In case you're keeping score, Letterman's producers have moved Donald Trump from the Wednesday show to Friday, displacing Tracy Morgan. (Friday's show, by the way, will be taped on Wednesday.) I should also mention that Thursday night's show will have a musical number from Young Frankenstein.
We love most of the comic book style fonts that our friends over at Comicraft make and offer to the public, and you'll even see a few of them in evidence on this site. If you've been thinking of ordering any of them, tomorrow is the day. In honor of the New Year, all fonts are $20.08 — including some that ordinarily sell for $19.00. Forget those and buy the more expensive ones cheap by clicking on this link tomorrow. We don't make a buck off this. We just like to tell you about bargains.
Mike Huckabee had a press conference this morning that has even his devout supporters scratching their heads, wondering what the hell he was thinking. It's like the guy had just decided to remake Skidoo, only odder.
Basically, he announced that his reps had prepared an attack ad slamming Mitt Romney but that he [Huckabee] wasn't going to use it. And then, just to show that he'd made something he didn't want America to see, he then ran it for reporters.
The commercial accuses Romney of being dishonest, a comment that Huckabee and his crew have made in other ways in other venues. So he said it and he stands by it and he clearly wants that message out there...but he's electing not to use the ad because he doesn't want that kind of commercial (the kind he made, the one that's all over the Internet by now) to represent him. Or something like that.
I'm tempted to write out the question that I'd like to see Jay Leno put to the man when he has him in the guest chair on Wednesday. But I can't. There's a strike on.
So...is Bill Maher going back to work without his writers? The HBO site says that all new episodes of Real Time begin on January 11, and Maher is listed on the CBS site as David Letterman's first guest this Thursday, which suggests the man has something to plug.
Robin Williams is Dave's first guest on the Wednesday night return. He may or may not be followed by Donald Trump, who wanted to appear because he has a new show to plug and also because a week ago when he was booked for that night, he thought he'd be able to cross a picket line on the way in. He always enjoys that. Anyway, the CBS website says Williams and Trump will be the guests, followed by musical guest Shooter Jennings. A piece in the N.Y. Times said that Trump will move to another night.
Letterman's first guest on Friday night is listed as Tracy Morgan. Maher and Morgan are both entertaining guys but I would have expected bigger names for this "return" week. Leno, meanwhile, has Mike Huckabee on Wednesday night. Which I guess means Huckabee is writing off the union vote.
No word yet on who else Leno will have on or who'll be crossing picket lines to guest with O'Brien and Kimmel. The shows are keeping the names secret as long as possible to prevent the guests from being pressured and perhaps backing out. Massive protests are planned for outside the studios. If you ever really wanted to hobnob with stars, you might want to go to NBC Burbank on Wednesday and join the picketing.
Tom Lehrer stopped performing long ago...but in 1998, he sat down at the piano again as part of a gala tribute to producer Cameron Mackintosh. Here is a video of his performance and if you like it, thank Robert Spina. He told me about it...
One of the weirdest movies ever made will be on your TV shortly...that is, if you get Turner Classic Movies. I do want to make clear that though I write a lot about this film, I am not (repeat: NOT) telling you that Skidoo is a great movie and that you will admire the brilliant filmmaking skills on display. This is a movie to make your jaw hang open in astonishment and to cause you to mumble, "What the hell were they thinking?" Or maybe "What the hell were they smoking?"
There are a lot of such movies around but it's rare that you see one with so many familiar faces, including those of Jackie Gleason, half the cast of the Batman TV show, and Groucho Marx in his final screen appearance. I guess Groucho figured that after you've played God, anything else is anti-climactic.
I will suggest that this film has redeeming features, above and beyond its sheer camp value. Friends and I have had some spirited, enlightening discussions about what the movie business was going through in 1968, with studios and filmmakers floundering about, trying to grab onto a youth market that wasn't warming to the same old, same old. It also says something — the "what" is highly arguable but there's something — about the way the country was changing and leaving some people (Otto Preminger, obviously among them) behind.
Anyway, I suggest you watch or tape or TiVo. But I have to warn you that this is not Gone with the Wind. Then again, it also isn't The Gong Show Movie, either. (It has long amused me that those two movies appear, one after the other, in Leonard Maltin's movie guide.)
From a 1984 episode of Entertainment Tonight, here's Leonard Maltin reporting on the enduring popularity of Rocky and Bullwinkle, complete with interviews with Bill Scott and June Foray, and them staging a mock recording session for the camera.
Bill was, of course, more than the voice of Bullwinkle and other key characters in the Jay Ward cartoons. He was Jay's co-producer and head writer...and much of the wonderful humorous style of those shows was Bill's humor. At the time this Entertainment Tonight segment was done, Bill was a little frustrated that plans for more projects of the Moose and Squirrel kept falling through...which was due more to business problems than the network interference he complains about. Not that the then-current pressure to launder cartoons and make them "socially redeeming" was not a formidable obstacle.
Still, he had hopes. Shortly after the time this was taped, Bill and I and a brilliant actor named Frank Welker began working on a Dudley Do-Right project. It was humming along nicely until late '85 when Bill passed away.
Happily, June is still around to bask in the love that so many of us have for those films. Her autobiography, which Earl Kress and I are assisting her with, should be out in '08.
Here's a few minutes of Bill and June from 1984...
I mentioned in the previous post that I didn't recall Tumbleweeds ever appearing in any Los Angeles newspaper...and I didn't. Apparently, it was in the L.A. Times for several years. I don't think I read it there. I think I discovered it in the paperback collections.
This may sound odd but I used to be a voracious fan of newspapers...and a great fan of newspaper strips. But for some reason, I never really liked reading newspaper strips in newspapers. My affection for certain strips is based almost wholly on getting them in collections. This probably has something to do with having been reared in the era of television (I was born in '52) and reading so many comic books...getting my entertainment in larger, immediate increments instead of a tiny piece at a time.
I was going to write that this impatience can only be more intense for a generation that has always had the Internet available to it...but maybe not. Maybe, just as they can get used to checking their favorite websites every morning, folks are becoming more accepting of serialization...not that they'll ever go back to paper newspapers. But I wonder if "these kids today" are more or less likely than I was/am to enjoy following something day to day, as opposed to getting it all in one lump.
Can't let today end without waving goodbye to Tumbleweeds, the long-running newspaper strip which made its final appearance in today's funny pages. The western-themed feature made its debut in 1965 and now its creator, Tom K. Ryan, is retiring and taking his characters with him. I don't recall it ever appearing in any Los Angeles newspapers. I discovered it in the seventies via its paperback reprints, of which there have been more than twenty volumes over the years. It was a pretty funny little strip and once you got enchanted with Ryan's townspeople and Indians, impossible to resist. A lot of folks are going to miss it.
There is much to say about the supposed Pie Face game from Hasbro that was the subject of this morning's Video Link. Here's a couple of examples from the flurry of messages I've received, starting with this one from my pal Marvin Silbermintz, who has nothing better to do at the moment since he's a writer for Jay Leno. Before that, he was a game designer for Ideal Toys and he offers what he calls an educated guess...
I think it was actually manufactured. The product in the commercial doesn't seem to be a hand-made prototype:
The yellow base is made of two pieces, glued together at the very visible seam. So they actually made a mold, which is very expensive and not done unless the item will go into production. (Unless.....it was a cheap vacuum-formed mold that forms a sheet of plastic into the shape you want. That's a small possibility.)
The yellow base also seems to have inset screw-holes, which a modelmaker wouldn't have bothered to drill.
The red hand has a hole in the center, presumably to accomodate a 'pin' on the dish that guides the factory worker who glues them together.
The artwork on the board has a copyright notice below the name 'PIE FACE' — a detail that would be left out if it was just a prototype.
I can't see the box clearly, but it seems to have lots of detail, and cover art that was more than a magic marker sketch. More evidence that it was actually produced.
