HSM Still Going Strong

De's ankle is much better. And the show is going well. We had to miss last Sunday's show due to injury but today's show was great. Cast and the band are spot on.

The audience was clapping along with the entr'acte. This show is a hit with the kids, adults not so much

One more week left of High School Musical then it's on to singing Nazis...

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.

Star Trek (2009) A Review

Star Trek (2009) is a wonderful, action packed, humor filled, and loving reboot of the classic original Trek series. Chris Pine, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Bruce Greenwood, Simon Pegg, and John Cho are awesome. Zachary Quinto is spectacular as Spock.


Eric Bana is great as the villain Nero. He gives depth to his character, a character that we've seen in Trek before: a man bent on a self-destructive obsession to hurt the one that had hurt him in the past, like the brilliantly mad Khan in ST:TWOK. Nero could have ended up being a one dimensional cartoon villain, but Bana is a very good actor and brings much to the role.


Like Khan, Nero is a man obsessed with vengeance. He wants to hurt Spock, just as Khan had wanted to hurt Kirk.

Nero blames Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy in an ST:TNG episode) for the destruction of his home world Romulus and the death of his family. Nero wishes to destroy Vulcan and to force a helpless Spock to watch.

Zachary Quinto as Spock and Zoe Saldana as Uhura bring out levels of feelings and emotions not found in the original series or movies. They have a very touching, very close, and very real relationship, the type of relation ship that Dr. Chapel on the original series had always wanted with Spock.


Saldana portrays Uhura not only smart, funny and tough but also as a very caring human being. She truly cares for Spock and unlike, Nurse Chapel, Uhura has managed to get emotionally close to Quinto's Spock. So, in a way, we can get a glimpse of how Spock's mother, Amanda, must have bonded with Sarek during their own courtship.

In Star Trek (2009) there is a subtle acknowledgment by Ambassador Spock the events in this movie are taking place in an alternate time-line. Nero fell through a black hole that existed within the TNG universe and he fell into this movie's alternate time line

Thus the destinies of some of our beloved characters, in addition to Kirk, such as Spock, Uhura, and Scotty, are totally screwed up.

That screw up in the time-line could also explain why the Enterprise is built on Earth, in Iowa, instead of at the San Francisco Ship Yards.

This is the most beautiful looking Trek movie since The Motion Picture. The visual effects are top-notch. The production design is imaginative and a delight to behold. The Enterprise Bridge is a thing of beauty. It's like being inside of a futuristic Apple computer.


The re-visioned Enterprise is a true work of art. Hard core Trekkers will not be disappointed. Yes, there are some minor differences, for example, the Boussard collectors are larger than on the original ship, making the warp nacelles a bit thicker. But overall, this ship is as beautiful as The Motion Picture Enterprise.

Star Trek (2009) is the best movie of 2009. A perfect movie.

Over-Rated Movie Directors in No Particular Order

1) Charlie Chaplin. That’s right, I said it. I never got The Tramp and never will. And, by the way, The Three Stooges did a hell of a better job making fun of Hitler in You Nazty Spy and I'll Never Heil Again than Chaplin did in that Great Dictator movie.

2) Noam Baumbach. Pretentious filmmaker about pretentious, self-involved people. With Mr. Baumbach movies, movie critics are under the impression that they are watching an intellectual movie about intellectual people made by an intellectual. Wrong on all counts.

3) Whit Stillman. Pretentious filmmaker about pretentious WASPs. His movies are just a painful, excruciating look at characters created by some lame Noel Coward wanna-be. So witty, so smart, so stomach-turning.

4) Michel Gondry. Just pretentious. And like my complaint with Tim Burton, Mr. Gondry seems to do the same wacky, arty-farty stuff over and over. Intellectual? Intelligent? Witty? No, just tedious and boring.

5) QT. I liked Reservoir Dogs but Pulp Fiction was all hype and style over substance. Kill Bill was watchable thanks to the great cameraman Robert Richardson, but overall, that movie was way too long, too indulgent.

6) Michael Moore. Preaching to the choir. Yawn. We get it, Mr. Moore, America (the land that's been paying your royalties from your books, movies, and TV shows for years) sucks. Big Deal.

