, it was the most exciting. I started it
during the summer, so I did have friends come over

(11:57):
to visit because we could see outside. You know, you
couldn't have people in the house because and everybody had
you know, we rolled lepers and stuff. It was like
a scene at a ben her with her mother and
sister hiding behind the stone the lepers. But um, so
I still had friends come over for play dates with
the dogs and stuff like that. But other than that,

(12:20):
there was shopping for food, and there was cooking, and
there was the computer and I guess streaming television. Okay,
so you finished the book. You're deep in the groove.
Now when you're finished and it's done, it's going to

(12:40):
be exposed to the public. Were you anxious about that?
Did you said, well, maybe it's not that good, or
he said, no, this is great. Everyone's gonna love it. Um,
I've written enough stuff. I'm seventy years old. I've been writing,
even though I never wanted to be a writer. I've
been writing since I was twenties. So it's fifty years

(13:03):
of putting yourself out there. Um, people are gonna think
what they're gonna think. There's people who are gonna love
what you write, and these people who are gonna hate
what you write. And I'm more than used to that,
so I I really try not to judge that. If
I want to put something out, if I feel it's
true and I'm gonna put it out, I put it out.
I don't read reviews anymore. I used to read reviews,

(13:27):
and they didn't do me any good. Um, they only
heard and um, because you never remember the good ones,
you only remember the bad ones. And so uh, I
changed names. I did right to several people and say,
I've written this memoir, I've written about you. Do you

(13:48):
want me to use your real name? I'm more than
willing to change names, and like people I don't talk to,
I changed their names. But there were there were a
couple of excellent overs that wanted their names used. Um.
In fact, one of them doesn't speak to me anymore.
I used his real name and he stopped speaking to me.

(14:12):
But he told me to please use his real name.
So I think there's a difference. I think I would
if I didn't it over again. I just change everybody's
name because I signed on to tell my truth. They didn't.
I signed on to tell my story they didn't, And
of course my story about them is going to be

(14:35):
different than they remember it, so it only makes sense
to allow them that fictionalized cover. Okay, so a book
is a different artwork from a player a movie in
terms of promotion. In the sales arc, what was that
like doing that for the first time. It was very

(14:58):
low pressure because didn't know anything about it. You know,
I published plays. There are books out of my plays,
but I don't have to do anything. They sell them
in the lobby, or they sell them at theater, book stuffs.
You know, it's nothing you have to do. So I
was very curious, especially since COVID was going on and

(15:20):
I had very little else to do. I was very
curious as to what it would be like to sell
the book and and and do all that stuff. There's
a lot of stuff to do, a lot of interviews,
but most of them were on Zoom, which is why
I'm I'm pretty good at zoom and well, I think
we all have gotten so good at zoom and Uh.

(15:43):
I did do some book signings that were fun. I
did some personal appearances that have been fun. Uh. I
don't think I read. I read a few. You know,
here's what I say about reviews. You don't really have
to read them. If they're bad, your friends will call

(16:05):
it tell you. If they're good, you'll see them in
the ad. You know. It's like, I go to Amazon
and they got all those quotes about the book, so
I didn't have to read any of those reviews. Uh,
they're They're all there. And as far and like I said,
as far as the bad ones, your friends will called.
I don't know how he said that you're so stupid,

(16:26):
because I don't think you're so stupid. I get it, okay. Also,
there's an audio version. Tell me about the creation of that.
And uh, because a lot of people listen to books
on tape, as they say, even though it's no longer
any tape, that was a That was the challenge that
I knew I was going to have to face. I

(16:48):
do voices, and I do narration for movies. I've I've
done the narration for several films, including the Academy Award
winning Times of Harvey Milk and and a few other
and I do voices of cartoons and stuff. So I'm
comfortable doing voice over work. The first book that I

(17:10):
did was my play Bella Bella about Bella abzug Um.
We did a recording of the entire play. It's a
one person play, and so I did that recording. So
I was that that is the background, but I already
had that memorized, so I had the pages in front

(17:32):
of me and I could read from the page, but
it was already memorized. I'm very dyslexic. As I say
in the book. The idea of sitting down and reading
an entire book, especially UH fifty nine chapter book, was
really frightening to me. So I said, could we get

(17:52):
a studio that was low pressure, which I thought meant,
don't go into the city to and go into that
evil city of New York because they're they're used to that,
They're used to people being very professional and reading. And
I lucked out. And they found this fabulous guy who

(18:14):
has a beautiful Victorian painted lady about half hour from
me ah and in his guesthouse slash garage, he's built
this beautiful studio where he does all kinds of recordings
and all kinds of celebrities have recorded their books there
and it's just you and him and no pressure because

(18:40):
he'll put in as many days as it takes. So
I think they told me I should figure on three
to four days to do the book. It took me six,
because like I said, I'm so dyslexic, but I just
took my time and did it. Um. The only there

(19:02):
was it was all manageable. Even the sad stuff was manageable.
There was one section that I read aloud and I
had to leave the building, and for the life of me,
I can't remember what it was, but I will remember
what it was. I read that section and I had
to leave. Um. I became very emotional, which I had

(19:26):
already lived through writing the book and editing it. So
I sort of shocked myself, UM to have that kind
of reaction. And like I said, at this moment, I
can't even think what it was. And it's not something
that that would knock out a reader. A reader would
understand what I was saying in that section, but to me,
it just it just ripped me apart when I read

(19:48):
it out loud. Okay, many cases they have people who
were professionals who that's what they do, read books for,
you know, and then the other things. You are a performer,
both naturally and in front of the camera and on stage.
So when you approach the book, did you view it

(20:09):
as a performance? What attitude did you bring into the
reading of it. I thought the way to do it
is to just be as honest as I could be.
Just be like you and me talking here, not for
public consumption, not big, but just the two of us talking,

(20:34):
I'm telling you this story, and and that's what I
wanted it to sound like. I wanted it to sound
like I was sitting in your car, because I think
most people listen to these things in the car, and
I wanted you to feel I was sitting in your
in your passenger seats, saying, oh wait, I gotta tell
you this story. And that's what I wanted it to
sound like. And so that's that's what I went for.

(20:56):
Um now, and then I did a little bit of
a car out to voice, you know, if I was
doing an invitation of somebody, which I don't do very much,
but but I did because I also feel that I'm
not exactly positive that I would get every word right
if I quoted somebody, so I didn't. I tried to

(21:19):
give you an impression of what someone said, rather than
actually put words in their mouths unless they were already dead. Okay,
have you got I know you don't read your reviews,
but you've got any specific feedback from friends, family, other
maybe unknown people who reach out to you about the
audio version as opposed to the reprinted version. No, my friends,

(21:43):
my friends all read the book because it was done
way before the audio version, so then I know. But
thanks to social media, you get strangers writing to you,
and I know, and I get a lot of comments
from people that read the book. I have that listened

(22:04):
to the book, and even a lot of people who
say they read the book while listening to the book,
which I found really interesting. That's, I guess, a very
fully immersive way to do that. But but never a
negative word. Knock wood, knock wood. I have not, They

(22:26):
have not written to me a negative word. I'm sure
this this is a world of negativity, so I'm sure
that's negative out there, but not to me. Okay, how
much do you participate on social media? Both surfing yourself, posting,
interacting with people you don't know. I don't serve myself

(22:49):
because I'll find myself. And like I said, it's like
reading reviews. You don't want to go looking for trouble.
Life is hard enough without looking for trouble. It's like
look walking down the street and saying, there's not a
mugger on this block. Let me walk on the next block.
Maybe I can find a mugger. You like, I'm looking

(23:10):
for a mugger. So no, I don't do that, but
I am on I joined them all for different reasons.
But I'm on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. I was
on TikTok for a moment or two, but I don't
think I ever posted anything, and I was even They
even made me join LinkedIn because these are tools to

(23:33):
sell the book to, you know, to help, and I
had and I have a website which hasn't been updated
in six months and nights whatever, But that was also
to help. So I did all that stuff they told
me has to be done. Um, I mostly Facebook. I
do do with friends I belonged to. I mean, I

(23:55):
have friends that we follow each other and we write
about our dog. You know. I belong to a Liam
Burger page because I have a Liemburger, right, I got
follow other friends and stuff like that. On Instagram, I
mostly follow friends, but I mostly post stuff about my
shows coming up. It's advertising, it's it's sharing dates and

(24:15):
stuff like that. Okay, you're a gay icon. Many people
look up to you. If someone you does it? How
reachable are you by the Holy eploy? People who are
not either household names themselves. You haven't met someone posts

(24:37):
a response to something you write. Is the public too dangerous?
Or are you open I'm pretty open um. It depends
on how it would get to me. I mean mostly
when people post something to me on Facebook or on
Instagram or one of those things, they're they're usually nice.

