Kelly Osbourne / Wireimage
Barry Weissler Exclusive:
Day 12
By Barry Weissler, The Opinions of People
Wed Jan 30, 2008
Kelly Osbourne has a great sense of humor. So do I. I can be insulted in the papers and laugh about it. She transformed herself into one very sexy Mama Morton for her role in Chicago. After the photos came out, it seemed every website had another opinion about how much digital manipulation there was in those images to shrink her waist or slim her face. Yes, she looked that good. And she took this disbelief with good humor.
There will never be a shortage of opinions in the world, and everyone is entitled to theirs. And when an activity or creation gets large enough, it naturally attracts all kinds of reactions. If there is no variety among the reactions, then the project was not big enough or was not received by a wide audience. A project is big enough when it pleases some and offends others.
I am used to reading all kinds of things written about me. Sometimes, I feel as if the reviewer really gets what I do, and other times I am misunderstood and the entire trajectory of my decision making process is missed.
But very often, a critic’s reviews will reveal more about the critic then it does about me. One of my all time favorite reviewers is Ben Brantley, for the New York Times. He can give my shows or casting great reviews or poor ones but underneath it, he seems to live in a state of perpetual surprise and shock at what he calls my “bottomless brazenness”.
I see this average bespectacled man lurking in the corners of lobbies of the shows he reviews. He spends his life in the stands, judging those on the court. He is very intelligent and has a reverence for theater that almost seems out of place. It as if theater was something so pure that even an audience could defile it by laughing and crying at the wrong times or witnessing it in the wrong way.
Not too long ago, he wrote about seeing that ad campaign for Chicago on the London underground. It was the one with Kelly Osbourne looking amazing. Somehow he took offense at the idea of Kelly Osbourne playing Mama Morton and then first thing he arrives in New York, he has something to say about my old productions of Grease. I feel like he must travel around the world thinking about me. Its strangely flattering to have someone so invested in your work that they comment on everything you do.
In show business the worst thing that can happen to you is that you are forgotten. Ben Brantley single handedly ensures that America never ever forgets me. And for this, I thank him. Besides, there are worse things to be derided for than brazenness.
Until tomorrow…
Broadway producers Barry & Fran Weissler are the recipients of five Tony Awards®. Their numerous Broadway credits include acclaimed productions Othello with James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer, My One and Only with Tommy Tune, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Kathleen Turner and Charles Durning, Gypsy with Tyne Daly, and the Tony Award-winning productions of Falsettos and Annie Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters and Reba McEntire, among others. They are currently represented on Broadway – and across the globe -- with the international smash hit Chicago, which earned six 1997 Tony Awards® including Best Musical Revival, as well as countless other awards in the U.S. and abroad.