So, if you haven’t heard by now, we made Page Six, shortly after we were an item on Filth. Then we were on all kinds of radio station newsbites. You guys are like my personal press clipping service, and I really appreciate that. How else would I know we made the West Australian?
This morning we’re in the IMDB gossip page.
Buy today’s People Magazine, and you’ll find us on page 20.
Scott Thompson is doing our late-night 10pm show.
We are sold out for this weekend, so we added a late-night Friday show.
And now I am faced with the big question. Am I going to extend the show?
It’s all anyone will talk about with me for about a week. People call all day long to give their opinions. It’s more than a little bit crazy around here.
You see, normally when you have a show that is the talk of the town… or several towns… and continents, then you just keep doing the show for as long as you can and you tour it and you go to bigger and bigger theatres and you don’t stop until you’re famous.
Not such an easy thing to do here. We’ve reached the end of this seven-week run, and at the end of it, I’m losing my two producers. If I decide to extend, I’m on my own with the theatre owner. I don’t have the money to mount this thing, so I’d be assigned a producer, someone who would be paid to mount this thing. I’d have to rent the props, the theatre, the lighting people, the box office people, and the theatre people. I’d have to make the programs and the press kits. I’d have to buy more postcards and postage to advertise the additional shows. I’d have to get more guest spots and replace certain cast members who couldn’t extend.
None of that would be a problem if I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this show won’t get shut down. But that’s the problem. As soon as Anne’s had enough, she can just make this show stop. We’ve always known that. But before we were nobodies doing a little show in a bar. We weren’t discussed in the New York Post. We weren’t gossip fodder. I can only imagine Anne’s getting a little tired of our asses.
And every other person tells me why this show is completely legal under parody laws. Then every other other person explains exactly how I can get sued for millions of dollars for even coming up with such a concept. Apparently that all depends on how mad Anne and her people get. I suppose even Ellen and Steve Martin could sue if they really wanted to. Everybody could jump on an enormous lawsuit spaceship and abduct my future savings.
Then others say that we’re untouchable, that we’re covered under First Amendment rights, that the show isn’t slander or libel because we’re only telling her story as she told it.
My point is, how much longer do I push this? Do I keep doing the show until she cries Uncle? Or do I take a bow now, when we’re as big as we’re going to get, when nothing bad has happened? We wouldn’t be at this place where are now if she hadn’t shown up. I don’t know who leaked the story to the press, but all of this attention is because she came by. Yes, the show is good enough to back it up (Our LA Weekly review, which came out today, is a really nice one). We haven’t received any bad reviews. That’s been the most rewarding thing — people do enjoy the show. And everyone who sees it wants to talk about it afterwards, which makes me feel like it’s really theatre. It makes people talk about celebrity, fame and how crazy people can get when everyone’s talking about them. I’m really proud of this show, and if I could, I’d want it to go on for months and months and months.
I just don’t know if we can anymore. We’ve been doing the show for over a year and a half now, and I’m not sure what else we can get from it. It’s very hard to launch theatre in Los Angeles, and only now are we getting attention from the Industry people we wanted to see it in the first place. But what difference will four or five more shows make? We’ve been peforming to sold-out houses for over a month now. What good will another month do?
So I’m at a bit of a crossroads. I’m not sure what the best thing is to do. I said to my friend Jessica last night, “When I go to Vegas, if I win two hundred dollars, I stop gambling. Because I know the odds were I wasn’t supposed to win that two hundred dollars. And sure, maybe I could turn it into a thousand, but I know most likely I’ll just end up giving it back and then spending an additional two hundred dollars of my money trying to get lucky again. I don’t like pressing my luck.”
Am I now just pressing my luck? Or is this the reward of all the hard work I put into this show? Is this dangerous, or a blessing? I guess it’s both, and that’s what makes it all a good story. How much further could we go? Would we go up in flames? Would we go from the show that Anne Heche stormed out of to the show Anne Heche is suing for millions of dollars?
Why would she even care? I don’t know. You just try to imagine all the scenarios. I’ve got a couple of days to figure out what I want to do. I don’t want to let anyone down, but I also want to do the right thing.
I just have to figure out what that is.
[db]
You can now pre-order your own copy of Why Girls are Weird.
Coming to see the show? Here’s a discount.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.