A Quote by Harvey Fierstein
As the book writer for one big smash and one big smelly flop, I always wondered if anyone knows just what goes into making a great musical. When a show is a hit, the critics trip over themselves not knowing who to laud and applaud the loudest. It's that marvelous score, those urbane lyrics, that irreplaceable star. But only when a show is a flop, does anyone notice the book writer. And then it's always our fault.
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By the time I get through writing a score, I know the book better than the book writer does, because I've examined every word, and questioned the book writer on every word.
Attending a book group is always a salutary experience for a writer. There's no guarantee that the people there will have enjoyed your book, and, as anyone who has taken part in a book group will know, half the fun is in ripping a book you haven't liked to shreds.
My husband, William Sutcliffe, the writer, is my first reader and in many ways my most important. That initial reading of the manuscript is crucial and irreplaceable and you want them to approach it as someone in a bookshop might, not knowing much about it. So I've got into this pattern of not telling Will anything about the book I'm working on. He often knows nothing about the book I'm working on at all until I give him the whole manuscript and ask him to read it. The book I'm working on at the moment he knows nothing about. No one does.
A flop is often the result of the fact that each of the talents involved, while working on the same project, may in effect have been working on a different show from all the others. If all contributors do not share the same vision of the evening, the end product will not evince the harmony of diverse elements-the seeming inevitability of book, score, and staging-of a good musical.
When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.
A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.
I feel that, irrespective of a hit or flop, there's always pressure on an actor. When you give a flop, there's a pressure to ensure that the next film works, and when you give a hit, you want to keep it going. So, the pressure of success and failure is always there, and that's what keeps me going.
When you have a movie that has big stars in it... like, Will Smith does a great job in 'I Am Legend,' and it's a magnetic performance, but he's always Will Smith. That's not his fault. That's not anyone's fault. He's the center of it, and he's a movie star. But when you see something like 'Jurassic Park,' Sam Neill is Alan Grant.
Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.
Wesley Stace has always been the only genuinely gifted fiction writer who also happens to be a rock star, but Wonderkid is the book he was born to write. And if you prefer your novels brazen, poignant and hilarious, as I do, you were born to read it. Like a great show, this will stay with you long after the last cymbal crash and power strum.
The music is the emotional substance of the show; the book just sets it up. Nobody goes to a musical to hear the book. That's the way it works.
The things that I have done that haven't been as successful have been things that have been largely out of the public view, which is great. It's terrible, when you're a theater writer, to have a big flop publicly.
To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator.
I've had mostly book parties, where I get very focused on inviting everyone and not forgetting anyone, although of course one always does, and being worried no one will show up, but mostly the book comes from going to parties and feeling very, for lack of a better word, anxious.
Flip or Flop' was a house show based on designing houses for the masses - they were always designed so that any person could walk in and like it and picture themselves living in it.
Environmental issues are on everyone's mind. It's part of our culture now and I can only applaud and laud anyone who is doing what they can and raising awareness.
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