vanillalime

Back in May 2010, there was an Oz reunion of sorts when several cast members assembled in NYC to do a charity stage reading of the play "The Godfather, Part IV." The play was written by Tom Fontana, with the proceeds benefiting the Writers Guild of America. "Godfather IV" was a comedy where the actors played fictionalized versions of themselves, often incorporating the personality traits of their Oz counterparts. Oz fans from all over (including many from Livejournal) attended "MobFest" and came back with rave reviews on how uproariously funny the play was, and how generous and gracious the actors and Tom Fontana were after each of the two performances (there was one in the afternoon and another the same evening).



Unfortunately, I did not discover Oz until 2012, and missed all the squee associated with this legendary event. As fate would have it, however, someone recorded the audio of the first performance and tobyfan recently sent me a copy (THANK YOU ANNE!). And, let me tell you, IT SURPASSED ALL MY EXPECTIONS. It was every bit as OZSOME as I'd always imagined.

And, yes, Lee Tergesen was totally the star of the show. :D

Being the devoted fan I am, I decided that more needed to be done to immortize this milestone event in Oz fandom. I therefore took it upon myself to transcribe the entire play from the audio recording so other fans could better understand what the play was like (or reminisce, as the case may be). The transcription is not 100% perfect (there was so much laughter at various points in time, it was sometimes difficult to hear exactly what was being said), but it is very, VERY close. There were several instances of onstage visual humor that aren't necessarily reflected in the transcript (for example, there was prolonged laughter at the point where Chris Meloni and Tom Fontana "snuggled" together onstage), but you'll be able to get a very accurate idea of what the play was like.

Please note, I am going to ask that no one re-post this anywhere else. I have a feeling the recording was not entirely legal, and I don't want to be responsible for raising Awkward Questions about its origin.

I hope you enjoy it!

( Godfather IV transcript )

Earlier this month, Tom Fontana gave an absolutely fascinating interview with a podcast called The Crime Story where he talked about the making of "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "Oz." The interview is over an hour in length, but there is also a written transcript that you can read (if you're like me and don't have the patience to sit and listen to audio for that long). I highly recommend checking it out:

The Crime Story Podcast with Kary Antholis, Episode 33: Tom Fontana, Homicide, and Oz

In looking through the podcast's tags, I discovered that David Simon did a four-part interview with the show in September, totalling nearly three hours (!) in length. I haven't read/listened to those episodes yet, but I'm guessing they're insightful as well. Here is a link to part one of Simon's interview:

The Crime Story Podcast with Kary Antholis, Epiosde 24: David Simon, The Wire, The Corner, and Homicide

Which reminds me... I never did finish watching the end of Homicide. I still need to watch the last half of the last season (so, about 10 episodes) and the two-hour TV movie finale. I sort of lost some interest in the show in the last season after Andre Braugher and Reed Diamond left. But now I'm feeling somewhat motivated, and I think I'll move that back up to the top of my To Watch list.

And, in semi-related news... Lee appeared in the CBS show "Bull" on Monday night playing a prosecutor, and ohmygoodness he looked particularly scrumptious (WOOT he shaved!). Here are a few bonus screencaps for your viewing pleasure:

Tom Fontana recently gave an interview to The Paley Center for Media in which he talks about the infamous snow globe ending to St. Elsewhere (which was 30 years ago, YIKES). It's a good read if you watched the show, or even if you simply enjoy Fontana's works:

Tom Fontana and the "St. Elsewhere" Snow Globe Series Finale

Apparently, Tom still has the snow globe they used. :)

There were a couple of things in particular that made me LOL:

DB: So let’s finally talk about the ending ending. Was that idea traceable to one person, the whole snow globe and Tommy Westphall concept?
TF: I don’t want to sound like I’m boasting, but I think it was my idea.

Oh, Tom, I'm pretty sure no one will think it sounds like you're boasting. :D


BUT THERE WAS ALSO THIS:

DB: Did you expect the kind of feedback that you got?
TF: No, it was a real lesson for me. I figured the people who watch this show know we do this kind of thing. I would say fifty-percent of the reaction we got was extremely angry. And it was a real lesson to me, given that it was my first series, how much people care, how much the audience cares about these characters that they lived with.


I don't think he learned that lesson well enough, considering what he did on Oz 15 years later!

Being reminded of how he ended St. Elsewhere, coupled with what he did on Oz, makes me really, really nervous for watching the series finale for Homicide. (Which is still a couple of seasons away, but I'm beginning to feel like I should start preparing myself NOW.)

Look what I got for Christmas! Woot!



Now for the hard part: finding 122 hours of free time to watch all the episodes! O-O

One of the nice things about the show is that most of Lee's episodes were in Season 1, so I don't have to wait long to see new, young-ish LEE footage! SqueeEEEeee! ;D

Wow, what a weekend!

PaLEEyFest was an awesome experience I’ll never forget!

WARNING! This recap is ridiculously long and includes an overabundance of details. Sorry in advance if it bores you! But I wanted to document the Oz reunion and the LeeFest and the associated happenings in my own way, so I can remember and reflect on all the amazing and fun and silly stuff for years and years to come!

I’m breaking it all down into 3 sections: the build-up, the actual PaleyFest Oz reunion, and the LeeFest after-party. I’m posting the first 2 sections now, with the events of LeeFest (which is when things got so AMAZINGLY AWESOME that I am still SQUEEING AND FLAILING at this very moment) to come later.

( PaLEEyFest, Part One... )

I decided I was bored with my journal style and layout and decided to do something new. I went with a periwinkle blue color scheme and made a new (blue!) Leeloni header to go with it. Which would probably have been more appropriate in the spring instead of the fall, but whatever. Check me out!

