Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Today's Bonus Video Link

Okay, here it is: Your all-time favorite of all the video links we've provided on this site.

On December 13, 1976, Bob Newhart was guest-hosting The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Don Rickles was guesting, mainly to plug his then-current sitcom, CPO Sharkey, which taped right across the hall from The Tonight Show. During the spot, Mr. Rickles accidentally broke the cigarette box that had been in permanent residence on Mr. Carson's desk.

The next night, Carson was back and a bit was arranged to capitalize on the moment. As you watch this, it may be helpful to remember that while Johnny did his best to make it all look spontaneous and unarranged, it had to have been carefully planned. Rickles probably was not in on it and may have been genuinely surprised...but Johnny's producers and director must have been prepared for what transpired, and the producers of CPO Sharkey almost certainly knew. (At the moment Johnny entered, Don just "happened" to be shooting on the set closest to that door. The surprise wouldn't have worked as well if they'd been on one of the other sets. It wouldn't have worked at all if they they'd been between scenes or taping a portion of the show that Rickles wasn't in.)

Carson's show was taped in Studio 1 at NBC Burbank. The Rickles sitcom was in Studio 3, where Leno now tapes. These studios are side by side and share a common corridor of dressing rooms and a make-up department. You'll see Carson, in a seeming impulse move, take his microphone and cameras across the hall to interrupt Don's taping. (If you look carefully on the left side of the screen as Johnny crosses that corridor, you'll catch a quick glimpse of the late and legendary Pat McCormick, who was then one of Carson's writers. He's the tall guy with the mustache.)

While David Letterman would later make this kind of "wandering the halls" bit commonplace on his NBC show, this was done at a time when Dave was still showcasing for no money at The Comedy Store. I remember seeing Johnny burst in on Don that night and I laughed my fool head off. Later, when I knew enough about the teevee biz to realize it had been planned, my admiration for Johnny's ability only grew. Doesn't he give a great performance, making you think it was all something that just occurred to him on the spot?

So enjoy your new, all-time favorite clip on this site. And thank Peter Avellino for letting me know about it.

• Posted at 9:43 PM · LINK

The Masked Senator

One United States Senator has placed a "hold" on a bill that would make federal spending more transparent by establishing an open database of it. Which Senator has stopped this bill? We don't know...which is somehow appropriate. Why shouldn't a bill to let us know where our money is going be killed by a Senator who won't let us know who he is?

As it happens, this is an issue that unites a lot of activists on both the Left and the Right. Many in both camps see the need for this database and have joined together to try and figure out which Senator placed the secret hold. Each Senator's office is being contacted and asked for a clear denial.

As of this moment, we seem to be down to six suspects...six Senators who've declined to deny they did the deed. Smart money seems to be on Ted Stevens of Alaska. In case you aren't scoring at home, he's the Senator who's in charge of laws governing the Internet but who keeps making statements that makes it clear he doesn't have a clue what the Internet is. He's also the Senator who threw what the Washington Post called a "hissy fit" when it was proposed that his state not get $453 million dollars of federal funds in order to build a bridge that would only serve a handful of people.

Here's the current tally. You still have time to get a bet down.

• Posted at 9:15 PM · LINK

Sick Society

If you live in California, you might be surprised to learn that our Legislature is on the verge of passing a bill that would set up a system of Universal Health Care in this state. It was proposed by State Senator Sheila Kuehl and if it goes the distance — Governor Arnold has vowed to veto — Ms. Kuehl will go into the history books for substantially more than having played Zelda Gilroy on the old Dobie Gillis TV show.

I don't know the details of the plan...though what the above-linked article says is encouraging. What I'm hoping is that this is not an Election Year stunt to force Schwarzenegger to spend a lot of time defending what would probably be an unpopular veto. On the other hand, his opponent doesn't seem to be getting too solidly behind the proposal, either.

Health care costs in this country have become insane...and in many ways, more threatening to human life than all the shoe-bombers in the world. I honestly don't understand why people who are so concerned about the lives of embryos and zygotes aren't more outraged that, once born, those embryos and zygotes so often exist without the ability to get adequate medical care. (That is not a dig at the so-called pro-lifers. I admire much about their cause and might even join it if the "all life must be preserved" mantra didn't seem to have so many loopholes.)

It isn't just that people die because they can't afford decent medical care. The crunch of the uninsured lowers the quality of health care for us all. Most emergency rooms are packed 24/7 because they're the only recourse for the uninsured when they get sick. As a result, they fill the waiting rooms to capacity. Last February when I went to the E.R. at Cedars-Sinai with my leg infection, the wait was around six hours to get in, and then another hour spent lying on a gurney in a corridor. This was after a Cedars-Sinai doctor has arranged for my admittance. I wasn't waiting for a doctor to look at my leg. He'd done that. I was waiting for the Emergency Room crew to just get around to handling my case and find me a room.

