Well, dear readers, who doesn’t like a good airplane movie. Now, is that a way to start these here notes or is that a way to start these here notes? I’d say that it was a way to start these here notes. My first movie memory is seeing The High and the Mighty, the granddaddy of airplane movies. Oh, how I loved The High and the Mighty and oh how many times I saw it back in 1954 – many times. You can only imagine how amazing it was to the six-year-old me. In 1960, we had the kind of “remake” from the same studio, only it was terrible – that was called The Crowded Sky. But the next one we got was a doozy – it was simply called – Airport. I’d read the Arthur Hailey novel and enjoyed it. The movie was glossy, star-laden, and despite the soap opera aspects, terrific. Helping it mightily was Alfred Newman’s final score. I saw it on its opening day at the Hollywood Pacific, March 20, and the amazing thing about that is that the Darling Daughter was born just four days prior to that, on March 16. But the then-wife said I should go see it and so I did. It was, in fact, the only movie or show I saw that entire month because I was mostly at home with the Darling Daughter and the then-wife – we were living at her parents’ house, as we’d only gotten back to LA in January. It’s interesting to see what I missed that was playing in LA – movies and shows. The Ballad of Cable Hogue opened the same day as Airport and I never got around to seeing it. Ditto for The Liberation of LB Jones, Harry Goz in Fiddler on the Roof at the Lindy Opera House (formerly the Ritz Theater), Dames at Sea at the Ivar, the rock musical Salvation at the Las Palmas, The Price at the Huntington Hartford, Idiot’s Delight with Jack Lemmon at the Ahmanson, and two weeks later, Ann Miller in Mame at the Hartford – I would have seen all of those things, plus I had connections to two plays – Do You Know the Milky Way was playing at the Gallery Theater and I’d done that on a six-month tour from January to June in 1967. And about to open at a small theater was Jimmy Shine with Todd Sussman – and just two months later I’d be asked to do the show at LACC and I said yes and began rehearsals for it and, of course, it was doing that play that basically gave me my acting career. Airport was mighty impressive in 70mm ToddAO and stereophonic sound and the Pacific’s had state of the art projection and sound having formerly been the Warner Cinerama.
Then we got all those sequels, each worse than the last and then we got Airplane, which kind of made it impossible to have any more good airplane movies.
Now, of course there’ve been many since – Air Force One, something with Jodie Foster, any number of hijacking movies, and I’ve seen many of them. I say all this because last night, I watched to movies – one airplane movie and one air controller movie about airplanes, or as I like to think of them, The High and the Not So Mighty. The first was called Non-Stop from 2013 (as opposed to Non-Stop from 2014 with Liam Neeson (not a bad movie). I was interested to watch Non-Stop because it starred Lacey Chabert and way back in 1993, Lacey was playing little Cosette on Broadway singing Castle in the Clouds or Sky or whatever it’s called. We need a youngster to sing Inch-Worm with Liz Callaway and Lacey came highly recommended and we hired her. She came in, cute as a button, professional as can be, we did a few takes and that was that. But listening to it, Liz and I thought it was TOO professional and too Cosette-like. So, we replaced her with another New York kid and that was worse. I finally used a non-professional here in LA and that worked out fine. Well, Lacey went on to a really nice TV and film career. Non-Stop is one of those awful movies where we have a heroine who’s skittish and nervous, walking up and down the aisle, sitting in many different seats, working on her computer, being give a sleeping pill by another passenger, meeting a handsome man in coach, making out, falling asleep and – wait for it now – when she wakes up the man and all her belongings are – drum roll – gone! And no one remembers seeing the man! No! The main stewardess drinks and is abusive, the steward in training seems nice, some guy says he’s from Interpol (I’m not making any of this up), and then it just gets stupider and stupider from there – how that’s possible given how stupid it was from frame one is anyone’s guess. It was a TV movie made for the Lifetime Movie Network who apparently make anything, any old piece of dreck – one wonders if anyone there actually read the script of this thing. I never heard of any of the other actors, but I guess Lifetime fans must know who they are – the only other actor I knew was Veronica Cartwright, who was fun to see but given stupid material. You will never see or hear worse writing and the direction is inept. Highly NOT recommended by the likes of me. The one with Jodie Foster, which is similar in the disappearing part of the plot, is better.
The second movie was entitled Ground Control from 1999, I think. Decent cast – Kiefer Sutherland, Bruce McGill, Robert Sean Leonard, Kelly McGillis – but again, a terrible script – who read it – anyone? This one was laughably right out of the Screenwriting 101 playbook – Syd Field – Robert McKee – you know. The movie starts with our hero having a bad problem as an air controller and even though it wasn’t his fault, really, he must overcome that to safely get a plane to the ground six years later. Characters behave stupidly because the writer needs them to, none of it is believable, Robert Sean Leonard spends the entire film chewing gum, the laziest actor business in the history of acting, and everyone flails because the writing is so terrible. Add to that a bad director and this is the mess you are left with. It went straight to home video, needless to say. The only thing that works is the score, by Randy Miller, someone I worked with several times and who, in fact, conducted my biggest selling album, Titanic: The Ultimate Collection. He also did our Godzilla best-of, and our Superman best-of. Very talented composer and a terrific conductor. The point of all this blather is that I love a good airplane movie and isn’t it about time we had one?
Yesterday was okay. I got eight consecutive hours of sleep, so that was nice. Once up, I answered e-mails, then shaved and Marshall Harvey came by and we went to Barone’s, one of our favorite places. Saturday is not a time to go to Barone’s – lesson learned. They had a party of forty people, plus other diners and this was at two-fifteen in the afternoon. The chefs must have been going crazy trying to fill the orders, and frequently the day chefs aren’t as good as the dinner chefs, although our last lunch there, on a weekday, was great. I had my spaghetti carbonara and Marshall had some angel hair pasta primavera thing. We each had the salad and we shared some garlic bread. The latter was a little burnt for my taste, but the salad was fresh and good. The pasta took forever to arrive and when it did, my carbonara was spaghetti literally swimming in sauce. It’s never been like that – like carbonara soup. It wasn’t terrible, but it just wasn’t what it usually is and I could only eat about a third of it. I got the rest boxed up, and thankfully they got rid of most of the soupy sauce, so when I had that later in the evening, it was pretty good. Anyway, a disappointing lunch but we’ll simply not go there on Saturday from here on in.
After that, I came home, did some stuff on the computer, and the rest you know.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ve been invited to see a few short plays but I’m not sure I’ll get over there – too much to do here. I want to write, since I did no writing yesterday, and I’ve got to attend to other stuff. At some point, I’ll eat, watch, listen, and relax.
This week will either produce a modern major miracle or it will produce some modern major stress and frankly I’m too old to have modern major stress. So, send excellent vibes and xylophones. Otherwise, it’s writing, it’s meetings and meals, and doing whatever needs doing.
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, do whatever needs doing, maybe see a play, although it’s doubtful, write, eat, and 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, wondering when we’ll have the next great airplane movie.