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June 10, 2014:

THE LETTER

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, the fans of It’s a Wonderful Life came out yesterday and we had the biggest single day of a soundtrack release on the Kritzerland site.  When we do a show release, we really do sell five or six hundred in a day, maybe more.  But with soundtracks, because there are so many other options where people can get our stuff, we normally only sell between fifty and a hundred copies of most things, which is truly pathetic, but the dealers end up taking a lot of it so we’re usually fine, although that money doesn’t come in for quite a while.  For It’s a Wonderful Life, by the eight hour mark we were over two hundred, which is great for us.  Not a huge amount of money, sadly, but the dealers are ordering heavy and so there will be a nice check about thirty days after we actually ship it.  We’re hoping approval comes in the next day or two – once that happens we’re probably a week or so away from getting it pressed and ready for shipping.  It’s been a very tough year for Kritzerland – we’re behind in how many CDs we normally due, some of that due to projects just not being ready in any kind of orderly fashion – it’s just been tough.  We can’t bill till we ship and we can’t ship till we have approvals and then product and this year has been the craziest yet in terms of things that are going on.  So, I’m grateful that this one is at least doing some business.  There is a chance we’ll be sold out of it in a couple of days – the last two hundred is hard to predict, but with the dealer orders that’s pretty much what’s left to move.  I could use a few more of these, frankly.  What I warned every label about over three years ago, that the glut of the market would kill this golden goose, has, in fact, come true – they don’t want to admit it, but I was right and no one is selling the kinds of numbers they used to save for the biggest of the big releases.  Gluttony will do that.  So, we’re all suffering a little this year, and Kritzerland probably more than most as we have never glutted anything and put out less than anyone, pretty much.

The other significant thing of yesterday was the sending of the letter.  And it did exactly what it was meant to do.  I got a call just after nine from a gentleman who said the letter had been forwarded to him and him telling me that a letter had been sent to ME on May 14, signature required, via both UPS and USPS.  They were surprised that I’d never responded.  I informed the man that had I actually received the letter via UPS or USPS I would have replied in about four seconds and I certainly would not have needed to send MY letter.  I mean, c’mon – what are the odds that a signature required (meaning registered mail) sent by two different delivery services would both end up lost?  Astronomical, that’s what the odds are.  I did call the UPS Store and have them double check from May 14 all the way to the 22nd, and nothing had arrived that required signature from anyone.  And I’m here to tell you it hadn’t arrived via regular mail either.  So, he said he’d have the person who’d sent it send it via e-mail.  I said that was fine and reiterated that it was my opinion that it had never been sent – and that had it been it would be very simple for them to have checked the tracking information as they would be notified had it been signed for.  He said they’d just assumed it had arrived since they hadn’t gotten it back.  I said assumptions have nothing to do with me and are not a good practice, especially if they have a way of checking.  I also said, if I hadn’t responded in four weeks, why hadn’t anyone e-mailed me to make certain I’d received it.  All very irregular.  And, of course, the fact that even HAD the letter been received by me, it was mailed a full two weeks after the thing had begun.  There’s really no way to spin this in any way that makes what was done right.

Ten minutes later, I had the e-mailed letter and a request to call the sender as soon as possible.  I read the letter and it was exactly what I thought it would be every step of the way.  I then called and went step-by-step and point-by-point.  The person I spoke to also said that if I had any supporting documentation about anything to please send it.  As it turned out, I went and looked at some stuff and found two perfect things to send the person, two things that absolutely supported what I’d told her, so that was good.  I do believe all this should be wrapped up within a week and hopefully to my satisfaction as well as theirs.

I did get a couple of extra hours of sleep – I guess I had six total.  After all that stuff, I really needed to eat, so I went and had a regular Cobb salad with 1000-Island dressing and a bagel, and then some tap tap tapioca pudding – that was my main meal o’ the day.  After that, I came home, did some work on the computer, had several long telephonic calls, printed out orders as they came in, and finally sat on my couch like so much fish.

Last night, it was back to Netflix for two motion pictures, the first of which was entitled The Factory, yet another serial killer movie, this one starring John Cusack as a cop on the trail of a serial killer.  Amusingly, the last serial killer thriller I watched, Mr. Cusack played the serial killer – an Equal Opportunity Actor (EOA).  It was the usual thing – bad writing, silly, cookie-cutter family – you know, defiant teen daughter who smokes, wants to sneak out to be with her boyfriend, dresses like a hooker and feels misunderstood by her parents.  Of course, since the serial killer abducts hookers you can see where it’s going instantly.  Mr. Cusack is a good actor and he makes part of this watchable, and his co-star, Jennifer Carpenter, is very good.  But it just keeps getting stupider and stupider and just when you finally get to what you know will be the film’s penultimate scene, there is a “shocking” twist – and no, I certainly didn’t see it coming – but it’s so inane, so desperate, that it literally makes you hate the movie a hundred times more than you did.  And then it goes on for another ten minutes, while they flashback to show you they played fair.  That’s nice, but you just can’t do what they do to an audience.  And the proof is in the pudding.  This went straight to DVD in late 2012.  But that’s not when it was made – it was made in 2008 and sat on the shelf for four years.  But someone had to read it, someone had to green light it, but apparently no one has to own up to all that dough lost.  Since this, like all those Nicholas Cage disasters, was shot in Canada, it makes you wonder if there’s some nefarious thing going on there where it’s okay for a film to lost $25 to $40 million bucks.

I then watched a motion picture entitled Interview With the Assassin, one of those “found footage” films, like The Blair Witch Project.  You know, a budget of not very much, in this case a purported $750,000.  What exactly they spent that on is anyone’s guess, since, like Blair Witch, it’s all shot with a video camera.  In this film, we’re meant to believe that a cameraman has been asked by his neighbor to come tape him – that he has something extraordinary to say.  So, the cameraman goes and the man says what he has to say – that he was the second gunman in the Kennedy assassination.  So, the set-up is fun and it’s kept reasonably documentary-like, although unless you are totally unaware of who actors are, you can’t exactly fall for it being real, since the person playing the neighbor is actor Raymond J. Barry.  He’s reason enough to watch the film – just a terrific actor.  However, even if I’d been fooled into thinking what I was watching was somehow real, the minute they go to a hospital and interview a nurse – Lillias White – the jig is up.  Anyway, it’s entertaining enough and turns into a kind of paranoid thriller, but the writer/director simply can’t sustain it and his film goes completely awry at the end, just dissolving into a puddle of stupid.

I also went to Gelson’s for a little snack, but didn’t really find anything interesting, so I bought some onion bagels, came home, and made some tuna with onions.  I had one bagel with the tuna and the rest I just ate sans bread, so not too bad.

Today, I shall have a few telephonic conversations, I shall hopefully pick up some packages, I shall relax, and then Kay Cole and I are going to a dinner with about ten students from the Li’l Abner company.  Where are we going?  Genghis Cohen, naturally.

Tomorrow, I have a lunch meeting here in the City of Studio, and the rest of the week is more of that.  Not sure what’s happening on the weekend, although I may have to go see one of those staged things at Musical Theatre Guild – City of Angels.  We’ll see if I feel like it.  I also have to see another show that’s in the Fringe Festival.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have telephonic conversations, hopefully pick up packages and then have a dinner. Today’s topic of discussion: If you could have one luxury item absolutely free, what would it be and why would you choose that particular item?  Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that the letter finally got sent and had the effect we hoped it would.

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