The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 190 - Bad Reviews

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen. You look chirpy.

Jen: [laughing] I'm already laughing before we've even started today's episode, because it's taking me on a trip down memory lane. What I want to talk to you about today is bad reviews...

Pete: Bad reviews.

Jen: ...of which I've been a recipient of quite a few.

Pete: Oh dear, me too. Me too. I have like a little sinking feeling in my stomach every time I think about this. But I like the idea of approaching this with some levity, which clearly you're doing. So, bad reviews...alright, let's dive in. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Well, this topic is front of mind right now for a couple of reasons. One is, I am on the receiving end of clients telling me stories about like crazy things that have been said either directly to their face about a performance they gave or like in print in a newspaper in the form of a review. And someone recently introduced me to the podcast, Dead Eyes.

Pete: Dead Eyes...I've never heard of it.

Jen: It's so brilliant. It's so funny. It's about this actor Connor Ratliff, who had been hired by Tom Hanks for a very small role in Band of Brothers in 2001, and then was fired before the shoot because Tom Hanks felt that he had dead eyes. And he just has never forgotten that. And now, twenty years later, he's doing a podcast in the form of like a true-crime podcast where he interviews all of the witnesses to find out, did he actually have dead eyes? It's just so funny. But it got me thinking about how, in the moment when you receive a bad review...in my world, a bad review, or it might be like some harsh criticism at your three-sixty at work, or whatever it might be, that in the moment, it really stings. And it's very hard to separate the comment from the circumstance, or to even like see who the review is coming from with any sort of objectivity. But after time passes, sometimes you can laugh at the bad review, which is what I've been doing thinking about recording this today, or you can actually find a little gem in what you thought was just a stinking pile of poop.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, I feel like in the example you shared about Dead Eyes, therein lies some sort of strategy, right? Like leaning into the thing that you've been critiqued on, I feel like there's some strategy there. But I'm curious to hear more and unpack it some more. I find it hard to believe that Jen Waldman's received bad reviews, but then I guess everyone has received bad reviews.

Jen: Pete, I have received bad reviews. But what really is the reason I'm laughing, is I was like, "Oh, it'd be funny if when I bring this up, if I can quote a bad review that someone gave me." And I went to Google and I typed in the words that I thought I remembered from this particular bad review, and it was verbatim what was said.

Pete: Oh my god.

Jen: So okay, this is actually like the perfect example of what I'm talking about. In the year 2000, I starred in a musical called Saturday Night. And the show takes place in Brooklyn. My character pretends to not be from Brooklyn for a good portion of the show. So the review says, "Very few of the performers were able to sustain a Brooklyn accent. The leading lady, Jennifer Waldman, didn't even try." Which, at the time, I was like...first of all, I shouldn't have read the review, because I'm an actor in the production. It affects my performance if I've read the reviews, so I shouldn't have done that. But that's for another moment. But at the time, I remember being like, "Well, I'm not supposed to even have a Brooklyn accent. I'm supposed to have a bad Southern accent for like a good portion of this. Am I doing it wrong? Is the reviewer right?" Like, spinning in my head. Meanwhile, if I had kept reading, I would see that the next time I'm mentioned, she says, "While Waldman sang very nicely as Helen, I enjoyed the two women who had the bit parts the best." And then she says, "I hope I get to see more of them. Maybe next week, in The Mystery of Irma Vep," which was the theater's next show. Okay, so that should have been my cue. The Mystery of Irma Vep is a two-person play...two men. So she wouldn't be able to see them next week in The Mystery of Irma Vep, which should have told me to not read so deeply into this particular review.

Pete: Clearly, she doesn't quite understand.

Jen: Right? But I remember it. This is twenty-two years later, and I was able to quote that line verbatim.

Pete: That's wild. That's wild. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with how and why we remember such specific things. Did you have a strategy, in the moment? Like is one strategy you shared before or alluded to, if performing in a show, or if, I don't know, if you've just released a book, do you think the idea is like don't read reviews, basically? Is that what you're saying?

Jen: Well, I think it depends what role you're in, whether or not you need to read the reviews. Because as a director, I always read reviews, because I have to know kind of how to take care of the people that I'm working with. And as an artistic director, I always read reviews. It was really important to know what the people were saying about what was happening at the theater, and whether or not the work that we were doing felt like it was actually intended for our audience. But as an actor, it's not helpful to read reviews. And when I direct, I really try to establish, as soon as we get close to opening night, that, "There won't be any talk of reviews backstage. And for those of you who do read reviews, like more power to you, but please respect the boundaries of those who don't." So, yeah, I think there's a time and a place.

