Well, dear readers, I had a shocking experience yesterday. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, I had a shocking experience. And just what was this shocking experience you might ask, and I might tell you because keeping a shocking experience from you would be unseemly. Some kind person sold me a copy of a Donny and Marie Show from the seventies. That on the face of it is not shocking. The guest stars on this particular Donny and Marie Show from the seventies were Charley Pride, Cindy Williams and someone named Bruce Kimmel. That on the face of it is not shocking. No, what was shocking was to watch the tape. That was shocking indeed. This particular episode was the first of three or four (I no longer remember exactly how many we did) that Cindy and I guest starred in (she was doing Laverne and Shirley and I was doing the Dinah Shore and Her New Best Friends Show on CBS). First of all, may I say that Mr. Donny and Miss Marie Osmond were so cute on this show. Really cute. Extremely cute. With large teeth. Their “Sonny and Cher” act (the comic bantering and put downs) was still fresh and they did it very well. Both of them are extremely talented and have excellent voices. It was an odd group of people to be working on the Donny and Marie Show. Bruce Vilanch ended up writing for the show. And this first season, the very strange and wild David Winters was the choreographer. Anyway, it was shocking to see how sweet and innocent tv could be back then, and still be entertaining. Watching the show now is very surreal. What are those ice skaters about? Cindy and I did a cute sketch about an actress auditioning for a crazy director, and we both took part in another sketch about a beauty contest. The other guest star, who I forgot to mention, took part in that sketch, too. That was Miss Pinky Tuscadero (aka Roz Kelly). How many of you remember Pinky Tuscadero? As I recall she was being groomed as the female Fonzie. Whatever she was being groomed as it didn’t work. She had two other girls with her, too, the Pinkettes or something. Very strange. The big finale was a jaw dropper. It was called “Follies”, and it started off with Beautiful Girls, then everyone got to do their own Follies numbers. Cindy and I did The Continental for no discernable reason – although, I must say I was quite impressed with our “dancing”. I do remember that doing these shows was great fun and that the Osmonds treated everyone like gold.
Is that the longest paragraph ever written? I will be bitch-slapped for sure now. Watching the credits of the Donny and Marie Show I remembered that their musical director/arranger was the great Tommy Wolf. I remember going up to him immediately and fawning over him and telling him he was a huge hero of mine. He was very touched because I don’t believe anyone had fawned over Mr. Wolf in quite some years. But Mr. Wolf (along with Fran Landesman) wrote one of my all-time favorite songs – Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, along with the musical The Nervous Set (coming soon on DRG). In any case, watching the show was a shocking experience, there are no two or even three ways about it.
Oh, we really must click on that tiresome Unseemly Button below, so we can get on with these here notes.
As promised, here is the information on how to purchase tickets to the Tourette’s Syndrome benefit I’m directing. The show pays tribute to the music of the great Julius Wechter, he of the Baja Marimba Band. Lots of very cool guests, including Herb Alpert, Sally Kellerman, Karen Morrow, Nancy Dussault, Teri Ralston and some surprises. There will be a Baja Marimba Band reunion, with lots of great guest musicians (a core band with guests), plus a house band for the singers. The hosts for the evening are Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall. It’s being produced by the family Wechter (Cissy, David and Jerry) and it’s written by David. It promises to be a truly fun evening. The show is a one-time affair, April 28th, at the historic Alex Theater in Glendale at 7:00 pm. The tickets are a very reasonable $40.00 (there are a handful of “Gold” seats at $100) and all the money goes to benefit a very good cause. You can call 818 243-ALEX to purchase tickets. If you come, be sure to find me and say hello.
And now, the continuing saga.
There I sat, in the waning days of my involvement with Varese Sarabande, formulating a brand new plan, a new idea of how to create what would hopefully be a successful new label – a heavily internet based label. But my idea was larger in scope that just a “storefront” site. I wanted to create a website that would be fun, that would have personality and pizazz, would have a radio show and interviews and a chat room. Somewhere people could go all the time to not only buy albums but to be entertained as well. So, I started making some calls to see if anyone thought this was as great an idea as I did. First I called someone who I’d dealt with at a major theater website, because I thought they already had the site, we could plug right into it and feed off each other, how cool would that be? The fellow I spoke to was instantly interested and thought it a brilliant idea. He said he would speak to the owner of the site immediately and that they’d get back to me. Two weeks later I hadn’t heard from either one. A week later I called the fellow back, who apologized profusely. He said his boss had been very interested and that I should just hang tight and that they’d call in the next day or two. After four days, I called another theater website. This site was run by someone I also had had dealings with, the difference here was he ran the site. The minute I pitched him the idea he went nuts. He thought it was fantastic, a perfect fit. They flew me to New York for a meeting with he and his financial officer. We outlined what the company would be, we did up a business plan and they agreed to my terms (I would have an ownership position in the company, I was guaranteed a certain amount of employment, and they agreed to pay me what I wanted, the salary I would have made had I continued with Varese – in other words, I would have gotten the raise I asked for). I was thrilled, I was elated.
That was in November of 1999. They were supposed to have contracts done by early December. By mid-December they weren’t done but I did have a “deal memo” outlining the terms of my deal. By January, they told me that they’d had an offer from a big conglomerate to buy them out – although they would still effectively run things. That made me nervous. A week later they said they now had to pitch the label idea to the company (they had to actually pay me a holding fee once February 1 rolled around – because they’d asked me not to talk to anyone else about the idea and I, in fact, and signed a confidentiality agreement). Well, the conglomerate thought it was a fine idea, but not one they were interested in doing at the beginning of their involvement. The people with whom I’d made my deal tried to get the conglomerate to at least pay me the holding fee so we could work everything out, but they wouldn’t (ultimately, in a turn of events that foreshadowed other events, the owner of the site was pushed out of his own company by the conglomerate – and ultimately the website folded). So, there I was, back to square one after wasting three months. To be continued on Monday.
Don’t forget tomorrow is our handy-dandy Unseemly Trivia Contest, so come and play. I’m very discombobulated right now – my handy-dandy cleaning lady came today instead of tomorrow – hence, I think it’s tomorrow instead of today. That would just discombobulate anyone, in my opinion. Today I will be rehearsing with the lovely Miss Sally Kellerman, I will be seeing a rough cut of the first twenty minutes or so of our handy-dandy Nudie Musical documentary (Diana Canova is finally shooting her interview today in New York). And then I will be going to my friend David Wechter’s for a poker game. What an exciting day it will be.
Yesterday Mr. Jason Graae and Miss Susan Egan and I had breakfast and discussed trying to do a concert version of the musical that we recorded, Drat! The Cat! We’re going to do our damndest to try to make this happen, so stay tuned for details.
I’ll have lots of new DVDs to report on over the weekend, so do drop by. And Donald will have a brand spanking new radio show up, too – he’ll be along shortly to tell us what it is. Yesterday’s topic of discussion sure got a heated response and some brand spanking new posters. We love that. Today’s topic of discussion (by the way, if you’ve got any spiffy ideas for discussion, please e-mail them to me by clicking on the unseemly Ask Bruce button): What do you think of the various “concert reading” groups – i.e. Encores! Reprise! and the others around the country. Which ones do you think “do it right”? Why? Has Encores! which started out as staged concert readings of shows that deserved a rehearing, evolved into something wholly other, namely fully staged productions with costumes and scenery – does that negate the original purpose? Discuss away, Kimlets and Hainsies.