Over on Airfarewatchdog.com, they have a nice Q&A section from readers. We pass along some of the interesting ones that could end up being helpful on futureso you can stay in your aisle seat right here and not have to move around the cabin.
Q. I just returned on a trip from Seattle to Air France. Prior to my flight, I was confirmed on an aisle seat. When I arrived at the airport, I discovered my seat assignment had been changed to a middle seat. Needless to say, I was upset. I mentioned this seat change to a friend of mine. She said the same thing happened to her group of passengers. Can the airline randomly change seat assignments once they have confirmed them with their passengers? A. Unfortunately, yes it can, especially if there's a change of equipment or, in some cases, if the airline needs to rebalance the plane's weight. As you probably know, an airline can even take your seat away entirely (involuntary denied boarding), in which case they are required to provide cash compensation.
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With Anne Hathaway winning the Oscar – and for a musical – it was impossible for me not to think back when… About eight years ago, I was working on a film project with a producer. A very production company was interested, so we sent them a packet with about 25 names of young actresses. They accepted 10 of them as possible, and rejected the rest. One of the rejections pissed me off so much that – even though she’d been rejected – I kept venting to the producer for months. The actress who’d so stupidly been rejected was Anne Hathaway. She’d only starred in two films at that point, but not only was The Princess Diaries so successful, she was also clearly hugely talented. And even her next film, Ella Enchanted – while not a hit – did passably well. And again, she was terrific in it. The reason she’d been among those rejected, by the way, was because the company said she wasn’t “cool enough.” This is what spurred my non-stop litany of what became known as “The Anne Hathaway Email of the Month” vents to the producer. (I give a lot of bonus points to my producer, Michael Ewing. Most producers don't want to hear anything from a writer. Let alone about an actress who was already rejected. Let alone an unending barrage of yammerings about a rejected actress, from a writer. But to his great credit, Michael not only was open to such things, he actually listened. In fact, after getting so many yammering emails from me, he not only started including Anne Hathaway’s name as being right for our project when he submitted it to other companies – but he and his director partner Peter Segal even hired her soon after for another of their projects, Get Smart. To be fair, she had made Brokeback Mountain by that point, no small matter, as you can imagine, but Michael said he still kept my emails as a reminder. Another bonus point: most producers tend to forget the past when it's convenient to do so.) Anyway, I just have the warm, whimsical view that such insane stupidity by production companies shouldn’t go un-remembered. I will leave out the name of the company, not because they deserve protection, but I don’t want to embarrass my producers, who have only done right. Oh, and I still have the full packet of names that Michael sent over to the company, and keep it by my desk. It’s sort of like a fond reminder, since our project – even after all these years (sigh) is at least happily still alive. But this story is even worse than all that. Because a couple years prior to this – before my screenplay was even written – a friend of mine called me up one day to say that he had a connection with Disney, and they were looking for suggestions of musicals to do as the Disney Sunday Movie. Since he knew I had a respectable knowledge of musicals, he wondered if I had any suggestions. I did. I told him he should suggest a great musical that’s never had a film made of it – Carnival, based on the classic MGM film, Lili. It's a show that got five Tony nominations and won one award, with a wonderful score by Bob Merrill, who later wrote the lyrics to Funny Girl. And I added to my friend that he could also suggest the actress who should star in it. Carnival, after all, is a difficult show to cast because it requires a young girl who has a near-operatic voice. I said that there’s this young actress named Anne Hathaway who had just starred in The Princess Diaries, and I had heard her talk about her opera training. Moreover, The Princess Diaries was made by Disney, so they might like to keep her in the family for The Disney Sunday Movies. She'd be perfect for it. My friend didn’t pass along the suggestion. He didn’t know Carnival, didn’t think it was worth mentioning. The story gets worse. A year later, totally unrelated, Disney bought the stage rights to Carnival. And it gets even worse. Because a few months after that, the Encores! series in New York did a production of Carnival. And for the lead they hired – yes, you guessed it. Anne Hathaway. (Side note: to prove that this isn’t an after-the-fact story – when Michael and Pete were making Get Smart, they invited me to the set. And Michael introduced me to Anne. The first thing I said was how much I liked her family's shirts. Fortunately, she laughed. And no, her family is not related to Hathaway shirts. Then I later got around to telling her about this Carnival story, and there were witnesses around. So there!) And just to show how right my suggestion was -- here’s footage of Anne Hathaway in that Encores! production singing a number, “Yes, My Heart.” Eleven years ago. The footage isn’t very good. The performance is a gem. And then tonight, there was Anne Hathaway accepting her Academy Award -- for a musical.
Gee, who would have thought it?! Incidentally, Carnival would still make a good film project. And Anne Hathaway could still probably play it. Not that I would suggest it or anything… I don't know if the producers (or Seth MacFarlane) intended a subtle joke, or if the powers-that-be just decided to choose a lively tune for the opening music when MacFarlane made his entrance. But given how little-known the song they used was, and considering how many, many other lively opening tunes they could have chosen -- and given that, as far as I'm aware, Seth MacFarlane has a great love for and knowledge of musicals -- I'm going for intentional, subtle joke.
The song performed as Seth MacFarlane walked out to face the auditorium full of Hollywood's gorgeously-gowned, tuxedoed and bejeweled elite was "What's Wrong with That?" from the movie -- The Happiest Millionaire. As I said, I'm going with subtle joke. If it wasn't, it should have been. For those who like to keep a scorecard of such things, the score was by the team who wrote, Mary Poppins, the Sherman Brothers, Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman. And it was performed by, of all people, that world famous song-and-dance man, Fred MacMurray. First came the tragic story that South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius was being charged for the murder of his girlfriend.
Then came the bizarre story that the lead investigator in the case was being charged with seven counts of attempted murder in an earlier, unrelated case. Now comes the sad story today that the brother of Oscar Pistorius, Carl, is being charged with culpable homicide in a case from 2008. I don't know what's in the water in South Africa. But if anyone is asked to be on the jury in this Oscar Pistorius case, they'd probably be wise to turn it down, lest they discover they're involved in some murder. It sounds like playing "six degrees of separation" in South Africa not only never gets much farther than two degrees, but can also be dangerous to your health. Big, breaking news headline on the homepage of today's Huffington Post --
"Jennifer Lawrence Flashes Major Sideboob" For a minute, I thought they were referring to the editor who keeps putting these Big Stories on the homepage, endlessly. Then again, maybe all these articles on the homepage about seeing "sideboob" are just the result of their ongoing, editor's internship training program for six-graders. It turns out that the most interesting film product on the Oscarcast might not be a movie, but the commercials. Samsung will be presenting six separate ads during the telecast, and one has the potential to be particularly eye-catching.
Have you seen any of the Samsung ads that feature tech geeks trying to develop a "Unicorn Apocalypse" video game? Well, Samsung will take that to the next step. Director Tim Burton will be playing a director attempting to turn that unicorn game into a blockbuster extravaganza movie. Whether the ad will present any of the fictitious film -- I guess we'll find out. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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