Well, dear readers, last evening I had a celebration dinner at the Smoke House with the team of the One Starry Night benefit – well, dinner and postmortem. It was a really fun dinner and the only things in the postmortem were behind-the-scenes things that will make things a bit smoother backstage. The show itself has pretty much gotten raves from all who were there. We are already thinking ahead to the 2015 One Starry Night follow-up, which will most likely be in mid-March. It won’t necessarily be at the Pasadena Playhouse, although we all really loved being there and they treated us wonderfully. I’m really happy to be an integral part of the team as I love doing these kinds of things, especially for something as important as ALS. I had my first meat in a week – I had the prime rib and it was so filling I thought I was going to explode, but it was really good. With it, I had a wedge with Thousand Island dressing.
Prior to that, I was up at nine, out of bed at nine-thirty, and futzing and finessing. I wrote a couple of pages right away, and then a third. I was in a critical chapter and just kept going back to fix, add, and change things until it felt right to me. I went down a few avenues I didn’t care for, rethought, and redid until I found what I hope is the right avenue. The helper came by to pick up a couple of books to ship to dear reader ChasSmith, and then I went to the mail place and picked up a package – a complete Blu and Ray set of all the Eric Rohmer films. I’ve only seen about seven of them and I’ve always enjoyed his work, so I’m really looking forward to seeing the ones I’ve missed and to revisiting my favorite, Claire’s Knee. Then I got a six-inch Subway Veggie Delite to tide me over until dinner. Then I came home, ate it, and sat on my couch like so much fish.
Yesterday, I finished watching It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on the new Criterion Blu and Ray, the extended cut. I have to say that for a film whose history is really pretty easy to understand, it seems that everyone is hell-bent to keep it as confusing as possible. In that spirit, the Criterion states that Mad World premiered at 202 minutes in length. While that may technically be correct, it’s completely misleading – the real running time of the premiere version was 192 minutes. The ten other minutes are the intermission police calls and I don’t feel those should in any way be part of any listed run time. The 192 minutes included the overture, entr’acte and exit music. They also state that about forty minutes was cut, but that’s also completely inaccurate – about twenty-four minutes or thereabouts of actual film was cut when the film was shortened to its second roadshow release version (done after only four weeks into the original run) – that version ran 164 minutes but that included the overture, entr’acte and exit music. The new extended version runs 197 minutes and yes, that running time is INCLUSIVE of the intermission police calls, so that the actual run time of the feature is about 187 minutes, which means there are still approximately five minutes of missing footage from the original roadshow. So, the confusion will continue to run rampant, which is a shame.
As to the extended version, it’s very nice to have and there are two or three scenes that should never have been cut, namely William Demarest’s first scene with Spencer Tracy and the scene where Tracy has a phone conversation with Buster Keaton, whose appearance in the short version comes out of nowhere and makes no sense. The Keaton scene is presented with stills over the soundtrack. The rest of the trims were all good ones, tightening the pace and especially shortening the endless scenes in the hardware store with Sid Caesar and Edie Adams. Robert A. Harris has done as good a job as could be with the iffy elements for the reinstated scenes and trims. The rest of the transfer is the same as the old MGM Blu-ray and is terrific.
Then I wrote some more, and almost got to the end of the chapter. When I got home from dinner, I finished the chapter and wrote over nine pages in all, a very productive writing day.
Today, I shall try to write at least three pages before leaving for the theater and will do more if I’m of a mind to. Then I’ll see our matinee, then eat, and then I’ll come home, write some more, watch a motion picture and relax.
Tomorrow I’ll be writing and I think I may have something else going on, but I can’t remember what it might be. Tuesday through Friday I’m teaching a musical theatre workshop at LACC and am really looking forward to that. Of course I’ll also be writing every day, plus I have to prep our new release, plus have a work session with Shelly Markham for the Kritzerland show, plus write the commentary for same.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, see a matinee, eat, write and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which I shall have a Sunday.