Well, dear readers, I am hot. I ask you, where else on all the Internet can you get such information? Nowhere, that’s where. Oh, I don’t mean that I’m hot in terms of being the kind of fellow you pass on the street and go “He’s hot.” What I mean is that I’m hot, as in we had us some LA Warming yesterday. It was broiling all day and there was little respite in the evening. This really came out of nowhere, this heat. The home environment, which usually is quite cool always, got hot, too. I do hope we’re not in for a hot spell because it’s a little too soon to be dealing with extreme heat. Why am I going on about the heat? Don’t I have notes to write? Don’t I have to be up at seven to get ready for rehearsal? I do, I do. What am I, Schmidt and Jones all of a sudden? Speaking of Schmidt and Jones, yesterday was a day of heat. I got up quite early, then had to deal with a Brain problem, which we solved, and then I headed off to rehearsal where we rehearsed. Today was a stop and start work through of act two – we cleaned up blocking, added a few things, worked on specifics and it was a very good session. There’s still about five things blocking-wise that I have to fix and we’ll get to those today. The Brain Tap is really starting to come together and it’s so much fun to watch. In fact, all the group numbers are looking pretty good. We have some cleanup work to do on some of the smaller numbers. After rehearsal, a few of us went across the street to the Knowlwood Café and had some luncheon. I had their yummilicious Philly Cheese Steak sandwich and fries. It’s really a very nice group of folks. After that, I headed home. I gassed up, got a cupcake from the new cupcake place and then sat on my couch like so much fish.
Yesterday, I watched two count them two motion pictures on DVD. The first motion picture on DVD was entitled The 11th Hour, a documentary about Global Warming and all the ways we’ve screwed up a little thing I like to call Planet Earth. Though there are many factors to blame, one group of lovely people come through loud and clear as major culprits and it’s no surprise that it’s corporate Oil. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that big oil runs this country in just about every way. It’s shameful, sickening, and someday one can only hope that there will be a revolt that takes these people down and down hard. The film itself is very dry, with lots of talking heads saying lots of interesting things, but it does get wearying after a while, something you really don’t need a documentary to do. It’s produced and narrated by Mr. Leonardo di Caprio. Transfer from all sorts of sources is fine. I then watched the second motion picture on DVD, which was entitled Daisy Kenyon, the third film in the new Fox Noir releases, and yet another film that really has nothing whatsoever to do with noir, save for some shadowy photography by Leon Shamroy. What Daisy Kenyon is, really, is an old-fashioned sudser with Miss Joan Crawford, Mr. Dana Andrews, and Mr. Henry Fonda, along with Ruth Warrick and the always-cute Peggy Ann Garner. It’s a splendid sudser, with superb direction by Mr. Otto Preminger, and the performances by the entire cast are excellent, especially Mr. Fonda. The score by David Raksin is not up to his usual great standards, and it actually seems to be fighting the film at times. The transfer is very nice.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because it is late, I’m hot (baby, I’m hot), and I really must get as much sleep as I can before my early arisal.
Today I have a rehearsal to attend. At said rehearsal, we’ll finish the work we were doing yesterday, and then I may start from the top of the show and continue to stop and start and clean and also fix the five blocking things that I need to fix. I may also revert to the I Need An Earthman original staging I did at LACC – the NY staging, which used some of those ideas, but made the number much stagier and busier, didn’t thrill me there, and it’s thrilling me less here, because it requires the actress to do so much movement that it becomes about that rather than the singing of the song. After watching it at Thursday’s designer run, the actress was really winded by it all, although that was partially because the tempo was really slow, something that we’ll be fixing today. So, I’ll discuss it with the actress, show her the original staging and leave it up to her. I’m also having to adjust things because of the length of the stage and the very wide seating arrangement of the audience – sometimes things are completely blocked for those sitting on the extreme sides, so I’m trying to adjust and open things up so that everything is viewable from everywhere. We won’t succeed 100% of the time but we’ll be close.
And then, starting tomorrow night, it’s run-throughs every night until tech. I had another discussion with our lighting designer and I really get a good vibe from him and I suspect he’s going to do a really good job, which will be a lovely thing after the terrible lighting in the NYMF production.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, get up quite early, attend a rehearsal, come home, watch a DVD or three, and then get ready for a very busy week. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics, shall we, whilst I get my beauty sleep and arise to a brand new day and most likely one in which I’ll be hot.