Jeffrey Seller

It was a genuinely contemporary musical with a sort of contemporary score.

And that I knew right then and there, that's what I love.

You had the four mega musicals from England.

You had Cats, Les Mis, Phantom, and Saigon.

And basically, that's it.

Like we were not making musicals during the 80s and the 90s on Broadway.

I'll give you an example.

Terry, in 1995, the year before Rent, there were only two musicals nominated for Best Musical.

One was Sunset Boulevard, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, and one was a show called Smokey Joe's Cafe that was a review of songs by Lieber and Stoller.

So Sunset Boulevard actually won Best Score and Best Book by default.

Two musicals.

And that's where the industry was in the late 80s into the 90s.

I think one big reason was AIDS.

Look at the number of artists we lost, Howard Ashman, Michael Bennett, and look at the artists we lost that we don't even know.

And I think it was also about economics.

And for some reason, Broadway was having a hard time attracting investment dollars in the 80s into the 90s.

Yes, it actually is true.

Oh, my gosh.

I couldn't raise the money.

You know, in many ways, when we were working on that show, he had told me that he had shared it with Sondheim once.