Monday, September 26, 2005

Don Adams P.S.

A couple of folks have reminded me of one other TV show Don Adams did. From '85 to '88, he starred in a sitcom done in Toronto for Canadian TV with limited distribution in the United States. It was called Check It Out! and in it, he played the manager of a supermarket. It was based on a British TV show called Tripper's Day. Now that others mention it, I vaguely remember seeing an episode or two.

• Posted at 11:45 PM · LINK

Don Adams Remembered

Veteran Hollywood reporter Bob Thomas has written an excellent obit on Don Adams for the Associated Press, hitting all the key points. One biggie, which others are omitting, is the extent to which Adams' career was molded by Bill "Jose Jiminez" Dana, who wrote a lot of Don's early monologues and routines which set his on-screen character and even introduced many of his catch-phrases. Then in 1963, Adams played a bumbling house detective on The Bill Dana Show, a short-lived sitcom set in a hotel, and there was an obvious direct line from that character to Maxwell Smart two years later. Get Smart was not created with him in mind but he was such a perfect fit that everyone assumed otherwise.

Adams was a good comic actor when the material was tailored to the one thing he did well. He made Get Smart work and even members of the crew who detested him personally (there were some) admitted that he could wring every laugh possible out of a joke. After Get Smart though, he appeared in one hastily-cancelled series (The Partners in '71) and an awful lot of unsold pilots. The problem was evident, at least to me as a viewer, around '76 when he starred in a sitcom pilot called Three Times Daley that should have/could have become a series. All it really needed was someone else in the lead role besides Don Adams. It was about three generations — grandfather, father and son — trying to live together in the same house. Adams played the father and he was absolutely blown off the stage by a great character actor named Liam Dunn, who played Grandpa. The trouble was that Adams's part was written for a real human being and he was still playing Maxwell Smart. That was about all he could play. It is not a coincidence that Don's only other successful jobs were voicing cartoon characters — Tennessee Tuxedo and Inspector Gadget. A penguin and a robot...never a human being with any feelings.

He had one other series which almost no one remembers and which is not in any of the obits I've seen. In the early seventies, Adams made the rounds of talk shows and often brought out-takes from Get Smart, mostly of him and Don Rickles. They were hilarious and the reception gave him the idea to do a whole series showing out-takes...or bloopers, as they're sometimes called in a quasi-trademarked way. When he tried to put it together, he discovered that the union contracts made it prohibitive; that he'd have to pay or negotiate with dozens of people for each 30-second clip. In fact, the Screen Actors Guild told him that he technically shouldn't have been airing the Get Smart footage without paying actors, directors, writers, etc. Years later, the union rules were changed in a way that made the Dick Clark "Bloopers" shows do-able but at the time, it killed Adams's plan. Trying to figure out a way around it, he came up with the only possible solution: Create new out-takes just for the show! So in 1975, he hosted Don Adams' Screen Test, a kind of talent competition where the idea was to get aspiring actors, pair them in scenes with established stars and then have a lot of things go wrong. It didn't last long because, I suspect, the out-takes just didn't seem real. Which they weren't.

After that and a few more failed pilots, it was mostly Get Smart revivals, commercials and cartoons and the occasional Love Boat voyage for Mr. Adams. The one time I actually spoke to him for any length of time was at the Playboy Mansion, where he seemed to be in semi-permanent residence. We were both Waiting for Hef, which is pretty much the main thing one does at the Playboy Mansion despite what you may have imagined. I had an appointment to discuss a sketch Hefner was going to do on a show I'd written. Adams had just dropped in because he needed to talk with The Man about his marital problems and he seemed so worried, I almost felt like I should offer to let him go ahead of me.

We talked about what I thought was his best comedy album, Don Adams Meets the Roving Reporter, which I don't believe has ever made it as far as CD. We talked about his appearances on The Steve Allen Show where he repeatedly did a sketch playing a lawyer in a courtroom summation scene. ("Your honor, for the last thirty minutes, I have sat and watched as my worthy opponent, the District Attorney, has stood up here and made a complete jackass of himself. Now, it's my turn.") We talked about The Bill Dana Show and about Tennessee Tuxedo and about his brother (a fine character actor named Dick Yarmy) and I think he liked the fact that I never asked him anything about Get Smart. I base that on the fact that someone else later walked into the room and immediately began peppering him with lines from the show and questions about 99's real name and what kind of car he drove in the opening. Adams smiled in that polite, "I have to go through this all the time" way.

