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[0:06] Ken Davenport: What do you think Broadway's doing today versus the Broadway that you came in to see as a 13-year-old? What do you think of the state of the state? People will say it's the best theater in the country. Let me amend that slightly. It's the best commercial theater in the country. It doesn't mean that great things don't happen here. And I get really upset with people that go, oh, it's all been disnified and it's all tripe, and it's like a really New York theater is still some of the best theater in the world. But on Broadway.

[0:41] Ken Davenport: You're listening to the Producer's Perspective Podcast with your host, Tony Award winner, Ken Davenport. Hey everybody, that's Tony Award-winning Jason Alexander, who's gonna be coming to you in just a few moments with a full podcast, including an incredible idea about what we can learn here on Broadway from Hollywood. One of the few things, according to Jason, that they may do a bit better than we do. So wait for that. In the meantime, I just wanted to ask you a question. Are you following me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter? On Instagram specifically, you can find me at Ken Davenport Bway. That's short for Broadway, at Ken Davenport Bway, or at Ken Davenport on Twitter. Do me a favor on Instagram, turn on post and story notifications to see what I'm up to. I'm going live these days. I've got a bunch more stories. So make sure your story and post notifications are on. We will see you on the social media now on with the podcast.

[1:52] Ken Davenport: And what a treat for all of you and for me we have today. Please welcome to the podcast, none other than Mr. Jason Alexander. Welcome, Jason.

[2:01] Jason Alexander: Are they welcoming? How do you know if they're welcoming? Are they sitting around applauding or are they just?

[2:05] Ken Davenport: They're definitely standing up right now. You just can't see them.

[2:08] Jason Alexander: Wow. That's usually um, that's most of my standing ovations. I just can't see them.

[2:11] Ken Davenport: That's right. Uh so that's the Jason you all know and love. You know him from, of course, his infamous role as George Costanza on Seinfeld. But many of the world may not know that the guy who had us cracking up for so many years on that brilliant show got his start in the theater. He won a Tony Award for Jerome Robbins Broadway, was a part of the original company in Merrily We Roll Along, was in The Rink, which I'm a huge fan of that. I saw a bootleg of that. I'm probably not supposed to tell you that.

[2:38] Jason Alexander: No, that's fine. Uh you're the producer, my friend. You're the one losing money on the bootlegs, not me.

[2:43] Ken Davenport: Uh Broadway bound. He came back to Broadway a few seasons ago to take over for Larry David, the man who George Costanza was based on in Fish in the Dark. Tons of movies, including Pretty Woman, which is now a Broadway musical. I want to talk about that. Now, I'll never forget the first time I realized you were a theater guy. So you were on The Tonight Show and you sang "This Is the Moment." Is that true you remember that?

[3:07] Jason Alexander: Was it The Tonight Show? I think so. I know I did it. I know I did it. I'll tell you where I know I did it. I did it on the Jerry Lewis telethon one year. I know I did it there.

[3:19] Ken Davenport: So yeah, that was one of my, somehow some charts fell into my lap. So when people said, Do you have charts? I went, Yeah, I do. So obviously you're, you got your start in the theater, big theater guy, and then of course you blow up with Seinfeld. Yeah. Do you and then I see you on this talk show and you're belting out of tune. Do you find yourself having to remind people all the time like, hey, I'm a theater guy. This is where I got my start?

[3:40] Jason Alexander: I don't have to. You know, um I had no fantasies or aspirations of a career outside the theater. I grew up in Jersey, and I started really going, really, really going to New York to see theater when I was 12. I would, I would, I fell in with the theater kids at school, and we would come almost every weekend and see two, if not three shows per weekend, because it was a dollar to stand in the back if you were a student. So this to me was everything. And the thing that made me want to be an actor really was Ben Vereen in Pippin, which is an old, everybody tells I've met more people that say Ben Vereen in Pippin made me want to be a musical theater actor.

[4:25] Jason Alexander: Um what was it about? I had never thought about being an actor. What I had fantasies about when I was really little, and up until I was, you know, 15, 16, I thought I was gonna be a magician. And I knew by the time I was a teenager, I wanted to be a close-up magician, and your audience can't see my hands, but they are not a close-up magician's hands. They're very small, and I got little short, stubby fingers. And so I couldn't, I knew I wasn't gonna be able to do the things I really wanted to do, and I was heartbroken over the fact that I was not gonna be a magician. And I went to see Pippin, and it was the first musical I had seen where actual magic had been really incorporated into the show, and through the persona of Ben.

And I kind of sat there and like a dummy, I went boing, and it hit me. I went, the whole thing's an illusion. The whole thing's a trick. It's an old, it's a magic trick. And that's when I went, oh, I can do this magic trick. And of course, Ben was so charismatic and so powerful and so magical in that show that he became, you know, I'm this little white Jewish fat kid from Jersey going, I'm the next Ben Vereen. And so I started taking it very seriously from that moment on. I was about 13.

