Well, dear readers, I am totally exhausted from a two reading and show choir day and evening. I had trouble getting to sleep and only slept about six hours. I felt pretty good in the morning until I saw the Fed Ex charge for shipping Eubie to us. Our pressing plant is only twenty minutes away so there are never delivery charges. But when you license through Rhino it’s a finished goods deal and you have to use their pressing plant, where you have no control over how quickly they press or the cost to ship back to LA. Because Eubie took a long time we were right up against our official ship date so I had them ship Fed Ex three-day. As soon as I got up and checked e-mail I saw the Paypal charge – $800! We now have to recoup that money on TOP of the already pricey advance and let me tell you we’re nowhere NEAR doing that. It was a shocker.
Then I had about eight people tell me they had to cancel coming to the signing. It happens every year and I just don’t get it. I really thought no one was going to be there. It was kind of an irritating morning, but then, like Frozen, I let it go, shaved, showered and got ready for the signing. I went to Gelson’s and got the cake, and as soon as I got back in the car, it really began to pour and continued to do so all the way to Glendale.
Once there, we got everything set up and people began arriving. Despite all the cancelations, we ended up with a great crowd. In attendance, dear reader Mark (sans dear reader Amy), Doug Haverty, Adryan Russ, Sami and her mom, Brennley Brown and her mom, Hadley Miller and her mom and dad, Henry Stanny, Marshall Harvey, a fellow named John Christopher who I’ve known for almost forty years, friend Joanna Erdos, friend Karen Cohen, and several people who were not known to me, which I always enjoy. I began by reading the preface and chapter one and there were lots of laughs and I had a great time. Then I skipped ahead to the making of Bronstein’s first film, The Strange Terror, and they were all laughing merrily away. Then I answered questions, which I love doing. I signed, then we ate cake (I didn’t have any), and then I was asked if I could stay an extra fifteen minutes to speak to a writing class that meets at the store, taught by the excellent writer Dennis Etchison. Of course I said yes. That was almost as much fun as the reading. I don’t really ever consider myself worthy of talking to other writers – I’m just a guy who writes, like it or hate it. But Dennis asked great questions and I think whenever you hear the process of a writer it’s always interesting, even if that process wouldn’t work for you. I do have several tricks I use that insure I never get writer’s block and I shared those and that was very interesting to people, as was my use of Muse Margaret. I had a great time. Here are some photographs. First, the crowd with me reading. As always, I look like an idiot.
Here’s Sami and me.
And here’s such a cute photos – left to right, Hadley Belle Miller, Sami, and Brennley Brown.
Then some of us went to BJ’s and got a meal. I had baked ziti and it was pretty damn good. Then I came home and only had an hour before the LA show reading. I got everything ready and then our participants arrived – Robert Yacko, a female friend of his, whose name is escaping me at the moment, April Audia (who’s in the show) and Doug Haverty. Also in attendance were the two costume designers, who really wanted to hear the show – we’re not going to do a read-through with the students.
We began with act one and I timed each act. When we did the first informal read through we were still lacking several pieces of material from both acts. Act one I knew felt good, despite missing a couple of things, but act two was a bit of a train wreck and disaster, so I completely restructured it several times, cutting a song, writing monologues to lead into two other songs that I was having trouble with, hoping the lead-ins would give the songs clarity and a point. I added a new opening number to act two, as well. We of course now have all the material, so it was hearing everything from start to finish.
Act one really feels strong to me – it’s structurally very sound, the sketches and one long monologue are in the right places and have the right feel, and all the songs really work well. The monologue, which I wrote, is about the Pan Pacific Auditorium and it’s really very touching and April reads it beautifully. Also, the blackout sketches worked great, and the long sketch about the art of the deal in Hollywood, then and now, was really a big laugh-getter last night. I wrote that one with David Wechter. Act one ran fifty-one minutes, which seems just right to me.