Toy companies as big as Hasbro expected about half of their new items to fail. So this could have been a real stinker that sounded great during the brainstorming sessions, but bombed. These items were shipped back to the manufacturer (it's not like the book business) who would sell them to junk stores. (Sometimes a deal was made with the original purchaser to sell them off at a very low price.)
And there were lots of reasons for it to fail...
Parents would think it was too messy for their house.
Parents realized the cost of whipped-cream would soon be more than the cost of the toy.
Customers like to get everything they need in the box. (Except paper, a pencil, or water.) So why buy it and have to buy whipped cream too? You could have almost the same gameplay with a paper plate and whipped cream.
The whole thing is just too clumsy. And big — the box looks like it's twice as big as the average action toy. That's extra cost for shipping and storing.
I guess I should be grateful this strike has given me more time for my true passion; Fifties Action Game Reverse Engineering and Retroanalysis.
And that's probably a lot funnier than anything Jay's going to be doing on Wednesday. Your deductions, Sherlock Silbermintz, are spot-on and though many an e-mailer joined me in wondering about this game we couldn't recall ever hearing about, it was real. A likeness of the box is posted above (thank you, Sid) and I have much testimony in e-mail, such as this from John Schwengler...
I seem to remember it from when I was in Grade Two (which would be around '67-'68) — a friend had gotten one for his birthday. Basically, it was a laminated cardboard screen with a clear plastic "bag" in the centre (gee, I wonder if the idea of a kid pressing his face into a plastic bag as he turned the spring, possibly asphyxiating himself may have something to do with it vanishing). If I remember (from the one time we played with it), the pie kept slipping off of the paddle after a couple of turns, it was messy and it turned into a war with the can of spray shaving cream (two cans of cream and a group of seven year olds — we didn't need a game!)
I do know that Hasbro re-released a product under the same name in the early nineties (I thought it was the original!) but it was more of a board and card game with no splat. Too bad.
Gary L. had this to say...
I saw your entry about Pie Face, and I can assure you the game actually did exist, because I owned it! I never saw the commercial you linked to, but I became aware of the game in a more interesting way: it was demonstrated by Johnny Carson, during a Tonight Show segment about new toys!
I was always a huge Soupy Sales fan, and thought this game was my best opportunity to get hit with a pie (as well as all my friends) without getting in any trouble. The game was actually a lot of fun, especially if you played without the protective plastic mask (strictly for cowards).
Alas, my Pie Face game is long gone, but I have seen it show up occasionally on eBay. That game, along with the Eldon Bowl-a-Matic (also a rarity), were probably my two favorite toys of the 60's.
Chris Smigliano remembers it, too...
I remembered those commercials, too, and yep, it existed. When I was a wee first grader in Catholic School, they actually used one of those things during a school fair. I don't think I tried it myself, but I remember someone complaining that there was no cream they could use for the pie. The only option was to be hit in the face with a plain round piece of foam rubber.
Which is always fun. Here's a message from Marc Thorner...
Here is a memory for you. I remember watching an episode of the old Merv Griffin Show when he use to demonstrate the latest gadget and toys for the holiday season. What I remember about this was that he played Pie Face with his cohort, Arthur Treacher. What I
remember was that bit was funny in that Mr. Treacher was the one who got pied and that Merv made a big deal out of over doing it with the
whipped cream. Man, the crap I do remember...
I think I do vaguely recall Johnny or maybe Merv showing the game. I'm just pretty sure I never saw the commercial and (speaking of remembering crap), I usually remember the commercials better than the shows. I think it's pretty obvious why this one never caught on. Isn't the premise of a pie-in-the-face that the person doesn't want to get hit with a puss full of cream? The game not only made it voluntary but inevitable...plus, of course, all the safety gear really made it sterile and non-spontaneous.
For the record: Soupy Sales used to get whacked with pie shells full of some brand of shaving cream that didn't sting the eyes. Some did but Soupy had found one or two that didn't. The shaving cream clung to the face better than anything edible and it cleaned up much, much easier. When I visited the set of his seventies show, I saw them using a Wet-Vac style vacuum cleaner to effortlessly suck it off Soupy's set and even his chest...and it wiped clean from his face with a towel without even disturbing his make-up that much. I got to lob one of the pies at him in a sketch that involved him being hit with around forty or so of 'em and I swear...two minutes after it was done, there wasn't a trace of shaving cream on the set or Soupy, and he was ready to tape the next spot. Isn't science wonderful?
PBS has a couple of things coming up this week that I haven't seen but which may be of interest to the kind of person who'd come to a site like this...
New Year's Day (the night before in a few cities), they're running Words and Music by Jerry Herman, a new documentary on the man who wrote the scores for Hello, Dolly and Mack & Mabel and La Cage aux Folles and so many others. Further details are available over on this page.
Then on Wednesday, most PBS stations will run the first of four one-hour documentaries entitled Pioneers of Television that explore great old programs of the past. The first is about situation comedies and the second is about late night programming. This webpage will give you more info.
Like I said, I haven't seen any of this. But I will. Keep in mind that some PBS affiliates seem to delight in running the network's programming at the oddest times...or not at all.
There are now more theories about how Benazir Bhutto died than there are about John F. Kennedy. I vote for the one about Bhutto being slain by an army of Cubans hiding on the grassy knoll.
It's been a while since we dug into the ol' Strike Mailbag. Let's start with this one from Bolera, whoever he or she is...
I'm reading on some boards that many WGA members are mad about the settlement with David Letterman's company and may go back to work and break the strike. Do you think that's really going to happen? And in light of that, do you think the deal with Dave was a bad idea?
I don't think that's really going to happen. I mean, there are probably a few guys out there who have been itching all along to cross the picket lines and go back to work, and who've been waiting for some excuse to be outraged and do so. You have that in any union. So far in this strike, I've seen a lot less of that than I did in the four previous WGA strikes where I carried a picket sign. In each of those, we had a band of name writers announcing — and not anonymously — that if the strike wasn't settled in X days or weeks, they were going to return to work and sabotage (or quit) their own union. In '85, we had a large group that said that before the strike, before we'd even gotten the AMPTP's "final" (and terrible) offer.
As far as I know, none of those threats were ever really acted upon. In 1985, the strike did collapse before the dissidents had to make good on theirs. In other years, anyone in that position kept postponing the pulling of the trigger until it became moot. Interestingly, I can think of at least three writers who made such pronouncements in years past and are among the most militant members supporting the current strike.
So far, what I've seen is probably what you've seen: A few anonymous people posting such threats on the Internet...or warning that they know of vast quantities of unnamed showrunners who are convening and agreeing to head back to work any day now. Some of these messages are obviously bogus and I don't necessarily think they're AMPTP plants trying to undermine us. Some may be WGA members who wouldn't actually risk their own careers to take that action but who want to nudge their Guild to make more concessions and end the strike sooner.
We seem, as a Guild, to be very much together on the position that there must be a real share in New Media before a contract will be acceptable. On other issues, there's a majority but not as overwhelming a one. I had a friendly debate the other day with a writer who believes — and I think he's dead wrong about this — that if we only drop the notorious Six Demands, the AMPTP will scurry back to the table and give us everything we want in DVDs and Internet Streaming. Yeah, and if he also loses ten more pounds, Rebecca Romijn will leave her husband and move in with him.
Frankly, observing from afar, I think workable compromises are possible on a couple of those areas...and the ones about Fair Market Value and Distributor's Gross are too important to abandon. Those two are about closing the loopholes that allow studios to agree contractually to pay us a fair share...and then not pay it. Giving those up is like getting someone to agree to give you a share of the profits but granting them the power to define what constitutes profit.
I'd also add that just because you read an anonymous message in which someone says "I'm a WGA member and a staff writer on an NBC series," it doesn't mean the guy who wrote that message doesn't really work in the stockroom at Best Buy. I have an acquaintance who sends me a tirade about once a week — a fellow who occasionally sells a comic book script or two. He's angry that he doesn't sell more. He's furious that he's never gotten a TV job or sold any of the dozens of screenplays he's written. And he's especially livid that we've walked out on jobs that he would do for free, and which I suspect he's now offering to do for almost free. But no one wants his work...which, by the way, I'm not knocking at all. I've never read any of it. It could be brilliant for all I know, and he could just be doing a rotten job of selling it or having bad luck. (I suspect the former and that it's only going to get worse. The more desperate and bitter you seem, the less likely anyone is to even read your scripts or consider hiring you.)
