Missed the Sunday Show Due to Injury

The bride and I missed the Sunday show because she fractured her ankle. We're hoping she'll get better for the shows this weekend...

High School Musical Rocked Again

Show went very smooth tonight. The techies rocked - as always. Group of us techies and actors headed to Chili's after the show. Good times. Good people.

Pensacola's High School Musical Is A Hit!

Opening Night last night and the house was packed. Show went off without a hitch. Everybody was awesome. Techies were fantastic!

Heck, the audience applauded when the house lights went out for the first act. They even applauded when the house doors closed. They were a great audience.

The balcony ushers were dancing and clapping along during the finale. Good show. Good job everybody.

HSM Rehearsals...

...are going well. The lighting has been updated and looks really good.

The cast is superb. They're all able to bring the play's two-dimensional characters to life. Claney Outzen is very funny as Kelsi, the nerdy writer of "Juliet and Romeo." Valerie Remic as Charpay and Benjamin Haupt [Jo Jo from last year's Seussical] as her sidekick Ryan are delightful.

The two leads, Jordan Moore as Troy and Courtney Ricardo as Gabriella, bring warmth and likability to some pretty bland characters.

The techies are brilliant, as always.

Working the follow spots on this show is fun. It's not a difficult show like Seussical was. Most of the spots are on stationary characters. In Seussical, the cast was jumping and running all over the place.

Spot Ops at the High School Musical

The Bride and I operated the spots at last night's rehearsal. It went well. This is gonna be a fun show for the kids.

The band was in the pit and the songs sound pretty good. This cast of actors can really sing. That's a good thing because the play itself is so...well...horrendous.

Okay, it's horrendous only for people born before Clinton's first inaugural. God, I'm old...

High School Musical Tech Week Has Begun

No spot ops were needed at last night's rehearsal but got to watch the whole show.

First, I shall commend this awesome cast. They are talented kids. Pensacola actors never cease to amaze me. There is a lot of talented people - of all ages - in this little town.

But the storyline of the show is painful. It's best described as "Grease" meets that episode of "Saved By The Bell" wherein troublemaker Zak Morris takes a drama class to get a credit so he can graduate.

Not having seen the original Disney movie with Zac Efron and whats-her-name I cannot judge the songs. The music at the rehearsal was provied by a very loud piano.

Now, the cast does a great job performing "Status Quo," the song that closes out the first act. But the show's finale never seems to arrive. There is this endless reprise of all the songs and it just goes on and on and on...but the kids that'll make up the audience will just dig it.

Needless to say I'm out of this show's target demographic.

Tonight we shall run the spot ops.

Next Up - High School Musical

The wife and I shall run the spotlights on Pensacola Little Theater's 2009 production of High School Musical...oy vey!

Tech week starts tonight.

The performance dates are: July 24-26, July 31- Aug 2, and Aug 7-9.

Authentic Spock Ears on Ebay

Ebay find of the day: Spock ears! Check out the description from the seller:

A pair of Latex Mr. Spock Ear Tips worn by Leonard Nimoy during the shooting of the Star Trek IV Movie which he directed. Has an Autographed COA by Leonard Nimoy and it's dated June 1986. Obtained from Leonard Nimoy through his secretary at the time Teresa Victor.

Framed Dimensions are 11'X13'. In fabulous condition.

The buy it now price is only $2500.00!

Shatner Sells The Commodore VIC-20

Gotta love Shatner!

T.J. Hooker The Movie. For Real.

Word on the street is that the classic 1980s cop show TJ Hooker, starring The Shat during his curly headed toupe era, is being turned into a big time "action comedy" motion picture.

The producers of this future classic plan to do a retro comedy like the Starsky and Hutch movie. The good news is the filmmakers are interested in having The Shat appear in this film.

Bad news? No word on the status of Adrian Zmed's participation in this new project.

Read more at Trekmovie.com

Michael Cimino Please Make Another Movie

Film lovers need another Michael Cimino epic, that is a movie of epic proportions that feature real, three dimensional characters and awe inspiring visuals.

