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June 25, 2007:

THE SWIMMING HEAD

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, my head is swimming with ephemera and detritus and ruminations and all manner of whatnot. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, I have what is known in scientific circles as The Swimming Head. The Swimming Head – that’s the title of my next novel. Why is it always scientific circles – can’t we have scientific squares and scientific rectangles? But, noooo, it’s always scientific circles. Damn them, damn them all to hell. Where was I? Oh, yes, The Swimming Head. I’m trying to be very organized and write everything down as I get information and whatnot, but it’s difficult. Speaking of difficult, yesterday was a lovelier than lovely day, a day in which I relaxed and smelled the coffee and the roses and the spaghetti sauce. I woke up way too early because of The Swimming Head, so I was quite tired all day. But, the only real business I had to attend to was recording a couple of lines of dialogue with Miss Susan Egan, which, despite The Swimming Head, went swimmingly. I then came home and rustled up a whole mess o’ thin spaghetti along with some thin spaghetti sauce, and I then proceeded to sit on my couch like so much fish, eating it all up. I’d been craving Ye Olde Spaghetti all week – this is what happens when you watch nine episodes of The Sopranos in a row. It was quite yummilicious. Other than that, I did type up some notes and had several telephonic conversations.

Yesterday, I watched two count them two motion pictures on DVD. The first motion picture on DVD was entitled Land Of The Pharaohs, a large piece of ham and cheese on rye directed by, of all people, Mr. Howard Hawks, his only film in Cinemascope. Now, if you go to the imdb you will see cries of “MASTERPIECE” and “GREAT MISUNDERSTOOD FILM” and the like. Well, masterpiece it ain’t and great misunderstood film it ain’t. A big piece of ham and cheese on rye it is. With mustard. For an epic film it runs a scant 106 minutes, but each and every one of those minutes seems like an eternity. It’s not a bad film, but it doesn’t work. It looks good, has nice costumes and good actors and a bombastic score by Dimitri Tiomkin, but the script (by William Faulkner and two other writers) is laden with corn, and has at its center a character who is self-centered and somewhat loathsome. And the first forty minutes of the film are virtually plotless, unless you consider that Jack Hawkins wanting to build himself a pyramid for his death a plot. Once Miss Joan Collins arrives, then there’s a plot where the loathsome character she plays plots to do loathsome things to the loathsome Jack Hawkins. There are a couple of nice characters but we don’t really care about them at all. Miss Collins gives a horrid performance, but everyone else does fine. The transfer from Warners actually has decent color (unusual for Warners these days), and some of it looks fine, and some looks soft. It does have nice stereophonic sound. I then watched the second motion picture on DVD, which was entitled Mame. Now, if you go to the imdb, you will see cries of “MASTERPIECE” and “GREAT MISUNDERSTOOD FILM” and the like. Well, masterpiece it ain’t. Great misunderstood film it ain’t. One of the worst pieces of crap I’ve ever had to endure it is. You know, we all love Lucy, but by 1974 she was too cocky, too “I know everything” to be good anymore. This syndrome has happened to other comic actors and it always makes them completely unfunny. Her voice was so ravaged and deep (and it got worse with each passing year) that it no longer was able to have any color other than a basso-profundo. Paul Zindel’s adaptation is not great, and the songs sound canned and dead as a piece of whitefish (bone in). Miss Ball croaks her way through them, trying to approximate gusto, but her face looks embalmed. The little boy playing Patrick is one of those kid actors you want to kick in the pants, Robert Preston is fine, as always, but Jane Connell is not, shall we say, a screen actress. Miss Ball is not the only thing that looks embalmed. The whole mess looks embalmed and that includes the choreography of the usually terrific Onna White. Gene Saks’ direction is ordinary, at best, but his wife (Bea Arthur), at least, has moments of humor. In the stage show, her basso-profundo voice worked perfectly next to Angela Lansbury’s higher-pitched tones. With Miss Ball, it’s the battle of the bassos, and it isn’t pretty. Speaking of isn’t pretty, then there’s the transfer – it’s very clean, but too dark, and too damn brown (yes, there are other colors, but the film has too much brown in it and that’s all there is to it). By the end of the film, I felt battered by cinema ineptitude.

What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Don’t I have a million things to do? Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because The Swimming Head is about to explode, like in the movie Scanners.

Remember, there is an Unseemly Trivia Contest question buried in Saturday’s posts, so if you want to hazard a guess, go find it.

Today, I shall be making an early-morning telephonic call to wrap up some details, and then I shall be doing a lot of work on the computer, making a lot of telephonic calls, and trying to figure out what will be a very complicated schedule for the next few months. If all goes according to Hoyle in the morning, it looks like I’ll have to fly to New York, New York at the end of July to cast the ensemble and whatever leads we’re casting out of NYC. After all that, Joan and I will meet at John Boswell’s to rerecord and fix some things I’ve changed due to the staging – we’ve cut a few bars here, changed a tempo there, that sort of thing. After that, it’s on to a meeting with the LACC Foundation.

Tomorrow I’ll have a rehearsal with Miss Ryan, and the continuation of figuring out the schedule. I’ll also continue booking people for our fundraiser show – so much work to be done on that in the next two weeks.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, attempt to jog, do scheduling, have important telephonic calls, have a work session with Joan and John, and attend a meeting – all of which need all the excellent vibes and xylophones you can send. Today’s topic of discussion: What are the worst screen musicals (both original or adaptations) you’ve ever seen, and which of them, despite their awfulness, are actually guilty pleasures? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I deal with The Swimming Head.

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