(24:59):
I will hear her about there's a controversy. Oh, kinky boots,
kinky boots. Um, I just had, I just had a
I dinner thing for page six. Well, Ginky Boots has
been brought back off Broadway, which I absolutely love because
the theater is smaller, so the audience is closer. I

(25:21):
come from off Broadway, you know, I come from that world,
so it's a smaller theater. There's no balcony in your way,
there's no bounce off of balcony for sound. The sound
in that place is gorgeous. Even Cyndi Lauper, who I
get so scared to let her in the theater because
she hates hours how her song sound. Even she's happy
with the sound in that theater. And like I said,

(25:42):
you can see from every seat because there's no balcony,
there's no So I'm really happy with the show off Broadway.
But I didn't interview um where I said that if
they make the movie. They were asking me who I
would put in the movie. I said, well, when I
wrote the show and years ago, it would have been
different people. These are young people, but right now I

(26:04):
would put Harry Styles and Bruno Mars pick two names
out of nowhere. Well, that explode, I mean, the headlines
across the universe. But what's really funny to me is
that some of the argument is Harvey Fierstein casting heterosexual

(26:24):
men to play gay roles. They're okay, neither one is gay.
Charlie is heterosexual, and the drag queen is a heterosexual
cross stress her. He's very clear. The whole second act
opens with a big number called what a Woman Wants

(26:45):
about I am what a woman wants ah, And they
were like tearing me apart that I'd want a heterosexual
in that role. So that stuff cracks me up. And
then and then you're on. There were a bunch of
comments like that, and then it said, well, in Harvey
fire Stein's opinion, he's heterosexual, Well whose opinion to be?

(27:08):
I wrote it. In fact, what those idiots don't know,
I'll tell you the truth. What those people don't know
is that that character, which comes from the movie, the
English movie that I adapted to make the musical. He
took that. The writer of the movie took that character

(27:29):
from a novel about that made a movie you might remember,
starring Simon senor A called Madame Rosa. Yeah, sure, Madame Rosa,
the next prostitute. She'd been in in Auschwitz. Now she
took care of other people's children. Well, her next door
neighbor is a transvestite, well actually a transsexual waiting to

(27:52):
have an operation, an xboxer whose father made him be
a boxer so he would toughen him up. The whole
character was taken from that novel and putting Kinky boots,
and then I did an adaptation of that character from
My Kinky Boots. So these people who are telling me
I'm wrong don't even know where this came from. But
that's what I like about stupidity. There's no end of stupidity.

(28:15):
If you don't stop and ask a question, you're gonna
stay stupid the rest of your life. And the biggest,
the biggest enemy of art in every way is prejudice.
I say in the book. I think it's in the book. Um,
if you go into a gallery thinking you know what

(28:37):
a Picasso looks like, I guarantee you will never see
a Picasso if you if you're gonna go looking for
what is familiar to you as a Picasso, you'll never
see what else he painted in that picture. You'll never
see what else he did. And that's the truth about
any art. If you walk in thinking you know what

(28:59):
it should be, you'll never see what it is. And
that's my problem with critics. Critics think they have to
be the smartest person in the room. They go to
see a show. They come in with the history of
the songwriter, of the book, writer of the subject matter,
of the distance that they know every Broadway show that
was ever done, and they come in with all of

(29:20):
this knowledge to tell you where you fit in. But
they've walked in with so much prejudice. The only thing
they haven't come in with is the ticket they paid for,
which makes a difference. Which makes a difference. They also
have not come to have a good night out. They've
come to work. It's not the same experience as an audience,

(29:42):
not the same experience as an audience that's come to
have an experience and love what they're seeing. They don't
buy a ticket to not like it. Some critics too.
There's a very famous New York critic whose name I
will not mention. You know, if you're gonna get a
good reviewer a bad review when he comes into the theater.
If he brings his beard with him, you're going to

(30:06):
get a bad review. If he brings his young nephew
with him, you're going to get a good review. Listen,
I tell you know, just you know, I talk about
concerts your brother, in my in me or in that business.
I don't want to hear a review from someone who's
not a fan of the act. The people who pay

(30:28):
what was their experience, people who wanted to like, the
people who wanted to be there, or the person who's
never been there before, and it's having that first experience, right,
I know, thanks to radio and recordings and all that,
that doesn't happen all that much. We usually buy a
ticket because we know who the person is. I was

(30:49):
watching last night, I loved it on the news. Last
night was the opening of the metric of the season
at the Metropolitan Opera. So they broadcasted in Times Square
on the giant screens, and they put out two thousand
chairs and two thousand people sat, many of whom had
never seen an opera before. And watched Madeia. Of all

(31:12):
operas to watch Madeya killing their kids off um and
they just one woman said, I always nod out in
the theater. I didn't not out. I sat near the
whole thing and loved every minute of it. You know,
being exposed to something like that for the first time,
it is so wonderful. Now think of that in terms

(31:35):
of the critic who's walking in having heard calluses Madeia
and having heard controbusious Madea and you know, in fifty
recordings of Madeia and seeing forty eight productions of Madeia
and this one's direction of it and that one's, and
they're walking in with all of this prejudice of what
they think Madea should be. Who would you rather hear

(31:56):
from that woman who said I've never seen nothing like
this before in my life. Well, this guy who's going
to tell you how she didn't hit that either way
she should have hit the e were you on this
recording from that? He was hit much better? Okay, I
see you on screen in your office, highly designed, uh

(32:20):
full of highly designed all wait wait wait wait wait
let me no, no one can see it anyway. It's
got nothing to do with the question. I'm asking. My
point is, you appear to be living a nice lifestyle.
How do you feel about living alone at this point,
which begs the question of why you're alone? If you've

(32:42):
not met the right person, are you ultimately difficult to
have a relationship with? What do you think about all that? Well,
I built this house. I've been here. I've been here
since four but I tore the house down seventeen years ago.
It was falling apart. It was either put a lot

(33:03):
of money into fixing the old house that was here
or just tear it down. So I tore it down because,
as you can see behind me, I collect folk art
and outsider art. I like art create. You know, I
have a degree in painting, but I don't well, I
do have a collection of of real of a real artist,

(33:25):
but I love outsider art. I love people that have
to create that it comes out of a place inside them.
They have had a painting lesson in their life, a
carving lesson. I mean the that lamp you see behind me.
See there's a woman there with a light bulb. I
have twelve of his lamps. He's a lifetimer in prison.

(33:48):
He makes those lamps in prison. They all look exactly alike.
They all have blond hair and blue eyes, and they
and he makes the clothing out of sleeves from from
T shirts and stuff like that. And yet he carves
the name or paints the name in each one. That
one there, that blonde hair, blue eye is Tina Turner. Oh,
look exactly. His Hillary Clinton looks exactly like Tina Journal.

(34:13):
It's exactly like like, Um, I mean, they're all, they're
all what's but it's he's a lifetime in prison. The
above what you can't see those two you see those
two big frame pieces the wall hall drawings, um, you know,
in preparation to do silk screens. The one on this

(34:34):
side is of Wilhelmina Ross, who is a drag queen
who starred in two of my very first place that
I wrote. We were friends before war Hall discovered her
and all that. So my collection is stuff like that. So, yes,
I live in a barn that my office is sort
of the hay loft, and I designed this place with

(34:58):
no walls. Um. I basically designed it for one person.
There are guest rooms on the on the other side
there's guest rooms my but I can close off my
bedroom and just have my world and they can be
in the house. I did that because I sort of

(35:20):
came to a realization in my life that I'm just
not good at relationships. I love men, and I love
playing with men, and I love romance, and I love
sex and I love the physicality. I just not good
at relationships. I lose myself completely in a relationship. The

(35:44):
very first thing I'm willing to do is give myself up.
Nobody wants a cipher, but that's what I turned myself into.
I just become like whatever for you. It's stupid, it's bad,
it doesn't work. Um. And so I stopped doing it.
I stopped doing I had, you know, the book certainly

(36:08):
numbers mess of my relationships, and I do mean mess um.
And then there's a lot more. I was actually I was.
Actually My editor sent to me, so what about the
next book? What is that gonna be? And I said, well,
I could write a book about all the boyfriends I
didn't talk about. I said, I even have a title

(36:29):
for it, bottomless. Okay, okay, you have so much self knowledge.
Have you been in therapy? No, but let me say this,
any gay person has been through therapy. When you're a
child you're you mostly brought into a family. Most children,

(36:54):
lucky children are brought into a family. As you learned
language and really ships and all that, you look and
see where you belong. Oh, this is what a daddy does,
This is what a mommy does, This is what a
brother does. This is and you find yourself in that.
A gay child goes through that process and goes, uh,

(37:18):
don't feel that way. I don't feel like that boys
and feeling or young lesbians. If I don't feel like
that girl is feeling, I have very difference. So they
go back and they do the math all over again,
and they do and they study themselves and they go, Okay,
I fit here, I fit here, I feel you I
don't fit there. So that's called the act of coming out.

