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[0:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello, welcome to The Drama Book Show.

[0:21] David Rigano: I'm Mark-Eugene Garcia.

[0:23] David Rigano: I'm David Rigano.

[0:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And here we are back again, episode 19.

[0:27] David Rigano: 19.

[0:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Happy New Year.

[0:28] David Rigano: Happy New Year.

[0:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Happy Halloween.

[0:30] David Rigano: Happy Thanksgiving.

[0:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Happy everything that we, yeah.

[0:33] David Rigano: Yeah, we work retail.

[0:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Well, we thought we were gonna make a whole bunch of podcasts during that time.

[0:37] David Rigano: It turns out we got busy here at the store.

[0:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[0:40] David Rigano: Turns out retail stores get busy over the holidays.

[0:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But we are back. It is January.

[0:45] David Rigano: It's new year, new you, new podcast.

[0:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[0:49] David Rigano: And we were producing a bunch of amazing events.

[0:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[0:54] David Rigano: Author events during that time that we have recorded and ready for you now.

[0:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We ran events up until the very last week of the year.

[1:02] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think the fact that we weren't doing an event on Boxing Day was like...

[1:09] David Rigano: Right.

[1:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That was my choice. I love Boxing Day, and so I wanted to celebrate.

[1:13] David Rigano: I've still got the black eye.

[1:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We shouldn't even joke about that.

[1:16] David Rigano: I just wore box whips.

[1:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So we, yeah, we have had a busy time, but we are back, and we're excited to be back. Today we're back with Thrill Maker-, the making of my musical Thrill Me by Stephen Dolginoff.

[1:31] David Rigano: Which is not Mark, the making of your musical.

[1:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It is the making of Stephen Dolginoff's musical thing.

[1:39] David Rigano: That's just the title. The title is the making of my musical, but it is not either of our musical.

[1:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It is Stephen's musical, and it's a fantastic musical.

[1:48] David Rigano: I haven't seen it.

[1:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Because everyone else has.

[1:51] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It is all over the world. And interestingly, my friend Mark Ryan Anderson was at this event because while we were doing this event, he was in rehearsals to go and do the show in Asia.

[2:09] David Rigano: And I think that he said that they were...

[2:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Steven talked about in the event. You'll hear this. He talked about how popular this show has become in countries all across Asia.

[2:20] David Rigano: Yeah.

[2:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I believe the world. He went into Spanish productions, all kinds of things. But I believe that Mark was going into the first American cast doing the show in English, but in Asia.

[2:36] David Rigano: Oh wow.

[2:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And he was, so he was in rehearsals for that while we had our event.

[2:40] David Rigano: So he was here in attendance. A little bit of trivia. Steven was one of the first guests in the store when we reopened.

[2:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[2:49] David Rigano: We met that very day through a mutual friend, and only later found out that, oh my gosh, we met each other that first day.

[2:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then he was at the Chi De Rivera event.

[3:02] David Rigano: Yeah.

[3:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: As well. And that's when we first started talking about doing this event. So I'm so glad that we finally did. We got him in to... And I hope that I, with all the productions that are going on, I should be able to see it soon. But I've only gotten to listen to the cast album.

[3:16] David Rigano: Yeah.

[3:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Which is a wonderful album. And it is pretty much the whole show.

[3:21] David Rigano: Yes.

[3:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, it is. Which is great. Because this show is, as the title would suggest, a thriller.

[3:29] David Rigano: Uh, and it's not a murder mystery.

[3:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, but it's true crime.

[3:34] David Rigano: Yeah, it's not a who done it, it's a why done it.

[3:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's really cool.

[3:39] David Rigano: Yeah, I'm that nerd who I had to listen to while reading the libretto, which we have here at the bookshop. And it was a fun day for me.

[3:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's got some really good twists, including that last one that you want to give away.

[3:51] David Rigano: No, don't give it away.

[3:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I, and Steven does in the episode. And he talks about, alludes to it. He alludes to the importance of a factor, but he doesn't.

[4:01] David Rigano: But I would say even the show talks about that. Like there are a few red herrings for what that thing will represent.

[4:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then it, I was not reading along. I was cleaning my house.

[4:15] David Rigano: So I like, I was like scrubbing my bathroom when that happened on the album.

[4:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I was like, what?

[4:24] David Rigano: Oh no, I was just have to have everything set up for, it's like there's a drink, there is a little desk I use to read the library at and the music playing in my headset so I can be completely absorbed in this with a little desk light, everything. And yeah, I, it was awesome.

[4:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Now we were lucky to get Steven here at the store, but we were also joined by Peter Filichia, who moderated the event, who had a slew of wonderful questions. Because this book is the behind the scenes, not just of how he created the musical, but about the life that the musical took on after he wrote it and his journey getting it produced, his journey having to step in and be in the show. It's such a unique show for that reason of what a following it has in its existence.

[5:15] David Rigano: It's just had an incredible life.

[5:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And let's jump in.

[5:18] David Rigano: Yeah.

[5:27] Stephen Dolginoff: So if you open the book to page 153, you will read this.

[5:32] Stephen Dolginoff: To be honest, after so many years, it was starting to become a little tedious to be answering the same questions again and again. How did you get the idea? Why is it so popular in Asia? Well, either we're gonna put you to sleep at least, but I'll go home now. It's up to you.

[5:49] Stephen Dolginoff: Um, how did you get the idea? Well, 30 years ago, which I cannot believe, I had two different ideas for a musical. The first idea was I wanted to write about a relationship between two people with a weird power dynamic, like a power play between the two of them. And it could have been anybody, anything. I had no idea. It was just a bit of an idea. And I had also always been a real fan of true crime, and I wanted to write a true crime musical someday. So those were my two ideas.

[6:28] Stephen Dolginoff: And I happened to walk into Coliseum Bookstore, which used to be on 57th Street, one day, and I came across this big encyclopedia of famous American criminals. Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, and I came to a chapter on Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who I had heard of, but I didn't really know their story. And I stood in the bookstore. I read this five-page chapter, which sort of was a capsuleized version of the entire story.

[7:04] David Rigano: Did anybody say to you, hey kid, this is not a library?

