Who Has the Rights
To ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’?
” ‘Good job,’ ” said NATHAN LANE, quoting KATHLEEN TURNER as she walked away after a brief conversation at the opening night party for “The Odd Couple.” “That means she hated it.”
Oh, Mr. Lane, it matters not. The limited run of NEIL SIMON’s and MATTHEW BRODERICK’s and Mr. Lane’s “The Odd Couple,” which opened on Thursday at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, sold out before it opened, to the tune of more than $21 million. No one’s opinion, no matter how long it has been sautéed in a reduction of passive-aggression, can change that! (In all fairness, we didn’t hear Ms. Turner; she might have meant every word. But, hey, that wouldn’t make a lick of difference on the bottom line either.)
Now, from every corner of Broadway, from every wood-paneled office and dimly-lighted bar, from the red-lipped visages at Sardi’s and the lurkers in the dirty bookstores, there comes an idea for a buddy revival.
“I’m bringing Lane and Broderick back together in ‘Waiting for Godot!’ ” shouts a mustachioed fellow from a corner table at JOE ALLEN.
” ‘My Dinner with Andre!’ ” cries a woman pushing a grocery cart on 38th Street.
” ‘Last Tango in Paris!’ ”
” ‘Live with Regis and Kelly!’ ”
Truly, it has become everyone’s favorite sport.
“They could do anything together,” TINA BROWN said at the party at the Marriott Marquis. “I think they can even do ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ and be great.”
There are actually three brothers, but details, details! Mr. Lane is versatile enough to play both DMITRI and IVAN, and ROSIE O’DONNELL is a no-brainer for the GRAND INQUISITOR.
What other opening night party would bring out JERRY SEINFELD, MARTIN SHORT, REGIS PHILBIN, DORIS ROBERTS and BRAD GARRETT (who, to be fair, is actually in the play)?
SARAH JESSICA PARKER is, obviously, a guarantee.
But we have digressed for too long. Let us return to Mr. Lane, who was working his way back from the bar, punctuating his conversation with thank-you hand signals and eyebrow-raises to passing well-wishers.
“You get the impression sometime that because it’s sold out and it’s sold so many tickets,” Mr. Lane was saying, “it was as if we planned a sort of get-rich-quick scheme. When it was really about just wanting to do the play.
“I hope people realize,” he continued. “We wanted to do the best version of the play we could do. That was our intention. Not, you know, riding the gravy train.”
He smiled.
“And we don’t make as much money as they say anyway.”
Let that be a lesson, Greed-Blinded Reader. The show’s the thing.
And so we will close out with a conversation with MARC SHAIMAN, who composed the score for this production, his first score for a play that did not have lyrics. That does not mean he did not have some in mind.
“Every score I ever wrote,” Mr. Shaiman said, “I have a lyric to it.”
Well give us a line or two.
He looked down at the carpet and gathered his thoughts. And then, snapping: “Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick sure bring in the crowd!/When producers hire them they sure don’t wear no shroud!”
Then he stopped.
“I never got past that.”
He Wasn’t Referring
To the Scent, You Mean
“740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building,” a book by MICHAEL GROSS, is about a place in Manhattan that has housed many very rich and powerful people, sort of like a ghetto, but with a doorman. We went to a party for the book last week at Lotus where we saw NICOLE MILLER, KIM TAIPALE, TIFFANY DUBIN and MARIO BUATTA and learned the secrets of the moneyed classes.
“My grandfather called those buildings where everybody knows everybody else ‘riding academies,’ ” said DANA STUBGEN, a niece of the longtime resident ENID HAUPT, who died last week. “He meant there was lots of sex. Isn’t that funny?”
Now you know.