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January 28, 2002:

YESTERDAY I HEARD THE RAIN

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, tonight is the night I do the panel for this year’s Disney/ASCAP workshop. I’ve done this for the last seven years, I think, and I always have a very good time. It’s a bit nerve-wracking to sit and critique something you’ve only heard once, but that is our task and by gum and by golly I will do my best. Tomorrow, I will have a full report on the whole affair.

If you missed the weekend drivel, do be sure to use the Unseemly Archive Button to catch up. We discussed many varied and sundried things here over the weekend, and had a very lengthy story (endless, really) about why we cut a musical number from The First Nudie Musical (it will be included as a supplement on the DVD, of course). I’ll finish that story later on in these here notes.

Yesterday I heard the rain, dear readers. Yesteday I drove in the rain, got wet in the rain and generally had a good time watching and being in the rain (and yes, Virginia, raindrops were falling on my head). You see what happens? My sprinkler man was here fixing a sprinkler (what did you think he was here doing, fixing the oven?) and I just had to pay him for said fixing. In other words, the act of paying him took me away from writing these here notes, and now I have lost my train of thought. Have you ever lost your train of thought? My train of thought is probably in Pacoima already. By the way, my thought always travels on the Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe. My thought must always have a “sleeper” car, but that’s because my thought is spoiled rotten. What the hell am I talking about? Oh, yes, yesterday I heard the rain. Today I do not hear the rain, I see the sun. Just once I would like to hear the sun and see the rain.

Has anyone noticed that I have lost my train of thought? My train of thought has left the station and is bound for glory. I think that until my train of thought returns we should all click on the Unseemly Button below and then click our heels three times so that we can be carried off to TheRestOfTheseNotesLand.

Ah, the train has returned from parts unknown and I have my thought back with me, safe and sound. So, on Saturday I told you the story of why and how we cut the musical number from The First Nudie Musical. I also told you how the very next preview, in Westwood (where we played with Woody Allen’s Love and Death – amazingly, we got more laughs) where we showed it for the first time without the musical number, was the preview that Paramount saw. The next day they made an offer on the film. We accepted, of course. However, at that preview (and all previous previews) the film’s most famous scene and musical number, Dancing Dildos, didn’t exist. Isn’t that interesting? How it came to exist is also interesting. After the deal with Paramount was signed and sealed, I went to a meeting with the fellow who was responsible for the film being picked up by them, Mark Trabulus. Also at the meeting was the then head of the studio, the brilliant production designer, Richard Sylbert. Why a production designer was given the task of running a major Hollywood studio is anyone’s guess. He lasted one year in that job, and then was back to doing what he did best. So, there I sat – my first film as writer, director and star had been bought by a major studio, I was twenty-seven and felling my oats. They told me they loved the movie, thought it was hilarious and had high hopes for it. I thought, “Great.”
Then they told me that they thought there was an eight minute section of the film where things slowed down. I knew exactly where they were talking about, because I’d always felt the same thing. They said they’d like me to come up with something to replace it. That made me very nervous, and I tried to convince them that having eight minutes where the laughs weren’t as big as the rest of the picture, wasn’t really all that big a problem, but they were adamant that I come up with something. More importantly, they were going to give me half the budget of the entire film to shoot whatever I came up with – it would be shot for two days within three weeks time, so the picture could come out in March of 1976 (this was in October of ’75). Can you imagine? In comedies today, you’re lucky if you get three good laughs, in fact, you’re a hit if you get three good laughs. Back then, you really had to get a laugh every two or three minutes or your comedy was considered “in trouble”.

In any case, I went home that night and I sat in my living room trying to think of something to replace those eight minutes with, something that would be funny and clever, but that could include the one thing I didn’t want to lose from those eight minutes (althought the bit wasn’t funny, I knew if I reshot it differently that it would be). Remember, I’d co-directed the film, but for this reshoot I was on my own as a director, so I could do anything I damn well pleased. I sat for hours and hours, then went to bed. Lying in bed, for reasons I can no longer remember, I suddenly thought, wait, Dancing Dildos. It just came to me, just like that, almost fully formed. I got up, wrote the song in ten minutes, then the next day wrote the scene that would precede it and the one that would follow it. I went in to see the Paramount people the following day, and the minute I said Dancing Dildos they were on the floor, and they green-lighted the scene to be shot a week later.

Simple? Not as simple as you’d think. Cindy Williams, our star, had just started shooting Laverne and Shirley. Since we were going to shoot our new scene on a weekend, that wasn’t a problem. What was a problem was that she had a completely different hair style. So, in order to get around that, we had Tom Rasmussen, our set designer and costumer, make her a hat, a very cute hat, with a plastic hand on the front giving the finger (she and Stephen Nathan improvised some wonderful dialogue about the hat). Stephen was noticibly thinner and his hair was shorter, but we figured no one would notice (no one did). We also had to get everyone else back, because most of the background players would be in the scene. Tom created an amusing “set” for the number, and he built five large wooden dildos. Our choreographer, Lloyd Gordon, gave them a few steps, and we rehearsed for two days (we’d prerecorded the track already, two days after I pitched the idea!). Because Alexandra Morgan (as Mary La Rue) couldn’t sing, Diana Canova came in and did the vocal. I sat with the cameraman, Doug Knapp, and mapped out and storyboarded every single shot – there were something like seventy-three setups in two days time. I did this because I was also in the scene and, of course, video assist wasn’t being used very much in those days, so I couldn’t see a playback or anything. Anyway, we not only shot the entire sequence and wrapped early, I was also able to do some closeups and group shots for the first scene of the film, which we’d been too rushed to get during actual principal photography.

Paramount hired John Woodcock to cut the new sequence. I was very impressed with that, because Mr. Woodcock was Mr. Jerry Lewis’ editor for all his Paramount films. After I saw his cut, I gave him one suggestion, which he was kind enough to take, and the problematic eight minutes came out and the new eight minutes went in and the film was done. And that is the story of how Dancing Dildos came to be. There are a million more stories in the Naked City, but you’ll have to buy the DVD to hear them – the making of this film was truly hilarious, because none of us really knew what the hell we were doing, which is sometimes a good thing.

Last night, for supper, I made one of my favorite concoctions, which I call Wacky Noodles. I’m not going to tell you the recipe because you would vomit, but I like my Wacky Noodles and that is all there is to that. I will tell you that one of the ingredients is Cream of Mushroom soup. Now, for some reason, I’d bought a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup that was Low Fat. I didn’t notice that I’d done that at the time of purchase, but there it was, sitting on my shelf amidst the other normal cans of Cream of Mushroom soup. Wow, thought I, I’ll make Wacky Noodles with the Low Fat soup, thereby saving many fat grams and calories. So, I spooned in the low fat soup at the proper time, mushed it up, added a few of the other ingredients, and tasted it. I almost gagged, so awful was this low fat soup. It was totally grotesque, the taste of this low fat soup. I had to throw the entire batch of Wacky Noodles in the trash and start over, this time using normal Cream of Mushroom soup. The resultant Wacky Noodles, were, of course, delicious. Lesson learned: Do not use low fat Cream of Mushroom soup for anything, unless you want to gag.

Well, my train of thought is calling “All aboard”, and I must board it and be off. I shall see the sun but I shall not hear the sun, even though yesterday I both heard and saw the rain. One of life’s funny little conundrums, that.

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