Quotes and Trivia 
Barry Bostwick's
Quotes and Trivia
| (About the title of "matinee idol") What is a matinee idol? It sounds silly. Is it that someone on stage you can't take home with you? I don't want to be that kind of force until I can only give what is right and honest and beautiful ... and harmless. |
(1976) |
| ("Matinee idol") What does that mean? Does it mean the only ones
who like me are the women at Saturday and Wednesday matinees? Or does it mean I'm a popular actor with a certain amount of sex appeal who turns on the women in the audience? Does it mean that 'matinee idols' are only heroes, not villains? |
(1979) |
| I've never been married and I'm straight and I've lived with lots of women and I date frequently. | (1979) |
| ("Grease") Man! I just had an audition for a stage show, and I know I got it. |
(1971) |
| Fact is, the film was a handcrafted vehicle for Travolta. | (1979) |
| ("The Robber Bridegroom") Jamie is a manchild. (...) His nemesis is that he falls in love, probably for the first time. And that unmasks him, as love does for most people. (...) he's losing his playfulness. You know, it's really a sad story. |
(1976) |
| (The accident in "The Robber Bridegroom") The rope broke and I didn't just fall, I was thrown, because there was the momentum of a jump. (...) For days I kept hearing I had died. |
(1976) |
| Instead of just trusting myself to be interesting on stage, I have been
using my body to say it. (...) With the accident, someone somewhere has proved to me that I just had to trust my presence. |
(1976) |
| What really happened is that injury forced me to simplify everything. Had
I not had the accident, I would have given a much more superficial, 'look-at-me' performance that probably wouldn't have had half the effect of the final version. |
(1999) |
| ("Nick and Nora") The day the review appeared, not a single person in New York phoned me. |
(1999) |
| Musicals use up performers. | (1999) |
| Musicals are about promoting the most glib, the most flashy, the most entertaining part of yourself. | (1999) |
| Without the ego, you don't have the nerve. And without the nerve, you can't perform. | (1999) |
| Part of the actors journey is the evoluton through many levels of self-discovery.
When we're young, we set up images of these phenomena in our lives, the Clark Gables and the Jimmy Stewarts. (...) Eventually we appreciate that Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart are phenomena. They're against all the rules of nature, and we will never become them. Once you make that discovery, you begin a new journey, which is to become the most honest, most spontaneous, least-judging Barry Bostwick that I can be. If that turns into superstardom, then that's just a quirk of nature. But it is no longer a goal. |
(1999) |
| Most of the things I've done have been new stuff. (...) I want to work
with contemporary creative people not in revivals. |
(1979) |
| I was never interested in doing musicals like Oklahoma! and those old chestnuts.I wanted to do things that were strange and groundbreaking. |
(2001) |
| ("The Rocky Horror Show" & "The Rocky Horror Picture
Show") I had friends who were in the stage production at the Roxy in LA, so I'd seen it a number of times. (...) When Kim (Milford) came around at the beginning of the show, while the cast was circulating through the audience, he came and started sucking my toes. I thought to myself, 'Well, this could be an interesting evening.' |
(2001) |
| I came from an off-off Broadway point of view, (...) so Rocky wasn't that strange to me. | (2001) |
| In fact I think that scene was cut from the movie, in which I was actually molested (by Tim Curry). | (2006) |
| He was cast as Zach and participated in the creation of A Chorus Line in 1975, but declined the role at the end of the final workshop. |
| He was accidentally stabbed in the leg by Zoe Caldwell during the Off-Broadway run of Colette. |
| It was Kevin Kline who played Jamie Lockhart in the Robber Bridegroom for the tour and in the off-Broadway production in 1975. But he was not yet "box office", so it was Barry Bostwick who was cast for the Broadway production in 1976. In 1977, Barry Bostwick (who had won a Tony Award) turned down the offer to play the role of Bruce Granit in On the Twentieth Century. Instead of him, Kevin Kline was cast as Bruce Granit and won the Tony Award best featured actor in a musical. 2 years later, Kevine Kline played the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance on Broadway. In 1981, Barry Bostwick played the Pirate King in the national tour. |
| Barry Bostwick, and Sue Blane, the costume designer of Rocky, as well, still have the stilettos (high-heels) he wore in the movie. Sue Blane says the heels were about 7 inches. |
| "He is also an expert juggler and is available for weddings and bar
mitzvahs." (from the cast who's who description in the 1972 Grease playbill) |
| In 1969 he and Bette Midler were both replacements in the Off-Broadway musical Salvation. |
| It was Bob Fosse who recommended Barry Bostwick to Stanley Donen, the director
of Movie Movie although B. Bostwick had never worked for Fosse. And Barry Bostwick didn't even have to audition the film. |
Barry Bostwick Brilliant!