Film Score Blogs by Bill Wrobel There was no direct film score research done by me yesterday! I am taking a few days off after five straight days of research to rest my right hand from incessantly using the Paper-Mate Sharpwriter #2 pencil. I’ll definitely return to it on Tuesday when I go to Doheny Library at USC to study Tiomkin’s The High & The Mighty materials in the Tiomkin Collection, and other materials mentioned below in previous blog posts. Yesterday Susan & I left home after 10:30 am and trekked up to Ojai for the day. We stopped off at Marie Callendars for lunch in Camarillo off Positas or whatever street that is (starts with a “P”) in the big mall to the right (north). We usually do that anyway because she likes the breakfast brunch. We got there at 12:20 pm and the brunch was officially over and the greeter said so. However, the food was still out and I had to convince him that my wife was “really looking forward to it” and that she can rush and get a plateful. She wanted her bacon! She rarely has bacon but true to being a Joseph, she must have it now & then. Her dad, John, used to have tons of it every day. He was a big man! I quipped more than once “John wasn’t a great man, but he was a big man!” As we drove into the Ojai Valley, we first stopped at the southern most edges of the city to Krotona—one of the few remaining outposts of Theosophy in America. We always go there when we go to Ojai. It’s a stunningly peaceful, expansive grounds. Susan always comments when we’re here how she’d love to live here or in a place like this. We first visited the library. I wanted to see if there were any interesting books on music there (hint of my music research!). I wanted to check out the theosophical magazines from the Fifties and Sixties but I did not have the time—maybe next time. The librarian was very helpful and friendly. We’ve talked with her many times in the past (an eastern Indian lady). We asked if the theosophical astrological, Jane Evans, was still around. Indeed she was. In fact, I was lucky to obtain a free tape of Jane’s lecture “Astrology In The Coming Year” spoken at the T. S. Lodge last January 6th. She discusses the coming elections and George Bush. I’m starting to listen to it in the background as I type my words here on Microsoft Word. She’s rather traditional and I don’t find her observations as insightful and sophisticated as, say, Zip Dobyns, but we like her. She’s intelligent and competent, but traditional, relying in her interpretations on chart patterns (“splash” types, “bowl” types, etc). At the Krotona Bookstore, we wandered around a bit looking at titles. I first looked to see if there were any old cassette tapes of interests and used books. I then checked to see if there was anything “new” published posthumously published by Geoffrey Hodson. There wasn’t. Then I checked the back room where I sought out music related books. The one that caught my strongest attention was “The Healing Energies of Music” by Hal A. Lingerman. On pages 19-20, he briefly discusses the merits of film music, and listed many cd titles he purchased from Screen Archives. I appreciated his non-snobbish attitude towards film music when writing about the healing energies of music. I will this morning e-mail him and show him my appreciation of his work, and also ask him for his comments and descriptive observations of Herrrmann, Rozsa, and others. I’d like to post them on my site and maybe Talking Herrmann and also the Rozsa site. I will do so “now” (10:16 am). [10:16 am] [10:57 am] I had some difficulty in trying to locate him. I still couldn’t but I decided to send the message to the head of the Arts & Sciences School at National University in San Diego. Perhaps she can forward the message: “Hello: filmscorerundowns Let’s see if I get a response! Susan just woke up (we didn’t arrive back home until 11:30 pm—rather late). We’ll go to Peking Wok at noon when it opens, then run over to the Farmer’s Market, and then to Wild Oats across the street. Later in the afternoon I will start to play my dvd of The Greatest Story Ever Told and transfer the audio to cassette tape as a reference audio for my research at USC on Tuesday (and maybe also Wednesday). The Reading Room there is only available on Mondays-Tuesdays-Wednesdays from 10 to 4:45. After we let the Library at 5 pm, we went back to Boccali’s and bought some vegetables, and then we went east along 150 to Santa Paula to the 126 to Fillmore. At a MacDonald’s there, Susan used the pay phone to contact Jennifer and Walter (Walter is my nephew) to tell them we are on our way to Valencia near Magic Mountain to visit. I bought a coffee at MacDonald’s. We stopped off at a roadside fruit and vegetable stand on the way out of town, and then had a very pleasant trek in the late afternoon. It was such a beautiful sunny day all day! It was a wonderful day to go to Ojai, the start of the October Indian summer! Warm but not hot. Time to get ready for lunch and chores! [11:31 am] |
