Robbie Rozelle: Welcome to Fynsworth Alley's Stage Door, Bob.

Bob Ost: Thank you very much.

RR: Tell me a little bit about your background, where you're from...

BO: I'm originally from Philadelphia, if you want to go back that far.

RR: When did you first come to NY?

BO: I moved here when I was 25. Actually, the move was influenced by being accepted into the Edward Albee Foundation. It was kind of a transition for me. I had come to New York and I was trying to establish myself already, and I had submitted some plays to a producer named Richard Barr, who was at that time the president of the League of Broadway Producers and Theatre Managers, and was the man responsible for discovering Edward Albee and a producer of Sweeney Todd. I was being totally ignored by everybody I was submitting to, but I got a call from Richard's office. His assistant, Bill Martin, called me and said that Mr. Barr wanted me to know he was very interested in my work, even though he couldn't contact me personally because he was too busy with pre-production of "Seascape" by Edward Albee. Once "Seascape" opened, Richard called me in and expressed enthusiasm for me as a playwright. He didn't know me as songwriter... at that point I didn't think of myself as a songwriter. He asked if I would like to meet Edward Albee, and I said, "YEAH!" He walked me next door to Edward's office, and we walked in. I was a mass of quivering jell-o. I just was a mess. Richard just left me there, and I was a mess. I stood there like an idiot and I finally said, "I can't believe I'm actually standing here talking to you." And Edward Albee took his characteristic dramatic deep breath and responded, "Well, Bob... why shouldn't two playwrights talk to each other?" I never said a coherent word to him for at least the first two or three years I knew him. But I was invited to be part of his foundation, which influenced my final move from Philadelphia to New York.

RR: Did you study theatre or song-writing in college?

BO: Well, I went to the University of Pennsylvania, which didn't have much of a theatre program at all. But I was very involved in what was there. Actually, I wrote my first play when I was 14. I was in high school. . .Central High School, an all boys school ... and it was called "Everybody's Crazy Except The Man In The Blue Velvet Dress." I brought it to my drama teacher in high school, and he produced it for the whole school. I was sort of a celebrity in school because my play had been produced, and everybody had to come and see my play and discuss it in their English classes.

RR: When did you start writing music?

BO: I loved the piano from the time I was six, seven years old. My First instrument was actually violin. My parents had already bought me a violin, so they weren't about to buy me a piano. So I used to go to a neighbor's house all the time. They had a piano, and I used to sit down at it and say, "Ok, which is middle C?" And they'd point to middle C, and I'd look at the music and I'd say "Which one is that note?" They'd show me the note, and I'd count up or down from middle C and put my fingers where they were supposed to be. So I taught myself how to play the piano. My mother and father were invited over to hear me play Brahms' Waltz in A-Flat Minor. They were stunned, and said, "Ok, you can have piano lessons and we'll buy you a piano." It was sort of weird. I was a weird kid, though. I was a very, very persistent kid. My talent was music, my talent was piano, my talent was persistence. That is true to this day. The fact that I haven't given up by now is a bloody miracle. Music writing came about because I had a piano teacher in Philadelphia named Louis Kazze. I liked to write little ditties on the piano, and I'd play them for him. He was very excited, and he taught me how to write them down, and he encouraged me as a writer. But I never thought of music as my field. I always felt that it was a forbidden area, that I was trespassing. Something that those other special people could do. I went to the University of Pennsylvania, and I brought a bunch of my compositions to the head of the music department there, and he said, "Don't write another note until you know what you're doing." I took that as criticism, but I did take a theory course. I took a harmony and a counterpoint course ... breezed through counterpoint, but found harmony a bitch . I finally went back to writing music years later because I was writing lyrics and wasn't always finding people to set them, so I started setting my own stuff. It's the same story of most people who write lyrics and set their own stuff.

RR: Ok, so you're 25 years old, and you've just moved to NY. Let's go from there.

