neil simon at the neil simon
the playwright's the thing II

On June 26, 2000 there was a special tribute to Neil Simon at the Neil Simon Theatre in New York City. The event was to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Actors performed selected scenes from his plays. Kevin was not there but he was one of the actors who contributed to the Playbill for that night's show, a message or story about working with Neil Simon. Most actors had a small paragraph, a few short sentences. But not our Kevin... Here's what he had to say:

Original thoughts: 

"Louie" Lost In Yonkers

I first met Neil Simon in 1990 in the back rehearsal room of New York's Dramatist Play Services. I was there as one of many actors auditioning for Neil and director Gene Saks for the Broadway production of Lost in Yonkers. Nervous and fretful to audition for such a revered playwright, I cracked open the rehearsal room door so I could watch the actor auditioning before me. I saw that Neil was sitting there at a table. He wasn't smiling. I auditioned next and looked up after what I of course thought was a triumphant reading. Neil still wasn't smiling.

Somehow, I was miraculously cast as Uncle Louie and soon began the process of developing the character with Neil, which to this day remains one of my most challenging and joyful professional experiences. We opened in Washington, D.C., on the night that George Bush attacked Kuwait. I will never forget the sight of Neil wringing his hands backstage, muttering to himself that he could already see the headline of the review in tomorrow's paper: "BAGHDAD WASN'T THE ONLY PLACE BOMBS WERE FALLING LAST NIGHT." 

To say opening nights for Neil are nerve-wracking would be a gross understatement, and anyone who has experienced one with him knows this all too well. When Neil left D.C. to gain some distance from the play, I began a ritual of calling him every other day to ask him if it would be okay to make slight adjustments to a scene here, a line there. I did this in such a calculatedly slow and gradual manner that not until the first preview in New York did Neil realize that I had successfully cut 15 lines of his dialogue from ACT I. I cannot begin to describe the torrent of expletives Neil leveled in my direction backstage. I calmly told him I would be happy to discuss the changes, but for the moment I had to go perform ACT II. 

We later had a great discussion about the credibility of the character and that my intention was to make him less jokey but not damage his basic persona as a fast-talking, vaudevillian-like gangster. Neil, God bless him, ultimately embraced those changes. On opening night, I received two things from Neil that I will forever cherish: a stunningly beautiful letter from this stunningly gifted playwright and the original, handwritten page of a scene between Uncle Louie and his Ma. It had Moxie written all over it. Oh, I also got one other thing from Neil that night which I will never forget. He was smiling! - Kevin Spacey

Driving Mr. Spacey!: The positively untrue life and times of Kevin Spacey,
with a few real facts thrown in for fun.

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