[5:46] Ken Davenport: 13 years old. So I want to get into this, my hands are too short to be a magician comment. Because that's a very insightful thing to say for a 13-year-old to recognize, oh, I'm never gonna be at the top of my craft because of this.

[6:00] Jason Alexander: Yeah.

[6:01] Ken Davenport: And do something else. Where a lot of people would frankly be struggling magicians to this date.

[6:06] Jason Alexander: Do you well I could have struggled? I'm not big on struggling. Um what gave you that insight to know, like, oh, this I just was I was friends with enough good magicians. And you know, I could look at my dad, a full-grown man, and go, my hands are as big as his hands right now. I'd 13. So I just looked at my hands and went, I don't think this is gonna get much bigger. And the reason I knew I wasn't going to be really viable is that no matter what I did, I could not palm a standard playing card without a corner of it peeking somewhere, because my hands are too small. And I thought, well, if you eliminate cards from the close-up repertoire, what's left? And so that was the beginning of my whole, well, I might be able to do some kind of magic, but I'm not a, you know, I'm not a copperfield guy. I can't stand up there with the big box and the girl and go cut that dash. So I just couldn't see a way that I was gonna somehow be a money-making magician.

[7:07] Ken Davenport: It's such a fine line between having a big dream and then being practical, like you know, someone was saying I want to be a professional basketball player, but I'm also five two and have hands you can't pull a basketball. And for some people it drives them to make extraordinary, you know, there are shorter basketball players who are so extraordinary that they can be competitive. I just, it uh maybe somebody else would have been doubly motivated by the assessment of going, well, I can't do cards, so I'm gonna be the greatest coin magician in the world, whatever. But I just kind of went, no, I don't think it's in the cards. Plus, I was really, I had already been doing community theater, and I went, This is really I got a lot of joy out of it and great feedback out of it. So there was already another avenue to go down, so it wasn't quite hitting that desperate terrible wall.

[8:00] Jason Alexander: So you see Ben and you decide to double down on the performing. What do you do?

[8:04] Jason Alexander: I start literally the day after I saw Pippin, which I wound up seeing 21 times when I was a kid. I saw the full show, not just the second show. No, I saw Michael I saw John Rubinstein do it probably a dozen times, and then Michael Rupert replaced him, and I saw Michael do it many, many, many times. And I, you know, I've seen a couple of other productions that Ben has done in other places, but um But the day after I saw Ben the first time I started taking voice lessons seriously, and then I said, Well, he dances, so I have to learn how to dance. And so I don't know how I landed on tap, but I decided tap would be the way in. And there was a tap school about four towns over in Jersey, taught by two, I kid you not, retired, clearly retired, Ziegfeld Follies Girls, sisters, who were in their 70s or 80s then.

And so it was a very heavy-hooted, heavy-footed style of tap. But I was, you know, easily 30 pounds overweight. I'm the only boy in the class. I was just like, this is humiliating. But I learned how to tap.

[9:15] Ken Davenport: You were unique. You were very used to performance.

[9:17] Jason Alexander: I was.

[9:18] Ken Davenport: So what was the first professional gig?

[9:20] Jason Alexander: Yeah. I got into the unions by um there was a children's theater group called Push Card Players in New Jersey. And um they uh their model was they were creating short original musicals for children that they would take around to schools and do summer shows and stuff. And while they were doing their thing, they got uh some dad in the audience was a television producer who thought these little original musicals would be a good television series for kids. And so he put together uh enough of a bankroll to shoot a pilot. The guy in the group was a very young Ken Jennings who was about to play the original Toby role in Sweeney Todd. Well, he had been on a panel of judges for a junior high and high school theater festival that I had been in with my school, and he saw me do that festival and he went, Oh, but this kid's good, I gotta remember him.

Well, Ken was tapped to do Sweeney when that TV pilot was being done, so he couldn't do it. And he must have said to them, I got a kid for you. And I got a call and I had to join after, and at the time, if you joined after, you could join all the unions. And at 14, I got my my after SAG card and my equity card. And so that was the first real gig. And then I started doing commercials left and right. I got a manager from doing that production. He didn't sell it as a series, but it became, you know, like a one a Sunday morning special on local New York New Jersey television. This management company that handled kids and teens saw it and hunted me down and went, you want to work with me? And I went okay, hopefully. And so I started working.

[11:18] Jason Alexander: And Merrily was the first Broadway show.

[11:20] Jason Alexander: Yeah, Merrily happened. Um I had gone through three years of college. It was the summer after my junior year of college at Boston U. I was a theater major. And uh I did uh Harvey Weinstein's first movie. It was a very forgettable, except if you're a big horror fan, it was a really forgettable horror film called The Burning, which was kind of a Friday the 13th wannabe knockoff. Notable only in that it was my first movie, Holly Hunter's first movie, Fisher Stevens' first movie. Um there were a couple people that did okay out of that. Um and Harvey's first movie. Uh and I was late for school. It ran over, and I was late, so I couldn't go back. I was going to take a semester off, so I moved in with my manager here in New York, and I started working for the casting director who had cast me in the film. And it was during that that there was uh an open call from Merrily, and I went and got that and never got that degree. It was all over from then.

