1. Orson Welles doing a Paul Masson commercial... drunk
Laughter through the tears. "Aaaaaah, the French... champagne."
Tears through the laughter. "She could dance. She could sing. She could... do almost anything."
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1. Orson Welles doing a Paul Masson commercial... drunk
Laughter through the tears. "Aaaaaah, the French... champagne."
I haven't posted in a while, but the schoolmarm is back.
I'm not a preposition Nazi, really, but these are some common mistakes people make. You are enamored of something, not enamored with it. One thing differs from another, it is not different than. Use than when you're comparing specific attributes: taller than, redder than, older than, etc. (e.g., "The play was different from any other that I've ever seen.")
You try to do something, you don't try and do it (e.g., Try to be here early on Monday.). If you were to try and do something, then you'd really just do it. There's no point in mentioning the trying part. "Try" should be followed by an infinitive ("to" followed by a verb; e.g., to be). The whole point of using the word "try" in a sentence is to convey the fact that the attempt's ultimate outcome is uncertain, but using "and" instead of "to" implies that you're telling a person to do two things (in the previously cited example, the two things are 1. to try, 2. and to be here early on Monday). If you're giving a direct command to someone, then you don't want them just to try, you want them to accomplish whatever the task is (Be here early on Monday.).
Most people say a myriad of, but this is one word that shouldn't have any preposition associated with it at all. And don't use "a" before it, either. Use "myriad" the same way you'd use "many". You wouldn't say, "I saw a many of annoying TV commercials during the program last night." You'd just say, "I saw many annoying TV commercials..." That's how you should use myriad. "There were myriad groupies hanging outside the stage door after the performance."
Yes, yes, you might be getting ready to tell me that many sources accept the usage of myriad as a noun, as the ever-vigilant Davis McDavis has done. I know this, but I refuse to acquiesce. I'll never do it. Never! Myriad-as-noun, I reject thee!
I know that Patricia T. O'Conner, author of Woe Is I, would agree with me that just because something is considered to be acceptable usage in the dictionary it doesn't mean that it's grammatically preferable. Here's what she has to say about myriad:
"It originally meant 'ten thousand,' but myriad now means 'numerous' or 'a great number of.' (Lulu has myriad freckles.) Avoid 'myriads' or 'a myriad of.'"
Who am I to argue with the ever-amusing Ms. O'Conner? Or would that be whom?
Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange will star in "Grey Gardens," a fact-based drama about two eccentric relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy who made headlines when the health department threatened to raid their flea- and raccoon-infested East Hampton, N.Y., estate.And this is from Playbill.com:
Commercials director Michael Sucsy wrote the script and will make his feature directing debut on the project this summer. He'll produce with Lucy Barzun and Rachael Horovitz.
Barrymore will play Little Edie, and Lange will play her mother, Big Edie Bouvier Beale, the socialite cousin and aunt, respectively, of Kennedy Onassis. The Edies made headlines around the world when Jackie O herself materialized to rescue her family from public disgrace.
The Edies were then the subjects of "Grey Gardens," a 1976 docu by David and Albert Maysles, whose rights will be part of the movie package.
Docu, which showed the women living in squalor, made a cult figure of Little Edie. She got a nightclub singing job as a result. Years after their deaths, the Edies have Web sites devoted to them as well as an Off Broadway play.
Sucsy, who summered in nearby Quogue, grew up with the legend of the women and hunted down rights to personal correspondence and journals that chronicle Little Edie's struggle to break free of her mother after they retreated from Park Avenue for the Hamptons.
The film will cover 40 years. Kennedy Onassis will be a character in the film, as will Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, who bought the crumbling mansion from Little Edie after her mother's death.
"You couldn't capture the eccentric nature of those women better than the documentary did, but it left me with so many questions of what led them there," Sucsy said.
CAA and Cinetic Media are packaging the project.
Lange, last seen in the Jim Jarmusch-directed "Broken Flowers," just made "Don't Come Knocking" and "Neverwas." Barrymore will next be seen in the Curtis Hanson -directed "Lucky You" and will star opposite Hugh Grant in the Marc Lawrence-directed "Music and Lyrics By."