[7:08] Stephen Dolginoff: No, I guess I just looked, you know, sweet and innocent enough, and young. And I couldn't even, I couldn't even buy the book that day. Like I literally stood there. So as I read it, I realized this is the story of a relationship between two people and a true crime story. This would be great for my musical. I went home, and my life has not been the same for 30 years. It has literally been a part of every day of my life ever since.

[7:38] Stephen Dolginoff: Now it starts with Nathan 25 years after the fact, hoping he's going to get paroled.

[7:45] David Rigano: Right.

[7:46] Stephen Dolginoff: You think he shouldn't have been paroled?

[7:48] Stephen Dolginoff: Well, I won't give it away, but he did commit the crime when he was very young. He served a very long sentence, and he was a model prisoner. And if anyone's eligible for a parole, I suppose that he was eligible. Incidentally, the crime happened 100 years ago today.

[8:09] David Rigano: Today.

[8:10] Stephen Dolginoff: Today. And this event is a total coincidence that it's happening on the same day. It was not planned.

[8:17] David Rigano: I love that. For those who don't know what happened, tell us what the crime was.

[8:22] Stephen Dolginoff: Well, these two very rich, smart 19-year-old guys who lived in Chicago. They had a bit of a sexual relationship with each other. They decided it would be kind of fun to commit a thrill killing. Murder a young boy for absolutely no reason other than the thrill. And it was going to be a perfect crime because they thought they were geniuses, they had superior intellect, and they thought they could never get caught.

[8:53] Stephen Dolginoff: And they committed this crime and were caught almost immediately. Because a clue was accidentally, or perhaps not accidentally, left at the scene something extremely sloppy. If that hadn't happened, they probably would have never gotten caught, but it led the police straight to them, and they ended up pleading guilty. They were represented by Clarence Darrow, who just argued the death penalty or life in prison, and he successfully saved them from the death penalty.

[9:26] David Rigano: Alright, so you don't want to tell us what the clue was?

[9:29] Stephen Dolginoff: Well, if you look at the cover of most versions of the script, you'll see a pair of eyeglasses, and that's all I'll say.

[9:39] David Rigano: Alright, maybe it's all you'll say, but um we go in a different direction.

[9:43] Stephen Dolginoff: Sure. You took great liberties with what actually happened. You made an assumption that we, it may have been exactly what happened, but we don't know for sure.

[9:53] David Rigano: So how can we tell us without giving too much away since you seem to be rabbit in a certain state?

[9:59] Stephen Dolginoff: Actually, most people here know the show. It's Nathan Leopold dropped his glasses at the scene of the crime, and they were very rare glasses that had a modern for the time hinge on them, and only three people in Chicago had pairs like it when the police traced them through all the optometrists. And so the police went to the people that had those glasses, and one was an old lady that was wearing them, one was someone who also had them, and the other was Nathan Leopold who didn't have them.

[10:30] Stephen Dolginoff: And in Thrill Me, I take the dramatic leap that he has left those glasses on purpose. No one knows if that's what really happened. It could have been. There's only one person that knows, and he's long gone. But as a dramatist, I didn't want to write a documentary or a biography or nonfiction because that tends to be very dry on the stage. So I really wanted to amp up the drama and really make it the story of this relationship, and not so much about the murder, but about the two of them and this dynamic between them.

[11:06] David Rigano: Okay, but suddenly you hear that Hal Higdon, who's the Leopold and Loeb authority who's studied this case upwards, backwards, etc., is coming to see your show. Are you worried he's gonna save you?

[11:19] Stephen Dolginoff: That never happened.

[11:20] David Rigano: What are you doing?

[11:21] Stephen Dolginoff: I was a little worried because Mr. Higdon at that time had written the Bible about Leopold and Loeb. The one book that I couldn't even find because it wasn't in print at the time when I was first writing it. And he came to see the show off-Broadway and was generous enough to do a talk back. And I was a little nervous because he really knew the history, he knew everything that happened and exactly how it happened, and had researched it for most of his life, I assume.

[11:51] Stephen Dolginoff: And here I was, this young guy who had called the show the Leopold and Loeb Story, but I knew it had dramatic license. Well, he could not have been nicer, he couldn't have been more complimentary. And he said that it's possible that Nathan really did leave his glasses on purpose because of his weird psychology.

[12:10] Stephen Dolginoff: So he sort of validated it for me, and I have always been grateful. So if anyone ever says, "Well, that probably didn't happen," I've always been able to say Hal Higdon said it might happen. Look up who Hal Higdon is and you'll know.

[12:23] Peter Filichia: That's right.

[12:23] Stephen Dolginoff: Don't look him up and complain.

[12:25] Peter Filichia: Right.

[12:26] Stephen Dolginoff: All right. The irony is that this took place in the Chicago area in 1924.

[12:32] Peter Filichia: Something else happened in Chicago in 1924, right?

[12:36] Stephen Dolginoff: That's right. The two women that we now know as Roxy Hart and Bella McKelly, although those weren't their real names, they also committed their crimes in 1924 in Chicago. And their trials overlapped in the same year. Their time in the Cook County Jail overlapped in the same year.

[12:58] Peter Filichia: And it was really interesting when we were doing a show off Broadway, the cast of Thrill Me traveled to meet the cast of Chicago and do a great photo op. And the photos were all over the theater websites, and it looked like Nathan and Richard were hognobbing with Velma and the girls, and it really all took place in maybe five seconds. No one said a word to each other. It was snap snap snap, now get out of our dressing room.

[13:28] Stephen Dolginoff: That's right. So you decided not to have buttons on the song.

[13:33] Peter Filichia: Button is the da-da-da-da-da-bump at the term of the end of many show songs, but you decided not to have any.

[13:39] Stephen Dolginoff: Right. We were in rehearsal for the very first production, which starred the incredible Christopher Tottenham who was sitting right in front of me.

[13:51] Peter Filichia: Oh, really?