Pete: Yeah. I've heard a lot of authors, actually, talk about like the fact that they don't bother to read Amazon reviews. I mean, the classic example I always go back to when I think about like or grapple with bad reviews, or bad feedback, or negative feedback, or someone inserting their perspective when you didn't ask for it and frankly you don't really know who they are...and the thing I go back to often is like, go and look at Harry Potter on Amazon. Go and look at the Harry Potter reviews on Amazon. And there are thousands, thousands of one-star negative reviews about how much of a piece of crap that whole series, but like any particular book in that series is. And you know, this is one of the best selling books of all time. It's one of my favorite books of all time. Like clearly, by most measures, what someone would consider success, whatever that means to them. And so, I often go back to that. Oh yeah, no matter what we produce, no matter who you are, no matter how good something might be, there are always going to be a proportion of people that don't get it, that don't understand it, but also that just feel that it's their responsibility or their duty to like to bring something down.

Jen: Yeah. It really is amazing how...well, nothing is for everyone. Right?

Pete: Right. Yes.

Jen: Which is why you and I always go back to, "Who is it for," and, "Who is it not for?"

Pete: It's so funny you say that, because I feel like that's the thing that people who give a bad review don't seem to get.

Jen: Right, that maybe it's not for them.

Pete: Exactly. It's like, it's okay if it's not for them. But they feel the need to say, "Here are all the reasons that is not for me," without saying, "Maybe it's just not for me." You know? It's like...

Jen: Yes. Oh my gosh, yes. Okay, I'm reading this book right now, which is absolutely amazing, called Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created Sunday in the Park with George. It's by James Lapine. And even if you're not a theatre person, it is a completely fascinating story about how these two artists found their way to each other at totally different points on their artistic journey and like on the success scale, and then created this masterpiece together. But there's this really funny passage in the book, where Lapine is interviewing Sondheim. And Lapine is talking about how his production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was completely panned in the New York Times. And Lapine says, "That was a first for me. It's funny, because I went home after reading that review and I thought, 'Oh, Stephen Sondheim is never going to work with me now.' I thought, 'Why would he?'" And then he says, "The day after the review came out, the phone rings at my place as I'm licking my wounds. It was you inviting me to come over and look at your bad reviews." So Stephen Sondheim sees that Lapine gets this terrible review in the New York Times, invites him over, pulls out an album of bad reviews, and they spend the afternoon reading Sondheim's bad reviews. And Lapine says, "I assumed you always got raves." And Sondheim says, "I was dismissed, ignored. The first time I ever got a good review, I was forty years old on my sixth show."

Pete: Wow. I feel like I want to say that again. He was forty years old.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Forty years old.

Jen: At this point, he's done West Side Story. He's done Gypsy. At this point, he's done a lot of shows, some of which are considered the greatest musicals of all time. But it wasn't until his sixth show, Company, that he ever got a good review. And then he says, "Well, that one wasn't even in the New York Times. They panned it."

Pete: Wow. Oh, that's so helpful to hear.

Jen: Right? So, I love the idea that Sondheim collected his bad reviews and was able to make light of them.

Pete: Yeah, agreed.

Jen: And I also wonder if there's...may he rest in peace, I wish I could ask him, "Did you ever go back and read something, and think, 'Oh, now I see what that reviewer was trying to say.'"

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. I also am obsessed with the idea of making light of reviews, bad reviews. Because I...I mean, I guess it's not unique. But like I, in the moment, can really struggle with and obsess about, or keep myself up at night with like just one negative review or one piece of negative feedback. We've talked before about like, you might have a thousand or maybe a hundred positive pieces of feedback or reviews, or people have come up to you a hundred different times and said how great something was, and then one person said something to the counter,-

Jen: Yep.

Pete: -all I can remember is that one.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And so, I really like the idea of like making light of the situation, making light of it.

Jen: And going back to the earlier point of, "Who's it for, who's it not for," and like who's review and critique are you going to trust...when the person who your work is for has something to say about your work that is criticism, constructive or not, it does make sense to like pause and see where the gift is in that feedback. I think back to when I was in my early twenties, and auditioning a lot. And I kept getting this piece of feedback, which I guess is, in a way, a bad review from a casting director, who kept telling my agent, "She's just not getting the world of the play. Like, she's not in the world of the play." And at the time, I was so stung by that feedback. I was like, "Oh my gosh. Like, I must be the worst." So what I did was, I became defensive about it. And I was like, "Well, this person doesn't know what they're talking about." But the truth was, they were who my work was for in that moment.

Pete: Interesting. Yeah.

Jen: And now in hindsight, I actually agree with them, that I was not in the world of the play. I was going through this phase of feeling like I needed to make everything super contemporary, even if it wasn't meant to be that way. So they were right, I was not in the world of the play. But at the time, it stung to the point where I brushed it off, and didn't take it in and didn't learn from it.

