CollisionWorks

First, as I've now seen mentioned on Boing Boing and Gothamist, a surprising animation from the vaults of Sesame Street: Geometry of Circles - no indication of who the animator is, but the music is an original piece by Philip Glass! And from my favorite, classic period, the mid-to-late 70s, with the Ensemble (and vocal group)! It was shown on SS in four parts, but here some nice YouTuber has weaved them all together into the longer piece they must have originally been (are there more?):

A new song by DEVO created for a Dell commercial, and released as an internet single, which I found as part of an excellent overview article on Mark Mothersbaugh, DEVO, and his soundtrack company Mutato Muzika in the L.A. Weekly:

Meanwhile, in last night's Special Comment (and thank you MSNBC), Keith Olbermann reminds us - if we needed reminding, and apparently we do - that The President is a liar:

And Jack Cafferty (thanks for this, at least, CNN) reminds us as well - any everyone should be constantly reminded - that the Administration is a pack of actual, literal criminals:

Enjoy. If that's the right word . . .

Our Friend What-The-Fuck-Chuck has given a rave review to Tracy Letts' August: Osage County. All fine. All good. OK! I'm sure I would enjoy this show if I could afford it, from what I'm hearing.

However . . . (dilute, dilute) . . .

These lines from the review engage the gag reflex:

In other words, this isn’t theater-that’s-good-for-you theater. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote an immortal line from a beloved sitcom.) It’s theater that continually keeps you hooked with shocks, surprises and delights, although it has a moving, heart-sore core. Watching it is like sitting at home on a rainy night, greedily devouring two, three, four episodes of your favorite series in a row on DVR or DVD.

You know . . . I like a lot of what's on TV. Berit and I don't watch any at home (we gorge on it when visiting my mother in Maine) - we have neither cable nor antenna here - because we don't like it in the home, where it sucks energy away from the work you should be doing as you wind up watching the not-good stuff just because it's there.

But we watch quite a few series on DVD as they come out on Netflix, and I've thought for some time that the hour-long drama has indeed been going through a golden era these past few years. There is certainly great TV happening.

That said . . .

OKAY. Maybe he's just trying to sell a "difficult" play to an audience he thinks (condescendingly?) might rather stay home and watch the DVR (we have already learned of WTFC's fondness for Friday Night Lights, which, given my feelings about current TV, I'm more than willing to believe is deserved). Maybe he's sensitive to the negativity thrown his way by audiences who went to see Thom Pain (based on nothing) ("theater-that's-good-for-you-theater"?) based on his review and wants them to feel they won't get burned again.

But. Still.

Am I completely off-base and/or snooty to like to think that the best standard to hold up a theatrical work to is not a television drama?

UPDATE: Not a minute after posting the above, I came across an interesting post re: WTFC from Lee Rosenbaum at CultureGrrl. A bit off the subject above, but interesting - and I mean the second item about WTFC, not the first, innocuous one. The one Rosenbaum refers to as "disturbing."

Also, I would like to note that now that I've read WTFC's review of the original Chicago production, I can express my dislike of his work on one more count - one of the oldest, lazy-reviewer tricks there is: dragging in quotes from, or examples of other, "similar" works of art in your opening, "topic" paragraph to supposedly give your review "context," when you are in fact stuck for anything interesting of your own to say about the work immediately in front of you. In the Chicago review, he drags in works by Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Lillian Hellman, and Edward Albee (phew! - why not throw in Brecht if you just want to enumerate destructive theatrical mother figures?); in the NYC review, he pulls out Tolstoy and one of the most overused quotes you'll find for this kind of opening (hell, it was old when Nabokov parodied it in the opening sentence of Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle 38 years ago!)

The one time I tried this trick with my 10th-grade English teacher, Jim Block, he mocked me so severely with his red pen that I never tried it again (I think). Would that WTFC had had such a hilariously cruel instructor at some point . . .

Our performance at The Brick's Quinquennial Party went over like gangbusters. Sometime soon, I'll see if I can cut the video down to 10 minutes (it's about 11 now), put it up on YouTube and embed it here, though it was really completed by Berit's and my live performance in front of it - and Berit appearing live on stage, performing (something she has continually vowed she will never do) was a stunning surprise for many of the friends and collaborators present. It was meant as a nice special gift from Gemini CollisionWorks for The Brick, to have both of us up there doing the piece. Now, of course, everyone's trying to convince Berit to make another stage appearance (Bryan Enk is determined she'll act in a Penny Dreadful episode at some point), but she's adamant about staying off stage, and I'm not going to help anyone try and convince her otherwise (in any case, who'd be running the board if she's on stage?). We are appearing together in non-speaking roles together in Carolyn Raship/Daniel McKleinfeld's piece in the Baby Jesus Jubilee, so Berit will take to the stage briefly again in the next few weeks (her rules seem to be that she'll appear on stage in silent roles or vocally over the booth mic - she won't be on stage and speak at the same time).

