Well, dear readers, I am trying oh so hard to be organized and on top of things and I am hopefully winning the battle, oh, yes, I am hopefully winning the battle. My head is swimming with a hodge-podge of various and sundried thoughts, oh, yes, my head is swimming with hodge-podge of various and sundried thoughts. Today, for example, I must lock down our recording script, so that we may make copies for our company of players. Yesterday, I spent considerable hours on the telephone, having conversations with the recording studio, our musical director, and the gentleman who directed the show we’re recording. Happily, the recording is fully funded now, so we have no worries about that end of things. I’m trying to have everything in place by end of Thursday, so that none of this is on my mind Friday, and I’ll be able to pack and attend to the home environment details prior to my car pickup at five a.m. the following morning. After dealing with all the phone stuff, I sat down and wrote two-and-a-half pages. I then had a lovely call from Mr. Ira Levin, who was happy to hear that I’d be in New York this weekend. He has booked me tickets to see the concert reading of Drat! The Cat!, which I’m looking forward to. Then Mr. Kevin Spirtas came over and we did some adjustments to the second half of the show. We scotched two medleys and decided to do several full songs instead. I made some song recommendations which he liked, and I also suggested a little two-song tribute to the recently departed Cy Coleman. I then headed over the hill to have dinner with a gal pal I haven’t seen since around 1998ish (I saw her once, briefly, about three years ago, when we passed each other at one of the Ray Courts shows). We had a blast catching up. She’s a dear person, and she seems quite happy in her life. It’s nice to renew friendships that have languished, and I look forward to keeping this friendship alive for many years to come. I then came home around eight-thirty and returned a few calls. And still, there is a hodge-podge of various and sundried thoughts swimming around in my head. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too? Did you know that too too spelled backwards is oot oot? Just asking.
Last night I finished watching Mr. Charles Edward Pogue’s Hercules, the mini-mini-series. As you all know, one hour was cut from the show (and will be restored to the DVD), and I think when we all view the uncut version we will see just how much damage was done by the cutting of key character scenes and what Pogue calls the slow build up of getting to know the story and the characters (which I feel most Hollywood and TV product today does away with, which is why I feel that most Hollywood and TV product stinks to high heaven and low hell). I found the first hour tough going for that reason – it was very hard to get with the story. Things got better in the second hour and even better in the third hour. But, for me, while the film had its moments, its downfall can be placed squarely at the feet of director Roger Young. He’s one of the kings of mini-series television, but he’s a terrible director. He has no sense of pacing, he has no sense of composition, he is not good with actors who definitely need his help, and, if he supervised the editing, he is not good supervising the editing. Take for instance the scene where Hercules builds a pyre of fire so that he can kill himself. Pogue told me how that scene was written, and all a director would have to do is shoot what he wrote and it would have been a great scene. But that, apparently, is beyond Roger Young, who shot it in a completely inane way. Pogue set himself and NBC a difficult task – he wrote a good script and wrote in a dramatic vernacular that many of the actors simply did not deliver well. That’s where a director comes in – he’s supposed to help the actors understand the language and how that language can best be spoken. Half that battle is won when you cast properly. But, if you have actors who are inexperienced with having to speak that kind of language, you just get bad performances. Just listen to the difference between Timothy Dalton, who does understand the language, and the actor who played the husband of the villainess (can’t remember the names, sorry), who doesn’t. The young man who played Hercules looked pretty (too pretty), had a buff and toned body with abs and buns of steel, but he could not speak the dialogue well enough for it to have the power of what it has on the page. I got weary of all the TV acting/whispering, which I find annoying and facile. The CGI effects were just about the worst I’ve ever seen, and the whole show had a cheap look to it. Why? These things don’t have tiny budgets. Even the sound mix wasn’t good – with the music buried in the background. I go on about it because it’s criminal what gets done to good work. As I said yesterday, can you imagine what this would have been as a feature – directed with scope and grandeur, with good effects, and with really good classic actors in it? Whole different ball of wax, my droogs. Pogue should be proud of his work. Roger Young should hang his head in shame for taking quality and turning it into something ordinary.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because my head is swimming with a hodge-podge of various and sundried thoughts.
Have I mentioned that my head is swimming with a hodge-podge of various and sundried thoughts? I have many phone calls to make today, plus I must get some good writing in, plus I shall be lunching with Miss Juliana A. Hansen, plus I must do some errands and pick up a rather large and heavy package which should be arriving at some point today.
Tonight, Miss Tammy Minoff and an actor friend will be coming over to read through act one of this play I’ve been working on. It will be fascinating to hear it, and I’ll finally know how long the act runs and if I have to add another five or ten pages to it.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must write, I must do everything mentioned above plus more, and I must continue to try to be organized and ready for my trip. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you’d like, and we get to give any old answer we’d like. This is going to be the final Ask BK Day, so let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers, shall we? We shall.