Well, dear readers, I am feeling a bit more rested and relaxed after a semi-day off yesterday, and today it’s back to work, back to the nose to the grindstone. Have you ever had your nose to the grindstone? Was your nose smaller or a different shape afterwards? Who puts their fershluganah nose to the grindstone anyway? It’s painful. In any case, it’s the nose to the grindstone and work, work, work (that is three works) for the rest of the week. Speaking of the rest of the week, yesterday was such a pleasantly pleasant nothing of a day. I got up, I packaged up ten or twelve orders, and then got them all shipped. After that, I lunched with the author of the musical that I just did the reading of – he wanted to pick my brain and hear what I thought, and I told him and was completely honest. He’s now asking me what it would take to have me help him with the show in terms of doing fixes and also getting the score into some kind of shape so that it actually functions as a musical comedy score. I’m thinking about it – I know there wouldn’t be a lot of money to be had, so I have to figure out how much time would be involved and what I’d be comfortable with. But he liked all my thoughts, so that’s a start. We lunched at Jan’s coffee shop. I used to go there with Ye Olde Ex-Wife in my last semester of LACC because it was always open and because I was very addicted to a sandwich they called a “Half Reuben.” There were only two places you could get the “Half Reuben” – Jan’s and Theodore’s, because they were both owned by the same people. The Half Reuben was a grilled sandwich (on rye bread), with turkey, ham, cole slaw, swiss cheese and 1000 Island dressing. A real Reuben would have corned beef and sauerkraut on it. In any case, I hadn’t been to Jan’s until I went back there about four years ago, and today was the first time since then. They now serve a regular Reuben, but my sandwich, the old Half Reuben is still on the menu, now called the “Old Fashioned Sandwich.” It doesn’t quite live up to my memory of the Half Reuben, but it was still very good and they had some tasty fries with it. The meeting lasted a little under two hours, and then I headed back home, where I immediately sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I managed to watch two count them two motion pictures on DVD. The first motion picture on DVD was entitled Boom, a film starring Miss Elizabeth Taylor, Mr. Richard Burton, and Mr. Noel Coward, directed by Joseph Losey, and written by Mr. Tennessee Williams (based on his play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore). I am here to tell you that Boom, which was a huge commercial and critical disaster of the highest order, is still a disaster of the highest order. I’d say it belongs in the pantheon of “What were they thinking?” movies. It gives outré a whole new meaning. Miss Taylor’s performance alone puts it miles beyond outré, and her hacking coughing scene is one of the most obnoxious things I’ve ever seen on the screen. Mr. Burton is just plain weird, Mr. Coward is in for one scene (as the Witch of Capri), and simply looks bemused the entire time, as if he cannot believe what he’s a part of. Some of the sloppiness is amazing – in the opening scene, after Miss Taylor, lying in bed getting a massage, cries, “Injection!” she turns on the cassette player next to her bed. They cut to a closeup of her finger pressing the rewind button, which doesn’t even stick – yet glorious John Barry music rings forth from the player. The film was all shot on location and Losey’s direction is properly wacky (he was going through an odd time, what with this and Modesty Blaise). Universal must have been horrified when they saw what they had, because the film came and went very quickly. Mr. Williams is at his most purple and the whole thing is just a sight to see. I then watched the second motion picture on DVD, which was entitled Straight Time, a film starring Mr. Dustin Hoffman, directed by Ulu Grosbard, and written by Alvin Sargent and Edward Bunker (based on Mr. Bunker’s good novel, No Beast So Fierce). For some reason, I thought I hadn’t seen it before, but I had. The film holds up quite well, and Mr. Hoffman does a fine job completely channeling Mr. Bunker’s persona and look (Mr. Bunker appears in one scene and you can barely tell he and Mr. Hoffman apart). Theresa Russell is excellent as the girl Mr. Hoffman takes a shine to (he plays a recently-released ex-convict on parole), and there’s really excellent support from M. Emmett Walsh (really smarmy and terrific), Harry Dean Stanton (one of his best performances), Gary Busey, and Kathy Bates (who is really young and who looks very different than what she looks like today). The film has a sparse but effective score by David Shire. The transfer is just about perfect, capturing Owen Roizman’s usual grainy and green look. Again, Warners seems fine with their transfers from films from the 70s onward – they just need to fire whoever’s doing their films from before that time.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Don’t I have to put my nose to the grindstone? Where did that ridiculous expression come from? Was it from days of old, when the first person with a big nose wanted a nose job and the grindstone was the only way to do it? Why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below whilst we ponder.
I believe I have a work session today with Miss Joan Ryan and we’ll finish doing rough-ups of the patter. I want to start staging the show this week, and that’s going to be a lot of work. The rest of the week is already filled with lunches and meetings, at least one each day, and often up to three or four.
I also have to read a project someone wants my opinion on, as well as getting the new novel to proofer number two. I also have to go over notes for a potential new Wechter/Kimmel project.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, jog, rehearse, read a project, and sup. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton performances – the good, the bad, and the ugly? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst we all put our collective noses to our collective grindstones.