Well, dear readers, if you were looking to hire someone to direct a rap video for kids, you’d hire me, right? Well, that’s exactly what happened back in 1989. Needing the hippest, most with-it bro in the entertainment world, I was hired by a man named Norman Martin (he wrote the book for the musical 70 Girls 70), who’d written the lyrics (raps) to music by a young African-American man named Hami. Of course, Mr. Martin was twenty years older than ME, so maybe it made sense that he hired me. I have no memory of how he found me or why he found me, but I must have said the right things because I was, in fact, hired. The studio behind the video was Hanna Barbera. They had a script, which I found very unfocused, so I helped them focus it and gave it a setting, which I felt was very important. Then I made a great decision to hire my friend Gene Castle to choreograph the show (there would be a LOT of dancing – from hip-hop to show dancing). We spent a few weeks casting – the hardest roles to cast were the two leads, two young people in their teens who would serve as our hosts and leaders through the show. We finally found two newcomers who were just terrific and very appealing. Mr. Martin was, at times, a little too bombastic for my taste, but I shut my mouth and just did my job. Hami and I bonded right away – partly because I figured out right away where his nickname had come from – he was an alum of my very own high school, Hamilton High, affectionately known as Hami High. The tracks were already done, and all we had to do was lay our casts’ vocals over them. I approved a fun set design and costume design, and we finally finished casting the racially diverse young company – aged from five to eighteen.
We rehearsed for at least a solid week and I attended all the dance rehearsals and planned all the shots on paper, working closely with Gene. His work was just great and it made my job really easy. Then it was time to shoot. We were doing a multi-camera shoot, which I’m not that knowledgeable about, but I had a very good TD. At first, I tried calling the shots to the cameramen, which is the way it’s usually done, but I found it very distracting and found I couldn’t watch what my actors were doing because all I was doing was saying, “Camera three, go, camera one, go.” Finally, I asked my TD to call the shots based on my master plan and that worked out really well, because he was very experienced and knew the lingo. Things went pretty smoothly, but I had this idea for how I wanted the set and cast to magically appear behind the two lead actors who, up to that point, had been dancing in limbo. We shot that against a green screen and then we had to shoot the company against the green screen and then we had to shoot it all again on the actual set. It was time-consuming but a great effect. At one point, Norman Martin came in the booth yelling about how we were wasting time and falling behind schedule (we weren’t behind at all, because we were actually ahead in the other work we’d done) and how I wasn’t doing a good job. I looked at him and said, “Fine, we’ll just forget what we’re doing and move right on – we won’t have an opening for the show, but I do realize that you think I’m not doing a good job, so let’s not waste one more minute.” He backed off and we finished our work – on time. The shoot was fun, the numbers were fun, and the cast was fun. The editing was not fun.
The editor and Norman were friends. My DGA contract was very clear about what the director’s rights are, and they just blithely ignored them. I saw a rough version of the opening number and just hated it – no rhythm, no magic, no nothing – always cutting on the wrong beat to the wrong shot. They re-cut it to my notes and it was much better, but would have even been better still if I could have gone in there and sat with the editor. But this guy was very uppity. For one number, he did a great job of creating a number out of nothing – the entire thing had been shot green screen and he made wonderful backgrounds for all of it. But his work on the regular numbers was ordinary and I got such attitude whenever I tried to give notes that I finally had to write them a really strong note threatening to go to the DGA. This made them very angry and I didn’t care. In the end, it came out well, but could have been better. It had a perfunctory video release because Hanna Barbera was in the throes of going under and we were lost in all of that. I knew the hope was for a series, but that didn’t happen. Mr. Martin, who was Sherry Lewis’s business partner and who’d written a lot of her TV material, didn’t really work too much after that. Gene and I stayed friends and are still friends. I haven’t seen anyone else connected with the show since we finished filming. I watched it not too long ago and it wasn’t bad, and the dancing was really fun.
My other memory of that shoot was that I’d just bought my first cellular phone – it was huge and I wore it in a holster like a six-shooter. Every time it would ring I’d look around trying to figure out where the ringing sound was coming from – then realized it was coming from my holster.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I’m through with this section’s rap, and I’ve got more rap for the next section.
Yesterday was rather a fun little day. For example, I got up late. That was fun. I then did the long jog, then did some work on the computer, got an e-mail from my close personal friend, Mr. Stephen Sondheim, which enabled me to finish the unfinished paragraph in the Illya Darling notes, and then I got all the Illya stuff off to MGM for approval. I then toddled off to a working lunch with Mr. David Wechter. We came up with a fix for the one line we weren’t happy with, and one additional fix that is really amusing. After that, we came back to my house and talked through a movie idea we’ve been working on for the last four years – we’re finally going to sit down and write it over the next few months. After that, I picked up a couple of packages, packed up about twenty orders, and took them over to the post office, after which I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on DVD entitled Rock-a-Bye Baby, starring Mr. Jerry Lewis, and introducing Miss Connie Stevens. I hadn’t seen the movie since it came out – I remember not loving it then, even though I was a huge Jerry Lewis fan. But I enjoyed it pretty well on DVD. The film is a very loose remake of Preston Sturges’ The Miracle Of Morgan Creek, directed and written by Frank Tashlin, of whom I’m a huge fan. Some of the gags really are laugh out loud funny and when Lewis and Tashlin hit, they hit it out of the park. When they miss, they miss large. Miss Stevens is cute and perky, and Marilyn Maxwell and Reginald Gardiner are fun. The film was mostly shot on the Universal backlot (even though it’s a Paramount film), in the same “town square” that everyone knows so well from Back To The Future. The film is practically a musical, with about eight songs, some of which are really quite good (by Harry Warren and Sammy Cahn) – there’s a production number for a movie called White Virgin Of The Nile that’s a hoot, with great choreography by Nick Castle. It’s a little cloying at times, because Jerry was trying to have it all ways back then – to be a clown and an actor and have not only funny but have pathos, too. It’s not that he doesn’t do pathos well, it’s just that the writing of the pathos isn’t good. The transfer on this region 2 DVD is fine – a little milky-looking, but the color is good and it’s reasonably sharp.
Today, I have to enter a lot of e-mail addresses from Kritzerland customers into Constant Contact, and we’re going to send out another big eBlast about our upcoming LACCTAA event this Monday evening – it’s my Cabaret and Singer Workshop. I also have to figure out exactly what I’ll be doing. Thursday I have a lunch at Langer’s and Friday I have a work session with the composer and lyricist of the long musical.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, enter addresses, enter all the Nudie fixes so we have a final script we can send to people who’ll be doing the reading, and then maybe even find a little relaxation time. 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 whilst we wrap up the rap with some rappin’ and rhymin’.