Anyway, I'd wager that this guy — or others like him — are writing some of those messages, trying to gin up a little Schadenfreude. Look it up if you don't know the word. There's a lot of it in our profession. Some are probably nurturing the fantasy that not only will the strike collapse but that the producers will all say, "Let's never hire any of those people again. Let's find all our writers from now on by checking out the stockroom at Best Buy."
The deal with Letterman's company has probably put a very small dent in WGA solidarity for some while at the same time heartening a much larger number of members. If it's followed in the next week or two by other such interim contracts — especially if there are some significant independent movie companies in there — it'll be seen as a brilliant strategic move. Even now, most WGA members are not unhappy to see someone going back to work, especially since it's Dave's crew, which has been as supportive and loyal as anyone on the picket lines. I was leery of it at first but the more I think about it, the more I think it was a good gamble.
Our next question is from Shel Weisman...
So Letterman's writers go back to work and Craig Ferguson's do, as well. Does this mean no picket lines around the places they tape their shows? Doesn't Ferguson tape at the main CBS studio?
Well, it definitely means no picketing of the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York where Letterman does his show. In the case of Mr. Ferguson, he does tape at CBS Television City at Beverly and Fairfax, and that would ordinarily present a problem: How do we picket CBS, which we're still on strike against, without picketing Craig Ferguson? As it happens, the WGA decided two weeks ago to stop picketing that CBS facility, which is where I picket, and to move those picket teams over to Paramount. Picketing will continue at the CBS lot in the Valley.
I wondered at the time why we were abandoning Beverly/Fairfax since that's a very visible, important place to demonstrate. Maybe it was because they anticipated this deal. We have some pretty sharp folks strategizing so it wouldn't surprise me.
From "Dina B" comes this query...
So how do you think Leno without writers will fare against Dave with writers? I like both guys and would like to see the WGA show do better but fear that America long ago decided it liked Jay over Dave and that that's how it will go.
I don't know what'll happen because it's so unprecedented. A lot of it will depend on guests. Can Jay and his staff get enough interesting people to cross the picket line and come on? Will all the Big Names stampede to Letterman? Or if Jay's show is a disaster, will more people enjoy watching the train wreck over there? I have no idea. The first few nights both shows are back, the ratings probably won't be indicative of anything other than which way the Curiosity Factor is playing out. After a bit, some sort of trend will set in and I'm guessing it'll be a stronger Letterman show and a weaker Leno one, even if Dave does not retake the lead.
Jay Leno's a very nice, hard-working fellow who in the past has demonstrated an uncanny willingness to extend himself to help others and to do what's right. I think he got some very unfair, undeserved slams during the Tonight Show Wars, painted as a guy who elbowed the King aside and seized the throne away from its rightful heir. That was nonsense. He's always been one of the good guys and he's also a much better ad-libber than a lot of people think.
Unfortunately for him, he'll be hampered not only by the guest problem but by this lovely Catch-22: The funnier his show is and the more he does what he does best, which is monologue-style jokes, the more he's going to be accused of scabbing and employing scabs. I don't think a lot of folks resent him going back. He does have a perfectly valid, legal contractual obligation as a performer. He does have a staff (a very fine staff) that was about to be laid off. He did, at considerable personal expense, shut down for two months rather than to rush back on like Ellen DeGeneres. He has demonstrated his support for the strike and says he will continue to do so.
But if he goes out there and does a bad show, he's going to get hammered for that. And if he does a good one, he's going to get slammed for violating the rules of a strike he professes to support...and all of that effort is going to bolster a franchise that he's being forced to leave, anyway. So he's in a tough position, which is not to suggest I feel particularly sorry for the guy. I never feel that sorry for the career travails of anyone who makes that kind of money.
And our last question this time is from Billy Batson, who I'm guessing is not the kid who turns into Captain Marvel, but is actually someone who just like those comic books...
I don't understand how the WGA can fight for jurisdiction over Animation from the studios. Isn't that some other union's job? Or isn't it up to the people who write Animation to decide what union they want to have represent them?
The Animation Guild, Local 839, has jurisdiction over some Animation Writing. At the moment, it's a majority but it's not exclusive. The WGA has jurisdiction over some, as well. There's a lot that is not covered by either. Obviously, it's a long-range goal for the WGA to cover all of it but that's way in the future, maybe on some other planet. The immediate battleground is those jobs that are completely unrepresented for collective bargaining. We want to give those writers the opportunity to elect, if they wish, to have the WGA represent them. (Full Disclosure: I have occasionally been one such writer.)
That "if they wish" is a key point to remember because the AMPTP is talking like we're asking them to just give us jurisdiction over everyone, regardless of what those writers want. Not so. First off, the writers working at studios signed with 839 are not in play. Nothing in the current negotiations (or probably the next one or the one after that, etc.) will affect their status. Insofar as the rest are concerned, what the WGA is asking for is for the AMPTP to get out of the way and not prevent a standard, garden-variety National Labor Relations Board action wherein those writers would get to vote for WGA representation if that's what they want. The AMPTP knows they will almost all want it.
We're making a completely reasonable demand here: Just let the basic process work. I hope the WGA doesn't get steamrollered into dropping it. I mean, I know that at some point, we're going to have to drop a couple of items on our Wish List that we really, really want and should get. We're expecting the studios to drop a couple of their fondest desires (like, say, to keep all the money from selling our work on the Internet) so we'll have to abandon some things. It would be a shame if this one had to go.
And right now, I have to go. Sorry this was so long. Tune in later today (maybe) for a long discussion of something that really matters: That Pie Face game.
Comedienne Beverly Wines, who went by the single stage name of Pudgy, was found dead of natural causes in her Las Vegas home the day before Christmas. Often described as a cross between Don Rickles and Totie Fields, Pudgy (which was usually written out as Pudgy!, with the exclamation point) got her start waiting tables in her native Chicago. She was a funny, acerbic waitress and more than a few patrons told her she belonged on the stage. She thought so, too...and wound up there, becoming a regular in Chicago night spots, especially the Pump Room.
Her career was intermittent, reportedly by choice. She valued raising a family more than stardom and only accepted performing gigs when she thought they wouldn't interfere. Sometimes, they were Vegas jobs and in 1993, when her kids were old enough, she moved to that town and began a string of long-term engagements, usually as emcee of hotel burlesque revues. I saw her when she hosted Crazy Girls, an otherwise unimpressive girlie show at the Riviera. Audiences came for the promise of nearly-naked women but they wound up clapping the hardest for the mistress of ceremonies who insulted them relentlessly when she wasn't mocking her own chubby appearance. She was fast and she was funny and an amazing percentage of her stream of conscious invective seemed to be ad-libbed on the spot.
I met her after the show and we wound up sitting in the lounge, talking over beverages, until she had to get back for the next performance. She said that it was a constant challenge — two shows nightly, three on weekends — to "win over" an audience that didn't come to see a fully-clad fat lady. She said that about half the time, someone in the audience would yell, "Put it on!" The joke didn't bother her but "they're always so smug, like they were the first person to ever think of that. Sometimes, they aren't even the first person that night to yell it out." At the performance I caught, she left the audience wishing there'd been a little less of the naked women with the bad implants and more of the fully-clad fat lady.
Wish I could remember some of her lines to quote here. Most of them were funnier for their speed and attitude than for anything else so maybe they wouldn't translate. But I do remember thinking she deserved to work much bigger venues than the Crazy Girls Theater at the Riviera.
