Jeff Loeffelholz suicide news coverage — Page 2

this is all such a mess

trpguyy said: "ladypresent said: "the weisslers are multi millionaires..why would they care about 35k (or so)?
"

They’ve literally gone to arbitration over $35. Barry enjoys his reputation of being disgustingly cheap.

Also, don’t expect AEA to be able to actuallyinvestigate anything. The NAMCO office is in the Equity building, which is completely separate from the fact that Equity is inept at pretty much everything."

This makes me sick. Jeff deserves a fair investigation. There is a little money in the extended family, but not a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed to battle the Weisslers, if it came to that.

Updated On: 7/7/18 at 12:37 AM

How ironic for this to happen in a show that encourages a murderer to razzle dazzle the jury to be set free.

morosco said: "What I can't wrap my mind around is why either Walter Bobbie ormusical director Leslie Stifelman would really care about how much it would cost to buy Jeff out of his contract. What would it matter to the two of them? I could be completely wrong and this is just a wild guess but to meit would make sense only ifsomeone very high up within the production perhaps "strongly suggested"toBobbie and Stifelman in a "wink wink" kind of conversation that the two of thembegin a process of stirring sh*t up in order to makeJeff's work environmentintolerable in hopes that he would quit. I just don't understand howthis situation would be something that Bobbie and Stifelman felt compelled to do on their own. I'm not defending the two for their alleged actions, but I feel like they must have gottenpressure from someoneat aproducer level to suddenly behave the way they did.

This is what I was thinking all along.

Did Bobbie and Stifelman have a secret meeting and say, hey we need the show to keep running so we can buy more vacation homes so let's do the producers a favor and bully this guy out of a job, but let's not tell them.

Also if the standby leaves they can't just cancel that contract, they would have to hire someone new at a salary fairly close. So who's saving any money anyway? In the long run, the money and the bad publicity is far worse than buying out his contract, This story is very sad and tragic for all immediately involved and bad for Broadway and the Theatre in general. My sympathies to his Family, Friends, and co-workers on this senseless loss.

ladypresent said: "why would they care about 35k (or so)?
"

How do you think they became millionaires?

CurtainPullDowner said: "morosco said: "What I can't wrap my mind around is why either Walter Bobbie ormusical director Leslie Stifelman would really care about how much it would cost to buy Jeff out of his contract. What would it matter to the two of them? I could be completely wrong and this is just a wild guess but to meit would make sense only ifsomeone very high up within the production perhaps "strongly suggested"toBobbie and Stifelman in a "wink wink" kind of conversation that the two of thembegin a process of stirring sh*t up in order to makeJeff's work environmentintolerable in hopes that he would quit. I just don't understand howthis situation would be something that Bobbie and Stifelman felt compelled to do on their own. I'm not defending the two for their alleged actions, but I feel like they must have gottenpressure from someoneat aproducer level to suddenly behave the way they did.

This is what I was thinking all along.

Did Bobbie and Stifelman have a secret meetingand say, hey we need the show to keep running so we can buy more vacation homes so let's do the producers a favor and bully this guy out of a job, but let's not tell them.

Also if the standbyleaves they can't just cancel that contract, they would have to hire someone new at a salary fairly close. So who's saving any money anyway? In the long run, the money and the bad publicity is far worse than buying out his contract, This story is very sad and tragic for all immediately involved and bad for Broadway and the Theatre in general. My sympathies to his Family, Friends, and co-workers on this senseless loss.

The reason production risked the possible turmoil over just paying the buyout is because of a pattern of behavior that until the past week went without consequence. Under the scientific laws of punishment (punishment as a behavioral term in the field of behavior analysis), a specific behavior is less likely to occur in the future if there is a consequence of punishment. Without contingent punishment, the behavior will continue. Not to mention the reinforcing effects of all the actors that quit because of this behavior by production. The law of reinforcement states that a behavior is more likely to occur in the future when there is contingent reinforcement for the behavior. In this case, production was being reinforced for harassment by each target voluntarily quitting as a result of the harassment. It made harassment a continuing pattern of behavior, because it always produced a desirable outcome. I'm not sure if anything quite like this outcome has occurred before, but it most definitely will have a diminishing effect on the harassment, especially if word gets out and there are consequences that are undesirable for those who emitted the behavior.

adamgreer said: "If he hadn’t been on since mid-February, were they putting an understudy on or had the actor playing the role (R. Lowe I believe) simply not missed a show in 4 months?"

You’ve made me think that maybe his lack of being on stage for four months fed into the psychology behind the producers’ actions and its timing. If he had been periodically going on, that might have been one thing, but they now perceived (spitefully and illogically) that he was “stealing” from them and not doing anything to earn his salary, so the hell with the contract, he wasn’t getting “one more fXxg dime.” Which of course, it’s not his fault if the primary actor is a sturdy workhorse - he was paid to be the standby, and he was fulfilling his part of the contract.

Thanks for the explanations, everyone. Sounds like you know a lot more about the S&M world than I do.

Thank you, Ado Annie, for the kind words.



I recall some of you on this board partaking in the "Good thing Bob Fosse isn't alive during #MeToo" nonsense, which is fine, but wrong, and not helping victims of sexual abuse in the theatre. Plus, we could use someone like Bob Fosse... or at least someone who behaved the way Bob Fosse did in auditions. There are the stories of Fosse kindly explaining to rejected performers WHY he was rejecting them, wishing them well, and hoping that they crossed paths again. There's the story of Fosse talking with performers auditioning for leading roles (eg. Russell Nype for Billy Flynn) and expressing how much he was looking forward to hearing them sing and read. There's the famous story of Fosse rejecting a perfectly good, perfectly pretty female performer at an audition, explaining to everyone after that he "didn't like the way she talked to the accompanist." There he is, looking out for a colleague, and a lower man on the totem pole.



Whatever Mr. Fosse's issues with extramarital affairs were (to put it mildly), the aforementioned behavior is the kind of behavior that should be practiced in the theatre. It's hard enough to face rejection. If you're going to reject, reject honestly and kindly-- don't dismiss and don't condescend either. Of course, there could be stories of Fosse acting badly in auditions, but I've not heard any the way I have of other directors of his and other eras.