Pintele Update 8
It’s been over a month since my last Pintele update, so here we are with some proof of life for the project. It’s still rolling along; I’ve been working hard on it at every available opportunity; and it will be in your ears soon. (And here’s the usual disclaimer: I post these updates more as an accountability tool for myself than because I think you’re waiting urgently for a progress report.)
Back in January, I thought I was almost done with Pintele, and would spend a few months fine-tuning it for release in April. Now it seems so obvious; of course it was going to take longer.
So here’s the view from early June:
I’ve wrestled Part One (“Straight Outta Anatevka”) back into a state of near-completeness, after incorporating all the new material mentioned in my previous update. This weekend Amanda and I listened carefully to the whole episode, stopping for notes and edits, and we fixed and clarified many things and cut a few minutes. Part One still has a handful of specific lines and passages I want to rerecord, which I’ll hopefully do next weekend, and that might be the finish line for Part One. It’s still running a little long, about an hour and fifteen minutes, but that seems to be its natural length. Maybe we can still cut two minutes, but not ten.
With the exception of Part Six (“Tyrants Disappearing”), none of the remaining chapters have changed nearly as much as Part One. Part Two, “God and Other Gods,” is in roughly the same shape as Part One, a few things to fix, but pretty solid.
Part Three (“A Very Brody Passover”) is the holiday special, and it needed a rewrite due to the advent of The Pintele Haggadah (see previous update)! I’ve finished that rewrite and rerecorded the narration. Part Three has a lot of singing and character voices, and although I recorded all of that in February, I may redo it. The Haggadah itself is also coming along, and will be available when Part Three is released.
Amanda and I worked together on Part Four recently, and decided it should be tightened up. It’s currently as long as Part One, but not nearly as dense or focused; just trimming it might solve that problem. It may need a different title, too. I’ve been calling Part Four “Pintele Yid,” because it includes a discussion of that phrase, and of the 1909 Yiddish musical Dos Pintele Yid. But any of these episodes could have been called “Pintele Yid,” and Part Four might benefit from a more definitive title.
Part Five, “The Old Jewish Man of Unity,” is in decent shape. There’s one section which needs a polish, and one joke I want to add. And then there’s the challenging Part Six, “Tyrants Disappearing.” This episode deals so much with current events that if I rewrite it now, it will still need another rewrite before it’s released. So I’m resigned to doing this last. Something like 85% of this episode is finished and won’t change, but there’s a lot of fire in that other 15%, and it burns hotter with every news cycle. Finally, Part Seven, “Next Year in Manhattan,” just needs a little rewriting — because it functions partly as a summing-up of the series, and some of what it sums up has been rewritten.
And that’s the story! The project keeps moving steadily toward completion. I haven’t posted many updates lately, strictly because the time it takes to write them is better spent on the episodes themselves. I hesitate to announce a specific release date, lest I miss another self-imposed deadline, but we’re really getting there.
The photo shows a view of Vilenskaya Street in Molodechno, the Russian/Polish shtetl that was home to my great grandmother Jennie and her family. The photo was taken in 1941, the year of the Nazi invasion. Jennie and three of her brothers were already in the United States; one of her brothers was in Israel. Those who did not leave did not survive.
