Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Today's Video Link

Speaking of speakers: Lee Hester, who runs a couple of fine comic book shops in California, was at the CAPS Banquet the other night when Stan Lee was honored for...well, partly for his work and partly for just being Stan. Mr. Hester shot some video of Stan's acceptance speech and an excerpt from that speech is our video link for today. The gentleman standing to the left in the frame is CAPS President Bill Morrison and you can catch glimpses of me standing at the right.

• Posted at 12:38 AM · LINK

Hollywood History

In the midst of the current labor unrest in the business I sometimes like to call Show Business, some of you might be interested in a little background on the Writers Guild and how tough it was to get it started. Pat Sierchio wrote an article for the Guild's magazine that lays it out pretty well.

And I'll even toss in my favorite anecdote about the formation of the Writers Guild, which involved Louis B. Mayer. A lot of people still think the legendary Mayer was the president of M.G.M., the movie studio he ran. Actually, during that era, a man named Nick Schenck was president. Mayer was just the guy who ran the studio.

Okay, so the Screenwriters Guild has just been formed and several other unions are springing up on the lot. This is shortly after the bombing at Pearl Harbor and a wave of patriotism and a willingness to sacrifice has swept the nation. Mayer calls all the studio employees to a big meeting, which is held at lunch hour so it's on the employees' time, not his. He gets up in front of them and makes an impassioned speech about how the U.S. is in trouble and there are menaces that must be fought and how since God blesses America, it will win but cannot take that for granted. Everyone must give maximum effort in everything they do and that includes the making of movies to entertain the country and the troops. It would be unreasonable and even treasonous if the unions — especially that new Screenwriters' one — did anything to impeded production or cost the studio money. Not in time of war.

It's a very convincing speech and some people in the room even buy it. And then, confident he's closed the deal, Mayer proposes a toast. Everyone in the hall picks up a glass of something liquid and raises it as Mayer proclaims...

"Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you a toast to our great president...Nicholas M. Schenck."

• Posted at 12:37 AM · LINK

Judy, Judy, Judy!

The other day here, we were discussing this video clip which ends with Judy Garland singing one note for an amazingly (but not impossible) long time. I wondered if it was an audio trick and if anyone had inside info to say for sure. Well, no one did...but about eighty people, some of them audio engineers, wrote to say that it looked pretty phony to them. No one wrote to say they thought she really sang that last note live. The majority isn't always right but I think, in this case, I go with them.

• Posted at 12:21 AM · LINK