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January 30, 2012:

KING RICHARD AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE SQUARE TABLE

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, there is nothing quite like coming home to a classic film. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, there is nothing quite like coming home to a classic film and last night that is exactly what happened. The classic film in question is Picnic, from the play by William Inge. It is so wonderful to watch a story that has characters with depth, scenes with heft and that don’t last two minutes, and a relatively action-less story that just unfolds, taking its own lovely sweet time. And when you add elegant direction by Joshua Logan, wonderful performances by the kind of actors who simply don’t exist anymore – William Holden, Rosalind Russell, Betty Field, Kim Novak, Susan Strasberg, Arthur O’Connell, Cliff Robertson and every other cast member – and then put the hot fudge of the photography of James Wong Howe on top of it (want to see a cameraman who paints with his camera – watch what Mr. Howe does with two actors and some Chinese lanterns), and then, as if all that wasn’t enough, you add the whipped cream and cherry of George Duning’s masterpiece of a score and you get absolute perfection. Well, we’re not quite done with the perfection here, because the new Twilight Time Blu and Ray is also perfection, thanks to a stunning transfer by Sony and Grover Crisp. It’s funny to me that the people who go on and on about how beautiful heavy grain is in a transfer have said nothing about Picnic – which has only the kind of grain a transfer made off a camera negative or something close to it should have – fine grain. You should not be able to SEE THE GRAIN like popcorn balls. The color is perfect and the stereo sound is the kind they don’t know how to do anymore – oh, they can do it louder, they can do it digital, but they can’t make it sound as good, at least not to my ears. If you love great movies, great writing, great directing, great acting, great photography and great music, do not delay – get this disc. Highly recommended by the likes of you-know-who.

It was, in fact, the perfect ending to a rather long day attending a film music round table (well, more square) discussion held by film music agent Richard Kraft, who I’ve known for close to thirty years now. Richard is writing some sort of article and he wanted to have this little round table to hear from the people in the trenches doing all these limited edition soundtracks. Almost every specialty label was in attendance and there was a LOT of palaver that went on for four solid hours. This is not my idea of fun, and other than saying a few perfunctory things I just sat there like so much fish. Fortunately, I was next to our very own Mr. Nick Redman and his ever-lovin’ Julie, so that was nice. And it’s always nice to see certain people, like Jon Burlingame and his ever-lovin’ Marilee, Doug and Roger from Intrada, Jeff Bond, and a few others. Some folks were unassuming and just responded to specific things, some pontificated, and all of it was videotaped by two cameras. Richard had a big lunch spread, so that was nice, except, for me personally, it was from my least favorite Chinese restaurant ever, Chin-Chin, so I only had an egg roll and left it at that. I hope Richard got what he was looking for.

I was so happy to be free afterwards, and I went and had a sandwich and onion rings and proofed another twenty pages or so, which is all I really care to do these days, because I can’t send this to my three other proofers until I finish my pass, enter my corrections, and get the manuscript ready for their perusal. I did put the discography in, but I’ll have to double check and make sure it’s everything I’ve ever done – for example, right now it does not include any of the albums I did at Bay Cities, so those have to be added. And I don’t think I want to include anything that I didn’t personally produce, but just reissued – but even that gets complicated, because I kind of want to list stuff like the Promises and Sugar reissues where I took a major part in making them sound better than they ever have. So, I have some decisions that need to be made.

I did manage to do a two-mile jog, so that was good. And I did manage to actually be smart and do some interesting research. There was a painting up for auction on eBay by one of my favorite artists – Reginald Marsh. I went insane when I saw it, because it’s absolutely gorgeous, a watercolor and one of his Coney Island beach paintings. The size was something like 13×17. You have to be very careful on eBay – sometimes things ARE what they seem, and sometimes, many times, they are not. This was bargain priced for a Marsh and I figured it was probably worth three times as much as the price on eBay (not that it was cheap). When I first saw it, I went to my Reginald Marsh art book and looked at other watercolors from that period and of Coney Island. They seemed close, the signature certainly looked right. But last night, I went back to the book and looked at his major paintings, which were all done in tempera. The first thing I noticed was that all his paintings were of large size. There literally was not one smaller than 20×30 and most much bigger than that. I then flipped to the watercolors to see if those were smaller but they were not. I went back to his 1930s tempera paintings and am I glad I did – because there it was, this exact painting, huge, not watercolor, signature and date in a different configuration and a tiny detail in the tempera version completely missing from the watercolor.

So, what are we to deduce? Either the watercolor is an “After Marsh” painting done by someone just imitating Marsh’s original (this is much more common than you’d think) – and imitating it really well, I may add – or, I suppose the watercolor might have been a study for the real deal but there would be no way of ascertaining that and therefore you’d be taking an awful chance. The dealer is very careful to say there’s no provenance, but having now seen the real deal, anyone who would go near this would be a fool.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must get some sort of beauty sleep, as I must be up at six to announce the new Kritzerland titles.

Today, I shall be up at six to announce the new Kritzerland titles. I may or may not go back to sleep, and hopefully I’ll be printing out a LOT of orders. I’ll try to do a jog of some sort, and then I have to try and proof at least one hundred pages today. Then I’ll eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then relax.

Tomorrow, we have our second Kritzerland rehearsal, which I’m looking forward to. Otherwise, it’s finishing proofing, entering corrections, and getting the manuscript to my other proofers so we can be done with that part of the process, at which point everything goes to Grant for the design.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, announce two new Kritzerland titles, I must hopefully print out a LOT of orders, I must jog, I must proof, I must eat something light but amusing, I must hopefully pick up packages, and I must relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite William Holden movies, Kim Novak movies, and Rosalind Russell movies? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall hopefully not dream of a square table film music discussion.

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