Hef finally appeared — pajama-clad, of course — and hurried through his meeting with me so he could get to Don. The last thing Mr. Adams said to me as I was going out and he was coming in was, "Thanks for taking my mind off the end of my marriage."

Fifteen years later, I found myself around him at an autograph show. He was not well — didn't look well, didn't seem to remember a lot and didn't even sound much like Don Adams, the easiest person in the world to impersonate. At one point when he seemed somewhat aware, I said something to him that began with, "You won't remember this, but..." It turned out he didn't remember at all when we'd sat and talked for what must have been at least an hour. Trying to jog his memory a bit, I said, "You were there for some advice from Hefner because your marriage was breaking up."

He paused, thought for a moment and said, "You wouldn't happen to know which wife this was, would you?" I'm pretty sure he meant it as a joke. Even if he didn't, the delivery was vintage Maxwell Smart and comedically perfect.

• Posted at 5:13 PM · LINK

Don Adams, R.I.P.

To the surprise of no one who'd seen him the last few years, Don Adams has passed away. I have to run out to a lunch meeting but I'll write something later today. And I promise: No "Would you believe..." jokes.

• Posted at 12:20 PM · LINK

TeeVee Toons

Over in Slate, Edward Jay Epstein offers an overview of the escalating war between Comcast Cable and DirecTV. The article is okay as far as it goes but I think this is one of those "Battle of the Titans," so familiar to readers of Marvel Comics, wherein two powerful forces slug it out based on a false premise. For instance, I don't think "Video on Demand" will ultimately be driven by allowing people to pay to see Desperate Housewives whenever they want and without commercials, nor do I think it will thrive by delivering current major motion pictures. I think most people will come to adopt the attitude that the big, mainstream material will always be readily available. If you don't catch it today, you can always wait for a rerun, especially if you have a TiVo or similar device and know how to program it.

Epstein writes of the head of Comcast, "His ultimate VOD goal is to release new movies at the same time as they are released on DVD." I dunno...if you're going to pay to see a new movie, wouldn't you rather have the DVD? Even if it means waiting until your next trip to Costco... when it'll probably be cheaper? Once you have physical possession of the DVD, you really "own" that movie. It's not going to get deleted off the hard drive of your Personal Video Recorder or lost if there's a crash. You can watch it whenever you want it on any TV in your house that has a DVD player. You can take it to a friend's house and watch it there. You can look at a little shelf of DVDs in your library and say, "I own those" and feel like you really got something for your money. This could get into a long discourse but basically, I think the new age of cable and the Internet is disabusing people of the idea that you pay for content. A lot of people feel that they're not stealing if they download a bootleg of a new movie. They'd never think of stealing a DVD or a VHS tape of that film but just moving a copy to their harddisk is different. That same, dubious distinction is what I think will discourage people from paying to have a new movie delivered to their PVRs when they could be getting a tangible DVD for their bucks.

What I think VOD is going to have to do is to offer people programming they can't go and buy at Sam's Club. I'll pay to add new channels to my DirecTV subscription because that increases my viewing choices. But I've never bought a pay-per-view offering because I've never seen an ad for one it would bother me to miss. If I cared about sports, that would probably be different.

The business model for VOD may not be in TV. It may be established by Howard Stern's pending move to Sirius Radio: How many people will buy the units and subscribe to hear Howard, for the first time, unexpurgated? (My guess: Not nearly as many as Sirius is projecting. I think a lot of people will never accept the idea of paying for radio. And as Stern's show gets dirtier, it's going to be more frustrating to listen to it and not be able to see. Betcha that within three years, he moves the whole thing to HBO or Showtime...or to VOD, where it would indeed be something you couldn't get elsewhere or buy at Sam's Club.)

Lastly, Epstein's article is wrong that "[Rupert] Murdoch's satellites reach about 90 percent of the American population. Everyone (including Roberts' cable subscribers) in this vast footprint can receive Murdoch's 500 channels with a small 31-inch dish and digital receiver." An awful lot of people can't because they live in apartment buildings and housing projects that won't let them put up dishes and/or where they have no unobstructed view to the South. (I had to have someone come out and cut the top off a big tree in my neighbor's yard with his permission.) Another large chunk of people in that 90% are simply scared of the technology. To my mother, having cable installed wasn't that much different from using the old roof antenna that had brought her TV for years. Ask her about having a "satellite dish" on her house and she won't get past the idea that this is something that you have to work for NASA to operate. I love DirecTV but it'll never be as popular as cable because it'll never be as simple.