While assembling the Leeloni header, I realized how relatively few pics there are of the Chris and Lee together as themselves (i.e., outside of Oz), considering they've been friends for nearly 20 years. I guess the ease of digital photography since Oz's heyday has warped my perspective, since now the smallest of celebrity activities and events yields countless pics on various forms of social media.

Can you imagine all the pics and vids and gifs there would be of the kiss at the GLAAD Awards if it happened today? Instead, all we have is one grainy YouTube video and some extremely low-def photos. Which is better than nothing, obviously, but still. Tom Fontana likes to post all these behind-the-scenes pics from his last show "Borgia" to his Instagram account, and I can't help but be jealous that the techonogy wasn't available for him to be able to do the same for Oz. I think Tom Fontana needs to hire me to go through his old photo albums and scan and upload all his Oz-era pics for him. ;)

Actually, this would be a good time to mention that I have an "Oz Fandom" Instagram account, which I originally thought might be another way to help promote fandom activities like I've done with Twitter and tumblr. I opened it up while planning the Oziversary fest and posted my Oziversary graphics to it, before realizing that it really wasn't a good platform for what I was trying to accomplish. But then Tom Fontana discovered it (presumably because I followed him), and for a while he was my one and only follower. And now he tags me whenever he posts an Oz-related pic. O_O

(Although the icing on the cake was when Robert Closhessy followed me after I liked a cute vid he'd posted of him with his mother. :D)

One week from today, Lee Tergesen and Dean Winters will be performing a stage reading of a Tom Fontana play called "Screenplay By Stalin" at the Williamstown (MA) Theatre Festival. As I've mentioned on Twitter and at leeloni, I am going to be travelling there to see it, alongside some other Lee Peeps. So, I've been super-excited lately!

I'm sure it's going to be worth it, but it's going to be a bit of an adventure to get there. I'm arriving in Massachusetts Thursday afternoon via a 13-hour train ride from Toledo, Ohio that departs at 3:20 AM Thursday morning (YES, that's AM, folks). My home in Michigan is about an hour and 20 minutes away from the Toledo station, and it's still unclear exactly who in my family drew the short straw of driving me there. Heh.

Of course, there's then another 13-hour train ride on Saturday to return home again.

But whenever I feel a little nervous about the whole thing, I remind myself of one of my favorite lines in the 1970s AU Oz Magi story that pride_of_erin wrote for me for last Christmas:

It feels like an adventure, and sadly enough [Toby] doesn’t think he’s ever had one of those.

... because, that's me! I think it's time I had an adventure, and I figure a LeeFest is as good a time as any to have one.

(To be clear, though, it won't involve the sex, drugs, and disco music that Toby experienced in Erin's story.) (At least, I don't think so.) (But who knows what really goes on during these LeeFests?) (I guess I'll find out!)

I'm going to bring my copy of the script for "The Tip" episode of Oz that I bought last year, and hopefully I'll be able to get Lee and/or Tom and/or Dean to autograph it. AND I also made a special little gift for Lee that I'd like to pass along at some point, assuming that I can get over my fear that he'll think it's weird. AND I'm also hoping for an opportunity to get to the bottom of those strange Missing OZ Episodes/Season 7 rumors (MURPHY NUDE SCENE).

It's entirely possible, though, that I'll just melt into a giant puddle of goo and spend the whole time drooling like an idiot, thereby rendering all my plans irrelevant. ;)

I have a long, rambling tale to tell! It's a little exciting, even if the ending is rather anti-climactic.

Using the Wayback Machine, I've been poking around HBO's old official Oz website, which includes their old fan message boards. The whole experience has been frustrating at times, probably because I have a limited understanding of how Wayback really "works" (some of the website's pages were captured, while others weren't; some of the captured links work, but many don't, etc.).

BUT I was able decipher from several posts at the message board that APPARENTLY never-before-seen (not legally, anyway) additonal episodes of Oz exist! The details are still murky on how they came about, but I can explain the gist of it. (It's been like trying to put together a puzzle when you only have a handful of pieces.)

These so-called lost episodes of Oz can be divided into two distinct categories: (1) episodes made from additional footage that was created during the course of the show (!), and (2) at least four episodes of a Season 7 that was filmed after Season 6 had aired (!!!).

( The Story Behind Season 7 )
( The Story Behind Fontana's Additional Footage )

It's like Christmas in May!

FIRST, last week I bought off Amazon a used copy of the Oz book (Augustus Hill's "journal") that Fontana & Co. put together after Season 5. Which I got it for a grand total price of only $10.13! With free shipping! It arrived yesterday, and even though the book is 13 years old, it's just like new, basically mint condition. Woot! What a bargain!



Look at this glorious picture of Toby getting his head smashed in!



BUT WAIT THATS NOT ALL

So, you know how when you buy something and you get a great deal, it totally justifies splurging on something else? Yeah, that's what happened next. Because I found an original copy of the script for "The Tip" episode of Oz on eBay (note: it's NOT the one I posted about on oz_daily, but another one sold by itself), and I decided go for it. It just came in the mail, and I AM SO EXCITED.



You can't see it in the photo, but the pages are all a light blue, hence the "Rev. 1/22 blue" notation. (Which is a later draft than the one in that other eBay listing.)

So anyway, practically the first thing I did, of course, was skip to the scene where Beecher bites the tip off Robson's dick. Because, ya know, crazy!Toby is just TEH BEST. And, ohmygod, apparently, during the course of that whole sequence, Hill was supposed to be doing a voice-over where he sings "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" by the Righteous Brothers. LOLOLOOL Can you believe it? That would've been hilariously awesome! I'm guessing they were unable to get the rights to the song, and that's why it didn't happen. But LOOKIT:



"Door opens. OFFICERS stand with BEECHER, naked, cuffed." RAWR

WheeEEEeee! I can't wait to read the rest of it!