[12:16] Ken Davenport: What did you think about your first three years at BU and the teaching of acting and the craft of acting?

[12:21] Jason Alexander: Well, I had never studied acting in my life. I'd studied singing and dancing, but I'd never studied acting, and I didn't know you could study acting. I thought, you know, you got cast in a role, you imagined the actor that would be really good in it, and then you imitated them. That was my idea of really good acting.

[12:38] Jason Alexander: It's all impressions, that's right. Um so I was amazed at uh at how much craft uh there is to it all. I, in retrospect, would tell you that Boston U did probably as good a job as any place else I would have gone. I got a lot of great fundamentals, I got a lot of great experience. I left there a little prematurely, so this is not an entirely fair comment, but take it with a grain of salt. I left more confused than I went in. Because like m I'm not a big advocate of university training for the arts as a result of my experience and seeing other people.

[13:20] Jason Alexander: Not that they don't do a good job. I just think, um, the arts are, um, you learn the skills as you learn the skills. But unfortunately, when you've got a curriculum, you’ve got to move a student through that curriculum, regardless of whether or not they have any mastery of the thing that you have to build on. So I would get introduced to an, uh, a tool of the craft, and before I understood how to use it, we were on to the next tool. And maybe because I didn't finish, I came out knowing a lot of tools, but no methodology to use those tools. So it's like giving me a bunch of hand tools and saying, now go build a house. I'm like, I don't know how to build a house. Um, so I had to go find a teacher, which took me a couple of years, and then I, uh, I eventually started studying with Larry Moss.

And Larry just brought it all together for me, and I stayed with Larry on and off for about 12 years. Um, so not I don't think I, I don't slight the university. I think that's probably true of most university programs that I've seen. I just, I think they can turn out some great people. I think they're great introductions. I think college is a great thing with Music for the World. I don't think it's necessarily the best training for an artist.

[14:37] Ken Davenport: But so your son's an actor.

[14:40] Jason Alexander: Yes. It turns out both of my sons are actors, Ken. My older son has been, this was clear he was gonna do this from the time he was two years old, he was up and performing. My younger one, uh, has, it's been anathema to him forever. I mean, this is a kid who at four years old, we were trying to make him feel better about something, and we were singing him a song, and at four years old he went, "Please don't make my life a musical." You know, he was that kid. But he's actually making a career as a voice actor now, doing, uh, commercials and animation stuff.

[15:11] Ken Davenport: So what is your advice to them as they look to study and learn the craft now if universities aren't the best?

[15:19] Jason Alexander: Well, if you, I, I, if you have children yourself, you will know that my advice as a father is meaningless. Um, what I said to my older son, because he wanted to be a theater major very much. I said, if you're gonna do that, may I suggest to you that you don't go to a conservatory program. So a program like Boston University or NYU or Carnegie Mellon or some of the top university theater schools. I said, you're gonna be studying walking and talking 24 hours a day. You're not gonna have much of any other requirements. And if you're gonna do that kind of training, I'd rather you, I'll pay for it. I'd rather you find a great teacher that you love and study for as long as you want to study. You don't need to go to college for that.

But if you're gonna go to college as a theater major, get, get an education. Get a real education. And bless his heart, he, he, uh, wound up at Yale, and he was a Yale theater, uh, major, undergrad, and got a great education. And his theater education was more academic than he wasn't taking a lot of acting classes, but he was taking a lot of playwriting classes and composition. He had Janine Tesori teaching him composition for musicals. He had, um, oh gosh, I can't remember his playwriting teacher was somebody wonderful too. His name just skips, uh, skips my mind. But, um, but he got a great education, and now out of school, he's been studying and, and you know, trying to figure it all out. But he, um, he's an interesting kid in that he looks, he's so fortunate, he looks like my wife.

Um, so when people see him and they go, "Well, you, I'm his dad," they go, "No." Yeah, yeah. Um, but he's a, he's a leading man. He's kind of like a, uh, a Chris Pine-like leading man. But his sense of humor is my sense of humor. So he likes these broad charactery roles that he's so not ripe for. Um, like his dream role as a kid was Barfay in Spelling Bee. Dude, you are, you are creating a lot of character to make that happen. Um, but he gravitated to sketch and improv at school, and he's really good at it. So he's writing, and he, you know, he's, he's set up, he's got a good manager, he's got a good agent, and, uh, as anyone will tell you, this is a, just is what it is. It's not a great time to be a young white guy in our business.

But this is, we have finally gotten to the place where diversity and having a diverse presentation, uh, will for now give you a little bit of a leg up. So he's, he's fighting sort of the, he's, he's on the tail end of what used to be, "I'm a young white guy," that used to be you check, and now it's, uh, it, it's actually probably closing a few opportunities for him. But it's fine, he'll, he'll figure it out.