Then we did act two. The new opening number works great, and so did the new structure. One of the songs I’d written a lead-in to worked beautifully with the lead in really giving it context. But the other song, despite a good new lead-in, just stubbornly refuses to work – the tone of it is not good for the show and despite the lead-in, its point remains too enigmatic and “poetic.” We all knew it had to go even as we were hearing it. Luckily and happily I already had a song waiting in the wings – a Sherman Brothers song no one’s ever really heard, about Christmas in Los Angeles. It’s sweet, charming, and funny, and it’s just much better for that slot. Best of all, it’s very short and the song its replacing was at least two-and-a-half minutes longer. Then we got to the first of Doug Haverty’s long pieces – this is one we’d already cut down by two-and-a-half pages and it’s still three-and-a-half and still feels just a bit too long, but to me it was very obvious where the lifts were – it’s whenever he veers off on a tangent that isn’t really germane to the story he’s telling – he agreed immediately on what those lifts were, and it will shorten things by another half page. The section I was most concerned about was the final three things in act two. The first of the three things is a very long sequence about the gay experience in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, right up to now. Doug did a beautiful job with it. When he sent it to me, I just asked for certain cuts to make the length work (again just things that were either repetitious or not absolutely necessary to the story being told), and those lifts really made the piece work. It begins with a monologue spoken by our storyteller, a Brit in LA whose come here for the fun, the sun, and the men. It’s very charming, and sets up how secretive everyone had to be in the 60s – that leads directly into the first verse of We Look Ahead – that’s sung by two men at opposite sides of the stage. Then our storyteller tells of meeting and falling in love and lust with someone and how the 70s were getting better and could be out in the open, which leads into the second verse of the song, which is sung by several more men and women.
Then the third part of the story happens, and it’s just really touching and beautiful and leads into the bridge of the song, which is sung by the storyteller, and then the entire company comes on and sings the big anthem-like finish to the song. It’s very stirring and emotional and it worked like a charm. The problem was, what do you follow that with – I couldn’t have it go into the final song directly – that just wouldn’t have worked at all. So, in an audacious move I put the Bruce Vilanch sketch there – I just didn’t know if the adjustment going from that stirring emotional number into a comedy sketch would work, but it did, it worked totally and was just the perfect way to follow it. The sketch got big laughs all the way through right to the button. And then the final song, coming after that, just worked beautifully. So, when we cut the song and add the replacement, I think it will be really good. There’s one dance number that can’t be written musically until the choreographer knows how she’s staging it, but I think it will come in around two and a half minutes to three minutes, so I allotted for that. The running time as an hour and four minutes, which is too long, but I think once we make the cuts in the long monologue and we have the shorter song, we’ll come in under an hour, but I’d really like to come in at fifty minutes. But if the act is paced well, that might be possible, and I have one other song reprise that could possibly go, too, and that would cut two minutes and thirty seconds out. I don’t really want to move any second act stuff to act one.
We all chatted about the show – I think everyone was very happy about it, save for the one number we’re cutting. There’s one other problem number but I think I’ll stage it and see how it feels – it has to do with The Black Dahlia, certainly LA’s most iconic unsolved murder. I wanted a number about it – the first attempt didn’t work, then I gave a lot of notes and the new attempt was much better, but I’m not sure it’s working the way I want it to. I have this image in my head, a kind of ballroom pas de deux between a woman in a blood-red dress and a man in black, the Dahlia and her murderer. One way to perhaps try it is to only use the music and make it a dance number – but with a monologue before it. I’ll play with it in rehearsals and see how it feels, but in the end, if it has to go it has to go. Right now, it just lacks a point of view, and I don’t want anything in the show that doesn’t have a point of view.
Then Sami and her mom came by and we all (plus Doug) went to see a show choir performance in Burbank at a school. I’ve heard about show choirs, but I’ve never actually seen one in action. Well, this is a huge thing, with sets and costumes and lighting and bands and incredible staging. I mean, these are real productions. They last twenty minutes and are non-stop energy. We went to see our own Jenna Lea Rosen and her school – they’ve won mostly of the nationals with what we saw and it was pretty damn impressive. Jenna sings a lot of the solo bits and she’s won best vocalist quite a bit for this show. The staging is huge and complex – they have full lighting and sets, and yet they have to set up and break down in fifteen minutes. Anyway, very talented kids, and Jenna’s mom puts these things together and deserves big kudos.
Then I finally came home.
Today I will do nothing but relax – just a total ME day with no work. I think I have to change what the May Kritzerland is because I just don’t have the time to put together a complicated show, which the one we were going to do would have been. So, we’ll do a kind of May Mayhem show, just like the April show, a potpourri of funny stuff and pretty stuff – and that will be much easier to cast, too. And that way we can sneak in a couple of numbers from the LA show. I’ll eat something fun (having a pizza craving, frankly), and then I’ll watch some stuff.
Tomorrow we begin rehearsals. As soon as we finish (the first two days are just learning music), I have to go right to a meeting about the ALS show. The rest of the week is rehearsals, meetings and meals, casting, choosing songs, and being busy.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a ME day, eat, and do nothing. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers make with the topic 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 to have had a good reading, a good signing, a good reading, and show choir.