Film: Broadway: The Golden Age

The Legends Who Were There

Writer, director and producer Rick McKay spotlights the glory days of American theater in the new feature documentary, "Broadway: The Golden Age," which opens this weekend at the E Street Cinema in Washington.

View the Trailer:Broadway: The Golden Age McKay recreates an era by using interviews with over 100 legendary Broadway performers, home movies and found footage. "The largest cast of stars ever assembled for one film" includes Angela Lansbury, Jeremy Irons, Shirley MacLaine, Stephen Sondheim, Tovah Feldshuh, Carol Burnett, Uta Hagen, John Raitt, Eva Marie Saint, Frank Langella, Carol Channing, Elaine Stritch, Fay Wray, Ben Gazzara, Alec Baldwin, Kaye Ballard, Al Hirschfield, Ann Miller, Tommy Tune and more.

McKay was online Friday, Aug. 6, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the film, the performers and the golden age of Broadway.

Rick McKay produced the first story commissioned for the critically successful national series, "Egg" the arts show," and received two Emmy nominations. He has helped produce the opening segment of the last two Tony Awards broadcasts; won three Telly awards for his television work; is an independent producer for A&E's Biography series and has produced programs for HBO and United Artists.

A transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

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Alexandria, Va.: Who will this film appeal to?

Rick McKay: I think it appeals to all ages because documentaries are kind of hot which is very nice but 90 percent of them are about Bush or politics and I think that there's no rule that documentaries can be entertainment and passion-inspiring. And also, I think it appeals to another audience because the movie is really about at 100 18-25-year-olds who got off a bus with no money in their pocket in NYC and changed the future of music, film, television, stage, popular culture ... all within 15 blocks of each other over the course of about 20 years. It seems to inspire young people in a great way.

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Fairfax, Va.: How long did this project take to do?

Rick McKay: It took six years from the first shoot that I did until I had a finished print that I could show people and I was shooting right up til this year. Ben Gazzara was the last interview and a lot of people did their own last interviews for this film -- I was almost chasing them to record this history before their time ran out and they passed away.

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Washington, D.C.: When does the movie open up nationally? Is it a limited release?

Rick McKay: It's limited in the sense that it's mainly major cities but the fascinating thing is that if you ask for a specific city and e-mail me at rick@broadwaythemovie.com it's likely that your city will be added on. Suggest a theater that it should play in. It's working. (A complete of cities will be listed at the end of the discussion.)

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Arlington, Va.: Where does your interest in Broadway come from?

Rick McKay: Growing up in a small town in Beech Grove, Ind., watching old movies about Broadway and from joining the Columbia Record Club as a kid because that was the closest way you could get to this experience of live theater. Also, Columbia Record Club was my first introduction to debt.

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Washington, D.C.: Has this concept about Broadway ever been done before?

Rick McKay: I think I can fairly safely say no. I made a concerted effort to really let people talk as if you were sitting at the knee of a relative asking what it was really like to be there. Since I had come from PBS and there was a template for this kind of thing, I made a choice to work outside of that since this was an independent project and chose not to make a historical timeline or to separate drama from musicals but to really just talk to one community that was really there and not historians and let them tell their own story and get out of their way. Which is why the film took a different direction and ended up having large portions devoted to Laurette Taylor, Kim Stanley, Brando, etc., instead of the usual Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Arthur Miller ... traditional story lines.

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Arlington, Va.: After doing all of this research, what's your assessment of the state of Broadway today? It seems impossible for it to ever recreate its golden era, but what do you think producers and the Broadway community at large should do to engender more interest in the theater?

Rick McKay: I think there's always hope for another golden age although I'm sure it will be completely different, as it should be. And I feel the most important thing producers can do is to make theater accessible again to a general audience, especially young people. Fifty years ago the top ticket price may have been $5.50 but the cheapest ticket in the back of the second balcony fifty-five cents which means by today's standards if the top price is $100, then the cheapest seat in the back of the balcony should be competitive with a movie in Times Square instead of being $67.50 which makes it impossible for a young person to discover the theater without a rich relative to take him.

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Fairfax, Va.: Exactly what years are considered the Golden Age of Broadway?