(37:41):
Coming out. This is coming out in public, but this
is coming out to yourself. Every gay child, and I
would add transgender and questioning has been through self analysis.
They have to because they've got to figure out what
the hell they are in this world and how they

(38:03):
fit in. So most gay kids, transgender kids, whatever, have
so much more self knowledge than any heterosexual will have
with twenty you know, than what do you allen have?
After a hundred and forty years of therapy, because we've
gone that deep in ourselves. What is it that's making
me attracted to that person? What do I want? This

(38:26):
so much going on there? So you ask where do
you get yourself knowledge? I think I have the same
self knowledge that many of the gay people do. Okay,
and uh, but you have so much self knowledge about relationships.
How you lose yourself with the other person. If but

(38:48):
I would think the desire does not evaporate. So theoretically,
if someone or through some process could help you in
a relationship not to who's yourself. Is it that you're
seventy years old and you say I don't want to
change or you don't believe that could happen? No, no, no,

(39:09):
I um this this this. I have a gentleman caller,
I have don't feel bad for blacks dubois. I have
a gentleman caller. I don't. I don't live without. I'm
not I'm not a eunuch. Um so I just don't.
I'm just not looking for at this moment, I have

(39:33):
never met the person that I could do that with,
that I could consciously couple with. I haven't met Mike
Gwyneth Paltrow, who know she consciously on couples, right, she
doesn't come she got the on couples. But yeah, am
I open to it? Yeah? And because age has nothing
to do with it, I'll never forget. There's a lovely

(39:55):
um documentary about about gay life, and there as this
older couple that met in their late seventies and they
sort of looked at each other and said, should we
see what this is like at our age? You know,
we had all the sex in our twenties and thirties
and then the world sort of dropped us. Should we see?

(40:17):
And they did and they were together until they died. Um, yeah,
I'm I am. I am a believer. You know, I
have friends that that meant. I mean, I don't know
how armistic marpen I don't know how old he was
when he met Chris, but but they're such a happy,
wonderful couple. Um yeah, I believe it can happen. It's

(40:38):
just do I need it? And the truth is I
mostly would rather hang out with my friends. You know, okay, boys,
but boys are different than then boys is so different
because you know, we we we like it's it's like exciting,
it's society. It's exciting, we orgasm and then we want pizza.

(41:01):
S it's boys. Okay, let's go back to the point
invention earlier about the end of the book, and you're
connecting with your brother, which really has to do with
your mother and how she viewed the fact that you
were gay. And it's quite heavy. So if you could

(41:24):
relate a little bit of that to my audience and
how it ultimately left you have accepted or you still scarred,
and tell us I think what your parents say to you.
I think Soundheim was so right when he wrote in
in Into the Woods, children will listen. You know what

(41:47):
your parents say to you, and how you grow up,
and the stuff that said to you, whether you're conscious
of it or not, stays with you and imprints on
you so heavily that all the therapy in the world
can't actually erase it. Ud Ronald Tavel, who created the
Theater of the Ridiculous, I um he was agoraphobic, and

(42:09):
so I used to have to take him to therapy.
I just have to pick him up in his apartment
and take him uptown because you couldn't go uptown on
his own. And I would sit outside in the in
the lobby but I could hear when they got loud
and at what guy Ronald was in the sixties at
the time, and I'm sitting there reading a magazine or whatever,

(42:30):
and I hear the therapists scream out, You're six day,
three fucking years old. Where are you gonna stop blaming
your mother? You know, it's true, it sticks with you,
it's important, it's very important, but you gotta also let
it go. My mother may have had that bad moment,

(42:53):
and maybe that bad moment was a lot longer because
obviously was going on in her mind, whatever's going on.
But my mother went on to deliver meals for for
um God's love. We deliver, you know, to AIDS patients
for years. He's a woman in her seventies and eighties,
driving around, she said, bay with her friends delivering meals

(43:16):
to gay people. Shut in. My mother. She she spoke
at She didn't like speaking at groups because she said,
what do I know, I'm no expert. But she spoke
to parents all the time. People would write to her
and she would and she would speak to them. She
supported causes left him right, you know. She had her

(43:41):
Jewish causes and she and then she had her gay causes.
So was she still my mother who would make me crazy?
I'll tell your story that's not in the book, that
will show you it has nothing to do with sexuality,
has just to do with with mothers and sons. So
Lakajha Fall is about to open a revival of lakaj

(44:05):
at the at the Marquis Theater right across the street,
the Minskore Theater. I'm about to open in Fiddler on
the Roof. So I'm rehearsing eight hours a day, killing myself,
learning those dances, the songs and all that. Across the
street they're rehearsing Lakasha Fall. I'm Lakasja Vos opening, let's say,

(44:29):
on Saturday night, and I'm gonna open the next Monday
in Fiddler. So I rehearse all day. I get a
room at the at the Marquis Hotel. There's a hotel
above the theater um, so I can change my clothes.
My family and friends are all waiting for me up
in the thing. So I come across. I'm like dying.
I've been dancing all day. I'm dying. I jump in

(44:51):
the shower. I pulled on my casino. Okay, let's go
and As we're walking out the hotel door, my friend
Patty says to me, you must be exhausted. You work
so hard. My mother under her breath goes, I should

(45:12):
work so hard. Ha ha, that is classic Jewish mother.
Believe me, I understand. I turned around the finger in
her face and said, Jacqueline, you can go home right now.
You don't have to go downstairs and take a bow
as my mother. You don't have to sit through this

(45:32):
show of mine. You can just go home right now.
What I say So, that's mothers and sons that had
nothing to do with sensuality or anything else. I should
work so hard, Okay, pivoting just a little bit. Both
you and your brother grew up in the city. Ron's

(45:54):
office was in the city, You lived in the city.
You both primarily live in the country. Now what's that about. Well,
he needed to because he had his two sons, and
they made a choice, um two of what schools they
wanted their kids to go to. Because you can you know,

(46:16):
I mean, these private schools in the city cost a
fortune and both kids, both of his sons went to
lovely private schools when they were little, but as they
got older, they needed better schools so um. And I
think I think they made that choice for that reason,
because because my sister in law is a lawyer and

(46:37):
she still worked in the city to this day, she's
still um commutes into the city. Uh, so they made
that choice. I was looking. I was I was living
in the basement of Harvey to Wells Brownstone, and then
I and then I, uh, I moved into a a condo.

(46:59):
He needed to move his mother into the basement. So
I found a condo and I moved into this condo.
But I was looking for a place in Manhattan, and
the places were so expensive in Manhattan. Brooklyn used to
be cheap. Can you believe Brooklyn used to be cheap?
It certainly ain't cheap now my apart. I just looked

(47:20):
at my apartment, my old apartment, which I think I
sold for two hundred thousand dollars, is worth it like
a million and a half. Now. Anyway, I'm looking in
the city, and there was there was one building that
I really loved. It was a little standalone building in
Greenwich Muse you know, one of those little streets in
Grenwed Village. But it really it literally was one room

(47:44):
on four stories. There was on the first story was
like a living room, the second story was the kitchen
in the bathroom, the ne story was was the bedroom,
and then the top was like the office. And that
that was a million dollars. And friends said, really, why

(48:06):
don't you just stay in your apartment in Brooklyn, take
that money, nowhere near that money, and go buy a
country house. I said, what am I good guy from Brooklyn?
What am I gonna do with the country house? And
she said, because you love swimming, you love there, you know,
just go and see what that's like, because I did.
Used to come up to this town I live in.

(48:27):
I live in a small fictional town in Connecticut, and
I used to come up to this town because I
had friends who lived here and um, they had a pool,
you know, and I love swimming. I love being out
in the cut. I mean, a lot of our childhood
was spent in the Catskills because that's where my father
was from, so I guess it was already in the blood.

(48:47):
So I got this weekend place and fell in love
and spent less and less time in the city. And
also when you have animals, it makes it harder to
move back and forth, you know. It's like I have
two dogs and two cats. So I filled the car
with the two carrying cases for the cats, and I
put the dogs in the car, and then I drive

(49:08):
into the city park in a garage. Take out the dogs,
take out the cats, take them up to the apartment,
put out the water, put out the food, change the
litter box, take the dogs down for a walk, bring
the dogs backed up. Then you were first free to
go out. You went out, come back to the apartment,
got the dogs, got the cats backed downstairs, into the car,

(49:31):
and drive home. What kind of you know, It was
just silly. So that's how I ended up spending more
time here. Okay, there's a pulse in the city, and
you certainly drew on that pulse, both for daily activities
and inspiration. Do you I'll grow that? Is it an
age thing or is the city or is the city

(49:53):
just different? The city has definitely changed, and maybe it's
and maybe it has changed cost of age or whatever.
But the so much of what I loved has changed. Um,
you know, there's the gay bars, just people are openly

(50:16):
ky now. It's it's a different vibe to all that
Broadway is. When I arrived on Broadway, more than half
the theaters were empty. My friend Betty Lee, who had
the house up here that that um that I used
to come up to, she was the one who came
up with the idea instead of having all those empty theaters,

(50:38):
to put up a sign that said see a Broadway
show just for the fun of it. Half the theaters
in New York said see a Broadway show for the
fun of it. They were empty. Broadway was different. The
the shows on Broadway were four New Yorkers. Think about it.
You know they didn't have of a Phantom of the

(51:00):
operand and Lion King and Aladdin and Alan Mankin lives
over there. Don't tell him. I said that. Um, they
didn't have these tourists kind of shows. It was we
had on on my block alone, where I had Towards Song.
We had Night Mother plenty, um, Um good Kay two,

(51:31):
um Amadeus. We had plays that were four New Yorkers.
We had musicals you know that there was a revival
of of Pirates of pens And starring Linda Roundstadt. There
was Barnum. We had trying to think we had the

(51:54):
history of rock and roll. They were different. It was different.
Not that one's better than the Broadway goes through it's things.
It's going through a thing right now, It's it is different.
Can I go into the city and get enough of
a flavor from spending a day in the city. Here.
I go in, I go to the art galleries. I

(52:16):
go to an auction I go to the auction houses.
I come in, I see a Broadway show. I heeded
my favorite restaurants. I see my my friends and all that,
and then I come home. I don't care. Well, you know,
I told Barbara Corkran. You know who Barbara Cowkran is.
The big she wouldn't send to me. I was playing um.

