Among the shows that passed the desk, I looked at one and the title page said Assassins — I just immediately thought, “That’s a musical,” without knowing anything about it — by a man named Charles Gilbert. And I opened it up and it was essentially a tale of a soldier who comes back from Vietnam and he’s politicized and becomes an assassin and he tries to assassinate… I’m not sure if it was the president. I think it was. At any rate, along with this story, which is really one of paranoia, there was a sort of Sidney Greenstreet figure who would appear as sort of the spirit of evil, who would appear sporadically and read quotations from various politicians’ letters. I don’t think they were all presidents, but anyway. So it was interspersed with history, and it wasn’t for us. We decided not to do it. But many years later I was talking to John Weidman. We had written together, and we wanted to write something else together, and I mentioned this to him, and his eyes lit up and he got it right away, the way I did, and he said, “I don’t know what it is, but that’s a great idea.” I said, “Let me see if I can track down Charles Gilbert,” and I did, and I wrote him a letter, and I said, “Could we use your idea? We won’t use your show, just the idea of Assassins.” And to my delighted surprise, he said, “Absolutely, providing that it doesn’t ever prevent me from putting my show on, if I can find a way to put it on.” I said absolutely not.