Life isn't everything by Ash Carter

Author:Ash Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Mike and Meryl Streep at a diner in Texas during the filming of Silkwood, in 1983. Based on the life of the labor activist and whistleblower Karen Silkwood, who died under mysterious circumstances, Silkwood was Nichols’s first film in eight years. He would often tell friends, “Meryl woke me up.” (© Mary Ellen Mark)

CHAPTER 8

We Must Work Together

TONY WALTON: Mike invited me to design Annie when it was about to come to Broadway. I had seen it and said, “Mike, why do you think it’s going to work?” And he just said, “Trust me. If we get it right, it’ll be your annuity.” I had a similar experience on Star Wars. George Lucas asked me if I would do it, and I said, “I’m not really very interested in futuristic things.” I added that if all these high-tech wonders were rusting and falling to bits, I’d find that in some way appealing enough to get onboard and, cheeky bugger, he actually ended up using that idea. After the success of Annie, Mike never tormented me about it. But George did, every time I saw him.

TOM STYRON (former assistant): Mike was living in the Carlyle. I was his gofer. He was always driving some beautiful, top-of-the-line, very souped-up Mercedes. I think the one he had that year he actually had imported from Germany, because it had some bells and whistles that were not yet allowed in the States. Annie—I don’t know if it was still on Broadway, but it had three touring companies. I don’t know the numbers, but I was aware that there were vast sums of money entering that office every day, just based on Annie alone.

JOHN LAHR: Mike knew how to fix things. He was famous for that. Call Mike Nichols in. He fixed Annie.

MARTIN CHARNIN (lyricist): There was a compilation book of Annie strips that was being sold at Christmas of 1970 or ’71, and upon reading it, I thought it could be turned into a musical. I had no collaborators at the time, so I had to put this entire package together myself. First, I optioned the material. Then I approached Tom Meehan and talked him into doing the libretto. We wrote the show and took it to Michael Price at the Goodspeed Opera House. We went into rehearsal in the summer of ’76, and it went through all of the things that musicals go through. Musicals are rarely written, they’re usually rewritten.

Once it really looked good, we decided to find a New York producer to invite into the piece, and Mike was an old friend of mine. We’d play charades at my house in New York. I called him at the end of that summer and begged him to come up and see it, because I really believed that strongly in it. He and his wife and his then partner Lewis Allen came up on a weekend and saw the show, and we went out and had a cup of coffee afterward. Mike said, “It’s sensational.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.