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March 18, 2009:

2009 ENTRIES

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, never to be undone by a nasty, vicious review by Lawrence Christon, I kept on writing. Speaking of writing, did you know, for example, that
not only is this year 2009 but that I have done 2009 entries for bk’s notes? At least in this current form I use to post – there may have been more in the very first form I used. Maybe someone can do the math – 365 entries a year since November of 2001. But back to the 1970s. Next up for me was, of course, The First Nudie Musical movie. I used a few elements from my show Feast, like the Diana Canova and Alan Abelew characters. I worked with my co-director Mark Haggard, who had some good suggestions about the script. I don’t need to dwell on the details, since it’s all gone into ad nauseum on the DVD, but it was the most exhilarating time – crazy, long days, flying by the seat of our pants at every turn, and somehow, amazingly, managing to actually shoot a full-length original musical comedy film in 35mm on $150,000 in eighteen days. Post production was equally crazy – firing our Academy Award-winning editor and finding myself in the editing room with his assistant and my star, Stephen Nathan, and getting a four-year course in filmmaking in two months of editing. I learned so much about everything – especially how to make some things funnier by not showing what you think you should show, and how reaction shots make comedy. And then there was the insanity and thrill of our first preview (I wish I could remember where it took place – maybe in Pasadena or Glendale – I just can’t remember). We showed the film in interlock, separate picture and sound. We had no idea what was going to happen. It was a full house and that audience of total strangers had no idea what they were in for. I was shaking with fear as the film began. As soon as Cindy Williams entered the film got its first big laugh. To hear that theater full of people all laugh at the same time was something you just don’t forget. The first musical number got applause. And then the audition sequence started. I was sitting next to my then-wife and Cindy. As soon as Joy Full began her scene I swear to you the laughs were so loud and so long that you literally could not hear half the dialogue that followed her bits. When she sang “scales” – well, I can tell you and I can tell you, but unless you heard it you just couldn’t imagine what those laughs were like. And each of the following audition scenes got just as many of those huge gut-busting laughs. There was a man sitting in front of me who was laughing so hard I thought he was going to die. He was howling and stomping his feet on the floor. Cindy and I just looked at each other in amazement. And the rest of the film played exactly like that – huge laughs every two or three minutes. When I did my speech to the cast, well, it got applause, too. It was an amazing night. All our previews were like that. I tightened up the film a bit, but also extended some shots because the laughs were so big and some key dialogue would go unheard.

The buzz on the film was incredible. We had four or five more previews, inviting all the majors. Roger Corman really wanted the film, but, as most know, he’s incredibly cheap when it comes to purchasing films, so we said no. And then Paramount came to our Westwood preview, where we previewed with Woody Allen’s Love and Death, which had just opened there and was knocking them dead. I was petrified to preview with a film as funny as Love and Death, but we got just as many laughs – in fact, it was a virtual replay of our first preview – just huge, big laughs every two to three minutes. My father was there that night, with his client Arthur O’Connell. My father could not believe the laughs the film had gotten and he was very proud. I think Mr. O’Connell was a little shocked by the subject matter, but he said he’d had a good time. Producer Fred Roos told me it was one of the funniest and best previews he’d ever attended. And Paramount bought the film, for double the money it had cost. I couldn’t believe that a film that I’d made was going to be distributed by what was my favorite studio when I was growing up. I went to a meeting there, and was told by Dick Sylbert, who was then running the studio, that as far as he was concerned there was Mel Brooks, Woody, and now me. Yes, he actually said that. They did think the film had one section that wasn’t playing well. I certainly didn’t disagree – it was about a six-minute section where nothing really got any laughs. But with all the other laughs, who cared? They did. They gave me half the budget of the film (75K) to go shoot a new six-minute sequence to replace those six minutes that weren’t getting laughs. I really didn’t want to and I didn’t have a clew as to what I could write that would be as funny as what was in the film. They told me I didn’t have a choice. I went home that night and couldn’t think of a thing. And they wanted us to be shooting in two weeks because they’d already set a release date three months from then. I went to bed that night, and in one of those crazy, unexplainable moments, I just thought of Dancing Dildos. It just came to me sort of full blown. I jumped out of bed, went to the piano and wrote the song you now hear in the film. And I scribbled down dialogue to get us into the number and out of it and back to the extant footage.

The next day, I went in to Paramount and told them what I’d come up with. They flipped and their only further need was nudity – they wanted more nudity, if you can believe it. Two weeks later, I was directing (and acting) in the new scene (my co-director wasn’t really involved at that point). It was amazing having time and money to do something right, and that sequence, I think, looks better than anything else in the film. I also got the opportunity to pick up some shots for the first scene, some close-ups that we’d never had time to do. So, this little six-minute thing that I hadn’t really wanted to do, of course became the film’s most famous scene. Go know.

The rest of the film’s history wasn’t as sweet, but again, I’ve gone into all that elsewhere and there’s no need to repeat those stories. Suffice it to say, that to this day the film has a loyal following, is a hit cult film, and was one of the first cable TV hits.

Two years later, I had a few months where I wasn’t working, so one day I went in to see the head of the theater department at LACC. I told him I wanted to do a new musical. This was in May. He said “Great” and set me as the first show of their new season in September. The only problem was I had no idea what the show was going to be. He said it was their 50th anniversary or something like that, and I think that gave me the idea that it should be a show about a bunch of people in a college theater department. Thus was born Stages. I wrote the show very quickly and the next thing I knew it was time to cast it. I decided right away that a lot of the cast would be brought in – including Alan Abelew playing the lead, my friend Randi Kallan playing opposite him (those two characters were clearly modeled on me and Cindy Williams), my old pal Phil Clark, who’d been a regular on my first TV guest shot, The Young Lawyers, the terrific Michael Byers, Jeffrey Kramer (who’d just been in Jaws), and my biggest coup, Sammy Williams, the Tony Award-winning “Paul” from A Chorus Line, in his first show after that smash hit.

