Well, dear readers, today’s the day. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, today’s the day for two important things. Let’s begin with the first important thing, the new Kritzerland release, which is the world premiere release of the original score tracks to one of the most beloved and iconic movies in history – Frank Capra’s brilliant and timeless It’s a Wonderful Life. To be able to finally bring this into the world is joy itself. I came late to It’s a Wonderful Life in the mid-1970s, but once I’d seen it, it became one of my all-time favorite movies. In fact, I finally got a beautiful 16mm print, which I then showed every year at my annual Kimmel Movie Marathon – once a year we’d convene at noon a week or two before Christmas, either in my Sherman Oaks home screening room (I turned the garage into a screening room there), or, later, mostly in screening rooms that were donated to me or that I rented. Those marathons would always begin with It’s a Wonderful Life and the laughter and tears were as predictable as rainwater. The most memorable marathon screening of the film came around 1979 or so, when we held our very first all 35mm marathon at someone’s home – I can’t remember how we got there, but the projection was superb. I do remember that I’d just come into a whole slew of Technicolor 35mm prints and at that marathon we screened the dye transfer prints of Vertigo, The Court Jester and You Only Live Twice, in addition to several others. But the best was It’s a Wonderful Life – through some bit of weirdness, the guy who’s house we were at managed to get the Library of Congress nitrate print, which was about to be sent back to them. And that’s what we ran and it was the single most beautiful black-and-white print I have ever seen.
The journey to the CD was, as occasionally happens, fortuitous and at the right time. About eight months ago I heard a rumor that there were acetates of the score and that they’d been transferred to tape, but because several of the acetates were in poor condition and others weren’t that great, nothing was ever done. That and the fact that each acetate contained aborted takes, partial takes, and rarely a finished take – it was just a monumental job to even figure that stuff out, because a good deal of the music as used in the film isn’t the way it was recorded. Capra made a lot of editing changes and then just cup up Dimitri Tiomkin’s score however it suited him and also tracked in some music from other movies. As Tiomkin said in his autobiography, “It was a real scissors job.” I was finally sent the music – probably two hours of stuff – and it was hard to even listen to it, it was all so convoluted and in so many pieces. But after our wonderful audio restoration person, Chris Malone, had performed a miracle and saved A Place in the Sun, I sent all the material to him. He was in the midst of a very long project for another label, but he finally began working on this about three months ago. And miraculously, using all his skills, he managed to slowly piece everything together, bit by bit, as Mr. Stephen Sondheim would say. About six weeks ago he sent me the fruit of his labors and to say I was astonished would be putting it mildly. He’d managed to take all the merely okay acetates and make them sound wonderful. And he made the really bad-sounding acetates listenable – they’re not perfect, but had he gone any further in trying to minimize the acetate noise on those few tracks, it would have affected the actual music and we did not want that. He finessed things over the next couple of weeks and presented me with the final version, which was fantastic. And so here, at long last, are the original score tracks to It’s a Wonderful Life. I don’t think it’s going to last very long, so this is one title I would move on very quickly. Here’s the cover.
The second important thing that will happen just after I announce, is the sending of the letter about the stuff that’s been going on since the second week of Li’l Abner rehearsals and, as far as I can tell, is still going on. While I’m not prepared to talk about it yet, let’s just say that what went on was in no way handled properly – in fact, it was anything but proper – in both my opinion and the opinion of two different attorneys. So, the letter is going to quite a few people, including, of course, the main people who, in our opinion, mishandled things. We’ll see what the response is and I’ve given them a week to make it. If they don’t, or if we don’t like the response, then the attorney will deal with it from there on in.
Yesterday was a day called Sunday. I slept till around ten-fifteen – that was about nine hours, I think. Then I answered e-mails, had a couple of telephonic conversations, picked up a package (with Prime, Amazon now delivers on Sundays – free) and had a Subway Club for lunch. I came home, ate my sandwich and sat on my couch like so much fish.