I occasionally write here about games and toys I remember from my childhood...but I absolutely do not recall ever hearing or seeing this one, even though it allegedly came out in 1968, a year when I watched every danged cartoon show I could. It's called Pie Face and apparently all it did was to enable you to hit yourself in the face with a pie in what looks like the safest, least fun way imaginable. It looks like it was designed by someone who actually could not grasp the basis for humor in the act of being hit with a pie.
A quick Internet search reveals no one writing about owning it or playing it...no antique toy dealers selling it...no eBay auctions of old Pie Face games...nothing. So I'm wondering if it was ever actually produced or if the commercial that is our link today was done for some sort of test marketing that did not yield an actual product. A few people on the 'net are looking for it. No one seems to have it. Is there anyone reading this who is prepared to swear on the good name of Soupy Sales that they actually owned and played Pie Face?
Here. Have a look at this thing and tell me if it looks familiar...
Our pal Dave Cockrum died last year. His lovely spouse Paty is selling off some of Dave's comic book collection and I'm going to direct you to this link so you can get some great comics for good prices and she can make some bucks. Truly a win/win situation.
Here's a number from the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls, which was a terrific production...one that made clear what a fine, well-crafted show Abe Burrows and Frank Loesser wrote. Before I saw this revival, I'd seen others which had not, especially one in 1980 that was directed by one of the show's original producers, Cy Feuer. Milton Berle starred as Nathan Detroit and mugged his way through the proceedings, winking at the audience and delivering asides that were not in the original text. The reviews said things like, "If you thought it was impossible to ruin Guys and Dolls, this new version will disabuse you of that notion." It played Los Angeles and San Francisco, allegedly to get the bugs out before they took it to Broadway. Instead, it closed in California and seems to have soured the theatrical community on further revivals for years after.
Mr. Feuer reportedly did not like the '92 version but he was just about the only one. I sure enjoyed it and this clip may give you some idea why. The first three actors you'll see on stage have all gone on to considerable success. The gentleman playing Nathan Detroit is, of course, Nathan Lane. The man in the magenta suit is J.K. Simmons, who seems to be in half the movies being made these days, including his role as J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man films. And the gent in the blue-green suit is Walter Bobbie, who is now one of the top Broadway directors. Here they are doing Frank Loesser proud...
Starting next week, GSN (the channel formerly known as Game Show Network) is restoring its old seven-nights-a-week black-and-white game show block. Every night at 3 AM (Midnight on my coast), they'll be running a vintage What's My Line? followed by an old I've Got a Secret. These were all run on GSN a few years ago but it'll be nice to have them back every night instead of once a week.
Even as I was posting the previous message, I received an e-mail from the Guild that included the following...
Second, this is a full and binding agreement. Worldwide Pants is agreeing to the full MBA, including the new media proposals we have been unable to make progress on at the big bargaining table. This demonstrates the integrity and affordability of our proposals. There are no shortcuts in this deal. Worldwide Pants has accepted the very same proposals that the Guild was prepared to present to the media conglomerates when they walked out of negotiations on December 7.
So the terms of the deal are acceptable to us and we're already using it to tell the world we're not asking for anything so unreasonable. Okay, let's see if we can predict the AMPTP press release...
We respect the position of some independent producers to enter into arrangements that will spare them from the damaging, costly strike that the Writers Guild has caused in our industry. However, a company like Worldwide Pants is not engaged in areas such as Animation and Reality Programming that make the WGA demands so unacceptable to most production entities. The WGA demands would harm and cripple any studio engaged in those areas so we cannot and will not entertain them.
Something like that. It should be out any minute now...
Just got back from the market to a whole batch of e-mails asking me what I think of news that David Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants, has made an interim deal with the Writers Guild. I think you'd have to look at the terms of that deal to decide if it's a good thing for the WGA. If it establishes some meaningful gain that advances the ball on the issues that matter in the current strike, it's great. If it just means that CBS gets back one of its major points of profit, then I don't think much of it.
There is a slight potential bit of division possible within the Guild if some writers go back to work while most are hiking about with signs. I don't think it will divide us in any significant way if it seems like the interim contract will help our mission, even a little. Some members will complain but the WGA can't hire a new janitor without someone complaining. Most will see it as a good thing, especially if Letterman's ratings show a clear advantage over his competition, and if Dave's on every night speaking of Network Weasels. If the Guild can field a few more of these, it will do a lot to combat the AMPTP claim that it's impossible to make a deal with us.
And a happy birthday to Smilin' Stan Lee...from Madcap Mark, as I was once dubbed by him. You're nobody in the comic book business until Stan has assigned you an alliterative adjective.
May you have 85 more, Stan. Either that or we're going to freeze you inside a glacier so that one day, you can be found and thawed out and resume your amazing career. (If I were you, I'd just keep on living and forego the glacier option. Glaciers don't seem to be doing too well these days...)
Everyone knows the Carl Reiner-Mel Brooks routines about the 2000 Year Old Man. What some don't recall is that they did other routines on their first records. Here's one, from what I think is a 1962 Timex All-Star Comedy Special. It's introduced by an obscure comedian named Johnny Carson...
I need to get back to work but before I do, I wanted to say something here about Cheerios®. I haven't mentioned much about Cheerios® here lately and that's an oversight I need to correct. Because Cheerios® are important. Cheerios®, I realized not long ago, are truly Nature's Most Perfect Food. They're tasty. They're crunchy. They're healthier than most other things I eat. Did you know that they may help lower Cholesterol? That's not a proven fact but they may, which puts them ahead of all those foods — like bacon and butter and In-and-Out Burgers, that we're pretty certain do not lower Cholesterol. But Cheerios® may and that's good enough for me.
Please note that I am writing here of plain, old-fashioned Cheerios® — the kind in the yellow box. I have never tried Honey Nut Cheerios® and I never will, partly because I'm allergic to almonds and partly because I simply resent the notion that Cheerios® could be improved upon. I also have no use for Berry Burst Cheerios®, Yogurt Burst Cheerios®, Multi Grain Cheerios®, Cheerios® Crunch, Fruity Cheerios®, Frosted Cheerios® or Apple Cinnamon Cheerios®. For obvious reasons.
Over the years, I've occasionally shifted my affection to other cereals but rarely for long. I always come back to Cheerios®. Recently, I went through a brief Corn Flakes flirtation but it faded. When you put them in a bowl with milk and sugar, they're almost as good but Cheerios® are much, much better when you just eat a dry handful right out of the box. Which is how I eat most cereal.
These days, I really only eat two cereals. One, of course, is Cheerios®. The other, which is also quite wonderful, is Barbara's Shredded Oats and I kind of think of it as Designer Cheerios®. Barbara's Shredded Oats is denser and crunchier and a little more expensive. It's kind of like Cheerios® on a higher budget.
This is all I have to say about Cheerios® at the moment but there will be more. I can't say enough about Cheerios®.
Like most (all?) of you, I woke up this morn to the news that former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated at a political rally. Like some (most?) of you, I had some knowledge of Bhutto and Pakistan but not enough to really understand the significance of this killing...what it means to Pakistan and, of course, what it means to the United States. It's tough to not look at every bit of news from the standpoint of immediate self-interest. There are times when I feel semi-uncomfortably like an actor friend of mine. If you told him that a volcano went off in Uruguay, all he could think about was, "Does that affect my career in any way?"
Anyway, I started hitting webpages where I thought I might find some explanation and quick analysis of what the assassination means to me and my country. What I found were a lot of theories about what it means to the Iowa Caucus. Apparently, it helps Hillary Clinton because it will send voters towards the candidate who seems more likely to use military force...unless, of course, they're afraid of a President who'll plunge us into another Iraq-like debacle, in which case it will send voters away from Hillary Clinton. On the Republican side, it will help Rudy Giuliani because voters will look to the man with experience in Crisis Management...unless, of course, those voters realize that Giuliani has no experience in foreign matters, in which case it will send voters away from Rudy Giuliani.
I love explanations that tell you everything you want to know...unless, of course, they don't tell you a damn thing.
