(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

Harvey Fierstein is down on Broadway. “There’s so little future in theater,” he said at a New Dramatists luncheon, “because our wonderful critics don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.” The Hairspray vet currently stars in the critically panned A Catered Affair, which he also wrote. “Here’s what happens to good playwrights: They spend five years of their life on a new play, then critics come in and kill it,” he said. “So they just go to Hollywood and get paid $50,000 a week to write shit.” They don’t return, he said: “They do one show, they get bad notices, and they say, ‘Fuck it, I’m never doing that again.’ ”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Table of Contents: Jun 9, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!