(52:38):
I was playing a real estate agent, and she was
my coach, and she said, Harvey, how could you live
in Connecticut like that? What's wrong with you? Come back
to the city. I'll find you an apartment. I said, Barbara,
here's the difference. I live in the city. I have
my friendly, my friends and all that. I go up
to my apartment. I get there, I unlocked the twelve locks.

(53:02):
I go inside. I closed the twelve locks. The city
is right outside my door. It's right outside my window,
it's right outside my door. I am always aware that
I'm locked in my box and the city's right outside.
I come home to Connecticut, I get out of my car.

(53:23):
I walked straight through the house and throw myself in
the pool, you know, under the stars. Float around in
the pool for a while, come out, walk around to
I don't lock the door now I do, but back
in those days you didn't. Um. I never feel that
something is outside my door waiting to come in. I'm

(53:45):
in a peaceful place. It's a big difference. How does
it affect inspiration creatively that you never know? You know,
if you if you don't meet John Doe, you're not
going to write about John Doe. So I wouldn't know.

(54:08):
I mean, since I've been living here, I've written I
don't know how many things I've written so many. Um,
it's probably easier to write up here because this office
is very comfortable and uh, you don't have that hocking

(54:30):
at you from outside. You don't have that fever coming
at you. I can concentrate. I don't know, you know,
do you have to live to write here? But I live? Um? Okay.
You are a very charismatic personality. You tell a good story.

(54:52):
You take up a lot of space. Were you that
way from a very young age or is this something
that you developed grew into. When I was a kid,
I always had a friend that was more powerful than me.
I was always the second banana. I was always the

(55:13):
best friend. Like my friend Michael was very charismatic and
very handsome, and I could get any guy he wanted
and all that, and there was me and I had
several of those relationships, and I liked being second banana. Um.

(55:35):
I didn't feel ever that I wanted to be out there.
It wasn't until the until I got into the theater
and I got that taste of doing stuff. And I
guess what. The way I described it in the book

(55:56):
was what Tom O'Horgan said to me. Tom o horgan,
who directed Hair, and I said, Tom, I've run out
of unemployment. I have no work. You're doing a new
show at the Public Theater. Please give me a role
in the show. And he said, there's nothing in the
show for you. I said, put me in the chorus.
I just need a job. And he said, Harvey, if

(56:18):
I put you in the chorus, I have no chorus.
And that's when I started realizing there was something else
going on with me that I didn't wasn't really in
control of what happens between you and the audience. The
real magic is not something you do, it's it just happens.

(56:40):
It happens because of who you are, or your personality
or whatever. That magic is that you can't really put
your finger on, you know. Ah, I can't tell you
why audiences loved me anymore than I can tell you,
you know, some of the mystery. I no, I don't

(57:01):
think I'm a great actor. I don't think obviously not
a great singer, dancer, any of that stuff. But there's
something that people like about seeing me, so it's nice.
I don't mind. I don't mind it all forgetting about

(57:25):
the critics and the people we referenced earlier who might
say negative things. You're very successful. Do you find any
insider resentment of your success? There's that line in the
book that I think, I forget who said it. I
think it was Jay Well anyway, uh, And it's a

(57:52):
he's and it wasn't an original line of his, that
show business is the only business where it's not enough
that you succeed all of your friends and my fail um.
I don't think that we in the theater are the
only ones who feel that way. And I do certainly
understand that there are people who feel that way. The

(58:13):
older I get, the less I feel that I'm in
somehow in competition. I hate that we have award shows
and stuff like that. I loathe it. Um. Now, what
somebody can sid to me is that's fine. You have
six Tony Awards sitting in your bathroom, you know, so
you can say you don't like the Tony's. But I

(58:36):
don't like what it does to us. It's a tool
to sell tickets, That's what it is. Can't we be
honest about that, um and not turn it into something else?
These popularity contests. But but I guess you know, I mean,
they give out awards in second grade, so I guess

(58:58):
that's just built into human I don't know. Okay, Emotionally,
not on paper, do you feel that you're this big success?
Emotionally do I feel like I'm a success? Not on paper?
I mean, you someone could say, Harvey, here's the list
of your Tony Awards, here's the list of this, this

(59:19):
is your bank account that define success. But that might
be completely different from what you feel on the inside. Yeah, No,
I definitely feel because I don't feel. I mean, there's
certain certainly things I didn't do. You know, we all
have little moments of like being conscious of a project

(59:41):
we didn't do that we should have done, or you
know that kind of stuff for something I wish I
had gotten. Um, but that doesn't have anything to do
with success. Yeah. No, I would have to say yes,
is that a good There's nothing I'd have to say

(01:00:02):
that that. I'm really very happy with what I've accomplished. Um.
Like I said, to sit down and write something, um,
you know, like whether it's this book. You know that,
I mean a New York Times best seller, goddamn. I mean,

(01:00:24):
you know, really as long as as long as you
can believe it. A lot of people can't accept it
even though they've achieved it. Yeah. No, I don't think
anything came to me so easily that I can't accept it.
I've worked really hard on most things. You know. Sometimes

(01:00:46):
sometimes something happens that that I just say, oh please. Um.
There's this movie that's opening Friday, your Friday, called Bros.
I don't know if you've seen the ads for it,
Billy Listener else. Yeah. So I'm in the movie for
about thirty seconds, literally thirty seconds. I hear from everyone

(01:01:09):
who's seen it from every screening they've had, including from
Billy Eichner, that as soon as the audience hears my voice,
they begin to applaud. They get so excited that I'm there. Unfortunately,
by the time they stopped a book over because I'm
on the screen for thirty seconds. Now, would you say,

(01:01:34):
that's sort of embarrassing, you know, because you didn't really
do anything to get that kind of applause, But it's
also cute and fun and well you did plenty, Well
I guess, I guess in the long run, I did.
I took a lot of cocks to get that reputation.
So you talk in the book, but I'll tell you

(01:01:56):
a story. There's a new woman that writes page six,
you know, page sixth of course, So it's the opening
night of Funny Girl, and we're all nervous enough as
it is. This is the Funny Girl that's on now
that now starts. Liam Michellen is a huge hit. But
you may remember several months ago we opened with Beanie Feldstein, Feldman,

(01:02:17):
Feldspine whatever, and everybody was a little nervous. So it
was opening night of that and the woman from page
six is there, and they say, Harvey stay away from her.
She's so mean. She she writes very mean things. Just
stay away from I said, what the funk do I care?
So I go up to I said, what do you want?
She said? The way the world is going now, with

(01:02:40):
people changing language and all that, I don't even know
what to call you. Are you a homosexual? Are you
a faggot? Are you are are you gay? Are you queer?
And I said, just call me a cocksucker? That one
ever can't respond to that particular one. At what point

(01:03:04):
is some people now you talking about being gay, knowing
that you're different referenced earlier than the conventional person. At
what point did you wait a second? I can't let
you get away with conventional person. I can't let you
get away with saying that gays are conventional people. You're
absolutely right boring any heterosexual. I know some gaze. I

(01:03:27):
know some gaze i'd like to throw back. You know
you measure them and you they're not big enough to
keeping your thrown back in the ocean. I know some
really conventional gaze. You can't get away with that with me,
and you are absolutely correct. If I want to give
myself an excuse, I was talking while I'm thinking of
something else, So let me go directly what I was thinking.