BO: Like I said, it's been persistence. I wrote a play called "The Necessary Disposal." That was the play I brought with me to the Edward Albee Foundation. Richard liked my work based on "Everybody's Crazy Except The Man In The Blue Velvet Dress" and "Beast." When I was a senior in college, I directed a production of "Beast" at the University of Pennsylvania. My teacher was very unsupportive of me, and was constantly berating me for directing my own plays. She wanted me to be a director, actually... she didn't want me to be a writer. And I wasn't interested in directing. So we had constant fights about that. I had lost faith in my piece. I had a friend Karen who was at Columbia, and she came in for Thanksgiving. I told her about my angst about my teacher and this play. She said, "Well, let me see it." So she read it, and at the end she said, "Don't change a word!" She was my greatest source of support. She took the play to New York, and it wound up being produced at the first season of Playwright's Horizons, by Bob Moss. Starring Karen! So that was my first New York production. I was on a double bill with a play called "The Brothel," by Mario Fratti, who was one of the writers of "Nine." Richard Barr said I was the most exciting playwright he'd come across since Edward Albee. That's his quote, not mine, but I've often said it. My karma has been that, I always get there too late. With Richard, he said that if the Actor's Unit had still been around, he would have produced my stuff. But they had disbanded the year before. So that was the first of many times where I heard about what could have happened if I had gotten there sooner. Very frustrating pattern for me. He introduced me to Albee, and I got invited to the Albee Foundation. Edward didn't much care for "The Necessary Disposal," and at my first meeting he let me know it, which devastated me. I was very sensitive. I'm a Pisces! Nurture me! Love me! Don't criticize me!

RR: Baby, you're in the wrong business!

BO: I know I'm in the wrong business. Richard used to say to me all the time, "Bob, you're gonna have to get a thicker skin if you're going to be in this business." While I was at the Albee Foundation, I was inspired to write "Breeders." While I thought that the inspiration was a positive one, it ultimately led to Richard dropping me as a protege. There were a lot of gay people in the Albee Foundation. What came to mind was the insular nature of the gay community, of how we all know each other so well and have prejudices against each other's business, and make catty remarks about heterosexuals. I thought it was a perfect setting for a play about reverse discrimination. So I wrote this play, and it was about a young gay guy and a young gay girl who discover their closet heterosexuality and wreak havoc on the colony. One of the characters, the head of the colony, I guess I modeled after Richard and Edward, but not literally. It was kind of a springboard for me. I never meant any harm by it. Richard took deep, deep offense to the play, and felt that I was portraying him in a negative light. It wasn't him. That led to my being dropped as a protege of Richard Barr. Clunk! Edward and I have maintained a distant friendship, I still call him every now and then.

RR: Let's talk about "Everybody's Gettin' Into The Act." and the genesis for that show.

BO: A young producer and my attorney encouraged me to write a small show. I decided to go through my trunk and find songs that were related in some way. A theme that I found running through a lot of my work was how people pretending to have feelings that are different from their true ones. It's what I eventually identified as "The Act." And I came up with the title "Everybody's Gettin' Into The Act," which is a paraphrase of Jimmy Durante. I pulled material together, and wrote a lot of new material, about people's pretenses and poses. It wasn't meant to be from a position from judgment, but from a position of compassion. People cope, and it's how they cope. They cope in various ways, and honesty is not always the easiest coping mechanism for people. Everybody thought the show was going to make me the new Sondheim, and then someone would produce my big musical. It was a nice plan. However, We did a non-Equity workshop of it at a place called the Network Theatre under the auspices of a man named Cecil Gorey. Very well received. We decided to take it to the next level, and my producer decided she was going to play like the big people and raise real money. We went into pre-production, and I went into re-writes. Fifty percent of the show changed between the workshop and Off-Broadway. The Off-Broadway production, because it was an inexperienced producer with little money, was slapped together relatively quickly. Bear in mind, this show is called "Everybody's Gettin' Into The Act," and is about how people put on acts and aren't always honest. When she was producing the show, a young Italian guy named Vinnie came into the picture, and presented himself as a potential backer and associate producer. Let's just say he wouldn't seem out of place on the Sopranos. Basically, he took her in and took us all in and swindled us all. So, "Everybody's Gettin' Into The Act" has always had people with acts attracted to it.

RR: Apparently!

