Well, dear readers, one simply cannot keep up with the weather here – one day it’s windy and chilly, the next day it’s ninety degrees – well, one can deal with that but one’s allergies cannot. I had a terrible allergy attack a few nights ago and I’m having one now. Isn’t that a fine kettle of what is it, fish? I am sitting here like so much fish with watery eyes, an itchy throat and eyes, and pleased ears since I’m listening to a potpourri of wonderful music by the VERY underrated film composer, Stanley Myers – not underrated by ME, of course, since I’ve been in love with his music since discovering his name as composer of the wonderful movie, No Way to Treat a Lady. I saw the film many times when it was originally released, and I owned the soundtrack LP, which has, unfortunately, never found its way to CD and probably never will. Happily, I had a reel-to-reel of it (I had a huge number of released soundtracks on reel-to-reel) and had it transferred to CD and it sounds great. My second brush with Mr. Myers was via the 1969 film, The Night of the Following Day, a movie I happen to love, and Myers’ music is a major reason for that. Never released in any format and never will be. And then it was The Raging Moon, a movie I never saw, but had the UK release of the soundtrack, which was and is truly stunning and gorgeous. Myers is most well-known for Cavatina, featured in The Deer Hunter. It’s become a hugely popular piece for guitar players, and everyone knows it – his most famous composition. What few know is that it wasn’t written for The Deer Hunter – it was written for a little-seen Brit film called The Walking Stick, starring Samantha Eggar – so little seen that even I have never seen it. He did a terrific score for The Witches, which I had on cassette – now transferred into iTunes. My goodness, what a long introductory paragraph all about allergies and Stanley Myers.
And I haven’t even talked about yesterday’s rehearsal, have I? No, I have not. We had yet another cast mix-up – our Miss Preen standby, who’s playing the final weekend of the show, was supposed to be with us at ten, as Kay Cole couldn’t. The standby got the time wrong, so while she was hurrying to the theater, we did a line-through of act two. We got about fifteen minutes in when she arrived. I let her have ten minutes to make sure she had all the blocking in her script. Then we began our run-through. Lots of calls for lines but running a bit smoother. But acts one and two are just way too long – no pace yet, but there will be, oh, yes, there will be. I will meet my goals for how long I want each act to run. Funnily, act three ran thirty-five minutes, which was surprising as that’s only five or eight minutes off from where I’d like it to be. After we finished, I gave a few notes, then ran the opening of act one, adjusting the staging just a teeny bit.
Prior to that, I’d only gotten five hours of sleep due to an upset tummy. I must have chewed about ten Pepcids. I really need to catch up on sleep and I hope my Claritin-D kicks in soon so I can go to bed after a hot shower.
After rehearsal, I picked up a package from the mail place – another DGA screener for some movie I’ve never heard of – I looked it up – not well reviewed and a big flop, so why they’re expending this kind of dough on it is anyone’s guess. I stopped at Gelson’s and got two tiny chicken tenders, a little stuffing, a little lobster salad, and some onion bagels, came home, and ate all of it and a bagel with cream cheese. I listened to some music whilst answering e-mails. I’m told that all the Creature DVDs will be out by tomorrow afternoon – I really wanted them out earlier, but alas, not possible. Also, I know all the Shoestring Revue and Kurt Weill Revisited II CDs have shipped. Then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a DGA screener for a motion picture entitled Honey Boy, starring Shia LaBeouf. He wrote it, too – he had to as part of his court ordered rehab stay. It’s about his childhood and abusive father. He plays his own father. It’s obviously a cathartic thing for him, but as a viewing experience it’s just not that interesting. It’s extremely repetitious, as you might imagine, and I just couldn’t wait until it was over. It has one of those terrible droning “now” scores that I loathe. The boy who plays Shia is very good, but in the end I just really didn’t like it and couldn’t even imagine how Amazon put up the money for it, but that’s the show business these days.
After that, I had another bagel, then began nosing around the Tube of You looking for stuff, which is how I found a bunch of rare Stanley Myers stuff. Then I began listening to it.
Today, I am sleeping in, then I’ll do the usual morning things, probably in the afternoon, I’ll eat, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, but mostly I need to rest and relax. I’m sure I’ll watch another screener and listen to music.
Tomorrow, I think I have a working lunch meeting. Then we’re back to rehearsing. We’re on our stage for the first time so we’ll run a couple of the bigger moments so everyone can get used to the stage. Then we’ll run act one. I’ll fix and adjust whatever needs it and then we’re running it again, and, if there’s time, again. Wednesday will be the same for act two – at least twice through, and three if we can. Thursday, it’s act three and there’s no question we can run that three times. Friday, we’ll have a proper run-through, and we’ll do the same on Saturday and Sunday – twice if I can get in two.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep in, do stuff, eat, hopefully pick up packages, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your most favorite classic motion picture themes? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, hoping these damnable allergies take a hike sooner than later.