Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History Read Free Page A

that their friendship went into the freezer as a result. But as she sighed to me during an elevator ride years later, “I’m not sure what else I could have done.”

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A Falling Piano
    I n 2005, my friend Jules was working as Julie Taymor’s personal assistant. I learned through her that Julie and the producers had begun searching for a new writer. Or rather, a new co writer. To avoid being disappointed a second time, Julie was going to get more involved in the generation of Spider-Man’s story and dialogue (known as the musical’s “book”).
    Celebrated playwrights like Tony Kushner and Tom Stoppard were considered and dismissed. Finally, a handful of playwrights were asked to deliver a scene based on a two-page “vision” of the musical that Julie had penned the year before. But dialogue is generally the least interesting part of a Julie Taymor production. Giving Julie a few pages of the stuff seemed to me like a recipe for disappointment.
    So I didn’t submit a scene. Instead, I turned in a treatise explaining why I wouldn’t be submitting a scene. I raged, I rambled, I explained Julie Taymor’s entire career to her. I spewed half-baked ideas for ten dense pages and ended it all with “Or perhaps not. Anyway, it’s a thought.” It read like I was on drugs.
    I was simply wiped out meeting writing deadlines for PBS, and distracted coraising two toddlers. And, most of all, I just wasn’t taking the assignment seriously because I knew there was no way I was landing this gig. Yes, I had pages of sparkling pull-quotes, and yes, I had been following Julie’s career half my life. In fact, it was painfully obvious (to me) that out of the five billion writers in this universe, I was the writer they were looking for. But. C’mon . Julie Taymor? Bono? Spider-Man? There was no way I was landing this gig.
    But Julie had actually seen my Off-Broadway play Underneath the Lintel, and something in it resonated with her. Tony and Julie read my ravings, were intrigued enough to request an interview, and that next week, on a sunny Saturday in May, I was ringing the bell to Julie’s Union Square office.
    I left an hour later with my brain fizzing. Tony had this warm, casual-yet-stylish vibe that put you immediately at ease, as if he had just handed you a mimosa. And Julie? Her aura cleared the sinuses. We three sat at that long table of white-painted wood—Julie’s artwork from a thirty-year madly inspired career decorating the walls—and I didn’t want to have to leave this place, this world where spring breezes wafted in through loft windows, and everything that hit the eye was pleasing. I wanted to soak in it, for a while at least, yes, absolutely—what did I have to do to make that happen? Write a scene? I’ll have it for you tomorrow.
    So, up late that night I settled on a setup that had the Green Goblin hoisting a grand piano to the spire of the Chrysler Building. We’d have him sing something cocktail-loungey and unhinged—why not? I had nothing to lose. I typed out a scene containing lots of puppet-violence, beginning with the Green Goblin proposing a partnership with his archenemy, and ending with the Goblinpushing a Steinway off a skyscraper only to be sent to his own death because he didn’t realize he was attached to the piano by Spider-Man’s webbing. A little inelegant, but whatever.
    Birds had begun twittering outside my window; the sun was rising. I hit SEND . That afternoon my cell phone rang. It was Julie. I was the new bookwriter for Spider-Man the Musical.
    So, yes, this scene got me the job; and yes, it was that easy; and yes, this same scene . . . this same scene would lead to Julie’s dismissal from the Spider-Man project. The scene I wrote that night would lead to lawsuits, shattered friendships . . . tears . . . scandal . . . rigmarole . . .
    But all that would come much later. It was nothing but innocence on May 15, 2005, when Julie and I rendezvoused at her Upstate New