(01:03:49):
Did you know from a very young age you wanted
to we're going to be something? Because in the book
you portray someone who's not who's smart but as dyslexic.
Some of your parents are not absolutely behind you. A
lot of people who are someone ostracized too strong a term,

(01:04:10):
but people who are living in a separate This is
where I, you know, used conventional but and I won't
use it again, who are separate from the traditional. Um
they say I'm different, but I'm gonna make it. Other
people say, well, I'm just gonna go on my own course.
Who knows what's happening? What do you know? I had
no My mother had dropped out of school in seventh

(01:04:37):
grade because you had to help, uh, support the family.
My father has brought up in a orphanage in the Catskills,
where at thirteen you were an adult. So at thirteen
he was driving a truck for the bakery. He was
delivering bread for the local bakery. My father worked his
whole life in a factory as a mana here. I

(01:05:01):
was not raised to be Uh why not? I would,
but I was not raised to be in the uppercrost Um.
My brother and I were called the lawyer and the
doctor because we would choose. You know, I choose always,
that's what you what you? I watched my mother. You know,

(01:05:25):
I didn't know what the hell I wanted to be.
I knew I wanted to be some kind of an artist.
I didn't know. I love the arts. I love Disney.
I wanted to be a Disney cartoonist. But I knew
I wasn't good enough to be a Disney cartoonist. I
was good enough to copy a Disney cartoon. I could
copy the drawing, but could I create. No. But I

(01:05:46):
knew that there must be jobs in the arts for
for a technician type person. So that's what I figured
I would do. So I went ahead and got my
education as an art in the arts. I went to
the High School of Art and Design. I went to
Pratt got my degree in painting, et cetera. My mother,

(01:06:08):
when I went to high school, went back to high
school with me so she could finish high school. She
then went to college with me. My older brother was
already ahead of us, and my father sort of put up.
It wasn't all that happy with it, but he put
up with her going back to school, and she went,
and she got as far she got her master's. She

(01:06:30):
went as far as she could have gotten a doctor.
But she didn't want to write that long paper because
she was already at the top of the food chain
as a New York City school teacher. She said, why
do you all that work and not get anything for it? Anyway?
So I watched people take care of business which had
nothing to do with rising above in the way that

(01:06:56):
you were asking. I my brother, as you probably know
because you know him, he got out of school. He
was supposed to be the doctor he found himself from
pre med before he realized that he had been talked
into it. I never wanted to be a doctor. He
went and formed a rock and roll band. They didn't

(01:07:19):
do very well, but they did okay enough so that
he realized he could go back to law school because
with a law degree there were lots of things he
could do. He could understand contracts and all that and
become a manager or whatever and then have the career
that he had. I, on the other hand, just went

(01:07:39):
forward with whatever opportunities came to me. Somebody said, draw posters.
I drew posters. Somebody said, work on a set for
a show. I worked on the set, pull the curtain,
do the lights at this little role. What the hell?
When Ronald Tavell said to me, why don't you write
a play, and I said, I can't because I'm dyslexic.

(01:08:02):
I can't spell. And he said to me, there are
people who get paid two dollars an hour to fix
your spelling. You go ahead and write. That was the
freedom for me. So it wasn't that I had this ambition,
this growing ambition that I wanted to now be a writer.

(01:08:25):
I'm going to write Broadway plays. No, it was just
an opportunity to do something else, and and I didn't
know what I was doing. And the first couple of
plays I wrote, as I say in the book, were
imitations of my friends plays um which is another reason
why I don't like critics, because they came in and
reviewed it as if I was trying to do something else,

(01:08:48):
you know, like, look what he's doing. He's imitating his friends.
Such a rip off, That's all I was trying to
I never wrote before, I never typed before. But anyway,
so my life was in a funny way accidental. Did
I have points where all of a sudden, I pushed, yes, definitely,

(01:09:11):
you have to you know, you can't just swim with
the tide all the time. So I did have moments,
but for the most part it was with open eyes, saying,
what's this next opportunity? Okay, I mean I just how
many years ago? Let me just look at the script.

(01:09:33):
Two thousand and twelve, they came to me to write
a movie about May West for Bette Midler. I went
through all the steps and all that. I'm sitting here
with this open because yesterday, nine years later, ten years later, yes, say,
I got a call from somebody who had heard about

(01:09:55):
my script from Me West. They never made it um
and said I hear it's good. Can I see it?
Somebody would say, hey, Harvey's out there trying to sell
the script from Me West. No, it's just one of
them accidents. Life. Life is really interesting. Life is really
interesting if you just live it, you just you know.

(01:10:16):
I think the quote in the book is life is
only as exciting as the number of times you say yes, right,
I was just going to get there. So you say
say yes, because you never know what will happen if
you say no. Nothing's going to happen. Is it really
saying yes to everything? Or now I see you shaking

(01:10:39):
your head. So what does that ultimately mean? Is it
when you're on the fence, you say yes? Because there
are certain things when you're dying into when you get
the offer and there so what we're talking on the
certain that you say no way, But how does this
actually operate in your life where you say, well, you know,

(01:11:00):
I could stay where I am, but I'm gonna take
a flyer. Um, if you're dying to do something, there's
not really a question, then you're gonna do it. That's
if you have. You know. I've come up with some
rules over the years. I'm not sure any of them applied.
I no longer will do anything for money. Um. Money

(01:11:24):
is the wrong reason to say yes. And I only
know that because I've said yes to things for money
and they've always turned out disastrously. Um. The ones that
are the things that that I was talking about, and
the things that people don't pay attention to are not
necessarily Somebody calls you up and says you ought to

(01:11:45):
be in fither on the roof, that's a whole different thing.
Somebody calls you up and says you want to go
out to dinner. That dinner can change your life more
than being in fither on the roof. You don't know.
You don't know what will happen at that dinner unless
you go to that dinner. It's the little stuff that

(01:12:07):
we say no to, and we say no because it's uncomfortable,
not because it's a big life changing thing, A big
life changing thing you have to think about. I'm talking
about I'm sitting here talking to you and I get
a text message that says, meet me for dinner tonight. No,
I'm gonna say no because I've got the script I
have to edit, and I have this other stuff and

(01:12:29):
I haven't answered email all day and all that, and
I'm gonna say no. But if I said yes and
I went out to that restaurant, I don't know that
the guy sitting at the next table wouldn't turn out
to be the great love of my life by angor
meet him sitting there editing a script at home. So
it's the little stuff that is really the important stuff

(01:12:51):
to say, Yester. If you stay at home, if you
do the comfortable thing, you will be comfortable, which means
not living you. You have to you have to live,
and live means making uncomfortable choices. It's not the big stuff.

(01:13:12):
The big stuff you figure out. Okay, I'm interested. You're
saying that you were busy right now the friend invited
you to go to dinner, forget the person who sitting
at home watching television. Whatever. You have things and that
are going that you're focused on. Just to be clear,
you are not going to go. And when should you say?

(01:13:35):
I'm I got something going on literally just today, the
same thing. I'm really busy And I say, well, you know,
maybe at this time I can make a window, but
I got so much in the schedule. Should I always
be leaning towards yes? Or when can I just say no?
When there's other people dependent on you to finish a project,

(01:13:56):
you owe that. You owe that um a commitment. If
it's a project you just want to get finished to
get it off your desk, you don't necessarily owe that.
You can say to yourself, as I would if somebody
calls texting me right now, I would say, you know,
it's four o'clock. I'm gonna have to stop for dinner

(01:14:20):
sooner or later. Anyway, I haven't even had breakfast. I
didn't even have lunch because I've been running. I came
running home to do this with you. But I'm gonna
have to stop for dinner anyway. That it's gonna take
me longer to cook it myself than it will to
just get in the car and go meet there at
the diner. Let me go to the diner. That's what

(01:14:41):
I mean. Okay. Is it harder to go to the dinner, yes,
is there It's harder to go to the desk, make
a sandwich and sit at my desk. Okay, let's go back.
You say you have this May West script from almost
a ten years ago. Right, are you the type of
person right now there's fifteen thing. Well, there's some things

(01:15:06):
that are relatively dormant, like that movie script. But are
there a lot of dormant things or a lot of
things in the middle? How many projects are you juggling
or involved in it? Once? Um, I keep joking that
I'm retired and I cannot stop with the project. So

(01:15:32):
at the moment, like I said, this the May West thing,
this will only take me two days to just I
just have to clean it up because it's not even
written on the same UM version of the Scriptwriting Program anymore.
I just have to go clean it up everything. It'll
take me two days to do that, no problem, and
then that's gone. If they come back to me, it's fine,

(01:15:55):
but it's nothing I'm gonna actively pursue. But I've got
a play that I've always wanted to write that I've
started to write. I've got a television show that I've
been pitching and I have meetings for and I've had
a few great meetings, and that's fine. I've got Kinky
Boots off Broadway, which I still have to do press for.

(01:16:17):
I've got Funny Girl on Broadway, which is going just fine. Now.
Kinky Boots is gonna be on the Today's Show in
two weeks and they need a lot. You can't say
a certain word on television. I have to go rewrite
the line. And then there's another line that's we're seven
seconds over, and we can't be seven seconds over, so

(01:16:38):
I have to cut seven seconds out. So there's always
stuff like that that has to be done. I mean,
it's you know, it's it's And I am offered a
lot of work that I just say no to because
there's a lot of stupid ideas out there, a lot
of really bad ideas out there. And the other thing

(01:17:01):
that I say no to is when somebody writes to
me and says, I've always wanted to tell my story
and you're the one to do it. Oh see, look
at you nodding your head. I hear that all the time.
And what do you say to them? I say two things.

