Haines His Way

Up until the last election I was never involved in a heated political discussion that became personal, NEVER!


Oddly I have never had a friend who was of the Republican Party persuasion berate me, or bash me for my views.  I have only been respected or at the least, forgiven.

Sadly I have been badgered, berated & bashed by Democrats for expressing any opposing views regarding the Democratic candidates.  

Having experiencing only friendly discussions most of my life I don’t understand how the line crosses to a personal attack simply because someone sees things differently.  I judge people by their kindness & actions, not by their political views.  

DR vixmom and George et al - As for the "Rent" screenings... The lines here in NYC were loooooong(!) on Wednesday and Thursday nights.  -And I have friends who are already planning on lining up at least two hours before the showing tomorrow, so... -It may not be that popular in your neck of the woods, but ya' never know.

Something tells me (just a hunch, no inside info) that someday, someone will pony up the money to get that Legally Blonde that was on MTV several times out on DVD.  Unlike the Rent filming, so many people were able to tape Legally Blonde when it was on TV, and legal copes of legal copies abound in the world, so i think saner heads will prevail and make it affordable to pay people off to release the thing.

DR George, Joe Orton is one of my favorite playwrights because of his outrageous wit, insane plotting, and inner rage. I believe his plays are the funniest things written since Noel Coward's best comedies, and his style calls for the easy repartee of Oscar Wilde cmbined with the violence and rablood of a violent film: when one of the robbers in LOOT tells Truscott "You have got me bloodied and on the floor" and the shootings occur at the end of WHAT THE BUTLER SAW, the blood should be realistic.

Orton's not easy to perform: of the 7 or 8 different productions of WHAT THE BUTLER SAW that I've seen, only the 1973 Wiliamstown Theatre production with John Glover, David Dukes, and Lynn Milgrim came the closest to being an ideal representation of the show's style.  There's a not-too-good film of LOOT with Lee Remick as the killer nurse, and you might want to track it down on VHS, and a rather good film of ENTERTAINING MR SLOAN with the late, great Beryl Reid. The film bio of John Lahr's book PRICK UP YOUR EARS is very interesting and goes into detail the tribulations of the original disastrous London-bound production of LOOT, which couldn't make it into London, and how another director took the script and made it a success.

I saw John Tillinger's Broadway production with Alec Baldwin and Zeljko Ivanek as the robbers, but I thought he miscast Joe Maher and Charles Keating and they should have switched roles. Charles was too sly to play McLeavyand would have been better as the corrupt police inspector.

There are grrat lines in LOOT:
   "Total extermination has done nothing to silence her slanderous togue."
   "What a thing to happen to a man who's been kissed by the pope!"

...I then asked her how many times she went on for Miss Grimes while standing by - the answer?  One.  Which led the discussion where I wanted - the fact that in days of old (up until about twenty years ago) stars and leading players would have rather DIED than miss a performance and let their understudy go on.  Now, it's all personal days, and people missing if their having sniffles, or PMS, or a headache, or they need to do a concert somewhere.  It was unthinkable back then and frankly it should be unthinkable now.  Miss Morrow told of being told she had to miss a performance (of Drood, I think) because they wanted to see how the understudy was.  She didn't want to miss, and, in fact, hung out at the theater because she felt she should be going on. ...

We are getting a big windstorm.