In brief, our piece consisted of alternating voiceovers as Berit read smarmily from Isherwood's piece in the Times about "what to do in NYC while Broadway is mostly shut down" -- she describes her (excellent, I'd say) vocal performance as "NPR crossed with Crow T. Robot's description of his day-trip to Chicago" -- and I read quotes on Theatre from Brecht, Foreman, Clurman, Wellman, and Mamet as well as some supposed Gemini CollisionWorks "rules for making theatre" (eg; "Rule #1: If you lived here, you'd be home by now.") The video was just titles identifying the quotes for the most part - Berit did a great job in creating them, as I requested, to look as much like the titles in Godard's Tout Va Bien as possible. On stage were sixteen chairs in three rows, and as our quotes played, we knocked them over one by one, until the end, when something different happens. It worked. People dug it. David Cote and I wound up having another in our continuing series of talks (which feel like one ongoing talk, broken up) regarding Off-Off-Broadway and the NYC press, and Berit had to keep assuring people who hadn't read the Isherwood article that it was indeed a real article by a real theatre critic in the real New York Times.

The whole party was great, and the other performances were quite good. A lot of it was very in-jokey for "The Brick Regulars," but that's only appropriate - Trav S.D. and Art Wallace showed a film (which we shot last Tuesday) of spurious "forgotten shows from The Brick's past," mainly parodying the styles of some of the Regulars - I contributed Ian W. Hill's Death of a Salesman starring myself and Moira Stone. Best of all, Lynn Berg and Audrey Crabtree performed a wonderfully nasty clown piece detailing "The History of The Brick" in which they did lovingly vicious parodies of all of us who run the space -- I spent most of it wondering what they were going to do to Berit and I, and was not disappointed as they enacted one of our typical lighting-tech squabbles ("Give me some ambers, Berit!" "Those are amber, Ian!" "No, those are green, Berit!" "Ian, you're colorblind!").

Unfortunately, a lovely night was capped by returning home after 13 hours at The Brick and finding that the cats had got into a sewing bag of Berit's that they shouldn't have, and Hooker was obviously in distress, having chewed on a piece of foam that B uses for a pin cushion. A trip to the 24-hour emergency vet, a couple of hours, and several examinations later, and, yup, there was a needle lodged in his throat. They sedated him, removed it, and kept him under observation until the following afternoon. Lucky little bastard - it could have been so much worse (needle in the stomach = surgery), and now he gets soft food for a week, like he's getting rewarded for misbehaving (as is Moni, as we know damned well that she's the one who got up on Berit's workdesk and pulled down the sewing materials).

So that was two nights running we didn't get to bed until 4.30 am, and last night I wound up falling asleep at a really early hour for me, and now I've been up and edgy since 4.00 this morning. Grrr. At least the snow outside has been kinda pretty as it appeared to me during the sunrise.

The good news in the middle of the whole magilla yesterday was that we finally got the play I'm directing for the Baby Jesus Jubilee fully cast as of 11 am yesterday, and were able to actually rehearse with the full cast in the afternoon. So, Jason Liebman has joined Alyssa Simon, Aaron Baker, and myself in Marc Spitz's Marshmallow World, and he's perfect in the part, as I thought he would be. I had neglected contacting him before yesterday, as he's already acting in another show on the bill (Qui Nguyen's Action Jesus, as Jesus), but once again I've learned not to assume anything, and "nothing ventured, nothing gained" (well, I've been given another example; considering that this keeps happening to me, I have no doubt I haven't learned anything). He read the script and jumped right in. Jason was the other Hamlet in The Pretentious Festival this year (in Q1: The Bad Hamlet) and we have an odd bond as a result (do actors who've played Hamlet have this in general?) - though there have been jokes from the rest of the company about us being "matter and anti-matter" and whether having the two of us acting together will result in some kind of cosmic instability. Judging from how well yesterday's rehearsal went, there's nothing to worry about. So, THAT's set.

