Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Weaver.
Matt, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in New York, where I was raised by my father, an openly gay man raising a child in Manhattan in the late 70s-early 80s. It was a glamorous time, made even more fantastic by my father’s job. He was the head of marketing for Paramount Pictures. I grew up on the red carpets of iconic movies like Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Footloose. Our summer home was in Cherry Grove on Fire Island, which you can imagine what that was like in the 80s for a 9-year-old boy. When I was a teenager, my dad went to work for Disney and we moved to Los Angeles. I got an after-school job at Walt Disney Studios while I was still in high school. I was a gopher and production assistant, literally delivering mail and I loved it. I saw and experienced so much just by listening and paying attention. I delivered things to movie stars and watched Disney grow into the iconic company it is today. Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg were taking over the studio and it was a really dynamic time to be there. I tried going to college while working part-time on the lot. Ultimately, college just wasn’t for me and I started working for Disney full time.
By the time I was 25, and most people were just starting their careers, I had already been at Disney for 8 years. That’s when I left and started producing. I partnered with Tony Lord out of Chicago and our company was called Lord Weaver Productions. Because of the name, people thought we were a really rich British royal who was financing movies. The business was very different, and it worked to our advantage. You could still sell spec scripts and pitches back then and we got our first producing deal on the Sony lot for Tristar pictures when I was 26. I produced my first movie in 1999 and since then have produced nearly 30.
While I was producing the Rock of Ages movie, which was a huge budget, starring Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russel Brand and Catherine Zeta-Jones, I was also producing a small documentary about a well-respected but little-known sushi chef that became Jiro Dreams of Sushi. I fell in love with documentaries and non-fiction and I’ve since made about a dozen of them including Chef’s Table for Netflix and a new upcoming docu-series for AppleTV+.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Opening Rock of Ages Hollywood has been unlike anything else I’ve ever done. It’s not just the show, which we’ve totally reworked and made immersive. It’s also building a nightclub, restaurant and theater. We had two sets of people, creative theater people from New York and an amazing nightlife and hospitality team from Los Angeles working together on something that has never been done before. They don’t speak the same language. They don’t focus on the same things. We found a way to combine the two worlds by communicating and just being flexible. There are a whole lot of things that are just out of your control when you’re in construction. On Broadway, you’re given an opening date and you open that day. When you’re building a venue, everyone else gets to decide your schedule, tile deliveries, building inspections, permits, construction delays. It’s been a lot, but you just keep moving ahead a little bit each day.
Rock of Ages Hollywood – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Rock of Ages began as an idea in 2005. I was not in the theater business at all. My wife, Hillary, was producing plays at the time and she introduced me to Kristin Hanggi. Seeing Kristin and Hillary work really got my wheels turning. What if we made a musical out of 80s rock songs where you could actually have a drink while you enjoyed the show? That was the entire idea. Kristin suggested setting it at a club on the Sunset Strip. I wanted it to be interactive and immersive. Kristin found the writer, Chris D’Arienzo, and that’s when it all began to take shape.
Rock of Ages had its first workshop in 2006 at King King on Hollywood Boulevard. At that point, I thought the best we could hope for was turning it into a Las Vegas show. I was really hoping Steve Wynn was just going to walk in and save the day. From King King, we went onto Vanguard and we would perform before they opened for the night as a nightclub. We eventually got kicked out because we kept going long and we went to find a space that we could own ourselves. We put it up in a soundstage at Renmar Studios and people started to really enjoy it. Then, in 2007, we got a chance to do 1 week at The Flamingo in Las Vegas. I don’t want to say it was a disaster because the show was great, but the run only lasted 1 week.
We needed the credibility from New York to make it work in Vegas. So, I finally listened to my writer, director, choreographer and wife and we headed to New York where we opened Off-Broadway in 2008 at The New World Stages. From that run, we were able to sell the movie rights to New Line and Warner Brothers. In late 2008/early 2009, at the peak of the financial crisis, a lot of Broadway theaters were available. I had a meeting with James Nederlander, the man at the head of the legendary organization that controls most of the theaters on Broadway. In the middle of the meeting, he asked me, “Do you have the money?” I replied, “Yes, sir.” He turned to his team and said, “Give him the Brooks Atkinson.” In May 2009, we opened on Broadway.
On Broadway, we thought we were going to be a tourist show. A fun night out for the bridge and tunnel crowd. We were a show that you could drink in your seats with songs by Poison and Whitesnake. We thought New York theater people would hate us. When the New York Times critic, Charles Isherwood, came to the show, he was stone-faced the entire time. The day after, I got a call from my publicist saying he wanted to come back a second time. This just never happens. Reviewers normally only come once. I thought for sure that he hated it so much, he wanted to see it again to make sure he really thought it was that vile. When I walked into the theater that night, I saw him walking to his seat with a drink in his hand, and I knew we had a hit. His review gave permission to the New York Theater crowd to enjoy it. When you combined that audience with the people who just loved our music, we got six years on Broadway, over 2,350 performances, 5 Tony Nominations, and 19 productions worldwide. We still hold the record for the most liquor sold at any Broadway show in history! Rock of Ages Hollywood will be the 20th production.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Passion combined with the ability to take risks and jump off cliffs. It’s a very scary and unsafe thing to do. Hopefully, you’re smart about it, like Hillary, my wife. Sometimes, you just have to jump off a cliff and weather the storm.
Contact Info:
- Address: 6356 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028
- Website: https://www.rockofageshollywood.com/
- Instagram: @rockofageshollywood
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