My Near Brush With Broadway Immortality

Rent has returned to Off-Broadway, as I noted in my review the other day.

And that reminds me that in one of the original versions of the show’s song “La Vie Bohème” — a bouncy chronicling of the people and things that have inspired bohemian culture — composer Jonathan Larson included my name!

I am not making this up!

Before Larson rewrote it a bunch of times, I was in the song’s list of boho icons!

This would have easily towered over my other accomplishments, like being cut out of Dawn of the Dead and turning down a gay game show.

When Evelyn McDonnell, who wrote a book about the show, told me this bit of musical-theater ephemera, I almost crapped my gown.

I mean, I was almost named in a Pulitzer freakin’ classic! One so successful it was made fun of by the South Park guys!

I can understand why Larson eventually took my name out — nothing much rhymes with it, duh — but I still sit around imagining what it would have been like to be as famous as Tommy Mottola must have felt when the song “Cherchez La Femme” came out.

Oh, well.

I still have LCD Soundsystem’s “Eat it, Michael Musto.”