Ten Years On, A Geek Reflects
A decade following Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark's opening, actor Gideon Glick recalls his experience in the ill-fated "Geek Chorus"
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Last month I wrote a piece for BNet about a YouTube channel collecting video evidence of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark—specifically focused on Julie Taymor’s aborted vision of the show, known as “Version 1.0.”
The piece was, unexpectedly, quite popular. So to mark the 10th anniversary of the Turn off the Dark’s official opening, I spoke with Gideon Glick, who performed as part of the much maligned “Geek Chorus” which narrated audiences through 1.0. The Geeks were excised in the revisions that followed Taymor’s dismissal, and three of the four actors were let go, including Glick.
Here Glick reflects on hostile audiences, relaxing with Civilization IV, and why Taymor’s vision was ahead of its time.
Glen Berger’s behind-the-scenes book about the show, Song of Spider-Man, describes the Geeks’ dressing room as a kind of haven from all the madness. The four of you would play a lot of video games, and it became a place people could go to just relax. Is that your memory of it?
That is accurate. We kind of became a hub, especially because we sort of existed outside of the show, in a peculiar way. And because we were a channel for the writers. The Geeks were written to represent Bono, Edge, Julie and Glen.
Because the Geeks were completely made up characters, there was an element of freedom and expression for [the writers]. And our dressing room became an extension of that.
But yeah, we would just mostly hide out and play Civilization IV.
How did you get involved with the show? Had you taken part in workshops?
I was never part of a workshop, I came on for the show. I was about to go do Moritz on the Spring Awakening tour, but then I got Spider-Man, but then Spider-Man kept getting delayed and delayed. So I just continued college as I waited. It was a whole year from when I got it, to when we started rehearsals.
How did the Geeks develop in rehearsals?
I always thought of us as—and Julie never liked this analogy—but I thought: the show is a circus, and we are the clowns. And Julie was like, “You’re not clowns, it’s deadly serious.” I would say, yes the show is very serious, but we’re there to make light and pontificate. We can be the ones who don’t have to take it seriously, which allows the audience to perhaps enjoy it more.
And what was Julie Taymor guiding you towards instead?
I think she was more interested in stakes, as a director should be. She was interested in the idea that, for the Geeks, telling this tale was of the utmost importance. Which I wasn’t trying to negate, I just wanted to honor the fact that we are the four clowns that come out so they can change the set.
She was more interested in the “Greek Chorus” of it all—which was kind of the beauty of what she was doing. She was trying to elevate comic books to the world of mythos. And when you think about that time, 2010 through 2011, it was just Iron Man that had been out at that point. The Marvel Cinematic Universe hadn’t come to full fruition yet.
So in a strange way, Julie was ahead of the time. She was saying, “These are our myths, we are going to flock to these stories.” And then we did. They became the event of every year and made massive amounts of money and we keep coming back to these stories that we already know and we’re kind of seeing over and over again. So I really liked that she was on the forefront of that.
The Geeks came to be widely dismissed as an element of the show that definitely didn’t work.
I remember at one performance Mat Devine, who played the “Rocker Geek,” had a line in the show that went, “What’s the problem?” And someone in the front audience replied, “You are!” So yeah, we heard, we hear you, loud and clear.
Did you feel like people just didn’t get it? Or did you think okay, clearly this isn’t working.
I have no objectivity when I’m part of something. But there was this understanding that people were coming not necessarily to engage with the show, but to see something go wrong. And then also with the injuries, and the darkness associated with it, and the danger it was putting people in, and the vitriol coming from the outside world, and the ridicule—it was a lot to take in. I mean, that’s why we played Civilization all the time.
It sounds like there was a mutual defensiveness, or protectiveness, between you guys and Julie Taymor. Do you still feel that now?
Very much. I never wanted to do Spider-Man the musical, I wanted to do Julie Taymor’s Spider-Man the musical. She is...there’s nobody like her, and I adore her, and I adore her mind.
I feel a sense of pride in being part of 1.0. It had this rough edge to it that might have been baffling, but it was captivating. It encompassed everything: it was vulgar, incredible, and baffling all at once.
Have you been aware of the renewed interest in 1.0 in recent years?
Not particularly. I like to joke about the show on social media just because, when people say, “Was this a real thing?” I sort of wonder the same thing, and I was in it!
As one gets older, parts of your life feel so distant and disconnected from who you are now, that they almost feel like a dream. Did they really happen? They can really feel like closed dusty chapters.
And there’s a bit of—I’m not gonna say trauma, I wasn’t traumatized by Spider-Man, but it was difficult. We thought of it as like going to war, to an extent. Because we were up against an audience that didn’t come to take pleasure in the show, they came to laugh at it, to see what goes wrong, and to see if somebody will get hurt. That was the hardest thing to grapple with, because it’s so antithetical to why we do what we do.
Was there a sense of relief when it ended for you? Or was it just painful to lose your job?
No, it felt like a relief.
Do you have conflicting emotions when you see people treating it purely as an object of fun, when it was often so difficult for those involved?
The injuries really were painful. That was a real dark cloud. People were scared, people were upset, people were hurt. That part was impossibly difficult. Chris Tierney is one of the kindest and most beautiful souls. To see that happen to anyone that you know, it’s devastating.
I’ll never forget the confusion and horror of our entrance [that night], because our entrance happened literally right after that fall. We entered and all we could hear was the eerie cacophonous sound of the music and then Natalie Mendoza down in the pit screaming, because he fell right next to her. I didn’t know what happened, I thought maybe she had gotten hurt, because I just heard her wailing. And we just stood there on the side, shocked, not knowing what to do. It's a very scary part of the musical to begin with, it was quite dark, and it was completely disorienting.
In moments like that, you want to blame somebody. But it was human error. A lot of people blamed Julie, saying she was putting people in jeopardy. I never blamed anybody. There’s always an attempt to - you want to blame somebody to grapple with it. People outside of the show felt it was very clear, but I never felt that way.
It was hard to move forward after that. Everything felt bifurcated - before and after the fall. After that, everything started getting disjointed.