One of the great disappointments of the 21st Century surely has to be that the seemingly inevitable Big Lebowski: The Musical has somehow not yet materialized. It is quite obviously a slam dunk idea, and if we are to believe string theory, we are stranded in the one dimension out of thirteen where this glorious reality does not exist. Instead, the little indie film Waitress was improbably turned into a smash hit, while Big Lebowski: The Musical remains but a dream.
Why have we been so forsaken? The only reasonable conclusion is that the formidable ghost of Dude has been standing in the way of Big Lebowski: The Musical taking its rightful place alongside Hamilton and The Book of Mormon as Broadway’s gifts to this, still young (yet, seemingly long-in-the-tooth) century. Dude was the lyricist Gerome Ragni’s follow-up to Hair and has gone down as one of Broadway’s biggest fiascos. The show’s producer Adela Holzer, recently died, once again shaking the grave of Dude. In the early 1970s, the press praised Holzer as a bright, young producer willing to take risks on groundbreaking material. With All Around Town, a farce directed by Dustin Hoffman and Terrence McNally’s The Ritz, she had two hits under her name and was brimming with confidence. “I have three college degrees, and I know if something is good,” she told The New York Times. Talk like that would make even Icarus blush. It was only a matter of time before the world would see her wings burn.
The demise of Dude is not just the tale of a Broadway flop; it may very well be the defining story of the entire genre. It has it all: excess, insane prima donna behavior, outlandish demands, an unscrupulous producer, nudity, revolt, and a quick fall off the cliff.
Adela Holzer had invested in Hair, claiming to have turned a $57,000 investment into a $2,000,000 profit (in actuality, New York magazine reported that she probably turned $7500 into $115,000). A little puffery in the producing class is no big thing, if not a requirement. She and her third husband, a shipping magnate, decided to go all-in with Gerome Ragni, who is the brain behind Dude and was a lyricist of Hair. Hair’s phenomenal success had turned Ragni into a millionaire, and he had scribbled his epic vision of “Dude” across 2000 pages. Had he not just co-written Hair, a 2000 page manuscript for a Broadway musical would have perhaps been a sure sign of an addled, schizophrenic mind, but in this case, it was merely a testament to his overflowing genius.
Adler, in all her producer’s glory, insisted that Ragni cut it down to 200 pages, but by all accounts, there was still no story to be found. Considering how thin the narrative runs through most Broadways, it is surprising that one could not be concocted. But at the time, Gerome Ragni was considered an eccentric genius going deep down the rabbit hole to inevitable glory, and the novice producer indulged most of his outlandish inclinations. In a 1972 Times post-mortem (“Dude … an $800,000 Disaster”), Adler says, “It had no plotline. That worried me a little. I see now it should have worried me more. Basically, Dude was everyman. Everyman who loses his innocence and fights to regain it. But Dude was also Gerry Ragni’s own life. His memories. Temptations. His fears. His struggle to create … when he was five years old he began painting crazy beautiful paintings all over his family’s house and his parents couldn’t stop him. Even then he believed he was a genius. That belief made him tireless … I knew Hair was a traumatic experience for him. He became famous – a rich man. But his marriage broke up and fell in with a strange crowd.”
In Ragni’s original fever dream, he envisioned that Dude would be performed at the Schubert, where the stage and seats would be “scooped out,” and the theater would be reconfigured in the round. But when the producer’s procured his dream venue, he demanded the Imperial Theater instead. Pippin, though was playing there. So, the production had to make do with the Broadway Theater, which was considered cursed, a flop house. Dude was here to break the mold, and the production would be unimpressed by such petty superstitions. The theater was booked; its interior was dismantled and transformed to contain the circus-like, ever-changing spectacle that was rattling about in Ragni’s restless mind.
Holzer initially went along with Ragni and cast one of his friends to portray “Dude”. Not exactly a sign of producorial strength, especially after it was revealed that the actor could not, in fact, sing. This liability would prove to be an issue, and the production had no choice but to fire Ragni’s pal. The logical replacement for the 23-year-old white actor was, amazingly, Ralph Carter, an 11-year-old African American boy. It was a bold decision that must have seemed groundbreaking at the time. Ralph, though, was unable to pull off several of the numbers, so they hired twenty-something white male Nat Morris to play the older dude, aka “Big Dude.” Surely, they had convinced themselves that having a black child and a white adult portray Dude was a brilliant commentary on the duality of man and would reflect that deep down we are all brothers … or something. Although, that may be a bit harsh. After all, Todd Haynes brilliantly used six actors to play Bob Dylan in his 2007 masterpiece I’m Not There.
