Not much news to report in this week's diary--more like news about news that might be coming. David James of Citizens for Truth e-mailed me to say that I should "expect a big announcement" in the next week or so. I assume this big announcement has something to do with the internal shake-up of CfT, part of which I witnessed as I shot the CfT conference two weekends ago. Is David James still a member of Citizens for Truth? Is the group still together? I don't know--David won't say, and Debra Meagher, president of CfT, is apparently not collecting her e-mail. And the CfT website has not been updated since before the conference, even though a big conference report was supposed to go up the day after the event ended.

This diary is not supposed to be a play-by-play of Citizens for Truth drama anyway. So back to the film. This week, composer Laurence O'Keefe turned in what he calls a "sketch pad" of music for the "MacArthur Park" main theme. Click here to download the 1.6 MB MP3 file. I feel lucky to have Larry involved with the score, as he is usually busy with big-time musical theater projects such as Bat Boy: The Musical (which I am involved with as well) and working with heavyweights such as Hal Prince on other musicals. I've worked with Larry on various projects for over three years now and am convinced he can do just about anything.

Larry gave me this short bit of music as a starting point for the rest of the score. I like it quite a bit. I think we can use the hypnotic 6/4 time signature and creepy 2-note melody (a minor 6th interval, if you must know) as the building blocks for the whole score. John Williams used an approach this simple and came up with the theme from "Jaws," and that score turned out pretty well.

Email me with your thoughts on the score if you'd like.

Forensic animation artist George Kelly continues work on the 3D animation, which is a painstakingly slow process. Attached are some more JPEGS of his progress.

That's all for now.

Best,
Brian Flemming
doc@nothingsostrange.com

MacArthur_Park_Main_Title.mp3 Download the MP3 of "MacArthur Park's" potential main theme by Laurence O'Keefe.

These stills are from a 3D re-creation of the official version of the events in the fifth-floor stairwell. Here, Officer Baker discovers Alek Hidell. After dropping his rifle, Alek Hidell manages to get control of Officer Baker's gun and shoot him in the head. Hidell and Baker collapse to the floor. Hidell retrieves his rifle and runs away.

And, yes, to repeat, these stills are representative only of the OFFICIAL version of the Baker killing. For more information on the controversial events in the fifth-floor stairwell on December 2, 1999, see the Garcetti Report and Citizens for Truth's own analysis.