When entertainment industry mogul David Geffen decided he didn't
have the time to produce the stage version of Mel Brooks's musical
comedy, The Producers, Brooks staged a reading to see if
there was anyone else interested in the show.
There was.
"Everybody wanted to produce the show," said Rick
Steiner, '70. "Wouldn't you want someone to do a romanticized,
funny version of your life story? I mean, that's what we all dreamed
about when we began - 'I wanna be a producer and wear a tux on
opening night. I wanna be a producer and see my name in neon lights.'"
Producers, like Steiner, act as a show's board of directors.
Usually, they initiate a project and hire the creative talent,
as well as handle the budget and other management tasks. But Mel
Brooks's project was partly finished, so Brooks was auditioning
producers to negotiate contracts, manage the day-to-day details,
and raise money.
He also was looking for a theater, which gave Steiner an edge
over the competition—his business partner and childhood friend
Rocco Landesman is president of the Jujamcyn theater chain that
includes Broadway's prestigious St. James. Landesman approached
Brooks during the reading's intermission and offered him
the theater. Not long after, Steiner and Landesman were cast as
one of the show's eight producing entities that raised a
total of $10.5 million.
Now, of course, The Producers is the largest Broadway
hit in history, with 12 Tony Awards, $38 million in advance ticket
sales, and a weekly gross of $1.1 million. This is astronomical,
given that a show is considered successful if—as Steiner
put it—it recoups "the investment plus one dollar."
Even then, 80 percent of Broadway productions flop.
Because of the dismal rate of return, Steiner—who has a
talent for raising money—recruits investors who enjoy the
prestige factor. "This is a fun investment for folks with
a lot of money," he said. "This is not money you need
in order to eat. You don't measure your return as, OK, I made
32.6 percent this year. This is the kind of investment you talk
about at cocktail parties."
But The Producers blew away that conventional wisdom.
"We've started to use business school terms that we don't
normally associate with theater, like inventory. What is our ticket
inventory? We have this great problem, which is that we have limited
capacity—1,720 folks a night—and unlimited demand. Even
though we raised ticket prices to $100 after opening, we've had
to cut back our advertising and marketing. It still just sort
of rolls to us," Steiner said.
The black market price for tickets, he added, is $600 a pop.
Though he is also a successful venture capitalist and world-champion
poker player, theater is in Steiner's blood. His grandmother was
an actress in a George M. Cohan show; his mother's closest childhood
friend was composer and lyricist Frank Loesser. Steiner himself
did summer stock as a child and grew up listening to show tunes
from Guys and Dolls and South Pacific. He peppers
his conversations with snatches of dialogue and lyrics from Broadway
past and present.
Steiner's producing career started almost 20 years ago, when
he and Landesman tried to convince country music singer Roger
Miller—best known for "King of the Road"—to
compose a musical based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. Miller was convinced and Big River won seven
Tonys in 1985, including best musical.
"I lost 20 pounds before the Tonys that first year, I was
so worried. I didn't even realize then how much was riding on
them. If we hadn't won, we would have closed, and Roc and I would
have been out of the business. We were lucky. We were good, plus
we caught a weak field. And we got launched," Steiner said.
Steiner and Landesman followed that success with Stephen Sondheim's
Into the Woods, their only show that has not yet fully
returned its investment; The Secret Garden, based on the
classic children's book; and Broadway's longest-running musical
revue, Smokey Joe's Café.
Steiner currently is working on a musical based on the western
Shane, but he knows that he never will repeat the success
of The Producers. "We're very blessed. This show is a phenomenon,
and it will never happen to us again in our lifetimes," Steiner
said. "The idea is to stay at the top with this thing, but we'll
never top it. Ever."
—Jennifer Vanasco
