Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to Trijntje Oosterhuis singing Bacharach, which I’m happy to have had in my Music folder, although I should have her other two Bacharach albums and they’re not here, so I’ll go searching for them today. She’s wonderful with these songs and the arrangements of Vince Mendoza, who’s kind of the Claus Ogerman of now, are wonderful – there are three albums of her doing Bacharach, and I’m listening to the third, so I have to find the other two. Burt himself supervised the three albums. If you’ve never heard Traincha (the American pronunciation) you better do so right now. She has her own YouTube channel with lots of these tracks. Hie yourself over there and give yourself a treat. Prior to listening, I watched a bootleg video on the Tube of You, a complete performance of the Broadway production of the flop musical Smile. It’s nice to hear it the way it was on Broadway, because the demo they made after the show closed had a lot of revisions that are nowhere as good and that’s the version that’s licensed. That said, the show is very confused and one can see why it flopped. It’s certainly not the score, which is terrific every step of the way, with infectious Hamlisch tunes and good Ashman lyrics. Ashman also wrote the book and directed, and his direction is mundane, while the choreography of Mary Kyte is great – very Michael Bennett and I used to think that Bennett must have doctored the choreography because of his relationship with Hamlisch, but the timing doesn’t work because Bennett was, I believe, already living in Arizona and on his downward spiral due to AIDS. And you can’t blame the cast – all wonderful, especially Anne Marie Bobby in the Joan Prather role from the movie. Jodi Benson sings beautifully and one wishes she were directed to have more energy. So, what’s the problem? Well, you have to go back to the movie, which everyone seems to think was a huge hit – the only problem is that it was the opposite – it was a huge flop because audiences didn’t like its slightly smirking tone – satirical but kind of halfway. It’s a fine line that’s very difficult to walk. So, as a musical how do you fix the tone? Well, no one seems to have a clew. The movie moves right along and also has a great cast, too, but when your source material was probably the biggest bomb of its year – Michael Ritchie called me in to read for something and when I got there he told me I wasn’t really right for whatever it was and he said he just wanted to meet me and compare his grosses to Nudie Musical – it was funny, but we won. Turns out Smile didn’t make it past $500,000 at the box-office. Ashman never solves it in his book or the production. There’s not enough humor, laughs are few and far between, and in his attempt to soften the brittle satire of the film, he ends up with pudding. The terrible set design doesn’t help either. But the score shines throughout, with great orchestrations and a great band. The characters of Big Bob and Brenda, the people running the beauty contest never really come to life, especially Big Bob. It’s a real shame. The post-closing revisions not only don’t help, they’re worse than what they had. I saw a small production in the mid-1990s back east and it had no chance, much as everyone, as with every flop, acts like it’s some brilliant thing that somehow got by everyone. The fellow who put up the bootleg, also put up what apparently was the first production after the original, about six years later in a college. And the problems are still the problems despite the friendly college audience reaction. I wanted to record the whole show as originally done, but Hamlisch wasn’t interested, but finally let me record the four or five songs we did.
Yesterday was busier than I wanted to be. I did get eight hours of sleep – I was hoping to get more but was happy for the eight. I sent the book in for designing, so that’s done. At noon-thirty I had a Cobb salad from Stanley’s and that was excellent – hadn’t had it in quite a while. Then at two was the long Zoom with David Wechter and we got everything done, so that’s good. It was about two-and-a-half hours so that was exhausting. I tried twice to take a nap, to no avail. I had some snacks, then watched Smile and the rest you know.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, Marshall Harvey will be bringing me all ten episodes, which I’ll then transfer to a thumb drive and that will go to close captioning. I have no idea how that all works, only that it takes about ten days. Once that’s done, then Marshall will make the full resolution copies, which take a long time to upload. Amazon Prime has all kinds of technical specs we have to abide by so we’ll have someone to help and make sure everything is done exactly as they want. I’ll eat something, maybe from Gelson’s, and then I’ll just watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is a holiday so I get to have a mostly ME day, which will be nice. The rest of the week is hopefully seeing the first pass at the designed book, hopefully getting in at least one of the blurbs I’m waiting on. I have some meetings and meals and hopefully it will be a calm week or at least most of it.
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, get the back-up drive with the ten episodes, get them on a thumb drive, I’ll eat, and then I’ll watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have seen the full Broadway production of Smile because it makes it so clear why shows flop.