Word: papp
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Still suffering from the sulks when shooting ended, he auditioned for Joseph Papp's Lincoln Center production of Julius Caesar. At last he was to be Cassius. "I went home, and for the first time I did homework," he says. "It felt so good to struggle over a part!" Two days into rehearsal, however, Papp canceled the production, and Dreyfuss "just went crazy. For about a year and a half I went berserk, I took drugs, and I started drinking a bottle of cognac...
What pulled him up, ironically, was what set him down: Jaws. Nothing is so good for an actor's ego as a hit, and Dreyfuss's ego, which Jaws had punctured and which Papp had exploded, returned to its normal enormous size. He now calls Steven Spielberg, the director of Jaws, a genius, and admits that the movie was not the "dreck" he once thought...
Most others would describe it as a retreat. Though Papp has raised his box office receipts at Lincoln Center to a current high of nearly $4 million, costs have risen alarmingly; this season's budget was $6.2 million, up more than a third from last season. Foundation and government support, on which Papp's ventures have always depended, has been shrinking. He has managed to cover his Lincoln Center deficits only by using the Broadway profits of his phenomenally successful A Chorus Line, which started off as an innovative musical in Papp's downtown Public Theater...
...figures tell only half the story. Papp was never happy at Lincoln Center. He has always been at his best working with new playwrights, and he gave a start to a new generation of young writers-David Rabe, Jason Miller, David Rudkin-who would not have been let in the front door by more profit-minded producers. The classics-with the exception of Shakespeare-make Papp nervous. He never felt at home with Lincoln Center audiences, who demanded at least some older plays to balance the new. Said Papp last week: "I feel I cannot grow at Lincoln Center...
...Papp's decision caught Lincoln Center officials off guard, and for the moment they have no plans beyond a search for other producers. They may not be easy to find. Papp is the second tenant to fail at the Vivian Beaumont. "This is a sort of bad-luck house," says Bernard Gersten, his associate producer. "It has not yet worked for anybody. I hope it will...