The lack of a script proved to be a problem during rehearsals. Allan Nichols, who played the God-like character “33” (originally Ragni intended to play this part himself, as he had played Berger, the lead, in the original cast of Hair) was quoted, “By the fourth week of rehearsals, the producers, director, and choreographer had stopped communicating … We didn’t dare discuss the script. There was none!”
Instead, Ragni was preoccupied with badgering his producer with 2 a.m. phone calls, requesting the release of a hundred butterflies at the beginning of his performance. (It should be noted that this is a man who allegedly did not do drugs). Rebuffed by Adler, Ragni pivoted to envisioning the release of live pigs and chickens down the aisles during intermission. That genius notion, too, was a no-go, but Adler did acquiesce to unloading two tons of dirt on the theater floor. It was a decision that left the sometimes naked actors coughing and gasping for air from the plumes of dust and debris. Instead of removing the dirt, they watered it down. Now, covered in mud, the actors’ complaints turned into a cacophony, bordering on out-right revolt. In order to appease the resurrecting players, they replaced the dirt with brown pieces of felt, which soon gave way to brown fragments of plastic.
not impressed
The actors, though, were not satisfied (are they ever?), and lengthy “therapy” sessions were held to air their grievances. Many thought their careers would be over once the world bore witness to the inevitable fiasco. Many thought they might just lose their minds from the never-ending chaos and uncertainty. Ragni’s sister taped the sessions, and presumably, in a counter-culture meta-utopian attempt at understanding, Ragni inserted some of the best complaints into the show … but, sadly, he would later remove them. Similarly, in this autobiographical opus Ragni would also delete all references to his many grievances surrounding Hair, the source of so much money, fame, and, apparently, angst.
There would be previews where the audience couldn’t decipher the lyrics or the dialogue as the theater’s acoustics were not designed for theater in the round … or for dueling bands playing in the balconies. On the first night of previews, it seem the audience was unaccustomed to the charms of an unintelligible musical and begin crying “Rip-Off!” Naturally, the production hired sound engineers from MIT to fix the issue, but alas, their efforts fell short.
As the ship sank, Holzer made one last-ditch effort: hiring a new director, Tom O’Horgan. He had directed Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, a bone-fide star in his own right. It was a Hail Mary pass that just might connect. The rub was that the hot-shot director only had three weeks to whip Dude into shape before he had to move on to another project. His arrival, though, buoyed the actors, who believed they had found their savior.
While it looked like the production had let the sun shine in with O’Horgan’s star power, the production could not be salvaged. Ragni still had not finished the script, and actors were often left to improvise their own dialogue. Then, oddly, Ragni’s brother – a priest in full regalia – started showing up to rehearsals, vigorously pushing to insert more overt religious imagery and overtones into Dude. O’Horgan resisted the priest’s input, but the holy man persisted … until the producers had no choice but to exorcise him from the theater.
The ever-changing “script” was not frozen until two nights before the official open. Yet, still, there was a feeling that all of the craziness might just pay off. “Audiences love it,” Adler insisted. Summoning the audience’s collective response, the Times mused in its post-mortem: “It was entertaining, sometimes, yes. The songs were great. Yes. But what’s Dude all about?”
The critics would be more brutal: “Boring.” “Infantile.” “Shapeless.” “Much ado about nothing.” The New York Daily News called it “an extremely pretentious and juvenile affair and certainly not worth all the fuss.” Richard Watts of the New York Post really wanted to like it, “But after the first half hour,” he generously surmised, “it made me unhappy.”