Pete: Yeah. I feel like you call out the important distinction between getting feedback from trusted sources or people who the work is intended for, versus getting feedback or a criticism from perfect strangers, perhaps, or people who are just clearly not part of the audience you're trying to serve.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So I think that's really important to get clear on when doing anything, really. And so you reminded me, actually, this idea of making light of feedback...you reminded me of this great story in the book Think Again, by Adam Grant, about Melinda Gates. He shares this great anecdote, and I'm paraphrasing it all, but the anecdote...gosh, I think about it all the time. Basically what happened is, Melinda Gates recorded a video of herself, reading criticism that she had received from staff members of the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation about her leadership style. And she did a video where she just read them verbatim. And some of them were brutal. Some of them, she started laughing at. Some of them, she was like, "Yeah, like, you got me there." And the whole point of it was to, I think in that context, like break down this barrier of her being on a pedestal, and actually just be like, "Here I am. I'm a human. I can see that I also have faults and flaws." But also, in my mind, I like the idea of, she kind of like...I'm trying to work out what the opposite of weaponize is...de-weaponized the feedback, and added some levity to the situation, which is like, "Yeah, I'm human. And yeah, I get negative feedback, like we all do. And here I am. Let me read it. And let's have a laugh about it." And I just, I don't know, I really like that as like a strategy, a coping mechanism.

Jen: Yeah, I like that too. Oh my gosh, so many...I've lived fifteen years longer than you, so maybe I have like more horrible bad review stories than you've accumulated at this point. I'm thinking back to when I was at NYU. And I would get, at the end of the semester, the written evaluations from the students, which were anonymous, so they could say whatever they want. And on the years where my reviews were bad, I was like, "These kids don't know anything. Forget it. I'm not taking any of this." And on the years they were good, I was like, "These kids know what they're talking about."

Pete: "They're geniuses."

Jen: It's just really easy to make some decisions about whether or not the person is qualified to give you feedback, based on what the feedback is and whether or not you like it.

Pete: So true. So true. Then there's the like the flip side that I hear talked about often, is that often the person who's giving the feedback is like projecting some insecurity that they have about themselves.

Jen: Hmm, interesting.

Pete: Yeah. I sometimes try and remind myself of that, too.

Jen: Yeah, I bet that means that reviewer couldn't do a Brooklyn accent.

Pete: Right, exactly. Or had been criticized for their Brooklyn accent, you know? Like they had a particular quirk about or experience about their identity within New York or Brooklyn or something, like maybe that was part of it.

Jen: You know, the cousin question to, "Who is it for," and, "Who is it not for," is, of course, "What's it for?" (And I guess this is like an episode of Jen telling stories.) I had directed a production of Spring Awakening, when I was an artistic director. And I got a letter addressed to me from a subscriber, saying that they had decided to cancel their subscription because of the production of Spring Awakening and how absolutely offensive it was. And she, "Left the theater thinking about...," and then she listed all of the themes of the show, and, "That was so disturbing." And I was like, "This is a huge high-five." Because the, "What's it for," of Spring Awakening, the reason I chose it for the season, was because I wanted the people to leave the theater and think about X, Y, and Z, all the things she listed in the letter that made her decide she didn't want to subscribe anymore. But what was so interesting is, because I had been so specific about why we were doing that show and we talked about it every single day during rehearsal, "This is why we're doing this. This is what it's for,"...when I got that bad review from the subscriber who was like, "And I'm out of here," I was like, "This is a success." Like, I'm sorry that they decided they had to go. But this told me that the show did exactly what we said it was meant to do. So you know (we talk about this a lot), ahead of time, get clear on, "What does success look like? Can you answer, 'Who's it for? What's it for?'" Because that helps so much with the processing of how people are receiving your work.

Pete: Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I love that. Okay. So it sounds like part of the strategy that we're recommending is, go back to the age-old questions of, "Who is my work for? Or who is this project for? And what is this project for? And also, who is it not for," so that (when, not if) when we receive negative feedback, we can look at the lists of who's it for, and who's it not for, and what's it for, and go, "Where does this fit? i.e. Is this something I should laugh at and ignore, or is there a gift in this piece of feedback?" I like that. So, I feel like they're effective strategies. And then the other thing that this reminded me of, there's a lot of writing in Stoicism about, "When people give you negative feedback, you know, focus on what you can control," and all of the stereotypical stoic philosophy-related ideas you might imagine. But one of the things that I always really liked comes from, I think it's George Herbert, who was like a poet, way back in the 1500s/1600s. And he said, "Living well is the best revenge." So like, when in doubt and you are feeling overwhelmed by all the negative feedback, if you could just focus on living well. You don't have to give it oxygen. You don't have to necessarily get in an argument with the person who gave you the feedback, or defend yourself, if it's within the realms of who it's not for, and not constructive. I just always liked the idea of just focus on living well, and showing up, and being generous, and doing the work you're doing. And that is the ultimate, you know, "revenge"...whatever, I feel like that is a slightly extreme word. But that is the best revenge.

Jen: Living well. I'm going to give that five out of five stars. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.