g.d.e.l.g.i., that's what I've thought all along- that the lead producers made up this dead investor rather than be outed as having lied to their other investors about missing such a huge chunk of money from their capitalization so late in the game. Even failing to raise funds for the show three subsequent times is better than claiming you accepted $4.5 million from a person you knew little to nothing about and only corresponded with via email.
To be honest, this is sounding more and more like the Stephen Glass story. Glass was a writer at the New Republic in the 90s. One of his biggest stories raised a couple red flags in the fact checking process, and when the errors became too egregious for him to be able to explain away, he was adamant that he'd been misled by a source that had clearly made things up (much like Ben Sprecher is now coming forward with this information about the shadiness of this mystery investor.) Upon further probing, the New Republic found out that Glass had completely fabricated the entire story in question, as well as completely or partially fabricating many others over his tenure at the magazine.
The fact that the Times article continued to emphasize that the email address for the investor's "representative" was made only a month ago (pretty close to the time the news of said investor's "death" broke) continues to make me think Sprecher is much more of the perpetrator than the perpetrated in this debacle. A sad, sad thing for everyone involved.
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
Updated On: 9/25/12 at 09:44 AM