[13:54] Stephen Dolginoff: But of course, they'll probably remember that the songs had buttons at the beginning, and the guys were singing them beautifully, and when the show starts, it's pretty innocuous. There's no murder yet, there's nothing horrible, and we figured people would applaud as normal. But eventually you realize, well, then they're starting to plot a murder, and then they're gonna kill somebody and lure someone to his death and hide the body and start to implicate each other into all these horrible things, and we thought it's gonna be very awkward for the audience to applaud it, and then they might feel weird not applauding. So we decided that there would never be a button, never be a chance for the audience to ever applaud.

Hopefully, if they followed their cue from the piano that never stopped, and the actors that kept on going. And I think that was the right decision because it made the show sort of one big piece, and at the end, after all of that tension is built up, usually there's a lot of applause at the end.

[14:54] Peter Filichia: There was for you, I know. Interestingly enough, of course, there are two schools of thought on that. And the fact is that you have no idea if the audience is with you under those circumstances. Most people do, people who are writing shows do get the benefit of saying, "Oh, they love that number." There was the applause that went up, and then it went down, and it went higher. That's really wonderful when that happens.

[15:15] Stephen Dolginoff: But you, uh—

[15:16] Peter Filichia: Right.

[15:16] Stephen Dolginoff: I had a vision when I first started writing the musical. It wasn't of the musical, it was of the audience. I imagined people sitting with red lights and a lot of smoke, and they're watching and they're leaning forward and they're covering their eyes because they can hardly believe what they're seeing, but they're not moving a muscle. That was what I wanted. And the night of the very first performance, that's exactly what the audience did. So I knew they were with me. And after that night, I was so satisfied with that performance that I wouldn't have cared if there had never been another performance. And little did I know that now there's been over 200 and 25 countries and 17 languages. I never could have imagined it. And like I said, it's literally a part of my everyday life now.

[16:04] Peter Filichia: All right, but this brings up a bit funny. I couldn't have imagined it. I was surprised. The book does a lot of this saying I looked at the poster, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, etc., etc. So there's a part of you that must have felt you're writing this and nothing would have happened with it.

[16:25] Stephen Dolginoff: There was. It sat in a drawer for about seven years.

[16:29] Peter Filichia: Is that right?

[16:29] Stephen Dolginoff: Yes, it was. I wrote it in 1994. There were readings and workshops and development, but it wasn't until 2003, excuse me, 2003, when we had the very first production. There were some fights along the way, but a lot of theaters were afraid of it.

[16:50] Peter Filichia: Sure.

[16:50] Stephen Dolginoff: And were afraid of the subject matter, you know, little boy gets killed. And the two guys are—that was pretty hot stuff for them.

[16:58] Peter Filichia: Sure.

[16:59] Stephen Dolginoff: And so hot stuff for now, I guess. But I got very lucky and I met an aspiring producer named Jim Keirsted, who is also here tonight. And back then, he was just starting out, and now he is a Tony winner.

[17:14] Peter Filichia: Oh right.

[17:14] Stephen Dolginoff: A Olivier Award winner. I can't even name all the awards. And I am very honored that Thrill Me was pretty much his first major show and his first major success. And he's gone on to a wonderful career. But I met him, and he was not afraid of it at all. In fact, he really enjoyed the script, and he decided to submit it to a theater festival. It was called the Midtown International Theater Festival, and it got accepted. And off we went, did the show. We were very lucky that the famous director Martin Charnon, who had earlier been involved with the show but was never able to get it off the ground, was interested in directing. And Martin was famous for creating the musical Annie and writing the lyrics to the song "Tomorrow." And the press at the time was fascinated that Martin wanted to direct a show about a little kid that gets murdered now.

[18:12] Peter Filichia: So we were very lucky.

[18:15] Stephen Dolginoff: If you saw Annie II, that would be too.

[18:21] Peter Filichia: So got murdered, but that's another story. You do it as a flashback. First we see Nathan hoping the parole board will play Wall of the this time. What made you start in that fashion of the post just start from the lame me?

[18:35] Stephen Dolginoff: I never thought that what would be the opening scene, which would be Nathan and Richard being reunited after being apart for a summer, had enough of a punch to it. I thought if it just started like that, it wouldn't really draw the audience in. So I always knew that I wanted there to be a prologue or a wraparound. And originally it was going to start with Richard, who in real life was murdered in prison in the 1930s, stabbed by another inmate in the shower. It was originally going to start with that. It was going to be lights up on a stabbed naked man in a shower, blood rushing out of him, and Nathan Leopold is allowed to go and comfort him as he dies and reminisce about the story.

[19:22] Peter Filichia: I see.

[19:23] Stephen Dolginoff: And I thought, "Eh, I don't think so." That's gonna be tricky to stage. Also maybe hard to gain sympathy because you'll already know that one of them is dead. So I didn't want it to be a courtroom drama. I didn't want it to be about their trial, but since the real Nathan Leopold had been paroled and he wrote a book about his quest for parole, I decided that would be the best way to tell the story. So not only do you have the story of Nathan and Richard doing what they do, but you have an entire story of Nathan wanting out of prison—will he get out of prison, how will he get out of prison—and it seemed to work out. I was very happy with how it turned out. Chris's performance was that he really had that role to say, "I'm gonna be too before this parole board.

Before here we are again, is it ever going to happen?" It was just he made you feel bad for him right away despite what he had done, and you really start thinking about the people after all at different being with different ages. He certainly was a different person at this time went on a need with this, so that was very effective.

[19:50] Peter Filichia: All right, so you open at the York theater. Do you remember in fact that after you did the reading walking up near the circle and I saw you and I said you were terrific last time? Do you remember that you remote player? So this is not something I'll just say to me really good.

[20:31] Stephen Dolginoff: All right, so May 2005 you opened. I mean you're too late for any of these awards.

[20:53] Peter Filichia: Right.

[20:53] Stephen Dolginoff: Did that have a criterio say, "Gee, can we open a month earlier Sunday?"