(01:17:22):
I say, Well, if I was going to write anybody's story,
take that time, I would write my own. And I
would say, I just don't have the time. Sounds like
a great idea, I just don't have the time. Yeah,
maybe I'm a little kind to that. You. What I
say to them is, if someone's going to tell you
a story, it should be you. But they always see

(01:17:46):
your story, right, but they always say no, no, no,
you're such a better writing That's that's what I say.
Somebody's gonna tell you a story, it should be you.
You have a great idea for a play, go ahead
and write it. You have a great idea from you
of the gig, because a day I have more than
enough ideas of my own. And you know which doesn't

(01:18:08):
mean that a bad a good idea could come. I
wouldn't have written Kinky Boots unless I was guilty because
I had already turned down two or three other shows
offered to me by the same people, and I said,
if I turned them down again, And and the produce,
the main producer had produced my show Catered Affair, which
she lost everything on it. It bombed. So I owed her,

(01:18:32):
and I owed the director choreographer. So I did Kinky Boots,
which turned out to be a wonderful experience. But it
took me five or six years to write that show
to get that score. Well, first of all, to find
the right composer, which turned out to be Cindy Lauper,

(01:18:52):
and then to get the fucking score out of that
woman had to keep the producers from firing her a
daily basis. They wanted to fire every single day. Um,
you know, so it us how it worked. But okay,
do you have that holy Gray grayal personal project that

(01:19:15):
you just need to get done before you leave this
mortal coil? Oh? I would have done it alround, do
it all that? I mean, like, like I really want
to write display. Will the world be fine without Display? Yeah? Will?
I'd be fine without Display? Here. I'm not a believer
in life after death. I've been dead, you know. When

(01:19:37):
I had my my heart surgery. I've been dead. There's
no life after death, so I don't worry about what
I'm going to leave behind, or what somebody's gonna think
of me or or whatever. It's such silliness. Other projects
I wish there's there's things I wish I had done

(01:19:59):
that I did. I'm doing here. But but but none
of them are painful because I do enough of what
I want to do, so none of it's painful. They
just did the movie of of Little Mermaid. Would I
have loved to have played Ursula the evil Witch? I
would have loved it, But Rob wanted Melissa McCarthy. I

(01:20:19):
happen to be a huge fan of Melissa McCarthy, So
while I curse her, I will also applaud her because
I'm sure she's going to do a fabulous job in
the role. Okay, your father died surprisingly at a very

(01:20:40):
young age. How did that affect you on a long
term basis? And did it force you to pay closer
attention to your health? You ultimately had hard problems? Were
you lucky it was quarter? Would you've been paying attention? Well?
My heart, then, as I tell the story in the book,

(01:21:00):
is such a joke because two days before I went
to the doctor, before my annual physical, I did a
drag show for Broadway Cares that when he fights eighth
and I had this huge fur coat and all this stuff.
I had these bags that must wait sixty seventy pounds,
and I dragged them up three flights of stairs to

(01:21:21):
the dressing room. Did this show, you know, running up
and downstairs and all that. I then go to the
doctor and he said, your heart's about to fail the
valve um. Don't lift anything over five pounds that don't
run up and downstairs. I said, you don't. Und day, Well,
don't do that again, but dude down let me okay.

(01:21:44):
Um So some mortality came to me in such a
strange way. And then I have this brother who immediately
took charge as he's wont to do, and and and
because he was pre men in college, he had a
doctor friend who was able to hook me up with

(01:22:05):
the number one cardiologist in New York. And so before
I knew it, I was being operated. It wasn't even
like a choice. Um. So did I ever stop to
think that my father died of a heart attack? Yeah,

(01:22:26):
And I'm not gonna say that life isn't precious. Life
is precious. But do I think I'm gonna be cheated
out of something if I died this evening. No, I
wouldn't want them to find me naked. But no, I
wouldn't feel like I was cheated. I've had this incredible life. Um,

(01:22:50):
if it ends tonight, they're fast. If it ends thirty
years from now, well not really. I have I have
a pact with a friend of mine that when things
get too hard, we take each other up to the
roof and look at the view. Hey. Look, people couldn't

(01:23:13):
see the push there on screen, exactly just right off
the roof. But um, yeah, but we don't live in Russia.
We don't have putin as our dear friend hel pushes
off the roof. Uh. But yeah, you know. My philosophy
of life, I guess this is a little different than
other people's. And partly because I have my beliefs, and

(01:23:35):
then partly because I've had this in I mean, what
the fucking ride I've had already? Do I have more
fun stuff to do? Absolutely? Every day I have more
fun stuff to do. But I enjoy You're talking about
somebody who enjoys being at home alone. With my dog

(01:23:55):
as much as I do go into a Broadway theater.
I love them both, but I love them both and
I get something out of both. I love seeing my
friends in the city. Hell, I love seeing my friends
up here, which is the whole different crowd of people. Um,
and then they sort of don't mix my life, don't mix.

(01:24:17):
Or city city at my sewing machine and making a
quilt or sitting at this computer writing a play. Okay,
to what degree does Harvey Firestein both open doors and
get what he wants? Or do you have to because
projects can be so expensive? Do you always have to

(01:24:39):
sell a projects are very sense and you always have
to sell even if you want to do it in
a tiny theater um, because because it's always It's my

(01:25:01):
friend Martin Sherman who wrote Bent. You probably know his played,
So he wrote a play that I did at the
public theater Um called Gently Down the Stream. I did
it about five years ago, and uh and we we
had to work to find a theater to put it on.
We absolutely did and you have so you have the

(01:25:21):
writer of Bent and me and uh Sean Matthias directed
and he's very well known English director. We had three
very three people that you can trust to put on
a good show, and we still had to work really
hard to find the right theater. Um, it's just it's

(01:25:44):
just just the way it is. I have projects all,
you know, like Bella Bella. I did a reading of it.
I must have had around ten twelve theaters come and
everybody had different opinions on what should be done with it. Um, yeah,
you're always selling, but that has nothing to do with

(01:26:06):
writing it. I already wrote the show. Then you then
you have to sell, and then you go back to
being an artist again of producing it. Okay, so when
you do go to sell, up, most of the creative
work has already done in terms of, you know, the
structure of the bones of what you got. No, your
script is done, you're you know in the script is malleable.

(01:26:34):
But theater is a theater is Uh, it's not a
single person. Even even if you're doing a one person
show like Bella Bella, you have the director, you have
the designers, lighting, sounds, set designer, even costume of what
you're gonna look like. Um, you have the theater owner

(01:26:57):
and what that space is going to feel like when
the audience comes into it. Do I I don't know
if I tell the story in the book or not.
When we were doing Bella Bella and this guy had
to go to the bathroom so bad, but he did
not want to leave that theater. He didn't want to
leave that theater. So he went out the side door

(01:27:18):
and he peted on the wall. What he didn't know
was we get here and in the theater he peed
on the wall of the theater and they were very
thin walls, and of the entire audience. And the play
takes place in a bathroom, so I was grateful that
he didn't come up on stage and pee in the

(01:27:38):
toilet boat on stage. But the guy, I mean, so
even the theater can fit into what the whole evening
is like. Um, but yes, theater is definitely it's not
it's not a book. Even the book. I mean, Chip
Read did a gorgeous job designing this book. You know,

(01:28:00):
the coverage is absolutely beautiful. I mean took us weeks
just choosing the photographs because my editor didn't want it
to look like a showbiz book. You know, I would
have put a couple of hundred photographs in there, but
he didn't want it to look like a showbis book
he wanted to look like a memoir. So you don't

(01:28:21):
do anything alone. There's no such thing. I mean, while
you and I sit here talking, you have Margaret sitting
in the other room, you know, boared out of my mind,
saying I gotta fix this ship. When this is over,
nobody nobody's alone. That's well put. You've made your name

(01:28:43):
on Broadway, but you've also had great success in films.
Give me your take, Hollywood visa the Broadway, and you
wish you were in more films which tend to have
a permanence that Broadway does not. What's your take? Um,
I couldn't care less about movies. I really couldn't. I've

(01:29:05):
been in a few, not many. I've enjoyed myself. Sometimes
most of the time I'm bored because movies, you know,
they drag you to the set, you rehearse the scene.
Then you go back to your trailer and you're sit
in your trailer for several hours while they lighted or whatever,

(01:29:28):
and they put you in the costume whatever. They drag
you back to the set, they fix it again. You
do it once or twice, so twenty thirty times doesn't
even matter. You're out there for a couple of minutes
back to your trailer. It's it's not There are people
that know how to do that as an art I
am not among them. I find it incredibly boring. Theater.

(01:29:54):
You still rehearse like you do in movies, but you
rehearse the whole piece, you form the whole piece, and
then you go out and you perform it in front
of an audience and you have the whole control. You
are the control, You're the act just telling the audience

(01:30:15):
what to look at well, um, what to feel at all.
It's just much more control in that. Um. I love movies.
I love going to the movies. I love watching movies,
and I could care less about being in them. I
loved doing certain movies. But if you knew what those

(01:30:37):
circumstances really were, like, they're a joke. I mean, Mrs
s doabtfire, you know which? Everybody recognized me from I
was there two days. There was two days that I
got a lifetime relationship out of it is the important
thing to me. I couldn't care less about the movie.