Rick McKay: In actuality, I hate to put any kind of limit on an era but the 100 people I interviewed seemed to believe the era that most influenced them and the rest of the country was from the early '40s to the late '60s. I want to make it very, very clear that I do not think of this as the only golden age, simply one that was never properly documented because it didn't happen on a soundstage in Hollywood -- it was live. But the fact that it was happening just after a war and before the advent of a huge amount of television made for a freak age when there were more brilliant, talented, passionate, young, creative people all in the same city within about 20 blocks of each other.

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Washington, D.C.: Perhaps you heard that Harvey Weinstein and others are working to bring Pink Floyd's "The Wall" to Broadway. To me, this is yet another example of the non-creative, revenue-focused thinking that dominates the Broadway scene in the modern era. Your thoughts?

Rick McKay: I think it would be much more exciting to develop new talent rather than constantly searching the music library of pop artists, composers and writers who never actually worked on stage. There is such as thing as a stage creature that creates something magical whether it be a playright, a composer, a lyricist, an actor ... that can't happen anywhere but on a stage and I don't think the theater should be imitating Hollywood and the recording industry as we have to remember that not so long ago Hollywood and the recording industry recorded, imitated, adapted and was inspired by what happened on Broadway.

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Washington, D.C.: Are all these interviews that are in the movie original interviews that have never appeared anywhere else?

Rick McKay: Every single frame of the movie I shot for the movie execept for the archival footage. But every interview I did myself, many in my small two-room Manhattan apartment.

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Adelphi, Md.: Which of the stars you interviewed was your favorite and why?

Rick McKay: It's hard to say but I tended to be as inspired by the struggle as I was by the result and hearing Stehpen Sondheim tell me how they couldn't convince anyone to give them money for West Side Story, even after hearing the score, inspired me to keep fighting for this movie.

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Waldorf, Md.: What was Ann Miller like?

Rick McKay: Ann Miller was fantastic. She made an entrance down a circular stairway in her Beverly Hills home dressed every inch the Hollywood and Broadway star you would hope for. She was open and passionate and still holding out for another golden age and another show for her. I miss her.

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Washington, D.C.: Why do most Broadway stars who go into film still regard Broadway as their favorite venue? They usually claim it's because of the live audience. But don't they tire of the same lines and performances night after night?

Rick McKay: Excellent question! What I found, that surprised me, was that it was not as much the live audience that made them look back fondly but the fact that they had the "last word." There was not editor or director to decide after the fact which take was used. These Hollywood stars at that time in their lives had complete control of the performance every night which they never had in Hollywood no matter how important they were. I also found that they seemed to never tire of doing it every night because it was in fact the audience that changed every night, which is 50 percent of the equation of every performance. Marlon Brando was the exception who told me that he did Streetcar two years and was going nuts by the end but that was his seventh Broadway show in six years or so. You also have to remember that very few shows ran longer than a year back then. They didn't have to run, as Tommy Tune said, "a vulgar ten years" to earn their investment back which made the actors more well-versed because, as Hume Cronyn says, "You could have three flops in one season with three different directors and writers."

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Bethesda, Md.: I haven't seen your film yet, but based on the reviews, I'm really looking forward to it. The number of famous people you talked to is pretty staggering. How were you able to track them all down? Was it difficult to get all of them to say yes, or were they pretty agreeable once they understood what the project was about?

Rick McKay: It was never easy. Everybody is making a "movie" more so today than ever. You have to convince them not only of your passion but that this will really, truly end up in a theater or on television and this was my first feature-length film so it was never easy. But each new person I added would lead me to another new person. It was almost like a film-noir following a trail of this lost era. I'm going through the same thing now as I work on the sequel, "Broadway: The Next Generation." People Patti LuPone who turned down the original film are signing on for the sequel. But that is because now that people have seen the film -- people like Marc Shaiman (Tony Award-winning composer and lyricist of Hairspray) have become great champions and have asked the likes of Patti LuPone to come on board as well which is a great help to me.

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Suggested venue: Cinema Arts Theatre in Fairfax, Va. It's a suburb of Washington, D.C., and I know the owner tries hard to find interesting films.

Thanks.

Rick McKay: E-mail me at rick@broadwaythemovie.com. My film is "easy" to find and I would be honored to have it play at Cinema Arts.