The legendary Clive James at The Times praised O’Horgan’s direction: “There is also an almost gothic sense of fantasy to his work; he has the manic imagination and innocence of a child indulging his nightmares in daylight. Mr. Ragni is an artist of the same jib. But here the lack of discipline to that imagination, a freedom that proved so charming in Hair, chains the musical down instead of liberating it. In Hair the very aimlessness of the piece, its random poetry and shafts of insight could afford the luxury of a nonstructure because it was describing a life style that deliberately embraced nonstructured patterns as its aim. Dude, on the other hand, seems to be an allegory about ‘that great theater in the sky’, and an allegory that is not clear, even on its primary level, is in no end of trouble.”
The show would take in only $500 at the box office the next day. Adler insisted that word of mouth was terrific and took out an ad proclaiming that tickets through January 3, 1973, were on sale … But alas, such wishful thinking would not be infectious, and Dude would close after only 16 performances. A glorious disaster.
As the show limped to the end of its run, it is reported that some exasperated audience members fled the theater at intermission only to find themselves confronted by none other than Gerome Ragni. “Get back to your seats!” he yelled. “Go sit down and suffer with everybody else! Suffer!”
For a show that closed so quickly, we can be grateful that the cast album survives. The was recorded in March of 1972, and the show premiered in October of that year. Considering how much Ragni tinkered with the book and the tunes, it is quite possible that the cast album bore little resemblance to the musical that died on Broadway.
After Dude lost $800,000 in 1972 (4.8 million in 2020), about half of which was her and her husband’s investment, Adler declared that her days as a theater producer were over. Her bank-rolling husband complained, “The Broadway system is a lousy system. A bunch of stone-faced old men should not have the right to make up the public’s mind.” But it would turn out that Adela could not kick the Broadway habit so easily. She would go on to produce several more flops, a losing streak that left her paying off investors with money from new investors. On Broadway, such accounting is sometimes just called “producing,” but in real life, it’s called a “Ponzi Scheme.”
In her first trial in 1977, naturally, her lawyer was Roy Cohn, notorious as Joe McCarthy’s counsel, as well as Donald Trump’s mentor in mendacity. Cohn is truly one of the great scumbags of the 20th Century. In addition to their ginned up crusade against alleged communists, he and McCarthy would purge hundreds of gay men from the U.S. government. While McCarthy was just a drunken asshole full of hate and lies, Cohn – of course – was a closeted gay man. So, if anyone ever deserved to die of AIDS, it was Roy Cohn. And that is exactly what happened. Cohn would later be depicted on his death bed in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed in the electric chair after being prosecuted (and/or persecuted) by Cohn.
Adela’s crimes went well beyond bilking Broadway investors, as her scams included fake investments in Indonesian Toyota dealerships and Spanish real estate. Cohn was as worthless to Adela as he was to life itself. She was convicted for fraud and the judge sentenced her to two-six years in the clink. The Ponzi scheme is a time honored scam and she would go to that well again and again. All in all, Adler would end up spending 14 years in prison for fraud and various cons. Most despicably, she would sink to ripping off immigrants from her native Spain. According to The New York Times she “convinced Spanish-speaking immigrants that if they paid her $2,000 to $2,700, she could get prominent political friends in Washington to pass private immigration-relief bills that would give immigrants permanent resident status, the authorities said.”
Sure, any Broadway producer probably has a bit of grifter in their bones, but Adela was in a league of her own. Show business loves larceny, making it virtually inevitable that Terrence McNally – she had produced his work twice – would write a comedy featuring a character based on her larger-than-life persona: It’s Only a Play. The action takes place in a producer’s Upper East Side townhouse as the writer, director, and various actors wait for their play to be reviewed. The play’s most recent incarnation in 2014 starred Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, featuring Meghan Mullally as Julia Rudder, the hostess and producer inspired by Ms. Holzer.
Is Adela Holzer why we can’t have nice things like Big Lebowski: The Musical ? Yes, I am afraid there really is no other explanation. In essence, she peed on the rug, leaving a long trail of broken dreams in her wake, tragically sullying the idea that the Dude could succeed on Broadway. But now that the witch is dead, perhaps the Dude can rise again? One can only hope that this small blog post will be the proverbial pebble tossed in the ocean, whose ripple will somehow become a tsunami and, only then, will the grandeur and glory of Big Lebowski: The Musical wash over us all.
