Dave Letterman discusses the whole Colbert matter…

Nine panels down.  Ten to go…

We're pre-empting the next chapter of the Ackerman/Schwartz/Bradbury story to bring you this more timely anecdote from my past…

Believe it or don't believe it but I have a story about Terry Gene Bollea, better known as the superstar wrassler, Hulk Hogan. In 1985, CBS debuted a cartoon show on Saturday morning called Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling. I had absolutely nothing to do with the show but I was the writer and co-producer of a prime time special CBS ordered to promote the shows on that season's Saturday morn schedule including Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling.

The special was a co-production between Sid and Marty Krofft's company and a new TV production company co-owned by Cyndi Lauper and a gent that Wikipedia describes as "Lauper's boyfriend and manager at the time." The show was to be hosted by another superstar wrestler of the day, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. Ms. Lauper and her boyfriend-manager had some interest in Mr. Piper's career as well as many connections to Vince McMahon and the organization then known as the World Wrestling Federation. Mr. McMahon was not credited on the show but he was on the premises as a kind of shadow producer. (In case you're wondering, I thought he was one of the smartest people I ever met in television and he has the bank account to prove it.)

One of the problems the show had may have been too many people with "producer" in their titles: Sid, Marty, Cyndi, the boyfriend-manager, the shadowy Vince, myself and a wonderful producer (who also directed) named Bob Bowker. We all got along famously except that Cyndi was later very unhappy (justifiably) with a number of things for which she wrongly blamed Bob and me. That still bothers me because I always thought she was a wonderful performer and I am unsurprised that she has become such a wonderful writer.

For the cast of the show — and this was all decided before Bob and I signed on — we would have, in addition to Roddy, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Patti LaBelle, Pee-wee Herman, the rock group New Edition, Captain Lou Albano, Hulk Hogan and Hervé Villechaize. When I appeared on Gilbert Gottfried's podcast, the first questions Gilbert asked me were about working with Hervé Villechaize. Once hired, I added a few other bodies to the stage including Gary Owens.

I have many, many stories about the production of this odd production but this is about Hulk Hogan…

Since he was the "star" of the cartoon series being promoted, he had to be on the special. This created two problems, one being that he was booked solid with wrestling gigs and it would be hard to get him into the studio. The other problem was that when we did get him into the studio, the star of our special could not be in the studio.

The hatred that Hulk and Roddy Piper had for each other in the wrestling ring had somehow bled over into real life. Roddy — who turned out to be a very nice guy, by the way — told me that happened…often. You're hired to feign beating the bejeesus out of some other guy when the TV cameras are on and the crowd is cheering…

…and pretty soon, you really, really do want to beat the bejeesus out of the other guy. Often, like everything else in Pro Wrestling, it has a lot to do with money.

So it was up to me, the writer, to figure out how to have Hulk in the show without Roddy around.  We wound up sending Roddy off the lot to a restaurant while we taped a spot in which Gary Owens did a locker room interview with Hulk.  But there were other problems.  Hulk would be coming to us, literally, between planes.  He had to fly from one city in which he had just wrestled to another city in which he would wrestle that night.  We had him for about an hour…and not a second more.

We were all set up when he arrived but there were all sorts of delays in getting him to the set.  One was that to appear in "character," his muscles had to be glistening and that meant he had to be rubbed with oil.  I have no idea why he couldn't oil his own shoulders but a make-up person had to do that…and when it turned out that our make-up person was male, Hulk refused his services.  We had to wait until a female make-up person could be located, hired and arrived to apply the oil.  We couldn't even get him to rehearse, unoiled.

This is the kind of thing that TV producers have to deal with.  On this show, I also had to handle the problem that every time Hervé Villechaize had a wardrobe change, he was unable to zip up his fly.  He demanded that the wardrobe ladies do it and they (rightfully) refused.

