Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Tuesday Evening

A bunch of "loose ends" to tie up tonight...

• Jackie Estrada, who's one of the folks who brings us the Comic-Con International each year, says it's definitely Russ Manning in that photo. How does she know? Well, she took the photo. That's a pretty good reason to listen to her.
• Two different folks who attended tapings of Thank God You're Here confirmed my suspicion that the spontaneous sketches were somewhat edited for broadcast. The scenes felt edited so even if they weren't, that's not a good thing. The ratings were not wonderful for a heavily-promoted debut so the question now is whether NBC will try to fix it or bail. If they try to fix it, I'd suggest three words — do it live — but they'll never do it. One of the things that I think will eventually doom most reality shows is how little "reality" is in them. At least, I haven't seen a moment yet which the producers couldn't have anticipated, prepared for or even configured.
• I haven't written anything about Don Imus because...well, I don't watch Don Imus. The few times I've caught a few minutes of his show, he seemed like a guy who didn't like anything: Didn't like his guests, didn't like the topics, didn't like his employers. I remember the guy when he was starting out and he was occasionally funny and insightful back then. At some point though, the sour curmudgeon act seems to have consumed him and now he just sits there and says nasty things about everyone and everything. The only surprising thing about his recent racist/sexist remarks is that he got called on them. Instead of suspending him for two weeks, they oughta punish the guy by forcing him to say only positive things for two weeks. His face would probably shatter.
• I erred. I said the other day that my appearance on the Time Travel radio show this Friday would be at 4 PM West Coast Time. It's actually 4 PM East Coast Time so you can figure out when it happens where you are. Sorry. I've corrected the earlier posting.
• Lastly, one of the things you learn from having a weblog is that some people don't know how to read and some have no sense of humor. Every time I post anything even vaguely political, I get some insightful, reasoned rebuttals but I also get at least one message from someone debating a position I neither wrote nor hold. I also get an amazing number of e-mails from people who seem to be taking jokes seriously. So just to make sure everyone understands: I did not take my mother to McDonald's for her 85th birthday. My mother is a wonderful lady and she deserves the best. I took her to an Arby's.

• Posted at 8:54 PM · LINK

The Man Behind Richard Butner

Yesterday in this post, I gave you a photo taken at the Inkpot Awards Ceremony at the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con. Back then, the awards ceremony consisted only of the Inkpot Awards, which were bestowed by the convention committee. Later on, they added in the Eisner Awards and eventually, the Eisners squeezed the Inkpots out of their own ceremony. The Inkpots are now presented at daytime panels and other events. Also, in case anyone's puzzled about this: The Comic-Con International used to be called the San Diego Comic-Con, among other names.

Yesterday's photo was interesting because one rarely sees so many important, creative people in one snapshot and I was able to identify all but two of them. One, we've subsequently fingered as Jim Starlin...but there's another person in the photo whose face is blocked from the photographer's angle by Richard Butner, the convention chairperson. That's Richard you see with the beard in the above detail from the photo. A lot of my correspondents are now trying to guess who that person is behind Richard.

Many of them tried to guess by looking at the list of that year's Inkpot recipients. That year, the convention presented them to a couple of the convention committee members...but I can recognize all those people and I'm pretty sure it's not them. There were also Inkpots presented posthumously...to Vaughn Bode, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rod Serling and Larry "Seymour" Vincent. It's none of them, obviously. (Larry Vincent was a great horror movie host, by the way. Here's an article I wrote about him.)

The professional recipients in '75 were Brad Anderson, Robert Bloch, Daws Butler, Will Eisner, me, Gil Kane, Dick Moores, George Pal, Joe Shuster, Jerry Siegel, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Starlin, Jim Steranko and Theodore Sturgeon...and no, I don't know what I was doing in a list like that, either. I think someone had been watching them play "One of these things is not like the others" on Sesame Street. We've already identified Anderson, Butler, Eisner, Kane, Moores, Siegel, Starlin and Steranko in the photo so it's none of them. I don't think George Pal or Barry Windsor-Smith were at the convention. Windsor-Smith might have been but anyway, it doesn't look like him. It also doesn't look like Shuster or Sturgeon.