[20:57] Peter Filichia: Yes, it did. So after the 2003 production, the show was done in Australia, in Florida, in Boston, and finally Jim Morgan, the producer and artistic director of the York Theatre, was interested in mounting the show at the York for a full off-Broadway run. And Jim Kears sent to a board to co-produce it, and it was very exciting. And they wanted us to open at the very end of May, right around this time, 2005 actually. And that missed the cutoff for everything for the Obi Awards, the Lorotel Awards, the Drama Desk, the Outer Critics. Not that you do it for awards, but we were so close, like we were missing it by days. That I just couldn't believe it. And so we had to wait an entire year. And the show was a limited run.

It was extended several times, but it was long gone by 2006 when those award nominations came out. And when I woke up on two different things to find out that we were nominated for Best Off-Broadway musical alongside Grey Gardens and Title of Show, it was unbelievable. The next day I found out I was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Best Music, beating out Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John, who had music that year. And Thrill Me was nominated for Best Musical right next to Drowsy Chaperone and Jersey Boys. It was so exciting. And there's always that old say where you're supposed to say, "Oh, it's just the nomination that counts, you know, because that's the honor." A year later, thinking we'd be forgotten, it truly was.

I knew that I was never gonna win after all that time. Certainly not against Jersey Boys, but it was truly an honor to be nominated, and I really felt like I won. So, in a strange way, it was even a greater compliment than it would have been if they'd been eligible the previous year.

[22:52] Peter Filichia: Definitely. Definitely.

[22:53] Stephen Dolginoff: And oh, I would have wanted to win. I would have wanted to win so bad if it was that year.

[23:00] Peter Filichia: How did you wind up playing the role of Nathan?

[23:04] Stephen Dolginoff: Well, it's quite a story. It is well detailed in the book, but we were running at the York, we had a wonderful actor named Matt Bauer who was playing Nathan, and the show was very successful. It was scheduled for a six-week run. Our review in the New York Times didn't come till about four and a half weeks into it, and it was a really great review, and New York wanted to extend the show, but Matt Bauer was unable to continue. He was already booked to do another show. So there were certainly plenty of actors in New York, but for various reasons with timing and who was available and politics and all of that, it came down to the only choice was I took over the role myself, as recommended by Jim Morgan, or the show would have to close. And I hadn't performed at that point in ten years, and I never imagined returning to the stage. I didn't write the role with myself in mind, I never imagined doing it. So I was terrified, and I didn't think I could do it.

[24:12] Stephen Dolginoff: I was very scared. I talked to my friends, my family, everyone encouraged me. I talked to my wonderful agents who said, what's the harm at this point? The show's already open. I thought the harm would be me humiliating myself. I just couldn't let the show close. I thought if there's any way that it can keep running, I have to go for it. So I did, and I channeled the great Christopher Tottenham and I channeled the great Matt Bauer, but I discovered that I was just nothing like them. I couldn't do what they could do. I had to make Nathan my own. And it was only when I realized that and really relaxed into playing the part that I was able to do it and feel comfortable, and it was really exciting, and then I got to do it in several other theaters.

[25:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm curious as to how much you would call before you actually went into a rosa. Just for the sake of argument, let's say they said to you, look, Matt can't do it tonight. You gotta go on or else there's no show. How much of out of the hundred percent of the show did you say you remembered? If that happened, if there was an emergency and without any preparation, they said you have to go on.

[25:22] Stephen Dolginoff: I probably could have done it. Because I had watched it almost every night, and I thought I knew all the blocking, I thought I knew where everyone moved. Of course, when I had my put in with the stage manager, when I really got the part, and I was moving around thinking I knew where everything was, he said, No, no, no, that happens ten feet downstage. And I thought, but I watch it every night, that's impossible. Well, you're not gonna be in the light. So I learned things that I never even imagined. And my co-star Doug Krieger, who was phenomenal as Richard Blow, he did not let me get away with anything.

[25:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You mean he didn't say you're the author, whatever you want?

[26:01] Stephen Dolginoff: He did the exact opposite. He's no people left showing. He was willing to do the show with me. He was a professional actor, and I certainly was not. And I felt almost like I had discovered him because he came to our auditions, he was so wonderful, and not everyone else agreed, and it took a lot of finagling to finally get him into the show, and I just thought he walked on water in the role, and having to perform alongside him was one of the scariest things I had ever done. And the put in went well, opening night went well. And but by the second and third night, he started feeling like I just wasn't giving him what he needed as an actor. I wasn't listening. I wasn't doing all those active things that actors tell you.

So he quite professionally talked to the stage manager. The stage manager talked to me. The three of us had a meeting, and I just said, just look give it to me. Tell me. I want this to be good. I want the show to run. You just have to you have to tell me. And he gave me those actor tips, and I implemented them immediately that night because I was terrified. And things seemed to click. And when it was time for him to renew his contract, where he didn't have to be in the show anymore, he did renew his contract. So he I must have done something right because he kept doing the show. And to his credit, he could have just mopped the floor with me every night. But he wanted the show to be good. And he had the opportunity to just be good himself, but he wanted me to be good too, which was I'm so grateful.

[27:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: By any chances, anything he told you something that is actually helped you in writing other shows?

[27:46] Stephen Dolginoff: Not specifically what he told me, but more of what I learned when I was playing the part, when I was literally on the stage saying the words that I wrote, living in the world that I created. I learned that it's hard, it's really difficult. When I would write certain high notes, I thought, well, that's no, just sing it, actor. And I learned that if you're sort of scaling up to that high note, it's really easy, but if you have to come right out with that high note, it's really hard. So I learned, let's not do that again. And I also learned that the show runs about 90 minutes, and the character of Nathan at least never leaves the stage. And I thought, oh, 90 minutes. No big deal. When you have to be on stage for that full 90 minutes, you realize that it is really difficult.

Not time for water, not time for anything. And I decided to also never do that again. Give the actors a little bit of a break. So that's really what I learned. And it's something that I really hope that I wish that every playwright could experience being in their own show because you learn so much, even if it was just for one rehearsal, because it's a fascinating experience, and I feel very lucky. And then once I got going, oh boy, I was bit by that acting bug again, and then they couldn't stop me. Then I wrote marks for myself after that.

[29:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: One of the funny parts of the book is when you're doing it in Buffalo.

[29:22] Stephen Dolginoff: Oh yes. What happened?

