November 15, 1995
Dear Everyone:
Less than seven
working weeks left in the year.
Time to get started on that all-important project that was
assigned last January.
Anybody remember what it was?
Year-end and
Christmas are approaching at an alarming speed.
At least I can say my number one project (Versatile)
is completed (except for the User Guide, of course) and my number one
Christmas present is already in the closet.
However, there are a bewildering number of birthdays coming up in
the next few weeks. Must
remember to go out and buy a flock of birthday cards.
Cards!!!
Gotta do Christmas Cards!
Who’s idea was it to come from such a big family and have so many
friends, anyway? I’m really
looking forward to the Holiday Season; but I’m also seriously
considering coming back in my next life as a daffodil.
Movies...
Back in 1978,
Helen Hayes made
a rare appearance in a
Walt Disney movie called Candleshoe.
A 16-year-old
Jodie Foster played the young con artist bent on tricking the old
lady out of a hidden treasure.
Way back then, Hayes pointed at Foster and said, “That young lady
is going to be a
director some day.” She
was right.
Home for
the Holidays is Foster’s
second turn behind the camera.
It’s a delightful compilation of nearly everyone’s worst holiday
horror story.
Holly Hunter
(busy girl right now) plays a woman reluctantly going home for
Thanksgiving.
Anne Bancroft
is wonderful as the mother, wearing (I swear before God!) Mom’s coat.
There’s the drive
home from the airport, going two miles per hour.
Another car inches past and Hunter glances over at some other
offspring trapped with his own parents.
The wordless look that passes between the two of them speaks
volumes.
No one has a family
quite like this one, but everyone will recognize someone, maybe even
themselves. There’s the
obnoxious niece who insists on pirouetting in the kitchen while dinner
is prepared. The inevitable
football game on the lawn.
The prissy sister who can’t stand the fact that everything isn’t
absolutely perfect. The
not-coming-this-year sibling who shows up, unannounced, with a friend.
The ding-a-ling aunt who gets tipsy at dinner.
“Jeannie” kept poking me and whispering, “That’s (fill in name of
family member)!”
Everything is
included, but in small, easily digested pieces, like a smorgasbord.
Or leftovers. Try it,
you’ll like it.
Speaking of female
directors, of which there are still far too few, there’s a story about
the first woman who ever applied for membership in the
Directors Guild of America.
The head of the Guild, well-known for being a
male chauvinist pig, even before there was such a term, proclaimed,
“Over my dead body.”
Time passed.
The head of the DGA died.
The woman appeared in the office of the new head, application in
hand. “We had a deal,” she
said.
I’m on Vacation next
week, so no Letter.
Everybody have a Great Thanksgiving.
Love, as always,
Pete
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