• Posted at 12:14 PM · LINK

More Convention Talk

And this morning, I received the following from Julio Diaz...

Of course, the flip side of your discussion about the San Diego Con is that Angelenos such as Foster complaining about the struggle of attending sounds like a bunch of sour grapes to those of us who live in other parts of the world and who have dreamed about attending the Con for decades. I've lived my whole life in Florida, and am only planning on attending my first San Diego Con in 2006, having wanted to go for basically my entire life (I'm only 33, so by the time I was aware of such things, San Diego was already legendary). I've never been able to afford the investment involved in attending, including airfare and hotel. In fact, I'd likely not be able to go in '06, either, had I not just sold my house, having transferred to another part of Florida for work. And even then, I'll be rooming with several friends and likely sleeping on a floor for the week. To those of us for whom San Diego has taken on a mythic, Mecca-like quality, who have for years and years dreamed of going and who have thought of the Con as the fandom equivalent of nirvana, well...

We'd be thrilled if it was just a short drive on a crowded freeway.

Just my two cents. I'm sure looking forward to being there in '06!

And you'll enjoy it, I'm sure, but only if you attend all my panels. It's really quite an amazing convergence, though my friend is right: It does require more effort than we might like. I've found over the years that certain kinds of travelling — going to New York, for instance — simply necessitate a fair amount of advance planning and research. You can't just up and go to the San Diego Con. You have to book your room at the earliest opportunity. You have to figure out when you're going and where you're eating and I think it's almost mandatory to make out a little schedule of events you'll catch and where and when you'll meet up with friends. One of the reasons I enjoy moderating so many panels is that I like always knowing where I'm going to be at any given time. I feel very lost in that place when I'm just wandering for any length of time with no particular destination or goal.

I find it helpful, in explaining the con to new attendees, to make the point that it is many conventions in one. You pretty much have to find the part of it that interests you. The great thing is that it's there, somewhere. You just have to get past the freeway and hotel obstacles.

• Posted at 10:45 AM · LINK

Convention Talk

My longtime friend, cartoonist Bob Foster, just sent me the following...

Every time you discuss the S.D. Con, I get another twinge of annoyance. I didn't go this year, for the first time since #2. I just couldn't face the miserable freeway drive to and fro, the agony of hoping to find a room, the aggravation of playing slow motion football with 100,000 attendees and the concentration of so many people, vehicles, superheroes and tourists all in one three-block corner of San Diego. Unless they spread events around the whole city, utilize other facilities (like the old convention center or all those vast meeting rooms in all those other hotels all over town) I probably won't be going back. It's just too much of a pain in the ass. I'd be curious to know how many of your readers feel the same way.

Well, the miserable freeway drive from L.A. to San Diego is what it is. The convention committee can't do much to change that, and I suggest you consider the train or driving at a non-peak hour. Actually, Sergio and I had a pretty unmiserable drive down this year on a Wednesday afternoon, thanks in part to a shortcut. And it wasn't all that bad on the way back on Sunday evening, either. (One year, I had to drive back in the middle of the night. I left San Diego around four in the morning and did 80 MPH most of the way — with cars passing me. Much to my amazement, I got back to Los Angeles in the two hours that Mapquest claims the drive should routinely take...and that included a drive-thru detour involving a Fatburger.)

I suspect spreading the con out over the city wouldn't work, even if those facilities are available. A lot of the hotels there weren't designed with big meeting rooms because they figured that's what the convention center is for. But if the con sprawled all over San Diego, my guess is that 99% of all attendees would still spend the entire con in the big building because that's where the epicenter of the convention is. And if you told them there were great events across town in the old convention center, they'd say, "Great, but there's more than enough for us to see and do here, and who wants to hassle with traffic and parking and going somewhere else?"

I'm sure most attendees wish the con was less crowded, that it was easier to find lodging, etc. — and by the way, what you're suggesting wouldn't make hotel rooms any more plentiful. It would probably make them more difficult to secure if all the folks like you, who stay away because of the crowds, decided it was now safe to attend. But the con has become what it's become, and I long ago had to accept that this convention I've attended since the very first one was no longer the intimate gathering it was back at the El Cortez. There are other conventions that can give you a less congested experience — the WonderCon in San Francisco and the Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus, to name two. The size and scope of the Comic-Con International have become a part of its unique nature and I don't think it's going to change.

• Posted at 2:01 AM · LINK