Brandon > Recent Status Updates

The co-screenwriter of Jaws gets nautical about Croz (202-203).

The deal that put CSN together (140-143).

A lengthy discussion of Crosby‘s early thoughts about drugs (118-121).

Crosby‘s father worked with many of the greats Flaherty (5), Murnau (6), Zinnemann (13), Rossen, and Welles (14). Floyd Crosby was blacklisted. Through his union Floyd filed an affidavit, revealing he had been on secret orders during World War II and was allowed to return to work without naming names (13).

From Cosby‘s mother, he learned the “cooperative effort” of harmony singing (11).

The type of specificity about harmony Graham Nash neglects in Wild Tales, Crosby delivers in Long Time Gone: “What we did which made me extremely proud, was to sing a lot of nonparallel stuff. I did some of my very best work being subtle, moving the middle part around in internal shifts that kept it happening.” (155).

Jerry Garcia says Croz got “better out of me than I get out of myself “ (197)).

Randy’s songs can be bleak. Not to seem a hard man he will insert a shard of comfort so meager. it seems Dickensian. His songs are superbly crafted, with a musical tension that results from this combination of Hope and utter despair. In his orchestrations, he might comment on the narrative being carried by the singer, using the instruments to deliver the jabs. Singing in the midst of one of his arrangements …..

Ronstadt was wary of the border between country and rock, and eventually she tired of limitations of arena, stadiums and “short note” songs (by which she refers to the effect of fast tempos on melody and, thus, lyrics. She makes a solid argument that what could be heard in venues began to affect what got recorded in the studio.

Ronstadt is brutal on arena rock: “There was so much evil slapback ricocheting off his those walls and ringing in the rafters, i’d swear I could still hear the lead guitar solo from the band that had played the week before” (141).

Ronstadt’s discussion of “parlor music” reminds me of a music scene at home in Winter‘s Bone. It’s not exactly feminine or feminist; it’s something women do for their own enjoyment.

High “lonesome” sound of male harmony is a good description. Why is it difficult for men to get along with women?

From conflicted to collaborative with Emmy Lou Harris.

How cosmically funny that when The Stone Ponies first hit plays on the radio their car has just thrown a rod or a cylinder has frozen.

Marvelous paragraph about vocal influences and character.

And more MND: ‘ if thou art changed to aught ‘tis to an ass’ (II.iI).

Someone wrote the comedy of errors was a precursor to Midsummer Night’s Dtream: ‘ this is a fairy land of spite of spites!/we talk with goblin, owls, and elvish sprites…’ (II.iI).

Dromio S.: ‘ was there ever any man verse beaten out of season,/went in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme no reason?” (II.ii).

The word ‘football’ appears in II.i: ‘ that like a football, you do spurn me…’

Jane’s commentary on wardrobe is detailed enough for a production designer. Will this attention to costume be sustained by character & plot?

How can fear be a motive for creativity? Write your fear.

Everyone in the group liked the story of three blind men trying to describe an elephant. If an elephant wanted to become a painter, would it feel more like one if it cut off an ear? I think it was ***** who asked this and then went on to describe the suffering of not loving the temple where the artist lives. For her artist’s date she lay on the couch and ate a raspberry popsicle.

There’s a ratio between magical plot devices and credulity. Importing a half dozen such devices from other plays and listing them does not diminish the toxic effects of so many devices (342).

So Moore does do the Dover Cliffs feels scene, which requires the exposition—unmotivated because it has everything to do with Moore getting in Shakespeare’s good bits and nothing to do with Gloucester, Edgar or Pocket (299).

What do we take from Pocket’s suppositional death of Gloucester, comedy heals?

The variation on Dover Cliffs feels like an attempt to put Pocket in a scene he was not.

Regan finishes Cornwall, Moore’s variation based on Shakespeare’s characterization.

In tragedies is the hero’s pain of his or her “own making,” as the girl ghost tells pocket (248)

The chess motif continues with Pocket’s supposition of Albany hanging Edmund: “[Oswald’s] whole life he had carried messages and run errands for Goneril, but at last he could see reward in sight for being intrigue’s pawn“ (219). A pawn one space from promotion.

Kent asks Pocket if he knows “that there’s no fool piece on the chessboard,” and Pocket says, “the fool is the player, the mind above the moves” (215), which is to say the fool is an aspect of all the pieces or visa versa, yet the fool is inextricably connected to his responsibility to the king.