"Tommy" tidbit

[Cheryl Posner-Weber <otter@execpc.com>]

I was paging through my copy of "Ken Russell" (by Thomas R. Atkins,
Monarch Press, 1976) last night, inspired by Brian-of-Atlanta's recent
"Tommy" liner notes.  The "Tommy" section in the book includes two pages
from Ken Russell's shooting script, with handwritten corrections.  The
excerpt is different in many ways from the finished movie, but what
struck me particularly was the following passage:

TOMMY blunders down the lit corridor.  Screaming silently, blundering
into objects, falling over, getting up, falling over, getting up and
blundering into things again.  The LOVER & MRS WALKER come out of the
room, sing: "You Didn't See It", not realising for the moment that TOMMY
is blind, deaf and dumb.

(My assumption, both from the original album and every version of
"Tommy" I've heard and seen, was that Tommy retreated into his inner
world of musical vibration and sensation AFTER the death of the
lover/father AND after his mother and the father/lover force him to
ignore the evidence of his own senses.  How interesting, that Ken
Russell should originally plan for this change to happen before the
song, not after it.

--Cheryl