Oh, and the theme for The Brick's 2008 Summer Festival was announced in a special video trailer at the party:

The Film Festival: A Theater Festival.

And I think this means I finally go forward with my longtime dream of presenting a stage adaptation of Orson Welles' film of The Magnificent Ambersons as Welles originally finished it, before the studio reshoots and recutting.

Oh boy, oh boy, this will be interesting . . .

We were going to spend Tuesday at The Brick fully restoring the house plot for the December shows coming up (the last two shows almost completely rehung and recabled and due to some changes in who was supposed to do what when, Berit and I got stuck with the last third-or-so of the restore), but I had too much email business built up to take care of - invoicing for money owed on shows directed or teched (I get WAY too lackadaisical about this until I NEED THE CASH NOW!), answering questions from people coming into the space shortly, casting the Spitz short that is coming up fast, etc. So Tuesday was spent on that.

Yesterday, Berit and I went over to The Brick to work and we should have started much earlier - fixing the patch (her job - she handles the lightboard) and recabling the lights (my job - I handle the hardware) wound up being more of a pain than expected. After two shows in recabling things up there, there's now a giant mess of unnecessary jumpers all over the grid. And I had to add a few more to get things working ASAP.

After the January show (Frank Cwiklik's Bitch Macbeth, which I acted in in both the previous versions - 2001 at Access, 2003 at The Kraine), I should have a chance to tear everything down and start from scratch and make it clean and efficient again. Maybe then we'll also finally be able to add the top border pieces Berit and I have wanted to do for some time now, to clean up the line there.

So today we have three hours (between a class and a rehearsal) to go in and focus the lights and dress the cables, which probably won't be enough, so I'll have to finish during the day tomorrow, as we get set up for The Brick's Quinquennial Party. Berit and I were going to have a video/performance piece for this, but between the extra time going into the house plot and the Spitz play, it ain't gonna happen. Pity. It was rather specific for the event, so it just goes into the hopper of unrealized paper projects - a couple hundred by now, probably.

Well, while I have about 5-8 unrealized projects for every one I get done, it's not like I'm not overburdened anyway, and I usually wind up cannibalizing the good bits anyway of the paper projects anyway - the "post-apocalyptic acting company" framework I placed around my original production of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room was nicked from an unrealized combined re-construction/collision of The Wild Duck, The Pelican, and The Seagull (to be called Bird/BRAINS) that David LM Mcintyre and I were going to do after Even the Jungle.

I just spent some time typing out a description of what tomorrow's piece was going to be and it got me so excited about trying to do it again that I'm going to wait and see if there's ANY way I can get it done today/tonight. If I can't, I'll post the description tomorrow.

The problem is that besides the immediate work at The Brick, I'm still dealing with casting for the Marc Spitz short. I had three out of four cast, with two possibilities for the fourth, when one of the cast had to pull out as he hadn't looked closely enough at the schedule and turned out to have conflicts. So now it's just me and Alyssa Simon in the show. It's less than 10 minutes long, and not-at-all staging heavy, but I'd like a good 10 hours of rehearsal work on it at least, and time is getting short (we tech the individual show on Monday, have a tech with the whole program on Wednesday, and open on Thursday).

I have one actor still checking schedule to see if he can do it who can play either of the roles, and another who can do it, and is perfect for one of the roles, but can't make a lot of rehearsal time, or either of the techs (but works FAST and gets things right, right away). And now I have emails out to several other actors, and am waiting for responses.

Not a great time of year to try and cast something, especially when the last performance is on December 22. It seems like everyone's leaving town on the 20th or 21st. One of the roles can be played by many different types of actors, but the other has certain specific demands that make it more difficult to cast. We HAVE to rehearse on Saturday.

Ah, the joys of casting. I'll be happy when I have everything set, cast-wise at least, for all my 2008 shows by the end of January. At least that's the plan . . .

But it is, as Berit has now put it, "douchebaggery of the highest water," and there are certain things up with which I shall not put. And the continued mentions in other NYC theatre blogs sent me back to force myself to read the horror again. In full. Dammit.

For it seems that, according to the second-string New York Times theatre critic, with most of Broadway on strike, there is little-to-nothing left of interest on the stages of NYC, and certainly no such thing as Off-Off-Broadway. Why don't you watch Friday Night Lights on TV instead, or for real theatre, the crowds at Trader Joe's?

Jesus fuck a bagpipe.

