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March 26, 2003:

FOCUS, PLEASE

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, it is like summer here in Los Angeles, California. Yesterday, it must have been close to ninety degrees and today looks like it will be the same. The evenings, however, still get quite chilly. What am I, a weatherman all of a sudden? Don’t I have notes to write? I do, and I shall, because I have to leave my home address shortly and deliver some things of importance.

Last night I watched three episodes (coming soon to DVD – I got an advance screener) of a marvelous BBC documentary entitled Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood. It’s a look at film’s beginnings in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy and England. It’s actually quite moving and some of the images one sees is fairly astonishing. For anyone who simply believes that film is an “American” art form, these documentaries (six episodes in all, I think) help set the record straight. While America certainly led the way early on, these other countries were turning out astonishing work from the beginning. It’s wonderfully put together, narrated by Kenneth Branagh and beautifully scored by Carl Davis and others.

I’ve been reading my friend Beverly Gray’s new biography of Mr. Ron Howard and am enjoying it very much. I’m two-thirds through and it’s lively reading, filled with good stories and quotes. Mr. Howard wanted no involvement with the book, but Ms. Gray does a clever job using previously published material, interviews with people who know him (including yours truly for a bit about Nudie Musical), and it’s not done in a crass or crude way – Ms. Gray obviously has an affection for him that comes shining through. She only gets one thing truly horribly wrong, and that’s calling The Music Man film an M-G-M production (it’s Warner Bros.). If you like Mr. Howard I think you’ll enjoy the book.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because time is a fleeting mistress who waits for no man, woman, or tuna.

I’m still madly proofing away and hope to be done in the next day or so. It is arduous work, proofing is, and I’m bleary-eyed from doing it. I’m also becoming truly annoyed with the state of my eyes and must do something about it. I’ve always had the same prescription for my glasses, basically – it’s really only changed in a minor way over the last twenty years. Both eyes were fairly equal in their nearsightedness, but recently, within the last year, my right eye has become much better (I can see distances quite clearly) and my left eye has become much worse (distances have become a total blur). Therefore I walk around looking at things half in focus half out. I find it very unnerving. And when I wear my glasses to watch the television neither side is in focus because the right lens is not too strong and the left too weak. Perhaps this weekend I’ll go visit one of those “glasses” places and have a new examination and get new glasses.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must deliver things of importance, I must make several phone calls of importance, I must eat various and sundried foods of importance and I must walk around with half the world in focus and half the world out of focus. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask all your excellent questions, and also feel free to discuss anything else you like. I’ll be checking in in a bit.

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