72 Hours in Austin, Texas
It’s not surprising that Austin, Texas is so satisfied with itself. No doubt it’s the best city in the whole state. Unfortunately, that distinction is a lot like being the prettiest prostitute in the alley smoking crystal meth. The rest of the Texas republic is a dump and that’s pretty much the way its citizens treat it. After all, “Don’t Mess With Texas” is a public service announcement pleading with Texans to quit shitting in their own bed. The last time I was there in the late 1990s I was shocked to find that not only do people drive on the beaches, but it is also the local custom to throw all of the week’s accumulated trash out the window while doing so.
Granted, perhaps I’m slightly biased. In 1997, I was there visiting the family of a girl I was dating. It was Thanksgiving. A month later she moved in with me. Three weeks after that she went to San Francisco for the weekend and reunited with the father of her (latest) abortion. I never saw her again. It would be disingenuous of me to deny that perhaps this situation has left me forever unfavorably disposed to the capital of Texas.
However, I like to think I am capable of change. Sure, even while blinded by love, I wasn’t particularly impressed with Austin fifteen years ago. But I didn’t like Brussels sprouts then and now I do, so I figured I’d give it another try. After all, the Psych Fest had a fantastic line-up and it seemed that it would be a fine opportunity to reassess the situation.
I met up with two friends, one from St. Paul and one from Portland. Through AirBnB we rented a bungalow/shack in South Austin that was fully stocked with Texas memorabilia and Ayn Rand propaganda: a puzzling, yet oddly telling detail in this allegedly hip neighborhood in the midst of a massive gentrification. Not so long ago South Austin was a ghetto. Now, ramshackle homes stand next to gleaming modern ones. A local boasted that it is where the slaves used to live. Now there are coffee shops, vintage clothes stores and enough food trucks to satisfy a range of cravings from $5 donuts to West African stewed goat.
We arrived at varying times throughout Friday afternoon. By the time Portland showed up, it was time to get over to the venue. The Psych Fest’s 5th edition was stationed at Emo’s East and the Beauty Bar, a short walk from one another in an odd commercial wasteland. The Beauty Bar, which resembles a barn much more than a bar, was the site of San Francisco’s Moon Duo, who provided an excellent opening salvo for the festival (for us). We ended up spending much of the evening here. At the other side of the parking lot was Emo’s East, which essentially is a warehouse with the ambiance of a truncated roller rink. It is, sadly, exactly what I’d expect a venue in Texas to be: too big for its britches and mistaking misguided kitsch for personality. In a state that routinely confuses big for better, the sound system was massive, yet muddy.
While the proprietors of both venues were amiable and created a space conducive to the freedom one might expect from a festival dedicated to psychedelia, both the Beauty Bar and Emo’s East are devoid of personality to the point that you could be anywhere. To make matters worse, the neighborhood which hosts these emporiums is surrounded by section 8 housing, dilapidated, run-down stretches of big box box stores, bingo halls and flailing franchises. It is a essentially a ghetto. Since the venues, which can hold 2500 people between them, can only accommodate about 100 cars in their shared parking lot, concert-goers will likely get an intimate view of the rotting carcass of the American Dream.
With a little time to burn before Lotus Plaza, we tested our Frogger skills and managed to make it safely to El Pollo Rico across the street. This taco shack is apparently a cherished Austin favorite and as such our expectations were high … and therein lies the problem with Austin, it’s supposed to amazing, but in reality it’s nothing special. In accordance with that calculus, the lard-encrusted tacos were fine, certainly nothing mind-blowing. It is, however, possible that my taste buds were stunted from the infusion of carbon monoxide spewing from the line of pick-up trucks idling in the drive-thru, conveniently located right next to the stand’s picnic tables.
Despite the unfavorable conditions, I was hungry for more. The weekend promised to be a marathon, it would be important to pace oneself. Somehow we managed to extricate ourselves from the greasy picnic table. But there would more tacos that evening. Many, many more.
Magically, there was a taco stand in the parking lot behind the Beauty Bar. Their tacos were far superior, and came with the added bonus of not having to risk one’s life crossing the street for the privilege of dining in a mist of car exhaust. I downed several of their chicken concoctions throughout the evening in a manner reminiscent of Ignatius Reilly’s prodigious ability to devour vast quantities of hot dogs. It seems I had acquired a parasite since touching down in Texas, which considering the nauseating state of the city’s water supply made a disturbing degree of sense.
