Did Bono show up drunk backstage with supermodels during the meltdown over “Spiderman” when it first opened to dreadful reviews on Broadway?
According to e-mails which are part of an ongoing battle between producer Julie Taymor and “Spiderman” backers who fired her, that was the case.
The emails reported on in The New York Times were written by Glen Berger, the writing partner of former producer Julie Taymor.
The Times reports that Bono’s alleged behavior was the talk of backstage Broadway all weekend after the emails became public in the continuing legal dispute between the two sides. The show has now become a huge hit.
An e-mail written by Mr. Berger alleged that one late-night meeting between him, Bono, and Taymor was canceled because Bono “showed up in our room with Christy Turlington and a couple other supermodels, and he had already had a few beers, rendering him useless.”
The meeting was canceled.
The Times noted that “Bono, a respected humanitarian on issues like AIDS and African debt relief, could be portrayed as a dilettante for whom the Edge, the relatively low-profile guitarist of U2, has to pick up the slack. “
The e-mails also reveal that Taymor begged the U2 pair to become more involved as the show experienced a flood of problems.
“We need you,” Taymor wrote to Bono and the Edge on Dec. 19, 2010, as they were completing a U2 tour in Australia. “It is not easy to change anything, but now I think it is a matter of lyrical and musical changes — and perhaps cutting a scene or two from the second act.”
The e-mails reveal that Taymor’s friends believed she was being unfairly targeted.
“I’ve gone along with this, despite it being what Edge called a ‘schizophrenic’ situation,” Mr. Berger wrote in an e-mail about a new ending. “Please know that anything you need from me — I’m at your service.”
Asked to comment in the Bono allegations the current producers refused , “The producers won’t even dignify them with a response,” they wrote in a statement.
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