Well, dear readers, as I write these here notes I am feeling very pastoral, as if I’m in a brightly colored garden amidst flowers and dew and butterflies and birds and little pastoral rodents running amok. I can smell the fragrance of roses and, conversely, the roses can smell the fragrance of me. I am prancing about the garden like a fairie sprite drinking a Sprite. Why? Because Beethoven’s sixth symphony is just finishing up and it is, of course, titled the Pastoral. Franz Konwitschny’s performance of it is splendidly splendid in gorgeous stereo sound circa 1960. Other than that, I really must cool down the home environment, which I haven’t done yet – it is currently 79 degrees in here, which is interesting since it’s a cool 65 outside and it was only 87 yesterday. Go know. I can report the following Bombshell news: I did not watch a motion picture because I did not really have time to watch a motion picture. I did “save” a few Amazon Prime things to my watch list, including Sidney Lumet’s film, The Group, which I’ve never seen, and also the obscure film, The Angel Levine, which I’ve also never seen. The latter looks like a very bad film, but I’ll watch it anyway. Despite not watching a motion picture, I never really stopped doing stuff from the time I got up until about an hour ago.
Yesterday was a short day due to getting ten hours of sleep and arising around one-thirty in the afternoon. Once up, I had a ton of texts to answer as well as a ton of e-mails to answer. I spent the next thirty minutes watching cameraman reels of people who submitted interest in being part of our web series. A couple of them were fine but only the one I liked best had a variety of styles to their shooting. The others were all very “today” in terms of low-budget feature films no one has ever heard of. I had two telephonic conversations with two of them, one of which was the one I like. They know the dough is low, but it is eight days of work and that’s not so bad. I have a few more reels to watch now.
I then began forwarding orders and believe it or not that took a long time, almost ninety minutes. By then, it was already late in the afternoon, so I ordered food from Uncle Andre’s – fried catfish and potato salad. That arrived about thirty minutes later and boy was it good. Usually you get three pieces, but this is the second time there’s only been two – but they were fairly good-sized pieces, and they were excellent. The potato salad is really good, too. If you look up calories for a fried catfish filet, you’ll see how calorie friendly it is. That’s all I’ve eaten today, and I’m going to try and keep it that way, given the hour. Then I had a long telephonic conversation with David Wechter. One person he sent our script to gave him his notes, and I’d sent a copy to editor Marshall Harvey. They both had very nice things to say about the plot, the characters, and especially the dialogue. The most interesting things were how closely their thoughts aligned. And we already knew what was coming in terms of the major note: That we still have to get this thing down to 120 pages or under, and most of that has to come out of the first half. Both are right in their major comments that there’s too much repetition of certain things, which I’ve said from the start – like we’re hammering the audience over the head to make sure they understand. But it’s almost like, in the first half, we have three beats of everything, where it could be one beat. Once you mention something as a character trait, we don’t really need to keep hearing about, especially when it takes up an entire scene.
We’re waiting on one more set of notes, then David will consolidate, and then we’ll spend a couple of hours, hopefully this weekend, cutting every ounce of fat out. If we feel we can lose an entire scene, then we will and if there’s a couple of lines we like we can simply move them to the scenes we’re keeping. We’re both happy about the reaction, though, and every time we make large cuts like this it’s like losing weight and it feels better. Now, if only losing weight were as easy as removing a scene.
That was really about it. It was a very busy day and I’m really glad I got all the orders forwarded, so they’ll ship today and tomorrow, and we’ll be done with that.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll probably have to look at more reels, but mostly I need to start on episode eight – I have something fun in mind for the main thrust of it and I need to choose the song. I have one that I know I want to do, I just have to make sure it works for the episode. I’ll eat, hopefully pick up some packages, have some telephonic conversations, put gas in the motor car, and then at some point I can watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow will be more of the same. Friday will be fun – lunching with Richard Sherman and his ever-lovin’ daughter Vicky, and then on the weekend I’m hoping we can do the work on our screenplay.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, look at more reels, start writing episode eight, eat, hopefully pick up packages, have telephonic conversations, put gas in the motor car, 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 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 written these here pastoral notes with butterflies.