[18:14] Ken Davenport: So you get Merrily out of an open call. Uh, you must have been pretty thrilled, I would imagine, to make your Broadway debut.

[18:21] Jason Alexander: I was, uh, yeah. I mean, I talk about it on, in my Symphony show, I talk about it. You go, so it's one thing to fantasize about, one day I'll get to Broadway. To get there at 20 is mind-blowing. To get there at 20 with Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim is, there's no, you just pinch yourself everything and go, how is this happening? This is, I must be in a dream, and I will wake up and, uh, get back to reality. It was, it was surreal. But it was obviously, uh, a bit of a troubled process. It was a challenging musical to put together, and it certainly didn't have the run that, never had the run. No. Any of the productions that anyone, uh, always hopes for it. So how is that to go from such a high to such, uh, low?

[19:11] Jason Alexander: Well, at the time it was devastating. Um, because your fantasies have run amok. Lonnie Price did such a great job in, in the documentary about capturing what everybody's, the dream world that, uh, everybody was in, uh, about how not only had you arrived, but it was the, it was the launching pad to, to a whole different set of dreams, and then to see it kind of crash and burn was devastating. However, in retrospect, it was one of the greatest preparations for anybody for what life in this business is actually about, uh, on so many levels. It was, you're working with gods. Well, to see that the gods are also mortal was a huge lesson. To understand that without rhyme, reason, or merit, you are at the top of the heap one day, and through no fault of your own, you're out of a job with no real advantage towards getting your next job. So, you know, it, it was a fantastic lesson about the constant humility and vagaries of, of a real life in our business.

[20:33] Ken Davenport: Do you remember what you did the day after it closed?

[20:37] Jason Alexander: Uh, uh, yeah, we made the album.

[20:40] Ken Davenport: That must have been a little long.

[20:41] Jason Alexander: We made the album the day after we closed on Broadway, which is why I think it's such a good album. There were so many emotions, you know, running all through that thing. Uh, and then you go on to do how long before the next Broadway show for you?

[20:54] Jason Alexander: The next Broadway show was, uh, two and a half years or three years. I d, uh, I had a slow period after Merrily closed. I was just doing commercials, I couldn't really grab anything else here in town. And then about a year after Merrily closed, I was in the first replacement cast of Forbidden Broadway when it was still at Paulson's Supper Club on 72nd.

[21:19] Ken Davenport: I hope so. Because there's nothing else there if you're not.

[21:25] Jason Alexander: Yeah, I, I actually took over the track that Gerard played in the show. So, and I did that for the better part of a year. And then out of that, The Rink came around.

[21:36] Ken Davenport: So then you grabbed the Tony for Jerome Robbins'' Broadway. And that's about when Seinfeld started gearing up, like right after that.

[21:44] Jason Alexander: It was, uh, uh, it was just like a storm of opportunities. It was the Tony to Pretty Woman to Seinfeld, all within nine months, ten months. Anything you can point to besides obviously the Tony and the attention that that must have gotten you, but anything else that also?

[22:02] Jason Alexander: It was a giant Rob Reiner connection. Rob had come to, well, I'll go back. Norman Lear had been a silent investor in The Rink. And when I was doing The Rink, I got a call from out of the blue. I didn't know Norman Lear was a silent investor in The Rink. Um, we got, my, my people got a call from Norman Lear's office that said he would like me to be one of the lead roles in a pilot that he was doing. But I couldn't get out of The Rink to do it. They wouldn't let me out. So shortly after The Rink closed, Norman, um, called and invited me to come out to do one episode of a half-hour sitcom called ER. But it's not, it's not the other ER. It was, uh, Elliot Gould, Mary McDonnell, and a very young George Clooney, who actually was in that show.

And I went out to do one episode and wound up staying to do nine. So Norman Lear had the relationship to Rob Reiner, so I became sort of, I guess, known in that world. Rob came to see, um, the Robin show. I didn't know that necessarily. But then the next thing I knew, I was auditioning for Gary Marshall for Pretty Woman. And I think Rob must have said to Penny, who said to Gary, "I just saw a guy he might be good." Uh, and then I eventually wound up with Pretty Woman, and then Rob's company, Castle Rock, was trying to cast George. Um, I got asked to get put on tape here in New York. So I guess I, I think it's all the Rob Reiner connection. Somehow, some way, Norman Lear to Rob Reiner too. But going all the way back to The Rink. That's the interesting part.

[23:51] Ken Davenport: Yeah. Which was another show that didn't really quite have the run.

[23:54] Jason Alexander: No, and it was actually the only time I ever got fooled on an opening night. I, well, I really thought, and I think all of us in that show really thought we had a gigantic hit on our hands. And we were completely not ready for the opening night response from the critics.

[24:11] Ken Davenport: When you're, and whether it's a movie, a television show, or do you think now, a couple decades later, you can tell whether a show is gonna work or not?

