Well, dear readers, I am once again listening to Mr. Khachaturian’s music whilst writing these here notes. I feel it is fine accompaniment to my scatterbrained ramblings. Isn’t it amazing that I’ve been doing these daily scatterbrained ramblings since 2001? Talk about a Space Odyssey. I already heard the third symphony, a very nice work, and now playing is the suite from his ballet entitled Masquerade. But enough about Khachaturian because it’s time for more scatterbrained ramblings.
Yesterday was a rambling kind of day. I got eight hours of sleep and was having a quite delicious kind of dream. Once up, I answered e-mails, had two Richard Sherman conversations, and then went and had some chicken tenders. After that, I had to go buy some more Coldeez and whilst buying said Coldeez I got a quart of cherry chip ice cream. They didn’t have the packaged one so I just went to the ice cream counter and got it.
Then I came home and spent several hours on the script for the Sherman Brothers musical. Richard and I made a necessary decision today. Rather than typing up my notes for changes and sending to the writer, I’m just going to go through and do them myself – most of it is just rearranging and cutting, and I’ll probably have to do a little new writing. We just realized that the writer, who is not good at timely responses to e-mails is not going to move fast enough and at this point I really have to get this done so we can actually have a reading of it and because I’m going to need new material from Richard – thankfully he is VERY fast at that. I contacted the guy who’d typed up the script about retyping it into MY Word document with MY formatting, but his response was so off-putting that I told him I’ll just do it myself and revise as I go. It’s a complete pain the ASS, but maybe it’s the best way. My other option is to have an LACC student do it – just come here on her off time and type it in. Richard is paying people to do this stuff, so it’s not a freebie or anything. We shall see.
After that I went and picked up one package, which contained the big ol’ heavy book The Walt Disney Film Archives. Then we had Jean Louisa Kelly’s rehearsal. She began with New Words, the beautiful Maury Yeston song, then she did If I Can’t Take It With Me, cut from Goldilocks and recorded by me on Lost in Boston IV, and finally she’s doing Someone to Watch Over Me, the song she sang in the film Mr. Holland’s Opus. She’s just great. After that, I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the first four episodes of Feud, courtesy of dear reader George. I must say I was rather taken aback at the really poor writing, just typical Ryan Murphy stuff, and not to my liking at all. And, for me, his direction is no better. I thought the two leading ladies were okay, but some of the supporting players were quite ordinary, I thought, and also typical Ryan Murphy casting. I’m quite over Stanley Tucci – it is, again for me, just the same performance over and over again and it just irritates me now. I laughed out loud at the person playing Frank Sinatra, and not in a good way. I guess I hoped for better, but alas. Also, when they can’t get very simple details right, I just am not interested. If you’re doing a period piece, it’s really not hard to research these things, but I guess it’s just easier not to. For example, when Jessica Lange is giving everyone copies of the novel of Baby Jane it’s a 6×9 paperback with the original hardback cover on it. Well, no – that was NOT the standard-size paperback in those days, and certainly not the size of the original Avon paperback, which also had a completely different cover from the hardback. I mean, it’s not brain surgery.
And wherever they shot “Producer’s Studio” (where Baby Jane’s interiors were shot) was a joke – it looked like some warehouse somewhere. I’m waiting for the first wiseacre to tell me they shot it there, but of course we know they didn’t – and why? It’s still there (Raleigh Studios now), they rent out, and the lot itself looks pretty much the same, as does the exterior – a little CGI work and it would have looked just the same. I know this because that’s where we shot The First Nudie Musical. And there were other annoying wrong details throughout. The scenes between Jack Warner (Mr. Tucci) and Robert Aldrich (Alfred Molina) were excruciatingly awful. I will, of course, watch the remaining three episodes today and tonight.
After that, I just listened to Khachaturian and relaxed.
Today, I’ll do more work on the script of the Sherman Brothers musical, and I’ll also listen to the demo to really get the songs in my head. We are going to have to have two or three additional songs, which Richard will write by himself. I’ll eat, hopefully pick up packages, watch the final three episodes of Feud, then we have our callbacks. If we don’t find our Tony Wendice, we’ll have one additional day of casting and I’ll put the word out on Facebook. We just want to make certain that the rest of the cast is all drawn from the Group Rep roster of actors.
Tomorrow is our second Kritzerland rehearsal, Friday is just plain busy, Saturday is our stumble-through, which happens early, and then I have to attend an event in the evening. I’ll have to leave that event as soon as is humanly possible because I really don’t like being out the night before a show. Sunday is sound check and show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, work on the script, eat, hopefully pick up packages, watch episodes, have callbacks, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader 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, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland after another dish of scatterbrained ramblings.