[29:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Buffalo.

[29:25] Stephen Dolginoff: Oh, Buffalo. That was my fourth time playing Nathan. And Buffalo in September was experiencing an unseasonable heat wave. And the theater was not air conditioned. The dressing rooms were not air conditioned. The stage was on air conditioned. The audience had some sort of a ceiling fan above it, but that was it. And I got there for rehearsal, and I said, It's really hot in here. And they said, Don't worry, it always cools down. It's never hot this time in September. So I said, okay, okay. Well, here we are at opening night. I walk out on stage, and now the stage lights are on, and the whole audience is in there, and it was sweltering. I've never been that hot in my entire life. And I am drenched in sweat from the minute it starts.

And I have tears in my eyes, sweat in my eyes. I have a handkerchief. I'm mopping my brow constantly. I can barely breathe. But after a couple performances, it started to work for me. It felt like, well, this is how Nathan Leopold is feeling. And I used that experience. I used that heat to create the moment, create the performance. And I really felt like it added something. So we had a few days off, and I was able to come back to New York, and I went back to Buffalo for a second week of performances, and it had cooled down.

[30:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[30:55] Stephen Dolginoff: So I went on stage that night, and suddenly there was no sweat, there was no perspiration, there was no need to use the handkerchief, and I wasn't nearly as good because I didn't know what to do anymore. I was like, well, the heat was the performance, so I had to recalibrate the entire thing. So that was quite a challenge. Then there was, of course, the night in Buffalo when half of the lights went out on the stage. And I went to one side of the stage to do a number, and there was no light on me, and the lights went up on the other side, and I thought, oh my god, I'm losing it. I know that I'm supposed to be here, please. And then the other actor came and we sort of did the whole show, and we realized something happened, and there was never any light on us.

Then there was the night that the piano got unplugged. And we were getting ready to go on to do one of the big numbers, and we were running from one side of the stage to the other, and we were in the windows one second, and the music stopped, and my co-star, God love him, was ready to go on with the show, and I grabbed him and I said, There is no way that I am gonna do the rest of this a ballot. And he just froze, and you know it's all in the buck, believe me. And finally, the plug got plugged in again, and there went the music and on we went. So yeah, that was Buffalo.

[32:31] Stephen Dolginoff: Now, you've been requested to do various things with various productions, giving permission, especially having two women play the parts.

[32:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, that comes up a lot.

[32:40] Stephen Dolginoff: The show's very popular in Asia and in South Korea and Japan and in China. I've gotten requests a lot to do like a full-scale female version in a big way, and I have resisted it to this point. I feel that these are real people that lived, and they were two guys. But I it's possible that it might happen someday. The producer in South Korea is sort of holding on to it. I keep saying, Is it time? He says, No, because when it is time, it's gonna be a big deal, so we're holding out on it. But I once accidentally let it happen when I got a request from a school in South Korea that wanted to do it, and I misread the email. So we gave them permission and we licensed it, and then I found out it was with two females, which I was very surprised. They didn't play the roles as females, they just did the show normally, and they did a really good job with it.

[33:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: When you saw our video, I saw pictures and some recordings and read the feedback.

[33:47] Stephen Dolginoff: Only problem with converting the show to female performers is the music. The music was written for two baritone voices. And most people would think that if the characters were teenagers, maybe they should have been tenors to sound young. But I wanted the songs to sound like they were conversational, starting in the natural tone of a voice, and then maybe getting higher. I didn't want it to come out with big tenor voices. So that's a very important part of the show that it's all very dark. So translating that into female voices and making it still sound dark will be a challenge. I do not know how this school did it, and I don't think I want to know. So we'll see.

[34:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So that since you brought it up, that's the other question that you find tedious.

[34:35] Stephen Dolginoff: Uh, why is it so popular in Asia?

[34:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I wish I knew the answer to that for sure, but I think it's because I made a very smart decision that was posed to me 17 years ago because the show has been running for 17 years now in South Korea, 10 years in Japan, four years in China. And I was asked if instead of allowing the show to be translated the way most Western musicals were translated, which meant word for word, the Asian performers play Caucasian people, whatever it would be, even if the humor doesn't make sense, even if the words don't necessarily make sense, there would be as close a translation as possible. For Thrill Me, they wanted it to feel different. They wanted it to feel more maybe like it was a South Korean musical. So they said, what if it doesn't take place in Chicago, but it takes place somewhere?

What if it's not 1924, but it's just sometime? And what if it's not Nathan and Richard, but it's just I and he? No names. And I agreed with the promise that they would print the story of Leo Bolin Loeb in the program, so everyone would know that that's what it was based on. And boy, they printed like a 50-page booklet with pictures about it everyone seen before, so everyone knew the true story. And I also told them that they could translate it as best they saw fit. Metaphors are different, humor is different, different standards are different.

[36:13] Stephen Dolginoff: So I said, just do what you think will make it the most successful.

[36:19] And that's exactly what they did.

[36:21] Can you think of any examples of things that they changed that you wouldn't have expected to be changed, but it could be.

[36:39] I didn't know what they were saying.

[36:40] It looked like Thrill Me, it sounded like Thrill Me in terms of the music.

[36:44] Things like there's a song called Nothing Like a Fire, which is sort of a pun in the show, and they changed the name of it to be careful because you're playing with fire, which is a very similar metaphor.

[36:56] They also, in Korea and in a lot of countries, there's no equivalent for the phrase thrill me.

[37:02] So while the show is still called Thrill Me, and sometimes they say thrill me in it, they use different wording.

[37:09] And of course, the relationship between the two men is portrayed just as it is in the United States.

[37:16] They kiss, they get intimate with each other, except in China, where those things are censored, and that's removed from the show.

[37:24] But when I think back to 2007, when I said yes to that, it would have been so easy for me to say no.

[37:24] It would have been so easy for me to say no, it's just translate what I wrote, and it would not have been a success, and my life would also be very different if I hadn't agreed to that.

[37:41] So I mentioned to you that there was a time when John F. Kennedy was talking to a German idea to say I am a Bremwombeer in German.

[37:52] But the way you said it came out, I am a donut.

