Well, dear readers, it is very late and therefore I must write these here notes in a hurry because I still have a couple of pages to write for the book. I don’t really know why I was so behind all day yesterday, whether I just couldn’t get with it, or I kept adjusting things, but I really should have finished my pages by six-thirty but by that time I’d done eight, with three to go.
I was up by ten after eight hours of sleep. I didn’t have a chance to do any futzing and finessing in the morning due to a computer freeze and then having to restart and make sure everything was okay. Then I had a conversation with Muse Margaret because I was thinking about making a tiny little change in the set-up of the plot – she totally agreed and so I made that tiny adjustment. By that time, Kay Cole had arrived and she spent about thirty minutes signing her 100 booklets.
After that, I futzed and finessed about half of the previous day’s writing, making little changes throughout, adding a few things and definitely smoothing out a few things. Then I went and had a bacon and cheese omelet and a bagel. There were no packages to pick up so I came right home. It was raining on and off all day and evening. Once home, I finished futzing and finessing, then wrote about four new pages right away, a sequence I absolutely loved writing, and I felt it was so much fun that I let it end that chapter, which was getting long at nineteen manuscript pages. Then I took a break, listened to some music, and then wrote another couple of pages. Then I had some telephonic conversations, and then I got ready for my visitors for movie night.
We watched the original theatrical version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the only version I like. It’s what I saw and what everyone else saw and I have absolutely no interest in revisionist moviemaking or what directors wished they would have done at some point. I felt the film was a masterpiece back then and I feel it now. It’s perfect and all the changes made for the Special Edition were terrible, I thought, and I’m also not fond of Spielberg’s ultimate director’s cut. I like it just as it was. It’s interesting watching it with people who’ve never seen it. Last time we did a movie night we watched Arrival, a similar kind of film. Arrival, as okay as some of it was, is a complete failure when compared to Close Encounters, which is made by a real moviemaker who knows how to tell a story with his camera, and who has really good story sense. Arrival has not a whit of humor, nor does it have any characters that you actually root for or care about – it’s simply dreary in the way that so many of today’s movies are. Close Encounters, on the other hand, has characters you love and root for, it has, above all, HUMOR, you never know where it’s going, and when it gets there it is so heartwarming and beautiful and the ending never fails to move me and incredibly so. And it has a real movie score, not some cobbled together thing that has nothing to do with how movie music functions, which is the problem with Arrival. The John Williams score is one of his all-time greats and that’s saying something. And it does exactly what movie music should do – keeps the pace, keeps the tension, keeps the drama, underscores the characters, and makes the images have undeniable magic at the end of the film. And it is his music as much as anything else that makes the film’s finish so moving. The Blu-ray could, I think, use a fresh transfer. Plus there were five or six sound dropouts – I don’t know if they were there last time I watched, which was when it was released, but it was just weird. It’s never happened on any other Blu-ray.
After the movie, we went out for a bite. I had some fries and nothing else. They were excellent. Then I came home and wrote another page and a half, then wrote these here notes, and before I go to sleep I’ll write another page and a half for a total of eleven.
Today is a writing day, plain and simple. I have no other plans – just writing and having one meal, hopefully picking up some packages, and more writing. If I get all the pages I want to do done by six-thirty, then I’ll definitely watch a motion picture.
Tomorrow will be exactly the same. Friday I’ll write in the morning, then I’m going to LACC at noon to shoot a little video footage for the Indiegogo campaign I’m helping them set up. I’ll be home by three and will write when I get home. The weekend is all writing, but also printing out however many pages are done by Saturday afternoon or Sunday by noon, Xeroxing them, and getting them to Muse Margaret.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, eat, hopefully pick up packages, write, and maybe if I finish early enough, watch a movie. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear readers any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have had some close encounters of the Tuesday kind.