Oh Curmie, Curmie, wherefore art thou?
Once again an ethics issue has surfaced that would have benefited from the shrewd analysis of Ethics Alarms’ AWOL columnist “Curmie.” (I know his real name.) I admit, I keep alluding to his abrupt abdication from his regular column here because I am both sad and pissed off about it. I don’t like the phenomenon of Trump Derangement, but I really object to it hurting my blog.
But the topic at hand is one on which I have some expertise myself, so screw Curmie, I guess.
The New York Times reported that rehearsals for a new stage adaptation of “Dog Day Afternoon,” Sidney Lumet’s 1975 movie about an odd Brooklyn bank robbery (“Attica! Attica!”), banned the production’s Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright from attending for three days over the past week. The show’s producing team told the playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis, that he was no longer welcome at rehearsals after he was part of a dispute that disrupted a rehearsal. The Times said it had no further information regarding why this confrontation occurred.
Ethics Alarms 
Not to be off topic but in the realm of missing commenters (in this case self-exiled)- I was reminded of Charles Green the other day.
My wife is with a new company and part of their onboarding involves some reading. One of the books shows up to our house and if it isn’t old Charles’s “Trust Based Selling”.
So my wife was pretty excited to find out he was a contributor here since she gets to hear about “that ethics website” often enough.
I managed to catch a preview of the show on Monday, just after the above news came out and just after the show was frozen.
As I understand it, one major disagreement between writer and director was with tone: the movie is a suspenseful thriller and I would argue all the Broadway advertising suggested the stage show would be the same.
I was quite surprised to find, then, that Dog Day Afternoon was played 95% comedic on stage.
I think, as with all things, there are pros and cons: on the plus side, the comedy was done very, very well and the sheer madness of it all did often enhance the discomfiture inherent in the bank-robbery-stalemate setup (as, for example, Joker-esque antics do in Batman standoffs); on the minus side, the yuk-yuks did give me a sense of false advertisement and detracted from the weight of the more emotional second arc, where I felt they sought a more serious look at love/identity/sacrifice/mortality.
Either way, I expect the show to do well! With 2 TV/movie stars at the helm and a strictly limited engagement, how far could you flop…?