After a great deal of thought, I have decided to put the blog on hold. At the moment I can’t go into why this is necessary.
I don’t know when I’ll start posting again, but if I can get some photos from Prue Bury’s Beatles Weekend appearance in France, being held one month from now, I might be able to return at that time. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to moderate comments and reply to mail.
Sorry about this being such an abrupt announcement. Thank you for being there.
In this video, hair dresser Betty Glasow talks about working on “A Hard Day’s Night.” Note: it starts with a clip that includes Jimmy Nichol, the temporary touring drummer who filled in for Ringo, while he was having his tonsils taken out.
[media id=68 width=512 height=408]
These pictures show Betty setting the hair of beauteous Prue Bury. (Prue’s name is pronounced like “blueberry.”)
The next picture is a truly delightful one of Prudence, taken before filming started of the scene with her and Pattie Boyd. Click to see a 1024×768 scan.
© Astrid Kirschherr
See how Prue still has the clips in her hair? The newspaper next to Prue says “the Beatles” and if you look at the paper John Lennon is holding it says, “she’s with it! she’s got it!” That is so perfect. Prue is still very with it and she’s definitely still got it. I’m fairly sure that Ringo was sitting across from John.
And this is Betty Glasow getting Prue’s hair camera-ready for that day’s filming.
The finished product.
By the way, Prue’s regular hair stylist was Vidal Sassoon. Not one of his people, but Sassoon himself.
Lucy (O’Donnell) Vodden, 1963-2009
Amazon.com says my copy of Monte Schulz’s new novel, “This Side of Jordan,” is on its way. Monte has been on a book tour, mostly making the rounds in California. I couldn’t catch him at one of his book signings, but here’s Monte in an audio interview with Mr. Media.
I really liked Jane in Monte’s novel, “Down by the River.” Jane is a good example of an idea that I’m fond of, which is the big external events of a story being window dressing for something deeper.
I was pleased when the TV series “The X-Files” had Mulder actually come out and say it, for those who were missing the point. I’m paraphrasing, but the point was, “Don’t you see, Scully? It’s not about aliens, and abductions and the government cover-up. It’s about you, Scully.” The same sort of theme was explored in Alan Moore’s “Watchmen,” relating to the character Laurie.
That’s what I took away from “Down by the River.” There was an assault, and a murder, and corruption in town, but the story really was about Jane. I don’t know if “This Side of Jordan” has a character as appealing as Jane, but I’m looking forward to reading it.
If you haven’t played with the Beatles Widget yet, give it a try. They could have called it the Ono Sideboard.
Way back in January 1994, I ordered my first “serious” desktop computer. It was MS-DOS 5 with Windows 3.1, on a 40 MHz AMD processor with 4 MB of memory, a 160 MB drive, generic Tseng ET4000 video card, and a 14″ SVGA CRT. I installed a Soundblaster 16 card with a proprietary SCSI interface for a Panasonic CD-ROM drive that used caddies.
One of the first CD-ROM’s I had (which, come to think of it, might have been a gift from Denro), was “The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night, the complete uncut movie”. It was put out by the Voyager Company, known for its high quality Criterion label of LaserDisc videos. My LD copies of “A Hard Day’s Night” and “HELP!” are both from Criterion.
I was thrilled with this new technology! I could actually watch the movie on my computer, albeit in extremely compromised quality, with the script automatically following along. Here are some sample screens.
Enlarged, the screen caps show the actual video image size. I’ve scaled up one of the MOV files from the CD to 320×240. It runs at a measly 16 fps, but this was hot stuff in 1993, with online streaming video still a long way off. Note that even here, in this limited presentation, “I Should Have Known Better” sounds better than on the Miramax DVD!
[MEDIA=67]