The rest of the cast were made up of students, who were all really good. The rehearsals were a blast – every day was a laugh-fest. And I vividly remember the night we blocked the end of act one, which was an incredibly intricate sequence wherein we see our cast rehearsing for a melodrama they’re performing (which I wrote). Everything goes perfectly. And then we see the performance, where every single thing that can go wrong, goes wrong. It was Noises Off years before Noises Off. I blocked the entire sequence, both right and wrong versions, in three hours and after we finished the cast applauded me, which had never happened before, and certainly has never happened since. The choreographer was very creative, and his staging of the title song was fantastic and really funny. I was told that backstage was mayhem personified during that number, as there were about ten costume changes per person.

We played one preview and that audience was fantastic and the show just worked like a charm – lots of laughs, the songs seemed to land, and the cast was a dream. Opening night was even better, and the end of act one worked as well as anything I’ve done before or since, just one laugh after another. There were a few things I wasn’t happy with and I tinkered with the show all during the run. Two funny stories: I found out that the show was going to be reviewed by the LA Times. I also found out it was going to be reviewed by – wait for it – Lawrence Christon. I knew what we were in for and I wasn’t going to have it. I called Sylvie Drake and told her that this guy had it in for me and I told her to read his two previous reviews. She did. She took him off the show. He bought a ticket anyway and tried to slip his review through the cracks. She wouldn’t allow it. They finally sent someone else and the show got a nice review. I just thought the lengths that he would go to review a show he’d already reviewed before he’d even seen it were so specious. The other funny story was when Cindy Williams came to see the show. She really liked it, but afterwards she asked me, “Who were those two lead characters based on?” I couldn’t believe she didn’t know it was her and me – which tells you something about her and me.

The run at City College was so successful, that a local LA producer who’d seen it asked if she could remount the show at the Matrix Theater on Melrose. We did, and that run was a complete sellout every night. We could have run for a year, but we were losing a bunch of cast members after three months, and I was moving on to some other projects, so we closed. I was playing me by then (and Alan moved to a role he was great at), I added a song to the second act, and we had a few new cast members – Sammy didn’t move with the show, so we had another Chorus Line alum, Ron Kurowski, as well as his then-girlfriend and fellow Chorus Line alum, Murphy Cross. We had Sara Ballantine, too, replacing one of the students. Our female understudy was a girl who just wandered into the theater one day and who loved us all and the show – her name was Valerie Landsburg, and she went on to have quite a wonderful acting and then directing career. One funny story from that production: That was in my racquetball days – I played three times a week with my cousin Alan. We were VERY competitive, and racquetball is a very fast and very dangerous game sometimes. We were playing one Saturday morning, and I just got myself into the wrong position at the wrong time and Alan’s racquet hit me in the mouth really hard, splitting my lip open. Blood was gushing everywhere. I went home and immediately put ice on it, and got the bleeding stopped. I didn’t want to go to the doctor, really. I just held the ice pack on that lip for about five hours straight, and it really helped. I think I did finally go have someone look at it, and they put some kind of butterfly bandage or stitch on it. But the problem was that I had a show that night. And in the show, I had a lot of kissing scenes (why wouldn’t I). It was really hard to do it, and we were not only sold out but a whole row of chairs had been added to the front, so people were practically sitting on the stage. For each kissing scene, we simply turned our heads upstage and faked it, because my lip was in excruciating pain. But it was a great show and no one knew there was a problem.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must attend to other things prior to the beauty sleep.

Yesterday, I managed to get the two International packages shipped off (no line at the postal office – hoo and ray), as well as a few other packages. I also lugged the ten big, heavy boxes to my car and then out of my car and into the UPS Store, and all those went out. I then had a lunch at Junior’s Deli in Westwood, with the gal singer I’ve been working with here. She’s booked into the Metropolitan Room in New York and really wanted me to be there for our final rehearsals and for support. So, she figured out how to make that all work, and today we solidified the dates and plans and I came home and booked the trip and hotel. So, I’ll be back in New York, New York, come May, for about five days. We shall play, oh, yes, we shall play.

I also am trying to prep our upcoming Saturday event with David Lee. I also watched half a motion picture on DVD, the new transfer and restoration of The Robe. I’ll finish it this evening and write about it tomorrow’s notes. I’ll just say that the restoration is fantastic and the color is excellent. And somehow the movie looking and sounding this good makes the actual film more compelling.

Today, I’m having my hair cut and highlighted by Teddy, after which I must hie myself to Langer’s Deli to meet Mr. Barry Pearl for luncheon, which I’m really looking forward to. Barry’s been away for the last few months doing the tour of Happy Days, but they had a two-week layoff, then they go back to work for many more months. After that, I have a ton of things to do, including preparing all the David Lee questions – I’ll do my best James Lipton, I promise.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog (time permitting), I must be cut and highlighted by Teddy, I must lunch with Mr. Barry Pearl at Langer’s, and I must do various and sundried errands and hopefully pick up several packages. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like, and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, and in tomorrow’s notes we’ll continue down the “Shows I Wrote” memory lane.

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