My new movie: SOMETHING BLUE

SOMETHING BLUE is an independent feature length film by award-winning producer/director/writer Sean Gannon. He is originally from Bondurant, IA and the entire film was set in Iowa with Iowa connected actors.

My part is "bit," but my fortune was good, nay huge! (although it really could have gone either way).

Producers were slow to call me back and since I knew people who had been definitely turned down and definitely accepted, I took the bull by the horns and called them. Mostly I was disappointed since the audition had gone so well and I didn't peg them to be the type that would just leave me hanging. Producer (and IPTV personality) Pat Boddy said they wanted to work with me but I didn't quite fit any of the parts as written and that's what was taking so long. Further strangling the aforementioned bull and his horns, I let them know what I was thinking -- what's a wedding without a wedding singer? Shockingly, they accepted my suggestion and wrote me in!

The result: I got to improvise three different versions of the scene with Boddy at the harp. One of them featured my favorite version and 20-year standby for weddings "The Wedding Song: There is Love." That version languishes somewhere on the fabled cutting room floor since it would mean fees which the production could not absorb, but you can see the improvised "free" version.

Here is my one scene ("Musician Audition"). The entire movie is there, too, broken into individual scenes at www.youtube.com/SeanOfTheWed. Keep in mind, I am supposed to be bad and overblown. And I did warn the sound guy I was going to be loud on purpose.....I guess you can never be quite prepared for me!

Please feel free to leave a comment and/or tell your friends!

For another version of what we improvised, see the movie trailer at www.somethingbluefilm.com. Both are "solid laugh getters" according to director Gannon.

Translation: His mom sure liked it.

Although it was filmed over two weeks in 2006, the finished film's debut is not set to premiere until Spring 09. The most recent of the multiple delays was due to storms affecting the Gannon family home (shown in the film as the groom's home). As I understand it, this film will otherwise go right into contest mode slash DVD but we do plan to hold a premiere in this Spring at the art house favorite Fleur Cinema.

I'll be helping with publicity. Any ideas or tips? Let me know!

Musician Audition scene

Something Blue movie trailer

ONLINE CLIPS FOR MARY CATLETT

Welcome!
Thank you for checking out my blog Mary Maile Online at
http://marymaileonline.blogspot.com. Feel free to look around here -- especially at the link to the right for "Truck Driver Gets Send Off Fit for King of the Road" -- or do a search of the archives at www.newsrepublican.com.

Here are my online clips:

BEST PERSONALITY FEATURE STORY
Weeklies Class 1: First Place - Woodward NE Dallas Co. Record. (Wilkinson story, image at right)
http://snipurl.com/PersonalityFeatureC1

BEST FEATURE PAGE
Weeklies Class 1: First Place - Woodward NE Dallas Co. Record. (Garage
sales in Grimes, layout image at right)
http://snipurl.com/FeaturePageC1

MASTER COLUMNIST
Weeklies Class 1: Third Place - Woodward NE Dallas Co. Record.
Sample: Meet our new reporter article
http://snipurl.com/RememberMary

70 Valentines and still counting
http://snipurl.com/ValentineWagners

Tallgrass Theatre of Dallas Center
http://snipurl.com/TallgrassTh

R.I.P. Merv Griffin

He started as a singer known for the novelty song "I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts." He tried on the role of leading man but eventually drifted into a 20 year career as a talk show host, writer of the Jeopardy theme "Think," and multi million deals designed to improve his various interests like realty.

He estimated that he had done 25,000 interviews.

For me, Merv Griffin was a familiar face to come home to. For a kid in central Iowa, this was the closest I got to seeing a very interesting conversational style, with a wide range of guests.

A child of the 70s, I remember stand up comics of all stripes -- always vital to my TV watching/talk show loving habits -- but mostly Totie Fields and Orson Welles and his magic, as well as maybe a plate spinner or two and Howie Mandel telling his wait-for-it "It's My potty" joke. I hurried home to see this show circa 1976 through '79 and even multi tasked as I sorted mom's kitchen shelves and watched from the next room.