[24:22] Jason Alexander: Nope. Nothing. I, I mean, I always think I can, but I'm, uh, uh, I'm almost always surprised.

[24:29] Ken Davenport: Did you know, did the group of you know about what you were doing with Seinfeld where you'd be like, "Oh, this is, this is special. This is gonna be something."

[24:35] Jason Alexander: I knew it was special, and that's why I thought initially that it wouldn't work. Um, I remember saying to Jerry, uh, it's not the first time I'm saying this, but I'm happy to repeat it. We did the pilot, and Jerry said, "What do you think? What do you think?" Never got a shot? I went, "I don't think so." And he said, "You don't think it's good?" I said, "No, I, I think it's good. That's the problem." The show was designed really in some ways to entertain guys like me. Guys 18 to 35, you know, with some sort of urban sensibility. Excuse me, that's who the show was kind of playing to. But that demographic didn't watch TV. So I went, when we shot the pilot of Seinfeld, I think the number one comedy in America was Alf.

Very different audience. And I thought, yeah, this is, this is for me, and I don't watch TV, so I don't know who's gonna watch this though. And to a degree, I was right. Um, because it only tested well with, with that demographic. That was why we were able to get sponsored in those early episodes, because advertisers wanted to get to that demographic, and there weren't a lot of shows to get to them. So even though we were a tiny little blip on the radar, the audience we were getting was the one that they wanted to talk to, so they would dump some money into our show. And, uh, and then that audience built out from there. But initially, no, I didn't think we were. I, I think we were, uh, anybody that charts the history of Seinfeld will tell you that after the third season, we were probably set. But I, I think in season five or six, we were sitting around going, "I guess this is working, huh?" You know, we weren't quite, quite sure even in season five if we were really all that so.

[26:28] Jason Alexander: I want to talk a little bit about the development of plays and musicals. You've been a part of a lot of original the rank early, obviously, and then original television or movies. What's something that here in the theater we can learn from the way Hollywood develops material?

[26:45] Jason Alexander: Oh if there's anything, yeah, I actually think I mean from my vantage point that I've been able to see, um, uh the theater actually does it more right than Hollywood does. Because more often than not, in film and television, at least the bigger things. Let me let me do it the other way. Theater tends to come from a playwright or a playwright and a composing team that have a singular vision for what they want to do. And they bring on a director that's in sync with that vision and augments that vision, and then all of them go and pursue that vision and you know, either do a workshop and they get investors and producers that go, I see where you're going, I like where you're going, let's go there.

There are shows that go through the mill where there's suddenly you got a producing conglomeration and everybody's got an idea and everyone's got a voice, and everybody's a cook in the kitchen. And a lot of times those shows sort of lose that guiding light inspiration that they had. But more often than that, I find that a strong creative vision, which starts with a very small number of people, tends to be what everybody signs up to, and that vision carries the day, and it either works or it doesn't work. But in film and television, you may have somebody go, um, we're gonna do the story of the Titanic, and everybody goes, Yes, the Titanic, we're doing the Titanic. And then some guy in the production office will go, does it have to be the Titanic?

I mean, maybe it's not literally the Titanic, and before you know it, it's an airplane, and then it's something, and there's like so much process, there's so many stops along the way to say no because, and it's and I'm sure you know better than I do, this is something that is beginning, if it hasn't already completely infected the theater. There's so many financial considerations now.

[28:50] Jason Alexander: In Hollywood, it never stops. How much money to make the film? What are the stars actually worth? What is the script actually worth? What is the release date? Who's the advertising? Do we go the festival route? Do we go the big release? Do we do the small release? Do we do an online campaign? Do we do it? How do we sell it? Do we did but you know, should we cross genre? Do we promote the lead actor in supporting role? Or do we support the supporting role in the liberal? There's so much horseshit that goes on about politics and business considerations that have nothing to do with the initial thing that everybody got excited about creatively. And the business tends to drive the creative rather than the creative driving the business.

And it opens the door to a lot of people who, if you're gonna go that way, should have a say. I mean, if it's gonna be done as a business, then the business people should be able to say, Don't do that. It may be right for the story, but it's not gonna be right for the theater. Um my experience was while I was really working here more often than not, that the creative vision and the creative fire drove the business people. It lit it was the torch that the business people carried above them as opposed to the inverse of that. Um I think the theater tends to get it all right. Is there anything that the theater can learn from Hollywood?

[30:16] Jason Alexander: Uh I'm you know, I'm sure there is. Um I will say this. When you take um a look at companies like Pixar and the great animated films that we're doing, and when you take a look, I I just I happen to know one of the producers on the Avatar, one of Jim Cameron's producers, and so what those guys will do is they have a sort of creative heart to it all, but they will continue to bring in different collaborators and different until you've got a team of creative people, but with one creative vision being pursued. But it sometimes, I mean, what happens here, perforce, is you get a book writer or you get your composition team, or you get your choreographer, you hire your singularly creative departments.

