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I just got my mail at the Oil City Post Office after 7:45 AM Mass this morning with this week's Entertainment Weekly in the pile of one electric bill (Dish TV should have been in there, too, but the Post Office people probably dumped it into someone else's box), some junk mail, charity solicitations, the latest issue of the Erie Diocese's Faith magazine, and a flyer for a pizza joint. That's what happens when you work in Scranton all week. I was surprised to see that the cast from the movie Some Kind of Wonderful was chosen to take part in the biggest Entertainment Weekly cast reunion special ever. The only two members of the cast chosen were Eric Stoltz and Mary Stuart Masterson. The entry below has more detail about this article and I will be working on scanning some of the photos, which are very good as done by Ralph Mecke. I will not post the photos unless Entertainment Weekly and the photographer give explicit permission.
The big thing is, the article and interview described MSM as having a "baby bump." I had to think for a second and check the date the photos were taken, which was September 15, 2012 in New York City. No, the "bump" was not the twins. MSM is making new people again, and this time it is only one, I believe, and not a double header. The new Davidson family member is due sometime early in 2013, so there will be another "Big Game" for MSM to open the new year.
This was a thick issue of Entertainmment Weekly, with interviews of the stars of 10 casts of popular movies and television series. The Arrested Development cast was on the cover of my copy, but there were three more covers, including Alicia Silverstone and Stacey Dash from the 1995 movie Clueless, a large group photo of the Melrose Place cast, and a cover showing smaller versions of cast portraits from several films and television shows. There is Drew Barrymore, Steven Spielberg, and Henry Thomas from ET: The Extra Terrestial, and many other casts. The one most of us are interested in is the cast of Some Kind of Wonderful, Eric Stoltz and Mary Stuart Masterson. Anyone interested in getting more inside information about how this movie was made will not be disappointed reading the interview with these two principal cast members. Lea Thompson was not there, but the fact that the director, Howard Deutch, was really anxious to cast Lea Thompson in her role as Amanda (Deutch later married Lea Thompson) was brought out by Eric Stoltz. Deutch approached Stoltz early in the planning of the film and asked Stoltz to pitch the movie to Lea Thompson as Stoltz had worked with her in the past and they were acquainted. Eric Stoltz rode his motorcycle to Lea Thompson's house, carrying the script with him. Stoltz informed his friend, "This director is really into you." MSM got clued in when, "I remember seeing them making out at the wrap party and thinking, Ohhhhh."
There were some interesting insights into how John Hughes put the movie together. The script was completely rewritten more than once and started as a much "darker" film. The only cast members to survive all of the changes were Eric Stoltz and Mary Stuart Masterson. Hughes would do the soundtrack of the movie first and then write the script to the soundtrack. That might have been from working on music videos at one time or another, but probably more writers of Hughes' generation write that way, and make the storyboards to the soundtrack, too. Hughes once considered Stoltz for Alan Ruck's role of Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but Eric Stoltz will always be Chet the Bartender in Kicking and Screaming to me. "I'm a student," Chet explains to Josh Hamilton. "That is what I do." Chet was pushing 30 and still attending the college in the town where he tended bar at The Penguin.
There are great fans of the movie that, to this day, love the hairstyle MSM wore as Watts. This was a complete accident. MSM had co-starred with Sean Penn and Christopher Walken in At Close Range in 1986. For that role, MSM had her hair colored dark read. The script for Some Kind of Wonderful called for Watts to be a blonde, so Ms. Masterson did not use a professional to change her hair color, but tried it herself. Some of her hair broke off as a result, which was fixed with the "Watts cut." People who remember the movie still tell MSM that that their favorite part was when Watts got the diamond earrings from Keith.
This issue of Entertainment Weekly is on newstands now, but there will be one less after I scarf one up to send to Claudia Kehl over in Switzerland. I'm not sure EW is sold in Switzerland. I would put up the photos, but they are so easily copied and printed today, I'm sure someone will have an objection, so I'll ask EW's permission first. If the photographer and the magazine okay it, I'll scan and post the photos. If they decline, I will not be able to post them. It is too easy to reproduce this kind of work today on color printers and on glossy photo stock paper. You don't need to have a dark room or pay someone to print a photo. You do it right at home now, so the portability and usability of the technology make it harder for artists to protect the rights to their creations. Photos, music, and film are now ephemeral "objects" that can move through wires and space, something like digital money today. Protecting all of these digital assets is getting a lot harder. I still like to write checks, and since computer security is how I make a living, that should make people go, "Hmmmmm."
Anyway, there is a Web site for Entertainment Weekly, and that is highlighted below:
