Interesting article in today's NY Post about a failed reading theory that is being discontinued. A person named "B. Black" commented:
In the 1960s, Mom taught me the alphabet and that b + at spelled bat. From there I figured out cat, fat, hat, etc. My father taught me math using coins. By the time I entered 1st grade, I was miles ahead thanks to pencil and paper, a pocket full of change, and Mom and Dad (neither of whom went to college).
ChatGPT may work out well for me. There are suddenly appearing many job requests for copy editors to humanize books that were generated by ChatGPT from authors' input, but the copy needs humanizing. The conclusion is that more books are going to be written in general. So rather than a threat to my copy editing business, it's a boon.
This is not a flame but an honest review of why Call Me Kat failed. The source material, a BBC classic, featured a comic giantess, Miranda Hart, who viewers either love or hate. Her love interest in the show was very believable, whom US viewers might recognize as Welshman Tom Ellis of Lucifer fame. A lot of humor was mined from the largeness of Miranda compared to most everyone, including her diminutive friend and co-worker, Stevie. Miranda's gangliness must have been part of at least a half-dozen gags per show. Miranda's mom was a major funny force, trying to get her married off (a concept that can't play anymore in the US).
Now to CMK. In the US you can't do any body-shaming humor, so casting a gangly lady was not in play. Kat's shortness was also out of play for laughs. Kat's best friend is . . . nobody I can tell. Kat's mother is played by Swoosie Kurtz, whose terrifyingly thin appearance takes the edge off her comedy. Kat's love interest is played by Cheyenne Jackson, a talented Broadway performer who has no chemistry with Bialik. The loss of Leslie Jordan was curtains for Kat. He was the comic soul of the show.
The bottom line is that the US show is about a humorless independent woman. The UK show has a pathetic woman with room for growth, which does happen (spoiler alert). So watch the UK show, skip the US. And Jim Parsons, hire a casting director next time you produce. You're never going to get Maddie-and-Dave- or Rob-and-Laura-level sizzle, but maybe at least Cheers?
Watched a lot of old CBC footage on YouTube last night. Saw a great odd clip of the iconic Anne Murray introducing Dylan inducting him into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
Paul King, director of Paddington, is onboard the biopic of Fred Astaire starring Tom Holland.
They have guts even thinking about it. I like the idea of focusing on a period of his life rather than doing 80 years in two hours with corny montages to show the passing years. If it's a hit, it could be a trilogy: 1. the years with Adele from childhood through the 1920s; 2. the years with Ginger in the 1930s; 3. post-Ginger, the dawn of television, the amazing final years of productivity.
His young widow is taking the money. As rotten as that sounds, the silver lining to the silver pieces is the exposure to this generation of what talent is. I worked with Ted Mann, the father of Off Broadway, on his autobiography. The widow of Eugene O'Neill took a play to Mr. Mann and disregarded her late husband's will, which specified that his unperformed play, Long Day's Journey Into Night, not be performed until 50 years after his death due to its painful autobiographical nature. If she had respected her husband's wishes and not taken the play to Mr. Mann, the play would not have come out until 2003, when it would have had little impact as the subject matter was old hat by that time. So, the Widow Astaire may trigger a great cultural revival with this film, which I think Fred might approve of.