And while I was lying on that gurney, I saw them turning away people who were deathly ill or injured...because there were simply not enough beds for all of them. The scariest thing I saw or heard during my entire hospital stay was when a nurse told me this was — and I quote: "...a fairly light night around here."

The crunch is impossible. The bills can be formidable for the insured, prohibitive for the uninsured. People die because they can't afford health care...and they're just as dead as if they were on an upper floor of the World Trade Center. I hope the California plan goes through, proves workable and becomes a model for the entire nation. And while we're at it, the bill that will soon be on Schwarzenegger's desk that will cap carbon dioxide emissions — and which he says he will sign — may also make us a lot safer than all those things that aren't working in Iraq.

Who says there's no cause for optimism in the world today?

• Posted at 8:23 PM · LINK

Second Hand Ruse

So...you laid down the big bucks and you now have tickets to see Barbra Streisand in her upcoming concert tour. Everything is wonderful, right? Not so fast!

• Posted at 6:10 PM · LINK

The Crystal-Kirby Caper

I seem to be having a blog-to-blog discussion with Jeffrey Wells, who operates Hollywood Elsewhere. This is all about the allegations — which I think are thinner than Calista Flockhart in a waist-cincher — that Billy Crystal was somehow responsible for an alleged destruction of the career of the late Bruno Kirby. Wells writes...

I also know from limited experience that when the word goes out on an actor or actress that he/she is bad news and/or more trouble than he/she is worth or has made an enemy of a very important person, etc., people pick up on this and they tend to steer away from him/her. It's cowardly but people do this. Actors can go cold for long periods of time, and sometimes the cold streak starts when a big name hands them a black spot.

Once again, I'm not saying Crystal did this to Kirby — I don't know anything — but I know that if a certain heavyweight decides to shun an actor, other heavyweights pick up on this and figure, "If there's a 1 in 100 chance I might alienate that heavyweight actor-director by hiring this character actor, why do it? Why not just hire someone else?" This is a town, trust me, that runs on terror, avoidance and backbones made of jelly.

Yeah, but here's why that probably does not apply in this case. First off, no one knows what happened between Crystal and Kirby...or even that anything did. If I were a cowardly, craven filmmaker and I heard some semi-credible, detailed story of Billy and Bruno fighting and of Billy screaming, "I'll never work with that S.O.B. again," I might think it would matter to Billy Crystal if I hired Bruno Kirby. But we haven't heard any such tales, which means they haven't been particularly widespread. Billy Crystal hasn't handed out any known black spots.

And even if he did, why should I care about alienating Billy Crystal? The man ain't exactly the most powerful guy in Hollywood or anything close to it. What do the top directors have to fear by incurring his wrath? That he might mispronounce their names next time he hosts the Oscars? I can understand not wanting to piss off Jerry Bruckheimer or Amy Pascal...but the worst thing Billy Crystal could do to an important director is to refuse to be in his next movie. Which would harm Crystal more than it would hurt any director, which is why he wouldn't do it.

Actually, I disagree with the premise that people in the industry are all afraid of alienating others. The two actors who seem to consistently place highest on all those "Most Powerful People in Hollywood" lists are Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise. There are folks out there defending them, to be sure...but there's no shortage of show business figures who are willing to be quoted as calling Gibson a racist drunk or to ridicule Cruise's sexuality or religion. Why would anyone who was willing to so pointedly get on those guys' bad sides be afraid of upsetting Billy Crystal?

Wells also makes a big thing out of the fact that in one interview, when asked about Kirby, Crystal said, "I think we're still friends." Wells thinks that's an obvious dodge and maybe it is...but we have no idea what he's dodging. I've had quarrels with people in the past and if you ask me about them today, I'll probably duck and weave and try not to reopen old wounds. In those disputes, I think I was right and the other party was wrong...but there's no advantage to me to resurrect an old battle and give my side of it, thereby baiting a former associate to rush out and give his side, inflaming matters and lessening the chance that we can ever bury the ol' hatchet.

Oops — look at the time. Got to get to bed. I think Jeffrey and I are pretty much agreeing that we don't know a lot about the alleged Crystal/Kirby feud and that's really the main point I was trying to make. One of the many things I've learned about Hollywood is that sometimes, the truth isn't as interesting as the speculation. So it's a lot more fun to play in the speculation...and easy to forget that that's all it is. Good night from Tinsel Town.

• Posted at 2:54 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Yep, it's another clip from the 1985 Night of 100 Stars special. This one will take a little under seven minutes of your life but you'll see a lot of famous faces and you'll learn the history of the Actor's Fund, a show biz charity that does good work. Who, as Mr. Gershwin used to ponder, could ask for anything more? Certainly not us.

• Posted at 12:10 AM · LINK