[37:56] You had a similar experience with a title that thrill me was translated into some language and it didn't quite work.

[38:04] Well, there's several different translations.

[38:06] Sometimes it's translated as thrill me phonetically, but it doesn't mean anything.

[38:12] So, like in Korean and Japan, the words sell thrill me, but it means nothing.

[38:19] In China, it's very odd.

[38:22] It's the words thrill me in English are printed on the poster, and then under it are Chinese characters that they say dangerous game, which I don't know what that means, but that's what it says.

[38:34] So it's thrill me, dangerous game in China, or at least it used to be.

[38:38] And then there have been several different Spanish translations, and in Spain, it was called Exitame, which I think I'm pronouncing that right, which basically means excite me, which is similar to Thrill Me.

[38:51] But when they were going to do the show in Mexico, which was recently licensed, I suggested that they call the show Exitame because that had been the Spanish title.

[39:03] And the producer, this was on a video call, sort of started blushing.

[39:08] Because Ixideme in Mexican Spanish is very, very, very racy and would not be a proper title at all.

[39:17] So they had to change it to something that sounded to Predendeme, which means turn me on.

[39:24] I think that's pretty close too.

[39:28] You had an unexpected association with the Rocky Horror Show, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, actually.

[39:33] That's right.

[39:34] I grew up with the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[39:37] I was of the almost the first generation, and I had always loved it.

[39:41] And I was at a big fan expo, like a Comic-Con, with all these celebrities from TV and movies, and Patricia Quinn from the Rocky Horror Picture Show was there, and she was magenta, and it fits her mouth at the very beginning, singing the song in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[39:59] And she had a very brief lull at her table.

[40:03] Because she was it was very popular, people getting her autograph.

[40:07] And I went up to her, and the show had just been booked to be performed in London.

[40:13] And in the show there are these voiceovers.

[40:16] There's the voice of the parole board, voice of a radio.

[40:19] And I knew that the producers were looking for some sort of celebrity voices to do it.

[40:24] And I thought, well, I think Patricia Quinn, she lives in London or somewhere around there, so I'm just gonna go talk to her.

[40:30] And I approached her and I asked her if she had ever heard of the theater where Thrill Me was supposed to play.

[40:37] It was a theater called the Tristan Bates Theater.

[40:40] It's since been renamed.

[40:41] But she just lit up like a fuse and said, Oh my, the Tristan Bates Theater, that was founded by Alan Bates, and Alan Bates was my dear friend, and he named the theater for Tristan Bates, which was his son who passed away, and she was so excited.

[40:58] She gives me her email address, cut to a few months later, his opening night of Thrill Me in London, sitting next to me is Patricia Quinn holding my hand.

[41:08] She has recorded one of the voiceovers.

[41:10] She leads the standing ovation, clutching me, all because I went up to her at that Comic-Con table, which was very, very, very exciting.

[41:20] She was such a sweetheart.

[41:21] You don't ask you don't get.

[41:23] Exactly.

[41:24] Exactly.

[41:25] There was talk of bringing it to Broadway, and there was mention of you know Patrick Harris and his husband David Burtka, and you said well, I don't know that they knew that they were under consideration, but our wonderful producer who works tirelessly to get the show to Broadway had a it was a very exciting option period.

[41:44] Unfortunately, we weren't able to do it, but maybe someday for Broadway you have to have stars, and it was kind of hard to find stars.

[41:52] It's about seven years ago.

[41:54] Stars who would be believable as teenagers, even if they weren't teenagers, but depending on their age, I was always worried that if someone had played a doctor on TV or played a father on TV, it would be very hard for anyone to accept them as teenagers again.

[42:11] So we had gone through a huge list, and all of the names are in the books.

[42:14] You can read everyone who said no.

[42:16] Except some people I said no to.

[42:18] They're all in there.

[42:19] But the producer said, what about Neil Patrick Harris and his husband David Burtka?

[42:25] And I just thought, gosh, I think they're too old.

[42:31] You know, looking back on it, that was really, really dumb.

[42:36] Because I should have just said, sure, okay, because who knows what would have happened, and maybe they just said yes, I don't know, and wanted to be teenagers again, and we could have had the show on Broadway.

[42:48] So that was a rare time that I said no, and maybe I shouldn't.

[42:53] Neil Patrick Harris, David Burtka.

[42:54] If you're out there, if you're listening to this podcast, if you think that you're not old now, let me know.

[43:01] And we'll see if you guys interesting that you do write that actors who weren't even born when I started writing have done the show.

[43:10] Yes, it's really touching.

[43:13] There's a whole second generation of little Nathan Leopold and Richard Loebs.

[43:18] There's an actor right now doing the show in Romania.

[43:21] It's in its second year there, and I had to do a Zoom call with them because they invited me to Romania to do a talk back, and I wasn't able to go.

[43:30] So instead, they said, We'll film you and we'll do a talk back.

[43:33] And so the actor playing Nathan was chosen to talk to me.

[43:37] And we got on the Zoom call and he was terrified.

[43:40] He seemed so nervous, and I couldn't understand why.

[43:43] And he explained that he had discovered Thrill Me when he was young, and he was so nervous to talk to me.

[43:48] And I thought me.

[43:49] Why are you nervous?

[43:50] Talk to me.

[43:50] I'm nobody, I'm nervous to talk to you.

[43:52] You're an actor in Romania.

[43:54] So, and it happens a lot.

[43:57] Yeah.

[43:59] It does happen a lot.

[44:01] There's a lot of, I hear from kids in college, kids in high school that have read the script.

[44:05] They write to me, they ask me questions a lot in Asia, a lot in this country.

[44:11] There's students that perform cuttings for their dramatic interpretation festivals that I hear from.

[44:17] It's really touching.

[44:18] I can't believe it's we're already at the second generation.

[44:21] Because I feel like I'm still, I feel like it's still 30 years ago.

[44:26] I can't believe that all this time has passed because I still feel like the same as I did the day I first started writing it.

[44:33] Stephen Schwartz wants to say production of Pittman at the end of the show.

[44:37] Theo, the young boy saying Shrewd Belongs when they can travel, etc.