Now, I have been more and more happy with the Times's theatre coverage in recent years - they have been covering OOB more and more and more. I've not been a fan of Isherwood's writing, for most of the reasons usually brought up in the blogs, but I thought people were overreacting to him, and that he was just one facet of a richer group of voices at the Times that were doing better and better work in covering a wider spectrum on NYC theatre. Yes, I know, there's plenty that is worthwhile and uncovered (BELIEVE me, I know), but they're doing a better job -- I can certainly remember years and years where NOTHING below Off-Broadway level was ever mentioned, even in passing.

I was lucky enough to finally get a show of mine reviewed in the Times this year after ten years and 54 shows designed and directed in NYC - I've been mentioned here and there in articles, quoted a couple of times, but finally a review. I was also made aware that the review happened because the (freelance) reviewer - who pays attention to OOB and is on my company's mailing list - was particularly excited by the concept of my show and got an editor at the paper excited as well.

Charles Isherwood's little exegesis on the state of theatre in the city with the strike on, printed under a "theatre" heading by a "theatre critic," and basically saying, "well, there's some theatre left in the worthwhile houses, but why bother with any theatre at all?" removes much of the good will I've been feeling for the Times of late. Actually, maybe just about all of it.

I am, however, vaguely and bitterly amused by his use of "Addison DeWitt" as a pop cultural touchstone to describe himself and his fellow critics, DeWitt being the complete SOB of a theatre critic (brilliantly played by that glorious bastard George Sanders) in All About Eve. I know there aren't many theatre critics as characters in drama, and probably far fewer portrayed sympathetically, but should Isherwood really want to compare himself and his fellows to a noted fictional scumbag, even in jest?

The fairest, fullest, and most reasoned response on the blogs has been, as usual, from Isaac Butler at Parabasis, who sends an open letter to the Times regarding Mr. Isherwood. It has also provoked various and altogether appropriate levels of snark, anger, disbelief, obscenity, and outright rage from (thus far) Matthew Freeman, Adam Szymkowicz, John Clancy, Jamie at Surplus, and Moxie the Maven, whose headline, "What the fuck, Chuck?" is my favorite pithy summary of the matter thus far. Berit thinks that from now on Mr. Isherwood should be known as "What-The-Fuck-Chuck" or WTFC for short (but, hopefully, not for long).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to trying to cast and build some apparently non-existent and non-worthwhile shows . . .

House cleaning of both literal and figurative kinds this morning - taking out the garbage, cleaning the litter box, doing the dishes, emailing potential actors for my Baby Jesus Festival play, "Marshmallow World," by Marc Spitz, and planning out a rehearsal schedule, calling the garage I go to to see about bringing the car in for a checkup and alignment, thinking about what in the hell I'm going to create as a "ten-minute original piece" for The Brick's 5th Anniversary party coming up, and spending bits of all the time vaguely thinking about next year's shows.

So, anyway, in between it all, a friday morning Random Ten:

1. "Cadillac" - Bo Diddley - The Chess Box
2. "Saga of Jenny" - Lotte Lenya - Kurt Weill: American Theater Songs
3. "Maria" - Brian Eno & James - Wah Wah
4. "Black Night" - Daniel Janin & J.C. Pierric - Melodie en Soul Sol
5. "Make Me Belong To You" - Sandy Coast - Nederbeat The B-Sides 4
6. "Baby I Need Your Loving" - The Four Tops - Hitsville U.S.A., The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971
7. "Full Speed" - Claude Bolling - Stereo Ultra
8. "Nothing Will Ever Be The Same" - Off Beats - Dumb Looks Still Free
9. "No Good" - B.B. King - King of the Blues
10. "You Missed It All" - July - July

And, courtesy (quite obviously) of The Smoking Gun, the world's most gorgeous man (at one of the heights of his beauty) naturally provides the world's most gorgeous mug shot:

Hullo, I'm David Bowie, and I'm under arrest. Oh, bother.

When caught in the various binds of "what am I to do next?", "what should I be doing?", and the occasional "why am I even doing this?", Fripp's writings have been a gentle guide towards finding a direction when one is needed (like getting a slight push in a rowboat on a calm lake or blowing softly on a piece of floating tissue paper). More general than Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategies, which come in handy when blocked in specific working situations, Fripp helps answer the "whys" rather than the "what nows" - and once you have a few of the former answered the latter begin to take care of themselves.

