Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to Mr. Charles Gerhardt conduct Max Steiner’s music for Casablanca. Before we round up the usual suspects, play it again, Sam because this could be the start of a beautiful friendship and don’t forget we’ll always have Paris. And why am I listening to this? Well, not because I watched Casablanca, which I think I will, but because I watched a documentary about Mr. Max Steiner on HBO-Max. It’s a nice documentary with two questionable things in it. One involves a former soundtrack executive from a label I used to be involved with – he appears in the first five minutes of the documentary as someone who has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Max Steiner and says literally nothing of interest in the twenty seconds he’s onscreen and then disappears for the other two hours of the documentary. The question being, why is he in it at all? There are other interviews, and those people actually have something to say and are repeatedly heard from throughout, including many I know, like Leonard Maltin, Jon Burlingame, William Stromberg and John Morgan, Steven C. Smith (who wrote a bio on Steiner), and Michael Feinstein. There are a couple of others that I don’t know but they at least impart some information. The second questionable thing is having film music FANatic Ray Faiola, who has restored a lot of Steiner music, be the “voice” of Steiner, reading from letters and correspondence. An actor Mr. Faiola isn’t, and they should have come to me because after hearing Mr. Steiner speak in interviews in the documentary, I could do a perfect imitation of him. There were also times when I wanted to just hear the music rather than the talking, but it was nice they made it and I’m glad I saw it and I don’t care who knows it. I also watched a motion picture from 2012 made by what must be charitably described as neophyte filmmakers – entitled Amber Alert, yet another found footage film with a decent starting point that then devolves into inept writing/improvisation, during which the two leads fight and scream at each other for almost the entirety of the eighty-minute film, and speaking of screaming, it’s the kind of movie where you scream at the screen because it’s so inept. Let me put it this way: They find they’re driving behind a car that’s an Amber Alert car. They call the police as they follow the car. The police never show up, despite repeated calls. Oh wait, one cop pulls THEM over for speeding and stands there for five minutes as they tell him it’s an Amber Alert car. He tells them to bring their footage to the police station and that he’s on it. Only he’s not on it and nothing happens, nor do the screaming friends bring the footage to the station. You see, the screaming girl has cleverly put a microphone in the Amber Alert car while the driver is paying for gas.
In the end, they find the guy’s house because of the mic in the car. They call the police AGAIN and tell them they’re at the house and that the guy just left and to please come immediately because when he gets back in a moment, he’s going to molest the little girl he’s kidnapped. Once again, the cops never show up. This is bad Screenplay 101 writing if you even want to call it writing. Then everyone but the little girl dies, or so we’re told in the end credits, which begin at the seventy-minute mark and go sooooo slowly that they last ten minutes, probably because they couldn’t sell the film unless it was at least eighty minutes. You have never seen credits move this slow, you want to give these credits some Ex-Lax to help them move along. Clearly, the movie is a family affair, with the director, producer, and most of the crew all bearing the same last name of either the director or the co-writer. And the list of thank yous, which takes about two minutes to crawl by, means this was probably crowdfunded. All in all, it’s a horrid film that somehow got picked up by an independent distributor who actually got it placed on Netflix, and now it’s on Amazon Prime for free. Highly NOT recommended by the likes of me.
Yesterday was a fine day with no drama and thank heavens for THAT. I got almost eight hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, and as soon as I was coherent, I began futzing and finessing the previous day’s writing. That took over an hour because there was a lot to futz and finesse – mostly just deletions and additions and keeping the voice of the lead character on track, which is the single most important thing in this particular book. Then I wrote about four new pages, took a break, ate some tuna pasta salad, wrote three more pages, took a break – I never left the house because the mail place and banks were closed – watched the Max Steiner documentary, wrote three more pages, finished the tuna pasta salad, had a chocolate Entenmann’s donut, then did some research I needed to do and made notes, then wrote five more pages, so a good day of writing with fifteen new pages, plus all the futzing and finessing. Then I watched the Amber Alert thing, and that was that.
Today, I’ll be up by ten, I’ll futz and finesse and try to write at least two new pages, but I have to leave around noon to mosey on over to Marshall Harvey’s abode to see the first cut of episode six, which I’m excited to see. We’ll finesse whatever needs finessing and then he can move onto episode seven. I’ll then stop at the mail place and see if there’s anything there, and then I’ll go cash a check, then go home. I’ll pray for a major miracle, too. Once home, I’ll return to writing and try to write at least five or six pages. Then I’ll have something to eat, then I’ll write more, then I can watch, listen, and relax, and maybe even write a bit more.
Tomorrow, I have to meet the helper at the storage facility to try and find stuff she hasn’t been able to locate, although I’m pretty sure the stuff is there. I hope that won’t take more than an hour, then I’ll come right home and write and do whatever needs doing and the rest of the week and weekend is more writing and by Saturday or Sunday I hope to get the pages to Muse Margaret.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten, futz and finesse and write new pages, see the first cut of episode six, finesse whatever needs finessing, see if there’s anything at the mail place, cash a check, eat, write, watch, listen, and relax, and write some more. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorites amongst the humungous number of film scores Max Steiner has written? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have seen the Max Steiner documentary, as he really is the King Kong of film music – the man who really taught everyone what film music should do in a film.