Well, dear readers, I’m afraid I hit the road to dreamland prior to writing these here notes. I just laid down for a few minutes and here we are one hour later and that’s on top of the one hour I slept during the movie I was watching. And so, I’m a little groggy as I grog my way through these here notes, not really seeing what I’m typing very well due to eyeballs being fuzzy. The movie I was watching was Oliver Stone’s JFK, which I like and which I haven’t seen for over a decade, I think. I got through the first forty-five minutes and then fell aslseep, so I’ll go back and watch what I missed. It’s over three hours, but it really is one of the fastest paced three-hour movies ever. Prior to that, I watched a wonderful movie entitled Going in Style, starring George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg. I’d seen the first fifteen minutes but never finished it. It’s an interesting movie – it takes its own sweet time, it’s mostly quiet, the bigger two sequences don’t suddenly become a different movie, which could have happened easily, and it’s unexpectedly moving at times. The three actors are terrific, but it’s really George Burns who walks away with the movie – he should have been nominated for Best Actor, but it was a very strong year. In fact, the movie was nominated for nothing. It was written and directed by Martin Brest, his first feature after a couple of really well thought of short films. The film did fine and was a critical hit. After that, Brest had a really interesting run of films. First, he was fired from War Games three weeks into shooting for differences of opinion with that film’s producers. But just one year later, he’d direct Beverly Hills Cop, a huge hit. Then nothing until 1988, when he was doing Rain Man, but left that project and instead did Midnight Run, another huge hit. Next as Scent of a Woman, a film I actively hated, but it won awards and did fine. Then Meet Joe Black, which I didn’t really like all that much and which wasn’t a hit, and then came the career ender, Gigli, which he wrote and directed – the studio took control of the film a few weeks into shooting, it was rewritten, scenes were reshot, and the resulting film was a disaster, still one of the biggest bombs in film history. But it was his name on the film and twenty years later it remains his last film. He simply disappeared until a few years ago, when he gave some interviews. If Gigli had happened today, it probably would not have affected his career at all, but back then, pre-social media, despite his huge hits, that was it. Going in Style would be remade with Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alan Arkin and from everything I’ve read about it, it was terrible because they changed everything. If you’ve never seen Going in Style, you should – it’s free on HBO Max. And it has an absolutely perfect score by Michael Small.
Yesterday was okay. I got seven hours of sleep, answered e-mails, did some stuff prior to the Zoom session, got Taco Bell for food, ate it, wrote four pages, had a long and productive Zoom, wrote another four pages, watched Going in Style, wrote another two pages for a total of ten, watched JFK until I fell asleep, fell asleep again, and here we are.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll write some pages, eat, then I have to go back about forty pages and futz and finesse. Once all that’s done, I’ll send about 100 pages to Muse Margaret, maybe a bit less depending on how much I write today. After that, I can watch, listen, and relax.
This week will be lots of writing, hopefully shipping out the Vernon Duke III CDs, and then we can finally announce a new title or two, and then doing whatever else 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, write, then futz and finesse for a few hours, eat, send new pages to Muse Margaret, and then 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 finally post these late, late show notes.