It's not me. I'm taller than that and never had hair or a jacket like that and anyway, I didn't go to the award ceremony that year because I found out in advance that I was getting one. (They were badly-kept secrets back then. I think Alberto Gonzales's staff was in charge of security.) Anyway, I'll tell you some time why I didn't attend but for now, you just need to know it isn't me.

I thought it could be Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, among other works...and I'm not 100% certain it isn't. But then Bob Foster sent me an e-mail and he's sure it's Russ Manning. I'm not positive but that's a much better guess. True, Manning didn't win an Inkpot that year but then neither did Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Bob Clampett and June Foray, all of whom are in the photo. All of them, like Russ, received Inkpots in 1974, which was the first year of those awards. I think in '75, the convention got all the past winners who were present up there to pose with the new recipients and I'm pretty sure Russ was present. In fact, I believe he accepted the Inkpot for Edgar Rice Burroughs. Russ was then drawing the Tarzan newspaper strip.

So in the absence of more or better evidence, I'll say it's Russ Manning. Anyone got a better deduction? If it's Russ and if you could see that, it would make the photo even more impressive.

• Posted at 9:00 AM · LINK

Ad-Liberty

I remember one of the many times I attended the taping of what turned out to be an unsold pilot. The Big Network Guys sat through the whole thing and then (I heard later) went to the producer and said, "There's a good show here but you haven't found it yet."

I felt that way about the first two episodes of Thank God You're Here, which aired last night on NBC. If you didn't see it, here's the premise: An actor is dressed in a costume and then shoved into a sketch with no preparation. It's not exactly improv because the other actors in the scene have rehearsed and been provided with what I assume is a loose script, configured to force the unprepped actor to furiously ad-lib. Dave Foley, formerly of Kids in the Hall, sits as a kind of judge and at the end, he awards a trophy to whichever of the four actors in that hour has done the best job of making up his or her part on the spot. David Alan Grier is the host.

The "game" here is not new. It's played often in improv classes, though usually the scene isn't as structured and no one (not just one actor) has had any rehearsal or prep. I also, oddly enough, recall this was a recurring feature on the 1963 Jerry Lewis talk show where Jerry showed uncommon courage in being the unprepared actor in a weekly sketch that was broadcast live. The sketches on Thank God You're Here are not live, of course, and I had the sense that they were taped long and edited. I hope I'm wrong.

So how'd I like the show? I liked some of each episode. I thought Edie McClurg and Wayne Knight were the best improvisers in the two hours though neither got the trophy from Dave Foley. (I'm not sure what qualifies Foley to judge. Then again, what qualifies Simon Cowell?) But my main problem was that the games were overexplained and overhyped and then underperformed. Most of the scenes just didn't live up to the created expectation. To tell the truth, I was most impressed with the skills of the "ensemble cast" — the other actors in the scenes: Nyima Funk, Maribeth Monroe, Brian Palermo and Chris Tallman.

I have the TiVo set and I'll watch, at least for a while because I love good improv and this has the potential to turn into it. But it's going to have to be more than just a show about clueless actors struggling to get to the end of a sketch. We've had enough of that on Saturday Night Live.

By the way: The show makes a big deal about the fact that there's no script...and indeed, no writers are credited, nor did I see any job descriptions there like "program consultants" or "creative consultants" that are traditionally used to disguise a writing staff. But the end credits did list a Script Supervisor, two Script Coordinators and two Script Assistants. So, uh, why do you need those five people if there's no script?

• Posted at 2:41 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

We have here a terrific concert performance of "A Little Priest," the Act One closer of the musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I guess most of you know that this is the play with a book by Hugh Wheeler and songs by Stephen Sondheim. The next paragraph is just for those of you unfamiliar with the plot...

Sweeney Todd is a man who has returned to his home town after fifteen years in a penal colony on bogus charges. Having lost everything, he now lives only for revenge on humanity in general and more specifically on those he blames for his ordeal. In this scene, he's making a pact with a lady named Mrs. Lovett who operates a store that bakes and sells meat pies. Their partnership will be based on him killing people and her using their remains to make pies. A lovely arrangement.

Mrs. Lovett is played here by Patti LuPone, one of the great stars of the musical stage. Mr. Todd is played by George Hearn, one of my favorite musical performers. I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Hearn years ago and told that story here. This clip may give you a little idea of why I was so enthused about writing something that he'd be performing...

• Posted at 1:07 AM · LINK