After staying up well past 4 a.m. on Friday night we managed to get ourselves up for brunch. Apparently, most of Austin had the same idea as the lines were long at most recommended places, even though it was already past one in the afternoon. We ended up at the Bouldin Creek Coffee House & Cafe. It is a vegetarian restaurant, a shock to us at the time, but not an unwelcome one. Their spinach omelette was not only a minor revelation, but also efficiently soaked-up the toxins of the previous evening’s escapades.
sightseeing downtown: an Austin geisha lets it all hang out
We rented bikes upon our arrival, but had not yet used them so we took them for a spin, leaving South Austin and heading over the river for downtown and the capital. The bike trails and parks are quite impressive, but unfortunately they led us to 6th Street, a tacky commercial tourist zone where Austin “keeps it weird” in the most innocuous and tedious way. First we made the rookie mistake of stopping at Jackalope for a drink. Obviously, the name should have driven us away, but the Zombies were on the jukebox, so we went in. Apparently, mixing drinks is a difficult task for bottle-toking Texans, so it should not be astonishing that making a simple whiskey and lemonade was beyond the abilities of the Jackalope bartender. I can’t say we didn’t have it coming. The Jackalope – it’s the perfect name for Texas tourist trap.
Portland takes a Texas-sized hit from an avian aerial raid
From there we went to Easy Tiger, attracted to their ping pong tables and courtyard next to a stoned-in creek full of swimming painted turtles. In a matter of minutes I managed to smash my paddle into a pile of toothpicks, while Portland was showered with a Texas-sized pile of bird shit – an incident which I thought was particularly hilarious since we had just switched sides. That bird, I’m quite sure, had been gunning for me. I don’t think the winged creature had particularly appreciated my observation that Austin is essentially Branson, Missouri for hipsters.
The afternoon was slipping away so we headed back to our bungalow to get ready for the evening’s musical offerings. After hosing ourselves off, we were again thwarted with wait times of an hour or more at no less than three restaurants (none of which take reservations), so we ended up at a food trailer park in South Austin where we dined at Little Thai, purveyors of an unpredictably decent pineapple fried rice.
The fest offered several stellar acts on Saturday night, including Pink Mountaintops, Woods, The Telescopes, Olivia Tremor Control and the Black Lips. If only they hadn’t been relegated to the sterile Emo’s East, perhaps a degree of transcendence could have been reached. The weather was great all weekend and it’s a shame that the festival wasn’t outside. While it is unfair to judge Austin on the purgatory that is Emo’s East and the Beauty Bar, life in Texas is seldom fair, so somehow my conscience will have to deal.
the winding road to the top of Doug Sahm Hill
We rode around on our bikes again on Sunday and almost immediately stumbled upon an unexpected Austin landmark, Doug Sahm Hill, named for the legendary musician. Sahm was a child prodigy and shared the stage with Hank Williams in December 1952 at Austin’s Skyline Club. Sahm was 11. Hank died 13 days later. It was Williams’ last show. Sahm would go on to have a fantastic and influential career, cut short by a heart attack in 1989.
The Sir Douglas Quintet classic “She’s About a Mover” was once named the number one “Texas” song by Texas Monthly:
The third night of psychedelic offerings ended with a solid bang of Bombino, Thee Oh Sees, Meat Puppets and Brian Jonestown Massacre. Despite the lame venues, it was a fine, albeit narrow, festival. A few short weeks later, it is now largely a blur. And like Doug Sahm, I doubt I’ll be going back to Austin again anytime soon.
Doug Sahm – I Can’t Go Back To Austin
God Bless America: I’m Not Like Everybody Else
When I first saw the trailer for Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America, I was excited. The auteur behind Shakes the Clown had turned his acerbic eye to America’s glutinous excesses … and, yes, there would be blood. Lots of blood. As America becomes increasingly fractured and polarized over bullshit issues (while the rich get richer), clearly the time is right for a movie where people who deserve to die are systematically killed.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that we are in the last throes of Empire. Bloated and entitled, we are distracted from the world’s real problems by reality shows and fart jokes. When our hero Frank finds out that he has a brain tumor, in lieu of committing suicide he decides he’ll take a spoiled reality star with him. A young teenage girl witnesses the carnage and is filled with glee. She encourages Frank not to waste this opportunity and kill more deserving individuals.
