Well, dear readers, if variety is the spice of life, what is the Hollywood reporter? Right now, I’m having a lot of variety; hence my life is quite spicy. Every day there is variety from morning until evening. I flit from one thing to the next, like a gazelle playing craps. I flit, I tell you, and said flitting is exciting, invigorating, and stimulating, not necessarily in that order. Frequently, I am bewitched, bothered, and bewildered, all in the space of a few moments. In the space I have spice, you see. Yesterday, for example, variety was the order of the day. I got up in the morning, I jogged, I answered e-mails, and I went to Vinnie’s to perform our final fixes on the Emily and Alice album, so he could send it off to our mastering engineer. I then picked up some mail, then had to write a long and important e-mail, then had to toddle off to LACC to have a little meeting prior to rehearsal. We had a fairly short rehearsal – just doing about five short scenes. I got a bite to eat, and then went home and had to deal with many e-mails that needed dealing with. And then, I finally sat on my couch like so much fish, having had my fill of variety for the day, but with the knowledge that there would be more variety and spice today.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on DVD entitled Flower Drum Song. It’s been a long time coming for this film – it, in fact, has never been released on home video in its proper ratio. The laserdisc release was pan-and-scan, but with the musical numbers letterboxed. The letterboxed version shown on TMC and other channels was pale and ugly. Flower Drum Song has never been thought of as a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, but I have always thought it was a classic, from the moment I saw the film. In certain ways, I like the film adaptation better than the original Broadway version. The placement of the songs works better, the jokes are better (some of Juanita Hall’s jokes are really laugh out loud funny), and there is a real emotionality about the film that the film has never received enough credit for. Hermes Pan’s choreography is a weak link, and some of the numbers go on too long, but I’m just really fond of it. For years, I felt like I was a voice in the wilderness, but over the last decade people have come around to the film. When the revival happened with a brand new book by David Henry Hwang, everyone said that that was the only way Flower Drum Song would have ever been revived. I said phooey then, and I say it now, and I think for anyone who saw Hwang’s version and then the film version that it would be instantly apparent that the original version would have worked fine in revival – what I would have done is use some of the movie continuity, but I would have left the story alone – because a good generation gap story always works, and the score works better with the comedy of the piece. People would sometime arch their eyebrows when I would say that Flower Drum Song was my favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein score, but some of those same people are now jumping on the bandwagon. The score is a treasure trove of great songs – the classic Love, Look Away, A Hundred Million Miracles, You Are Beautiful, Don’t Marry Me, and even the dreaded (not by me), Chop Suey. I love them all. The film is rather stodgily directed by Henry Koster, who was not exactly known for his airy touch, but somehow it all works, at least it works for me. One of the reasons it works so well can be summed up in two words: Miyoshi Umeki. She is simply wonderful, and she brings so much warmth and sweetness and depth to her character that it’s impossible not to fall in love with her. Add to that the other fine performances by Jack Soo, James Shigeta, Juanita Hall, Keye Luke and others, and you have a winner, despite the film’s flaws. The transfer, while not perfect, is pretty terrific for the most part, with mostly excellent color, and the sound is robust. I haven’t listened to the commentary track with Nancy Kwan and our very own Mr. Nick Redman, but I will. I did watch the featurettes, and while there are interesting folks saying interesting things, I’m afraid that it’s strictly from the Laurent Bouzeareau school of featurettes – they’re not by him, but they might as well be – the endless cutting to film scenes that sort of illustrate what someone says, i.e. someone says, “I got a phone call from the producer” and they cut to a scene in the film of someone getting a phone call – I mean, how stupid can you get? Just let the people talk – that’s why we’re watching – we don’t need to see these endless clips we’ve just seen. How hard is it? And people make a living from turning out this crap.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must get my beauty rest because today will be filled with variety and the spice of life.
Have I mentioned that variety is the spice of life? Today will have its own share of variety and today’s spice will be Lawry’s Season Salt or perhaps paprika. I have tons of stuff to do in the morning – some shipping, some telephonic calls, picking up reference CDs to send Emily and Alice, delivering photo CDs to our booklet designer, and then having a long rehearsal (this one WILL be long) – today and tonight I have to do at least two musical numbers, maybe three, and about six little scenes. I think by the end of tomorrow, everything except the tap number will be at least roughed out, and Friday I’ll start putting the entire show together slowly. There is no school on Friday, so we’ll start earlier, at noon, and finish by five. On Saturday, I have my signing, and then directly after we have a four hour rehearsal to stage the tap routine.
I do hope some of our West Coast dear readers and lurkers will be at Bookfellows on Saturday. We’d like a big turnout and there will be cake and cheese slices and beverages and it will be ever so much fun. Bookfellows is located in Glendale at 238 North Brand Blvd, just north of the Alex Theater. The signing is from two to three-thirty and I’ll be reading several selections from the book.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, jog, ship, pick up CDs, deliver photo CDs, rehearse, and, at some point, eat. 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 like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, and let’s have loads of variety which is, after all, the spice of life. The spice Melange. What am I, Dune all of a sudden?