Monthly Archives: February 2009

Hello from…well, not from San Francisco, where the WonderCon is taking place this weekend. I was there Friday afternoon but at the moment, I'm home in Los Angeles in the natural habitat of my office. In about seven hours, I fly back to S.F. to host more panels, see more friends, etc. It's a great convention, even if you have to commute.

A nice turnout today…but I was telling people, "If you want to move, do it today because you won't be able to, tomorrow." A huge turnout is expected…and yet, a couple of dealers I talked with said that for the first time in many years, they're seeing a noticeable dip in prices. It's not so much on the real rare, high-end comics or artwork but the bad economic news seems to be prompting a downturn in, as one of them put it, "the kind of merchandise that the guy across the aisle is also carrying." I didn't poll the whole room or even a huge sample…but that's what some were saying.

I did a nice panel today with Gary Friedrich and Roy Thomas discussing what some of us think were the glory days of Marvel. Later, I started a one-on-one interview with the lovely Wendy Pini but was called away. My apologies to Wendy and all those I ran out on.

Gotta get to bed. Good night, Internet.

The folks at Heritage Auctions have, as they usually do, copies of Amazing Spider-Man #1 from 1963 up for bid. It's been called to my attention that when they list one of these, they always say, "Steve Ditko cover (Jack Kirby layouts) and art." Not that it's a huge deal but I think this is wrong. Ditko, of course, drew the insides but I'm pretty sure the cover is Kirby and Ditko, not Ditko working over Kirby layouts. I stand by my oft-made statement that once Jack was no longer working in the Simon-Kirby studio, I don't think he ever laid out a cover for anyone else. He pencilled hundreds that others inked, and sometimes his covers were significantly revised by others. But I know of no case where he laid out a cover and then someone else pencilled over his layout.

If there's been any recent movement in the Screen Actors Guild situation, it's been kept quiet. As of now, the two warring factions within the guild are kind of circling one another, figuring out ways to mend whatever fences seem mendable. They had a scintilla of unity when the moderate group, which has taken over the negotiations and which is more eager to make a deal, didn't fare any better in their quest. The studios are trying to keep the actors divided and to make it more difficult for the two parties of SAG to come together and then to re-engage with AFTRA. They may be at least partly successful in this but right now, nobody's budging.

Meanwhile: The Writers Guild is putting Jay Leno through a kind of trial, discussing whether he violated strike rules when he allegedly wrote material for his show during our walkout. At arm's length, it might seem like an open-and-shut case that he did but there are a number of factors involved here. One is that there's some ambiguity in the distinction between writing for the show and writing for one's self. If a performer thinks of what he's going to say in front of the cameras five minutes before he says it, that's probably writing. If he thinks of it five seconds before, that's probably an ad-lib. I'm oversimplifying but you get the idea.

Or if Leno wrote jokes for his standup act during the strike and went down and did them at the Comedy and Magic Club, the guild is fine with that and, in fact, has no jurisdiction. If during the strike, The Tonight Show booked a standup comic to come in and do his act, that's not considered writing, either. But if Leno writes and tells a joke in Vegas and then uses it in his monologue on the show during the strike…well, again, there's room there to argue if he's writing for the show.

It is also worth noting that in the past, the WGA often looked the other way when some very prominent stars, including Mssrs. Carson and Letterman, committed the same supposed breach, and there are some very famous movie stars and screenwriters who could have been brought up on charges but weren't. I was on a committee many years ago where two WGA officers got into a yelling match over whether the Guild was going after the "little fish" and ignoring the whales. There were (then) a couple of cases where that seemed to be true. (I should also add that I researched this matter when I did an article last year on scabbing for New Republic and found that in past WGA strikes, there was a lot less of it than you might have imagined.)

Among those who know him, Leno has a pretty good reputation for ethics and apart from this little matter of going back to work during it, he was a strong supporter of the strike. He met with WGA leadership before he did, and I suppose the disposition of this current inquiry will hinge on what was said then and how it may have been interpreted or misinterpreted. Someone will also probably take into account the enormous pressure he was under, not only in terms of the staff of his show being laid off but with NBC probably threatening to sue him for breach of contract as a performer.

The guy was in a "no win" situation and I still like him. But I do have to say that I was disappointed when he went back and that I'm glad my guild is not pretending it didn't happen.

The Los Angeles Times recently did something very courageous and gutsy for a newspaper. No, I don't mean they pointed out an error by a public official. That gutsy, they aren't. But they decided to try and define the communities that make up Los Angeles. We have all these little fiefdoms with names like "Westwood" and "Cheviot Hills" that have no official boundaries. Most people more or less know where they are but not precisely where they start and stop.

