Well, dear readers, don’t you sometimes wish that this first paragraph were wider? It’s so squeezed into a little teeny-tiny area, and sometimes these here notes just want to be in Cinemascope (or Cinnamonscope, as my darling daughter used to call it), or even ToddAO, or Ultra Panavision, or better yet, three-panel Cinerama. But, noooo, we’re in this little Academy ratio area. Yes, I think we need widescreen notes and yet we cannot have them without moving the sides out. What the HELL am I talking about? I was off on a widescreen notes tangent, wasn’t I? Speaking of widescreen, yesterday was a very wide day. I got up way too early and did early things. I then did an early errand, came home, and did more early things. After that, I met friend Lauren Rubin at nearby Hugo’s and we had a very nice late breakfast. I had Papa’s Eggs (scrambled eggs with sausage, bacon, scallions and spices – it’s a great dish. We caught up, laughed a lot, and then went our several ways – I, to do more errands and whatnot, she to do whatever she was doing. I came back home and just relaxed, knowing I had a long meeting ahead of me. And a long meeting it was. It was basically a post mortem meeting for the charity event – what succeeded, what needs work, that sort of thing. There was a very long agenda, and each part of the event was dissected ad nauseum. When we finally got to the program and entertainment, I took the bull by the horns and gave my thoughts, which everyone basically agreed with. The meeting lasted two-and-a-half hours and then I hurried home (well, I would have liked to hurry home but that was impossible since some stupid cretin driver rushed to get in front of me on Beverly Glen, then spent the entire ride up the canyon road going twelve miles an hour. I hadn’t eaten in ten hours, so I made a pit stop at Jack In The Box to get something to nibble on. Then I came home and sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I didn’t really have time to watch a motion picture on DVD, so instead I watched Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the hour version they show on Chiller. The episode was entitled The Monkey’s Paw: A Retelling. It wasn’t a classic, but it was okay viewing for a tired Jew. It was based on the classic story by W.W. Jacobs (oft adapted for radio and television), but the retelling just wasn’t very interesting. The cast was fun, though – Leif Ericson, Jane Wyatt, a very young Lee Majors, a very young Stuart Margolin, a young actress I recognized from a bit part in Marnie (she played the secretary in the film’s opening scene with Martin Gabel), and best of all Collin Wilcox. We just love our Collin Wilcox – she, of course, played Mayella Ewell in To Kill A Mockingbird, and she also guest-starred in one of the two classic Hitchcock Presents hour shows – The Jar.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because these here notes are just too narrow and need to stretch into a different aspect ratio.
Today, I will begin entering a few fixes into the Nudie Musical script, and I’ll also take my final pass through The Brain script, which I have to turn in in the next week or so. Other than that, I get to relax until this evening, when I’m supposed to attend some memorial service at the Henry Fonda Theater. I haven’t been inside that venue since it was called the Pix and showed movies, probably back in 1976 or so (you can see the Pix in all its glory in the final verse of The Lights And The Smiles in Nudie).
Tomorrow, it will be more of the same, and then tomorrow night I’m seeing our very own Miss Beth Malone in Pest Control, a new musical playing in a 99 seat theater in North Hollywood. There are many shocking things about this production, which I’ll be talking about after I’ve seen it. Saturday night, I’m seeing A Very Brady Musical, so it’s a two-show weekend for me.
I also have some material to go over for Kevin’s show, and a whole slew of mp3s to listen to, and then I have to read through two other batches of material for other people.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do work on the computer, do errands, ship a few packages, and then perhaps attend a memorial. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite comedy films made prior to 1950, including silent movies? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst we all imagine what these notes would look like in widescreen.