Well, dear readers, tomorrow it’s back to work after the long holiday weekend. I must say, the past two weeks have been mostly very pleasurable on any number of levels, especially level numbers four and six. I hope it’s been pleasurable for all you dear readers and lurkers out there in the dark, too. Yesterday, for example, was very pleasurable on any number of levels, with yesterday’s really pleasurable levels being numbers two and eight. For the first time in weeks I got a great night’s beauty sleep – close to nine-and-a-half hours, thanks to a nice shot of NyQuil before bed. I slept right through the night until I got up at ten-thirty. I stayed in bed until eleven-thirty, got up, did my morning ablutions and then began futzing and fixing the previous day’s writing. I had a lot of smoothing out to do, plus some rewriting, and that took quite a bit of time – over an hour, in fact. I then mushed on and wrote two new pages, beginning a new chapter.
Then I went and had a chicken salad sandwich with no fries or onion rings, and some tap tap tapioca pudding for dessert. Then I came home and went back to writing. I wrote about five more pages over the course of the afternoon, before taking a break and sitting on my couch like so much fish.
Yesterday, I finished watching a motion picture entitled Funny Lady, the sequel to a motion picture entitled Funny Girl, starring Miss Barbra Streisand, James Caan, Omar Sharif, and lots of others, including Mr. Ben Vereen. When I saw it back in 1975 I was very disappointed by it, having loved Funny Girl. I felt none of the musical numbers worked very well, save for Miss Streisand’s singing of them, and I felt the story was just dreary and had a lot of repetition in the scenes, which made for a very long 136-minutes. From what I later learned, there were a lot of scenes cut (like most of Mr. Vereen’s performance), music rescored by Marvin Hamlisch, the original cameraman, Vilmos Zsigmond was fired after a few days and James Wong Howe came out of retirement to finish it, although he got sick and was out for ten days and Ernest Laszlo shot those days. I felt James Caan was a strange Billy Rose and there was, for me, no real rooting interest because I didn’t like his character. I also thought the Kander and Ebb songs were nowhere near the songs of Funny Girl by Styne and Merrill. I don’t know that I’d seen the entire film since then – maybe I saw it on laserdisc, but I just can’t remember. So, seeing it with fresh eyes forty years later was fascinating. First off, I found the first hour of the film to be pretty entertaining, and I liked the Kander and Ebb stuff more now than I did then. Caan was still abrasive and unlikeable, at least for me he was. But the film is basically all Streisand all the time – she’s rarely off the screen. And I have to say, she’s just wonderful in it playing an older Fanny Brice. Her singing is impeccable. I was a huge fan of her first albums and she’s every bit as good here as back then. Her phrasing, her way with a lyric is just breathtaking, really. And she’s beautiful in the film, despite some bad wigs.
The second half of the film dissolves into bathos, though and is like a long soap opera. The screenplay simply isn’t very good, and while the scenes play decently in terms of direction, some of the musical numbers are just not well staged, especially the endless “funny” montage where everything goes wrong at an out of town tryout. It seems the camera is never in the right place to make a visual joke land. Also, there’s one shameless rip-off sequence where they try to have a number just like Don’t Rain on My Parade. The choreography is okay but not great – but I have to say that the one full number Mr. Vereen gets is excellent and while there is no proof of such a thing, it looks exactly like a Bob Fosse number, filled with his steps and style. Who knows? Maybe as a favor to Vereen he did this one number uncredited. It sure looks like it and nothing else in the film is anything like it in terms of style. The music sounds great – whether that’s Mr. Matz or Mr. Hamlisch is anyone’s guess. The transfer looks fantastic. If you’re a Barbra fan, you will have died and gone to heaven – you will plotz – you will kvell. She’s just great in it and the movie, despite its obvious weaknesses, does have its moments.
After that, I went to Gelson’s and got a little bit of chicken noodle soup, some almonds and some dried cranberries for my evening snack. Then I came home and buckled down, Winsocki, and finished about five more pages, maybe six. I think it was thirteen in all and I stopped just short of ending chapter two. I do that on purpose so that when I begin writing tomorrow I just pick up right where I left off and write the remaining paragraph or two to finish that chapter.
Today, I shall hopefully arise after a good night’s beauty sleep. I’ll futz and finesse yesterday’s writing, then continue on to a new chapter and I’ll try to do at least eight to twelve pages again. I’m very ahead of where I would normally be at this time, and I like having that feeling. At six I’m having dinner with a friend, and then I’ll finish up the writing later in the evening. My hope is that I will deliver the first batch of pages, all fifty of them, to Muse Margaret so she can hopefully give me the Muse Margaret Seal of Approval.
Tomorrow begins with more writing, a jog, lunch, and then we have our first Kritzerland rehearsal of 2015. Tuesday I have a meeting with the Inside Out musical director and then a dinner with Nick Redman and his darling daughter. I may take my car in on Wednesday morning to have them check something, Thursday is our second Kritzerland rehearsal, and, of course, I’ll be writing the whole time. Sunday is our sound check and Monday our show.
In the Amazing What Shows Up on the Internet department, this photograph of me playing Banjo in The Man Who Came to Dinner showed up. I first played Banjo as a student at LACC back in 1966. This photo is from their 1978 or 1979 production, in which I came back to recreate my role. As you can see, any opportunity I had to appear in boxer shorts, I took.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, maybe do a jog, write, write, sup, and write. 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, happy that it’s been such a nice and long holiday weekend on any number of levels, especially levels one and nine.