Allan Gordon is the producer of Rent, the 1996 Tony Award winner for Best Musical. Gordon, a graduate of Harvard Law School, is involved in financing and producing film and theater ventures, both personally and through his investment banking company, Gordon, Haskett & Co. The Crimson had the opportunity to interview him by telephone about the message of Rent, theater investment and why the French don't like musical theater.

I was really interested in your bio because it seems like you've kind of leaped around: you were here for law school, then you went into investment banking, and you produce film and theater projects on the side. I was wondering if those things grew out of one another.

My first love has always been theater. I'm always fascinated with it, always involved in it, whether as a spectator or as an investor, or now as a producer. But basically, you know, in terms of the interests I pursued, I was doing business things anyhow, you know, all sorts of venture capital, stock exchange kind of things, and one of the things I did was theater.

I understand that some things you produce on your own, some with other people and others through you investment banking company. Are they really involved in the arts?

Yes, of course! I mean, it's not the arts like the Brattle Street Playhouse, but the arts in the sense that it's cinema, it's film. Things like that. That's where you get Wall Street involved in financing. You really don't have any Wall Street involvement in theater. It's primarily individuals. You have the usual, you know, corporate backing, but that's the not-for-profit, like the New York Theater Workshop, which I'm a trustee of. Very little government support, at this point. Companies which are headquartered in New York give a lot of support to the New York Theater Workshop. But again, it's not Wall Street-driven. In terms of your interest in theater, if you have an interest in theater and an interest in the arts, you tend to look at movie deals more than someone else would, and you tend to look at Broadway on a personal level before anyone else would. If for no other reason, no one else would because they're exceedingly risky. And they're very, very difficult to make money. So in one sense, anyone investing in it has a love for it, wants to be invited to the opening and be a part of the production, to say they're a part of the production, to be able to go backstage and have the joy of knowing that they helped produce it. But the money is usually not there.

It's interesting that you say that about producing, because it seems that ordinarily producing--or maybe this is more on the Hollywood end of things--is seen as very businesslike. You know, it's all about the business and not so much about people who really like and enjoy it.

If you came--well, you can see it in Cambridge, but if you came to New York and you saw, we did for example at the New York Theater Workshop, or the Public Theater--all of these are not-for-profit organizations. You would see people there of great intelligence, lovely people, first-rate, hardworking, making virtually no money. There for ten years, thirty years of work, and they are there for love. They just love it. I mean, they just barely make a living. You're not making $100,000 a year by a long shot in any of these places. You're making substantially less. And yet you have people there of high intelligence and intense loyalty to the organization, because they love what they do. And they love theater. And they pursue it. So it's very different than film, which is much more business oriented and money oriented. There's also much less money in theater by its very definition. I mean, it doesn't cost a hundred million to put up a production.... But don't get me wrong, if you don't have ultimately a business interest or some business ability, you're out of business, and there's no art.

When you go to a new place, I read that you wanted to somehow integrate the feeling of the place, like the Boston attitude. But Rent is basically set in New York. What's it like taking a play, not only from where it started, on Broadway, but also the city where it's set? How does that translate?

Everything is set somewhere. Miss Saigon, Les Mis, Cats. Most of these things are set in some time frame. And people have an interest in it. The message is universal. It may be set in New York, but it just as well could have been set in London, or in Los Angeles, but it happened to be set in New York. In terms of the message and in terms of the characters, they're easily identifiable anywhere else. In terms of the markets, all markets are local. They're all different, they put different spins on things. And in terms of your presentation and your advertising, you're reaching out to get people to come to the theater, those things are somewhat different. And we're not cloning it. One of the great things about theater is it's living, and it changes all the time; film doesn't. For example, we keep referring to the Circle Line in the play, and really when you get outside of New York, a lot of people don't know what that is....

You just try to change a few words here and there, so it has a more universal understanding, like the Statute of Liberty, or what-have-you. I mean, Robin Hood lives in the forest. In England. He's not in Central Park; so what?

So you're going to have a different cast for each city?

Well, not quite. The New York production can play for years. So it can stay at the Nederlander with the cast we have. You know, as changes go on over time, but basically the same cast. It can play indefinitely, like Cats, or something like that. It's in a more sold-out position now than it was when we opened. So that's one cast that's not touring. Touring means going to another city, with the same cast. The cast we're putting together in London, we're casting now. We think we will open there in February of next year. And that will be there for at least--we estimate between two and five years. So that's what's called a sit-down production. Usually if it's somewhere for a year or more you call it a sit-down production, because it stays in the same city. New York and London are the biggest, you'll have things run there for years and years and years. And then it's followed by Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. And then of course you have your Melbourne and Sydney, those are big cities.... It's all cultural. It's all English-speaking. Ninety percent English-speaking, in terms of your market. You go to France, I mean, Les Mis lost money in France. It's just not in their culture. They just don't like it. They have a different lifestyle: you're sitting in the park and you're having a glass of wine and the sun is out and it's nine at night and you're not going to the theater. They just don't live that style, if you're in Paris you'd understand it. It'll play well in Germany. They like musical theater.

In German?

Yes, in German. We will be in Germany within a year-and-a-half. And we'll be in Holland. And we'll be in Austria. And we'll be in the Nordic countries, you know, Denmark and Sweden--stuff like that. They like theater. Other countries don't.

Ten years or even twenty years ago, Boston was a big city for new plays that producers didn't have enough money to open on Broadway.