Finally, we got Hulk in front of the cameras and we did Take One of the script. He changed the words a lot and did it without sufficient "Hulk" enthusiasm. I think Vince McMahon ordered another take even before our director could. Hulk then did it again — not my words but more Hulkish — and he headed for the door. We asked him for a Take Three but he said, "I've got a plane to catch" and that was that. He also refused to stay so we could shoot the scene again with the camera focusing on Gary Owens — a shot over Hulk's shoulder as Gary asked the questions.

No, he wouldn't do that either so we needed a Body Double and amazingly, that turned out to be me. I took off my shirt, put on one that matched what Hulk had been wearing and the makeup lady applied bronzer and oil to my shoulder. Then they put me on a box. I'm 6'3" and Hulk was 6'7" but they made me even taller since it made for a funnier shot of Gary. I scrunched up my shoulder trying to make it look more muscular but…well, I'm a pretty bad actor and I was even lousy at that. We ended up cropping the shot in post-production so less of me showed.

And that was how I played Hulk Hogan for a few seconds of screen time. I'm sorry the other man who played that role has left us because he could be awfully entertaining.  And then there was this…

A year or two later, I did a job for the animation studio that produced Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling. It was an unhappy project and it ended with one of those awkward situations where I said the equivalent of "I quit!" and they said, roughly, "You can't quit! You're fired!" I've been in a few of those and they sometimes end with my lawyer fighting with their lawyer over what I am to be paid for my truncated services.

My lawyer at the time was Henry W. Holmes, a name which may resonate with those of you who followed the many lawsuits of my friend and his client, Harlan Ellison. Henry is retired now. I had him on last year's Jack Kirby Tribute Panel at Comic-Con International since he helped Jack on some matters. He was a helluva lawyer and we're still good friends. And here's the kind of thing that proves a lawyer is a helluva lawyer: He got the animation studio to agree to pay me every cent my contract specified and they further agreed to deliver the check to him within 48 hours.

After 48 hours passed with no check appearing, Henry called me and said, "Well, we have two choices. I can sue them…"

I asked, "What's the other option?"

He said, "Well, Hulk Hogan is also a client of mine and we had problems with that studio paying him, too. I mentioned to him the problem I was having on your case and he volunteered to go over there, smash in the door, shatter a desk or two and demand your check.  Do you have a preference?"

I said, "I like the second option best, especially if I can be there and watch!" We decided Henry would call them and threaten that but — and this was a real disappointment for Henry and me — my check arrived before he could even make that call, let alone unleash The Hulkster.

A couple years later, I was at the Licensing Show, a gathering where people sell and buy the rights to put out merchandise based on the intellectual property of the sellers. I ran into Hulk Hogan, told him my name and reminded him about the show we met on. He didn't remember me or the show — the result perhaps of some drugs ingested in the dressing room — but he did stare at me for a long minute…

…and then he said, "Are you the dude I was going to go over to that fucking cartoon studio and get the money for?"

I did not know Forrest Ackerman all that well. A lot of guys my age who grew up on Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine worshiped the man who edited it for years and who also was a major figure in the history of science-fiction and science-fiction fandom. I didn't love monster movies as much as some of my friends but I tagged along with them on field trips to Ackerman's home…homes, actually because he moved. The Ackermansion, as he called it in his punny style, was once on Sherbourne Avenue about halfway between where I lived as a kid in the late sixties and where I live now as a kid in my early seventies. Later, he relocated to a bigger, nicer place in Los Feliz and that became "the Ackermansion."

I visited both homes, crammed museum-style full of s-f and horror memorabilia — tons of books, movie stills, posters, movie props, whatever — and found it and him interesting but a little creepy. Needless to say, a house full of what his was full of is supposed to be a little creepy, maybe even a lot creepy, but there was also something a bit creepy about the homeowner himself. I did not find him as charmingly avuncular as some of my friends who referred to him as "Uncle Forry" but we got along. A bit later on after I began working as a professional writer, he kept pressing me to let him agent my work.

