The musical “Million Dollar Quartet” opens at the Nederlander April 11. Following the new trend, it runs an hour-thirty, no intermission.
Meantime its star Hunter Foster is hoarse. On the usual tea/honey/lemon/antibiotic routine. “Eight shows a week is tough,” he said. “You can’t go out, can’t stay out late at night until 3 a.m. It’s exercise, sleep. It’s a physical workout like for an athlete.”
I told him I knew of stars who wouldn’t speak the day of performance. When Antonio Banderas was on Broadway, he didn’t even take phone calls.”
“Patti LuPone did that, too.”
OK, so what’s this show about?
“It takes place basically over a one-night recording thing in 1956. In Memphis. At this Sun Records recording studio. Sam Phillips, my character, is the host who operated the record session. He’s the man who discovered Elvis. Elvis recorded his first song there. Understand, this goes back before anybody was anybody.
“He’s the one who got Elvis into rock ‘n’ roll. He ended up being, really, the father of rock ‘n’ roll. There’s a direct link from him to The Beatles.
“So this night he collected pals he knew together, and it was basically just a jam get-together. But the names were Jerry Lee Lewis, who was then just a studio musician, Johnny Cash, who then was toying with an offer to go with the Columbia Record Co., Carl Perkins and a very shy Elvis.
“He discovered all these guys. So this night they just hung out. And drank all night. Sam Phillips recorded the whole night. Through daybreak. He loved these guys. He cared for them. He wasn’t trying to make money off them. What Sam wanted was to find white singers who could do black. Basically, what transpired that night we embellished in this script.”
OK, back to the present. How come your parents named your sister Sutton and you Hunter?
“Oh, who knows? Our mother knew some boy who had one of these names. We could have been Gloria and David. I wish we had. You know what it’s like to be picked on in school with these odd names? I’d sure have been happier as David or Michael.”
While he has problems with his name, I have problems with another name. He was in something called “Urinetown.” I hated that title. Not that I didn’t really like it. I hated it.
“Yeah, I know. We had lots of discussion about it. I thought it would hurt us. We finally came to the reasoning that the name made it stand out.”
I definitely repeated I hated the name “Urinetown.” I also definitely wished him luck with “Million Dollar Quartet.”
HAVING been home a bit last week, I watched morning television. Dear God, please, can there be no break from the insipid giggling happy-talk cooking segments in which the smiles are so wide it looks like their throat’s been cut?
With everyone clustered around saying, “Mmm, good.” I don’t expect the hosts to tell some celebrity chef, “This is lousy” but, maybe, “A pinch more salt?” Or, “I tell you the truth, I’d really rather have some PB&J.” These puerile segments are not alternate days or every other week. These super-stupid pieces, where the hosts look so diminished, are daily and embarrassing.
Or it’s some wildly excited-to-be-there twinky from some publication with a voice so high and thin only dogs can hear it. Her vocabulary stretches to two words, “amazing” and “exactly.” The host: “You’re bringing trends for the spring.” “Exactly.” “And you’ll show them to us now.” “Exactly.” I specifically remember one last week. I won’t mention the magazine because I am a kindly person. In her maybe three minutes, this little girl — and you just know she phoned her mom, boyfriend, high school music teacher to watch — used the word “amazing” 10 times. Might’ve been more because I didn’t begin counting until the repetition caught my ear. And nothing, zero, about what she showed was amazing.
Why not some stab at intelligence? Like a segment on Rwanda’s poorest-of-the-poor women who’ve learned to make bracelets to wrench themselves out of poverty. What is it with the dumbing down of this magnificent medium, television?
Is there nobody out there to listen to us? Help, somebody, please.
SO what becomes a legend most? If you’re Snooki, Mike The Situation and Pauly D, a k a “The Jersey Shore” beauts, it’s off this week for a season of shooting in Palm Beach. No, they’re going to stay in water-soaked, trees-downed, power-off Jersey, right? . . . Jeff Bridges not only smelling of success but of Nautica Oceans fragrance. He was spotted shpritzing himself recently . . . CNN adding a nightly talk show for Anderson Cooper?? Eclectic-type guests? It’s what I’m hearing.
‘YEAH, you do need a vacation. You’re starting to look like your passport picture.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.