Well, dear readers, our little staged reading is cast – for now. Heaven knows how many dropouts we’ll have, but we have a very good company of players. I was really happy to be able to cast Shannon Cudd in our ensemble (also playing small roles) – she was Donna the daughter in the Chance Theater’s The Brain From Planet X. We also have our young leading man, Patrick Levis – he played young Josh in Big on Broadway and is on Unsung Musicals III doing a duet with some gal. We’re still deciding on our older leading man, so won’t be able to say until that’s final. Our young leading lady is a terrific gal named Kelly Sullivan – she replaced Sutton Foster in Young Frankenstein. We also have our very own Mr. Barry Pearl, my pal Marsha Kramer, Barbara Minkus, Eddie Korbich, and several other really good folks. Our final day of casting was fun – I was, I must say, in rare form, humor-wise, and I will just say that we were the funniest and loosest casting room in the city. It was the longest of our three days, but I kept my energy up by having an apple fritter (huge) on our one and only twenty-minute break. After the session, I picked up my two new printouts of the book, and then I met Mr. Grant Geissman for food at Hamburger Hamlet. We decided to splurge and have our beloved nachos, only as per usual for this now pathetic restaurant, they have taken a brilliantly made appetizer and changed it – no more ground beef (which made it unique and perfect) and it’s just totally not the same now, so I have no need to ever have the nachos again. That said, I’d have to assume since they virtually had almost no cheese that the caloric and fat-gram count is way less than it used to be. I also had some lobster bisque, which was fine. Grant has agreed to get rid of that weird leg that’s on our cover photograph – it should be fairly simple and I’m hoping he gets to it soon. I went to Grant’s new play toy after – last August he bought a fixer-upper in Sherman Oaks to use as a sort of second home – he’ll keep his collections there, and when they have out of town guests they can stay there. I saw all the before photographs and he’s done an amazing job redoing the jernt and it looks really good now. I then finally came home, answered e-mails, had telephonic calls, and then sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled City Girl, a silent film by the master director, F.W. Murnau, truly one of the greatest directors ever. I knew nothing of City Girl, which was Murnau’s follow up to his masterpiece, Sunrise. Apparently the film was hacked to shreds by Fox, who added a musical score and singing to compete with the brand new talkies. Miraculously, though, a really good print of Murnau’s version was found in the Fox vaults, restored, and then shown recently. Well, for me, it’s better than Sunrise – in fact, I just sat there for all of it’s ninety minutes completely captivated with its storytelling. Yes, the story is not unique, but the filmmaking is. So many sequences are even today breathtaking, none more so than the brilliant shot of the two newly-married leads running through fields of wheat, which instantly entered my pantheon of great moments of cinema. Charles Farrell stars as the weak son of a tyrannical father (seeing him this young and handsome is something of a shock, having only known him as My Little Margie’s daddy, Vern), but the film belongs to its leading lady, Mary Duncan. I’d never heard of her, never seen her, but hers is one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from an actress of the silent era. She should have been a major star, but apparently she married a polo player in 1933 and gave up her screen career. She lived to the ripe old age of 98. For the Blu and Ray (and I’m presuming the new theatrical prints), Christopher Caliendo has provided a very nice new score. The Blu-Ray transfer is, in a word, astonishing. There has been no attempt to clean up or de-noise the image and it looks incredible – sharp, beautiful, incredible contrast – and the most incredible thing is that this eighty year old film looks better than some films from the 1940s and 50s, transfer-wise. I cannot recommend City Girl highly enough and happily the UK Blu-Ray is all region and will play in any player anywhere.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I am really exhausted and need my beauty sleep – I can finally have a relaxing day now that we’re fully cast.
Today, as noted in the notes, I shall relax, do a few errands and whatnot, and then this evening we’ll be doing our private little table reading of the long musical – we’ll have about seventeen of our cast members there. I’m most anxious to hear the new version out loud.
Tomorrow, she of the Evil Eye will be here, so I’ll do a few things, and then I’m not doing anything else all the livelong day and night, save for eating something amusing.
Sunday, I’ll be having a little work session with a film composer, which I hope won’t take more than a couple of hours. Then I’m going to a little art show opening in the nearby Oaks of Sherman. Next week is somewhat busy, but I’ll have some time to myself, too.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, relax, do some errands and whatnot, and have a table reading. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/video player? I’ll start – CD, various and sundried Eyetalian soundtracks. Blu and Ray, next up is the new Blu and Ray of Fritz Lang’s M. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and I shall hit the road to dreamland, happy in the knowledge that we are fully cast.