(No idea where to post this, but since I'm hoping to snag people's attention, I'll plop it right here in the main board.)
Gang,
My theatre company has got a gala fundraiser this Saturday night. I'm pulling together a bunch of readings to be interspersed with music to form the entertainment part of the event. "Silver Screen" theme, reflecting our "Pacific Theatre Goes To The Movies" season.
Anything come to mind for readings?
I'm putting together a montage of lines, interchanges, bits of speeches taken from shows we've staged that have also been movies; 12 Angry Men, Driving Miss Daisy, It's A Wonderful Life, A Man For All Seasons, The Woodsman, You Can't Take It With You, Hospitality Suite (The Big Kahuna). There'll be about ten actors from the company, we'll do it readers theatre style, should be swell.
I've also got a couple fine poems about the movies, and a few people's writings about the movies that have a nice flavor. A couple old pamphlets by Christians decrying the movies as evil. Great passage from The Moviegoer, another bit from Catcher In The Rye.
But anything else you might think of would be much appreciated. A monologue or scene from a play or film that's directly about the movie biz?
Sorry this is such short notice. I've got most of what I need, but could really use a good story (has Garrison Keillor done anything about the movies?), or something funny, or intense, to round out what I've got.
Any help?
Ron
Full Version: Stuff about the movies
I always liked this little speech from The Majestic...
QUOTE
Harry Trimble:
That's why we call it The Majestic. Any man, woman, child could buy their ticket, walk right in. Here they'd be, here we'd be. "Yes sir, yes ma'am. Enjoy the show." And in they'd come entering a palace, like in a dream, like in heaven. Maybe you had worries and problems out there, but once you came through those doors, they didn't matter anymore. And you know why? Chaplin, that's why. And Keaton and Lloyd. Garbo, Gable, and Lombard, and Jimmy Stewart and Jimmy Cagney. Fred and Ginger. They were gods. And they lived up there. That was Olympus. Would you remember if I told you how lucky we felt just to be here? To have the privilege of watching them. I mean, this television thing. Why would you want to stay at home and watch a little box? Because it's convenient? Because you don't have to get dressed up, because you could just sit there? I mean, how can you call that entertainment, alone in your living room? Where's the other people? Where's the audience? Where's the magic? I'll tell you, in a place like this, the magic is all around you. The trick is to see it.
That's why we call it The Majestic. Any man, woman, child could buy their ticket, walk right in. Here they'd be, here we'd be. "Yes sir, yes ma'am. Enjoy the show." And in they'd come entering a palace, like in a dream, like in heaven. Maybe you had worries and problems out there, but once you came through those doors, they didn't matter anymore. And you know why? Chaplin, that's why. And Keaton and Lloyd. Garbo, Gable, and Lombard, and Jimmy Stewart and Jimmy Cagney. Fred and Ginger. They were gods. And they lived up there. That was Olympus. Would you remember if I told you how lucky we felt just to be here? To have the privilege of watching them. I mean, this television thing. Why would you want to stay at home and watch a little box? Because it's convenient? Because you don't have to get dressed up, because you could just sit there? I mean, how can you call that entertainment, alone in your living room? Where's the other people? Where's the audience? Where's the magic? I'll tell you, in a place like this, the magic is all around you. The trick is to see it.
QUOTE (Baal_T'shuvah @ Feb 29 2008, 05:56 AM) 
I always liked this little speech from The Majestic...
Nice! Thanks, good sir. I didn't end up using it for the gala, but I'm going to keep it on hand. It'll come in useful somewhere!
We alternated pieces by the Nelson Boschman Trio (jazz) and the Pacific Rim String Quartet (classical) and sheree plett / Jeremy Eisenhauer with sets of readings. First set, I read these quotes;
Our neighborhood theatre in Gentilly has permanent lettering on the front of the marquee reading: “Where Happiness Costs So Little.” The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man.
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
I can understand somebody going to the movies because there's nothing else to do, but when somebody really wants to go, and even walks fast so as to get there quicker, then it depresses hell out of me. Especially if I see millions of people standing in one of those long, terrible lines, all the way down the block, waiting with this terrific patience for seats and all.
Holden Caulfield, in Catcher In The Rye
The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.
Andrei Tarkovsky, filmmaker
I don’t see movies ‘cause they’re trash, and they ain’t got nothin’ but naked people in ‘em.
Ouiser Boudreaux, in Steel Magnolias
Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again.
Pauline Kael, critic
Enter the dream-house, brothers and sisters, leaving
Your debts asleep, your history at the door:
This is the home for heroes, and this loving
Darkness a fur you can afford.
Cecil Day-Lewis, poet and father to Daniel Day-Lewis
For the second set of readings, I read the first page of "Going With The Wind" by Edward Vander Jagt, a Christian anti-movie, anti-theatre tract from 1940, followed by an actress reading the "Smoke On The Mountain" monologue about auditioning for GONE WITH THE WIND.
Third set of readings was a montage I put together of lines and scenes from Pacific Theatre plays which have also been films; Hospitality Suite (THE BIG KAHUNA), Driving Miss Daisy, It's A Wonderful Life, A Man For All Seasons, The Woodsman, You Can't Take It With You, The Elephant Man and Shadowlands. That played very well.
And I finished the night with a few quotes from G.K. Chesteron;
I don't deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.
G.K. Chesterton
The only two things that can satisfy the soul are a person and a story.
G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men
You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and the pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
G.K. Chesterton
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