Razzle Dazzle- Michael Riedel's book

[billyelliotfan123]

Posted: 10/6/15 at 11:12pm

Has anyone else started reading Riedel's new book yet? It is pretty interesting so far and i think he is doing a good job of making it read less like a history novel and more like a regular book

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/6/15 at 11:13pm

Not if it was the last and only book on earth.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/6/15 at 11:15pm

I read the excerpt in Vanity Fair because it had to do with Dreamgirls.  I couldn't read a whole book of his prose, though. 

[c0113g3b0y]

Posted: 10/6/15 at 11:15pm

should be thrown into the fire along with Phantom of Manhattan and the liberetto of Love Never Dies

[fflagg]

Posted: 10/6/15 at 11:22pm

I think he's an awesome writer. No one else makes theatre interesting and colorful as he does. 

[Fantod]

Posted: 10/6/15 at 11:28pm

Well I suppose when you color it yourself, you'll end up with some colorful pages, even if it ends up looking like puke.

[jbm2]

Posted: 10/6/15 at 11:30pm

At the risk of sounding like an idiot..... Why would someone not want to read this?

i don't live in NYC, so I don't rear his colum religiously (just occasionally online.) I do see him on Theater Talk, where he is beyond annoying. Is there something else I'm missing?

[nicnyc]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 1:39am

jbm2, many people in the theatre community feel quite intensely abut Michael Reidel and wouldn't think anything he wrote was worth the paper it was written on. He is considered by many to be a tabloid jerk, often mean-spirited and always with an agenda - and writes "stories" with a lot of unnamed sources that support said agenda. He's written a number of gossipy pieces on Hamilton this season which have been largely viewed as nonsense designed to bring attention to himself. Just to give one telling example, he wrote a particularly awful doomsday piece about Stephen Adly Guirgis' "The Motherf*cker with the Hat" and was berated into an about-face apology-piece of sorts (see link below).  Some felt what he did was slanderous - and this is just one example:

http://nypost.com/2011/04/13/skeptics-can-eat-their-hat/

Rock, Cannavale & Guirgis Reprimand Riedel on THEATER TALK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utXD4ZY9P3o

For a better perspective on his history, this is an old article but will give you a lot of insight:

http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/9224/

So, that's the piece of the puzzle you are missing as to why many of us have no interest in reading his book.

Updated On: 10/7/15 at 01:39 AM

[MarkBearSF]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 3:19am

I'm actually reading it now. I'm finding it fascinating. Primarily because it's filling in a lot of blanks and giving another perspective to reports I read in Shoenfeld's book and other accounts (as well as my memories of Tony shows). I also find stories of the esoterica of Broadway fascinating, For instance, a week ago, after many drinks in a SF bar, someone mentioned to me that a show at Berkeley Rep was booked into the Booth. To which I replied, "really? For a show to get that premier property, the Shuberts must be involved!"

Whether or not the original claim has any validity, it gives a clue to my areas of fascination. Also - I was a poor student in the midwest and outside of theater circles in my 20s - so, aside from the Tony awards, my experience was limited from 75-95. Once I got hooked in '96, as I learned more stories of the business of Broadway, I wanted to learn more about what happened in the 70s and 80s as my exposure was limited to the Tony Awards, After Dark, and Andy Warhol's Interview.

I can't imagine that it would be interesting to anyone except Broadway fans like myself who want to read stories about arcane battles from decades ago. (Although how the animosity against the Shuberts' support of the Marriott Marquis project contributed to the Nine upset over Dreamgirls was a revelation)

 

 

Updated On: 10/7/15 at 03:19 AM

[haterobics]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 5:14am

nicnyc said: "He is considered by many to be a tabloid jerk, often mean-spirited and always with an agenda - and writes "stories" with a lot of unnamed sources that support said agenda."

 

You mean... like someone who writes an opinion column in a newspaper? That's what he actually is...

[tazber]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 6:36am

He's not exactly a reliable fact-checker or truth teller.

 

I wouldn't trust anything in the book, so why waste my time reading it?