[44:42] The corner in the sky song is up.

[44:44] What a great idea.

[44:45] Oh wow, we've got to put this to the show from now on.

[44:48] So have you seen any improvements?

[44:50] Something you said, I didn't think of that, but that's great, and I love it.

[44:55] You know, which is not to say that others think they've made improvements.

[45:07] Yes, there's these contracts that say you can't do this, and you can't do this, and you can't do this, and then they sign it, and then they seem to forget all about it.

[45:17] Um, one that really springs to mind happened in a country that I will not mention.

[45:23] It's one of the 25 countries, one of the 17 languages, and one of the 200 productions.

[45:29] They decided it would be really great to split Nathan into two people, the older Nathan and the younger Nathan.

[45:37] Then they decided that that speech that Clarence Darrow gave when he argued against the death penalty for them in real life is so good.

[45:48] Let's we should put that in too in a really long voiceover.

[45:54] And they put those two things in, which was just completely gobsmacking to me.

[46:02] I found out about it because I get Google alerts for everything, even if they're in other languages, and everything can be translated.

[46:10] So I found out about this a couple days before they were supposed to start.

[46:17] So my wonderful agents, who I believe are here tonight, moved into action, and we told them in no uncertain terms they were to turn Nathan back into one person, take out Clarence Darrow immediately, or they couldn't do the show.

[46:36] Well, they said, but it's so important to us.

[46:40] And I said, Well, but that's not the show.

[46:44] Please let us do the show.

[46:46] You can do the show, just take those things out.

[46:48] It shouldn't be too hard.

[46:50] They refused.

[46:51] And we had every right to cancel their license and say, then you can't do the show.

[46:57] But I decided to be nice.

[47:00] So I said, we're gonna charge you a penalty, and we're gonna make you write a humiliating disclaimer that says, this is not Thrill Me written by the author, this is our interpretation, it's completely unauthorized, and they had to put it on cards on every seat, on posters at the theater, they had to send it to the press and put it on all social media.

[47:23] Thinking that this would shame them, they would say, okay, okay, we won't do it.

[47:27] But they did it.

[47:28] They did it.

[47:29] And then they wanted to extend it.

[47:32] And I said, you can extend it if you take those things out.

[47:36] Well, we can't do that.

[47:37] So I said, well, thank you very much and good luck with the rest of your season.

[47:44] Speaking of Clarence Darrow, what did he hope to achieve?

[47:48] Just to get these guys from being killed?

[47:50] Yes.

[47:51] Because he was against capital punishment.

[47:53] What?

[47:53] I'm not sure of what his particular beliefs on that were, but he was a he he would the guys fled guilty, so there was no question that they were guilty.

[48:03] And the question was just would they be put to death or get life in prison or some other sentence, I suppose.

[48:09] And so because the families were so wealthy, they were able to afford Clarence Darrow.

[48:14] I believe he came out of semi-retirement, and I believe it was one of his last cases, and I believe he just liked the legal challenge, and he was very successful, and his speech was very famous.

[48:24] Stephen Dolginoff: And but I didn't put Clarence Darrow in the play because it's about two people in a relationship.

[48:30] Peter Filichia: You mentioned earlier about the Susan Man factor and Nietzsche, of course, was very much interested in that. Brendan, did you ever do any research on Nietzsche too with Calbeworth show?

[48:40] Stephen Dolginoff: I did the character of Richard Loeb in drilling his very much into Nietzsche and Nietzsche's theory of the superman, and that's why they believe they're superior to society and have every right to kill someone and get away with it. I could have done that kind of research. I specifically chose not to, because I didn't want to get mired in the weeds of everything. I didn't want to be the world's expert on Leopold and Loeb and everything that they did and everything that they believed. I'm going to create my own dramatic version of them that would be stage-worthy and tell a really compelling stage story. So I really did the minimum. And I think it served me well because I think if I wanted to get too detail-oriented, I would have just gotten stuck. I would have said, oh, but that's how it actually happened. It's got to happen like this. And you just can't do that as a dramatist.

[49:35] Stephen Dolginoff: Now most off-Broadway shows these days seem to have room for a cello. There was some talk about having a cello, but you see, this is a piano or two-piano show, right?

[49:45] Peter Filichia: Right.

[49:45] Stephen Dolginoff: There have been so many opportunities, and I have been asked so many times to add a cello to the score for me. When it was first done, of course, I wrote it on piano. And at the original Midtown Festival production, there was no question it would just be done on a piano, an electric keyboard. And for the next few productions, there was no time to do anything else. But when the show was going to be done at New York off-Broadway, Jim Morgan said to me, if you want to have more instruments, this is the time and we can do it. I was very concerned about the budget at that point, even though it was really none of my purview. And Jim said, if you wanted, you can do it. And we talked about a cello, which I thought would sound beautiful.

We talked about a few other instruments. But finally, I just decided, let's make this as easy as possible. Let's not have to worry about copyists and orchestrators, and let's make this the best piano-only score that anyone's ever heard. So if all those 200 productions sent to me in piano, all of them have been piano. In Japan, where it's like you're at the Majestic or the St. J's Theater seeing them on Broadway, it's one piano. If you're at in South Korea, as if you're in the Barrymore Theater on Broadway, it's one piano.

[51:00] Peter Filichia: It's interesting to me, too, that after the crime is committed, you established that Richard wants to be a lawyer.

[51:07] Stephen Dolginoff: Yes.

[51:09] Peter Filichia: I mean, lawyers are upstanding one for people. How could he uh possibly quite allowed? Isn't there an irony here that he wants to be a lawyer?

[51:17] Stephen Dolginoff: Yes, they were both getting ready to go to law school, and I don't know. I thought who knows, maybe he thought that he could have better empathy for the criminals he might represent some day. I don't know. But that just goes to their, you know, what was going on in his mind and how much and what a waste it was. They could have been the next clearance arrows themselves.

[51:36] Peter Filichia: Indeed. My very last question. At one point you described Charles Strauss as the composer of applause in Golden Boy.

[51:45] Stephen Dolginoff: Yes.

