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Life's A Pitch

For immediate release: the arts are marketable

How not to handle bad reviews/how to handle crazy people

November 20, 2008 by Amanda Ameer

From Playbill.com:

Perhaps the most famous incident of his career was instigated by New
York Shakespeare Festival impresario Joe Papp. In 1973, when Papp
learned that Mr. [Clive] Barnes had given a poor review to David Rabe’s In the Boom Boom Room
— Papp’s choice to open his reign as the new director of the Lincoln
Center Theater program — Papp called the critic at home at 11:30 PM and
cursed him, yelling into the phone, “You think you’re going to get me?
Well, I am going to get you. I am going to get you.” That might have
been the end of the incident, except that Papp made the call in the
presence of a New York Times reporter who was writing a story about the
producer.

The next day, a letter from Barnes was hand-delivered to Papp’s office.
“Our telephone conversation (or rather your monologue) last night
disturbed me,” Mr. Barnes wrote. “Not merely because I am unaccustomed
to receiving obscene telephone calls, and certainly not because of your
violently phrased defense of Rabe’s play — I would expect no less — but
because in your anger at our difference of opinion, you questioned my
integrity. You told me that ‘You are out to get me.’ This is
transparent nonsense. I admire you as one of the major forces in our
theatre — and I imagine you have kept the press clippings to prove it.”

Filed Under: Main

Comments

  1. John Clare says

    November 20, 2008 at 10:07 pm

    I’m tagging you in the latest meme, it’s a fun one!
    http://classicallyhip.blogspot.com/2008/11/seven-meme.html

  2. Lindsay Price says

    November 26, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    Holy Crowly. I’ve never thought of calling up a critic, let alone threatening them! Does that make me glad I’m not Joe Papp, or wishing I was Joe Papp? Hmmmm.

Amanda Ameer

is a publicist who started First Chair Promotion in July 2007. She currently represents Hilary Hahn, Gabriel Kahane, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sondra Radvanovsky, Julia Wolfe, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lawrence Brownlee. She thanks Chris Owyoung at One Louder Photo for taking the above photo very quickly and painlessly. Read More…

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