Well, dear readers, how did a three motion picture day turn into a no motion picture day. That is the mystery we must unlock. So, let us examine the clews, shall we. I got seven and a half hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, then I moseyed on over to the mail place and then Gelson’s. So far, so good. I came home and made some Wacky Noodles and a very good batch it was. Check. I did a few things on the computer as is one’s wont, and then I sat on my couch like so much fish and began watching motion picture one: Hitler’s Hollywood, a documentary on the films that Hitler’s minions were turning out – pure propaganda in the guise of comedies, musicals, spectaculars and the like. It was fascinating seeing the clips and then, of course, I fell asleep and missed the rest of it, waking up in the middle of some other Nazi documentary in German yet. That was disorienting. Check. So far, I’ve watched one third of a documentary, which I’ll go back to today. Moving right along. I begin watching another American Film Theater thing, this one entitled Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, which began life off-Broadway in January 1968 and ended up a smash hit, running four years and producing a best-selling cast album, which I had and really enjoyed. Even though I lived in New York for all of 1969, I never got around to seeing the four-person show – five on the LP for reasons unknown to me. I do know it was an intimate revue with minimal staging. I was quite looking forward to the movie, although I had no idea what they’d do with a four-person revue. It did feature two original cast members, Mort Shuman and Elly Stone. Well, they begin with the song Madeline but not sung by the people on screen – who are a bunch of hippies doing “movement” outside a theater. I knew we were in deep doo-doo right there. Then we go into the theater for the song Marathon, which is performed by marionettes while the people who should be performing it sit in the audience watching. Also, seated in a box watching and blowing smoke through his nose – Jacques Brel. I could take no more and shut it off.
I then began another American Film Theater thing, this one being Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, starring its original Broadway star, Zero Mostel (he did the tour, too, that played the Huntington Hartford here in LA but it was just before I started seeing shows there – oh, how I would love to have seen that production, directed by Joseph Anthony. It begins. Already I hate it because they’ve Americanized it instead of keeping it set in Paris. But there’s Zero and one can, within five minutes, see why he won a Tony for this performance. Opposite him is – Gene Wilder, a fun idea if he were actually doing the same show Zero is doing. Gene is, instead, doing Gene and it does not work at all because the playing styles are all over the place by everyone EXCEPT Zero. The director, Tom O’Horgan (director of Hair) should never have been allowed near a movie set or camera. His direction is not only inept cinematically, he’s over-directed every scene with completely unfunny slapshtick that is cringeworthy. Also, the adaptation by Julian Barry is terrible. I cannot imagine that Mr. Ionesco was pleased by this thing. So, I fast-forwarded to Zero’s big scene where he, without any makeup, transforms himself into a rhinoceros. He’s brilliant, but O’Horgan ruins it by overcutting everything, adding shtick that takes away from Mostel, and I were Mostel I would have clocked him, frankly. Also, it’s a THEATRICAL conceit and it doesn’t work on film when you cut it up into excruciatingly bad shots and closeups. But then the play is theatrical, and it should never have been made into a film. Hideous and disheartening and the music by Hair’s Galt MacDermot is awful. The main point of interest for ME, besides Zero, was seeing Melody Santangelo in a pretty big role. For those with keen memories, she did the first production of The Unsinkable Molly Brown at Bluth Brothers Theater, which I saw, and she was a fine Molly. I did the second production (it was so popular there, they brought it back) but Melody didn’t do that one.
I do remember visiting people I knew after the show backstage and apparently, she was a bit of a diva – I vividly remember seeing the fellow who she was talking to very condescendingly, who was helping her with her after show stuff – I recognized him immediately – actor Michael Burns, with whom I’d be working just seven years later, and who’d become a good friend. She’s very good in Rhinoceros – but she didn’t have much of a career. She’s in the movie of Newsies for about twenty seconds, she played various tiny roles on Broadway in Lenny, she has small roles in Death Wish II, Shamus, and a handful of others. I’m sure she was cast in Rhinoceros because O’Horgan directed Lenny and Melody apparently did the LA company of Hair, although I’ve never seen her listed in that company. Anyway, it was fun seeing her. I was friendlier with her sister, Little Vi Santangelo, little because her mom was also named Vi, or big Vi as we used to call her. Little Vi would change her name to Laura Kenyon and do the original Broadway production of Nine. Talented family.
After that, I began watching Magic, which I’ve tried to get through about ten times. I watched fifteen minutes and just can’t stand it, but I might try to finish it today. Directed by Richard Attenborough in the same ham-fisted style as his work on the film of A Chorus Line. And there you have my day and evening, and the mystery is solved at last.
Today, I’ll be up by ten-thirty and I have several tasks to get through on this day, and I really want to get them done, I’m thinking either Popeye’s or sandwiches for food – I’ve begun losing a tiny bit of weight (SLOWLLLLLLY) and I want to continue doing so, and when I’m finished with my tasks, then I’ll damn well watch at least one motion picture.
This week is busy, with meetings and meals, setting the rehearsal schedule for the holiday show, attending the big celebration concert for Richard Sherman at the El Capitan, and other stuff that needs doing.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten-thirty, do several tasks, eat, 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 have solved the mystery of the three motion picture day that wasn’t.