Is there someone out there who's familiar with how to configure a pHpBB bulletin board? If you don't know what that is, then the person I'm seeking is not you. If you do know, and you could spare 15 or 20 minutes for a phone call to talk me through some set-up issues, please drop me a line with your number and a good time to call. Thanks.
The Old Globe Theater in San Diego has announced what will be filling its stage for the next year or so. Almost every year, it includes one new musical that is being developed for eventual Broadway status...and this time, it's Robin and the 7 Hoods, based on the 1964 Rat Pack movie. Casey Nicholaw, who directed The Drowsy Chaperone and choreographed Spamalot will direct. Rupert Holmes is writing the book and the songs will be some of those penned by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen for the movie, plus other Cahn-Van Heusen tunes from other venues.
This strikes me as a very good, promising venture. It'll be there July 14 through August 22 next year and I may make time in or around my busy Comic-Con schedule to go see it. The Comic-Con is July 22-25.
Absent from the Old Globe schedule — and everywhere else, insofar as I can tell — is the long-heralded musical version of The Nutty Professor, to be directed by Jerry Lewis. It was/is to have a book and lyrics by the aforementioned Mr. Holmes and music by Marvin Hamlisch, and not long ago, Jerry was telling reporters it would debut at the Old Globe, then go directly to Broadway without passing Go or collecting $200. If it's happening, it ain't happening there.
Also: A Broadway revival of the Neil Simon play Brighton Beach Memoirs — though well-reviewed — closed in one week. A companion play by Simon, Broadway Bound, was to have debuted later and played in repertory but of course, that's off, as well. James C. Taylor of the L.A. Times explains what he thinks caused this and it sure sounds like he's right. It's been a while since Mr. Simon had a hit on Broadway without someone like Nathan Lane to draw in the masses. Presumably, the forthcoming revival of Promises, Promises has a stellar-enough cast to give it a fighting chance.
Talking Points Memo is really good at catching dumb mistakes by other news sources. So it's kinda fun to catch them in one, once in a while. (This is not only a mismatch of headline and story but it's also an old story that somehow found its way into today's news feed.)
Here's Jay Leno on the defensive. It's kind of an odd interview. The questioner tries eighty different ways to get Jay to admit to panic and worry about his situation, and he barely bites. I think Leno's right that if his 10 PM show goes away, that will not lead to NBC programming five hours of expensive dramas that will hire everyone who wishes they were on a series at that hour...just to more "reality" programs and Dateline. It will also not probably lead to five hit shows in that Monday-Friday slot.
Then again, you all know the joke about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Jay isn't even rearranging furniture; he's just saying, "Hey, I've been on sinking ships before and I'm good at it." What I'm hearing out of NBC is that everyone's scurrying to come up with a Plan B and nobody has one yet.
My pal Tony Tollin reports that he attended the funeral for Soupy Sales...and says it was a funeral, not a memorial service as I wrote. There will be another, longer memorial service at some point in the future.
Ed Golick reports that a 1962 edition of Pie In Your Eye: The Official Soupy Sales Fan Club Newsletter stated that Soupy's saving cream of choice for pie-making was Aero Shave. I don't think that's currently made...at least not in its old formula. When they did the syndicated show in the seventies, master pie-hurler Clyde Adler told me that they'd done a lot of experimentation with different brands of shaving cream and pie shells.
Ira B. Matetsky sent me this link to a nice essay in the New York Post about Soupy.
November 3, 2009
