Well, dear readers, on Sunday we will begin shooting our faux documentary for the DVD of The First Nudie Musical. We’re revisiting as many of the locations where the film was shot as we can (actually, most of it was shot on a soundstage, but there are a few locations to go to), including Raleigh Studios (Producer’s Studio when we made the film), Hollywood Blvd., where the song The Lights and The Smiles was shot (at various locations on the boulevard), the old Masonic Temple next to the El Capitan (where we held auditions and rehearsed), the Greyhound bus station on Cahuenga, etc. Then, in the next couple of weeks, we’re going to do the commentary tracks and the interviews for the documentary. Now, this might sound like a simple process, but let me tell you, it isn’t. Our production coordinator is trying to round up as many of the usual suspects as we can for the documentary – but we shot this film in May, 1975, almost twenty-seven years ago, and trying to find some people twenty-seven years later is like trying to find a needle-in-a-haystack. However, our production coordinator is tireless, and he’s doing a great job. So, I’m reconnecting with people I haven’t spoken to or seen in all these years.
Unfortunately, Diana Canova cannot make it out to do the commentary track with Cindy Williams and Stephen Nathan, but we will be doing her interview for the documentary in New York. The documentary should be fun, as the film has a very wacky history and I think it will amuse people to find out how long it took and how many roads we went down before it actually got made.
As many of you dear readers know, I’ve been transfering some valued VHS tapes to DVD, to save them and have them in a format which will not deteriorate. I’ve been checking them out as they get done. So, let’s all click on the fershluganah Unseemly Button below and find out more.
By the way, I apologize for the length of yesterday’s notes – as someone pointed out, it was like a novella in disguise. I simply got carried away, oh, yes, I got carried away and there was no stopping me from telling the tales I was telling. Today’s notes will be the normal length.
Where was I? Oh, yes, checking out these DVDs of my VHS tapes. I watched several of the Ed Sullivan compilations, which look great and are amazing. I watched Gwen Verdon do I’m a Brass Band and If They Could See Me Now, back in 1966, I watched The Most Happy Fella excerpts, well, I watched about two hours worth (out of the fourteen hours). One interesting thing was that the dance numbers were shot better than anything in the Fosse DVD. In other words, they showed the number, without too much cutting. Then I watched some of the Mia Farrow/Danny Kaye Peter Pan. What a strange show. It’s like some alternate universe production of Peter Pan, where you get the same story, much of the same dialogue, but there are all these other songs in place of the songs we all expect. Some of the songs actually work well, others don’t come close to their more well known counterparts. Mia Farrow looks great as Peter, but it’s by the numbers time, and she never seems like a real boy. Danny Kaye is marvelous fun, as always, as Mr. Darling and Captain Hook.
Then I watched some 8mm footage I’d had transfered to VHS (and now to DVD) of my daughter when she was eight years old. Interestingly, the lady that shot that footage lost her mind, became institutionalized, got released and became a bag lady and occasional stalker (to someone I know!). Then I watched a pilot I made for CBS way back in 1971. It was called Young Love, and it starred Meredith Baxter (her first television appearance) and Michael Burns and was directed by Norman Tokar (The Happiest Millionaire). It’s strange to watch – but still very sweet. I had quite a bit of hair and wore amusing shirts and pants of the period.
Then I watched my musical comedy Together Again, taped when it was in its first incarnation, trying out at Los Angeles City College. Much of it got fixed after that production (we moved the show to a small theater in Burbank three months later), so it is painful to watch all the junk that didn’t work at all. It does have a few decent songs, though, and some pretty funny bits. Good actors too, including Joan Ryan (Marsha Kramer did that part when we moved), Jeff Maxwell (who was a regular on MASH), Debbie Tilton (who stole all the reviews and who is fantastic), Udana Power (she played Melanie in the musical of Gone With The Wind! Penny Peyser played the role when we moved), my pal Alan Abelew (George in The First Nudie Musical), Rick Waln (who sings a number called I Hate Musicals, long before Ruthless), and Debbie Moradzedeh, who was a student, and who later changed her name to Gracie Moore, and is now one of those loopers who do all the post-production voices for every movie ever made. Oh, and me. I was very skinny in those days, 137 pounds, size 30 waist. Whew. In this first incarnation of the show, my character was totally insufferable, and I kept shouting at the tv, “Shut up already!” as I watched me being obnoxious. Only one scene worked terrifically for my character, and interestingly, you can hear the audience react and laugh and respond to the guy. When we were in rehearsals for the move, it was Penny Peyser who finally said to me, “This guy is a jerk” and that really made me investigate the why of “this guy’s a jerk” – once I realized why, I changed almost everything – not so much the dialogue (although plenty of that changed, too), but certain plot points which just made the character seem too anal and obsessed and crazy. Once we fixed those things, the whole thing played much better and was much funnier.
All right, enough notes today. And they’re not even funny. They just sit there like so much fish, dry as a bone. We need to hose these here notes, we don’t like dry notes, we like wet notes. We like notes that drip with my personality, are soaked with my personality. Apparently I have no personality today, because these notes are dry as a bone. Are bones always dry? What if a bone was in the yard and it rained, or the sprinklers got water on the bone. Then it would be wet as a bone, would it not?
Why am I talking about bones, dry or wet?
Well, dear readers, don’t forget, tomorrow is our handy-dandy Unseemly Trivia contest, courtesy of dear reader Craig Brockman. And I promise, tomorrow’s notes will be wet.