But at least there also seems to be a consensus that, as David Gergen put it, "...Pakistan, like an immense number of other problems, will be awaiting our next president." And then he wrote something about how it will require extraordinary leadership in the Oval Office, like all the other decisions that go through that place don't.
Sorry to hear of the death of Paul Grant, who in the world of comic books was a a smart connoisseur and commentator. He was a pioneer of the online comic community, holding forth on the old CompuServe forum at a time when something like 1% of America had ever heard the word, "Internet." His handle, and the name by which most knew him, was Zeus...and when you got to know the guy, as I had the privilege of doing, you saw why the name fit. He not only looked like Zeus, he had a large, expansive manner and a huge, jolly laugh. John Ostrander has more.
In 1972 and 1973, ABC had a neat little show on Saturday morning called The Saturday Superstar Movie. What it was was an anthology of hour-long cartoon specials, which I suppose were all pilots in someone's eyes, produced by an array of studios. Some were revivals of old characters. There was Yogi's Ark Lark, which brought back Yogi, Huck, Quick Draw and the gang after many years off the screen. (Hanna-Barbera was fighting with Columbia over who owned what.) There was a very strange Popeye special that guest-starred most of the King Features comic strip characters. There was even a show that crossed new characters with old...Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies.
There were also animated versions of live-action TV shows including The Brady Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, Lassie, Gidget, The Munsters and That Girl. And there were a few new things, as well. You'll see fast cuts from some of these shows in this, the main title for the series...
There's no way I can embed the videos or link you directly to them...but if you go over to the Disney website right now, they have a video player on the first page that runs little featurettes. You can watch the Donald Duck cartoon, Donald's Snow Fight, and if you hunt just a little bit, there's a nice short about the recent Disney Legends ceremony. It includes a brief soundbite with our pal Floyd Norman and a musical performance by Randy Newman.
I get three or four e-mails a day lately asking me when my book on Jack Kirby is coming out, if my book on Jack Kirby is coming out, etc. The answer is that it's off to press and they're telling me I'll have copies to sign at the Wondercon in San Francisco, which is February 22-24. I doubt it'll be available much before those dates and I assume it'll be available everywhere soon after those dates...and you now know as much about this as I do. In fact, knowing you and knowing me, you may know more than I do. You can pre-order it right this second from Amazon where they're currently saying it'll be out February 1. It used to say March 1 on that page so maybe they know something we don't.
If you can't wait, Peter Sanderson is serializing a fairly detailed review over at Quick Stop Entertainment and he has Part One up. I almost wish he wasn't saying such nice things about it because in a day or so, I'm going to be giving a very nice review/plug to a book he worked on and it's going to look like some sort of sneaky trade-off.
No news on the strike front, and there may not be any for a while. We're still on strike and the other side is still trying to send out scary messages about not dealing with us for a decade or two. I would advise everyone not to believe rumors that come with no credible name attached...especially the ones that start "I was at a party and this guy said he'd heard that someone at CBS was saying..." It has been my experience that during a strike, a rumor that comes with no identified source has less than a 15% chance of having any basis at all in reality. This applies just as much to anonymous messages posted on Internet forums. Messages with identified sources or real signatures have a slightly better rate of accuracy, sometimes verging on as much as 50%.
The point is that just because someone announces "I just talked to Nick Counter and he said..." does not mean that Nick Counter said it or even that the person actually talked to Nick Counter or to anyone who had ever talked to Nick Counter. Come to think of it, even if Nick Counter really said it, that doesn't mean it's true, either.
(Speaking on Nick Counter: Have you seen his nickel counter?)
Our little labor dispute seems to bring out essayists with views I do not quite comprehend. A couple of them can be explained as just sucking up to (or working for) the studio heads, and I've read a few that seemed to me that the author had emotional issues with his own career and those who he thought were more successful. I'm especially dubious of those that rush to say "the Writers Guild has handled this all wrong" without suggesting any sort of scenario as to what we could/should have done differently. My pal Bob Elisberg penned a nice rebuttal in the L.A. Times to an op-ed piece that didn't make a lot of sense to me, either.
At the moment, the AMPTP is trying to sell the idea that this strike is about the WGA making unreasonable demands in the areas of Animation and "Reality" programming. It's not. It's about New Media and about the fact that the studios are simultaneously saying (a) that there's no money in that area and (b) that they're willing to lose many, many billions to not share that no money with us or any other union.
A touring exhibit is attempting to trace and maybe explain how so many of the great comic book super-heroes were created by Jewish folks. I keep getting asked about the connection and have never come up with any better explanations than the ones cited by others in this article.
Today, you get to see the opening and closing to one of the more bizarre cartoon shows ever on Saturday morning — Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down. That was how it was punctuated, by the way — no question mark at the end. It was produced by Filmation and was on the air from 1970 to 1972 on ABC. Even at the time I wondered how it came about. A few years earlier, someone might have said to someone else, "Hey, kids love Jerry Lewis movies...maybe they'll watch a cartoon show about him." But by '70, Jerry's film career was crashing and the movies he was making were things like Which Way to the Front?, which targeted (and failed to snag) an older audience. His TV career wasn't doing much better. A weekly variety show on NBC had just been cancelled. So why did anyone think America was eager to watch an animated version of the guy? Your guess is as good as mine.
Publicity at the time said that Jerry contributed to the scripts, and I recall at least one article that claimed (wrongly) that he was doing his own voice. The lead was actually by David Lander, who later became famous playing the character Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley. At the time, he was a recent member of The Credibility Gap, a brilliant troupe of L.A.-based satirists who did most of their work on radio. The other voices in the Jerry Lewis cartoons were by Howie Morris and Jane Webb. As for working on the scripts, I'd be surprised if Jerry spent much more than a long lunch hour discussing ideas. (He was off shooting The Day The Clown Cried during much of the time the show was being produced. They should have based the cartoon series on that.)
In each episode, Jerry was placed by an employment agency in some job where he'd prove to be utterly inept but would somehow manage to save the day. Along the way, he'd either find an excuse to dress up like one of the characters Jerry had played in one of his movies or run into them...and that's about all I remember about it. I haven't seen an episode in 35 years and haven't noticed any groundswell of demand to bring it back. But one of these days, it'll turn up somewhere...
Do you like Sudoku puzzles? Every so often, I get on a Sudoku kick for a week or so, feeling an urgent need to solve one each morning before embarking on my real work for the day. Eventually, I encounter one that is so maddening that once I do solve it, all others seem anti-climactic and I break the habit for a while. That was the case with this one, which took way too long. You might have better luck with it than I did. Then again, it might take you as long as it did me. So you'd better not go there.
I always thought the "they go in threes" belief was silly. People in show business die every day and every time someone really notable goes, folks pick two others who died at about the same time and they say, "See? They always die in threes." But depending on how long a time span you choose or how famous you expect the people to be, you could make the case for them dying in twos, fours, fives or almost any small number.
That said, it's sad to make note of these three: The great jazz musician Oscar Peterson has passed away. Ruth Wallis, a comedienne and singer of bawdy songs, is gone.
And the great choreographer-director Michael Kidd has left us.
I have nothing to say about Mr. Peterson and Ms. Wallis other than that I enjoyed their records. Michael Kidd, I actually spoke with on the phone for about ten minutes when I was researching the Broadway show and movie of Li'l Abner. For some reason, he asked me not to quote him directly in the article and then made doubly certain I wouldn't by telling me nothing whatsoever of interest. Still, I got to tell him how much I'd always loved the shows and movies he directed and/or choreographed. That was nice.
A bit of holiday animation by illustrator R.O. Blechman. This was done as a promo for CBS in 1966 and captured the holiday spirit better than a lot of the Christmas specials that aired before and after it.
A lot of folks in the movie and TV business are having a nervous Christmas owing to management/labor unrest. There's a tendency to only call it "labor unrest" and in this case, I think that's a misnomer. It's our unrest only in that we've been forced to take a stand, backed into a corner where a strike was unavoidable. This is my fifth Writers Guild strike and I honestly don't think any of them were avoidable. Some of them could perhaps have been fought earlier and been less bloody. Some of them could arguably have been fought later and been even more destructive.
