Well, dear readers, has anyone here noticed that every single day I begin these here notes with, "Well, dear readers"? I suppose that just for a change of pace I could begin them with, "Dear readers, well" or "Readers, well dear" but I hate change. I like comfort. It's why I tend to order the same exact thing in favorite restaurants. I find it comforting. Oh, I know one has to be adventurous, and I am adventurous sometimes. Why just yesterday I tried a new kind of pudding snack - Devil's Food Flavor. Naturally, after sampling it, I put on some horns and did the Devil's Food Flavor Pudding Dance, which I must say was rather devilish. In fact I looked like a whirling dervish whilst doing it. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, I looked like a devilish dervish and a whirling one at that. What the hell am I talking about? I was talking about something and I no longer know what it was. Or should that be "I know longer no what it was"? Oh, I remember now - starting each day with a "Well, dear readers". Well, dear readers, I think I'll stick with the tried and true and also, as long as I'm at it, the true and tried. As Jerry Lewis once said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Today I will be picking up a brand spanking new advance copy of Mr. Alain Resnais' film, Stavisky. I haven't seen it since I saw it way back in 1974, I think, or whenever it came out. I was in New York rehearsing a television adaptation of a play I'd done at the Mark Taper Forum, and I went to see it. I recall enjoying it. Of course, Stavisky is of interest to readers of these here notes because the musical score is by my close personal friend, Mr. Stephen Sondheim. It's a wonderful score, too, and I remember leaving the theater and going directly to a strange record shop I knew of in mid-town, a record shop that carried peculiar import titles. I just had a hunch and my hunch proved correct - they had the soundtrack to Stavisky imported from France, and I got the last copy. I couldn't play it, of course, until I got home from New York, but once I got home I wore that damn album out in short order. It's been issued on CD a couple of times, and I listen to it quite often. Anyway, I'll let you know about the DVD tomorrow.

Say, I've got an idea. Go on, say it. Say, "I've got an idea." There, that felt good, didn't it? It always is comforting to say, "I've got an idea," and comfort, as you know, should be Paramount in our lives, and also it should be 20th Century Fox or Universal. Say, I've got an idea - let's all click on that Unseemly Button below and see if anything happens.

Why, just look at that, something happened, we were whisked away by a devilish dervish that was, interestingly, whirling. I find that very comforting indeed.

And now, the story continues.

So, going into 1999, I was coming off my best year at Varese, sales-wise. So why did things turn negative. I believe it was because, after working for the same salary for over two years, I asked for a raise. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, I had the nerve to ask for a raise. And I did it in such a way that it was a no-brainer. I did it in exactly the same way, in fact, that I'd asked for my other raises, which I'd received without further ado. But the owner of Varese has his peculiarities, and this suddenly became a big deal. Suddenly everything was in question. Suddenly we were going over every single release over many many weeks. The many weeks turned into months. He said he was not opposed to the raise (or a raise), but just wanted to go over everything we'd done to that date. It had been getting harder and harder to get projects pushed through, and now it was like pulling teeth. Even Titanic had been difficult to push through, believe it or not. It took me two weeks of badgering to get it approved, and basically at the end of two weeks I walked in and said, "You know what - we're doing it. I'm not letting you miss this opportunity." After which, he said, "Fine." Fine indeed, seventy thousand copies later. I can't remember exactly what the sequence of events was that year, but early on he professed to be disenchanted with the Broadway line. I tried and tried to convince him to look at it as he'd always looked at it - as a boutique part of the label. But he just grew more negative as time went by that year. We had many arguments about many things. We finally came up with a plan - if, by the following March, I'd sold "x" amount of albums, I would get the raise I'd asked for. I felt confident that that would happen. I kept doing albums, kept trying to find the projects that would sell well. But the joy of it was dissipating for me because it was such a struggle. I came up with several excellent film music projects, but couldn't do them because they would ruffle the feathers of the person who did the film music CDs (it didn't please that fellow one bit that the best-selling Varese film music album in years was my Titanic album). Another reason the joy dissipating was that after doing all those albums, some of which, like Titanic, had made him a lot of money, I had never, never not once, received a word of thanks, a pat on the back, a "good job". That just gets a bit tiresome after six years. It's not that one needs to hear that sort of thing much (I got plenty of kudos from fans and press), but once would have been nice.

In any case, if memory serves (memory doesn't always serve), sometime in late August or early September, he came into my office and said he'd just gotten back a large number of Christiane Noll albums and he now wanted to be out of the Broadway business. Now, keep in mind, returns are part of the game. Christiane had sold very well indeed (upwards of 8,000 shipped) and you're always going to get some back. The fact is, they weren't back very long, because Christiane bought quite a few herself, and copies went back out over the next few months. But, for whatever reason, that was his decision. I said we shouldn't be making that decision until the following March because that was our deal. But he was adamant, and said there was no way I'd reach the sales figure he'd set. I said he had no way of knowing that at this point. He told me to figure out what else I could do, but obviously there wasn't anything else. He had a film music person, and that fellow hated the fact that I did occasional film music albums, so that wasn't going to be happening. He was putting me in a corner, because there wasn't really anything to do. This was very frustrating for me, because as a person I am incredibly loyal. I'd been approached two years earlier by another company - they'd offered me more money and a similar deal, but I opted to be loyal and not even mention this to Varese. I felt I had a home and that I had a home forever (that's what most certainly had been inferred when I began), and again, it's that comfort factor. In any case, there was no changing his mind. He told me he thought the best idea was for me to work through the end of the year and that we'd work out a severence package. And so, rug pulled out from under me, I began to think of options.

It occurs to me, dear readers, that I might not be able to do this story on a daily basis, because it takes quite a while to do. I mean, I will try to do it on a daily basis, but if I miss a day here and there, please forgive me and know that the story will pick up in a day or so.

Last night I watched the DVD of Mr. Jonathan Demme's fine film, Something Wild. I hadn't seen it since it came out, and it's quite good - a bit overlong, but very entertaining. It's one of Melanie Griffith's best performances, and Jeff Daniels is always delightful. It was either Ray Liotta's first film or his first significant role, and he's great, very menacing and a bad bad boy. I'm not a fan of rock songs being used in film, but they're used very well here. It's one of those budget-line MGM/UA titles, so it can be had fairly inexpensively.

Well, time to get cracking, time to make tracks, time to greet the day ("Hello, day"). Today's topic of discussion: What is your all-time favorite film musical? It can be an original musical for the screen, or an adaptation of a Broadway musical. And why? Happy discourse.