Monthly Archives: September 2007

Ezra Klein discusses the different health plans currently being floated by the various presidential wanna-bes.

Here's a couple of minutes from an episode of Erskine Johnson's Hollywood Reel, which was a series of short films that ran in theaters in the late forties and on TV in the early fifties. Mr. Johnson was a Tinsel Town columnist and he was known to haul a 16mm silent camera to events and shoot footage for his films. This one, which he filmed in conjunction with a gent named Coy Watson, was entitled Close Ups and Long Shots and it aired on TV in 1951, though this excerpt was probably filmed a year or three earlier. (Watson had an odd career in movies, working variously as an actor and a director and a cameraman…and he was even a Stage Father. Several of his kids were child actors, including two in the Our Gang series.)

This excerpt takes us to a swimming competition at something called the Brentwood Bantam Club in Brentwood, California. And wait'll you see who's officiating at the event.

This morning, I watched a few of the political chat shows and came to the conclusion that no one's going to be the next President of the United States. Hillary Clinton is too polarizing and rich Republicans will spend billions to convince voters that she barbecues and eats babies. John McCain is selling out every principle he holds to convince the Religious Right that he's one of them and they're not buying. Barack Obama is too lazy and inexperienced. Rudy Giuliani has nothing to offer other than to incessantly reference 9/11, plus the Religious Right won't go for him, either. John Edwards is just too pretty and vapid, plus his hair disqualifies him from higher office. Fred Thompson is like Giuliani except without the 9/11 connection. Bill Richardson is Bill Richardson. Mitt Romney is a Mormon, a flip-flopper and a congenital phony, plus his name is Mitt. And everyone besides these folks is Alan Keyes, one way or another.

So it's starting to look like we may have to keep George W. Bush for another four years. It probably won't make that big a difference. After all, we're going to keep his war going at least that long.

Tom Spurgeon previews a new, must-have book on the war cartoons of Bill Mauldin.

dLife is a weekly TV talk show that airs on CNBC and deals with Diabetes and the complications thereof. You can view excerpts from the show over on the dLife website and even if you don't have that problem, you might enjoy this brief chat with Broadway legend Elaine Stritch.

This one needs no introduction. Or explanation…

The Writers Guild is attempting to negotiate a new contract before the old one expires at the end of October. Between now and then, you're going to see a lot of articles like this one saying that the TV and movie studios have contingency plans for how they're going to keep making movies and shows if and when the WGA goes on strike. Past experience suggests that the studios will be exaggerating this. They will have a certain amount of product "in the can" and scripts ready to shoot…but they always have a certain amount of product "in the can" and scripts ready to shoot.

There's always a certain jet lag when we strike. When the actors go out, production stops immediately. When we go out, it takes a while for anyone to notice. At any moment, there will be scripts that are done or nearly done. The "nearly done" ones can usually be produced. The producers of most TV shows are writer-producers and they get pressured to do some minor rewriting as a part of their "producer" functions…and up to a point, most of them do.

What most don't do and won't do is to start new scripts. The studios will put out the word that they've quietly "stockpiled" scripts and have plenty they can shoot in the event of a strike. Past experience suggest that this is a fib. At least, it's always been in the past. Before the big '88 strike, we heard a lot about "file cabinets full of ready-to-shoot scripts" that would keep production going at full throttle without us. Somehow, while we were all out picketing, those alleged file cabinets were not opened.

I believe there will be a strike and that it will not be a short, pleasant one. All three "above the line" unions — the Writers Guild, the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild — believe it is long past time for them to get a fairer share of home video and new media revenues. From the Producers' viewpoint, it's Them Against All Three Unions, one at a time. (The actors' current contract doesn't expire until June 30, 2008 and the directors' runs out on July 31, 2008.) For reasons stated above, it's easier for them to try and stonewall the writers…and of course, if we can be made to take a rotten deal, the other two unions won't fare much better.

So it's going to get ugly. Prepare yourself for a solid month of planted stories in the press about how the business is hurting, the writers are getting greedy just when increases cannot possibly be afforded, and how there are piles of completed scripts and shows on the shelves. Boy, I wish there was a better way to do this.

Randy Skretvedt is one of the world's great authorities on Laurel and Hardy. But he's also interested in other comedy teams…

I really enjoyed seeing the Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein blooper reel. I think the last time I saw that was in the late '70s in Super 8 sound film. I wish MCA had included this in their DVD release, but I'd be surprised if anyone there knows that this exists.

I had the great pleasure of knowing Charlie Barton for about four years, 1978-81. He of course directed many of the best A&C movies including this one. I remember seeing it in 35mm at a revival theater and sitting next to him as he'd tell me anecdotes about the making of the film. He said that the Universal execs kept pressuring him to make the monsters funny, and that he was adamant that the only way the picture would work is if the monsters were legitimately frightening and the comedy was left to Bud and Lou. He gave in on only one point, the gag where Frankenstein's monster sees Lou for the first time and gets frightened. The joke always got a laugh, but I think Charlie still regretted it.

