What more can I say about yesterday’s installment of the Pilot Script Project? Other than: if you haven’t read it, please go read it. It’s the biggest bombshell surprise of the entire script! Well, I do have a few observations. No surprise there. The aired episode jumped straight from Vanessa telling her parents that she had flunked the test, to a mysterious blonde girl telling the Monkees the same news. That’s probably why I had formed the vague impression that she was Vanessa’s older sister; the news seemed to travel directly to the beach from Vanessa’s home. By the time we got to this stage of the story, I had nearly forgotten that the character of the Monkees’ manager even existed. Rudy who? But yes, if you haven’t been following the story from the start—that mysterious blonde girl is Jill Gunther, Rudy’s daughter. We had seen her in the earlier scenes in the record store. The news traveled roundabout, from Mr. Russell to Rudy to Jill and then to the boys. One of my observations about the pilot is that it is more a story about Vanessa and her father than a story about the Monkees. The addition of these scenes, with Mr. Russell confronting the Monkees’ manager and strongly denouncing “those kooks,” just drive my opinion farther in that direction. Removing that scene served to soften the antagonistic relationship between Russell and the boys, but also diminished the emotional payoff of the episode’s climax. On the other hand, retaining the Man on the Street scene without the preceding conversation between Rudy and Russell makes little sense. Moving the Man on the Street scene to the show’s beginning makes no sense at all! It’s a painfully elaborate but ultimately weak joke, and without its context it occupies valuable time for no purpose. Rafelson should have left it on the cutting room floor, and retained some of the other footage instead—including the conversation between Russell and Rudy. The script specifies that the Man on the Street scene takes place during the day. In the aired episode, the scene takes place at night—and the interviewer (played by Paul Mazursky, one of the writers!) goes off-script to explicitly mention that it’s a rainy night. The cramped footage, with a dozen or so actors and extras crowded into the frame, is rather murky. My question is…. WHY? Why night, why rain, why add unnecessary exposition to the dialogue? Shooting at night can’t be easy, or cheap, and the dark setting doesn’t really add anything to the scene. The Little Old Lady who charges Dr. Turner 15 cents is actually being seen for the third time in the episode. What had been a curious bit of comic business was actually part of an elaborate running gag, as she had previously been escorted across that same street by both Davy and the record store’s middle-aged customer. Her decision to start charging for her services for her services as a street-crossing prop seems reasonable and rational rather than mercenary. We’ll see her again. Oh yes, we’ll see her again.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 13:34:53 +0000
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