Well, dear readers, today is the day of the Sami Q&A on Zoom. We will zoom to the Zoom at 4:30 West Coast Time/7:30 East Coast time. Quite a few cast members will be with us, as well as several behind-the-scenes folks, so it should be fun. We’ll answer any and all questions as well as all and any questions. We shall be frankly frank in our answers and I’ll even reveal a few secrets that no one outside of a couple of folks knows. So, we hope you’ll join us because we wish to be joined and the more the merrier I say and have said. Here is the handy-dandy direct link to the Zoom meeting.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86554551306?pwd=L09vOG9rYnlhRDJsbjJpMUVyVG9mdz09
Also, I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but it’s the last day of April and tomorrow may be May, and it is my fervent hope and prayer that May will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful. Other than that, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to Toru Takemitsu’s lovely score to Kurosawa’s Dodeskaden – beautiful theme and variations and very American in feel. The actual tune is like Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne and the chorus of MacArthur Park. I really like the film, too. Speaking of film, I managed to watch two motion pictures last night. The first motion picture was entitled Mikey and Nicky, Elaine May’s 1976 disaster released for a few days at the end of December and then put on the shelf. I confess to not having seen it because – it wasn’t anywhere to see, really. In the 1980s, May and her buddy Julian Schlossberg bought it back, she did some re-editing and they put that out. Suddenly, it got some notice and just as suddenly and just as typically all the critics came out in force and proclaimed it a masterpiece. Then she did some slight further editing and Criterion released it on Blu-ray and more proclamations of masterpiece, a great American movie by a great auteur. Before we get into that, a little history. She shot the film in late 1973 and early 1974, shooting over one million feet of film, which is some kind of asinine record. She then spent all of 1974 and 1975 in the editing room before Paramount finally had had it and took it away from her, released their own cut and that was that. So, I’d seen the opening scene before and found it so amateurish that I couldn’t get beyond it. Last night, I endured all 106-minutes of it and it gets no better as it goes on. A masterpiece? It is to laugh. You’d think this woman had never been behind the camera before, despite A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid. I love Elaine May as a writer and I loved what she did with The Heartbreak Kid. This, however, is not a comedy, this is a drama. It seems like she just turned on her three cameras and let the actors run off at the mouth. Repetitive, boring, silly, and horribly shot and edited. A masterpiece? It is to laugh. It just goes on and on and then it ends. John Cassavetes and Peter Falk are fine actors, but they’re just making it up and that’s exactly what it sounds like. One critic acknowledged all the improv but still called the “script” brilliant. The plot is barely a plot, there’s no real forward momentum, it just lurches from scene to scene. I think it’s one of the worst-made films from a major studio ever, but now it’s a masterpiece. Go read some of the reviews from when she finally had her way with it. You won’t believe the salivating, drooling ridiculousness of them. Oh, and according to those exact same critics, Ishtar is also a masterpiece. As John Wayne says in The Searchers (now THERE is a masterpiece), “Not hardly.”
Then I watched the first two-thirds of an eighties thriller called No Way Out, from the book The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing, only with an entirely different setting and plot. I’m fond of the film The Big Clock. This thing is very much of its time – a lot of heavy breathing, a couple of eighties’ power ballads over scenes, and then the standard underhanded doings by some not nice people. Cast is fine – Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, and Sean Young, among others. An absolutely ridiculous score by Maurice Jarre, all synths. I’ll watch the rest after posting these here notes.
Yesterday was what it was and frankly I’m tired of what it was and would like to request a better day, I really would. Another Sami review showed up, but still there are four missing from the first day. I answered e-mails, had the other three enchiladas, which one should never eat two days in a row, went to the mail place and thankfully picked up two important envelopes, so that’s one less thing to worry about, and then I watched the movies, taking a break between, eating some Velveeta shells and cheese – it’s not good, but it was on the shelf.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll shave and shower and get prettified, and then at four-thirty West Coast Time we’ll have our Zoom thing. After that, I’ll go out and bring back something to eat. And then I’ll watch, listen and relax.
This coming week we’ll finalize our casting for the workshop thing, hopefully get my test books so I can place that order and do 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, shave and shower and get prettified, have a Zoom thing, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, really looking forward to the Zoom thing.