The borders can be quite fuzzy…and I would imagine we have realtors to thank for that. If you can claim that the house you're selling is in "Bel-Air," you do, even though someone might argue that Bel-Air is confined to the other side of Sunset. There are also many areas where no commonly-used name seems to apply and the folks who live in those areas usually shrug when asked and say, "I live in Los Angeles," which is accurate but not useful in pinpointing where in Los Angeles.

It's brave for the Times to undertake the task because a lot of people disagree with their decisions…and before I forget, here's the link to what the Times staff came up with. A lot of folks are outraged or baffled or startled by the assertion that their homes aren't where they thought they were and that, for example, there is such a place as Chinatown but Little Tokyo seems to have disappeared. The areas where I grew up and where I now live seem properly designated to me…but the apartment where I lived in-between is assigned to a neighborhood name I would never have used to describe that location.

A lot of local blogs are dissenting and some are so vituperative that I doubt the Times map is going to settle the matter of where, say, West Hollywood stops and starts. But maybe it's a starting place.

A number of folks have written to thank me for my advice re: the fine new movie, Coraline. That advice was to rush to see it and, better still, avoid reading notices or watching previews of it. This does not just apply to Coraline. Frankly, the relentless promotion of some movies these days has damaged the whole film-watching experience for me. Time and again, I find myself in this situation: Some new movie I might like to see is about to come out…and by the time I could see it, I've seen it.

So many clips on talk shows. So many plot summaries and dialogue quotations in reviews. I try to avoid those ubiquitous "first look" and "The Making of…" featurettes on cable TV but that ain't easy. A few years ago at a party, I found myself in the midst of a discussion about the first Spider-Man movie, which I have never watched in a theater or on a DVD or on cable. But I'd seen enough of it in promos that I held my own in the chat with what I thought were folks who'd all seen the film. At the end, when I mentioned I hadn't, several others admitted as much. Twelve people had all discussed the strengths and weaknesses of a movie, only eight of us had sat through it and no one thought that was odd. Moviegoing has become that kind of experience. Actually going to the movie is only a part of it.

One of the joys of Coraline for me was sitting there, not knowing where it was going, being surprised at many a turn. More often watching a movie, I find myself sitting there thinking, "Oh, I see…we're leading towards that scene that the star showed two night ago on Leno." This is not so much a matter of Spoilers as it is of experiencing a film out of sequence.

I remember some wonderful moviegoing adventures where it really helped that I didn't know what was coming. I saw Blazing Saddles the night it opened. If I'd waited two weeks, I would have seen 70% of it via Mel Brooks talk show appearances but that evening at the Avco Embassy, every joke came as a total surprise, including the part where the characters run right out of the movie. (It also helped that night that Mr. Brooks was in the house. Before Blazing Saddles started, they were running a commercial for the L.A. Times and you heard this familar voice yell out from the back of the theater, "Get this shit off and show my movie!")

I saw Network at the Writers Guild Theater a good six weeks before it hit regular cinemas. The place was packed and no one knew one thing about it other than it was Paddy Chayefsky taking a shot at television. By the day it opened, half of America was screaming "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," having seen it in the promos and clips. It was a lot more effective to not know what was coming. (I was sitting next to Ray Bradbury when I saw it. When the film ended, he looked around the hall and said, "There isn't a person in this theater who isn't wishing he'd written that.")

This matters more with some movies that others. I kinda knew how Frost/Nixon ended before I saw it so seeing clips beforehand didn't particularly diminish the experience. But there have been a number of movies lately I didn't bother to see…because I'd already sorta seen them.

That's when the WonderCon starts in San Francisco. The doors open Friday at Noon and I'm looking forward to everything except for the fact that it'll probably be raining much of Saturday and most of Sunday. But inside the Moscone Center, it'll be fun and dry, especially if you attend one of these peachy panels…

The 1938 Cadillac once owned by W.C. Fields. But you might not want it since they've taken out the martini mixer.

Tip O'Neill once wrote of the first time Gerald Ford entered to address Congress after he'd ascended to the highest office in the land. The gent in charge of yelling out such things yelled out, "Mister Speaker, the President of the United States!" And then everyone — Democrats and Republicans alike — looked over, reassured themselves that it was indeed Gerald Ford walking in, and let out a cheer that it was not Richard Nixon.

I think I just saw a similar moment.