[Jeffrey Karasarides]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 8:03am

According to a recent article from the New York Times, Riedel explained how he approached his book differently from his columns.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/10/05/arts/ap-us-theater-michael-riedel.html?_r=1

[Huss417]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 8:03am

Is the book fiction or non-fiction? Hard to tell.

[newintown]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 8:11am

This one is only for those who think Andrew Lloyd Webber is classical music, E.L. James is literature, Michael Musto is journalism, and TMZ is relevant.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 8:23am

 

 

Love him or hate him--and there are so many reasons to hate him--this is the best-written book on Broadway since William Goldman's The Season. 

 

He brings to life the Broadway of the 1970s and 1980s, the squalor, the desperation, the life, the deaths, the onslaught of AIDS, the rises and falls and rises of the Shuberts, A Chorus Line, Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse, Joe Papp, Sondheim, Lloyd Webber, Disney.

 

For anyone who frequents this board, it will be a compulsive read. Even if you detest him.

 

 

 AMAZON.COM: Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway

 

 

Updated On: 10/7/15 at 08:23 AM

[Pootie2]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 8:28am

Anyone who doesn't like him is probably better off checking it out at the library and not "voting" with their wallet (just saying; I'm reminded of a friend who hated Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies yet still finished the series in the theater out of loyalty to Tolkien--I pointed out that he was explicitly approving of Jackson by paying him).

[newintown]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 8:44am

Personally, I would hesitate comparing this book to Goldman's The Season, as Goldman was writing from the center of the event, and contemporaneously. Riedel is an outsider looking in, and doing that from a great distance as well. Goldman actually reported what he witnessed; Riedel is looking at the moon through a cardboard tube.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 8:56am

Some things I just can't do.

[hushpuppy]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 9:56am

Thanks, PalJoey. I have a long Amtrak ride coming up so I'll bring it along for the ride

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 10:00am

 

There's actually a lot more inside stuff than you can imagine. He was fairly close to Bernie Jacobs during the pre-Disney period when the Shuberts were leading the charge to revive Broadway.

 

Those of us who are old enough to remember the last gasps of Broadway-pre-AIDS will remember that before Disney helped clean up 42nd Street, the Shuberts, Joe Papp and A Chorus Line cleaned up 44th Street.

 

The whole city was in a slump back then. Riedel argues that reviving Broadway helped bring about the revival of the whole city. It's a fascinating premise--and not at all untrue.

 

Read this excerpt from Vanity Fair. It's a juicy part of the book...and reading it doesn't put a PENNY into Michael Riedel's purse.

 

 VANITY FAIR: Dreamgirls, Nine, and the Greatest Face-Off in Tony Award History

[newintown]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 11:31am

Considering Riedel didn't even get his BA until spring of 1989, it's difficult to imagine that he was "close" to Bernie Jacobs during the time the events described in this book took place. For instance, in October 1975 (when the piece linked above starts), he was 8 years old.

 

I'm certainly not saying that he knows nothing or nobody, but he's not an insider like Goldman was - he's rather more of a really avid remora.

Updated On: 10/7/15 at 11:31 AM

[ggersten]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 11:51am

That was a pretty cool excerpt. PalJoey.  Whether it's true or not - it was a fun read.  I will have to look for this book at the library.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 12:02pm

The Vanity Fair article made me lose any potential interest in this.  There is NOTHING in that article that wasn't better told (and better written,) and with better authority in Ken Mandelbaum's excellent A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett biography.  Riedel also writes all of this ridiculous dialogue for these people--quotes he could never actually know (and doesn't even claim to and say who told him it was said.  Stuff like "And then Bennett did this at his private party, and then he said this, and then..."  Simplistic, crap with nothing at all new in the story.  Maybe other chapters are better?

(And Razzle Dazzle was already a fine book about Fosse's work. :P )

[Kad]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 12:08pm

Which regular member of this board do we think is actually Riedel?

[tazber]

Posted: 10/7/15 at 12:15pm

But all those cool things PJ is talking about being in the book, who knows if they're true or made up?

 

He's just proven to be so quick to fabricate something for the sake of sales I don't trust anything he says.

 

So I'm gonna pass on this one. It's like the Wikipedia of Broadway. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not, but it's never acceptable as a legitimate source.