Well, dear readers, can someone please explain to me how this month is half over already? How can it be? November is flying by, like a gazelle drinking a Mai Tai and doing the Hully Gully. That’s a sight to behold, let me tell you and I have told you. I myself have never has a Mai Tai or a Tai Mai and I have never done the Hully Gully nor the Gully Hully. Apparently, I had led quite a dull life. That said, I have had Thai food and when I eat it I always think of it as My Thai. Soon it will be Thanksgiving and then soon we will do the last Kritzerland show at Vitello’s, and soon I will be a new age and someone better be throwing me a big ol’s party for a big ol’ age, and soon it will be time for the Christmas Eve Do and Christmas, and soon it will be our annual New Year’s Eve Bash, and then it’s a New Year. Frightening, isn’t it? Other than all that time flying by malarkey, I did watch two motion pictures last night, one old, one new, one borrowed, and one blue. Not really blue, of course, I don’t watch blue movies. The new movie was entitled See How They Run, a whodunit that exists only because Knives Out made it fashionable to have that kind of film again. The problem here is that See How They Run is ineptly written, derivatively directed, with some casting choices that actually boggle the mind. The plot is cute, I suppose. In 1953, real-life producer John Woolf wants to make a film of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, which has just played performance number 100. But a crass director wants to change everything, he’s having issues with his pretentious screenwriter, and the crass producer is murdered backstage. Whodunit? Who cares? The film has nice sets, a loud score, and one fine performance by Saorise Ronan, who can do little wrong, in my opinion. She’s endearing and funny and the director, had he had any sense of comedy, could have built on what she was doing – so many obvious wasted opportunities with her. She plays a police woman, just starting out, who is assigned to assist the lead detective. And that’s the first disastrous casting decision – Sam Rockwell as a British detective, with one of the worst English accents ever. He has zero energy, and while he may be acting up a storm in his mind, he fades into the background of every scene he’s in, especially with Ms. Ronan. The rest of the players I’ve never heard of nor seen, save for the terrible actress who plays Agatha Christie in the final scenes of the film. She played in a miniseries called Happy Valley in an equally irritating performance. There’s some actor playing Richard Attenborough who looks and sound nothing like Richard Attenborough. And it’s one of those movies that seem very full of itself, as if everyone involved thought they were being so clever with all their winky-winky stuff. I endured all of it. Then I checked out the reviews – well, you know if Richard Roeper loved it that it must be bad. But Peter Travers, who used to have some kind of discernment but now seems only interested in him getting his name in the adverts, also loved it and found Mr. Rockwell’s non-accent convincing. But many of the reviews called it the way I did. If you like this sort of pastiche or if you like Ms. Ronan, you might enjoy it – but I sure didn’t, in case you were wondering.
The other film, the old one, was entitled You Light Up My Life, a 1977 release filmed in 1976. I know it’s odd that I’ve never seen it, since I have a really strong connection to it, but I just never got up the energy to watch it. The strong connection? Joe Brooks, who wrote, produced, and directed it, as well as writing the title song and all the other music in the film, was a last-minute life-saving investor in The First Nudie Musical, betting our already low budget to where it needed to be. The reason he invested? Well, he liked the idea and the script, but more importantly, he was dating Cindy Williams at the time, and she was going to star in his film. He had never directed before, so he hung around and watched us film occasionally. While we were editing, he came to me and told me Cindy and he were going back and forth about his script and if you don’t know how to deal with her she can be very strong about stuff. They argued and argued and when he came to me he told me he didn’t think he could direct her while they were in their relationship and would I consider directing it. I told him yes. Then they broke up and that was the end of that.
He cast Didi Conn, used our leading man, Stephen Nathan, used our production manager, Ed Morgan, both onscreen and off, used our friend Nick Grippo as producer, used our art director, Tom Rasmussen, used our hair stylist gal, Nancy Chadwick, as his wardrobe person (Nancy also played the Lesbian in Lesbian, Butch, Dyke), our sound people, Art and Peggy Names, and a few more of our crew. Didi is good in it, but the voice Joe used for the songs sounds nothing like her, which is a bit of a problem. Stephen is fine in a thankless role, and the rest of the cast is also fine. There are some nice LA shots, and it looks pretty good for a low-budget picture (not as low-budget as ours, of course), and like us he sold his film to a major studio, but unlike us, they gave his film a nice release because the title song had already become a number one hit for Debby Boone. That was the luck out. And, of course, the final irony is that when our film was released by its second distributor in New York and it went wide (after a nice long run at one theater), we were the fourth highest-grossing film in the United States. The first two films on that list were Star Wars followed by The Spy Who Loved Me. The third highest grosser just above us? You Light Up My Life. Go know.
Yesterday was both okay and irritating, frequently at the same time. I did get eight hours of sleep, so that was nice, I answered e-mails, the bagels I’d pre-ordered the night before arrived at noon, I made two tuna sandwiches and ate them on two onion bagels – very good they were, too. Then I went to the mail place and picked up two screeners and an important envelope that for some reason I wasn’t expecting until after the first. The screeners were nothing I’d ever want to see – some Lena Dunham thing called Catherine Called Birdy, which I actually watched a bit of when I was surfing Amazon Prime – I found what little I saw insufferable. The other movie was called Emergency with a no-star cast and a plot that I really had no interest in wasting my time on. Before I’d left, I turned on the kitchen faucet and the little doo-hickey that gives you a nice even spray broke and fell out. So, on the way home I stopped at a hardware store for a replacement doo-hickey and they didn’t have one nor could they tell me where to find one. I don’t know what it’s actually called so I can’t find it by searching. Here’s what it looks like.
A new one should just snap back in. If anyone has any ideas, let’s hear ‘em. I did a quick run to the bank, then came home. When I pulled in the driveway, I pressed the button in the car to open the garage door. It would not open – over and over I pushed the damn button. I finally had to stop the car and go open the side door and push the inside control – it opened right up. I parked the car and just for grins I pushed the button in the car to close the garage door and of course it worked instantly. Go know. Then I spent two hours going over the credits for the web series – I wanted them in a form Marshall Harvey would understand, so that getting them done would be easy. The front credits of the main titles will always be the same and I think we’re looking for someone to do the main titles, which will consist of live action shots from the show and photos. When each episode begins, there’s only one credit, which is written and directed by. Then the end credits – the cast changes for each episode, of course, but the rest of the credits on episodes one through eight are mostly the same, with just a few exceptions. Then nine and ten have some different names because those are the L.A. episodes. Once we get them all locked down, then I think I’ll type them up so that Marshall can just cut and paste them into his program with a nice font. I think that’ll work and make his life easier so that he’s not doing all that typing. Then I began my viewing. I had another bagel between movies.
Today, I’ll try to be up by eleven, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I still have to make the show order and then get the commentary done, we have to get the rehearsal schedule done, too. I’ll eat, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
The rest of the week is more of the same and not sure what’s happening on the weekend.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, try to be up by eleven, do whatever needs doing, make the show order and do the commentary, get a schedule done, eat, hopefully pick up packages, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite whodunit books, plays, and movies? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, astonished at the flying by of time.