'Twas a long day today, much of it spent on the Disney Studios lot out in Burbank. And guess whose office I was in for part of that time? Walt's. It's been completely restored to just about the way it was on the day he went to that big Magic Kingdom in the sky. I can't really describe the sensation of being there, in that room next to the piano where Richard and Robert Sherman first demonstrated most of the songs for Mary Poppins and other Disney fare. I know that in the future when I read about the doings at the studio, it's going to help a lot with the pictures I form in my mind.
It was also interesting that such an imaginative man had what, on balance, was a pretty ordinary office. You kind of think of Walt sitting in an office in the middle of a fairy tale castle or the Pirates of the Caribbean…or Wonderland with the White Rabbit sprinting through. I think I learned something but it may have to rattle around in my brain for a while before I know quite what it is.
A lot of readers of this site send me movie trailers — most recently for the forthcoming Stan & Ollie movie or for the coming-this-Christmas Mary Poppins Returns. I appreciate the favor but I don't think I'll be watching them. More and more, I like to not see a movie before I see a movie.
The less I know going in, the more I'm able to involve myself in a film…and I've had some I thought were ruined for me because — between trailers, clips on talk shows and "first look" featurettes — I felt like I was seeing a movie for the second time, the first time I saw it. If I know I'll be going to see a given movie, I even avoid reviews until after.
I notice a lot of people online reviewing these and other movies after only seeing the trailer and that bothers me. Your opinion of a movie may be very valid or it may be way off the mark…but I think it's just slightly-educated guesswork — and maybe not even that — until you actually (say it with me now:) "See…the…movie." Being around film buffs much of my life, I've found few things indicate an oversized, underprincipled student of the cinema more than, as had been said to me, "I can just glance at the script or check out the trailer and I know exactly what the movie is going to be like." In my experience, such folks are correct about two less times per day than a stopped clock.
Among the more occasional 'n' obscure topics on this blog is a movie that I actually sat through in full before deciding it was not very good — a film called Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title. It came out in 1966 and disappeared with nary a trace. Who was in it? Well, lots of great cameo guests but the leads were Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie and Richard Deacon. Morey was the brains behind the project and I wrote about it here.
Why am I bringing this up now? Because writer-comedian Ramsey Ess has written a new article about it. He thinks about as highly of the film as I do…and we both think the same thing about it that Rose Marie did.