But avoidable? Sorry to say, I don't think so...and I'm one of those folks who thinks the best way to win a fight is to not have it. Whenever possible, I like to sit down, discuss needs and differences of opinion and arrive at some set of creative solutions and compromises that gives everyone what they want/require. That is not, sad to say, an option that has been open to us in dealing with the AMPTP.
Our members understand this, which is why they've been so good about hanging together. People outside the WGA "get it," too. The other day, I had a long conversation with one of the men who's rebuilding my kitchen. He understood completely, and without me explaining it to him. He's had jobs where the employer kept chipping away at his income and benefits, counting on the fact that no one's going to up and change jobs over the little cutbacks. "Nibbled to death by evil ducklings" is how the worker put it. At some point though, the nibbles add up and become major bites...and that's when you have to say, "This stops now." In his case, he could quit one construction company and go to another one. We don't have quite that luxury. As a unit, they're all trying to hack away at the financial foundation of our profession so we have to quit them all at once. I wish there was another way.
Lately, they've been employing Scare Tactics. You know: The CEOs are so mad at us that they're willing to blow off not only the rest of this TV season but the one after, as well. In every one of the previous four strikes, we had those threats of burning down the factory, breaking the union, destroying our whole profession. It's never happened. Eventually, they have to make a deal with us, just as they have to make a deal with the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild, neither of which is going to accept terms as rotten as the ones presented to us.
How and when this will end, I do not know. Despite all the rumors and games of Good Cop/Bad Cop being played, I still think the strike will end sooner than a lot of people think. I wish I was certain of that but all we can go by is logic and in this arena, illogical things tend to happen. I am pretty certain though that if we take a crappy deal this time, then in 2011 when the 2008 contract is up for renegotiation, they'll offer us a deal three times as crappy, take it or leave it...and we'll have to strike three times as long just to put a dent in it. At least.
ABC ran the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas this evening. It was a half-hour special when it first aired in 1966 but nowadays, there are more commercials in a network show so they have a choice: Chop it down or pad it out. They chose to pad the show out to an hour by inserting filler aplenty, including a little documentary on the making of the special.
The documentary was produced in 1994 and its makers were able to interview several folks who worked on the show and have since passed away — director Chuck Jones, composer Albert Hague and voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft. It was also hosted by someone else who's no longer with us...Phil Hartman. In fact, he's not even in the documentary anymore. A few years ago, Warner Brothers redid his sequences and narration, replacing Phil with Tom Bergeron. I suppose we should be grateful they didn't replace Chuck, Albert and Thurl while they were at it.
Even though I have the animated special on DVD, I got hooked watching a little of it on ABC. It still works. Some of Jones's later animated work smacks too much of his own stylistic quirks. He was an overpowering director and when he handled someone else's characters — the Jones-directed Tom & Jerry cartoons, for instance, or his Pogo special with Walt Kelly — everyone came off looking like Wile E. Coyote and twitching their noses. But on Grinch, perhaps because he had Dr. Seuss hovering about or because the Good Doctor's style melded well with the Jones look, there was a unity of style and purpose. The additional story points, which came mostly from a brilliantly mad animation writer named Bob Ogle and an artist named Irv Spector, expanded the Seuss story without wrecking it. It's probably my third-favorite Christmas special, following A Charlie Brown Christmas and Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.
It won't make your holidays any brighter but Fred Kaplan has an article up detailing what's likely to happen with Iraq in the next six months. And if you really want to be depressed about the world situation, read Christopher Hitchens on North Korea.
Here we have "The Night Before Christmas" as read by a whole bunch of voice actors including Gary Owens, Tom Kenny, Brian Cummings, Jim Cummings, Eddie Deezen, Grey DeLisle, Candi Milo, Billy West, Jennifer Hale and Don "The Movie Trailer Guy" LaFontaine. I believe Jim Cummings is the first person I've ever heard do an impression of Professor Irwin Corey. I'll bet there's a lot of call for that.
We love this kind of story. Earlier this year, the Circuit City chain, which wasn't doing so well, decided it could save money by firing 3,400 employees and replacing them with folks who'd work cheaper. In most cases, it meant getting rid of salespeople who knew about computers and electronics and the equipment sold in those stores, and bringing in kids who didn't know as much.
So, how has this worked out? Well, Circuit City just reported its fifth straight losing quarter and warned stockholders that it won't post a profit for this holiday season, either. When you're selling electronics equipment and you can't make money at Christmas, you're really doing something wrong. But at least they've wised-up a little and are now trying to hire a lot of their old, more knowledgeable employees back.
Recently, we pointed you to the trailer for the 1934 film starring Laurel and Hardy known as either Babes in Toyland or March of the Wooden Soldiers. This prompted some interesting e-mails, including two from Randy Skretvedt, who is the author of the best book on the making of The Boys' films, and one I highly recommend. In his first message, he writes...
You're right about Mr. Roach not liking Babes in Toyland. I got to do formal interviews with him twice, and on both occasions he launched into the whole grisly saga of his story versus Stan's story before I could ask him my first question — so it was still a hot issue with him. I remember as he told me his idea for the story, I smiled politely while my stomach sank and I thought, "Oh, boy, this would never have worked as a movie!" I don't know if Stan actually told him that they couldn't use his story because it wouldn't allow them to wear the derby hats
(that story's in my book) — if Stan did, he was really grasping at straws for a reason to turn down Roach's idea.
As for the colorization of the film, there are two different color versions — a better one came out on DVD last year. Generally I don't like computer-colored versions of movies, but this one is pretty good, and the film certainly lends itself to being colorized. Henry Brandon told me that it was a thrill to walk onto the set every morning, because everything was painted in bright colors, like a child's storybook. And John McCabe mentioned in his liner notes to the soundtrack LP that Stan felt Babes in Toyland had more consistent entertainment values than any of their films, and his one regret was that it hadn't been made in color. Ah, well, three-strip Technicolor was still a year or so in the future in 1934.
I don't recall Mr. Roach's plot as sounding particularly unworkable when he described it to me...but then he didn't go into much detail and the plot may have changed over the years. I suppose we should just be grateful that he gave Laurel and Hardy and their writers as much freedom as he seems to have given them most of the time. Over all, he seems to have been the ideal boss for them, at least in non-monetary ways. I can forgive him the occasional exception, especially since it didn't result in a bad movie.
You make me want to check out that new "colorization" of the film. I recall not minding the first one all that much, especially since the black-and-white copies then available weren't too sharp. Actually, what I minded more in some of the past computer-colored Laurel and Hardy films was someone monkeying with the musical track.
Here's Randy's other message to me...
Just watched the Babes in Toyland trailer and had a couple of trivial notes for you. The announcer at the beginning is Ken Carpenter, who would go on to do hundreds of radio shows, memorably as a straight man for Bing Crosby on Philco Radio Time. The shot of the Town Crier all by his ownsome is unique to this trailer, as is at least one of the shots where Ollie is being "ducked" prior to his banishment to Bogeyland.
A gorgeous new transfer of the film from 35mm materials, in black and white, is now available as part of the 3-DVD MGM Holiday Classics Collection, which also includes The Bishop's Wife with David Niven, Loretta Young and Cary Grant, and Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford. Even though it's listed in the packaging as March of the Wooden Soldiers, the actual film is entirely intact, with the original Babes in Toyland main title — and even including the MPAA Production Code title at the very start.
I shall have to pick that up...which I (or anyone) can do by clicking here. And then you can read this message from my friend, John Tebbel, commenting on my observation that a lot of people recall seeing Babes in Toyland in color when it wasn't...
Other possible explanations for the Babes in Toyland effect...
Just as you can dream in black and white, I think one's perception/memory will sometimes fill in the colors in black-and-white photography. I also think that some sort of colorization takes place when you're in the flow of a black-and-white movie; your brain knows the sky is blue and many other things and colorizes in a meta-conscious way, just trying to be helpful; you couldn't "do it" if you tried. If you "stop to think" you perceive "reality" once again. William Burroughs posits a similar effect about languages, saying we all understand them all, or some such, but we know we don't so we don't. And little kids eat ivy.