Fripp, dealing with music rather than theatre, often deals with the "why" of performance in public as desirable or not, necessary or not, his concerns with Music being primarily (entirely?) between the musician/interpreter and Music itself. Theatre, being all about public performance, does not have many of these same concerns . . . should it? . . . but much of the thinking still travels from medium to medium . . .


from Robert Fripp's Diary, October 30, 2007:

Performance / presentation in public is a superb way of getting to know ourselves & our mechanics, with a primary aim: to become aware of our illusions. This line of education is strong stuff, and holds dangers:

if we are unpopular with members of the public, the advice they offer (not always attenuated by compassion & forms of refined expression) may do us damage;

if we become popular, our illusions & self-deception become reinforced & strengthened, that fans (who have the right to do so) may live vicariously the thrills & wonder of idealised celebrity;

if we are very popular, representatives of commerce & those who profit from our work, act to encourage our illusions that they may strengthen their hold upon us, and we become more susceptible to business control & direction.

So, for the novice: better to go carefully, preferably with those of greater experience; better to be well-practised; better to be sure of one’s larger aim.

For the more experienced: best to go carefully; best to be well-practised; best to be sure of one’s life-aim; best to know the poverty of our nature (so there is less in the way to prevent music moving out, and inappropriate reactions / repercussions getting in); best to remember Music creates the musician, and who serves the Muse; best to trust the inexpressible benevolence of the Creative Impulse; and best of all - have a really good agent.

Recently, I have been of a distracted and restless nature. I had wanted to rest myself for some time before starting up on "next year's shows" but have wound up making myself fidgety and scattered. Luckily, I have a tech gig and short-term directing-on-commission gig before 2008 to keep me occupied.

But I want to be working on my own things soon, even though I don't really know what those things are as yet (except for the return of Harry in Love). I have bits and pieces of Spell, which appears to be about an American Terrorist in America (a lot like my interpretation of Foreman's Miss Universal Happiness from 1999), and images in mind for another show of grey men in grey suits in grey rooms doing bad things to innocent people they never see (which might or might not be the primarily dance/movement piece I want to do) - lots of clocks and papers. Desks. Metal and glass. Fluorescent tubes.

Spell was being written with a specific actress's voice in mind for the main character (Ann), but the actress is quitting theatre for the time being, so I'd have to recast (at least mentally, it's not like I had or could have had any definite way of knowing this actress would play the part). Any writing I'll do for a while will continue to be in her voice to keep the tone consistent, but I'll probably rewrite it all if I use the fragments I have with another actress (being most interested right now in creating new work for specific actors, their voices, their persons, their emotional tones and timbres). The character has been splitting, anyway, into a male character as well, Andy, who might be Ann's brother (possibly dead, possibly not, possibly imaginary, possibly the "real," dominant figure), or lover, or they just might be the male and female sides of one person externalized. I don't know yet, but I suspect the last. I'll know when it's happening on stage. Ann talks more, though. Still.

While fidgeting around, I've been returning to a lot of old favorite, "comfort food" movies. It started with the horror films around Halloween, but kept going into pulling out and throwing on a lot more movies than have been running here for some time. We've gone through Candyman (Bernard Rose, music by Philip Glass), The Brood (David Cronenberg, photographed by Mark Irwin), Scream (Wes Craven, photographed by Mark Irwin), The Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, written by Robert Towne), The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, photographed by Nicolas Roeg), Black Christmas (Bob Clark), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick), Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, photographed by John Alcott), The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorcese), The Devils (Ken Russell, designed by Derek Jarman, photographed by David Watkin), How I Won the War (Richard Lester, photographed by David Watkin), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Richard Lester, photographed by Nicolas Roeg), THX-1138 (George Lucas), Videodrome (David Cronenberg, photographed by Mark Irwin), Crash (David Cronenberg), Halloween (John Carpenter, photographed by Dean Cundey, camera operated by Ray Stella), The Haunting (Robert Wise, photographed by Davis Boulton), and the 7-episode series On The Air, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. Mostly horror, but slowly moving outward as connections were made or found.

I've got a page of my "favorite movies" on YMDb ("Your Movie Database") HERE. It changes. Fairly frequently. Lots of things drop off and on (especially Sherlock Jr., Sunrise, and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her).

I seem to be going through a lot of these old favorites trying to figure out what holds them all together in some way. Why these? What do I like? What am I interested in looking at right now? Is it the same damn things I've been looking at for 10 years now? How do I make this new for myself?