(01:30:58):
My relationship with Robin meant everything to me. Um, what's
another one independence day there? One day I did the
scenes with you know, in my in my offices or whatever.
And then they took me outside, put me in a
car in an alley, said we're gonna turn on a

(01:31:20):
yellow light. When the yellow light goes on, that means
the building is falling on you. Make a face. I
made a face. I went home. Meant nothing to me.
You know, very glad that the movie made a couple
of hundred million dollars, but it's nothing I'm ever gonna
care about. Well do you get at this point? Do

(01:31:41):
you get offers? And if you get offers, do you
turn them down? Or is that something that was infrequent
to begin with? Um, it's infrequent to begin with. I
get offers when they don't know what they want, so
they say, get Harvey, he'll fill it in. We didn't.
The writer didn't write anything. Get Harvey, he'll fill it in.

(01:32:01):
Um so bother Um. I did the movie, Bros. Because
Billy asked me to do it as a favor. He
wanted all gay casts and wanted me people part of that.
And that's why I did it. Um, Like I said,
that minute for thirty seconds, what's the big deal? But
I don't I don't get offered. Great movie roles I mean,

(01:32:24):
and my feeling might be different if I did. You know,
maybe I would like movies, if if I was offering
a role that was more than you know, thankless. Okay,
you've been in movies. You're physically recognizable, certainly in New
York there's Broadway, there's all kinds of things you recognizable,

(01:32:45):
and you also have this voice. Can you go anywhere unrecognized?
And to what degree is that? And to what degree
is out of burden when you are recogn No? I mean,
that's another reason for living up here, is I can go. Also,
it's placed up here. Nobody knows who I am. It's lovely,
um not, you know I can't. I well, I can

(01:33:06):
walk around New York City most most neighborhoods, and nobody
will know who I am. You know, I can't walk
around Broadway. I mean, who was it? And it was
I think it was Um. When they were doing me
for sixty minutes which never aired. Um, the reporter called

(01:33:27):
me the Mayor of Broadway because we're walking down the day.
We couldn't he could. We couldn't walk and do the
interview at the same time because everybody kept coming up
to me and and interrupting us, um, But that's just lovely.
You know that's lovely. But then I can also escape
it as lovely. I you know, I have friends like

(01:33:48):
a Robin Williams or Henry Winkler or you know that.
To spend time with somebody like that who can't go anywhere,
do anything without causing a crowd it, I don't think
I could live like that. How about the opposite? By
being Harvey fire Stein, you get to meet people that

(01:34:09):
you never thought you'd be able to meet. You had
a couple of those experiences. Oh, all the time, all
the time, and I usually embarrass myself. Did you have
you watched Have you watched the what is it called
the Offer that the new series about? No, I haven't
I know what you're talking about? Right, Well, there's a
scene with Mario Puozzo. He takes Mario Puozzo. Bob Evans

(01:34:33):
takes Mario Puoso into a restaurant. I forget what restaurant
it is that Frank Sinatra sitting there, and he tells
him to not go over to the but he goes
over to the table to meet Frank Sinatra, and Frank
Sinatra screams and yells at him and calls them all
kinds of horrible names and all that. That's that's me. I.
You know, the first time I said, the first time

(01:34:53):
I was seated with Meryl Streep, I think I tortured
that poor woman. Be I had just written a catered affair,
and I just if she would only do it, if
I could just get out of starting cater affair, and
I tortured them. She didn't have a chance. So so
then the next celebrity I sit next to is um,

(01:35:17):
what's the name? Uh Tom Tom, not Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks,
And so I decided, leave him alone, do not tort you,
Tom Hanks. You're sitting in his tam one, Tom Hanks.
Leave him alone. Don't say anything Tim. And I heard later,
you know, Harvey didn't say a word to me. It
was what's wrong with him? It's like I'm sitting there

(01:35:39):
going hello, and Harvey's like ignoring me. So I'm very stupid. Okay,
So you're saying, if you're in a public space and
you see a celebrity, you will get up and talk
to that celebrity. Sometimes they will and sometimes I won't.
It doesn't whatever the choice I make, it's the wrong one.

(01:36:00):
But There's that other thing about celebrities though, that I
really love. My favorite thing about celebrities is that they
all know each other because we all belong to the
same club, you know. So, Um, the other night, Leah
Michelle opened in Funny Girl and the place was packed
with celebrities, and so there was celebrities saying hello this way,

(01:36:20):
that way and all that, and and um, I'm so
embarrassed to tell the story, but it's the truth. Drew
Barrymore comes up to me and Oh, Harvey, how have
you been? And I'm thinking to myself, Oh, we belonged
to this club together, asshole that am We made a
movie together. We we we spent weeks together on a movie. Um,

(01:36:41):
we had a whole relationship with each other. I just
haven't seen her in years, but you know that's me. Okay.
Another thing that's very interesting in the book You take
down Bill Maher. Now, Bill Maher is known for being
very self satisfied, and a lot of people have been

(01:37:03):
wanting to take him down. The experience you mentioned is
very clear cut in terms of what was said and
what was done. But to what degree did you say
I want to put this in the book, And I
want to mention him specifically. Um, I think you're right.

(01:37:23):
I don't like the man. Um. I find him just disgusting.
And yet, in a funny way, you almost have to
check in with him every now and then to see
what he's saying, because he does have a certain voice
and people do listen to him, and I want to
hear what he's saying, even though I always think he's
so fucking wrong. He's so uh. This week he talked

(01:37:46):
about the Santis sending the the immigrants to and he
thought it was great. Right, Oh, he's been so well, yeah,
they're complaining. Look at that beautiful a beach, look at
that beautiful town. He has no idea what it is
to be a human being. He hasn't been a human
being in so long. He only does his complain about

(01:38:09):
cancel culture because he can't tell the jokes he wants
to tell. He has no feelings for anybody else. He
couldn't care less what anybody else feels like. He just
wants to tell the jokes. But that's the way it
is with an addict. I mean the man. I don't
think that man has gone two days in his life
without smoking marijuana. I mean you're a drug addict. Admit

(01:38:32):
you're a drug addict, and then we can talk if
you can't go a day without smoking, And that's his
big issue is, oh I finally have my Marijuanaoa. You know,
there really is more to life than than checking out.
You couldn't try enjoying life. And then his attack on
fat people don't even strove me. But anyway, I decided

(01:38:54):
to tell that story more in a funny way for Lynn,
for Lynn Redgrave, who I do bard, and she was
so hurt by what he did that day. She actually
went back and did his show again and never mentioned it. Damn.
She was a much bigger person than I am. But
I wanted to tell that story for Lynn and and

(01:39:17):
for and for women period, because it's still true to
this day. He still doesn't have women on his show.
It's still usually three men or two men and a woman,
or but it's never three women because he has nothing
to say to them. I fucked them, I smoke dope
off them, and life goes on. Well, speaking of THATTS,

(01:39:46):
you talk about your own experience with substance abuse and
twelve step to what degree? Well, there are two sides.
What degree were you? You know? Hooked and then a
whole hard was it to get off? But did it
affect the work or really it was separate from the work. Yes,

(01:40:07):
it does. Addiction affect your work. Absolutely. I did not work.
I did not really right in that hole, there was
a long slide of alcohol. Alcoholism is not something that
starts one day, and well it did end one day
for me. I just hit the bottom. But I at

(01:40:28):
the bottom sitting in my garage with the car running.
Not really a choice there, you know, It's like, okay,
you and I already had alan on behind me, but
so I'm sitting in a garage or I wake up
the next morning because I was too stupid to figure
out how to kill yourself. Um, and I said, okay,
the what they predict in ALAN or what they predict

(01:40:50):
in a A has happened. My disease wanted to get
me into a room alone and kill me. It just did.
It's time to stop taking charge and let somebody else
take charge. Twelve step pros will tell you God takes charge.
God to me is a group of drunks. G O
D group of drunks. You all tell me what to

(01:41:13):
do and I will do it. And that's what I did,
so I never looked back. I had that last drink
and have never wanted to drink again. I have never
touched a drink again. I have no desire. And it's
twenty it's going on twenty eight years. Um. And I
gave up smoking soon after that, and then eventually Kathen also,

(01:41:36):
so does it affect your work? Yes, because working I
didn't work on alcohol. You you think you're writing something great.
You know you're drunk and you're writing something great. This
value had the funniest day I ever wrote. Oh my god,
that's hysterical, and you look at it the next day
and go, what is this ship? If you can even

(01:41:58):
read it? Because you've scrawled in a cross the beet
of paper when you were drunk, and you know and
you don't even know it. Yeah, no, it was. It
was not good for work. Um. I did a bunch
of acting in those bad years. UM, and that wasn't
too bad because you there's a lot of drunk actors
that can't away with being drunk or drunk. There's something

(01:42:21):
about being vulnerable. I think that comes out. But I
also was a secret drunk. Nobody knew I was drinking.
I didn't drink once I knew that. I drank only
once I knew my day was over, even if that
was noon and I wasn't going to see anybody else.

