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Video: Tony Awards Nearly Decapitate Poison's Bret Michaels
By
John Del Signore
Published Jun 8, 2009
Modified Jun 8, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jun 8, 2009
Modified Jun 8, 2009
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The Tony Award broadcast usually amounts to a night of boring Broadway boosterism which most Americans happily ignore to watch basketball, but last night viewers actually got a few seconds of drama to go with all the backslapping, as Poison lead singer Bret Michaels got into an exciting accident with a piece of scenery. The "Rock of Love" star was on hand to perform a song with the cast of hair band jukebox musical Rock of Ages; but as you can see from the last few seconds of this video clip, that bit of cross-promotional synergy nearly cost him his life.
Michaels was "slightly injured," and his publicist told People that "Michaels was hoping to hit some after-parties but was getting X-rays." The rest of the evening was uneventful, with no major upsets besides the award for Best Original Score going to Next to Normal, not Elton John's Billy Elliot.
But producers of the latter musical had nothing to complain about; the show dominated the proceedings with 10 awards, and the three boys, David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik, and Kiril Kulish, who share the title role shared the award for Best Actor (video of their cute acceptance is after the jump). John appeared to perform a song from the show and help accept the award for Best Musical, telling America: "Thank you for accepting us on Broadway... We came here at a hard time economically. You opened your hearts and you opened your wallets."
God of Carnage won the award for Best Play, beating out Neil Labute's excellent reasons to be pretty, which will probably close by the end of the month, having walked away empty-handed. (God of Carnage has been extended.) 83-year-old Angela Lansbury won her fifth Tony (for her performance in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit), Liza Minelli won for Liza's at The Palace, and Geoffrey Rush beat out stiff competition from James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Raul Esparza, and Thomas Sadoski to win the Best Actor award for his delirious performance in Exit the King. Accepting the prize, he thanked Broadway audiences "for proving that French existential absurdist tragicomedy rocks." Here's the full list of winners.
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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