Sunday, October 14, 2007

From the E-Mailbag...

This is from someone named Arturo8...

I don't understand something about your post on the WGA and Animation. On the net today I am reading many pieces about it and they all say the Writers Guild does not cover animation writing. You say they sometimes do. What is the explanation here?

I usually cringe when people talk like this but the answer is that they're wrong and I'm right. The Writers Guild of America covers some animation projects. As I mentioned, the Simpsons Movie was written under a WGA contract. [Correction] The Simpsons TV show is written under a WGA contract. King of the Hill, Futurama and Family Guy are written under WGA contracts. I have written animation projects under WGA contracts. Quite a few shows and movies have been written under WGA contracts. I just received an e-mail from Neil Gaiman informing me that he and Roger Avary wrote the animated feature, Beowulf, under a WGA contract.

To repeat for emphasis: There are some animation projects that are covered by the WGA. There are some that are covered by The Animation Guild, which is a local of I.A.T.S.E. There are also animation projects produced that are covered by no union at all...and I should add one other category, lest folks get confused: There are projects where the WGA represents the writers and The Animation Guild represents the animators and other artists. The Simpsons would be the best example of this.

While I'm at it, let me clarify another piece of misinformation going around. As we all know, the networks buy a lot of so-called "reality shows" that claim not to employ writers. And as we also know, there isn't as much "reality" in those shows as they claim, and there are writers but they're disguised under other names to try and keep the show out of WGA jurisdiction.

The misinformation is that "reality shows" were invented to circumvent the WGA and the misinformer sometimes cites as the first two examples, Real People and That's Incredible! This is wrong. First of all, Real People and That's Incredible! were WGA-covered shows...and some other shows that fall under the category of "reality" have been WGA shows. Secondly, there have always been TV shows, including prime time shows, that tried to get by without employing WGA scribes...and even succeeded. Many game shows, including (I think) all the Goodson-Todman shows like What's My Line? and I've Got A Secret were non-WGA. They sometimes had writers disguised under other credits...but this is not a new trick and it's also one that only goes so far. It is essential to the health of the networks to have plenty of the other kind of programming, the kind that requires WGA writers.

There are a couple of key issues in the current labor negotiation, one being the issue of sharing revenues from new technologies. Perhaps equally important is the question of jurisdiction. The WGA covers most but not all TV and movie writing. For obvious reasons, the union would like to cover more and the Producers would like them to cover less. You'll be hearing more about this...but don't listen to anyone who tells you the WGA doesn't cover animation...or that reality shows like Real People were invented as a trick to get around the Writers Guild.

• Posted at 2:01 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Stephen Colbert turns New York Times op-ed columnist.

• Posted at 9:55 AM · LINK

Earl Bennett, R.I.P.

Earl Bennett, who performed with Spike Jones and the City Slickers, died October 4 at the age of 87. When he worked with Spike, he went by the name Sir Frederick Gas and played a wide array of musical instruments, many of which were not instruments at all. He could get notes out of hitting two pieces of lumber together or blowing on a leaf. He also belched a lot to music — ergo, the name.

Earl Fred Bennett was born November 5, 1919 in Kansas and grew up pursuing the dual paths of music and art. He studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1938 to 1941 before serving in World War II. In the service, he got to playing occasionally with military bands and appearing in shows so after his discharge, he gravitated in that direction. He toured for a time with a night club act featuring novelty music and appeared in Ken Murray's stage revues. In 1947, Bennett's act caught the attention of Spike Jones, who was then at the peak of his popularity and recording songs that employed the kind of odd sounds in which Bennett specialized. Spike hired him on and assigned him the handle of Sir Frederick Gas, which had previously been a gag credit on several of the City Slickers records.

Bennett appeared with the band on records, on radio, in movies and on Jones's 1954 TV series. He vocalized (often doing a Yiddish accent) and played odd instruments and even built some of the outrageous props that the orchestra employed. But after the '54 series, he decided there wasn't much future in that kind of act, and he was also tired of touring...so he got into film production, mainly as an editor but occasionally as a sound effects specialist. He worked for U.P.A. on the Mr. Magoo cartoons (he edited Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, among many other productions) and later became a long, friendly fixture at Hanna-Barbera Productions, working on all their shows from around 1965 on. He occasionally worked with Joe Siracusa, another member of the Spike Jones band who became a film editor.

I got to meet Earl at H-B and pester him with questions about his days with Spike. He spoke fondly of those days and of the people with whom he worked — Spike, especially — but insisted he was glad to be out of it. I'm told that after he retired, his career went full circle and he returned to painting, which he did until worsening eyesight forced him to stop. We miss you already, Sir Frederick.

Here's Earl "Sir Frederick Gas" Bennett performing the lead vocal in a Spike Jones classic...

• Posted at 12:15 AM · LINK