But you know, the a choreographer that can do the ballet number may not be able to do the tap number. And very rarely did they think, well, let's get the ballet choreographer for the ballet and the tap choreographer for the you know, for the tap number. Or let's get the designer that knows how to do the women's costumes. Let's get that person for the women, and let's get the guy who really does men's tailoring for the guys. One guy, you know, one person doesn't always have the expertise to be the best at what you can get. So the idea, perhaps, of not being slavish to the idea that every one person hired in every department is capable of doing everything. There was some show done somewhat recently that used multiple choreographers.

And I thought, well, that actually makes some sense if it's that kind of score or if it's that kind of storytelling. Even to the point of having multiple directors. You know, there I've worked for directors, both on stage and on screen, who do a big chunk of the job great. But there's things that they're less great at. Like they may be great conceptualists, great dramaturgs, maybe even great stagers. They don't know what the hell an actor's doing. They can't help an actor with a performance to save themselves. And vice versa. You get people that are great with performance, but the stage pictures are horrible, or they don't know how to move a set, or they have no sense of design. So there's something about enforced collaboration in the Hollywood model done correctly.

Not where it's a thousand cooks in the kitchen, but where a team is assembled of like-minded creative artists who go, let's come in and collaborate on this rather than this is my department and I'm taking the ball and going this way. That might be something that as the especially in the musical world here, as these things become bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, there could be some value in that, especially on the writing side. It's very hard to write, I think, a fantastic score. Like one person or one team creates an entirely fantastic score, it's really hard to do, especially for the kind of musicals being done there.

[33:35] Jason Alexander: So uh which are smaller and smaller in book and more and more some. So I don't know. A lot of what I'm saying, as I'm saying it, I'm going, this is sacrilege. But it's actually a genius. I mean, for those of if there was a camera in here, my mind literally is exploding and nodding while Jason was talking. But he's the from costume design to yeah, you want specialty or real experts in every specific area. If you're gonna spend this kind of money and you need this kind of, you know, this has become a factory where everything has to be bigger and better than the from than the thing from last season. Well, you know, there's a smaller number of people that we rely on in New York theater to do these shows. And the notion that we can keep going to the well and getting you know different, bigger, better results. It's just it's just hard. It's just hard, you know.

[34:27] Jason Alexander: Now you're directing more enjoying being on the other side.

[34:30] Jason Alexander: Love. Love. I want to be Joe Mantello when I grow up. I want to I want to act about 20% of the time and direct the rest. But uh, I'm not as good as Joe Mantello in either department. So what do you love about it?

[34:44] Ken Davenport: About directing?

[34:45] Jason Alexander: Yeah. Um I think if I were given a broader range of um opportunities as an actor, it would be a wash for me. But uh because of the way my career is sort of played out, people tend to think of me for a narrower selection of roles. And uh, you know, I'm almost 60, so I've been doing those roles for a long time. And sometimes they're great roles in great pieces, and it's a very rewarding experience. Sometimes they're pretty good roles in not so great pieces, and you everybody should be looking to lift the thing they're a part of, but sometimes from an actor's point of view, you can only do so much. And when you are an actor working on something that you know is not quite good enough, it's debilitating to go out there and do it.

But as a director, you can lift from so many different places. You can go back to the writer and say, let's really focus in on what is this story? What's the intent of this story? What are you chasing? And are we actually doing that? Or can we dramaturg this thing to make it stronger? If you're looking for comedy, let's find it. Either let's find it on the page or let's find it on the stage. Um, performances you can help guide. Um design you can help guide. If you're filming, if you're directing with cameras, you're really trying to figure out how do I tell this thing in the in a way that serves my producer, my budget, my audience, my my other collaborators. So it's just so much more engaging on so many different levels that even I find, even if I'm working on a piece of material that isn't all that, that still is a little soft, it's very engaging for me.

I don't ever feel like there's no point in trying to help this thing. I I go, there's lots of points in trying to help this thing. Um and it's just, it just is more exciting. I've been, you know, standing by and watching wonderful people do this job for so long that I kind of went, ooh, yeah, I just want to do that.

[37:03] Jason Alexander: And it's and the other truth is that it like in the theater in particular, it used to be when I was young that I hated to rehearse, couldn't wait to perform because the whole in our little performer soul was waiting for the for the applause. And until you were going to get the applause, you kind of go, what am I doing this for? I just want to be loved. But as I as I became more of a craftsman, um I found that I really what I loved was the rehearsal. All the discovery work was what was so exciting. And then you put it in front of an audience, and that's exciting because you go, I was right, or I was wrong, or I was right, but I can now I can make it even better because you have that learning curve.

But now you get into month three of a run, and I go, well, a lot of the discovery, the really exciting discoveries, kind of over. I've got a blueprint now that I've got to live in. And yes, every night is a different experience, but it is it's not like the first day of rehearsal where you go, we don't know where we're gonna go. Um and directing becomes all about the part I love now, and I I never have to do the part where I go, it's 5:30, I have to go down there on a Thursday night, and it's a one degree outside. I mean, I never hit that wall. I never had it's so interesting. I always used to say that I hated doing long runs because I hated doing the play in a long run. I would get sick of the play, and I realized not true.