Also, Babes is the type of film that most lends itself to today's crude colorization (pace Ray Harryhausen). Someone who's not used to seeing a lot of early Technicolor might think a colorized Babes looks funny because it's deteriorated, or some such nonsense.
And there was this character in a 50's comedy who "saw movies on the back of his eyelids."
Lastly, we have this from Jim Hanley...
I don't know if I ever mentioned this, in response to past mentions of Babes in Toyland on your site, but I was at the Sons of the Desert International Convention in 1986. There, I was at the same table with [cast member] Felix Knight for one of the dinners. After the meal was over, another Son came up to Mr. Knight and told of seeing Babes in Toyland, during its initial release. He asked if he had imagined a scene in a school house. Mr. Knight though for a second and said, "Of course! It was the 'I Can Do That Sum' number. They must have
cut that when the film went into wide release."
When asked more about the scene, he said that Stan and Ollie sang the song with some of the Our Gang kids. Have you ever heard of that footage still existing (other than possible mentions I've made in the past)? One of the Founding Tent officers of the time said that he believed that the Roach Studio had all sorts of footage in their vaults that they hoarded, waiting for an opportune moment to release it for maximum financial gain. That's led me to hold out hope for two decades, now. What do you think?
I think that if they have unseen footage and haven't released it, it's probably because they don't know they have it. Any historians who've dealt with almost any company in the home video business have been stunned at how often companies don't know what's in their own vaults and, even when there's serious money to be made off it, aren't all that interested in finding out.
The release of Laurel and Hardy movies on DVD has generally been handled poorly and has led to the erroneous (I think) belief that there's no market out there for their films. And that, in turn, I'm sure has led to not a lot of dollars being expended on searching for lost treasures. I don't know about the missing scene you describe but it wouldn't surprise me if it was filmed. It would surprise me a little if it was still in existence. And it would surprise me a lot if anyone soon made use of it to put together a deluxe, collectors edition DVD of the film with other appropriate extras. Maybe we can start rattling the bars a little here for someone to at least investigate.
I appreciate that a lot of you want to share my Mel Tormé story with the readers of your blogs. But Internet Etiquette is that you link to my page, not that you copy all or most of the text and put it on your page.
Today, we have another Little Audrey cartoon. This is Goofy Goofy Gander, which was released August 18 of 1950. The cast is kind of a "Who's Who" of performers who were heard in Paramount/Famous Studios cartoons: Mae Questel (who was most famous for playing Olive Oyl and Betty Boop), Jack Mercer (the main voice of Popeye), Sid Raymond (who voiced Baby Huey) and Gwen Davies (who was one of several voices of Casper). There are also a few unidentified singers in this film, which was directed by Bill Tytla.
Mr. Tytla was a great Disney animator who went on to become a director for other studios with less distinction. For Walt D., he handled several of the dwarfs in Snow White (especially Grumpy). He did some key scenes of the title character in Dumbo and also Stromboli the Puppet Master in Pinocchio. He animated Chernobog the devil figure in Fantasia and the old magician character in that film's "Sorceror's Apprentice" sequence. And he did other key animating which today is avidly studied by students of cartoons. He was one of Disney's star artists until he joined the 1941 strike at the studio. After it was settled, he returned to work but things weren't the same and he came to believe he was being handed assignments of less and less importance and personal challenge. That, along with a desire to return to his former climate (Connecticut and New York) caused him to head east in 1943. There, he worked for Terrytoons (where he'd worked before being lured to Hollywood to work at Disney) and at Famous Studios.
He later returned to Hollywood and worked here and there, though worsening eyesight limited his options. His last major animating — and it is said he required a lot of assistance from friends — was some work on The Incredible Mr. Limpet in 1964. He passed away in '68. As you can see from this example, his films were nicely directed, though sometimes limited by weak material and weaker characters. This one, I think, is one of the better ones.
Our dear friends at the AMPTP put out another of their lovely press releases yesterday. As you may recall, they walked out of negotiations with the Writers Guild on December 7 and promptly issued a list of six demands that, they said, had to be met before they'd speak with us again. There have been no talks since then, and as far as we know there have been no talks about resuming talks.
Yesterday's press release sort of reaffirms their position but it only mentions three of the six demands. It doesn't say they're withdrawing the other three. What it says is...well, here. You don't need me to summarize. Read it for yourself. Then come back and we'll discuss one paragraph in particular which I think is especially disingenuous.
Okay, here's that paragraph. It's the one about how they want us to withdraw our demand relating to the representation of those who write animation...
The WGA seeks to obtain, once again by top-down organizing tactics, jurisdiction over animation writers who traditionally fall under IATSE's jurisdiction, and to deprive those writers of their free choice to elect union coverage under the voting system administered by the National Labor Relations Board. The AMPTP has asked the WGA to withdraw this demand.
Okay, let's unpack that. I'm not entirely sure what they mean by "top-down organizating tactics" but one assumes they think we should be going via some opposite route...say, "bottom-up?" The phrase "...traditionally fall under IATSE's jurisdiction" is extremely misleading. First of all, the WGA has already organized some Animation Writers so this alleged tradition already has loopholes aplenty in it. Secondly, the immediate focus of the WGA's organizing in the area of Animation Writing is to cover studios and projects that are not covered by Local 839 of IATSE. So that's the relevant tradition here.
Then we get to the part about depriving "...those writers of their free choice to elect union coverage under the voting system administered by the National Labor Relations Board." Hey, if that's the case, we can settle this in no time. Let's have an election! Ask folks who write cartoons if they'd like the WGA to represent them. If all the AMPTP is trying to do is protect those writers' right to vote, great. Let's vote.
But of course, they won't go for that. The AMPTP is trying to prevent such votes...and by the way, to the extent the above suggests the WGA is trying to gain jurisdiction without that kind of election, that's a lie, too. The Guild couldn't win representation of these people without winning an election. What the WGA is trying to do is to get some language removed from the WGA-AMPTP contract that defines a "television motion picture" and a "theatrical motion picture," expanding it to include animation. That would give the WGA a clearer path to organize (which would mean a "bottom-up" campaign and seeking elections) at companies whose writers are not covered by IATSE.
So what the AMPTP has been doing all along is trying to block us from doing traditional labor organizing in that area and having elections...and they're saying, "We won't change the contract language in question because if you want to organize in this area, you have to do traditional labor organizing and have elections."
I know there are some people out there who are saying that the WGA should drop its demands relating to Animation and also to so-called "Reality" programming in order to get back to the bargaining table. I think that's foolish for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it won't get us a quarter-inch closer to a contract. The Alliance has listed six demands they say we must comply with before they'll bargain again. Now they're saying, "Drop these three" without saying the other three no longer matter. So if we do drop these three, they'll say, "Great. Now, drop the other three — especially that stuff about Distributor's Gross — and we'll schedule more talks."
And even then, there's no guarantee that those talks will move us any closer to a deal than did the earlier talks. They could just sit with us for two days, discuss the weather, make trivial and cosmetic improvements on their old deal points, and then throw us out with another list of ultimatums. That's certainly been the modus operandi so far.
There's compromise language possible in the area of Animation and also in "Reality" (which, you may notice, I always put in quotes. I've worked in "Reality" programming). In Animation, let us do the traditional kind of labor organizing, elections included, which the above statement claims they're trying to defend. In "Reality," do much the same thing. Allow the unrepresented to decide they want representation and let traditional union organizing, which the AMPTP claims to be defending, proceed.
By the way: One of the reasons that WGA representation of Animation is becoming a more and more relevant issue is that more and more movies are blurring the line between live-action and animation. Thanks to Motion Capture and other new technologies, it's getting difficult to tell on some projects where one leaves off and the other begins. I think it's safe to assume that if live-action is covered by union representation and animation isn't, the studio producing a film that's in any way arguable will be arguing the non-union side of things. Which poses a problem for the Writer because that quarrel has to take place before the movie is made, before you can look at a frame of film and even discuss whether it's live-action or animation.
