Imaginary Rehearsal

Today we had our first rehearsal without Lou. There was some sort of complicated mis-communication which involves his house not having electric and his cell phone not working.
So we had a rather expensive 3-piece rehearsal with Ethan, Arie, and me.

The band is very much not convinced that anything I'm suggesting is a good idea. In my experience that takes over 4 weeks. But eventually they'll come around. In the meantime we experimented with a number of notions. I think I've done a terrible job of explaining the vision of The Imaginary Opera.
Just using the word "Opera" with the two guys who do or had worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City is pretty loaded.

But we worked on some motifs (another couple motifs were rejected out-of-hand by the band). At one point I was playing piano and Arie was on guitar. Then there was a while where I was on piano and Arie was on keys (with Ethan playing standup). Then somehow I got back on guitar and was playing 6/8 against Ethan's 4/4 and nobody knows what happened. Luckily Ethan recorded it all on his sexy little Tascam portable recorder.
We did manage to play a couple of the little pieces of music from my dreams. And I think that those are going to work out very nicely.
I want to change the "tortoise" to something else. Something that has another word for it but that you also wouldn't flip on its back. I'm tempted to say "kitten" because none of them would know what a kitten was, now would they?
See? This is why nobody has any idea what I'm talking about. Sure, Chance Shirley would be right on board with the Blade Runner/Escape From New York/Apocalypse Now references, but he's in Birmingham (if you want to meet someone who really has no clue about these things, talk to my dad sometime.)
Ethan's engaged in a mighty struggle with GarageBand to try to get the recordings we made to us in a form we can actually listen to. We shoulda just played at my office today. ;-)

Arie asked if either of us knew The Decemberists. I said I couldn't think of their big song. As it turns out, this is it: The Decemberists "Why We Fight". It's a great tune.

A Journey of Discovery

So here's a thing I've discovered about myself. It only took 46 years:
As a composer, I've almost always composed alone. Indeed I know I've been resistant to composing with other people.
And you know what? I hate composing alone. Hate it hate it hate it.

There isn't any music there Dog. C'mon. Just improvise.

Now, composing with other people is another set of problems. You have to be on the same "wavelength" as the people you're working with. This is one reason I like Tyrannosaurus Mouse so much. Our best material has come about through someone saying "how about we do this?" and us trying it and liking it.
How does all of this apply to composing for film? Well, I think I hate composing for film. There. I said it.
Whew. I feel better.
I wonder how this makes me feel about writing the Blade Runner Musical by myself? Hmm... The guys in Tyrannosaurus Mouse have ignored the idea. But I might be able to fool them into doing the music by pretending we're doing something else. Tricking your friends, as it turns out, is the most efficient course of action.

I Need a Theater

New York City simply doesn't have any jewelbox theaters. I guess I'm basically looking for the theater in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

You'll never find a theater with a stage that small but with fly space above.
I think I'm basically looking for a puppet theater. Which would be perfect for Tyrannosaurus Mouse and for the upcoming Blade Runner the Musical.
Plus, of course, we need puppets.

Now, of course, I am talking about an indoors-version of the Doctor Parnassus theater.
When we made Manhattan Theatre Source I needed a place for Prague Spring. That show was basically a scrim with front and rear projections. But now we need something else.

Dream Opera

Plagiarism. I don't get it. I can't even spell it. There are passages of this book cribbed from other books.
Maybe I don't care about what's called "plagiarism" because we steal the structure of other things outright. In fact, we say, "Oh look, this has the same structure as Man of La Mancha" or whatever. To me the "blah-di-blah" in-between is the relatively easy part. I mean, I just wrote the book to a musical where I stole from Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, and Escape From New York.
And even if I hadn't overtly stolen from them, I would have stolen the structure from one of those things and still threw in some lines from my favorite movies.

And speaking of which, Blade Runner the Dream Opera or whatever it is now has been altered to accept the notes I've gotten on it. It's pretty much entirely cribbed from (obviously) Blade Runner, Escape from New York, and Apocalypse Now. There are lots of helicopters.
Also, I have a version of Alien Treasure which I'm not 100% sure how to shoot yet.

Notes on the Musical

We're coy about the incept date for Plissken being changed back when he kills Batty. Somebody should go ahead and say that.

It is more of a dream ballet. It's a remix and interpretive-y. But the word "musical" sets the wrong expectation. "Musical" just brings to mind "Momma Mia" and I don't think you want that. You can call it an "Imaginary Opera".

Now I think we need puppets.

(We're looking at the latest version here.)

Blade Running

Here we are, the first draft of Blade Runner the musical. The formatting of the document is majorly messed up and I can't upload anything to my server via FTP.
And, apparently, I've been working on this because I don't have better things to do. Right.
Actually, this FTP thing is frustrating.
I need to understand MySQL and PHP, CGI scripts and whatever the heck Perl is. Because I have no idea what any of those things are.

Updating my version of Firefox and FireFTP seems to have done the trick. Here's the .pdf of the first draft of the Blade Runner Musical.
I'm kind of thinking about switching my hosting provider to Gator Hosting. Everyone seems to like them.

Musical or Opera?

So, for whatever unknown reason, I'm working on this "Blade Runner, the Musical" idea. Which is absurd and insane.
I'm sort of wondering if it's more of an "opera" than a "musical". What's the difference between operettas and musicals? How about the difference between a completely-sung musical and opera?
I bet that between "opera" and "musical", you're talking a difference in millions of dollars in royalties. Certainly hundreds of thousands.