And I think I was wrong in what I said at the start here. Completely and utterly wrong. Fripp's words are an inspiration, but in the end nothing inspires as much as the tactile quality of the work . . . the Work is always what matters -- the guitar solo on "Baby's on Fire," or the lead line on "'Heroes'" have said and meant more to me for decades now than any words could, as has the quality of red captured by Nic Roeg in photographing the costumes of the Red Death and Zero Mostel, the firetrucks in Fahrenheit 451, and the splattered and sprayed paint in Performance. These are the inspirations I need more for myself right now . . .

Words are a trick. Words are a trap.

Didn't know I had a funky, sitar-led cover of this, but here it is . . .
2. "Concerning Your New Song" - Johnny Cash - Man In Black 1963-69

A monologue with music more than a song - just noticed I can hear the paper Cash is reading from rattling around as he turns the pages.
3. "Le Téléphon" - Nino Ferrer - Pop! Pop! Pigalle!

I dig the French Pop, but rarely do it have the funk. The backing track here, as usual, sounds ground out by some bored studio musicians, but damn if Nino don't sing the funk en français!
4. "Cosmic Jam" - Neil - Neil's Heavy Concept Album

Neil, from The Young Ones, discovers the perils of listening to extended hippie-jam music ("Oh no, here comes the big black skatey bit at the middle of the record . . !")
5. "Golden Hours" - Brian Eno - Vocal box set

Strangely lovely transition from the last track to this one, from comedy to sublimity.
6. "Rain Go Away" - Joe Tex - From the Roots Came the Rapper

Just noticed the album title, not sure if that really applies to this lovely bit of soul, but whatever . . .
7. "Temptation" - Martin Denny - Afro-Desia

My love affair with Exotica/Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music has cooled a bit, but only a bit. I've been cutting a lot of Denny from the iPod, but this track stays - a neat marimba-led take on the standard.
8. "Book of Love" - The Monotones - The Doo Wop Box I vol 3: Doo Wop's Golden Age (1957-1959)

A classic, familiar, we all know it, I just wanted to point out that they may have one of the worst band names in history, especially for a vocal harmony group. Why didn't anyone SAY anything?
9. "I Gotta Be Comin' Back" - John Lee Hooker - Alternative Boogie 1948-1952

"My baby got something, round like an apple, shaped like a pear . . ." Okay. Are you gonna argue fruit shape with John Lee? Didn't think so.
10. "Ces Bottes Sont Faites Pour Marcher" - Eileen - Femmes de Paris, Vol. 1

Hmmn. Think this version of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" has come up in a Friday Random before. Now I'm using it as soundtrack to try and get Berit up, awake, and moving with a minimum of grumpiness.

Ah, with the help of some cute cuddling from Hooker the Wonder Cat, it seems to have worked.

Okay, off to insulate ducts. Not a bad day, really.

Ed Hardy Jr., over at Shoot the Projectionist, will, at some point today, in honor of the holiday, be posting a list of the top "31 Flicks That Give You the Willies," as voted on by readers of his blog (and other interested parties).

He started by asking for nominations, and made up a list of 183 nominees from 67 ballots that got more than just 1 vote. Then the floor was opened for votes for the top 31 - to be listed in order of preference (top film gets 31 points, down the list to the final one getting 1 point). It was a fun, if difficult, exercise (way too many good ones).

Here's my top 31 out of the 183 films on the nomination list:


1. Eraserhead (1977; David Lynch)
2. Peeping Tom (1960; Michael Powell)
3. The Devils (1971; Ken Russell)
4. Hour of the Wolf (1968; Ingmar Bergman)
5. Lost Highway (1997; David Lynch)
6. Night of the Living Dead (1968; George Romero)
7. The Brood (1979; David Cronenberg)
8. The Birds (1963; Alfred Hitchcock)
9. Dawn of the Dead (1978; George Romero)
10. Targets (1968; Peter Bogdanovich)
11. Videodrome (1983; David Cronenberg)
12. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974; Tobe Hooper)
13. Don’t Look Now (1973; Nicolas Roeg)
14. The Wicker Man (1973; Robin Hardy)
15. The Exorcist (1973; William Friedkin)
16. The Exorcist III (1990; William Peter Blatty)
17. Black Christmas (1974: Bob Clark)
18. Halloween (1978; John Carpenter)
19. The Thing (1982; John Carpenter)
20. I Walked with a Zombie (1943; Jacques Tourneur)
21. Candyman (1992; Bernard Rose)
22. Black Sabbath (1963; Mario Bava)
23. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992; David Lynch)
24. Creepshow (1982; George Romero)
25. The Haunting (1963; Robert Wise)
26. Carnival of Souls (1962; Herk Harvey)
27. Kill, Baby…Kill! (1966; Mario Bava)
28. Martin (1977; George Romero)
29. Shivers (1975; David Cronenberg)
30. Scream (1996; Wes Craven)
31. The Evil Dead (1981; Sam Raimi)