Why I never agreed to that: For one thing, he wanted me to write a lot of things "on spec" and maybe he'd find someone — he didn't seem to know who — to buy them. He also wanted me to write pieces for his projects for Absolutely No Money. Absolutely No Money is what "on spec" usually turns out to mean when you write them with no idea who might buy them. He also seemed to have a non-traditional view of agenting, most notably as to which of us should get 15% of the purchase price of any writing of mine he sold. Despite this, we were friendly when I visited his Ackermansions or saw him at conventions.

I probably knew Julius Schwartz too well. At least there were times it felt that way. He was the editor of many of my favorite comics when I grew up — and of course, I'm using the term "grew up" loosely. But I wrote for him and interviewed him a lot at conventions and spent a lot of time with him at cons and found much to admire and like about the man. Eventually, there were things about him that I did not like, not one bit…but they aren't relevant to this story.

Ray Bradbury, I knew fairly well. Around 1968 — I may be off by a year — a group from our local comic book club arranged a visit to his office. He was charming and welcoming and fascinating and he kept saying over and over, "You kids remind me so much of myself when I was your ages." We talked about comic books and comic strips and his work and I could hardly believe that a world-famous author — a man whose work was so beloved — could or would take the time to chat with a half-dozen kids. But he did.

Not only that but he invited me and (I think) me alone to return. Things we said that day made him decide that I was quite serious about pursuing a career as a professional writer. A few of the others did go that route successfully but I think (I can't be sure) I was the only one he chose to encourage a bit. He took me to one side so my friends did not hear him. Softly, he told me to come back alone if I wanted some one-on-one advice about my chosen-but-still-distant career — and, of course, I did.

It was for me an important boost in the direction I was headed. The lessons learned were basic Survival Guide stuff — how to price your work, how to deal with idiot editors, the importance of reliability and meeting deadlines, etc. But I think the best thing he did for me that day was to send me home with the following thought: "Gee…Ray Bradbury thinks I might be able to do this…maybe I can." That was such an important, inspirational concept that my mind dared not clutter it with a few important caveats. The main one was that Mr. Bradbury, for all his encouragement and implied faith in me, hadn't read a single word I'd written. That should have mattered more than it did then.

But I got to spend a lot of time with Ray over the years, especially after I learned to drive because he never did. I'd run into him at local conventions or film screenings and offer to give him a lift. Once, motoring down Olympic Boulevard on my way to a mini-con downtown, I passed him at a bus stop, doubled back around and picked him up. Whenever I took him home, he'd invite me to come in and continue the in-car conversation for an hour or two.

Our chats — mostly me asking questions and him giving long, fascinating replies — eventually wound up on stages at Comic-Con for several years. The story I'm serializing here is about one of those panels which also involved his longtime friends, Forry Ackerman and Julie Schwartz. And in the next chapter, I'll explain how that panel came about.

I actually found this history of the Orange Julius drink and fast food chain interesting.  You might not but I did — and I don't think I've ever even had an Orange Julius…

While I'm at Comic-Con this week, I may not have time to post much on this blog (click here to see why) but I don't want this page to look abandoned. Therefore, I "wrote ahead" a long story about something that happened at Comic-Con in 2003 and I'll be serializing it here over the days I'll be down there doing this year's con and perhaps collecting tales of equal interest.

This occurred on Saturday, July 19 of that year in Room 6A at Comic-Con International. In a blog post here shortly after, I gave this account of the panel I hosted there that day…

At 3:00, I ran across the hall to moderate a gathering of three legends of science fiction: Forrest J Ackerman, a still-feisty Julie Schwartz…and the incomparable Ray Bradbury. Ray is still confined to a wheelchair due to one or more strokes but from the waist-up, he's still Ray "The Martian Chronicles" Bradbury. I took the three of them through the saga of their three-way friendship: In the thirties, the L.A.-based Ackerman and the New York-based Schwartz struck up a correspondence which led to Ackerman contributing to The Time-Traveller, a small-circulation mimeographed publication which Schwartz produced in 1932 with his friend, Mort Weisinger. It was the first science fiction fanzine ever. Ackerman also participated in a small s-f fan club in Los Angeles, which is where he met Bradbury. Later, when Ray travelled to New York (via a gruesome Greyhound bus) for his first science-fiction convention, it was because Forry had loaned him ninety dollars, which he later paid back by selling The Los Angeles Times on street corners.

