Well, dear readers, it’s Oscar night and we are having a party here at haineshisway.com, so put on your pointy party hats and your colored tights and pantaloons, get out the heaping platters of cheese slices and ham chunks, and dance the Hora or even the Frug until the cows come home. Here’s how it will work: I want play by play, moment by moment posts about everything and anything, for you see I will not be watching the Oscars because I’ve yet to get my new digital cable service. So, we will need all the dish, all the dirt, from who’s winning what to who’s wearing what. Oh, what fun we shall have at our Oscar bash. It will be the place to be, where it’s at, where it’s happening, where the in crowd will be, where the grooviest and the ginchiest hang out, man. Be there or be round, that’s what I say. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
Last night I watched a brand spanking new DVD, one of those Broadway Theater Archive things that they are putting out with some regularity. I must say, I never thought the one I watched last night would ever make it to DVD but it has. It’s called Forget-Me-Not Lane and it’s by Peter Nichols (Joe Egg). It stars Joseph Mahar, Tom Hulce (in his first starring role – he was understudying Peter Firth in Equus at the time), Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Moffat, Joyce Ebert and my very own self. I’d done the play here at the Taper (with John McMartin, Bud Cort, Beulah Garrick and Charlotte Moore), and when it came time to tape it, they only brought three of us from LA – Donald, me and Betsy Slade. We did the play in 1973 and, as I recall, this was taped (in Connecticut) in the first part of 1974. How weird it was to see it – I rarely like watching myself in anything, especially something this old. I must say, I look impossibly young in it, and I thought my English accent was very good, and I really liked my costumes (by Joseph Aulisi). The play, which, at the time, I thought brilliant, really isn’t, but it’s a lovely memory play. I remember the hardest thing for me was not adapting the performance for the camera (I’d done quite a bit of television by then), but the lack of laughter. My part got lots of laughs in the theater, and it was unnerving not to hear them. The funniest thing is that I’m on the cover of the DVD. Who would have thought?
Well, dear readers, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below, because we must start our Oscar bash preparations, mustn’t we? We must and we shall, not necessarily in that order.
I actually went out jogging yesterday. It is so hard to start jogging when you’ve had a six-month hiatus. I didn’t get very far, frankly, but today I shall endeavor to get farther – or is it further – or is it both? Perhaps today I shall endeavor to get farther further or ever further farther. What am I, the Marx Brothers all of a sudden?
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must go to the market and shop for our Oscar bash, I must attempt to jog, I must write, I must relax and then we must party. Today’s topic of conversation: It’s Sunday, free-for-all day, but we’ll make it about all things Oscar. What are your favorite Oscar moments, the worst Oscar moments, etc. Hold nothing back, and I will see you here promptly at six for the Hainsies/Kimlets Oscar bash and dear reader reportage. Our handy-dandy Live Chat will take place tomorrow at six.