Frankly, I'm surprised that Michael Riedel touched this story at all. I thought he might recuse himself because he's always been open about what good buddies he is with the Weisslers.
In an interview with the Producer's Perspective, Ken Davenport asked Riedel if he had any favorite producers, and Riedel said:
''A lot of them are friends of mine now because I’ve covered them for so long. I always get a kick out of Fran and Barry Weissler. They’re not as active as they used to be – they used to do a lot of shows and you could always get them on the phone and they would talk to you about everything. They were fun, they were characters and personalities. They always had funny quotes and they were up to funny tricks and gags and all that kind of stuff and I became friendly with them early on because they were sort of being dismissed as doing these cheap revivals with a star and everything they did was cheap, they were the cheap producers and I wrote an article once saying, “They may be cheap but here’s the track record – if you invested with Fran and Barry Weissler, nine out of ten productions would have made a profit. So if that’s cheap, I’m all for cheap,” and they appreciated that because the Times was like, “Rocco Landesman, he went to Yale and he’s an intellectual and we love Rocco but Fran and Barry Weissler, they’re rug traders practically.” So I always identified with people who weren’t part of the New York Times club.''
Speaking of the N.Y. Times, why has it been so conspicuously absent in reporting this story? The Times website ran a short about the probe a few days ago, but it was by the Associated Press.
Updated On: 7/20/18 at 12:56 PM