It was at that convention that Bradbury met Schwartz who had become an agent for s-f writers. Two years later, Julie sold a story of Ray's — the first one ever to be purchased by an editor. As it happened, Schwartz was planning a trip to Los Angeles anyway, so he decided to deliver the good news and payment in person. He drove to L.A. and his first night there, hooked up with a friend and went out to get some dinner. By coincidence, the restaurant was across the street from where Bradbury was hawking newspapers. Schwartz recognized his client…and that's how Ray Bradbury found out he'd become a professional writer. Julie walked up and handed him a check for $35, less the 10% commission.

Bradbury spoke eloquently and passionately about a range of subjects, including the space program's shameful (to him) neglect of Mars. He's just finished an article for Playboy on the subject, so those of you who buy Playboy for the articles can find out his thoughts on the topic. He also spoke with even greater passion to those in the audience who aspire to write, urging them to follow their own muses and to not listen to "any damned fool" who tells them how and what they should write. It was a short but wonderful hour and I doubt anyone who was present will ever forget it.

That's how I wrote the story back then and every word of it was true. But it wasn't the whole story about that panel. If you want to read the whole story, stop by here tomorrow. And the day after that and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that and as I'm writing this now, I'm not sure how many days it's going to run.

Comic-Con International starts tonight and I've added one more stop in my relentless campaign to have more panels than Steve Harvey has TV programs. I will now be appearing on this panel…

Thursday, July 24 – 4 PM to 5 PM in Room 4
JACK KIRBY'S FOURTH WORLD
Rand Hoppe (Kirby Museum director), Tom Kraft (Kirby Museum president), Bruce Simon (underground cartoonist), Mark Badger (comic artist and educator), and Tracy Kirby (Jack Kirby's granddaughter) discuss the themes of Kirby's Fourth World and how they reflect on his work before (Fantastic Four and Thor) and after (Eternals and 2001).

Those of you tracking me the way the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracks whale migrations may note that this puts me on two panels in the same hour — to which I reply, "So?" I've done this before. In fact, I did it one year with two simultaneous panels when I was the moderator of both of them. Fortunately, they were directly across the hall from each other.

Here — and this'll be the last time I post this — is what I believe is my full schedule unless I go out to the sidewalk and do an interview with that guy who's usually there with the yellow sign telling us Jesus will be back any day now and this is our last chance to repent. We've been getting those last chances for at least the past fifteen Comic-Cons and I keep thinking Jesus keeps getting shut out of the con because he can't score a badge each year. Anyway, here's this…

This morning on Facebook, I saw a rant from someone about how Comic-Con is not a Comic-Con because there's nothing there about comic books. This complaint usually translates to there being nothing at Comic-Con about the specific comic books that the complainer favors. But just by way of rebuttal…

This year, I'm hosting or appearing on three panels about the works of Jack Kirby. I think those are about comic books. I'm doing panels in which I interview long-time comic book letterer Todd Klein, long-time comic book writer Don Glut and there's another one with Frank Miller, who's among the most important writer-artists of the last few decades. Also, long-time comic book writer Mark Waid and I will be doing a panel where we answer questions about how the comic book world operates or did in the past. I have a panel about a comic book I work on called Groo the Wanderer and another panel about Walt Kelly's Pogo, which was a comic book and a comic strip. So was Charles Schulz's Peanuts and I'm on a panel about that, too.

