Well, dear readers, it is raining here in Los Angeles, California. Since I like rain, it is a pleasant change of pace. I knew it would be raining early this week because I finally had my car washed on Sunday. We had a perfectly lovely and sparkling chat last night – I had to leave after only fifteen minutes, but I was told that it was perfectly lovely and sparkling by those in the know. We had no uncouth interlopers and everyone who attended had a perfectly lovely and sparkling time. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
In case you missed my post yesterday, the weekend was the biggest we’ve ever had, traffic-wise, almost double our usual. Don’t forget, Donald has a brand spanking new radio show up so give it a listen, and I hope to have Brent Barrett’s Unseemly Interview up later this week – if not, the following week for sure.
Last night I did the panel for the Disney/ASCAP workshop, which I’ve done for the last eight or so years. I always enjoy doing them, although it is slightly unnerving to sit and critique the hard work of others. On the panel with me was Mr. Peter Fleischer, who used to run the Disney animation division, and Mr. Paris Barclay, an esteemed TV writer/director, and also the author of the new musical, Letters from ‘Nam. Stephen Schwartz, the usual moderator, is off working on Wicked, so we had the talented Craig Carnelia in his place. The musical we saw was from the novel (and film) Now, Voyager. The authors had done the “short form” version two weeks prior, gotten notes, and had been working steadily since. What we saw was the first act. The panel all felt that the authors needed to focus their story, clarify what the show was about. The opening number, a nice number, led us in the wrong direction, but was, in my opinion (IMO, in Internet lingo) fixable with a different point of view and different lyrics. But the show never really told us enough about our heroine (Charlotte Vale), hence we didn’t care enough at any point. Craig made an interesting point that they need to make the show their own, not just present us with all these hoary things from the film. As someone said, in the context of when the movie was made, the cigarette business was romantic and naughty, but today it does not have the same meaning – so, they either have to set us up for the period better, or they have to find other things. Also, as the act went on, the music suddenly got pop-flavored without point, which we all felt was a mistake. But the authors are talented and hopefully they will keep working on the show. I saw many friends there – in the cast was the marvelous Marcia Mitzman-Gaven, who was in excellent voice and quite pregnant. The male lead was played by Mr. David Naughton, who appeared in our Tourette’s Benefit last year. In the audience I saw our very own Adryan Russ, my pal Doug Haverty (who did many of the Varese CD covers for me), director Paul Lazarus (he did You Never Know, whose CD I produced), and several others. It was very nice to see Craig Carnelia again, and we both reminisced about the Lost in Boston session we did together. At the end of the evening this young man came up to me and said he’d missed our bios at the beginning, but that he thought he recognized me and my name. I told him I was a record producer and that I’m also a writer and director. He looked at me and then said, “The First Nudie Musical?” I said yes, and he was so sweet about the film and he told me he’d written a musical called Bestiality because the film had been an influence. All in all, it was a fine evening, and Michael Kerker of ASCAP should once again be given kudos for the program. I also told Michael that we’d be interviewing him for our upcoming film.
Speaking of the upcoming film, I spoke to our producers yesterday, and it was decided to push the film back by four weeks – done for a variety and also a Hollywood reporter of reasons. Interestingly, this makes our new start date May 5th. What is interesting and serendipitous about that date is that Nudie Musical and The Creature Wasn’t Nice (aka Naked Space) both started shooting on May 5th.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below, because I’m sure when we do so we shall discover yet more sentences on the other side.
You see, you see, I was right, there are yet more sentences on the other side. The flip side, as it were. I didn’t get the book off to the publisher yesterday, because we had what is called a Word glitch with the way it was numbered, and dear reader Susan Gordon toiled all the live-long day trying to fix it, but ultimately couldn’t. Some other dear readers helped her, but this Word glitch is just that and I’ve written a long note of instructions to the publisher, and included the problem, so everything should be fine and dandy and the book will go off today.
Last night I ate a McRib Sandwich. I don’t know why, really, and I’m not bragging about it. I’d never had a McRib Sandwich before, but McDonald’s brought it back and so I decided to try it just because it sounded so weird. Thankfully, there are no bones in the McRib Sandwich – I didn’t care for it much, however. The sauce is weird and the pickles and onions are weird and frankly ribs without bones are weird. I call it a McRib Glitch.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must try to avoid having my clean car in the rain, I must catch up on things I’ve neglected due to all this book proofing and I must eat various and sundried foodstuffs. Today’s topic of discussion: If you could choose one unrecorded musical for me to make an album of, what would it be and who would you have on the album.