CollisionWorks

Just finished about six solid hours of writing/editing/conceiving work on Spell, with another hour or two spread out earlier in the day. Feels good.

Sent off the 22 pages of material I now have to the cast, to give them something to look at and think about at this point.

Here's the first page of what I sent:

SPELL
Moira Stone - ANN
Fred Backus - Doctor General Jane (aka 2 JANE)
Alyssa Simon - General Doctor Jane (aka 1 JANE)
Jorge Cordova - ANDY
Iracel Rivero - WITCH 1 (Cuba)
Rasha Zamamiri - WITCH 2 (Palestine)
Jeanie Tse - WITCH 3 (China)
Gavin Starr Kendall – The MAN
Olivia Baseman - Fragment 1 (girlfriend aka FRAG 1)
Sammy Tunis - Fragment 2 (woman of business aka FRAG 2)
Liz Toft - Fragment 3 (worker aka FRAG 3)

SEGMENTS currently conceived (not really in any order yet):

I. Opening – swinging lamp over ANN as she sings “Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” stopped by 2 JANE, then buzzer, siren, explosion and screams.

II. First Interview – same dialogue done four times between ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE from different perspectives.

III. Light Bulb Discussion

IV. The Bedtime Ritual (with diagnosis speech from 2 JANE) – midshow relaxation/expansion

V. The Firing Squad Dream Sequence (relates to following sequence listed – “Piggies”)

VI. The Witches or Fragments Become Manson Girls

VII. ANN as Patty Hearst as “Tania” (connect to Che Guevara’s “Tania”?)

VIII. ANDY’s revolutionary speech (with James Brown cape routine)

IX. The introduction of the FRAGMENTS and their positions

X. The MAN and FRAG 1

XI. The MAN and FRAG 2

XII. The MAN and FRAG 3 (includes stereotyped “chasing the secretary round the desk” sequence, set to “Yakety Sax” – 1 JANE makes ANN back up and tell the story “right”)

XIII. The Male Gaze lecture – ANN lines up the women downstage – the men gather upstage to be manly and laugh together

XIV. WITCH 1 spell sequence

XV. WITCH 2 spell sequence

XVI. WITCH 3 spell sequence

XVII. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – Cuba

XVIII. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – Palestine

XIX. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – China

XX. ANN and ANDY on trains, travel, and getting to know the country

XXI. Finale – ANN accepts her actions – exit – “Just Another Day”

When I have some that excerpts well, I'll put it up.

So, a couple of good ass-kicking images that brightened my day . . . first, from LP Cover Lover, a man who kicks arse for the LORD!

And from Photo Basement, Batman kicks ass because he's full of PAIN!

And in video land, this young man's "Pyro System" could kick someone's ass, maybe his own . . .

( Darwin Award waiting to happen . . . )

Gary Cooper kicks cyborg ass!

( High Tech Noon )

And the Mean Kitty is just ass-kicking mean . . .

( Hey, Little Sparta )

Enjoy.

Back in Portland, ME for a few days, and the last of my dentistry work, I hope.

My bottom wisdom teeth were pulled four hours ago. One went easily and there is no real pain on that side at this point. One didn't want to go, required some unpleasant struggle ("Ooh, had a little hook there on the root, that was the problem" said the very skilled Dr. Killian D. MacCarthy), and, now that the novocaine has worn off, the empty socket on that side hurts like a sonovabitch. The lovely lovely vicodin I took earlier isn't having its normal excellent effects (or maybe it is, and without it I'd be screaming or something).

I went and had the work done - about 35 minutes in the chair, 25 minutes of which were filling out forms or waiting - got my prescription opiate and foodstuffs (soup, pudding, ice cream) at the Rite Aid and now I'm sitting back, waiting for a time when I can eat something and take more painkiller, and watching a rerun of the C.S.I. episode "Fur and Loathing" - the one about the furries . . . which has one of the single best music cues I've ever heard composed for episodic television - the only reason I'm watching this again is get to hear this cue - the rumpy-pumpy, sleazy-but-comic, circusy music that accompanies the "yiff pile" sequence is magnificent (okay, the scene just went by and the music isn't at all like I remembered . . . has it been altered in syndication from what's on the DVDs?).

So I'll be up here a couple more days recovering, watching the TV stuff I don't have at home, retweezing the rehearsal schedules for all my shows (many more conflicts have come in), and trying to write some substantial pieces of Spell and Everything Must Go, which I somewhat need to at this point to move those shows forward, though it'll be easier with EMG, as I've had three rehearsal/creation meetings for that one, and only one first meeting/inspiration session for Spell - which will also be a harder show to write, as I had thought it would originally just need a working knowledge of psychotic mental states (which I know something about) but has wound up requiring substantial research into the revolutions or conflicts of China, Cuba, Palestine, France, and pretty much any country that has gone through such an upheaval; the history of Pacifism; Kabbalah and Numerology; Feminism and The Male Gaze; and god knows what else will come up in creating this piece.

I'll post first draft pieces of the scripts as they appear.

I watched Cloverfield last night, which I expected to mostly like, and really loved it. I also watched Romance & Cigarettes, which I expected to really like, and didn't like it at all - fine actors doing excellent work in a badly-conceived and indifferently-executed . . . thing. Ugh.

Oh, and, courtesy of Bryan Enk, here's a picture of me as George Westinghouse in the season finale of Penny Dreadful:

It's now hours later from when I started this post - the painkillers are working, mostly. Time for ice cream . . .

Last night, around 2.30 am (so this morning, really, I guess), I finished the script for The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage. That felt good. Been imagining this project for years now - always figured it would stay an idea or paper project. Glad I have an excuse now (The Film Festival: A Theater Festival) to jump it up into reality.

When done, I sat back, skimmed it briefly, felt good. Then had a snack and a drink, went over it for editorial niceties and spelling for a half-hour or so.

Then, around 3 am, I sent it out to three of the actors I knew I wanted for the show, who had already expressed a specific interest in doing it.

I have other actors in mind, but I have to write more explanatory cover letters about the project before I send the script to them.

Went to bed, slept well.

Got up, went over the script again, this time listening to Bernard Herrmann's original score in my headphones as I went, timing it out, imagining how the scenes would play with the music. Pretty heartbreaking, actually.

I read out the end credits (as Welles does in the film and as I will in the show) several times with the original music cue (unused in the release cut of the film). So beautiful. I had to finally just force myself to stop or I'd have been doing it over and over again all day long.

I started collecting images from the film from where ever I could find them, as research and just for fun, as I can't watch the film right now, and spent some time cleaning them up in Photoshop.

(I have a bootleg DVD copy of the Criterion laserdisc on loan from Michael Gardner, but while it plays in The Brick's DVD player, it doesn't like playing in our PS2 or iMac - the two ways we have of watching DVDs at home right now)

Got an email from Timothy McCown Reynolds saying yes to playing Eugene Morgan (the Joseph Cotten part) - if the rehearsals can be worked out and there are no conflicts. Huzzah! One down.

Kept at work. Got interrupted by Hooker the Cat having one of his epileptic seizures (first one since July, as far as we know). Calmed him down, held him, cleaned up the mess that happens with this. Made sure he was comfy. Went back to work.

More emails about to go out. This is exciting. I'm actually going to do this damned thing.

OK. Now I need to find that understudy for a Pagan Reveler that I need for Merry Mount on Sunday . . .