Richard Dreyfuss
The Guardian talked to Richard Dreyfuss for the first time after being fired from The Producers .
He was asked why he has yet to speak to the press in any detail about his departure from the musical in October, he said, "Why would you? They're scathing. I go into a level of intimacy and privacy and then it's belied. It's really all just filler. Now that I think of it, this may be the last interview I do. It's my life, and then on Tuesday it's wrapping fish."
Things went bad for Dreyfuss on October 17, 2004 when he appeared on the Frank Skinner Show and warned audiences that the musical wasn't yet ready for public consumption. He said, "The Producers opens November 9. Come from Christmas on. Do not come before that, OK?"
On October 18, just four days before previews were set to begin, the show's producers issued a statement explaining that it had proved difficult for Dreyfuss "to fulfil the rigours of the role", and that he would be replaced. It was "with regret that both parties have had to make this decision," the statement said. He was replaced by Nathan Lane.
Susan Stroman, the show's director and choreographer, told journalists that Dreyfuss wasn't physically up to the job, and that he had a herniated disc and a bum knee. But Dreyfuss himself refused to talk to the British press.
The Guardian asked him about his experience in The Producers .
"When Mel first asked me 'Do you want to do this?', I said, 'You know I can't sing or dance, don't you?' But Mel kept encouraging me. And I said I'd do London."
Mel Brooks has told Playbill magazine that he always had Dreyfuss in mind for Bialystock, calling the actor a "brilliant artist" and a "nervous wreck". But Dreyfuss soon discovered that doing a musical was like "ascending to the pearly gates and being banished to the hellfires at the same time."
As he put it: "You die and go to hell and God says, 'You schmuck. You thought you'd made it. No way! You get to do a Broadway musical.' So you're dancing, moving, dancing, moving, 1,000 people doing 1,000 things. It's exhausting.
"Or you die and go to heaven and God says, 'You did it right. You get to do a Broadway musical. Butts and thighs, butts and thighs, butts and thighs, 1,000 people riding in and out and there's a sea of eternal beauty. Yow! Heaven.'"
"They decided my body couldn't do it much earlier than I did," he said. "At a very late date, I wondered too if my body couldn't do it. Really, my body divorced itself from me in July."
Dreyfuss said, "Susan Stroman would tell actors, mid-air, 'Stop. And while you're up there, pretend you're a peacock, and flush a toilet while you are at it."
Dreyfuss is not willing to write off his experience in The Producers as a mistake he should never have made. "You know, I would have won every award in Britain."
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