The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate are visually exciting, intelligent movies, not dumbed down time-wasters like so much crap that's spewed out by the studios.

Back then it was Jaws and Star Wars rip-offs. But there were also truly good movies produced like the Godfather, Clockwork Orange, and Nashville.

But today's movie screens are mostly filled with multi-million dollar retreads of old TV shows and video games. Studios spend a lot of money churning out uninspired pablum. Hell, even 3D is making a come back.

Studios are so cynical. Distract the audience with 3D! The audience won't know that they've paid $10 to watch crap.

Come back to the movies, Mr. Cimino. Save us from such nightmarish drek as the upcoming movie versions of Dallas, CHiPS, and yes, even I Dream of Jeannie.

We need big budget, adult films. Adult as in intelligent, real, personal.

The Deer Hunter is a beautiful, painful, gut wrenching experience. It is filled with some of the best film performances. John Cazale, Christopher Walken, and non-actor Chuck Aspergren, bring truth and honesty to their characters.

I've discussed Heaven's Gate in a previous post. Many people love this movie for what it is, an attempt to transcend the Western genre to become of the greatest movies ever made. It's visionary scale goes back to Griffith with Intolerance and Von Stroheim with Greed.

I know you haven't been totally out of the loop. You have directed a short film in France and have appeared at the Cannes Film Festival. But we need you to make a complete return to movie making.

The French government would be willing to finance another Cimino movie. It's only a matter of time.

We'll even forgive that new hair style.

Theater News Story of the Day™ - Jerry Lewis

Jerry Lewis, Academy Award-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch, and Rupert "(Escape) The Pina Colda Song" Holmes have joined forces to bring The Nutty Professor to the Broadway stage with Jerry making his Broadway directorial debut. Good luck, Jerry.

Read the story here.

Movie Review of the Day™ - The Devil's Rain

Heaven help us all when The Devil's Rain! That sentence makes no grammatical sense but it is the tag line of The Movie Review of the Day™: The Devil's Rain, one of the great bad movies of the 1970s. Follow an all-star cast as they do battle with Satan over human souls trapped within a glass orb in which there is constant rain.

That’s right, The Devil’s Rain!

All-star cast features William Shatner, wearing a bland, pre-TJ Hooker toupee, Ida Lupino, Tom Skerrit, Eddie “Green Acres” Albert, and Ernest Borgnine as the demonic Goat-Man man named Corbis.

This is a low budget movie so there's a lot of driving around. Lots of dirt roads. A small, old western town serves as the main location. A satanic church sits just on the edge of the abandoned town.

So this movie is very 70s, very dry, and very sweaty. Imagine being stuck out West with 1970s quality air-conditioning.

Get this, The Shat plays a man named Martin Fife - that’s right, Martin Fife - and for centuries his family has been hiding a book that contains the names of people whose souls have been promised to Satan (kind of like Beelzebug's accounting ledger, if you will.)

Corbis, the demonic Goat-Man, wants the book, needs the book. Why? Something to do with The Devil’s Rain, but what is The Devil’s Rain? No one knows. The Shat doesn't know. Corbis doesn't know. The filmmakers didn't know.

I have a copy of the screenplay (purchased from Script City because a free copy was nowhere to be found on the world wide Internet!) and it's as confusing as the finished movie. Funny thing, the screenplay has a few typos.

The Devil's Rain touches on ESP - what 70s movie didn't touch on ESP? Tom Skerrit and Eddie Albert are doctors that study the paranormal. Skerrit plays the Shat’s brother. Skerrit’s wife has ESP abilities and senses something is wrong back home.

John Travolta has a “blink and you’ll miss him” role as Danny. Anton LeVay and his Church of Satan were consultants on the film. Ernest Borgnine looks cool with horns.

The highlight of the film occurs when the cult members melt in The Devil's Rain during the climactic confrontation between good and evil. Green and yellow goo - looking for all the world like melted candle wax - oozes out of the cult members’ eye sockets. The melting scene goes on for what feels like hours but, man, it’s worth every sweaty 1970s minute.

Spread the word. People must see The Devil’s Rain.