{"id":3727,"date":"2018-03-19T04:27:17","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T11:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=3727"},"modified":"2018-03-19T04:27:17","modified_gmt":"2018-03-19T11:27:17","slug":"grease-2-turns-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2018\/03\/19\/grease-2-turns-35\/","title":{"rendered":"Grease 2 Turns 35"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going back briefly to Leslie Jordan\u2019s show.  At my table was acclaimed actor (and improv genius) Sam Pancake<\/strong>.  We\u2019ve known each other for eons, but never really had any prolonged conversations until now.  So when he found out that my guest Kenny Morse <\/strong>was part of the original Broadway <\/em>production of Grease<\/em><\/strong> and its first national tour, Sam was beyond thrilled.  \u201cI love everything about Grease <\/em>\u2013 in fact, I\u2019m going to the special 35th anniversary screening of Grease 2 <\/em><\/strong>tomorrow!\u201d  Uh, Leslie, could you keep it down?  I\u2019m trying to find out details about this Grease 2<\/em> reunion.  Apparently it was the brainchild of Brian Herzlinger<\/strong>, the director of the film My Date with Drew<\/em><\/strong>, which is a sweet documentary about making your dreams come true.  One of Brian\u2019s dreams was to see Grease 2<\/em> in a theatre with the original cast members \u2013 and he somehow made it happen. <\/p>\n

I immediately dashed home to try and secure a ticket.  Problem was, the show was sold out and there was no contact information anywhere.  Like all good dreamers, I was not deterred.  Through various machinations, I came up with Brian\u2019s cell number, texted him, explained who I was (he\u2019s straight), and asked for a ticket to the event that same night.  Balls?  Yup, I\u2019ve still got \u2018em!  You know what else I\u2019ve got?  Tickets to the show!  I was mighty impressed that Maxwell Caulfield<\/strong>, who is appearing in the sold-out run of Hangmen<\/em><\/strong> in NYC, flew cross-country on his day off to attend \u2013 and the next morning, he flew back in a blizzard to do his evening show.  Meanwhile, that Pfeiffer <\/strong>chick couldn\u2019t even begrudgingly drive 30 minutes and pretend to be gracious (her feelings about Grease 2<\/em> mirror how Halle <\/strong>feels about BAPS<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 something I found out the hard way).  Nonetheless, most of the cast was on hand, including director Patricia Birch<\/strong>, co-star Adrian Zmed<\/strong>, and most of the T-Birds and Pink Ladies.<\/p>\n

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Someone not at the event was Lorna Luft<\/strong>, who days earlier had collapsed backstage in London and has since been diagnosed with a brain tumor.  Christopher McDonald <\/strong>(one of the T-Birds) spoke with Lorna\u2019s husband earlier in the day and told me she\u2019s in good shape and was flying back to LA for more tests.  I thought back to when Liza had encephalitis and Lorna was pushing her in a wheelchair.  Now Lorna\u2019s down, and Liza <\/strong>(who has moved to LA) might be the one helping out.  Who would have ever pegged Liza as the healthy sister?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Going back briefly to Leslie Jordan\u2019s show.  At my table was acclaimed actor (and improv genius) Sam Pancake.  We\u2019ve known each other for eons, but never really had any prolonged conversations until now.  So when he found out that my guest Kenny Morse was part of the original Broadway production of Grease and its first national tour, Sam was beyond thrilled.  \u201cI<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3728,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3727\/revisions\/3728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}