I'm on a panel about Bill Finger, whose involvement in comic book history included co-creating (arguably) the most popular comic book character ever and that wasn't all he did. I'm hosting a panel in which comic book artists discuss how they design covers for comic books and I'm playing quizmaster on a game show (sorta) in which cartoonists, some of whom draw comic books, compete to draw funny things in a hurry. I'm speaking at a memorial for the late writer of comic books, Peter David, and I'm presenting awards at a ceremony that is all about honoring the best work in comic books.

And that's just me. As I scan the full schedule, I see plenty of programming items about comic books…and yes, there are other things there. Three of my panels are about animation, which is not that far off the topic of comics.

But we now live in a world where a lot of related fields — comics, movies, cartoons, videogames and others, are becoming not only more closely related but are all merging almost seamlessly into one another. The major publishers of comic books are no longer comic book companies. They're multi-media companies that dabble in all those fields and market the properties they control in every possible venue. Superman and Spider-Man are no longer comic book characters. That just happens to be the medium in which they first appeared and a decreasing number of people know or care.

This is the fifty-fourth one of these summer gatherings in San Diego — and I know because it's also my fifty-fourth. They were never exclusively about comic books or even comic books and comic strips. You have no idea how much I'd love it if these get-togethers were still mostly about the men (and occasional women) who created the comic books I read in my youth but I can't seem to get them on any of my panels anymore. Maybe if I did them with a ouija board.

For good or bad, Comic-cons — all of them, not just the one that starts tonight in S.D. — are mainly about what comics are today. And comics today are not just things with drawings and word balloons printed on paper. The definition has expanded considerably and you can accept it and then seek out the parts of the convention that interest you or you can…well, you understand the alternative. One reason I do all these panels is to make sure than for most of the con, there's not only something that interests me but that I'm guaranteed a good seat for it.

So far, we haven't seen any official statement from David Letterman about the termination of The Late Show for alleged "financial reasons." I think though that we can all guess what he will say if and when he does say something. It also wouldn't surprise me to see him say it with a surprise cameo on that program soon. I'll bet they've invited him.

Or maybe Dave's statement is this just-released video of times on his Late Show when he ridiculed the folks at the network. He slammed NBC a lot when he was there too, and that probably was one of the lesser reasons — nowhere near as significant as others — that he did not get The Tonight Show after Mr. Carson decamped.

An exec with NBC years ago told me he thought that when Dave insulted his employers there, he was right about two-thirds of the time and dead wrong the other third. But he also said that calling his bosses pinheads and incompetents was one of the reasons — again, nowhere as significant as others — that Dave was as popular as he was. Most people hate their bosses and they love it when someone insults his (on national television, no less) and gets away with it…

Hey, do you love the Marx Brothers? Of course you do. How could anyone not love the Marx Brothers? Well, here's a recent radio show that spent ninety minutes talking about Groucho, Harpo, Chico and even at times, Zeppo. Heck, there's even info in there about Gummo, courtesy of his grandson, who's among the guests. Several other members of the Marx family are interviewed along with some of my pals including Steve Stoliar and Frank Ferrante. If the little player I've embedded below doesn't work, try this link.

In case you didn't see Stephen Colbert last night…

He may be going down but he's going down swinging. It oughta be an amazing ten months — if they keep him on the air that long. Wonder what would happen if his ratings went way, way up because of so many people rallying to his cause. Would it still be a "financial decision" to take him off the air? Would it be a "financial decision" to take him off the air if someone among the new — or even the old owners if the merger somehow doesn't go through — just got pissed at what he was saying on his show?