There's a bit of strange algebra going on in picking the 31 top ones that "give me the willies," as it winds up being a big balance between "favorites" and "ones that creep me out." Eraserhead doesn't really give me the willies so much anymore, but it's my favorite film, so it goes to the top of the list anyway. Looking at Cronenberg, Videodrome is one of my favorite films, but The Brood has more "willy-giving" going on, so it comes in above the former. So it's a balance between what I love and what scares the bejeezus out of me.

Ah, Ed's just posted the list since I wrote the above. Hmmmn. Yeah, as always, things pretty much even out and the more obscure titles drop between the cracks. But 14 ones I listed are on there - obvious ones, classics - as well as the six I had the hardest time eliminating from my list and would have been #32-37.

Well, I've got 15 of my own list above on DVD, and another 10 on tape, so I'll find a selection to spend a few hours with today before going off to The Crow: Final at The Brick tonight (right now, I'm suspecting I'll put on Candyman, Scream, Black Christmas, and maybe The Haunting and/or The Brood).

Stay sick and turn blue!

silverplate88

Did okay by the show on Saturday at the Waterfront Museum and Riverbarge. Went over pretty well, though I think we confused as much of the audience as we entertained. We did the job.

Afterward, Jason Drago had a picture taken of us (I believe it was original "Mr. Romaine" from my 1999 productions, Peter Brown, who took it), modified it, and sent it to us:



(l-r, standing) Aaron Baker (Willie Hammond), Jason Drago (Frank Slade), Danny Bowes (Sample Switchel), Robert Pinnock (Simon Slade), Fred Backus (Joe Morgan), Trav S.D. (producer, Harvey Green), Dina Rose Rivera (Mary Morgan), Ian W. Hill (director, Mr. Romaine), in front, Maggie Cino (Fanny Morgan). The Statue of Liberty is right behind us, blown out by the sun.

A fun afternoon, even with the injured foot and a massive steam whistle (and less massive but still loud steam calliope) being blown at regular intervals. Really REALLY loud. Right next to us.

The barge is in a lovely place on the water at Red Hook, with a nice little park next to it. Red Hook is a bit odd, as Brooklyn native Mr. Bowes - who grew up not far away - noted: projects next to multi-million-dollar townhouses next to a maritime waterfront community (right where we were felt like parts of Portland, Portsmouth, or New Bedford). All within two blocks of each other. It was a little spooky rehearsing down there the night before - dim light on cobblestone streets. I see why it appealed to H.P. Lovecraft for use in a story (he spent a brief, unhappy time in Brooklyn before returning to Providence, RI).

Yesterday, got to take the day off and stay on the couch or in bed, reading - Terry Pratchett's Thud!, the autobiography of Peggy Guggenheim, and the collected Mad comic books.

Today, I had a couple of meetings at The Brick with the light designers of upcoming shows to discuss what can and can't be done. As the meetings were at 11 am and 4 pm, I spent the time in between beginning to write light cues for Bryan Enk's upcoming The Crow: Final, which will be a lighting-heavy show, and which I need to get as early a start on as I can.

The Clown Festival heads to its end this weekend, with some more excellent shows going on. I particularly wanted to promote a couple that I really liked (and which I thought I did some good lighting work on), but I was surprised to discover that one of them - Savage Amusements aka Svetlana Flamingo - closed tonight (with so many short runs, it's hard to keep track). The other one, Solo, is still going on, it's really terrific, and highly recommended here if you're interested in seeing anything in the Fest. It plays this coming Friday and Saturday.

Tonight at home, while reading and writing, a double bill of DVDs of Ken Russell's Tommy and George Lucas's THX-1138. A strange double bill, but what I was in the mood for, suddenly made weirdly logical by their extremely similar final shots.

So we've now moved on to another film where the appearance of the sun has significance, though I'll be hitting the hay before much more of it plays.