Well, dear readers, for the second day in a row I slept until two in the afternoon. That was over eleven hours of sleep – I guess all those three to five-hour nights of sleep caught up with me, but I really don’t like missing the entirety of the morning and the early afternoon and can’t have that happen again. One reason is that it’s been VERY quiet around here lately – I mean VERY quiet, and also my dreams have been interesting. But it’s very disorienting to get up and look at the clock and see it’s two in the afternoon. By two-thirty I was out and about, doing banking and then having some food, namely a Cobb salad without the turkey and bacon – only ham, and a bagel. By the end of all that it was already four-thirty. Then I’d gotten some interesting thoughts on the Sami show from Shelly Markham and we had a nice conversation about the show and his thoughts. He mostly really liked everything, but had a few concerns – and his concerns, while not necessarily things I’d do, were very much along lines I’ve been thinking about, and his points were well taken. Again, I tend to find my own solutions to things, but hearing outside thoughts sometimes helps me get there. One thing I knew instantly from the workshop was that getting from monologue to monologue wasn’t smooth enough, in fact it was very jerky. Part of that is that Sami was occasionally forgetting where she was and so was wandering the stage trying to remember, part of it was that I haven’t staged that stuff clearly enough, and part is because I don’t think I’m using music enough. The songs tend to start after the end of a monologue and end, while we wait for the next monologue. Only twice in the show do I use music DURING a monologue – in those two instances, about two-thirds of the way through the monologue I start underscore, and that leads directly into those songs in a really seamless way. I don’t want to do that for every song, but I think there are probably two to three more that are obvious candidates for that. Then I also will be using light cues to transition from one thing to another so that the lighting will also keep the flow going – flow is everything in a show like this. The lighting can also help mood changes from monologue to monologue.
One other interesting point was that he wasn’t sure whether Sami was playing Sami or a character. That’s completely my fault. The first time you hear the character’s name – Molly – is in one line in the first song, and Shelly missed it. So, I’ll be adjusting the opening monologue so we know she’s playing Molly and also just to set up a bit more clearly that the evening isn’t plot driven or linear – just a fourteen-year-old’s thoughts on being fourteen, life, stuff she thinks about, stuff that bugs her, parents, friends and all that kind of thing. I think if we establish that clearly at the top of the show it will be very helpful. So, next week I’ll start revising a few things and see how it feels to me. I don’t want to hurt anything we have, so it’s a tricky thing, but I do think these few things I’m thinking about will help and not hurt what we’ve built so far. It’s a tightrope and if when we read through it it doesn’t feel right, out it will go. After all that, I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the new Blu and Ray of 1776, the motion picture based on the stage show. Now, the stage show as originally done on Broadway and which I saw three or four times with the original cast, was one of the greatest theater experiences I’ve ever had. Everything about the show worked. The cast was amazing, the score was fun, and the direction was taut and really well paced. The show was about two hours and fifteen minutes long and played without an intermission. And it was a smash hit. The movie was made shortly after the show closed on Broadway. The same director was enlisted to direct the film, his first. While he may have studied up on it, it’s pretty clear throughout that he was not a film director in any visual sense. He gets the job done occasionally, but just as occasionally his camera direction is ham-fisted and clunky and just plain weird, as are some of the editing choices. The film was released in a shortened version and was a huge flop. The joy of it was having most of that original cast intact, and wonderful actors they are. But Mr. Hunt didn’t help Ron Holgate make his performance camera friendly, something any seasoned film director would have. Also, as Mr. Hunt says in his commentary, The Lees of Virginia, which was a showstopper and perfect on Broadway, was the first scene they shot, and he’s just not happy with it – and it’s just terrible. The extended version also includes the reprise – on Broadway the reprise was funny and theatrical. On film, he was smart to cut it and it’s not in his director’s cut. In the extended cut it is what it always was on film – an embarrassment. And the reason it’s in the extended cut is solely because of an army of FANatics who were so vocal about wanting everything that was in the laserdisc cut, even though that was assembled by someone other than Mr. Hunt, that he felt there would be no winning unless he complied. Well, it’s his film. He did leave off approximately eight-five seconds of stuff from the laserdisc, and you should already hear the bellyaching about it. I never understand this stuff.
