Well, dear readers, we had part two of our trip down the Nudie Musical memory lane yesterday and, again, it was a lot of fun and totally surreal. We had Vern Joyce (he plays the assistant director), Alan Abelew, John Kirby, Jeff Harlin and Greg Finley. They were all charming and had fond memories of the experience, some of which I hadn’t heard before and which were really sort of lovely. Then came my turn. Now, I like to talk as much as the next person, but I must tell you, dear readers, that I did not shut up for six hours. The first thing we did was my interview for the documentary, and my friend Nick Redman (who is directing the documentary) did the interview – he took me through the entire process from the time I got the idea to now. I talked and talked and then for a change of pace, I talked and talked, and then for a bit of variety I talked and talked. After I’d talked and talked I talked some more. Finally, we finished the on-camera interview, and then we went in to do my solo commentary track with Nick – so, we sat and watched the film from start to finish while, as a novelty, I talked. And talked. I have no idea what I said at any point yesterday, but whatever it was Nick has a lot of it. Now he begins the task of editing all this into some kind of shape. Thankfully, I will be home resting my voice.
This flu, or illness or whatever the hell it is, just hangs on. I haven’t gotten really sick, but I haven’t gotten really better. Just when I think I’m almost really better, I’m really not. And so it goes.
Something else very interesting happened yesterday and it happened right here at haineshisway.com. It was a first really, and I was totally thrilled to see it happen. Just what was it that happened at haineshisway.com yesterday? Well, perhaps we should all click that Unseemly Button below and find out.
What happened here at haineshisway.com yesterday is something I’ve been hoping would happen. Someone posted an Unseemly Comment. Then someone responded to it. Then another. It became a dialogue and suddenly we had a little message board going. I love that. Let’s have more of that. It was an interesting discussion about 70s television movies of all things, because apparently I’d mentioned that in a past Notes. From my point of you, the 70s were the Golden Age of the tv movie. They were simple, direct, and some of them were quite brilliant. They weren’t afraid to be different – in fact, they were rather like some of the great “B” movies of the forties and fifties, you know, the ones that played the bottom half of double bills but that were sometimes better than the “A” feature. I remember some with great fondness indeed, including A Cold Night’s Death with Robert Culp and Eli Wallach (a great scary movie), Isn’t It Shocking? with Alan Alda and Louise Lasser, directed by John Badham, of course the brilliant Spielberg tv movie, Duel, with Dennis Weaver, a Michael Crichton movie I can never remember the name of with, I think, E.G. Marshall, Brian’s Song, Brotherhood of the Bell (with Glen Ford, score by Jerry Goldsmith), Dr. Cook’s Garden with Burl Ives, from the play by Ira Levin, How Awful About Alan with Tony Perkins, some wonderful little thing with Richard Kiley and David Opatashu (something with San Francisco in the title – a great score by the very underratied Pat Williams), well, I could go to the imdb.com and look up all these things, but I leave that to others.
In any case, it was a great decade for tv movies, especially the first five years. Someone mentioned the theme from the ABC Movie of the Week show, which, of course, was Nikki by Burt Bacharach (how many of you know that Nikki actually possesses a set of lyrics by Hal David). Another great show back then was The Name of the Game, which had a revolving cast of leads, including Anthony Franciosa and Gene Barry (who was the third? Robert Stack or someone like him?) – each episode was like a movie, ninety minutes, and there were some terrific ones, including at least one directed by a very young Spielberg.
The Oscar nominations are out and are as baffling as usual. I was sad but not surprised to see A.I. snubbed in just about every category (it’s up for score and special effects, I think), and especially sad for Haley Joel Osment, who was simply extraordinary in it. And how do you nominate Moulin Rouge for Best Picture without nominating Baz Luhrmann as director? As you know, I was not a huge fan of the film, but if you’re going to think that’s a film that should be up for Best Picture then how on earth can you not nominate it’s director, especially for this particular film. This film is about its director as much as its about anything. Baffling. I haven’t really seen that many films from last year to know what other snubs were baffling. Let’s make that the topic of discussion for the day.
Have I mentioned that I talked for six hours yesterday? I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. When I got home, I spoke to a singer I’ve worked with many times, and this singer had some very very interesting things to say to me. Very interesting. So interesting that I wrote them all down and passed them along to the people who needed to see them.
This morning my phone rang six times (starting at seven o’clock), and each time I picked it up, it went dead at the other end. I *69d the first time, and it said the number was busy, but that it would ring me when it wasn’t. It did ring me several minutes later – I got a ring, the call connected and I was greeted by silence and then a disconnect. Then, five minutes later it rang, silence, disconnect. And again, and then again. It hasn’t happened in the last half-hour, so maybe it’s done. Isn’t that just too too annoying? Perhaps we should all wish a pox upon whoever is doing it. Yes, let’s all wish a pox upon them. And after the pox let’s eat some lox whilst wearing our socks. If the pox doesn’t work, perhaps we should throw rocks, or at least send whoever is doing it to the school of hard knocks. What the hell am I talking about? And why am I talking at all? Didn’t I talk for six hours yesterday? Wasn’t that enough?
Well, dear readers, perhaps I shall go relax and do things and then perhaps I shall do things and relax. Don’t forget to post your Unseemly Comments and chat with each other. That way we can have our very own pretend message board without really having a message board.