Yesterday, I watched two more motion pictures on Netflix. The first was entitled Parker, which was adapted from one of the later Parker novels by Richard Stark aka Donald Westlake. There have been several movies made from the Parker books, most notably Point Blank with Lee Marvin, but this is actually the first movie where they’ve actually used the name Parker. It’s always been changed in all the movie adaptations. The star of the film was Jason Statham and the director was Taylor Hackford. I gather Mr. Statham is some sort of action “star” but I had no clew who he was and after watching this film, I have no real interest in ever seeing another film that features him. I’ve never been a big fan of Mr. Hackford and his work here is ordinary. The film has a terrible screenplay, but a surprisingly decent performance by Jennifer Lopez. They give a dedicated to card to Donald Westlake – you’d think if they were going to do that that the screenwriter might have actually stuck more to the book, which I gather he mostly did not. Anyway, it wasn’t so interesting and a little long at two hours.
I then watched a motion picture entitled Trespass – you won’t believe it – yet another movie starring Nicholas Cage, this time with Nicole Kidman in a home invasion “thriller” directed by the extremely hit and miss Joel Schumacher, this being a total miss. Written by a first time screenwriter who has seen too many other home invasion movies and read too many screenwriting books, the script is so bad that you wonder how anyone could read it and not throw it in the trash immediately. The actors must have all gotten their prices, that’s all I can say. The film devolves into pathetic territory within six minutes and it goes downhill from there and finally dissolves into some of the stupidest sequences ever put on film. Yes, like all of Mr. Cage’s recent films, a complete money-loser that is actually now the record holder for a movie release to video – eighteen days from the theatrical release to the DVD.
Then it was time for our Annual Tony Awards Bash, which was hugely fun. Our other time zone folks were good about spoilers but their descriptions of things were fun to read. At eight, it began here on the Coast of West. It started with Mr. Hugh Jackman doing the Bobby Van bouncing routine from Small Town Girl. The purpose was anyone’s guess and I’ve read that most people thought it was horrible, but I liked it fine and thought it was cleverly done. I, in fact, liked it a whole lot better than the winky-winky smarmy numbers that Mr. Neil Patrick Harris did when he was host. I always enjoy seeing the numbers from the shows, even though most of what I saw wasn’t of interest to me. I did find it nauseating that we had to have two numbers from shows not even ON Broadway yet – some Sting thing that was excruciatingly bad, and, even worse, some awful number from Finding Neverland. It was a very long three hours. Best of evening was the number from A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, which at least looked like a real musical, had no flashing, moving lights, was not amped up to the nth degree. The number did owe more than a little debt to Mr. Sondheim – it sounded like a reject from A Little Night Music – but I’d rather have faux Sondheim than a lot of the other stuff I heard. Second best of evening was the segment from Beautiful, the Carol King musical. I thought the Aladdin big number wasn’t anything special and it was so hyper and filled with so many things to make you think you were being dazzled rather than actually being dazzled by a great number – you know, fireworks shooting off at the end, ten light bumps, and on and on, and then, of course, they short change it all doing what they do today at the end of every big number – a one measure button rather than a rideout that would get the audience crazy – think the rideout of the title song to Hello, Dolly! Today they wouldn’t have it, it would just end with a one beat bump.
There were some nice acceptance speeches, but as is usually the case with the Tony broadcast, it just got wearying. Better than the Oscars, yes, for sure. We had a splendidly splendid partay and out of it we now have a new haineshisway.com word – REBUKED.
Today, I shall be up at six to announce It’s a Wonderful Life and as soon as I’m done with that I will send out the e-mail containing the letter. Then I’ll probably go back to bed for a bit and then hopefully I will print out a LOT of orders. I’ll have a bite to eat, hopefully pick up some packages, then I’ll do some work that needs to be done, start a new set of liner notes and have a telephonic call late in the afternoon.
The rest of the week is meetings and meals and lots o’ stuff, including a dinner at Genghis Cohen tomorrow night.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, announce our new title, send out a letter via e-mail, hopefully print out a LOT of orders, eat, hopefully pick up packages, write, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite haineshisway.com expressions, and which have you sometimes used off the site? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and do remember that It’s a Wonderful Life.