Here is where the film goes wrong. As a muse, the bloodthirsty young girl is largely apolitical and encourages the obliteration of low-hanging fruit. For her the people who deserve to die include the Kardashians, those who give high-fives and “women who call their tits the girls.” While one could make a decent argument for Kardashian eradication, these targets, while odious, are not the people who got us where we are.
God Bless America could have challenged Natural Born Killers as the Citizen Kane of serial killer spree films, but it is merely an amusing sketch padded out into the length a feature. The uneven storytelling is almost a worse crime than any of the infractions of Frank’s victims. The film is repetitive and didactic and as a result it takes quite awhile for the action to get rolling. (The first act break is around 38 minutes in, when it could have been accomplished in about half the time). That said, it is true that there was a certain catharsis in seeing the slaughter of a rude movie audience. Sure, the assassination of a spoiled reality star brat was somewhat satisfying and the mass killing of a crowd of anti-gay crusaders provided a modicum of delight … but these people are merely symptoms of a dying culture, the true culprits are let off the hook.
When I think of the people that “deserve” to die, the “victims” in God Bless America simply are not it. While I would certainly not advocate murder except in fiction, perhaps if his killing duo had taken out some hedge fund managers, corporate polluters, political charlatans and fascist activist judges, Bobcat Goldthwait might have created an entertaining spectacle that truly confronted the real problems facing America today.
Watch the trailer and you will have seen all the best that the film has to offer.
The movie is also notable for featuring The Kinks’ “I’m Not Like Everybody Else.” Of course, that is America’s big lie. We all think we’re pioneering individuals. We are all special snowflakes. Everyone deserves a trophy. It is an important lie for a society based on consumption and excess. Because we are so special, we deserve all the comforts our hearts desire. In fact, we are entitled to them.
But really we’re not so different. When it comes down to it, we’re all easily slotted into a demographic: fish in a barrel waiting to be marketed to. And that’s the problem with God Bless America. It shoots fish in a barrel when it should be targeting the barrel makers.
The Best Baseball Songs Ever. Period.
all tunes soon to be covered by Nuke LaRoosh
The countdown is really in no particular order, although the song in the number one slot is, indisputably, the greatest baseball song ever. Despite the fact that I’m naturally partial to tunes that have personal emotional resonance, this list should still be considered definitive for everyone.
Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments, although petitioning for “Centerfield,” “Glory Days” or “Talkin’ Baseball” will result in your IP address being banned from ever accessing this site again.
Austin Psych Fest Preview: The Mind Spiders
The Mind Spiders: like an ear worm, but with eight legs
In case the memo got tangled in your spam folder, the Mind Spiders are here to proclaim that the Golden Era of garage rock is now. Hailing from Fort Worth, Texas, Mind Spiders is the side project of Mark Ryan, who is apparently best known for his his other band The Marked Men. I regret to say that I was unfamiliar with the The Marked Men’s catalog, but after seeing this fantastic video, that is an oversight that will be quickly rectified. Welcome to the best minute and a half of your day:
Although they are undoubtedly indebted to the past, the infectiously dirty power pop sensibility of The Mind Spiders is a welcome antidote to the polished sheen of modern music. By falling back to the past, bands like The Mind Spiders have emerged as the perfect palate cleanser for the endless loop of mindless chatter that dogs our dying culture. These guys not only provide a soundtrack that make life worth celebrating, they’ll also cure your hangover in the morning.
Mind Spiders – Don’t Let Her Go – MP3
Mind Spiders – Your Soul – MP3
Buy their albums here. Don’t buy them at Amazon. Amazon will not only send you real spiders, but they will also plant electronic spiders in your brain designed to track your every commercial impulse and desire. Sure, it sounds convenient, but in the end Jeff Bezos will have you mummified in twine made of cheap Chinese silk while he sucks your blood like a milkshake.
lonesomebeehive 