7) Marty Scorsese. Yes, his record is pretty darn good but come on movie critics, admit it when he makes a stinker like Gangs of New York or Age of Innocence.

8) Tim Burton. He may tackle different stories but his films all end up looking the same: Male and female characters with Bride of Frankenstein hair, heavy Goth make up. Wacky production design. Same old, same old. Tedious and exhausting.

Follow Spot Blog of the Day™ - Music Man

The Music Man has ended its interminable run at Pensacola Little Theater. The techies - managed by Carol Mankins - and the large cast rocked on this show.

The sets were nutty, like the two-sided set pieces. Stage right had a large living room set on one side and the exterior of a billiard hall on the other side, stage left had the exterior of a porch backed with the exterior of a Livery stable.

During scene changes the techies ran out onto the darkened stage to rotate the set pieces so that the appropriate side faced the audience for the next scene. Therefore the techies were as choreographed as the actors and dancers.

The lighting designer and follow spot operators also rocked. Sound was great despite technical difficulties like broken wireless mikes.

The cast really shined on the stage. Everyone brought life and joyous excitement into their repective roles.

For example, Scott Haring, who portrayed Marcellus, the Music Man's former partner in crime, acted with such gusto that we tech folk fell apart everytime he growled "Hey! Gregory!!"

The biggest plus of the production was the Barber Shop Quartet as portrayed by Pensacola Fiesta Barbershop Chorus. Listening to their delightful voices blend into a glorious harmony as they sang “Lida Rose” and “Sin in Sincere” made sitting through the show night after night tolerable.

Music Man ain't a bad show but some of those dialog scenes just went on and on...and on...

The music numbers: "Wells Fargo Wagon", "You Got Trouble", "Gary Indiana", "Pick-a-Little", and "Seventy Six Trombones" were spectacular. The orchestra was energetic, the dancing and singing by the large cast was perfect.

But thank the Lords of Kobol this show is finally over. Now, onto the next.

Retro Blog - Seussical The Musical Summer of 2008

My wife and I had operated the spot lights for the Pensacola Little Theater production of Seussical The Musical this past summer(2008.)

The show was a big hit. The cast was fantastic. I had never worked spot before and it was quite an experience.

The entire show was movement and music. My wife had one side of the stage and I covered the other side. We did the best we could with only two spotlights. Huge cast. Something like 30 actors.

The show is a blast. I never grew tired of the songs during the run of the show.

Halloween Poster Illustration of the Day - Satan's Deadly Brides

Here's another poster done up for last year's Halloween party. It's an homage to all of those great 1970s "Satanic cult - Witches coven" type horror movies that were all the rage back then.

You know classics like The Devil's Rain (reviewed in a previous blog), Dracula AD 1972, The Wicker Man (original version please), Manos:The Hands of Fate and Simon King of the Witches (reviewed in a previous blog)

I did the entire artwork in pencil. I used Prismacolor pencils to colour in the picture. I like the Prismacolor brand of pencils for their flexibility and colorful richness.

Click image for full resolution and to read the witty screen credits.

Halloween Poster Illustration of the Day

Ah yes, this drawing was used for last year's Halloween party. I was asked to create a series of old style horror movie posters to help decorate the party. I created five or six posters each being a nod toward different genres of the B-horror film, such as the haunted house, sea monsters, Draculas, etc.

This poster is a tribute to the lovable Shatner-mask wearing murder machine known as Michael Myers. This Michael Myers is one wack character. The dude just won't stay dead!

He was shot up by a bunch of bullets and fell off a second story balcony but managed to escape at the end of the original Halloween.

Then he was blow'd up real good at the end of Halloween II.

But thanks to the Satanic evil known as Hollywood accountants Mr. Myers managed to come back for many more pictures.

Michael Myers was finally beheaded by Jamie Lee Curtis in fantastic H20, but somehow was brought back for the campy Resurrection. You know the movie about a reality show set in the Myers house and...um...who the really hell cares...

Any-hoo, you can't keep a good killer down. Rob Zombie successfully brought him back in the 2007 remake and bringing back again in the upcoming H2.

Click on the image to read the - dare I say - witty screen credits and to view picture at full resolution.