Sunday, July 6, 2003

Defamation on the Internet

Years ago, before the Internet was the place to be, some of us communicated via computer bulletin boards — the kind you accessed by plugging your 2400 baud modem into your phone line. I operated a couple of different Bulletin Board Systems that catered mainly to writers. This was great because I made a lot of friends and the services did a lot of good for a lot of people. It was occasionally bad because if you get a batch of writers together, even online, egos and feuds erupt. On a computer forum, there are always a few who will start posting messages that some individual — who may or may not be participating in or even aware of the B.B.S. — is a liar, a thief, a plagiarist, a drug user, a sexual deviant, etc. This kind of thing happened a number of times with different players and different accusations of perversion and/or unethical, possibly criminal activity. Usually, the "flame" messages were posted late at night, often on Friday or Saturdays, and it took me a while to realize that many were probably posted under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Almost invariably, I — as the sober operator of the system — wound up in the middle of the fray. In theory, I was just supplying the hardware and configuring the software...but if Writer #1 slandered Writer #2, Writer #2 would usually direct some or even all of his outrage at me. Often, Writer #2 threatened to sue me or slug me. Once, the insulted writer was also a producer who announced he would do everything in his power to destroy my career because his had been attacked on a system run on a computer that I owned. In all of these cases, by the way, you could count on Writer #1 — the one who composed the offending message — not coming to my defense, not offering to help out in any way. He posted the message but it was my problem.

No lawsuits were ever filed but when I set up and briefly ran a system for the Writers Guild, suits were often threatened and I found myself consulting with a number of lawyers. I kept asking them if one could really be sued if one operated a public computer-based forum on which someone felt they'd been defamed. The response I got was invariably double-talk. For some reason, most attorneys were unwilling to admit what I finally realized was the truth; that it was a new area of law with very few precedents, and that no one had any idea how some court might rule on the inevitable test cases.

Now, more than two decades later, the Internet is a way of life and the laws of libel or slander (I'm not even sure which it is on the 'net) have yet to fully shake down. As this article by John W. Dean makes clear, the law is still thrashing it out. That it's still going back and forth convinces me I was wise to get out of the B.B.S. business when I did.

• Posted at 11:53 PM · LINK

San Diego Con Update

That's right: Another update. We have moved the Cartoon Voice Panel from 3:30 Saturday afternoon to 4:00! That's 4:00 PM, Saturday afternoon, July 19 in Room 6B. We've also added Kathy Garver to the gathering. You may know Kathy from her role as Cissy on the TV classic, Family Affair, but she's also an accomplished performer of animation voices, including roles on Spider-Man and Super-Friends. (While we're on the subject, here's a link to her web page.)

The change allows me time to host another panel that day...and yes, I know I'm doing five in a row but I couldn't turn this one down. It's an hour with three of the most important figures in the history of science fiction...fantasy master Ray Bradbury, historian/editor Forrest J Ackerman, and agent/editor Julius Schwartz. I'll tell you a little more about this one in a day or three, but you might want to jot it down now on your calendar. It's from 3:00 to 4:00 the same afternoon but in Room 6A.

Here's the current list of the panels I'm doing at the convention.

• Posted at 9:23 PM · LINK

He Doesn't Know the Territory

I was unable to find that great website devoted to The Music Man but a reader of this site did. Here's the link and while you're there, check out the memos from the director, the production budget and some audio files of Meredith Willson and his spouse performing the score. (Thanks, Lee!)

• Posted at 8:50 PM · LINK

Saving Your Sanity (what's left of it...)

The other day, I recommended that if you wanted to squander at least a half-hour of your life, you could go over to the Garfield website and play a walkaround adventure game. It's called Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt and it's very clever but not so involved that you'll spend the rest of your life glued to the keyboard trying to solve it. (Anyone here remember a computer game called Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time? Several comic books I wrote would have had a few more issues had it not been for that game.)

Anyway, the Garfield game is winnable and it isn't a bad way to introduce kids to the concept of computer gaming. But I'm also aware that sometimes even the most brilliant of us can get trapped in these things, unable to figure out how to win but also unable to stop thinking about it until we do. So I've written out the solution — a "walkthrough" that will tell you what you have to do to win so you can get on with your life. If you need a copy, drop me an e-mail.

• Posted at 2:07 AM · LINK

I Always Think There's a Band...

Daniel Frank (whose weblog I hope you visit when you leave here) writes to ask, "So what was the surprise at the curtain call of The Music Man?" (This is the Broadway revival from 2000 he's asking about.) Well, it wasn't all that huge a deal. The cast members marched out in snazzy band uniforms, almost all of them carrying trombones, and played a lusty but amateurish version of "76 You-Know-Whats." It had a certain fun charm to it, but I don't think it lived up to the promises of something unprecedented.

The curtain call of The Music Man is traditionally a real audience-pleaser. To his dying day, composer Meredith Willson used to insist that there had never been a production of the show anywhere at any time where the audience did not break into rhythmic clapping with the playing of "76 Trombones" as the cast took its bows. One suspects that at least once in all the skillions of performances of the show in everything from Broadway theaters to elementary school auditoriums, there might have been one where the audience was too busy walking out or demanding refunds or something...but perhaps Mr. Willson never encountered this. Or maybe he just saw only the good in them. The story goes that he took in the show hundreds of times as staged by various theatrical companies and community colleges and such, and that he sent every single one of them a telegram that said, "That was the finest production of The Music Man I have ever seen." Perhaps they all were.

Anyway, when the show gets staged at a school that has a marching band, it is not at all unusual for someone to get the bright idea to have the band march through the hall as part of the finale. So what they did on Broadway wasn't all that revolutionary.

Incidentally, I can't find it at the moment but there used to be a wonderful website which featured a bevy of production memos about the making of the movie of The Music Man. One which I found intriguing was from the director, Morton Da Costa, saying he'd decided that the role of Marcellus should be played by Stubby Kaye. We of course all loved Buddy Hackett in the role but I sure don't think Stubby would have been bad. Jack L. Warner, of course, once had his heart set on Frank Sinatra as Professor Harold Hill but finally bowed to pressure from darn near everyone on the planet and hired Robert Preston. If he'd wound up with Sinatra and Hackett, he might as well have gotten Shirley MacLaine to play Marion, Joey Bishop to be the Mayor and moved the whole thing to Vegas. As they said when they changed the family in Come Blow Your Horn from Jewish to Italian so they could cast Frank, "It's a small change."

Oh — and while I was looking (to no avail) for the site with the Da Costa memos, I came across this wonderful offering. It's a compendium of obscure names and terms that turn up in the text of The Music Man, along with explanations of what they all mean. They even note, as many of us comic book historians have, that the line in "Ya Got Trouble" about kids reading Cap'n Billy's Whiz Bang is an anachronism since The Music Man is set in 1912 and Cap'n Billy didn't start whizzing or banging until 1919.

• Posted at 1:53 AM · LINK

Remembering Buddy

Jerry Kupcinet has some nice memories of the departed Mr. Hackett.

• Posted at 12:42 AM · LINK

July 7, 2003 • Current • July 5, 2003