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Bethesda, Md.: Documentaries are big now. Michael Moore's has proved that. Why do you think documentaries are coming into their own now, being seen in theaters and making some decent box office?

Rick McKay: I think it may be because feature films these days tend to be for the lowest common denominator and people are demanding something that makes them think and inspires them. Major studios are concentrating on pablum. There is a huge void to be filled that documentary filmmakers are filling without the support of a studio. Documentaries are the last vestige of free speech and passion in the film industry that literally one person can make alone. I'm not sure how many people realize that a film like this playing all over the country in theaters was actually shot, lit, sound, edited and finished by one person which means if you have a deep passion and a willingness to learn your craft, you CAN make a movie yourself, if it comes to that, which I find inspiring.

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Harrisburg, Pa.: One observation I have of Broadway is today's scandalous offerings become tomorrow's classics. What do you see are some of the great breakthrough plays that helped redefine Broadway?

Rick McKay: When people talk about "Avenue Q" being written by a 29 and a 33-year-old FOR young audiences today, they forget that Death of a Salesman, Glass Menagerie and Streetcar were written by young writers for deeply passionate audiences who were mainly comprised of young people. People also forget that Carousel was the first unhappy ending where the hero died well before the end of the play; The King and I was a romance between two different races; and South Pacific had an entire song, "You Have To Be Carefully Taught" that was about racism. The theatre 50 years ago was much, much braver and more daring than what we have today which we could use a little more of.

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Washington, D.C.: I see you've helped produce the opening segments of some of the recent Tony Awards shows. How was that? The show's ratings have suffered. Is it because most of the country is not that interested in what's on the Broadway stage?

Rick McKay: Again, I don't think it's lack of interest, it is because a few generations have been deprived the opportunity to experience live theater. If you know, love and grow up on live theater then seeing it on television will be entertaining. If you don't KNOW live theater, television really doesn't capture it and it won't work for you. A young actor in Hairspray recently told me that most young actors on Broadway now are from very wealthy families, because only rich kids can have grown up going to the theater and able to afford years of dance classes whereas there was a time when kids with no money in their pockets were getting off buses every day desperately passionate to be on stage. Because there was theater in every city in the country, everyone was exposed to it. Broadway stars toured from the original companies and every kid took piano lessons or dance class. Now their primary exposure is to MTV.

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Nani, Tex.: Does your documentary include Eileen Heckert? She is such a versatile, talented actor. My granddaughters and I have a deal going. They'll watch my tapes of old b/w film noirs and musicals, if I'll watch, for example, 4 back-to-back episodes of Friends (they drive a hard bargain these gals). The youngest was quite taken with Ms. Hecker's portrayal of the grieving drunken mother in The Bad Seed. "She's funny and sad at the same time".

Rick McKay: Eileen Heckert was brilliant but passed away before I could film her. I do have Elaine Stritch, who has the last line in my film, who originated the role in Bus Stop that I believe Eileen Heckert also played.

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Arlington, Va.: I have not yet seen your movie, but am very eager to catch it as soon as possible as reports from friends in NYC have given it raves!

You were able to interview so many people, and it seems that more than a few are sadly no longer with us. Was there anybody you were not able to interview for the film you would have liked to?

Rick McKay: I regret that Kim Stanley died a few weeks before her interview. Paul Newman, Joannne Woodward and Julie Andrews turned it down but I still hold out hope that they and others will make time for an on-camera interview in the future because this is all part of historic and tremendously important oral history, an archive that I hope will one day find a home in an institution where the unedited interviews are available to the general public otherwise known as the audience and not only for scholars and historians.

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Rick McKay: I'm honored that the film is playing Washington, D.C., where so many shows "tried out" and were "fixed" before they came to New York. Audiences here are smart, sophisticated, demanding and passionate and I am delighted by the great reviews in this morning's newspapers and the tremendous excitement from audiences. The film is playing all over the country through November when it comes out on DVD with lots of extras as well as a very generous peek at "Broadway: The Next Generation." But as the Wall Street Journal said two weeks ago, this film must also be seen in a theater.

I believe something magical happens in the dark surrounded by strangers having a communal experience whether it be in a Broadway theater or a neighborhood movie house and I am so proud that this film combines those two mediums that I am so deeply passionate about. Please stop by the Web site (www.broadwaythemovie.com) and let me know your thoughts.

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