And unless you somehow got Mozart's licensing the differential is entirely on the side of "musicals".
Maybe we can vote on this. You likely need to click through to this blog in order to vote if you're getting this via email or on an RSS feed.
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If you're making that part of the movie where it has to look like you're some sort of super-hacker typing faster than humanly possible, HackerTyper is for you.
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Here's your transcript for Apocalypse Now. And Escape from New York. Neither are quite as spectacular as Blade Runner but that's just how it is.

Today's Conversation

Because the whole thing is a dream ballet.
Uh. Yeah.
Cyd Charisse will have to play Rachel.
You... might be a little late for that.

Dance Sucks

You know Bellwares. They'll just straight up murder you.

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Every single thing about the dance world just sucks.
The performance facilities all universally cost more than their theater equivalents.
The spaces are usually jerks about making you strike and set - up with almost Fringe-like speed. They'll make you strike your lights on "trees" even. It's a royal PITA.
Dance floors are expensive. Marley is bad enough. But really you want a sprung floor. They're expensive and easily damaged.
There's a huge prejudice against working on a piece, performing it, then working on it more, performing it, and doing all that again -- the critics want to see a choreographer's "new" work and are less interested in seeing it perfected. Theater isn't so obsessed with "new" which helps make for better theater.
And, of course, if you're not permanently injured by the time you're 30, you're doing it wrong.
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Lessee, what else am I grumpy about today? Microphones in musicals. Thing is, unless you're spending more than a million dollars on the musical, don't try to hide body mics on the performers.
Now, I fully realize that these damn kids (who won't get offa my lawn) are using wireless mics in elementary school plays nowadays. Their drama teachers will actually make them rehearse putting their own (clearly numbered) wireless packs on (using little blocks of wood to simulate the size of the wireless.)
And I've seen off-off-Wherever shows where they try desperately to keep microphones on sweaty performers who have obviously not gone through dozens of hours of tech with microphones and packs on. So the mics fall off -- the glue and/or the medical tape gets unstuck and you end up with a mess. You get the wonderful sound [that's sarcasm, son] of a body microphone slowly coming off someone's face or hitting their ear, or just falling down their shirt so the audience gets the sound of a microphone over someone's belly-button and...
And yeah, I quit. Musical actors need to know how to project instead of being miked*. And if they are miked, they need to learn to hear less of the band than if they were in a cabaret singing into a handheld microphone.
If you are going to throw wireless on your actor/singers then you better be planning it from the very first moment you put together your musical (see: elementary schools).
In the fantasy world I live in, singers would step up to a microphone or at least sing into a flower.
Right now for Blade Runner the Musical I only have one microphone on stage and it's for the geisha-dressed soprano who serves as the Chorus. Of course.
*And yes, I'm using "miked" rather than "mic'ed" because "mic'ed" looks stupid.

I Figured It Out

Blade Runner the Musical but with Snake Plissken is modeled on Apocalypse Now. It all makes sense. Now.
Escape from the Blade Apocalypse.

We have to finish post on Android Insurrection. We have to shoot Dragon Girl. Then we have to finish that movie. Plus we have to write another disaster picture. But I need to finish writing the book to this musical this weekend.
We're going to need a bigger boat.

Put the Bunny out the Door

This is somehow the most deeply weird, and deeply entrancing, commercial I've ever seen.

Amano Music is a music "atalier" in New York that supervised the score.
Have you applied for your HERE resident artist program?
So, when I think of the Blade Runner musical, but you know, with Snake Plissken as the lead character, I realized that the one style of music that I can do is this sort of morphine - pop style.

Can you stand an entire evening chasing replicants and listening to this? What if Plissken's morphology has his incept date accelerated so that he only has 22 hours to find, and kill, the replicants? Is Plissken a bass or a tenor? If Rachel is a soprano, then Batty is clearly the bass -- right?
We're gonna need an owl.

So, Apparently

It's Blade Runner, the Musical. But with Snake Plissken instead of Deckard. And instead of the threat about "little people" Snake has to take out all the Nexus 6 or be imprisoned in New York City. If he succeeds he'll be pardoned for all crimes committed inside the United States.
Also, Priss and Rachel are exactly the same model of android.
And it's going to be a big dream electronica score. I've always wanted to write a musical in the style of Bel Canto. No, I mean "Bel Canto."

QOTD

Today I did an NDA project. I haven't done an NDA project in a long long time.

Yes. I put an ad on this blog through Project Wonderful. I'll tell ya how that works. You have to click through to see the blog to see the ad. I may end up setting it up for the RSS feed. I don't know. It's only to amuse me.

Silence! The Musical goes to a LOT of trouble to tell you it's a parody. 

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I want to make "Blade Runner the Musical". 

Leon Kowalski

Leon. Leon.

Leon Kowalski.

Oh Leon Kowalski

Six days

Leon

Leon Kowalski...

The big numbers are going to be "Let Me Tell You About My Mother", "Morphology, Longevity, Incept Dates", "Wake up! Time to die." and the finale " "It's too bad she won't live. (But then again, who does?)"
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The Quote of the Day:
"Good Lord, you have some good ideas, Bellware. Although I notice "wearing pants" is never one of them."