James Carpinello Rocks!
James Carpinello is about to open on Broadway in Rock of Ages, but if you run into him on the street, please don't tell him to "break a leg." That time-honored wish for theatrical good luck would be a big mistake in this case, given that the Saturday Night Fever star's plans to return to the New York stage as the male lead in Xanadu were scuttled when he suffered a serious leg injury during a rehearsal and was replaced by Cheyenne Jackson.
"God didn't want me to do Xanadu, for some reason," James says with a Zen-like air of acceptance. "I grew up playing hockey, and skating was second nature to me, yet I broke my leg skating. Not even; I was pretty much standing still on skates when it happened. It was a total fluke. I was upset because, at first, the press release said something to the effect of 'James Carpinello hurt his foot.'
I remember reading that and saying, 'No, wait, you can't put that out there!' I didn't 'hurt my foot,' I actually broke my leg in three places. You can perform with a hurt foot, but I was in a cast up to my knee for four months, and I had two surgeries. I was sad when it happened because I was having the time of my life during that show, and I loved everyone involved. But it just wasn't meant to be."
A person with a glass-half-full outlook might say that, in the years since James made a splash Off-Broadway in Stupid Kids, his career has been less than charmed. Despite huge advance ticket sales, Saturday Night Fever was a disappointment. A few years later, James played Link Larkin in workshops of Hairspray but left the show before it came to Broadway to go off and do "The Great Raid," a movie that flopped at the box office even though it was quite good and boasted a high-profile cast. Then came the Xanadu mishap.
But James doesn't see himself as unlucky. "I think everything happens for a reason," he says. "Saturday Night Fever was my first Broadway show, and I had a great time. It was a big, giant dance show, and I wasn't a great dancer. That's why the critics and everybody came after me, but it's something I already knew. I was proud that I did my job to the best of my ability, but I also understand that this was Broadway. It's funny: If you watch the movie, Travolta only really dances, like, one time. But he's the man. He only needed to dance in one number to make an amazing impression."
Though James and his family now call L.A. home, he's delighted to be back in New York in Rock of Ages, which has moved to Broadway following a run at New World Stages. "It's not a revue," he states emphatically. "It's a complete book show. Chris D'Arienzo has taken songs from the '80s and put them into a storyline about two lost souls, played by Constantine Maroulis and Amy Spanger, on the Sunset Strip. I play a super-crazy, cocaine-snorting rock star who gets into the mix and screws everything up."
James didn't see ROA Off-Broadway, "but I saw a previous version of it years ago at the Vanguard in L.A. I grew up on that music, and I love it. But for my money, the best thing about this show is the book. Chris wrote an incredibly smart, hysterically funny book that allows the audience to have so much fun. Otherwise, the show would just be cheesy drek. It was the same with Doug Carter Beane's book for Xanadu, but people who write comedy don't usually get a lot of respect, even though comedy is the most difficult thing to write."
Before our interview ended, I had to ask James about the rather controversial decision on the part of the Rock of Ages powers that be to sell beverages -- including alcohol -- not just at intermission but during the performance. "I think it's great," he says. "Would it work if you were going to see an Ibsen play? I don't think so. Would it work for an O'Neill play? Probably not, because you don't want a bunch of depressed drunks in the audience, crying along with the characters as they get hammered. But does it work for Rock of Ages? Absolutely!"
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