Yeah. I was a weird kid.

Moreover, Merv made me a winner because I watched his show and heard instrumentalist Herbie Mann tout his newest album Super Mann. The next night I identified the same piece being played and won a whole party for my sixth grade class at a skating rink.

Merv made me a hero.

His style must have rubbed off on me.

And I have to say one his best features was his public battle with his weight. He talked about it, dealt with it and still lived for a long time at a higher weight than he might have liked, but never rejected himself before, during or after.

For some reason, I like that!

See the master in a clip (that's not Charo)....

This essay is rushed, but "Thanks, Merv."

He weighed 235 pounds. Shortly afterward, singer Joan Edwards told him: "Your voice is terrific, but the blubber has got to go." Griffin slimmed down, and he spent the rest of his life adding and taking off weight.

Am I getting old?

Lisa told me Hairspray and I immediately thought stage production
(versus original movie vs. Ricki Lake movie vs. newest movie)

Colleen told me she had a new sidekick and I said, "Oh is this a new
co=worker, someone who looks up to you... a 'mini-me'?"

And the girls in office love the Spice Girls. So when I recently heard a
reference to Old Spice it took me ten minutes of trying to remember
which girl that was...........

Gil-less Girls?

Are you a fan of the "Gilmore Girls?"

See what original creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who was not there for the final season, said HER ending would have been.

BOO HISS
not funny

Johnny Carson quotes from obituary 2005

Asked how he became a star, Mr. Carson once replied, "I started in a gaseous state and then I cooled."

Pressed further to analyze his own success, he said he worked hard on his own timing. "I have an affinity for editing and pacing," he said....

Someone once asked Mr. Carson what he would like his epitaph to be.

He thought for a moment and reached for the traditional line of a talk-show host:

"I'll be right back."


SOURCE:
Johnny Carson, Low-Key King of Late-Night TV, Dies at 79
By RICHARD SEVERO
and BILL CARTER
Published: January 23, 2005

A wild and crazy....book

Steve Martin.com sez:

"In early December, my memoir of doing stand up will be published, “Born Standing Up.” Writing it was an absorbing enterprise lasting two years. I’m sorry I’m no longer working on it. And that’s what’s up with me." May 22, 2007

He also recently married a staff writer for the New Yorker, where he contributes humor.

Here's his classic tribute to Johnny Carson from the New York Times.

It ain't over 'til the anorexic felon sings...

According to People.com and show business "Bible" Variety, "the Simple Life is over for Paris Hilton, but she has already lined up a juicy new role in the big-screen musical Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Hilton is joining Alexa Vega and Paul Sorvino in the cast of Repo!, a musical thriller..."

Egad.

Say it with me. The end of the world is near.....

And you think you're having a bad day....updated

My favorite is the elephant...

In order, from not-as-bad to downright terrible, the worst jobs in science as ranked by Popular Science magazine:

• Whale-feces researcher: The feces part just smells bad.

• Forensic entomologist: Studying bugs on corpses combines two unpleasant things.

• Olympic drug tester: Watching athletes urinate into cups and testing samples thousands of times during the Games can't be fun.

• Gravity research subject: Stays in bed for three weeks and lets muscles atrophy.

• Microsoft security worker: Deals with every Microsoft user's problems.

• Preserved-animal preparer: Bottles frogs, cats and pigs for biology students.

• Garbologist: Sifts through garbage, literally, to analyze consumption patterns and how quickly waste breaks down.

• Elephant vasectomist: Elephants are big, and so are their testicles.

• Oceanographer: Pollution, overfishing and coral reef destruction mean the oceans keep getting worse.

• Hazardous-materials diver: Swimming in sewage is a dirty task.

read more at
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-06-10-popular-science_N.htm
==========
From Ames police reports:

July 26, 2007: City workers were held at bay by what appeared to be a rabid woodchuck at South 16th Street and Apple Place.

The woodchuck, according to police reports, would not let the workers get back into their trucks near the BMX Bike Park.

The woodchuck reportedly fled the scene, and police were unable to locate it.