"Surviving Family" shoot starts July 11

We've got a start date for shooting Surviving Family: July 11, with a planned 22 day shoot. To say that I'm delighted would be a major understatement!

I'm happy with the script (although I'm sure I'll be tweaking it up until the last possible moment), and looking forward to working with director Laura Thies again. With Caroline Sinclair as the Casting Director, Carlo Fiorletta as Associate Producer, and Vanessa Bergonzoli as Line Producer I know we're going to make a terrific movie. Jeff Bellantine is designing the website, which will be live soon.

We're still testing a couple of log lines, but I'm leaning toward: You can't leave the family tree.

It's going to be quite a year.

Olympia Dukakis On An Icy NY Night

I fell on the ice yesterday morning. It wasn't a bad fall, more embarrassing than painful, sort of in slow motion. But as I walked - carefully - the rest of the way to the PATH station in Jersey City, I cursed the ice, the snow, and everything I could think of related to my morning commute. And for the millionth time I wondered why I don't move someplace warmer.

I know the answer to that question, of course: my job is here, and these days that's nothing to sneeze at. The charms of NYC have worn thin, though, and seemed virtually non-existent at 7 AM on the ice.

Fortunately we had booked tickets to see Olympia Dukakis in Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore at the Laura Pels Theatre. It's not one of his best - the review in the New York Times described it as a "patchily eloquent but often preposterous drama..." Yeah, I can't argue with that.

But. But. But Olympia Dukakis is great, and she's great in this. I've been a fan since her Oscar-winning performance in Moonstruck (1988), which is one of my favorite movies. To watch her on stage alternately angry, wistful, seductive, and downright silly reminded me of what remains (for me) the best part of New York: the theater.

Next week we're seeing Chekhov's Three Sisters with Peter Sarsgaard, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Jessica Hecht at the Classic Stage Company on East 13th Street. Hopefully we won't have another snowstorm before then, but if we do, I'm going to look forward even more to a night at the theater.

Note: The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore is produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, and is at the Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 West 46th Street (btw 6th and 7th Avenues). Discounts are available through http://www.theatermania.com/ and http://www.playbill.com/