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April 21, 2002:

THE REVISIT

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, I had to go into my storage facility yesterday, and whilst there I took home some old reel-to-reel tapes and some old cassettes that were lying in a box with them. I’d borrowed a reel-to-reel recorder and have been transfering some things to CD. None of the reel-to-reels I brought home had anything very interesting on them (although one of them had my original Nudie musical demo tracks that I gave to Rene Hall to orchestrate from), but the cassettes were an entirely different matter. I don’t normally ever revisit the past, I basically find it a bore – but sometimes it is either fun, interesting, or amusing to go back and hear or see things you did many many years before. For example, on Ask BK Day, someone brought up Amanda McBroom, so I dug out my cast album of Heartbeats, which I hadn’t heard since the day I finished mastering it, and I listened to it. Hearing it again, I felt it was one of the best-sounding albums I ever did – everything just worked and it made me happy to hear it. That’s not always the case – sometimes I hear one of the albums and I just sit there and shake my head and think, “Oh, dear”.

So I listened to a few of the cassettes (which I also transfered to CD) and my goodness was it an interesting and at times nauseating experience. I was already nauseous because I’d eaten Taco Bell (I like Taco Bell, and sometimes I go on a Taco Bell bender – luckily, I always lose weight when I eat there) and then some gummy candies, and the combination was simply heinous (heinous, do you hear me?). Never mix Taco Bell with gummy candies, that is my advice. Anyway, there I was listening to these various and sundried cassettes. Before I tell you about them, though I’ll tell you about the rest of Sweeney Todd: The Concert DVD. I watched the second act last night – again, I thought George Hearn was excellent. Patty, I’m afraid, does not get better in Act Two, just more mannered and the accent just goes all over the place and is very distracting and annoying. Neil Patrick Harris does sing very well indeed, but he seems to have no idea who Tobias is. The last ten minutes of the show is brilliant, as always, just great writing from Mr. Stephen Sondheim. As I watched, every time someone got killed you’d suddenly get these “arty” TV moments, and even in some of the numbers you’d get weird coverage and angles and I began to wonder just who was doing the camera directing. As it turns out, it was Lonny Price, who should not go into a career in TV or film direction. However, it’s all enjoyable ultimately, and as I said yesterday, you will be fairly blown away by the sound and the orchestral detail. I must say, major kudos to Rob Fisher. There is a “making of” documentary which runs about twenty-five minutes, and which features interviews with most of the cast and, of course, Mr. Sondheim (his interview, which takes place in the theater, is very hard to understand because there is so much noise going on). Mr. Sondheim seems to have his anecdotes down by heart – they are worded the same in every single interview I’ve ever read or heard. Curiously not amongst the interviewees is Rob Fisher, who should have been.

What am I, Ken Mandelbaum all of a sudden? I also watched the first twenty minutes of the new DVD of Butterflies Are Free, starring Edward Albert and Goldie Hawn (and Eileen Heckart). It’s fun to see something this dated, and Goldie is just delightful. Mr. Albert is merely annoying, and ends all his sentences by curiously making them questions, but in a very Brit way. Mr. Albert, though, is not British, so I don’t understand it really. Mr. Albert is a blind person trying to be out on his own. He’s also a would-be songwriter and all through the beginning of the film he’s “writing” and humming and singing “Butterflies Are Free” which, in reality, was written by none other than Mr. Stephen Schwartz, here credited as Steve Schwartz.

What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Look how long this section has become. We’d better all click on that Unseemly Button below before you-know-who sees what’s going on.

Anyway, back to the cassettes. One of the most interesting ones I found was a cassette made at either the first or second screening of The Creature Wasn’t Nice (aka Spaceship aka Naked Space). We made it so I could hear where the laughs were and weren’t. I remembered the first screening as fairly disasterous and I know I did tons of changes the next day (from seven in the morning until ten minutes before the next screening) and the second screening was much better with much bigger and more consistent laughs. Yet, listening to this tape, I can’t tell which night it was. Whatever night it was, there is a key early scene between Gerrit Graham and Cindy Williams which seems to be missing, and there are scenes and dialogue bits I haven’t heard in twenty years. If I had to hazard a guess, it’s the first night, although the laughs are pretty big, which is not my memory of that night. It’s funny, but about fifteen minutes in I began to squirm and even though the film works in spurts after that, with some very big laughs (the musical number with the Creature literally brought the house down – they were screaming from start to finish – that leads me to believe that it’s the second screening, because my memory is it didn’t do that at the first screening). You can literally hear the film lose the audience, it’s just amazing. Then we’ll get them back for a few minutes, then you can clearly hear us lose them again. Of course, those screenings had temp-tracked music (far superior to the score that was written for the film) and no sound-effects at all, so one had to forgive it certain things. I know I did three weeks more editing after those screenings, deleting about ten minutes of material. Somewhere there’s a really funny movie in there, and a good editor could probably find it (and I’d probably be more helpful now in that regard than I was then).

