As much as I liked Fred Ebb's work and his second class work was better than most of the contemporary work being shown in the theater today.
I lost respect for Mr. Ebb as a lyricist, a man of the theater and as a gay person when he voiced his opnion about Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman kissing on the Tony Award awards after winning for best score for Hairspray. Instead of criticizing he should have celebrated that Shaiman and Whitman were able to do when Ebb could never have done it even in 1992 when he wrote a gay themed musical Kiss of the Spiderwoman and won a Tony Award for it.
He said
"I thought they made spectacle of themselves, frankly. I thought it was dumb. "
Fred Ebb -- one half of the famed Broadway musical team Kander and Ebb -- is grousing about the big smooch that songwriting team (and lifelong partners) Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman planted on each other on national television after they won a Tony for Hairspray.
I thought they made spectacle of themselves, frankly. I thought it was dumb. " Ebb complained to interviewer Randy Shulman. "Your bedroom is not the screen, " he says. "And it is also not the stage. Say ‘Thank you’ to the people who helped you get where you are, ‘thank you’ to the source material, ‘thank you’ to the players and sit down. " Nobody has any right to intrude his private life on a mass audience, " he grumbles. "It is intrusive. "
Instead, Ebb asserts, any statement that he and Kander wish to make about homosexuality has been made through their songs. But then Ebb takes a sudden turn and brings up his Kiss of the Spider Woman, a musical that dealt very directly with a love between men.
"That’s how you make a statement, " he says. "That’s how you raise a flag. Through your art. I don’t have to do it through my mouth in front of millions of people and make myself look like an idiot.
Ebb should have complained when hetrosexual couples kissed on screen.
PS John Kander also refuses to talk his sexuality.
