Month: August 2012

But it’s a familiar story, it’s based on the same basic framework of a movie called The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, which I REALLY watched, when I was a kid, loved that film.  And there’s a Vincent Price movie that’s similar, called The Last Man On Earth – same basic idea. In fact, all the films have very similar final scenes, all around some sort of ceremonial altar type of a display, sort of.

Little known trivia fact: the movie credited with having shown the first ever inter-racial kiss was The Omega Man.  It was between Charlton Heston and Rosalind Cash.  The Omega Man is one of my all-time favorites, a classic.

In the somewhat similar film

The Last Woman On Earth

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A minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon. Four worms were placed into four separate jars.

• The first worm was put into a container of alcohol.
• The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.
• The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.
• The fourth worm was put into a container of good clean soil.

At the conclusion of the sermon, the Minister reported the following results:

• The first worm in alcohol — Dead
• The second worm in cigarette smoke — Dead
• The third worm in chocolate syrup — Dead
• The fourth worm in good clean soil — Alive!

So the Minister asked the congregation: What did you learn from this demonstration?

Freddie, sitting in the back, quickly raised his hand and said, ‘As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won’t have worms!’

If anyone told me they wanted to come to where I work and hang out, I would tell them that I would much rather meet them at a restaurant somewhere.  When I’m working, I’m working, and I don’t have the mental capacity to work and try to juggle the act of being social at the same time.

But that’s not the case for two of the most gracious people I’ve met, who also happen to be immensely talented at what they do.  Andrew Lenchewski is the creator, executive producer, and head writer for a great one-hour television show called Royal Pains on the USA Network, and the show’s star, well known actor Mark Feuerstein.  A few of us met Andrew and Mark back in April, and got a grand private tour of the world famous Oheka Castle in Long Island, site of some of the key scenes to the show.  Mark led the tour, and Andrew was right there as well.  That tour and the rest of the day there was an event unto itself, I’ll blog about that soon, there’s just so much to blog about!  Oheka, in case you don’t know, was originally built by famous banker Otto Kahn, the real life person upon whom the Monopoly board game character is based.

That meeting, and a few subsequent discussions, led to another visit to the crew last weekend, at the Brooklyn studios where much of Royal Pains is filmed.  I say “much”, but I wouldn’t say “most”, they do a lot of on-location shooting in the Hamptons.

We toured the sets, including the “guest house”, and the “hospital”.  We saw the post-production operations, and had a great time chatting with the crew there, including David and Katie (Happy birthday Katie!), and one very helpful Matt Nickelson, post-production film editor, a very knowledgeable industry professional.

We even joined the cast for a buffet dinner, and everyone was there, in addition to Mark:  Campbell Scott, Paulo Costanzo, Reshma Shetty, Brooke D’Orsay, and others, I won’t name them all so as not to inadvertently give away any plot lines.  But those names won’t surprise any regular fans of the show.

Incidentally, here’s a little known fact:  Campbell Scott (Boris) is the son of actors George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst.

And believe it or not, the three of us who visited ended up sitting in on the reading of the script for the upcoming season 4 grande finale.  And we actually didn’t have to sign any documents to participate, so LEGALLY I could theoretically get away with publishing some breaking news here, but no way would any of us actually do that – we’re all self-avowed to secrecy.  We like the people and show too much, and besides, we’re just not like that anyway.  So the secrets are safe with all of us.

But …

… but ….

… it’s a GREAT season ending, WOW.  You have to watch it.  We only heard the script read aloud, of course, the actors were just doing their initial read-through, and they themselves were hearing it for the first time along with us.  But it was obviously great, and the cast was clearly eating it up.  There are great writers on that show, Andrew chief among them.

P.S.  I did manage to get a few pictures, but not too many.  Between “quiet on the set” and people wolfing down dinner or doing the reading, and chatting about other items, there just wasn’t a whole lot of time to snap pics.  But we definitely got some great shots.  However, I won’t publish them here until I get permission from the individuals involved to do so.  Once that happens, I’ll post an update.

Kathie Lee Gifford celebrated her birthday yesterday on Today, as well she should have – after a lot of work in creating a fantastic musical, and then even more work in making sure it got the recognition it deserved, it it finally heading to Broadway.

Here’s a great article about her birthday and Scandalous at Broadway.com, including a photo of her impressive birthday cake, and a link to more info about the Broadway production of Scandalous.