BO: History repeated itself last year. But, we managed to survive Vinnie. I lost what was left of my money because of it. I wanted to invest money in my show, but everyone said, "No, you mustn't invest your own money in the show." To this day, I say, "If only I had invested in the show, Vinnie wouldn't have gotten his hands on my money." I would have lost it anyway, but I would have been proud of it. But it was a lesson. People aren't always honest. You can't make people be honest. You can only accept them for who they are. You have to be careful about making decisions based on what people tell you, unless it's people you truly trust. So trust has been a big issue for me in my life. It's no spiritual accident that everything that has happened to me so many major life lessons in my life have happened around this show, because I've really had to learn how to deal with people's dishonesty, and love and accept them in spite of it. Which brings us to John...

RR: Yes. This cd was originally a John Jerome project...

BO: Well, it was originally a Bob Ost project... Let's backtrack for a second. "Everybody's Gettin' Into The Act" opened and it closed, and I wasn't hailed as the new Sondheim, and I thought, "Maybe I don't know what I think I know." So I stopped writing for maybe a year.

RR: What made you start writing again?

BO: I lost my mother and father within a month of each other. My lover died, and then my collaborator Scott died. Through Scott, I met Barry Moss, who is a legendary casting director in the business. I was still thin-skinned and sensitive, but Barry had always been impressed with my work with Scott, and at Scott's memorial, my work was performed by Christine Ebersole, Christine Andreas, Jessica Molaskey... an incredible line-up of people doing my work. This was the first time talent of this caliber were doing my work, people that I'd actually heard of. My songs kept getting ovations. I hit one home run after another, even though it was a deeply sad evening as a friend of Scott's.

I spent a lot of my career as a writer and an artist waiting for other people to take the lead and notice me. In 1990, I was working for myself, I learned that I could, in fact, run a business. At the same time, my lover Gary and I decided to produce my show, "Love and Laughter." I guess it was after Scott died that I started writing again. I didn't have anyone else to write with, so I started writing music again. I pulled together this show with Gary. One of the miracles of my life is that Gary found me nine months after David died. We put together "Love and Laughter," and I started realizing that if I wanted to get out there, it was my job to make me a star. I decided I wanted to share that realization with other people. That was why I founded TRU. So I produced "Love and Laughter," and it made back all the money that was spent on it. I gave back the investors their money, and they said, "Huh? What's this?" None of them were expecting to get their money back.

I put all this together and realized that being passive as an artist may be comfortable, but it certainly doesn't get you as far as taking action and doing things for yourself. That's why I started Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU). What I try to do is to empower people to self-produce, if they aren't being produced -- but to do it well, to do it intelligently. So for ten years, I've been running TRU, and self-producing.

RR: How did your cd, "A Special Place: Songs From The Heart" come about?

BO: About six years ago, I was at another stand-still in my career, and I decided I wanted to produce a cd of my work. I went looking for some well-known people to perform on my cd. Barry came on as a mentor of mine, he kept telling me I should work with people who were better known than me. As I started putting together this cd, I thought, OK, I will start working with people better known than me. Michael Rupert did backers auditions a long time ago for my show "Finale." Michael agreed to a song for me on my cd. I go to the York Theatre, and get on the elevator to see a show, and I see a woman. I say, "Aren't you Rebecca Luker?" She says, "Yes..." I say, "Hi, I'm Bob Ost, I'm a song-writer. I'm putting together a cd of my songs, and Jane Summerhays and Michael Rupert are doing songs. Would you do a song on my cd?" And she looked at me and said "Sure!" Now I had Rebecca. The next night, Heather MacRae is at the Triad, so I go marching over asking her to be on my cd. A week later... it's like Christ collecting his disciples. I go to this ASCAP reading of a swing musical that Alice Ripley's in. I ask her if I can call her. She said she had been approached by seven people that night, and I was the only one she had allowed to call, and it was purely because she had a good feeling about me. I'm just very blessed. The only one I lost was Michael ... he wasn't able to do my cd because he did the tour of "Ragtime." I went to a dear friend who is in the finance business, and asked him to raise money for my cd. He asked how much I needed. I said I needed $15,000. He said, "All right, can I invest in it?" I said, "Sure!" First he put in $5,000. Then he decided to finance the whole thing himself. I did the cd for about $19,000. Bruce Yeko came aboard very early, and said he would release it on Original Cast Records. The cd sold well. I'm very proud of it, it's a terrific cd. I loved working with those artists. Every performance on that cd, I'm proud of. The next project I turned to was the cd of "Everybody's Gettin' Into The Act." An all-star cast recording of that to try to get interest in the show. I landed a gig for Grey Interactive Advertising as "Your Beauty Consultant Carolyn," working on the Cover Girl account, and I made enough money that I decided to self produce a cd of the show. I already knew Rebecca, and through Alice I knew Emily. I just called people, and people who knew people, and said, "Hey do you want to do this?" And most people say yes to me, I don't know why. But I'm not going to complain. So I bankrolled this recording. I spent a lot of money, by the time I met John Jerome.

