Well, dear readers, I was just thinking of butterscotch. I don’t really know why, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere, butterscotch just popped into my cranium for no reason whatsoever. What the HELL is butterscotch anyway? And who came up with that name? Well, I’ll tell you – someone who’d been drinking a lot of Scotch came up with that name. Like most food names, when you say butterscotch you immediately know what that translates to, taste-wise. But who invented butterscotch and how did they invent it. Well, I looked it up. It turns out that Mrs. Maureen O’Reilly O’Kearney O’Malley invented butterscotch. Apparently, she was sitting around one night and on the table in front of her was a plate of butter and next to it a bottle of scotch. She looked at the two of them and thought, “If I put butter with scotch why I’ll have invented a new word.” And so she did. Eventually she decided the word wasn’t enough and she diddled around the kitchen, throwing a little of this and a little of that into a big pot, and at the end of the evening, she christened her concoction butterscotch. She was so happy that she went out and picked some heather on the hill. The rest, of course, is history, butterscotch-wise. What the HELL am I talking about? In any case, I’m now craving butterscotch. But can you just go buy something called butterscotch, or is it just a flavor? For example, I know I’ve had butterscotch pudding and butterscotch sundaes. Just what IS butterscotch anyway? Is it like caramel? Speaking of caramel, yesterday was a day in which I did not think about butterscotch. For example, I got up. I didn’t think of butterscotch. I did some things on the computer, then had a brief work session. I kept waiting for news that never came – well, it came, but it was no news, and the news was, in fact, that the news will probably come today. I’m really hoping it will because we need the news and we need the news to be the news we need, if you get my meaning and my drift, not necessarily in that order. I did some errands, ate a meatball sandwich, did more work on the computer, made telephonic calls and answered a bunch of e-mails and then, quite suddenly, the day was done. I went to Gelson’s in the early evening and got some salad and bay shrimp. I then sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on DVD entitled The Princess Bride. I will preface my comments by saying it’s just one person’s opinion and I realize that most people will not agree with it, but that’s never stopped me before and it’s not going to stop me now. I know this film is a favorite of many, many people. If one looks at the almost universal ten star “reviews” on the imdb one thing becomes clear – those that saw it as a youngster think it’s the best movie ever made. I saw it at a screening just prior to its opening. The screening was at the DGA and the reaction, I must say, was tepid. I really wanted to love it – I was a fan of the book by William Goldman, and since he wrote the film, I was just ready to be swept away. And yet, I wasn’t. Why? Over the years people have lambasted me for not liking the film. So, I’ve tried to pinpoint what it is about it that doesn’t work for me. Having watched it again last night, nothing has changed. I wanted to love it, and thought that the passage of years would help me to do so. But the things that bothered me then still bother me now. So what is it that doesn’t work for me that obviously works for almost everyone else? It’s not the screenplay, which I think is a fairly good adaptation of the book. It’s not the look of the film, which is fine. That brings us to the director. I think Mr. Reiner is an adequate director and no more. And I think The Princess Bride needed more than an adequate director. I thought Cary Elwes and Robin Wright were fine, but I think a more charismatic leading man would have helped. Mandy Patinkin and Christopher Guest were very good, but Mr. Guest’s character needed more fleshing out. Chris Sarandon was fine. So, no disasters so far – until, that is, we come to the score. And therein lies my biggest problem – simply put, Mark Knopfler’s “score” is terrible. It hurts the film at almost every turn, with it’s synth strings and phony-sounding pads. The film needs a real score and had it had one, say by John Williams or Richard Rodney Bennett or John Addison – a thrilling score to match the FILM, I think the film would have worked for me. Obviously, very few people had a problem with the score, but, for me, it kills the pace, the excitement and everything else. It either just lays there like so much fish, or it veers into Loony Tunes territory, and it never lifts the film to the level it should. Another film that, for me, didn’t work as well as it should, strictly because of its score, was The Black Stallion, with Carmine Coppola’s anti-score really not doing the film any favors. Again, a different score by a real film composer would have taken that film to a whole other place, in the way that Elmer Bernstein’s To Kill A Mockingbird score takes THAT film to a whole other place, or Korngold’s score to The Adventures Of Robin Hood takes THAT film to a whole other place, and on and on. It’s not that I don’t see there are entertaining things in The Princess Bride – there clearly are, and some of it is amusing, but I just find the film doesn’t ever soar or involve me in the way I want to be involved. Again, I know I’m the one in a million person who feels this way, and I wish I didn’t. This is a new 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition – and as a 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition it’s an embarrassment. The transfer is fine and nothing more. There is some sort of Princess Bride game, and a short featurette on the making of the film, a short featurette on fairy tales, and a short featurette on swordfighting. And that’s it. Chris Sarandon, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright, and Chris Guest take part in the very short featurette – but nowhere in evidence is Rob Reiner or William Goldman, which is a real problem for a 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I am thinking of butterscotch and what it means.
Today, I shall wait for news, which will hopefully come and be good. When it comes, then I’ll have to do some driving in my motor car. I also will begin transferring all these notes I’ve been taking into one document. I shall also seek out some butterscotch.
Tomorrow is more of the same and also same of the more. As someone pointed out on the site, Dick Wilson, Mr. Whipple, died at the age of ninety-one. I actually thought he’d died years ago. I met him only once, when I was cast as Young Mr. Whipple in my very first commercial, back in the early 70s. He taught me how to say the famous “Please, don’t squeeze the Charmin” and how to squeeze the product. It was a flashback about how Mr. Whipple met Mrs. Whipple, and it was very cute. It must have run for three years, and I got weekly checks like clockwork. Not only was it my first commercial, it was the first commercial audition I ever went out on – so it was quite something to land a national first time out of the gate. I have it on 16mm film somewhere.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, wait for news, do some errands, make some notes, and then eat something fun. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite Princess Bride-type films? You know, fairy tales, swashbucklers, fantasy. And what do you know about butterscotch? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we?