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Love Quote by Andrew Lloyd Webber

"Well we'd just seen Gerry. I think he wanted somebody who had that authority and was handsome. The thing is, he's a big hunk isn't he? All I can say, if you look at his chat line, or the Phantom website, it's quite worrying. Because the girls really seem to love him"

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Andrew Lloyd Webber is doing that very British trick of sounding like he is casually gossiping while quietly diagnosing his own cultural machine. The line opens with casting pragmatism - "authority and... handsome" - a reminder that musical theatre is as much about selling a silhouette as a voice. But then it slips into something more revealing: "he's a big hunk isn't he?" The offhand lustiness is almost comic coming from the urbane composer, and that mismatch is the point. Webber is acknowledging the blunt, bodily economics of fandom that high-art pretensions prefer to ignore.

The real bite is in the pivot to the "chat line" and the Phantom website. Webber is peering into the audience's private annex, where the show stops being an elegant Gothic romance and becomes a projection screen for desire. "It's quite worrying" lands as both sincere and performative: a creator startled by the intensity he's helped manufacture, but also subtly flattering the production's reach. The concern isn't morality so much as scale - the way attraction metastasizes online, turning a stage role into an always-on object of fixation.

Context matters: Phantom has long trafficked in erotic danger packaged as prestige. Webber's comment exposes the feedback loop: cast a handsome authority figure, watch the fantasy harden into devotion, then confront the internet's ability to archive and amplify it. He's not just talking about one performer; he's clocking how contemporary fandom collapses the distance between audience and artifact, and how a "classy" blockbuster can still run on thirst.

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TopicRomantic
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Andrew Lloyd Webber on Gerard Butler Phantom casting
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Andrew Lloyd Webber (born March 22, 1948) is a Composer from United Kingdom.

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