(01:42:41):
That's the other great part about living in the country.
Couldn't do that in the city. Somebody could always ring
your doorbell. But living in the country, I could sometimes
be done with all my day by noon and drink
until the next day. Um. Yeah, anyway, I don't know what. Yeah,

(01:43:01):
I got it. To what degree does your Jewish upbringing
in Jewish sensibility affect your work? Oh, it's everything, It's everything,
it says, you know, it's Uh. Neil Simon said to
me in my dress room at tord Song. Notice how
how acutely I have just dropped that name. Um for

(01:43:21):
Nil Simon said to me, where did you come from?
I said, A couple of blocks from you. Uh, it's
it's it's there. I there's all kinds of reasons, and
you know, there are hundreds of books on the subject
of of the You know, I guess the bottom line
for dramatists anyway, is put two Jews in a room

(01:43:42):
together and you'll have three opinions, you know, or or
as I say, put two rabbis together and what I'm
gonna be agnostic because they both can't believe the same thing.
If you believe this, I have to believe something else.
And that is how were trained. I mean, did you
have that? Did you have religious training? Yeah? So then

(01:44:07):
you know that's how we trained. Is the idea. You
argue this side, you argue that side, and that's how
you learn the Bible. That's you know, the Christian Bible.
There lectured, the lectured to fucking death. Memorize this crap,
and you and they translated, and they and they and
they they they they add are the meetings that have

(01:44:27):
nothing to do with the written word and all that
which I always laugh when I watched those those preachers
who turned an innocent phrase into something else choose. I'll
never forget. When I was sitting doing cottage with my father,
which I didn't my brother did. Most of the days
of cottage. I only filled in fam um. But one day,

(01:44:48):
you know how they take one line from the from
the Bible and they discuss it after join the morning prayers.
It was a measurement of one of the pieces of
wood to build the arc. And these old men sitting
there drinking schnaps at seven in the morning, suspected our

(01:45:10):
arguing what was the meaning behind that measurement? What I
always say is Judaism is a questioning religion, and Christianity
is didactic. Everything's up for grabs. The other thing, you
put two Jews in a room, it's not gonna be quiet.
So let's let's just go back to Broadway. So you

(01:45:32):
is Broadway always up and down? Or if we really
hit a different phase with there being so much money
in it, a lot of non Broadway people, rock stars,
etcetera getting Broadway and as you say, there are many
fewer traditional plays and there used to be. What do
you think about the future of Broadway? I think we

(01:45:55):
just missed a great opportunity to invent it all. The
COVID closed down was such a great opportunity to go
back and say, Okay, we've gotten a little out of
control with ticket prices. Now we've gotten a little crazy
with the unions. Everybody's living very comfortably, that's very nice,

(01:46:19):
but charging four hundred I was the ticket for a
ninety minute show is a little nuts. Can we like
unravel some of this? And we didn't. They didn't even
clean the theaters. The Thetis was shut down. Maybe they
changed the air of filters, you know they but they didn't. You.
I would have thought they would have gone in and
painted the dress rooms, but the actors all went back

(01:46:40):
and this stuff was still sitting there, exactly where they
left it two years ago. So I think we missed
a great opportunity there. But you can't ignore it forever.
It's gonna come, you know, you you, it's gonna bite
you on the as. Eventually the truth has to come
out and change will happen, whether you want change to

(01:47:01):
happen or not. So I still think it's coming, just
like whoever thought Phantom of the Opera would close? But
it's closed or it's closing, whether you like it or not,
nothing stays the same. It moves on, it moves on.
So there will be a new day on Broadway. It

(01:47:24):
will be what we say in twelve Steps, we say,
I never let let go of anything without leaving claw
marks Broadway. Believe claw marks out all those buildings. But
it will change just because it has to, because it's
not it's not it's not a concert. You know, Um,

(01:47:46):
what's the name Elton John? They just figured out he's
gonna personally personally take over thirty million dollars from this
next tour. He's doing Springsteen, who I adore, charging the
prices he charged for his Broadway show, you know, absurd.

(01:48:07):
He doesn't need that kind of money to come out
of his house. He doesn't need that. Why can't you
do a show for because you love it? Why? I mean, why,
why does everything have to be about money? And why
is a thousand dollars a ticket? Because I bought two
tickets for my brother to see the show for a

(01:48:28):
birthday president of thousand, and I was getting you know,
I wasn't getting kicked up to the high prices I
was getting from the theater owner, who's one of my
best friends. I was getting a decent price. And it
was nine something per ticket plus the extra charges they
put on it. It's not right. Well, let me just
ask you. Just staying on that point, we're not going

(01:48:50):
into Springsteen Renny specific shows, not that I'm unwilling to
do that. What many people say Hamilton's being the bestis ample.
If we don't charge that price, the money goes to
the scalpers, right, That's what That's what Springsteen just said. Um,

(01:49:13):
he said Why should the money go to the scalpers.
Why shouldn't I get that money? Uh? I do think
they can control that better. I think producers and theater
owners would rather have the money in the bank from
the scalpers and then turn their backs. But could they
turn to a scalper I don't know that that would

(01:49:35):
be legal or not and say you could only add
this much to the ticket price. I don't know if
that's legal or not. Well, there are ways to do it,
restrict with paperless I don't want to Why don't they
work on that while while we were closed down for
two years? Why not put I could have a whole
discussion about this. The irony is people don't want it

(01:49:57):
because people want to scalp the tickets them selves. They
want to sell it. This has been a big thing
in the music business forever. I'm not apologizing for the acts,
I'm not apologizing for promoters. But you would think the
public would be on the same page. Well, no, because
then I won't be able to go to the last
minute and pay or no, if I buy tickets, I'm
gonna get rid of my tickets. But let's not go

(01:50:18):
down that avenue today, because ultimately We're on the same page.
It should not cost that amount of I had a friend.
I had a friend sit outside the Harry Styles um
Theater the other day because she had a connection that
was supposed to be able to come through with the
ticket if a ticket, And she stayed there until the
curtain went up, and the ticket never came through. And
she because she couldn't afford the thousand dollars to see

(01:50:40):
Harry Styles, who she really wanted to see. And it
breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. Why shouldn't they?
I mean, I went, you know, when I was a kid,
I went to Carnegie Hall to see Buffy Sick Marie. Okay,
not Eric Styles, but I went to see down of It.
I saw Bob Dilly, and I saw I saw oh
my heroes live on the money I can afford, you know,

(01:51:05):
twenty dollar tickets Broadway. I mean, of course, I'm being
silly now, But when I was a little kid, my
family and I four of us, my father, my mother,
my brother, and I two dollars and fifty cents a ticket.
We sat in the first row of the balcony, perfect seats.
You could see everything. For ten bucks. Fifteen cents was

(01:51:27):
the Subway. Well I think it was sixty cents. But
the problem is bigger than Broadway. It's about incomm inequality.
I mean, no one had billions back then. Well there's
also but there's also that. You know, we added the
half prize booth, which is a wonderful thing. But I

(01:51:47):
was a child seeing Broadway. Whether I went into theater
or not, my life was changed by seeing Just if
I saw nothing but Fiddler on the Roof, my life
was changed by seeing a stage full of Jews. Can
you imagine the kid who's went to see whose kids,

(01:52:07):
whose life is not so good, who went to see
Hamilton's and had his life changed? Do you know how
many lives Hamilton's can change? And I know they've got
it on Disney Plus, it's not the same. It's not
the same. It's not it's not having seen in a
number of times with the original casts and subsequent casts.

(01:52:28):
It's different. But what's this bit about you're retired. Oh well,
I like to joke that I'm retired. I mean, it
would take a lot to get me to do eight
shows a week. I'd have to really love the play
because it is hard to do eight shows a week. Um,

(01:52:51):
you know working. I mean, who else works six days
a week the way you know us theater people do
and eight shows a week is hard, you know, But
but there are things. I mean, I'm opening next week
in Guys and Dolls at the Kennedy Center, and how
about your commitment. I'm gonna be home every day because

(01:53:13):
we prerecorded my role. They offered me the role of
Big Julie, which is a fun role, but I said
so he said, if you remember Guys and Dolls, they
need a place to have the crap game. And so

(01:53:35):
nicely nicely calls this guy who runs a underground garage
and says, can we have the garage? Says here, you
can have the garage. You gotta pay me up front.
And it's a three page long scene of saying you
gotta bay me up front. You gotta bay me up front.
And so I record. I prerecorded it, and uh so
I will be at the Kennedy Center. I think they

(01:53:58):
don't even I don't even think I'm in the pro rap.
I think you'll just hear my voice and people will
realize it's me. Okay, Harvey, I can literally talk to
you for days. You're so easy to talk to. But
I think we've come to the end of the feeling
we've known for today. Good. So I want to thank

(01:54:19):
you Harvey for doing this. Uh you tell a great story.
They're also in the book. You can get the audio version.
So thanks again for taking the time. Thank you for
having me. I realized it was also two hours out
of your life. Okay, but it's also two hours for
many people who don't have the access I have. Okay,

(01:54:41):
till next time. This is Bob left sets

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