Thursday, August 14, 2003

This Evening

Going to see Lewis Black do stand-up. Hope he's Fair and Balanced. Full report later.

• Posted at 5:19 PM · LINK

Briefly Noted...

Fox News may be "Fair and Balanced" but no one in their website division apparently made contingency plans for a power outage. It has now been almost two hours since portions of the East Coast lost all electricity. All the other major news sites — some of which must be based in that area — had bulletins up within fifteen minutes. The Fox News site still doesn't have a word about it.

• Posted at 2:54 PM · LINK

About What's Up, Tiger Lily?

Earlier, I mentioned that What's Up, Tiger Lily? had been released to DVD and that I wished they'd been able to include the original soundtrack as Alternate Audio. This prompted e-mail buddy Pierce Askegren to write to me last night and say...

Are you aware that there are three soundtracks for the movie? The Anchor Bay VHS cassette some years back used a different dub track, with noticeably different versions of some gags. According to the Video Watchdog review at the time, the differences are pervasive enough that it's not a case of something being edited for broadcast, but a legit, alternate version. No one seems to know why.

I knew nothing about this but I knew who might. I dropped an e-mail to Frank Buxton, who was one of the writer-performers behind What's Up, Tiger Lily? Frank wasn't able to help with any of the specifics of the different versions but he offered the following and said I could share it with you all here...

I was also disappointed that there were no "special features" on the disk. Seems to me it would be smart to include some audio commentary by the people who were there — me, Len Maxwell, Louise — since we're still alive and lucid. Woody, of course, would not participate but the rest of us have stories to tell, you can be sure, mostly arguing about who wrote what, in all likelihood. "Did you think it was funny? Then I wrote it."

In any event, the "production" of that film was such a debacle it's a wonder there aren't more versions. At one point, for instance, after we'd dubbed in the studio for three months (!), I was in Paris on a Discovery shoot and got a telegram asking me to rent studio space and record a dozen or so new lines. I dutifully did and then when Woody, Louise and I went up the 79th Street Loew's to see it (on the bottom half of a double bill) the same lines were dubbed by Pat Harrington Jr., thus causing no end of confusion about who Phil Moscowitz is. That, I think, is the first and last time Woody has ever seen one of his films in a theatre. Or anywhere else.

If he'd seen it in the theater where I saw it, he'd probably have given up filmmaking and gone into the sheet metal business. It was paired on a double-feature with some dreary, badly-lit foreign film with subtitles that didn't quite make it onto the bottom of the screen. When Tiger Lily finally came on, my friends and I were the only ones laughing...and even we stopped because we didn't want to wake up the other patrons. I didn't really like the movie until I saw it on home video...but the sloppiness of the production was evident, and I recall not being able to fully track which voice went with which character. Ah, well.

The show Frank mentions — Discovery — was a wonderful science/information show that he hosted on ABC in '62 and '63. It belied the notion that educational shows are boring. I actually remember my friends and I putting down the comic books and turning on Channel 7 when it was time for Discovery and I still occasionally come up with a fact that I'm sure I learned from that program. Even more entertaining was a show that he did for NBC in 1970 with my associate Lee Mendelson. It was called Hot Dog and it starred Jonathan Winters, Jo Anne Worley and Woody Allen. The show was about how things are made and what they'd do was to ask a question — "How do they make spaghetti?" "How is money printed?" — and then go to the panel of experts who would make up ridiculous explanations. Then they'd show us the real answer. It was very amusing and Lee keeps threatening to take them off the shelf and syndicate them again. If he ever does, you'll love them.

Anyway, thanks, Frank. As you can all see, news from me gets results. In addition to being Fair and Balanced.

• Posted at 2:47 PM · LINK

Comics in Court

Here's an article about the conviction of Jesus Castillo. He's the comic book shop manager in Dallas who was found guilty of selling an adult comic book to an adult. The article provides a good overview of the case from one perspective.

For another, take a look at this weblog entry. Houston lawyer William J. Dyer believes that folks are overreacting to many aspects of the decision. He also thinks the big problem was that Castillo's lawyer erred at a couple of key points.

• Posted at 2:26 PM · LINK

A Thought About the Blackout

You know...if this happened in California, I think people would drag Gray Davis out of the governor's mansion and beat him to death.

• Posted at 2:15 PM · LINK

Fox Vs. Franken

Here is the actual text of the lawsuit that Fox News has filed against Al Franken for co-opting (or ridiculing, as the case may be) their phrase, "fair and balanced." You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed in order to read a document which suggests that the Fox guys were more interested in insulting Franken than in winning their point.

With Franken's as-yet-unreleased book topping the charts at Amazon, we are reminded of the time The Bullwinkle Show featured a storyline about a hat called The Kurward Derby. TV personality Durward Kirby announced his intention to sue. Bullwinkle producer Jay Ward immediately announced that he would pay all of Kirby's legal expenses to do so. "The publicity," he said, "would be worth a fortune to me." (Kirby, alas, never filed...)

• Posted at 1:29 PM · LINK

Recommended Viewing (online)

If you have 6 minutes and 17 seconds (and RealPlayer installed), here's the link to Tracey Ullman's guest spot on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. This is a funny woman.

• Posted at 1:48 AM · LINK