Monday, June 2, 2003

Winters' Discontent

The Winter Brothers have lost their lawsuit against DC Comics. They sued because they believed that some rather repulsive characters in a Jonah Hex comic were unflattering caricatures of themselves. This morning, the California State Supreme Court ruled (correctly, in my opinion) that it came under the category of parody and that was that. Here's a link to a fuller account.

• Posted at 9:51 PM · LINK

Those Elusive Weapons...

Here's Spinsanity on the current status of whether or not the U.S. has located Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. (Quick summary: Officially, no — but Bush says we have.)

• Posted at 3:01 PM · LINK

Jerry Lewis Mini Cinemas (and Mini Profits)

Here's an e-mail from a reader here named Lloyd Fein...

Your item about the Jerry Lewis mini cinema chain brought back painful memories. My uncle (with whom I was living at the time) pretty much blew the family fortune investing in one. Back at my other place, I think I still have some of the literature they sent out. As I recall, they promised a lot of guaranteed profit and you didn't have to know anything about running a movie theater because Jerry Lewis was behind the venture and he knew everything and his name was magic. A lot of the magic seemed to be that you and one other person could run your own movie theater all by yourself without unions. My uncle was very anti-union and that was part of the appeal for him. He was fearlessly confident that the projectionist union was going to bankrupt the traditional movie theater and the future of the business would be in little places like the one he opened. He wanted to get in on the ground floor.

The trouble was that he went into a mall in New Jersey that was itself in trouble. The only time it did any business was during the day. It was like a ghost town in the evening and you can't support a movie theater on matinees. Even when there were people at the mall, they didn't go to see movies. They went to the Montgomery Ward store, bought blankets and went home. I also thought the name hurt the business. The Jerry Lewis Theater wasn't showing Jerry Lewis movies but I don't think people realized that.

You're right that it's ridiculous that any theater would run a Jerry Lewis movie and Deep Throat. What's the audience for both those films? And I doubt any Jerry Lewis movie ran Deep Throat but a lot of people don't understand the difference. To them any movie with five seconds of bare tits in it is Deep Throat. So maybe some Jerry Lewis mini cinemas ran some of the popular R-rated movies from then like The Godfather and people got confused or maybe some Jerry Lewis mini cinema converted to X-rated movies and there was a week there when they didn't have Jerry's name off the marquee yet.

Thanks — and that's a good point about people not knowing the difference between adult movies and Adult Movies. At one point in the seventies, CBS acquired a package of Warner Brothers films to air in the late movie slot they had before acquiring Mr. Letterman. Now, as anyone who knows anything about the business is aware, movies are often sold in packages, and the purchaser doesn't always air everything in the package. In this particular package, WB included the TV rights to air the 1969 Luchino Visconti movie, The Damned. This film — a portrait of life in Nazi Germany between World Wars — was about as far from Deep Throat as a movie without Don Knotts in it could be, but in its initial release, it had received an "X" rating for some non-arousing kinkiness. By the time it got tossed into the TV package, it had been re-rated "R" and it probably didn't even deserve that. In any case, the mere fact that it was involved in that transaction prompted a nationwide rumor/alert that CBS was about to start running "X-rated movies" (i.e., stuff like Deep Throat) in that time slot.

This gets back to an item here not long ago about a current "family values group" that is drumming up alarm about porn stars at comic conventions, and how such groups seem to need an outrage against which to crusade. Back in the seventies, similar groups started spreading the alarm that CBS was planning to air porn and that to save mankind, that had to be stopped...and oh, by the way, that will require donations, people. Amazing quantities of cash were given in the cause of stopping CBS's supposed plan, and the network was deluged with form letters protesting their ungodly plot to make Americans watch filth. CBS issued press releases and sent back form letters that said, in pretty simple language, "No one here has ever considered airing X-rated movies," but for years, that did not end the protests. The folks drumming-up the letter-writing campaign kept right on drumming. A friend of mine who worked at CBS at the time told me she was amazed at the outpouring based on a false premise, and said that they debated internally at the network: Did the leaders of this campaign simply not believe the denials? Or had they gone so far out on a limb that they were incapable of admitting they'd been wrong? Or had it simply been so profitable for them, in terms of selling memberships and bringing in donations, that they wanted to run it as long as possible? The third option was the prevailing choice but none of them speak well of the kind of folks who run such campaigns.

CBS did finally run The Damned in its late night slot, by the way. By that time, the protests had died down and the innocuous movie was rendered even more innocuous by editing-for-television. So no one cared. But it's very true that some people who get outraged about things simply don't understand what it is they think is outraging them.

And I also agree that the Jerry Lewis chain was off to a bad start because of the name. If you didn't like Jerry Lewis, having his name and likeness out front was a negative, even if you realized that they weren't running Jerry Lewis movies inside — and some folks probably didn't. If you did like Jerry Lewis, it was like, "Huh? There's no Jerry Lewis movie playing at the Jerry Lewis Theater!" So the potential customers were moviegoers who had no opinion either way on the subject of Jerry Lewis. That's always been a pretty small group.

• Posted at 2:30 PM · LINK

Correction

I have a little group of readers who catch whatever mistakes I make and send me corrections, often within moments of my making the error. Mark Thorson is one of them, and he notes the following: Ed Rosenthal, who stands convicted of growing and selling marijuana despite the fact that his government asked him to do so, was acting on behalf of the city of Oakland, as opposed to the state government. Here's a link to an article about this travesty of justice. And here's a link to my item which I am hereby correcting. Thanks, Mark.

• Posted at 12:55 PM · LINK

Big Brother

We usually rave about TiVo here but this, we don't like.

• Posted at 11:51 AM · LINK

Now Playing...

