Well, dear readers, I have been sitting here like so much fish not having the energy to write these here notes, but I knew I just had to dive in and do it or I’d be up until three in the morning. Can you imagine in your wildest imaginings that I have been doing this ritual every night for over ten YEARS? It’s amazing that I haven’t completely lost my sanity or that I can even LOOK at this blank page, let alone fill it with drivel every night. But, that’s what it is and on I will go because in the end I just have too much fun doing it, once I actually get past the first paragraph or so.
There, I am now past the first paragraph or so and have realized that I haven’t eaten since twelve-thirty this afternoon – therefore I have just realized I am VERY hungry, but it is way too late to eat anything. And I won’t be eating anything today until one. Well, I shall persevere, that is what I shall do. In fact, I shall persevere with style. May I just say that I wish great pain and suffering to anyone who is responsible for the heaven-knows-how-many spam e-mails I get every day? Why do they bother sending these disgusting things, when there is not a single human on the face of the planet who does anything but nuke them IMMEDIATELY? It’s so disgusting and so irritating and I just wish great pain and suffering on them all – suitable punishment would be listening to the cast album of Bklyn for the rest of their natural or unnatural lives. Or having to watch the same Dolph Lundgren movie every hour of every day for the next ten years. Or having to eat fatty three-day old meats. Or having to actually read every piece of spam sent to everyone by everyone. I LOATHE these people. End of slight rant.
I am VERY hungry and am about to fall over. I may have to eat some sort of snack – a cracker or a waffle cookie or something. I have some toffee popcorn I could try. That might be amusing. In any case, yesterday was a very busy day but a creatively fulfilling one, mostly spent with the East Coast Singer and Mr. Lanny Meyers. It was a fun day, with lots of interesting things coming out of rehearsal. We began at eleven by running the show from the top. I listened to the opening number with the new cut and it played fine. Then I gave some very specific staging and watched it again. And then we moved on to the second number, which just delighted me because of the performance and the arrangement of an old chestnut, and because of what the song says and how it works within our structure and theme. And afterwards I just stopped everything and made a very radical suggestion – that we cut the opening number entirely and start with the second number. I think the Singer and Lanny knew it was the right suggestion at the right time. I’ve been struggling with the opening number from the very beginning. It’s a really good song, and the confusing thing about it is it kind of does everything an opening number should do. I thought my snipping here and there and making it not quite so repetitious and long that it would help. But in the end, it was what the song was actually saying that kept making me be resistant to it, within the construct of our show. Then I thought maybe if we added some patter in the middle to at least explain the Singer’s point of doing it, that that might help. But at the end of the day, it just felt wrong to me. The song, which you can hear on Laurie Beechaman’s No One is Alone album, is called These Are the Good Times. Sounds like a natural, right? My problem was and is simple: Are these the good times? Not really? Too many problems in the world to blindly ignore by singing how these are the best times we’re ever gonna have. It had resonance for Laurie because of what she was going through. But even with patter explaining how even though some things aren’t so good that if you look at things in the right way, maybe they get better and that positivity works, it still seemed labored to me.
But her second song, which is what this Singer is really about, A Cockeyed Optimist, really says all the right things in a much better and more tuneful and charming way. And once we tried it, it was so obvious it was right. We do the song as a jazz waltz and it’s just a charmer – we still will put patter in the middle – short – and then we came up with a great ending very quickly, which I loved immediately. That was all very exciting. Then we continued running numbers, and I gave some minor direction as we did. Then we got to the fourth number, which is a put-together of two songs. This one used to end the show, but we moved it earlier where it means more. But the second song has just been bothering me – again, it’s a really good and well-known song, and it starts out saying the right sort of thing, but by the end it’s saying all sorts of things that don’t really make sense in terms of our storytelling. So, I made another radical suggestion, which was just to do the first song, which works perfectly in terms of storytelling – we never ended it in the put-together, and frankly I missed ending it. This was a harder thing for the Singer, because she LOVES the second song a LOT, but once we did the first song all the way through, she and Lanny saw immediately that it was the right decision.
