Michael Cohl, the producer of my favorite show of all time — “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” — told me the real reason the musical is closing in January:
“We tried to get on the Web site for Obamacare, but we couldn’t. We don’t have injury insurance, so we have to close the show.”
You can’t say the man doesn’t have a sense of humor. In fact, throughout the entire “Spider-Man” saga — cast injuries, cost overruns, backstage intrigue, brutal reviews, lawsuits — Cohl kept a level head, and found the joke where he could.
He took over the beleaguered show in 2010 at the behest of his close friend Bono, who wrote the score. “Spider-Man” had run out of money, and Bono begged Cohl, a billionaire rock concert promoter, to come aboard and salvage his sinking ship.
The first time Cohl appeared at a “Spider-Man” meeting, one of my sources called with this description: “He’s got a bushy beard, and he’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He looks like a billionaire homeless person.”
I wrote that in a column, and Cohl invited me for a drink at Bar Centrale. He greeted me with a tin cup in hand. A cardboard sign dangled from his neck. It read: “Will produce for a quarter.”
He gave me the sign, which I still have.
“I’d like it back,” he said yesterday. “I need it.”
“Spider-Man,” which closes Jan. 4, will have lost more money than any show in Broadway history. I put the figure at $85 million, but Cohl said my calculations were off.
In the end, the cost of the show was less than $70 million, he says, adding, “I always said that when we close, you’ll predict $100 million!”
Cohl plans to set up a production in Las Vegas, and says there are offers from Russia, Germany and Japan.
He expects the show to be profitable in the long run.
Well, I suppose if by “long run” he means the next transit of Venus in 2117.
“Hey, I’m making a prediction here!” he jokes. He says each new production will cost a third of the Broadway version. “I guess we’ll call the money we spent in New York ‘research and development.’ ”
Was it worth all the grief?
“It’s a tough question. When I started out, I was an average — well, less than average — producer. But I’ve learned the hard way. And I think we’ve established a really good brand that will be even better the second, the third, the fourth time out.”
I wondered if he’d ever succumbed to the pressure, if he had ever wanted to bail on the whole thing.
“I’ve been a rink rat” — showbiz patois for someone who hangs around arenas — “for most of my life, so I’m more used to this stuff than most people. I try [to] remain calm, especially when the storm gets worse. But there were some really depressing moments. The lead-up to the whole thing with Julie sucked.”
“Julie” is, of course, Julie Taymor, the show’s original director. Cohl fired her, and they wound up in a nasty legal dispute.
Have you spoken to her since? I asked.
“We spoke a day or two after the suits were settled, when the air was completely clear,” he says. “Well, not completely clear, but clearing. I think we both learned a lot. I got into this with her in the first place. It went off the rails, but I still respect her.”
Would he work with her again?
“Never say never,” says a man who’s learned his way ’round the track.