But once I got to the theater, it was all good. It was here's my my friends and my company and the audience coming in, and it's going to the theater. It's that, it's that four o'clock, 4:30 in the afternoon when you go, oh God, I got to explode in four hours. I don't want you know, it's just getting your ass down to that theater and getting excited about getting there again. But once you're there, it's it's it the heavy lifting's over.

[39:02] Ken Davenport: Who is the uh your favorite director that you worked for, and what did you learn from that you use now?

[39:08] Jason Alexander: Um in the i i i it really Mantello was a was a big influence on me. I I learned a lot as an actor and a director from from Joe, and I never worked with Joe in the theater. I did his one movie. I did the movie of Love Hour Compassion. But I I really got um one of the things I got was um Joe's not big on schmaltz. He's gonna like schmaltz. He likes honesty, simplicity.

[39:43] Jason Alexander: And there's that big almost aria about how, you know, he talks about how he wants all of musical theater to suddenly be realistic and everybody dies and just treated horribly, but it's all a big tee up to the fact that he's afraid of dying, and he's afraid that because his lover is dying now, that no one will be there for him. And I was working with Steven Spinella in the scene in the film, and I knew it was an aria, and I knew I had to get there. I just had to get there emotionally, and so we get out there, and Joe's great, and he's coaching, and we get, and man, we're doing that. I got one take I love and two takes I love, and three takes I love, and I'm bawling and weeping, and I'm boy, am I a good actor.

And Joe comes over and he, um after a couple of really good takes, and he goes, you know, let's do one more. And in this one, don't worry about the emotion of it. You know, you're not afraid to die, you're not afraid, you just don't want to be alone. So all I want you to pursue for the whole monologue, all I want you to pursue is get Spinella to swear to you in a way that you can accept that he will be there for you when it's your turn to die. And I immediately went, Joe, that's come on. It's like a three-minute, four-minute monologue. I can't play that one thing the whole way. He goes, no, no, no, no, no. It's just, he goes, look, it's a montage. Well, we're gonna use a piece of this, a piece of that.

I got it, I got the, I got the big performance. It's great. It's just a color that maybe I can cut in. So, you know, it's Joe, so I trust him, and I do the monologue, and it and I when I get to the end of the monologue, for the first time in any take, I'm not crying, but Spinella is. And you could feel you could feel what that take was. And Joe comes over with this look on his face, and I go, you're gonna use that take, aren't you? And he goes, You bet your ass. And it's basically that take in the film. But what it taught me was it taught me a couple things that I teach and that I talk about as a director. Actors work a lot on feeling it, feeling it, feeling it. And at the end of the day, I go, if you've made choices the right way, you will have an emotional experience.

You really will. But at the end of the day, I don't care what you feel. I care what you make the audience feel. And if I'm in the audience, I care what you make me feel. I don't care what you feel. You have to be able to do a performance that is so profound and so good that I never miss. You can miss. You could be reciting a laundry list in your head, but if that performance does what it's supposed to do, I should have an experience. At the same time, I now say to students and actors that I direct all the time, yes, make a great choice. Make great choices for yourself. But in the back of your head, make a great choice for your partner. Give them something that they can just go to town on. And in that take of that film, instead of making the great choices that made a performance that I thought was exciting, I was focused on making choices that really gave Steve Spinella the next thing.

And in doing that, I got better. And that is what I find happens is if you are, if you're playing tennis with a great opponent and you serve them a great shot, they're gonna hit back a shot that's really good that you never expected. And if you can hit it back again, you're playing the most exciting tennis in the world. But if you just lobbing it and the guy on the other side can't hit it, nobody wants to watch that game. So that all came from Joe.

[43:39] Ken Davenport: We've had him on this podcast and a terrific artist. What do you how do you think Broadway's doing today versus the Broadway that you came in to see as a 13-year old? What do you think of the state of the state?

[43:51] Jason Alexander: Well, it's interesting. So when I talk about Broadway, people will say it's the best theater in the country. And I now say to them, let me amend that slightly. It is a business. It is big business. It doesn't mean that great things don't happen here. And I get really upset with people that go, oh, it's all been disnified and it's all tripe and it's all and I go, really? Really? You think the incident with the dog and the night is tripe? Go, screw yourself. You know, there are unbelievably great pieces that are done in this town, both on Broadway, off Broadway. New York Theater is still some of the best theater in the world. But on Broadway, I find more and more that there is a formula to get something done that has nothing to do with the piece itself.

It has everything to do with the package. And I find that some really wonderful possibilities for events and pieces that don't lend themselves necessarily to a package go by the wayside. And that didn't used to be true. So there's and again, I don't have an issue with it. It is what the market wants and what the market will bear, and this is not a static market. So very exciting, new avant-garde, crazy pieces get done. It's not like they don't get done. But there's a lot of Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast and Lion King and Anastasia, and sort of the cartoon crossovers. There's a lot of the Pretty Woman and the Mean Girls and the check mark by the movie, so that some audience liked it. Let's just drop some songs in it and see if we can get a similar effect.