RR: How did you first meet him?

BO: I was at a Richard Skipper as Carol Channing evening, and was sat plunk down next to John Jerome. I had some inkling that John was producing records, but I couldn't quite make sense of it. I didn't know what he was really doing. So, I sat down next to him, and we started talking. Kristopher {McDowell} introduced himself to me, and they said they had produced a cd of Kristopher's and they were marketing it on this website: Jerome Records. I was very impressed. They said they had pressed and sold ten thousand copies. Well, he got my attention! I thought, if he can do that for Kristopher, I want him to do that for my cd. So, meanwhile, he's backing and supporting Kristopher's work, and he's doing a Laurie Krauz cd, and Stephanie Pope. I guess it was through John that I got Stephanie to do a track on this cd. Stephanie I now consider a friend. Of course, the other thing I couldn't help notice was that during the course of Richard's show, John went through more alcohol than I had consumed in a lifetime. Nevertheless, I saw this as an opportunity of hooking up with a real resource and a real marketing skill... obviously, I didn't know anything else at the time than what he presented... other than the Act that he presented, which was a very good act.

RR: How did he get involved with the cd?

BO: Well, I socialized with him, and kept dropping hints. So, finally, we were at dinner one night after a friend's show. I asked him for $4,000 to finish the cd, would Jerome Records take it on? It started with a "no" that became a "yes" after a bottle of red wine. And it stayed a "yes" after he sobered up. I put together a budget and a letter, and gave it to him, and John never answered anything directly, which was one of our clues. Any form of a relationship with John Jerome took the form of a dance. It never went in a straight line. He had me totally confused about everything. Finally, I got a commitment fro m him. But! The cd had to have the "Jerome sound." Fully orchestrated, no synth. I came to him with piano/bass/vocals/percussion all completed. But he wanted it all fully orchestrated. We knew he was spending money all over the place. It made all of our heads spin. And nothing was bouncing. We all knew something wasn't kosher, but we didn't know that something was illegal. I thought maybe the money was coming from his family, or he was overspending on his credit card. We all thought it was going to stop, or that the money would run out at some point, but we didn't think it was embezzling. Based on the spending I saw from him, I can't account for four and a half million dollars. You can't imagine how much money John was spending on my cd. Legally, though, because I came to him with a finished product, his lawyer and John agreed that I had full ownership of the my cd work. Because his illicit funds, I was forced to do something I hadn't planned to do. John's grandiose delusions pushed me to do my first full orchestrations. But John was in my life for a reason. John was a great teacher for me. I'm grateful to John. I'm angry at John for what he did, but he didn't harm me. There are people who I think feel harmed by what he did.

RR: How did you learn about John's arrest?

BO: I got a call from my brother on January 6th. And he asked me if I had read the Post that day. He said, "Isn't this the guy who's producing your cd?" I asked him what he was talking about, and he read me the article about John Loan embezzling four and a half million dollars from Alliance Capital. That was the other shoe dropping. I knew I no longer had a cd releasing. Once I found out that I had full ownership of the cd, I started researching other labels. I sent it to Bill Meade, and I got a fax on December 11. I thought it was another rejection. Finally, I said, "Gary, would you read this for me? Does this mean he's doing my cd?" Gary said, "Yeah..." I was just overcome with joy. I'm just very grateful to Fynsworth Alley.

RR: I'm just glad it has a happy ending.

BO: And it will have a happier ending if everyone reading this buys the cd. That will be the happiest ending of all.

RR: I agree. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Bob.

BO: Thank you, Robbie.

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