Well, dear readers, what a funny and interesting day it was yesterday. But more about that later.
Last night I dreamed I was at Manderly, or, as has now been pointed out to me, Manderley. I can’t remember the details of the dream anymore, other than at the very end of it some evil person was trying to hold me down and cause me grief and I actually took a punch at them. I know this because I woke up, not screaming, but throwing a punch right into my headboard, which isn’t made of board, it’s iron or something so why am I calling it a headboard? Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, I threw a punch at that thing that is at the head of the bed. What is that thing at the head of the bed? You know, the frontispiece or the headboard that isn’t a board, what in tarnation do they call that thing, there’s an official name for a thing at the head of the bed, besides headboard, and I can’t think of it now come hell or high water. And while we’re at it, just what does “come hell or high water” mean? What does it have to do with the price of tomatoes? Anyway, it’s a good thing I was alone in the bed or I might have decked an unsuspecting bed-partner.
Well, shall I tell you about what a funny and interesting day it was yesterday? Shall I tell you who won the trivia contest (Yes, Virginia, we had multiple winners)? Shall we all click on the Unseemly Button below before I try to knock out my headboard which isn’t a headboard?
As you know, I went off to Image Entertainment yesterday to do the first of two days of interviews and commentary tracks with a few of the cast of The First Nudie Musical, for our brand spanking new and upcoming DVD release. Yesterday we had Cindy Williams, Stephen Nathan, our choreographer Lloyd Gordon, and Leslie Ackerman, who played the ingenue in the film. I’ve, of course, seen Cindy many times since the film, and I’ve run into Stephen several times, and I saw Lloyd not too long ago. I hadn’t seen Leslie in many many years, so that was fun. Everyone looked really good. The interviews were a lot of fun – but what’s really fun is how everyone’s memories are slightly (and sometimes way more than slightly) different. Cindy was hilarious as she recounted how she got dubbed by People Magazine as “little Miss Filth Mouth” because she said the words “stunt cock” in the film. In the original script, her character says it once, but she liked the sound of it so much that she kept saying it, and we, in fact, added a bit so she could say it even more. Stephen had a lot of good stories, too. Leslie told how she’d just gotten out from New Jersey at eighteen and, as fate would have it, attended a dinner party that I happened to be attending. The minute I saw her I knew she was perfect (she’d just done a feature film and a Broadway play). Since she couldn’t sing, we had actress Annette O’Toole do the vocal, and Leslie told how for three weeks she did nothing but stand in front of her mirror lip-synching to a tape of the song until she had every single vocal inflection down. And I must say, if you watch her performance of that number you would not have a clue that she wasn’t singing, so perfectly does she act it (plus the voices match really well). In fact, the very same People Magazine that dubbed Cindy “little Miss Filth Mouth” called me and wanted to do a huge feature on Leslie as the next up-and-coming singing star. We briefly toyed with the idea of trying to pull a fast one, but we came clean.
Then Cindy, Stephen and I did a commentary track while looking at the film (no sound, though – very surreal – Cindy started reading their lips and doing the dialogue). It was very free-form and rambling and, I think, pretty funny. Today we’ve got five or six more cast interviews and then I do my solo commentary which will cover the entire history of the project from its humble beginnings to now.
I thought our trivia contest was quite difficult this week, but we had four High Winners who guessed correctly (and several incorrect guessers – but we like when you play along even if you don’t get it right). The question was:
Both stars of this 50s musical won Tony awards, but even more impressive both were understudied by future Tony winners. However since the future Tony winners weren’t box office names at the time, when the stars took a vacation they were replaced by a husband and wife in the first of only two Broadway appearances together. Name the show, the original stars, the understudies and the vacation replacements.
And the answer is:
BELLS ARE RINGING
Original Stars: Judy Holiday and Sidney Chaplin
Understudies: Phyllis Newman and Hal Linden
Vacation Replacements: Betty Garrett and Larry Parks
Our High Winners are Michael Shayne, Jeff Kauffman, our very own wonderful Klea Blackhurst, and Robert Armin. We put the four names into our electronic hat, and luckily it randomly picked our very own wonderful Klea Blackhurst. Congratulations to one and all and also all and one.
Something else happened yesterday, dear readers, and in order to tell you about it, I am finally going to have to tell you The Story. I’m not quite certain what form The Story will take, or even how detailed it will be, but tell it I will, come hell or high water, starting next Monday.
Well, I must be on my merry way, and I do hope that I don’t run into any evil people who are trying to give me grief, otherwise I might find myself trying to punch out my headboard-or-whatever-it-is again.