THOROUGHLY DICK

Writer Dick Scanlan discusses his battle with AIDS and his triumphant musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, which hits Houston this month

by Bradley David Williams

When Dick Scanlan came up with the idea of making a musical out of the 1967 movie Thoroughly Modern Millie—the gay cult classic starring Mary Tyler Moore, Julie Andrews, and Carol Channing—he was confronted with obstacles at every turn. It was in 1991 that he first approached Richard Morris, who had written the movie’s screenplay.

“He turned me down flat,” Scanlan remembers. “And that went on for about two and a half years. I wouldn’t give up. I kept trying to give up, and then I’d wake up the next day and think, But it’s a really good idea! SOMEBODY should do it.”

Scanlan’s really good idea came to fruition in a huge way, with the Broadway version of Millie winning last year’s Tony for best musical (and presented December 16–January 4 by Theatre Under The Stars at the Hobby Center). Morris and Scanlan ended up collaborating on the musical’s book while both were dealing with terminal illness. Morris eventually lost his bout with cancer, while Scanlan, now 43, fought back from the brink in his long battle with AIDS.

Scanlan recently spoke by phone from his apartment in Manhattan’s theater district.

Bradley David Williams: Will you be in Houston during the run of Millie?

Dick Scanlan: I don’t know. I mean, I go out periodically and check on the show, but whether I’m coming to Houston or not, I just don’t know yet. But I’ve been to Houston before. My friend Ellen Currie is a fiction writer, and she was the guest writer at the University of Houston in the spring of ’96, and I went down to help her set up her apartment and everything then.

BDW: You had never written for the theater before. What was your background?

DS: I was an actor for many years, and then I became a fiction writer and a journalist. I haven’t written fiction in a long time, I’m sorry to say—Millie has kind of taken over—and I don’t do any journalism either.

BDW: Did the original movie cast of Millie come and see the show on Broadway?

DS: Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore came, and Mary Tyler Moore was the person who announced the Tony for best musical when we won. It was very exciting.

BDW: So did you actually get to take home a statuette?

DS: The statuette goes to the producers in a musical. In a play it goes to the playwright, but in a musical, it goes to the producers.

BDW: But you got to go onstage . . .

DS: Oh, yeah.

BDW: That’s all we care about. But you were nominated for best book and best score. Were you devastated and bitter that you didn’t win either one of those?

DS: Honestly, I wasn’t even a little bit bitter. I wanted the show to win, I wanted Sutton Foster to win [for best actress], and I wanted us to win more than any other show, because I thought as long as we got those three things, it would do good things for the show, and it did.

BDW: How is the musical different from the movie?

DS: It’s very changed. Probably of all the movies-to-musicals that I know, it’s the most re-thought. The spirit of the movie is there and the basic plot is the same, but it’s really sort of a moment to moment basis – there are large sections of it that differ greatly from the movie.

BDW: I know you’ve been very public about your battle with AIDS. How are you doing?

DS: I’m doing very well. My immune system is really strong. I’ve had no opportunistic infections in years, which is amazing, as close to death as I came. . . . I really was one of those people who was in the next rash to go, right before some new drugs became available on a trial basis, and that really turned my health around. Now I’m doing remarkably well. I mean, you never know how long it’s going to last. I’ve already lived so much longer than I ever thought I would.

BDW: When were you first diagnosed?

DS: Well, it’s a little hard to say, because I had a boyfriend who died in 1988. He and I had been together since 1983, and when he died, I kind of figured, you know, that I must be infected. I knew what our sexual practices had been, because we had gotten together in the really early days of AIDS. So I went to our doctor. I’d taken one test and tested negative, but the early HIV test was very unreliable. It wasn’t until like 1986 that they became more reliable. I went to the doctor and said, “Test me again.” And he said, “No, we don’t need to know if you’re HIV positive or negative. We just need to monitor your immune system. Let’s just do a T-cell check every three months, and as long as your T-cells are good, it really doesn’t matter.” It’s one of these things, I think, where you’ve just gone through a horrible loss, and I just don’t think you’re ready to hear that information right now. But every three months, we would do my T-cells and they kept going down. I knew I had HIV. I could tell from my skin. I just knew it the whole time. But pretty soon, my T-cells went down to a point where you medicate, and at that point the doctor said, “Of course we should verify that you have HIV. . . .” So I took the test and five days later—I remember I was washing my kitchen floor. I’d just had new tiles put in and I was on my hands and knees scrubbing. The phone rang, and it was the doctor. He was like, [very serious] “Dick, it’s the doctor, and we need to have a very difficult conversation. . . .” And I said, “I’m positive, right?” He said, “I know this is so painful. . . .” And I said, “It really isn’t, but I’ve got to get back to my floor.” I was officially diagnosed in ’92, but I knew from ’88 that I was infected in ’83.

BDW: Was your health getting better when you decided to do Millie?

DS: God no, my lowest point of health was ’95, and I began working on Millie in ’93. The first few years of working on Millie, I was spiraling down very quickly, and Richard Morris, who was my collaborator, had cancer and he was spiraling down. So the two of us were like the sick ward of the musical. In late ’95, my health really began to turn around and his really didn’t. He died in April of ’96. By mid-’96 I was quite healthy. I’d gained weight back and had energy again . . .

BDW: Do you somehow credit Millie with improving your health?

DS: I’m always very hesitant to do that. There are so many people who have died, and I don’t ever want to suggest it’s something I did. . . . A lot of people were working on a lot of great stuff, and they died anyway. I do think that your outlook is part of your health, and that it does affect your longevity, even while you’re facing a potentially terminal illness. And certainly Millie really helped keep my outlook positive, because I was really excited about it. So I think it was a factor in a very complicated equation. The biggest factor of that equation was just luck. I was lucky: The right drug came along before it was too late for me.

BDW: Are you working on any new projects?

DS: I’m pursuing the rights to a movie that I would like to turn into a musical. It’s a French movie that was never released in this country. It’s about a unique relationship between a gay man and a straight woman.

BDW: Congratulations on the success of Millie, and thanks so much for talking to us.

DS: Thank you.

Bradley David Williams interviewed Girls Will Be Girls star Varla Jean Merman (a.k.a. Jeffrey Roberson) for the November issue.

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