Hollywood Will Till the Ground of the Legendary "Grey Gardens" Ladies
By Kenneth Jones
22 Feb 2006
The story of Jackie Kennedy Onassis' broken aunt and cousin, Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale, continues to be fertile soil.
In the 1970s the mother and daughter, former society ladies, were living in a cat-infested, filthy, crumbling estate called Grey Gardens in East Hampton on Long Island. A 1975 documentary film called "Grey Gardens" was a cult hit that inspired the current musical, Grey Gardens, now at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan.
Variety reported that Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange will star in a non-musical feature film called "Grey Gardens." Michael Sucsy wrote the screenplay and will make his feature directing debut with it. Production begins this summer.
Barrymore ("The Wedding Singer") will play "Little Edie," and Lange (Broadway's The Glass Menagerie) will play her mother, "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale.
The documentary by David and Albert Maysles left Sucsy with questions, he told Variety. He sought personal correspondence and journals that tell more of Little Edie's history with her mother.
According to the trade paper, the movie will cover 40 years and characters will include Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, editor Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, who bought the raccoon-infested mansion after the elder Beale's death.
The new musical at Playwrights Horizons covers about 30 years, from a life-changing day in 1941 (when Little Edie's relationship with young Joe Kennedy fell apart, and Edith's marriage to Mr. Beale hit the rocks) to 1973 (when mother and daughter are cooking food over a hotplate at their bedside and listening to raccoons nibble at the frame of the house).
The new feature picture is not related to the musical, save for the subject matter. Both projects will include some imagining of events.
"The events of the play," reads a Playbill note for the musical, "are based on both fact and fiction."
The documentary that inspired both projects is a housebound experience set in the shambles itself. The film remains a creepy document of mental, physical and social decline.
The libretto for the musical is by Pulitzer Prize-winner Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife), who borrows lines from the documentary to pepper an imagined Act One that has the whiff of Cole Porter's "High Society" to it (the score is by composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie). Their Act Two is set in the crumbling home and more closely follows the documentary (including the more memorable lines from the ladies), spiked with songs, such as Frankel and Korie's haunting "Another Winter in a Summer Town."
Christine Ebersole plays matron Edith in 1941 and her daughter, Edie, in 1973. Mary Louise Wilson is the Medusa-like visage of Edith in old age in 1973. Sarah Gettelfinger plays the vibrant daughter Edie in 1941. Sarah Hyland plays young Jackie Bouvier. John McMartin is J.V. "Major" Bouvier, Edith's father.
Previews continue at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater on West 42nd Street. Opening is March 7. Previews began Feb. 10.
*
The cult movie, now on DVD with added special features, is a portrait of physical and mental decay that has fascinated viewers (and inspired some artists and designers) for 30 years.
According to Playwright Horizons, "Grey Gardens concerns the deliciously eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who were once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, and are now East Hampton's most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. Facing an uncertain future, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter, 'Little' Edie, are forced to revisit their storied past and come to terms with it ? for better, and for worse."
Librettist Wright is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of I Am My Own Wife, which also won the Tony Award for Best Play. He also penned the play Quills and the screenplay for its film version. Composer Frankel was musical director for Broadway's Falsettos and Putting It Together and lyricist Michael Korie co-wrote the opera Harvey Milk and lyrics for the Broadway-aimed Lucy Simon musical Zhivago.
Performances continue to March 26, but if critics and audiences take a shine to the show, expect it to have a commercial future.
Ebersole is a Tony Award winner for the revival of 42nd Street; Wilson was a Tony nominee for Cabaret and appeared in Off-Broadway's Full Gallop; Gettelfinger created the role of Jolene, the Oklahoma heiress in Broadway's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and appeared in Nine.
The production features scenic design by Allen Moyer, costume design by five-time Tony Award winner William Ivey Long, lighting design by Tony Award winner Peter Kaczorowski, sound design by Brian Ronan and projections by Wendall K. Harrington. Orchestrations are by Tony Award winner Bruce Coughlin and music director will be Lawrence Yurman.
The performance schedule will be Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2:30 & 8 PM and Sundays at 2:30 & 7:30 PM. Tickets are $65.
Grey Gardens is presented by special arrangement with Nathan Riley.
For ticket information, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200, or visit www.playwrighthorizons.org.
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."That's it. Period. The end.