Then I found an old demo of songs that were from what was supposed to be my film followup to Nudie Musical, a film musical which I called Sailors!. Sailors! was about three young men from an extremely small town in the mid-west – three guys who’d fallen in love with every sailor musical movie ever made, who’d spent most of their young lives watching those movies. So, they join the Navy of 1976 (when it was written), thinking it’s going to be like those movies, that they can sing and dance and have wacky adventures. Of course, the Now (then) Navy turns out to be something wholly different – none of their fellow sailors takes kindly to their singing and dancing on the ship, and their Captain, of course, wants to have them drummed out of the service. They soon get to LA where, like in On The Town, they have shore leave and meet and fall in love with three girls during their twenty-four hour stay. It was all very deconstructive and amusing, if I remember the script correctly. Anyway, I hadn’t heard these songs in over twenty years, and frankly I didn’t even remember half of them at all – it was like hearing totally new songs. The title song was bouncy and cute, all the girls’ numbers were fun, and a couple were just downright awful. I will be stealing back the tune of one of them, called It Might Be Fun, because I really liked it (again, no memory of having written it). Diana Canova and Alan Abelew were on the demo with me. One of the girls’ characters worked at Nu-Pike Pier in Long Beach, selling kisses for a living at a kissing booth (couldn’t do that today! Nu-Pike is, of course, gone, and can you imagine a kissing booth in today’s world?) – here’s the lyric:

Oh, I kiss for a living
But I’m living for a kiss
That will show me what a kiss is all about.
A kiss with something special
A kiss to be admired.
But all my lips ever get
Is tired…

Oh, I kiss for a living
But the living’s hardly bliss
It’s the kind of bliss that I could live without.
Let me find a kiss with passion
A kiss to be adored
But all my lips ever get
Is bored.

Night after night they all line up
For their little thrill
Night after night I put my sign up
And pray I don’t get ill

It’s a job, just a job
Kissing every creep and slob
But I do my job and do it very well…
And they kiss me with a fervor
With gusto and with verve
But will my lips ever get
What they deserve?
No, not like this!
Oh, I kiss for a living
But I’m living for a kiss!

I think that’s sort of fun. I did a revue of my material back then, with Diana, Alan and Annette O’Toole. Annette sang that song and she did it beautifully. Funny what comes back to you, hearing these things. Anyway, I also found a complete performance of my musical, Stages, and two complete performances of the show, Feast. I haven’t had a chance to hear them yet – but I feel I should preserve these tapes on CD no matter what.

Have I mentioned that mixing Taco Bell and gummy candies is not a good idea? By the way, I have definitely lost a pound or three – it’s very apparent because my pants aren’t quite so tight now. I have one more week before the benefit – where I shall have to look buff and toned with abs and buns of steel – barring that, I shall have to at least be able to fit in my suit. I have two rehearsals today, plus I’m going to visit a big paperback show in Mission Hills. I shall return on the ‘morrow with lots of new jottings. Today’s topic of discussion: What is the very first Original Cast Album you ever purchased? And what is the first soundtrack you ever purchased (I don’t mean things your parents had in the house – I mean the first one you actually went to the store and bought). My first Original Cast Album purchases were through the Columbia Record Club and were Mr. President and Subways Are For Sleeping. Isn’t that funny? But the first I actually purchased in a store was The Fantasticks, which I bought because I was at Wallich’s Music City and I loved the cover – just white with Harvey Schmidt’s lettering of the title in purple. I took it into a listening booth, heard it, fell in love immediately, and shelled out the dough right then and there. First soundtrack, Ben-Hur. Second, Li’l Abner. Your turn.

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