Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much late fish, listening to Mr. Bernard Herrmann’s wonderful score for Brian De Palma’s Obsession, his penultimate score, followed by his final score, Taxi Driver, a rather astonishing one-two punch and quite the way to go out on top. And interestingly, I saw both films many months before their final release. In fact, the screening of Obsession that I attended was prior to Columbia picking up the film. And I saw Taxi Driver before it was rated and it had the full color finale – they had to drain the color in order to get their R rating. I really enjoyed Obsession, even though it’s a bit creepy in one aspect, so much so that they had to make what in the original script was overt incest (albeit unknowing incest) into a dream sequence in the released film. Cliff Robertson did a great job in this film, and Genevieve Bujold is also wonderful. It’s De Palma’s Vertigo rip-off but nowhere as good as Vertigo. Still, considering how many bad films De Palma ended up making (even though he has rabid, devoted fans who proclaim every frame he ever shot a masterpiece), this one is very good, beautifully photographed, and only the supporting performance of John Lithgow is a little over the top – I think it was his first film and he’d yet to scale his performances for the camera. That happened pretty quickly, thought and he became a wonderful film actor. Just checked – he made one film prior to this but had a small role. Anyway, the score is great. Now I want to hear Taxi Driver – have to find the CD – for some reason I don’t have it in Music.
Earlier, we had our second rehearsal. I’d gotten word that our leading player had an emergency and won’t return to us until Saturday afternoon. So, this, rather than being a proper workshop with a couple of weeks rehearsal time, has turned into another two days of blocking and maybe two days to do run-throughs and that’s only IF I finish blocking on Saturday. Very difficult. The first seventy minutes of rehearsal was music and that went well. So, I was able to begin blocking and surprisingly I got through the first three long scenes, which only involve three people. The missing player’s stuff up until the halfway point in act one is all narrator talking to the audience stuff, so Doug Haverty, who’s actual role doesn’t appear until act two did that part. And then, one of our two lead actresses is having vocal issues so our other actress read her lines while she mouthed them – she should be fine by tomorrow or Saturday. But the three young leads are very good and so blocking went quickly and easily, all of them had good ideas and were pretty on point in the playing of their characters, so it was a lot of fun.
After rehearsal, I had to do a CVS run. Normally, there’s no one in the store at ten, but for whatever reason, there were twelve people in line for the pharmacy, which is where I have to get the Claritin-D from. I also had to buy a few other things. It took almost thirty minutes to finally get out of there, but the good news was that I had my monthly ten-dollar coupon, an additional 30% off coupon that had arrived earlier in the day, and a discount couple for the Claritin-D. So, what was a forty-dollar total ended up costing eighteen bucks. Not bad, say I. Then I came home and here were are.
Yesterday was a little frustrating with a bunch of small irritants happening one after another. The biggest of the irritants was that the Zelle payment hadn’t arrived by five o’clock. The person sending it, finally got to his office and then Zelle wouldn’t let him send the full amount because he’s never sent money to us before. So, what should have been one Zelle thing has become three – he sent one at five-thirty, will send another this morning, and then the final one on Saturday morning. I’m beginning to really not care for Zelle.
For food, I had the tiny pepperoni pizza I like. I did Sami stuff mostly – I wrote every TV Academy member I could think of and several have already gotten back to me and promised to vote for us in our two categories. The other two categories in the nominating process can only be voted on by music branch members, so we’re just hoping they’ll listen to the song we put up, which is Simply. I have a few more folks to contact and I’m trying to figure out if I can reach out to anyone in the music branch, since I know a lot of composers who work in TV – in fact, I just paused and sent a note to one such composer and asked him to vote for us and to spread the word to other composers. That took up quite a bit of the day, I spent some time going over the script for the workshop, and then I shaved and showered, stopped at the mail place and picked up boxes of Preview Harvey books, two Writer’s Guild residual checks for The Faculty – they’ll buy meals for a few days, so that’s nice – and 100 Pepcid tablets, so that’ll keep me in Pepcid for a while. Then we had our rehearsal and the rest you know.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll do more Sami stuff, I’ll eat something fun, I’ll deposit the two checks at the ATM, then we have a big blocking rehearsal and I’ll get as far as I can get in the allotted time, which is three hours. After that, I’ll come right home and watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, she of the Evil Eye comes, so I’ll go have a breakfast somewhere fun, do a few errands and whatnot, then we have a rehearsal from six to ten and I have to finish all the blocking, at least that’s the hope. Sunday, it’s an evening rehearsal and I think we start at six again. Monday we start at seven and I’m hoping we can get two runs in. Then we’ll convene on Tuesday around six to do a walk-through of the show and then we perform it at eight. Then Wednesday night, we do it again at eight.
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, do Sami stuff, eat, deposit checks, have a blocking rehearsal, 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 player? I’ll start – nothing. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, wishing we had a bit more time but having fun working the workshop and I have no time for negativity about any of it.