Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Voice Actor Website of the Day

I decided to start this new feature a few days ago and then promptly forgot about it, so I have some catching-up to do...

One of the best announcers and cartoon voice actors working today is Corey Burton. His website also has some fine demos, advice about how to get into the business and a good editorial about the problems with some modern microphones.

Another fine announcer and cartoon voice actor working today is Gregg Berger, who I've worked with on almost every cartoon show I've ever voice-directed. When you hear his demos, you'll understand why.

Everyone knows Nancy Cartwright from her role as Bart Simpson. That's only part of what this talented lady can do.

Okay, I'm caught up to today. I'll try to get one up every day from now on.

• Posted at 5:04 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Unlike a lot of people, I don't think Donald Rumsfeld should resign over the revelations of torture by American troops. If some of the reports are true as to when he learned of the problems — or when he should have, based on reports that he avoided reading — a case can perhaps be made that he should be fired for negligence. And of course, another case can be made that he and Wolfowitz should be fired over incompetence relating to the Iraqi war...but how often do people at that level ever get fired for incompetence or negligence or anything other than crossing their superiors?

This is not just a Republican thing or a Bush thing. If you are in a high appointed office and you develop (or even dare voice) the view that your leader is leading in the wrong direction, you're usually sacked within the hour. But I think you could be really, really inept or possibly even criminal and not lose your job.

Leaders like to blame unnamed subordinates but don't like to actually name or fire them. Back during the Watergate mess, Nixon seemed to agree that the break-in was a criminal act and that it was planned within the White House. But he didn't actually get rid of (or even seem to get mad at) Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell or any of those guys until events forced him to respectfully and reluctantly request their resignations. Maybe he was afraid of them turning against him if fired but he sure convinced a lot of folks of his complicity and/or guilt by not punishing anyone. A lot of things have happened to George W. Bush that if they happened to me would sure be cause for someone to be dismissed...like who told him to put that stuff about Yellow Cake Uranium into the State of the Union address? Apparently no one because no one got fired. Clinton kept a number of guys around him who gave him very bad advice or very faulty data, too.

I'm on the fence on a lot of Iraq-related issues. I can still imagine this whole thing turning into something we'll be proud of or something we'll wish had never been suggested. But I can't imagine not thinking there have been some really major screw-ups that caused more damage and loss of life than was necessary. And it's getting harder to imagine the folks responsible for those screw-ups being fired over them...or to even lose out on a raise and promotion.

• Posted at 2:18 PM · LINK

King Comedy

The other day, I was unable to find a picture of Alan King's best record album...but his death brought a flurry of Alan King items to eBay and many of you alerted me to this one. Like I said, Alan King in Suburbia was the performance of his I liked best. He tells jokes about crabgrass and neighbors and I remember a funny bit about Girl Scouts who accuse you of being a Communist if you won't buy their cookies. (This was 1960 and that almost wasn't an exaggeration.) Anyway, don't go out of your way to find a copy but if you get one, play it. That is, if you still have one of those machines to play records on.

• Posted at 12:57 AM · LINK

The Write Stuff

An ugly traffic accident closed the Cahuenga Pass and made us (my friend Adam Rodman and Yours Truly) late for the Writers Guild Informational Meeting this evening. This was a gathering in a ballroom at the Sheraton Universal to update members of the state of the current negotiations and I think I heard enough to be able to file this report.

The old deal expired at 12:01 AM on Sunday, May 2 and we continue to work without a contract as our Negotiating Committee seeks to hammer out an acceptable new three-year contract with the A.M.P.T.P. (i.e., "The Producers"). At the moment, that doesn't look easy. The biggest issue is that the Writers Guild Health Plan Fund is running out of cash owing to the national increase in medical costs. In the last few years, the WGA has had to cut back on benefits and change eligibility rules to kick a lot of writers off the plan. To prevent further reductions, the WGA needs to get the employers to kick in around $43 million over the next three years. The Producers are offering $10.6...and this is the best part of their offer. In several other key areas, they are offering nothing at all and there are even places where they want us to take cuts.

So will there be a strike? Not yet. The current plan of the WGA is to go on working without a contract. We have also proposed a modest one-year deal that will allow some of these issues to be discussed at length between now and then. I tend to doubt the Producers will take this. A more likely scenario — this is me speculating — is that they will make a "Last and Final Offer" (they make a lot of those) perhaps in the next few days which will add another ten or fifteen million to the Health Plan. They'll say, "This offer is good for X days," X being the length of time they think it would take the membership to accept or reject, and they will threaten explicitly or implicitly that there will be a lockout if it is not accepted at the end of that period.

I don't know what the mood of the membership is...I honestly don't. We have a total membership of around 9000, and I couldn't get a fix on the militancy of the 500 or so in attendance, let alone those who didn't brave the traffic in the Cahuenga Pass to show up. Everyone present was curious and concerned and eager to learn more but beyond that, you had a wide range of views in the room. Some people are clearly angry enough about the low Health Plan offer and the issues that have gone unaddressed. At times, I think we get bewildered that the Producers, while bragging about huge profits in the press, turn around and plead poverty when we ask for enough money to stay even. We have had WGA strikes that were about little more than the studios' desire to save ten million dollars or some other amount that is trivial to them. It wasn't that long ago that Disney gave Mike Ovitz a $90 million severance package for leaving...and yet all the major studios collectively are horrified at the thought of kicking in around three million apiece to keep our Health Plan intact. That kind of inequality does make some writers outraged enough to go on strike and there are others who simply feel they don't have any choice. If your salary and benefits keep getting whittled away, eventually you have to take a stand against that.

For what it's worth, I remain pessimistic that the Producers will come across with what anyone would call a Fair Deal. Well, let me amend that. They'll call whatever they offer us a Fair Deal and insist they can't come up with another nickel and that it's their Absolutely Final Offer. Like I said, they make a lot of those. One strike, they made five or six Absolutely Final Offers. But their goal, of course, is not to give us a Fair Deal but one they think a slim majority of the Guild will consider just barely acceptable. They have a long history of underestimating us in this regard, which is why the WGA has a long history of going on strike. They may be making the same mistake again.

• Posted at 12:53 AM · LINK

May 12, 2004 • Current • May 10, 2004