Well, dear readers, isn’t it interesting? Isn’t what interesting, you’re asking yourselves, since I merely asked the question isn’t it interesting? Well, back in the mid-1990s I read a terrific thriller called Point of Impact by author Stephen Hunter and featuring a character called Bob Lee Swagger. It was tense, surprising, and Bob Lee was a wonderful character. In 2007, it was turned into a terrible film called Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg, who was just about the worst casting for that role imaginable. The screenplay was like a bad Cliff’s Notes, and the whole thing just lay there like so much fish. A few years later, and author called Lee Child came out with his first book, Killing Floor, featuring Jack Reacher. I read the first three books in the series but didn’t care for them nearly as much as the Bob Lee Swagger series and yes, they had similarities and I can’t imagine that Mr. Child wasn’t aware of Mr. Hunter’s books. In 2012, they made a film of one of the later Lee Child books, One Shot, called Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise. Readers were unhappy with the Cruise casting because the book Reacher is six-foot-five and Mr. Cruise is anything but. I never even knew they’d made a Jack Reacher film – never heard of it at all, or its sequel. The only Jack Reacher thing I heard of was the current Amazon series, Reacher, which I hadn’t watched. So, Jack Reacher showed up on Amazon Prime and I watched it last evening, and I have to say I really enjoyed it a lot. I thought Cruise, despite the height anomaly, was terrific in it and so was Rosamund Pike. The director, Christopher McQuarrie did a fine job of it – no shaky cam BS, no over-cutting the action stuff. The story was standard, but the execution was good. I would have watched the sequel, but that one wasn’t free. Instead, I watched the first of the eight episodes of Reacher, adapted from Child’s first book, Killing Floor. It’s very different and the guy playing Jack Reacher is a bit of a stick (but the right height), but it’s okay so far and I’ve begun the second episode. I think eight hours might be stretching things, but we’ll see. And now, I’m listening to some very appealing music by Alexander Von Zemlinsky, Die Seejungfrau (See the young frau). Lush and pretty and to my liking.
Yesterday was okay, I guess. I got about seven hours of sleep, got up, answered some e-mails, got the audio samples done (just waiting on Doug and the order page to get done so we can announce), ordered my pasta thing from Stanley’s – it arrived thirty minutes later and was not as good as it usually is – something very strange about it, not sure what – I mean, it wasn’t bad or anything, but it’s usually fantastic and I think this was the first time it wasn’t. After that, the day just kind of ended and I sat on my couch like so much fish and watched Jack Reacher and then the first episode of Reacher. The rest you know.
Here’s a link to a video from the Kritzerland show. This song was written for L.A. Now and Then, one of the ones we put in for this iteration of the show – it’s by Amanda McBroom and Michele Brourman. I’d asked them to write a “Now” song back in January. After we’d been in rehearsal for a week, they e-mailed me, saying they’d tried hard but couldn’t come up with any ideas. I wrote Amanda back immediately and said, “Wasn’t it you who posted this really funny thing about freeways on Valentine’s Day?” She wrote back instantly and said yes, that was her. I said, “Well, that’s the song, write that.” She wrote back and agreed wholeheartedly. Twenty minutes later she sent me the lyric, which was great and very funny. She sent the lyric to Michele and a couple of hours later I got a demo of it from Michele, and she’d written the perfect music for it. We put it in the show and the reaction from audiences was great, with lots o’ laughs. So, I had the gal who did it, Danika Masi, do it for Kritzerland. So, here it is.
https://vimeo.com/718153787?fbclid=IwAR3cUVQ3w-3eItJK1pjk6Y2zRyjOb4Obz7ADQwNne1ZL-u5Jx5ld3xE7mDw
Isn’t that fun? I told them that I thought the song was going to become THE cabaret song about LA.
Today, I’ll be up by ten-thirty, and I have an eleven-thirty lunch with a nice lady who wants my opinion on the play she wrote – that’s the play reading I attended a few weeks ago. I’ll try to eat lightly because after that’s done, I’m going to Grant Geissman’s house to ogle his new OLED TV and we’re supposed to get food, too. So, maybe a sandwich at the meeting, and then some kind of salad with Grant. After that, we’ll hopefully announce the new title, and then I’m hoping David Wechter will have finished his stuff so we can go through the screenplay and see where we are. So far, all his ideas for cuts are okay by me – we lose a few fun lines, but we’ve got to lose a lot. There’s only one thing where I think the cuts are TOO severe, in that they take away character stuff that’s very important. And I’m hoping an important envelope will have arrived. Then I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I have an early dinner with Sami Staitman, who’s in town for a week or so, and her mom, so that will be fun. And I have a lunch on Friday. Then I can relax on the weekend.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten-thirty, have an early lunch meeting, visit Grant and then have some food, hopefully pick up an important envelope, hopefully announce a new title, and then watch, listen, and 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 want 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 seen a good adaptation of a book rather than a bad adaptation of a book.