Why Jack Schlegel is one of my heroes

Last night’s reading of THE CURSE OF BATVIA played to a packed house. As the audience arrived just before the show began, I spotted one of my favorite people across the crowded room. Jack Schlegel.

I first met Jack in the mid-1990s when my friend Laura Callanan introduced us as I was gearing up to direct my first feature film, ALL THE RAGE. I was living in Boston at the time, where the film would be shot, but the culture of Boston was not then nearly as conducive to arts fundraising as New York, so I was a frequent “special guest” at small house parties in Manhattan where friends or friends of friends introduced me to people who might be excited to help make the dream of a gay film that was about something other than coming out a reality.

I met Jack at one such party and he immediately invited me to a small off-off Broadway production of a play I’d never heard of featuring some actors he assured me I “must see.”