In this video, watch for Anderson Cooper, Andy Cohen, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog — all of whom, I'm guessing, dropped by The Ed Sullivan Theater briefly in the last day or so to tape quick, supportive cameos, probably all when Colbert's audience was not present. The show probably grabbed staff members or someone to surround the cameo guest stars for audience shots. I have a feeling Colbert and his crew are going to do a lot more things like this…

In 1983, Johnny Carson did a two-hour special on NBC to celebrate his 21st year as host of The Tonight Show.  To promote the special, he sat for an interview with Bryan Gumbel that was serialized across several days of The Today Show…

Those of you who were shocked that I was appearing on and/or hosting seventeen panels at Comic-Con can be further shocked. I'm now appearing on and/or hosting nineteen. I have joined this one…

Saturday, July 26 – 10 AM to 11 AM in Room 4
THE MANY HANDS OF BILL FINGER
Before Gotham had shadows, writer Bill Finger cast them. Comics scholar Dr. Alex Grand (Understanding Superhero Comic Books) moderates a lively conversation with Athena Finger (Bill's granddaughter and advocate), historian Bill Field (Field of Comics), playwright/filmmaker Lenny Schwartz (Bill Finger: Rise of the Bat) and Mark Evanier (administrator of the Bill Finger Award). Together they trace Finger's unseen influence across comics, television, and film and show why crediting Batman's co-creator still matters to today's storytellers and fans.

And I've also agreed to appear on another one but I'm going to wait and let its panel moderator announce my participation. Yes, I am well aware of how stupid this is of me.

That's Dr. Z — "Z" as in "Zaius" — the talk show host no one dares cancel. If you're going to be in San Diego this Saturday night, as I expect some of you will be, you can catch Dr. Zaius doing his brilliant, improvised, different-every-time show at The American Comedy Company over on Sixth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter. There are two shows — one at 7:30 PM and one at 9:30 PM — and you can get tickets at this link.

While you're over on that site, you might notice that on Thursday and Friday evenings, the American Comedy Company is featuring three of the best stand-up comedians working today — Natasha Leggero, Moshe Kasher and Dana Gould. There are rumors that Dana Gould has something to do with Dr. Z and I may ask him about this connection when he appears on my Cartoon Voices I panel at Comic-Con, which takes place Saturday afternoon at 1 PM in Room 6BCF. And then again, I may not. Wouldn't want to get on the bad side of Dr. Z.

My pal Paul Harris, with whom I have spent many an hour discussing late night television, has some thoughts about what Stephen Colbert will do upon completing the next ten months of The Late Show.  Mr. Colbert may be asking himself that very question at this very minute.

One thing of which I'm fairly certain is that the answer is, within reason, "Whatever he wants to do."  He may not be able to do it at a broadcast network like CBS but he will not want for opportunities.  He's widely respected, he has a huge following and he won't have his options limited because people will say his last show failed.  I could certainly imagine him migrating to HBO (or some network that wants to be HBO) and doing some show that might not fit the template of what he's done the last decade.

A few online folks have floated the idea that he may want to get into politics, perhaps running next year to take Lindsey Graham's seat in the U.S. Senate representing South Carolina. What an amazing battle that could be…but I'm not going to even imagine it's possible until such time as Colbert indicates any interest whatsoever in that line of work.

My guess would be he's in no hurry to decide on his next line o' work and may be waiting to see what happens with The Daily Show and Jon Stewart. There seems to be some concern that whatever factors led CBS to get out of late night programming could force some changes there…and elsewhere. Colbert's decision about where to go and what to do will probably have a lot to do with recognizing that the next niche he'll carve out for himself could be in a very different television industry…and maybe not a niche.

Donald Trump and the political turmoil in this country only have so much to do with those changes. The way The Internet has become such a part of our lives and how we're entertained and/or informed and/or make our purchasing decisions has smashed to pieces all the old business models of television. It's now a world of podcasts and YouTubers and Tik-Tok and streaming-on-demand and even if tomorrow you got an hour show on CBS, NBC or ABC each week, that might still be only part of the deal. Your success would rely a lot on clicks and online exposure and how your show appealed to those whose lives are irrevocably intertwined with their cell phones and home computers.

Colbert understands this. His whole time on The Late Show, he's had one foot in that world, almost like treating that audience as his primary market and the people who have TV sets that are only TV sets to them as secondary. He also has good management, that audience that will follow him just about anywhere and plenty of time to decide where he wants to go and what he wants to be. I'm quite fascinated to see what he decides. Quite fascinated.