Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to the ballet of La Strada, music by Nino Rota (Onin Ator, spelled backwards), and what music it is. The ballet incorporates some of his other classic Fellini scores, too, so that’s fun. We had some Indiegogo action yesterday but not enough to push us past 63%, although I think we’re within spitting distance. Still, we finally got past 62%, so that was good. I put up a LOT of new, inexpensive CD perks yesterday – mostly long out-of-print Varese Sarabande and Fynsworth Alley titles. Some of them got grabbed before I could even post about it. So, hopefully today will bring more action and perhaps some of the bigger perks. I’m really hoping we can get past 65% or, better yet, even close to 70%. I was also happy to see that the new book has arrived for most of the dear readers, so I’m looking forward to hearing your reactions to it and perhaps some Amazon reviews, which are VERY important. Anyway, here, as always, is the inevitable handy-dandy Indiegogo link, so go go click on it and grab something fun and fancy free.
I did manage to watch a motion picture from 2008 entitled The Mist, from the Stephen King novella, written and directed by Frank Darabont, who did The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. I’m not really a fan of Mr. Darabont and this film really brought that home. It’s ineptly written, with some of the worst dialogue you’ll ever hear, pacing slow as molasses, and acting that’s all over the map. Poor Marcia Gay Harden is saddled with the worst of it. Darabont changed the ending from the novella and delivered something bleak and awful. Reading the Wikipedia article on the film you’d think it was some kind of smash, but it most assuredly was not. It only made fifty-six million dollars world-wide – not a smash, Wikipedia nitwits. It did receive some surprisingly strong reviews, along with some not-so-surprisingly awful reviews. At two hours and six minutes, it’s a good forty minutes past its expiry date. Other than that, I did a Gelson’s run so I could make more Wacky Noodles today, and I spent some fun time on newspapers.com. As you know, 1962 was, for me, the greatest year in film history. And boy, did I go to the movies a lot that year, sometimes three or four times a week, just to keep up with what was being released. One of the most important 1962 weeks for me was May 23 – that was the day the film of The Miracle Worker opened at the Fine Arts Theater. I saw it over and over again there – one time with dear reader Jeanne, which shows you how long we’ve known each other. I was about to graduate junior high school just a couple of weeks later and have grad night at the Coconut Grove, where my “date” was Rosemary Green, who’s still alive and well and we occasionally e-mail each other. We saw Gordon and Sheila MacRae, who were wonderful. That would have been around the middle of June. When I met Sheila at Joe Allen one night, I told her that and she was delighted. But the week I saw The Miracle Worker, I also saw the national tour of The Unsinkable Molly Brown at the Biltmore, my first Broadway show, starring its original stars, Tammy Grimes and Harve Presnel. I’ll keep nosing around and see what else is interesting from that time period, just before I began high school.
Yesterday wasn’t so bad. I got about six and a half hours of sleep, got up, saw we had enough action to take us to 63%, answered e-mails, and then spent quite a bit of time putting up the new perks – very time consuming – they simply don’t make it easy. In the old days, all that was much easier. Then I ordered a Cobb salad from Stanley’s and that arrived twenty minutes later, and I ate it all up and it was excellent. After that, I spent the afternoon finishing. I finished revising dialogue for the screenplay, and I finished a test script for a potential web series.
After that, I sat on my couch like so much fish and turned on some movie I don’t remember and fell asleep for an hour. Then I watched The Mist, which I wish I’d Missed, then I went to Gelson’s and got the two things I needed for Wacky Noodles, and came home. I heard from Miss Laura Wolfe for whom Marshall Harvey and I created a sizzle reel out of a sow’s ear technically – here’s what she said: “This is phenomenal. Everything that I hoped it would be, and even more. Thank you, to you and Marshall, a thousand times over, for your generosity of time and talent.”
Today, I’ll be up by eleven-thirty at the latest, but maybe earlier if I can get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Hopefully we’ll have some Indiegogo action, I’ll read the test web series script and futz and finesse it – I had to cover a lot of stuff, introducing all the recurring characters, and then have some fun stuff going on and all in ten and a quarter pages. When I’m happy with it, I’ll send it to the person who first asked me about doing it. If we’re all on the same page about it, then I’ll continue writing the other nine scripts and we’ll come up with a timeline to shoot it. I’m thinking either sometime in August or sometime in late September. It will involve a lot of scheduling, so I’ll need someone to help produce it. It could be fun, I think. I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, I’ll eat some Wacky Noodles (unless I’m craving something else), I’ll cheerlead the new perks, and then at some point, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I’m having lunch with Marshall Harvey, but mostly I’ll be cheerleading like crazy as we begin our third week of the Indiegogo campaign. I do know the third week is usually the slowest of any campaign, which can be very scary, but I’m hoping we can get within spitting distance of our goal or, even better, just reach it and then cover the Indiegogo fees and then hopefully go beyond. I just made a deal with a soundtrack composer to do three albums and there’s a ton of show albums waiting in the wings, so to speak.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven-thirty or earlier, I must hope for some Indiegogo action, I must cheerlead, I’ll eat, I’ll futz and finesse the test script, I’ll hopefully pick up packages, and then I’ll watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite Stephen King books and your favorite movies adapted from them? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have reached 63% whilst reminiscing about ’62, the year, not the percent.