I never saw the film on the big screen – my first exposure to it was the aforementioned laserdisc and I thought that version so overblown and clunky, with a stitched together overture and entr’acte and exit music that never existed with this film, and horrible looking footage, well, it wasn’t for me. And the film itself just seemed not to have the pace or the tautness of the show. Now we have this new Blu-ray, which presents two versions of the film – Mr. Hunt’s director’s cut, which runs 165 minutes and an extended cut, which runs 167 minutes. A simple look at those running times will tell you the first problem. The stage show ran approximately 135 minutes. The additional thirty minutes of film time is slack pacing, the “opening up” of scenes, additional dialogue and stuff that wasn’t in the original play – for me it sorely lacks the tightness of the stage show.
All that said, the new Blu-ray is so much better than the laserdisc and DVD versions in terms of quality and color, that I cared less about the problems and just enjoyed the wonderful dialogue and musical numbers. The sound has been getting raves – I can’t go along with that – it sounds tinny and cramped, orchestra wise, and I’m not sure why, since it was recorded at Warner Brothers – it should sound as good as The Music Man and Gypsy do in their film versions, but it doesn’t. Perhaps that’s just the way it was originally mixed, who knows. The DVD was a brown mess, but here while we still get a LOT of brown and orange, the blues, purples and greens really shine and that part looks great. Contrast and sharpness are also terrific. So despite my nitpicks about the film itself, I really do recommend this disc.
After that, I began watching the final disc of The Honeymooners. I only watched one episode but it was very funny. I don’t know if I’ve ever told my Honeymooners story – I can’t remember if I put it in Kritzerland, the middle book of the Kritzer trilogy, but I don’t think I did, I think I left it out because I wanted to move the story along. As those who’ve read the book know, that book is the story of my first real friendship with a guy. We were inseparable for about three years, until he went his own way and shoved me out of his life. But during the friendship we had a lot of wacky adventures – making home movies (that’s in the book), selling magazine subscriptions (ditto), watching The Twilight Zone together every Friday night while eating spaghetti (ditto), etc. But there was this movie theater on Beverly Blvd. called the Pan Pacific. It was right next door to the Pan Pacific Auditorium, that marvel of streamline architecture. It was a neighborhood theater and played second and third run pictures. On Saturdays they’d play a children’s matinee. When I was in junior high school, I found out they had a talent contest every Saturday at the Pan Pacific. And so I decided my friend and I would enter the contest. I wrote a little sketch – and guess what it was? It was my friend as Ralph Kramden and me as Norton. I don’t remember much about it, other than I went to the store and bought two cream pies as I’d written a little pie fight – it may even have been four cream pies (I didn’t know then that they never used actual pies for a pie fight). Anyway, we did it and we won. My uncle Al Kingston came and saw us – he’s featured in one of the Kritzer books – Al was an agent with the Swanson literary agency, but handled a few actors, one of whom was Karl Swenson. He was very complimentary about our little skit. That story came back to me last week when watching one episode. Hadn’t thought about it in years.
Today, I shall not be sleeping until two in the afternoon. I’ll be up by ten, do stuff on the computer, read through the Kritzerland commentary, eat, and then we have our second Kritzerland rehearsal. Not sure if we’ll go out after for a snack, but maybe.
Tomorrow, I’m seeing Inside Out at the Disney Studios at eleven, then I have other stuff to do. Saturday I’m doing a final polish on the David Wechter song mix, Sunday is our stumble-through and then the Tony Awards Bash, and then Monday is our show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do stuff, eat, hopefully pick up packages, and rehearse. Today’s topic of discussion: What were your most memorable childhood adventures with your best friend? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have finally recounted the long-forgotten Honeymooners episode that starred ME.