You know, and sometimes they reinvent the wheel, even though it wasn't ultimately the most successful show in New York. I thought the reinvention that they did on Groundhog Day in reimagining that piece differently than the movie was really wonderful. You know, for whatever reason, ultimately the entire thing didn't quite work in town. But um but it's the kind of fresh new idea for a big piece that doesn't have a giant theatrical gimmick like a King Kong. It's gonna be hard to get it done. I don't know if you know, if another Next to Normal is easy to get done in town right now. Um it's it's spectacle. In the music world, it's spectacle, and in some of the plays it's spectacle as well. I mean, I loved Harry Potter across the street from your office here.

Um I can't tell you much about the story. I mean, I can tell you every effect and every I I mean I just loved it. I loved it because it's my magic. Yeah, I was gonna say and and I'm a huge John Tiffany fan, so I I was just so happy to be there. But um it's rare for me that uh I think one of the most thrilling things I've seen in the last ten years, and it kind of just blew my mind at what could be done on a stage, was when I saw the London production of Warhorse, and I went, it's actually a very simple story. Yes, the puppets and the puppetry are amazing, but we're looking at three people on each horse. We see them plain as day, and we don't see them. We see the horse. I remember when those two horses came out for their curtain call, and the audience leapt to their feet for the horses, weeping for the horses.

Um that is a different kind of standing ovation than Mama Mia gets. That's a different kind of standing ovation than um, you know, I don't know, I don't I don't want to seem to denigrate anything. But I'm I haven't seen King Kong, but I'm sure it's a different kind, even though it's another puppet, um, it's a different kind of ovation. And it's a different kind of experience. I love the Warhorse experience. I love the Jin game experience. I love uh Curious Incident and Hand of God and um, you know, a great revival of uh Iceman Cometh or you know, Death of a Salesman, or you know, those are the things that's it's harder and harder to do, with the exception of True West, which we seem to do every three years. We just get two more guys that are fascinating for a True West back then.

[48:57] Ken Davenport: That's a good segue to my final question, which is my genie question. I want you to imagine that that genie from one of those Disney shows a lot that comes to visit you and says, Jason, I want to thank you for your commitment to the theater and your dedication to it. I'm gonna grant you one wish. Yep. What's the one thing that drives you crazy about Broadway that frustrates you, that makes you mad that you'd ask this genie to wish away in an instant?

[49:22] Jason Alexander: The relationship between the audience and the and the people that they've come to watch. I remember when I first started coming to the theater, even as a teenager, we used to put on a sport coat to come and stand in the back. Now, I'm not saying I wish we'd go back to the days where people dressed up to go to the theater. I don't mean that. But the cell phones and the I remember when I was doing Broadway Bound at the Broadhurst, the front row was, I mean, the lip of the stage was, you know, in your, it was under your chin. People would put their personal items on the stage. On the stage. And my character was shot out of a cannon on my entrance. And routinely, I would come in as if my mother had left clothing on the floor, grab all those coats, and put them in the onstage closet.

Just to kind of shove it up their nose about how dare you, you know. So the talking, the cell phones, the picture taking, the videoing, the there is I don't understand why people spend the money that they spend to come have an experience in the theater, whether it be in this town or anywhere else, and then do everything they can to not get that experience. As if we are not aware of them up there. Do you know the concentration that it takes and the dedication that it takes to do live performing? You're creating this incredibly delicate illusion, and everything has to go right. If a stage hand messes it up, it's broken. If a musician messes it up, it's broken. If any actor messes it up, it's broken.

It's just broken. So a guy with a flash camera in the audience is gonna break it for everyone around them. It just I don't get it. It almost makes me want to not do live theater. Because I'm not somebody who could stop a performance and go, get that camera! I can't do that because I always have to believe half the audience doesn't know that camera's happening, so I don't want to destroy it for them. But I worry about that relationship. I also worry, here's another part of it. I remember being here a couple of months ago and seeing three pieces of theater that were all 90 minutes long. And every one of those shows ended at a point where I went, well, that's where now I want to see what happens.

You know, it's this notion that we want to get in and out. In and out, 90 minutes, no intermission, let's get in and out. And I go, would you please tell me a story that I'd want to be here for? You don't have to, I don't have it, it doesn't, you don't have to bring it in like a movie. We're I I came to see a different thing and have a different experience. So if I could change that, I'd be happy to do it.

[52:22] Ken Davenport: Well, you heard it here, folks. Jason Alexander, maybe hear more if we behave better as audience.

[52:27] Jason Alexander: It's all about behavior.

[52:29] Ken Davenport: All about behavior. That's the way to get you back here. Uh thank you so much for being part of this pleasure. Thanks to all of you for listening out there, and we will see you next time.