He was a wonderful man. He was only about 5' 3" but there was a lot of talent packed into that small frame. He'd been a child actor in his native San Francisco and appeared in some silent films; later he began working for Paramount. On William Wellman's Wings, he went from assistant prop man to assistant director — obviously, he and Wellman got along famously. (He also has a great bit in Wings as a soldier who stumbles and is about to get up until he sees nurse Clara Bow rushing over to comfort him. The "Oh, no, I'm not gonna miss this" look in his eyes is priceless.)

Charlie was an A.D. on many great Paramount films, including all three of the Marx Brothers' Hollywood pictures for that studio, and began directing some excellent B's for Paramount in 1934. (Car 99 is fun because it teams Fred MacMurray and Bill Frawley as cops, almost 30 years before their reunion on My Three Sons.)

For TV, he directed Amos 'n' Andy, Hazel, Family Affair, McHale's Navy and many others. I do recall he wasn't too happy working on the Smothers Brothers' sitcom (the "angel" show), and he only did one episode of The Munsters before telling his agent, "Get me outta here!" — probably because it reminded him of what he hadn't wanted to do in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

That's why that movie worked so well. There's a thin edge of self-parody in the performances of Lugosi and Chaney (and Glenn Strange too, I guess) but except for that one moment you mention, the film never crosses that line. The monsters really are the monsters.

Say, here's a trivia item/question that I'll bet someone reading this — maybe even Randy — can answer. When I was a kid, my friends and I would watch this movie every six or so months when it turned up on television and in the interim, we'd appease our thirst for it with the 8mm Castle Films abridged version. My friend Ric was always pointing out one scene in it and a "fun fact" he'd learned about it from reading Famous Monsters of Filmland.

There's a scene where the Frankenstein Monster (played by Mr. Strange) throws the lady scientist through a window. According to Ric quoting his source, Strange injured himself during that filming. A big chase scene followed and in it, he said, Lon Chaney filled in as the monster and a stuntman or someone played the Wolfman. (The chase scene led to the closing scene on the pier. That, he said, was Strange playing the monster again, I think because it had been filmed earlier.)

How much of this is correct? The sources I see say that Chaney only played the monster for one day while Strange recuperated…but based on the way the character moves on the screen, it sure doesn't look like Glenn Strange for the entire chase scene. Ric, who was a monster movie nut like no other, used to do impressions of the way Karloff, Lugosi, Lugosi's stuntman, Chaney and Strange all walked when playing the Frankenstein Monster, and he was pretty convincing in his insistence that it was Chaney all through the pursuit inside the castle…and I doubt that could all have been filmed in one day, though I suppose it's possible.

Ric, by the way, was deeply critical of this film, especially of the ghastly error in one scene where Lugosi's reflection is visible in a mirror. He also felt that the movie was erroneously titled and should have been Abbott and Costello Meet the Frankenstein Monster since "Frankenstein" was the doctor who made the monster and not the monster, himself. But I suppose Ric was grateful that Barton didn't make the monsters silly.

Amidst all this talk about "phony soldiers" and the honor of General Petraeus, people may be forgetting what a real military man looks like. Well, one of them just made Corporal. Thanks to David Cook for letting me know about this historic promotion.

Congressman Mark Udall is apparently going to introduce a resolution in Congress to condemn Rush Limbaugh for his recent remarks that troops who don't support President Bush's war policies are "phony soldiers." This would be just as wrong as that silly resolution condemning the MoveOn.org ad. Our legislators need to be solving real problems…not posturing over expressions of free speech that they might not like.

Outtakes from one of the greatest movies ever made, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein…

I posted earlier that Turner Classic Movies would be running My Son, the Vampire on October 8 and some of you were gullible enough to believe me. By now, you should know what a colossal liar I can be. The God's truth is that they're running it on October 5 and it's still a lousy movie.

That'll teach you to believe me.

Fred Kaplan on qualities that George W. Bush has that we don't want in our next president.

Happy 85th birthday to The Amazing Carl Ballantine, one of the funniest human beings it has been my honor to know. Some of you know him from the TV series, McHale's Navy. Others know him as the master of the silliest magic act ever performed. I know him as a teller of great anecdotes over lunch along with those other things. And I wish him many more years of life, if only so I can hear more stories.

Daniel Sweet informs me that My Son, the Vampire — the topic of this morning's video link here — is on Turner Classic Movies on October 8 [CORRECTION: October 5]. This is really stretching the definition of the word "classic" 'til it breaks.