Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, continuing on the Jerry Goldsmith 1960s journey with his incredible score to John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, a personal favorite of Preview Harvey. Speaking of Preview Harvey, there’s a new review up on Amazon – check it out. Speaking of Preview Harvey again, one of his favorite previews was Chinatown in San Luis Obispo, and telling producer Robert Evans that he did not like the score at all and that he felt it hurt the movie. And, of course, Robert Evans agrees, and the score was replaced with a Goldsmith score. And when he sees the movie with the new score, he says it’s like a whole different movie. I finished watching it last evening and it really is an absolutely perfect movie with a great screenplay, great and quotable dialogue, brilliant performances and beyond brilliant and perfect direction. Add to that the production design, photography, costumes and hair, editing, and it just adds up to one of the greatest movies ever made. Mr. Polanski made two perfect movies, Rosemary’s Baby being the other. No one working today can touch those two classics. Sure, they have their drone cameras and their electronic, remote-control cranes, they can move the camera, they can CGI to death to recreate a different era, but what they can’t do is tell the story with the camera, with perfect angles, without showing off, without calling attention to everything. There isn’t a shot in Chinatown that isn’t right, that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, and the recreation of a past Los Angeles is all done by choosing the right locations and knowing how to shoot them. Can you even imagine what they’d do today? Shoot it in IMAX for no reason, edit it to death, have endless tracking shots for no reason, CGI everything, and then you don’t have actors who could touch anyone in the cast. If you have somehow never seen Chinatown you really need to see it NOW. It’s on Amazon Prime in a nice transfer for free. If you haven’t seen it for years, watch it again. You can thank me later. And if you haven’t bothered to watch the Outside the Box musical version, you should bother. And if any of our loyal dear readers hasn’t watched Sami yet, why? Really. Why?
Yesterday was okay. I got about six hours of non-consecutive sleep. I fell asleep by 1:30 but woke up at 3:30 with ABS (Active Brain Syndrome). I got up and was up until 6:00. I did fix something I knew didn’t work the way I’d written it and in fixing it by moving it a few pages earlier, I also added about three pages, so I was ahead of the game, page-wise, when I got up for good at 10:30. I answered e-mails and then I futzed and finessed quite a bit, then wrote five more pages and that with the three from earlier made eight pages. I had Taco Bell for lunch, but it wasn’t a particularly good batch, I’m afraid. It wasn’t bad or anything, just not as good as usual.
Then I went back to writing and wrote another four pages for twelve pages. Then I took a break, did a few things, had some rice pudding, and then I was determined to write two more pages before finishing Chinatown and I did, so fourteen pages. Then I watched the movie, then listened to music and here we are.
Today, I’ll be up by ten-thirty, I’ll futz and finesse, write new pages, then I have a lunch meeting at two. After that, I’ll come right home and write more new pages, at least eight to ten, maybe more. Then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow and Sunday are just writing and relaxing, then next week gets busy, although I’ll probably be writing every day, unless I feel like skipping a day. We shall see.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten-thirty, futz and finesse, write new pages, have a lunch meeting, write more new pages, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray/or streaming things? I’ll start – CD, nothing. Blu-ray, a Preview Harvey movie. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I’m sure I’ll dream of saying, “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”