[51:46] Peter Filichia: Which I purposed to say Annie and Bye bye Bertie, which is what we usually hear.

[51:50] Stephen Dolginoff: Well, this is really funny. If you read the book, and I was so careful, there's a lot of celebrities that pop up in the book, and a lot of writers and composers, and shows that I talk about. And what I decided was once I talked about a show, I'm not going to mention it again. So since Martin Carden was famous for Annie, and I specifically mentioned Bye bye Bertie in there somewhere, having seen it, I believe, I decided that once I got to Charles Strauss, I had already used those credits, so I had to credit him with Golden Boy and Applause. That is how detail oriented I was. That is what wonderful hands you are hitting by me as an author. Even though I thought of everything.

[52:35] Peter Filichia: Anybody have any questions?

[52:38] Audience member: Yeah?

[52:39] Peter Filichia: Nobody? We can all go home?

[52:41] Audience member: Yeah.

[52:41] Peter Filichia: Yeah.

[52:41] Peter Filichia: I have a question. You talked about how it, how acting in your own show changed your writing style moving forward. But do you find that you write differently when you know you're writing for yourself? First is when you're writing for the nebulous actor that will be hired.

[53:00] Stephen Dolginoff: A little bit. After me, I didn't write for a long time because I was always so busy with it. And I eventually wrote three more musicals. And I didn't necessarily write parts for me, but what I did was I wrote parts that if we had to do a reading, and it would be difficult to get too many actors, I could always play one of the parts.

[54:07] Stephen Dolginoff: Anyway, yeah, one might way back there. I'm just curious as to know why what was it who was to write this? Why do you mind this as a writing book on this?

[54:18] Stephen Dolginoff: The book. Well, I had never planned on writing a book. I had, in fact, shied away from it. But I realized that this was 200024, the 30th anniversary of when I started it, and the hundredth anniversary that is happening today of the crime. And I realized that if I was ever going to do it, this was the time. This was a reason to do it. And so much had happened. I had a brush with Broadway, I brushed with Hollywood, hundreds of productions, getting to go to opening nights all over the world. And I kind of felt like I don't know that much more is going to happen. And if it does, I'd probably already give it a little flavor of it. So I figured this was the time. It was very cathartic, very difficult.

I had to go back 30 years where I where there were I didn't really have a computer calendar, so I really had to reconstruct a lot. And I wanted it to be what I remembered. I didn't want to really ask other people what they remembered because it had to come for me and it had to feel very genuine. And I was surprised at how much I did remember. I was really able to put the whole 30 years together. I talk about the writing process, the research process, what it was like putting that first production together, the struggles behind the scenes that happened, the difficult people that I had to work with. Sometimes names are named and sometimes they're not. And then the wonderful people that I that I got to work with, and all of the experiences along the way.

And I really wanted it to be a tool for other writers or even other actors to read about a show that is not a household name musical, certainly not in this country, maybe in Asia. But I'm certainly not a household name writer, but I make my living as a writer in a show that a lot of people haven't heard of. It's very culty. And my book says how I did it. Now that doesn't mean that anyone can just follow the book and do it that way, but you don't have to be Stephen Santine or Stephen Schwartz, Mark Martin Jordan, or David Bammett to make a living in the theater as a writer. And I think a lot of people would be surprised. Took a lot of hard work, a lot of lucky breaks, a lot of people along the way that were there to grace me with their talent, grace me with their generosity. And I will never write another book. I don't know that I will ever read another book. But I'm very glad I did it.

[57:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That was, for lack of better words, thrilling. That was exactly what that was. And Peter Felicia does such a great job. He's an excellent moderator, and he has been such a special guest here multiple times.

[57:23] David Rigano: Yeah, he's he's been a repeat guest moderator. There's a reason that I think you could hear why so many authors in this industry want him interviewing them.

[57:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He does such a good job, and he does his homework.

[57:38] David Rigano: He does, and he I think he's the most frequent guest we've had.

[57:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I think so. Yeah, I think he definitely hit the five timer. He should get the jacket.

[57:46] David Rigano: Yeah. At this point. But you'll hear more about that because you'll hear some of this events coming up. Not just of once he's moderated, but of his own books.

[57:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. Two of them here.

[57:55] David Rigano: Yeah, we've got, and I have particular fun getting to interview Peter on his book of Broadway Brain Teasers.

[58:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, that was rough.

[58:04] David Rigano: That was this book stumped Strowman.

[58:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes. We, when she was here, he came up in conversation and we said to her, Have you read his have you seen his book of Broadway Brain Teasers? And she said no. And we pulled it off the shelf, and we just started flipping to random pages and asking her this Broadway trivia.

[58:23] David Rigano: And that's a thing with Peter. It's not just trivia. It's not just whether you know it or not. It's can your brain make the connections between these characters or song lyrics? And we started flipping through, and Peter Filichia stumped Susan Strowman, which I think it's safe to say she knows a thing or two about musicals.

[58:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Also, trivia. She is the second most requested and famous guest that we've had. I think that was a repeated guest that we've had here.

[58:48] David Rigano: I think that was the the conversation that we were having about how she was. It was between the two of them. Tied with Peter.

[58:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But yeah, no, so we've had some wonderful guests here. And then we have another guest coming up for our next episode. Who was so amazing.

[59:00] David Rigano: Oh my god.

[59:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so famous.

[59:05] David Rigano: Yeah. Definitely fanboyed when I got the email about the possibility of the event.

[59:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh, I fanboyed when the guest arrived the first time to talk about it. And I fanboyed when she got here.

[59:16] David Rigano: Yeah. We are talking about the one, the only Estelle Parsons.

[59:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh my gosh. So wonderful, so lovely. And just she has an amazing book called Uncharted Territory: Life Lessons from the Theater, as told by Academy Award winner Estelle Parsons to her daughter, Abby Britton M.A.

[59:39] David Rigano: And we will be talking about that in the very next episode. Uh so don't forget to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast. And follow our Eventbrite page so that you can know about upcoming events here in person. And remember, all of the books we talk about are found here at the Drama Bookshop. As are we. And we will see you at the bookshop.