Wired.com presents the Geek's guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 135 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Today on the show will be speaking with playwright Glenn Berger who wrote the script for the

Broadway musical Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark.

That show, which had music composed by rock stars Bono and Edge from the band U2,

and which was being directed by Julie Tamore,

director of the Broadway musical The Lion King initially seemed like a dream job,

but it ultimately turned into a harrowing six-year-long nightmare,

which Berger recounts in hilarious detail in his new memoir,

Song of Spider-Man.

And now here's our interview with Glenn Berger.

All right, so we're here with Glenn Berger.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Okay, so this is a show for fantasy and science fiction fans. Thank you So just tell us a bit about what sort of track record did these sorts of fantasy and

science fiction shows have on Broadway? Well now that you mention it. Not so

hot, pop of my head. You know I suppose Superman was a Broadway show in the mid-60s I think and that

did better than people were expecting but it didn't last that long and they tried to revive it recently but I don't think it made it to Broadway.

So yeah, it's a I would say it's a challenging genre.

But you guys somehow you were confident, pretty confident though, that Spider-Man was going to be a big hit?

Yes, we were very confident.

I think part of it had to do with the unique characteristics of Peter Parker and

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