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It's wonderful when the bits of Spacemen from Space come together as they should. It just seems that every couple of days, I get to the point where a character enters and says . . .
Well, SHOULD say something, but even though I know the information they need to get across, I can't find the right words. The problem with writing a pastiche like this is that I'm fanatical about getting the right tones and cadences for each character, whether gangster, cowboy, g-man, alien, or supervillain -- kind of a poetic UR-tone that contains the entire FEEL of this character's type -- and when the right rhythms don't come, NOTHING works. One character, Cowboy Adam, just re-entered two days ago, and it took me a day to realize the first word out of his mouth was the very obvious "Howdy" before anything else he had to say was able to come.
Interestingly -- as I always work with music or video playing, or I can't do anything, for some reason -- while the Michael Powell and Mario Bava movies I had had on in the background worked for me (rich material that I know so well I don't have to pay any attention to it usually is the best for this, as I kinda mentioned last week), and a day of my favorite "odd" movie musicals (Phantom of the Paradise, Jacques Brel Is..., and a few others) wasn't bad, it turned out to be marathon listening to The Firesign Theatre that got me in the groove again the last two days. I had thought that their dense wordplay would be far too distracting, but it turned out to be just the pull I needed to move me forward (and kept me aware that this IS meant to be a comic/satiric pastiche, not simply an near-exact copy of a 1930s cheesy serial).
A spate of insomnia kept me up insanely late last night, and while nothing came in writing, I WAS able to cut nine pages from the Devils script. It needs about another 10 pages to go before it's a length I'll feel okay presenting (three hours including two intermissions - it's big, but it HAS to be). These nine pages were fairly easy to cut. The next ten will be heart-breaking.
And the Wedding script also moves forward slowly, but is happening, and is acceptable.
I've also been The Brick's point person on the upcoming Tiny Theater Festival which is coming together nicely, with 12 pieces in two programs. Now I have to go buy and cut the PVC pipe to make the 6' square cage all the shows have to be contained in.
And again, the Random Ten for this week comes from a specific playlist on the iPod, rather than the whole thing -- the playlist is called "A Brandnew Bag," and consists of tracks primarily from favorite artists that have not yet been played since they were put on the iPod (usually over three years ago). So here's 10 out of 3,323 in this playlist (with YouTube or other links for the song or the closest thing I could find):
1. "Wonder When You're Coming Home" - James Brown - Think
2. "The Ballad of Johnny Burma" - Mission of Burma - Vs.
3. "Frustration" - Rocket from the Tombs - Rocket Redux
4. "Feeding Time at the Zoo" - Sarah Kernochan - download from her website
5. "The Journey" - John Lee Hooker - Walking the Blues
6. "Verb: That's What's Happening" - Schoolhouse Rock - Grammar ROck
7. "Main Title" - Herbie Hancock - Blow Up
8. "Don't Defile the Sacred Mountain" - Tom X. Chao - Micro-Podcasts
9. "Let's Make It Easy" - The Parliaments (as The Fellows) - Testify! The Best of the Early Years
10. "Frog Dick, South Dakota" - Bob Martin - Midwest Farm Disaster
And here's a video playlist as close to the above as I could come . . . (if you're on Facebook, you'll have to click the link to the Original Post to see this):
Tomorrow, I'll be working again with David Finkelstein on the improvised work that he transforms into video pieces. We've been primarily working with a new form of improv this year (which David calls "landscape" as opposed to the other "musical" style we worked in before) and it took a while to find my footing in this form. Last week, though, David found an image that not only helped me find my way in this form, but I think may wind up a breakthrough in my acting in other ways.
But that's a longer story for another day. Back to work.