If you're not reading a fine comic called Supernatural Law, you're missing out on one of the best books out there. Here's a link to its website. And what reminded me to tell you that is that I just received this message from that comic's creator, Batton Lash...

Regarding Jerry Lewis's story about one of his movies on a double bill with Deep Throat: I've heard this before, even from people other than Lewis. I agree with you; I don't believe it's a true story. However, I have a theory how it originated...

I recall that during the 60's, there was a chain of Jerry Lewis movie theaters (set up with Lewis's sanction, of course) specifically for movies that the whole family could enjoy. By the early 70's, some managers of the Jerry Lewis theater franchise were having a tough time attracting audiences and began moving away from family fare. This didn't seem to be a problem, until one manager booked a X-rated film. A photographer snapped a picture of the incongruous image of a "family theater", complete with the famous caricature of "Jerry the Kid" on a marquee, showcasing some triple "X" film. Newspapers — or maybe a magazine — ran the photo, which was quite embarrassing to Lewis.

I believe that over the years, this story morphed into an urban legend of a goofy Jerry Lewis movie on a double bill with a notorious porno flick as an example of how low the morals and good taste of modern life has sunk.

You know, not only are you probably right but I believe that thought had occurred to me once before when this was discussed. In the late sixties or early seventies, Jerry got involved in a plan to open a chain of movie theaters bearing his name across the land, mainly in malls and shopping centers. It was, as I recall, a franchise deal that was designed to attract the small investor. The parent company had invented a system of automated projection equipment, and they sold this to Jerry and then to investors as the new wave of film exhibition. One of the reasons I recall this is that Lewis went on Johnny Carson's show to plug the concept and he even brought on a scale model of a Jerry Lewis Theater. He used it to demonstrate how two people could run one and said something about how he hoped couples that believed in the concept of "family" movies would invest in setting these up in malls and running them.

I remember this because it was one of the few times I ever saw Carson really nail a guest who had pissed him off. I'm not sure if he was annoyed by Jerry trying to use his show for such a blatant sales pitch or what, but he turned to Jerry and said, "What happens if a couple invests their life savings in one of these and then it bombs?" Then, in his Aunt Blabby/old lady voice, Carson whined, "We got screwed out of your pension, Murray" or words to that effect. Lewis was stunned and unable to answer, the audience was hysterical, and I think it was the first time I ever heard "screwed" on a network TV show.

As it turned out, Johnny was prescient. The Jerry Lewis Mini-Cinema operation went belly-up. The accepted explanation I believe was that too many of them were opened by people with no expertise in the business of exhibiting movies — folks who often did not know what constituted a bad location. Often, they opened in malls that were too close to where one of the big theater chains operated, and the big chains would lock up most of the "hot" new releases on an exclusive-to-our-area deal. This made it difficult for the Jerry Lewis outlets to book movies that anyone wanted to see, especially since the contract with the Jerry Lewis Theater company specified only family films, which then weren't being made in great quantity. (Apparently, one of the appeals of the whole deal to Jerry — who was then not doing well in the movie business — was the notion that a whole network of such theaters would provide distribution for new Jerry Lewis movies. But the chain never became successful enough for that to happen.)

It was a pretty big disaster, money-wise. One night as Jerry came off-stage from a performance in Vegas, a man who appeared to be seeking an autograph slapped a subpoena in his hand — a lawsuit on behalf of many of the investors in the theaters. It was all finally settled, of course, but Jerry was pretty unhappy with the entire experience. And I believe it is true that near the end, some of those Jerry Lewis Theaters, straining desperately to stay in business, began booking films with more than a "PG" rating. I doubt any of them ever ran Deep Throat or any hardcore sex film, especially since most were in shopping malls. But perhaps they ran "R" films that outraged Jerry, or perhaps some were converted into the kind of theater that runs porn, and reports like that morphed into the Urban Legend of a double-bill of Deep Throat and a Jerry Lewis movie. But I don't believe there ever really was one.

By the way, (he said, slightly changing the subject) I miss double-features, if only because they gave us some wonderful marquee combos. My favorite was a theater in Santa Monica that offered Cold Turkey and Bananas, which is quite a tasty combo. And I always loved what a theater in Culver City called the Palms would come up with. I wrote a piece about the Palms and its double-features, and you can read it here. Thanks, Batton!

• Posted at 11:48 AM · LINK

Another Nice Message

At long last, the sound films of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy are making it to DVD. On August 19, Hallmark Entertainment will release what we hope is the first of what we hope will be a whole line. It will be a two-disk set which includes one of the boys' best features (Sons of the Desert), four shorts (The Music Box, Another Fine Mess, Busy Bodies, and County Hospital) and, as they say, "many special features" — all for twenty bucks. Very good news. The minute this is available for advance ordering, I'll post a link here.

• Posted at 9:57 AM · LINK

Media Circus

Here's Tom Shales with an article about how the pending F.C.C. deregulation decision is a terrible, terrible idea. He's wrong. It's worse than that.

• Posted at 1:38 AM · LINK

Comic Website of the Day

Inaugurating a new feature: Each day, I'll send you clicking to the website of another great stand up comedian. Let's start with the World's Foremost Authority, Professor Irwin Corey.

• Posted at 1:02 AM · LINK

Comic Artist Website of the Day

Mike Kaluta began drawing comics in the seventies, at a time when you could look at almost any new artist and say, "Kirby" or "Adams" or "Kirby mixed with a little Adams and some Wally Wood" or some permutation of existing styles. Many of those artists evolved to have unique (or at least, reasonably fresh) approaches but Kaluta didn't have to. From the start, he was his own man with his own outlook and technique, and he's only gotten better since. Check out his website.

• Posted at 1:00 AM · LINK