The End of Two Eras
On July 31st, Playbill reported the passing of Donald C. Farber, Esq. While Donald was an experienced theatrical attorney, he was perhaps best known for his books. When I was starting out as an entertainment lawyer, I frequently turned to Donald’s treatise on entertainment law entitled Entertainment Industry Contracts. It was the first book of its kind, and remains a useful resource for lawyers to this day. Donald also published on the topic of producing theatre.I had the pleasure of negotiating several deals with Donald over the years. Although he enjoyed a reputation for being colorful and a tough negotiator, I always found Don to be pleasant and professional. What impressed me the most about Don was his undeniable passion for theatre.Donald’s passing marks the end of an era. When he first wrote Entertainment Industry Contracts, the internet was for geeks only and information of any kind was hard to find. Today it’s possible to find legal forms of all kinds on the internet. While most free or low-cost forms are worth exactly what people pay for them, there is no doubt that treatises such as Entertainment Industry Contracts are having a much harder time remaining relevant. There is also no doubt that a lot of people are using a lot of bad form contracts, which never ends well.Not that that’s any reflection on Donald. He remains a trailblazer.Less than two weeks after Don Farber passed, Playbill announced the passing of theatre lawyer Seth Gelblum on August 8. Seth was my first – that is, the first entertainment lawyer to decline to offer me employment. Vanity precludes my sharing how many followed in his footsteps.I did business with Seth many times over the years. He held a unique position in the theatre industry – a theatre lawyer who was an innovator. Seth was one of the first attorneys to embrace the concept of the amortization of production costs. On one deal he negotiated the pre-sale of merchandising rights by the authors of a Broadway musical. I suppose this is a bit of inside ball to those not familiar with how the theatrical financing sausage gets made, so I’ll just stress the highlights – Seth was a brilliant attorney and problem solver.Seth’s passing also marks the end of an era. In the past, innovations to make theatrical productions more likely to recoup their capitalizations came from re-structuring business norms. For example, Cameron Mackintosh created the concept of a royalty pool to ensure that a show would never have to close because royalty payments got too high. Amortization of production costs was another such tool.Today, the focus has become much less on keeping running costs down and much more on maximizing gross weekly box office. Premium seating has raised ticket prices for prime seats to unprecedented levels – the best seats in the house for Hamilton (if you can get them) cost about a grand each. This is having a profound effect on the industry. In order for a Broadway show opening now to have any chance of a long, profitable run, it has to be able to command premium pricing. And the more people pay premium pricing to see one show, the less they have in their theatre budget to see other shows. We are at the beginning of a very vicious cycle.Raising prices is easy. Innovating changes in business practices that make theatrical productions viable without passing the entire burden on to the audience is hard. With the passing of Seth Gelblum, we have lost one of the thought leaders in our industry capable of such innovation.Obituaries for Donald C. Farber and Seth Gelbum can be accessed below.http://www.playbill.com/article/master-theatre-attorney-donald-c-farber-has-diedhttp://www.playbill.com/article/seth-gelblum-lawyer-to-theater-professionals-dies