Then we continued, and I made one more order change at the last minute, and that worked very well. The rest of the act worked fine. Then we took a break and had lunch, then came back and ran it all again. Everything worked much better with the changes we’d made and it’s beginning to feel like a real act now. We timed it because we were worried that cutting the two songs would make it too short, but it timed out at about fifty-five minutes and we weren’t really doing the patter, since most of it is not yet written. I think when it’s all assembled it will run just about an hour, which is what we want. Then the Singer and Lanny went their merry ways (both are flying home this morning), and I finally got around to answering e-mails and returning telephonic calls. After that, I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I began watching a motion picture on Blu and Ray, one of those overseas Blu and Rays but one that plays in all players. The motion picture was entitled Shadows, the first film of John Cassavetes. It’s a very interesting film, one I’d never managed to see before. Shot for no money in 16mm all on locations in New York, it’s very off-the-cuff and very down-and-dirty, but there’s something oddly endearing and compelling about the roughness of it all, and the performances, which are heavily improvised. It’s now a relic from a time when such films could actually exist – they truly were independent films in a way that today’s independent films (now trendily called Indie films) aren’t – a truly maverick film by a maverick director who was not trying to be courted by a major studio or parlay it into a big contract, although that did happen to Mr. Cassavetes. Today’s indies are all about parlaying and rarely about maverick or truly personal stuff. They’re too slick – they’re all like mini-studio films. I watched half the film and the best thing about it thus far is the time capsule aspect – the location shots circa the late 1950s are amazing. In the very first shot of the film, we see the Imperial Theatre and the big poster for the show playing there – The Most Happy Fella. And there are equally tantalizing shots of 42nd Street and Broadway from a time we’re never going to have again. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, the New York of today, that candy-coated Japanese Disneyland of a city does not resemble one whit of what New York used to be like. I look forward to finishing it this very evening.
The only reason I didn’t finish it last night was because I had to get the packaging of our next release redone for the fifth time and back so it could be sent in for approval. Hopefully that will happen today, unless we need to make another change, which I hope we won’t. Then I had to deal with the packaging of our next Blu and Ray release – I had some comments from the filmmakers and addressed them as best I could. I also booked the New York trip in June and will shortly book the New York trip for August. I’m still not cast in terms of guys for the Kritzerland show and I’m about at the end of this journey unless casting the two guys suddenly gets easier. It’s a struggle on EVERY single show and I’m so bored of it. We’ve had certain actors tell us how desperately they want to do these shows, then when we ask they are NEVER available and it’s just so tiresome. The easiest shows to put together are the few where we’ve just had women – why the women are always available to do the shows, no matter who we ask, is an enigma to me. I’m actually ready to cancel the June show if we don’t cast it today. Because until I know who the guys are I can’t finalize the song list and assign the songs, and until I do that, no one gets their music and we’re only two weeks away from the show now. So, this endless problem with the guys is just making this too difficult and not fun and if it’s not fun I don’t want to do it – it’s too much work. So, we’ll see what happens today.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I really must have a tiny snack and then get my beauty sleep.
Man, for someone who didn’t have anything to say, I just said a mouthful, didn’t I? Today, I have a lunch meeting with Juliana to continue discussing her act and what it will be, then I will hopefully pick up a bunch of VERY errant and truant packages, then I will do errands and whatnot, have some telephonic conversations, and then finally relax.
Tomorrow and the rest of the week is more of the same – meetings, meals, and several shows to see, even though I don’t remember what any of them actually are. And I’m very hopeful that a little deal I’ve been trying to make happen will happen – I don’t know if it will make anyone happy, but it will make ME happy – it involves a Kritzerland project and would be something that I really love. I’ve been having an e-mail volley with the composer who, thankfully, owns the rights to his music on this project. So, we’re just trying to work out the details so that it would make sense for both of us. Send excellent vibes and xylophones that it works out because it is GREAT music.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, have a lunch meeting, hopefully pick up several errant and truant packages, do errands and whatnot, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: I’m too pooped for a topic – you all decide and let me know what it is and I will post repeatedly. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland happy with a good day’s work well done.