It's hard enough now to determine which Polar Express was, so you can only imagine that debate when the whole endeavor was just a verbal idea. One of the reasons that Animation Writers overwhelmingly would like to be in the WGA is that they want to avoid the old bait-and-switch: They're asked to write what they're told will be an animated film and since it ain't live-action, it will have to be done without a WGA contract. But once it's done, the producers start talking about Motion Capture and inserting live actors into the proceedings...and suddenly, the Writer wakes up and he or she has written a movie that should have been done (and wasn't) under a WGA contract. It would be so much neater if they all were.
So there's yet another reason — I have more, believe me — why Animation should be covered by the WGA. If that demand and the one about "Reality" are impediments to a new contract, okay. Put them aside for now and negotiate the other main points, such as sharing revenues for Internet delivery and adjusting the compensation on DVDs. We'll have to get through those topics eventually. Why not now?
Joe Conason on how the right-wing suddenly (and temporarily) seems to love Barack Obama. This is a Salon link so you may be in for some ad-watching if you want to read it.
A number of comic book websites were wishing a happy 86th birthday yesterday to John Severin, the great comic book artist. And they were right to want to salute this veteran illustrator, whose career highlights have included drawing for EC Comics, including the first few issues of Mad; a long stint as the star artist for Cracked, plus hundreds and hundreds of magnificent war and western comics for DC, Marvel and several other publishers. He's currently drawing a Bat Lash mini-series for DC and showing the world that he's still got it, still doing superior work.
So they were all right to want to salute him on his birthday but they were a little early. I don't care what Wikipedia says, guys. John Severin's birthday is the day after Christmas, December 26.
In the holiday spirit, we bring you the trailer to Laurel and Hardy's 1934 version of Babes in Toyland, which is sometimes also known as March of the Wooden Soldiers. It was one of their better films...and a very colorful one, despite the fact that it was filmed in black-and-white. A decade or so ago when a home video company colorized it, someone who worked for the outfit described an interesting bit of mass delusion. He told me that he'd encountered an amazing number of people who swore that the movie must have been originally made in color because they vividly recalled seeing it that way. At the time, they couldn't have...and I guess that says something for how effective the movie is. (You can also realize that by comparing it to the 1961 Disney remake.)
The only person I ever met who didn't much like this film was its producer, Hal Roach. As Mr. Roach told it to me, he had the idea and he wrote a much better plot outline which Stan Laurel refused to follow. They bickered over it for several months until Roach, fearing the movie would not get made in time for its desired release date, threw up his hands and told Laurel to do whatever he wanted. Hal didn't seem to think too much of what resulted but most people find it quite wonderful. Here's a few minutes of it...
Some WGA members are disappointed that the late night hosts are going back to work despite our strike. I think it hurts the strike effort but only a little. The networks still cannot produce most of their prime-time shows. The movie studios still cannot deliver most of the desired product to their marketplace.
One upside to Dave, Jay, Conan, Jimmy, Craig, Jon and Stephen restarting their shows is that the news coverage in their country will be less impaired. Earlier today, I was talking to a friend of mine who I'd consider well-versed in what's going on in the world. He had not heard of the recent embarrassment where Mitt Romney was found to have fabricated a tale he's been telling for years about watching his father march with Dr. Martin Luther King. Romney's staff has admitted it's not true — one spokesperson said "He was speaking figuratively, not literally" — which sure doesn't square with the actual quotes.
A candidate for public office lying? I have a feeling it's not the first time. But Mitt is lucky that Dave, Jay, Conan (etc.) aren't on to make it into the week's running gag. Not all that long ago, Al Gore said a few things that were not really lies but could be viewed as such if you were out to slam the guy. His opponents did a good job of selling the idea that the alleged fibs proved not just that Gore said something untrue but that they were proof that he was a congenital liar, incapable of speaking the truth...someone not to be believed if he just told you what time it was.
And now here we have Romney getting caught telling a truly untrue tale and repeating it on many occasions...and he may get a pass on it because the late night hosts aren't taping. People aren't hearing about it the way they'd hear about it if The Daily Show was current. Hillary Clinton and her husband have said some embarrassing things lately in besmirching her opposition and they're not paying much of a price for it, either.
So while I'm disappointed those hosts are coming back, there is this. Maybe now more people will know what's going on in the world.
Wade Sampson reminds us that today is the seventieth anniversary of the opening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the movie that changed animation (and maybe more than that) forever. It debuted on December 21, 1937 at the Fox Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles. Like most of you, I first saw the film after seeing several of Mr. Disney's later (and probably, better) animated features so I didn't appreciate how revolutionary Snow White was at the time of its debut; not until the early seventies when I attended a screening hosted by, of all people, Chuck Jones.
He seemed like an odd choice since Jones had not worked on Snow White. (His total experience at Disney was many years after it was made...a few months spent working on Sleeping Beauty.) This wisdom of his selection as speaker became apparent when he delivered a little talk after the film — a talk that could have been titled, "What Walt Disney Could Do That We At Warner Brothers Could Not." Much of it had to do with slow, subtle character animation and a wider, muted color pallette. He cited moments in Snow White that could never have been done in one of his seven-minute Looney Tunes extavaganzas. The budgets at Warner's did not allow an animator to spend as much time on a sequence as Walt allowed his crew...and the need to tell a story in seven minutes necessitated much swifter, broader action.
Anyway, I wish I had a recording of Chuck's speech because it contained a lot of fascinating observations — with admitted jealousy, a great creator of animation was discussing a cartoon from the standpoint of an onlooker. I came away with a new appreciation of the film.
Wade mentions the Carthay Circle in his article. It was a great place that in the fifties and sixties, alternated between housing live shows and movies. My parents must have taken me to a half-dozen films there. Situated in what was largely a residential area, it had impossible parking, which was probably what caused it to close. In fact, it became rather well-known as a theater to avoid because it had 1,500 seats and about a tenth as many places to leave your vehicle. Still, if you got there, it seemed worth the ordeal. It was a palace and just being in it was an experience, regardless of what was showing. (I seem to recall seeing Around the World in 80 Days there. I was four and a half when that movie was first released, but perhaps what we saw there was a reissue.) The place was intermittently open and closed in the late sixties and then finally demolished around 1971.
In fact, they not only razed the theater but they plowed through many of the surrounding streets. The name "Carthay Circle" referred to an area with several circular avenues with the theater at the approximate center. The city decided to straighten things out so they connected this to that and that to this and now you can drive through that area and watch some streets change names inexplicably from block to block...but there's no trace of the Carthay Circle Theater or even of the circular topography in which it was situated. Kind of a shame.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will return to the air with new shows on January 7, sans writing staffs. What are they going to do? Probably a lot more interviews, some rerun segments and a seriously reduced capacity to do new material. There's kind of a gray, arguable distinction over when a writer-performer's words are the work of his writer side, and there will be pressure on Stewart and Colbert (as there will be on Leno, O'Brien and the others) to expand the definition in favor of their performer functions. They'll also all probably spend a little time on each broadcast trashing Management for not making a deal. That maybe in apology to their guild for going back but it will also apparently also reflect these folks' true feelings.
By the way: A number of articles about this have made the assertion that Johnny Carson was able to return to work, when he did in '88, because he was not a member of the Writers Guild. I don't think that's true. I don't know it for a fact but I believe Johnny was a member.
The question I'd like to see someone put to Jon Stewart would have to do with his intentions regarding the Academy Awards, which he's supposed to host on 2/24/08. I would guess that if the strike isn't over by then — or isn't over in time for him to adequately prep for that date — he won't wanna. I would further guess that if the strike is not over, the Powers That Are might be afraid of giving him that bully pulpit. It all adds up to just another reason the AMPTP would be wise to get this thing settled well before then.
This is the time of year when I get a lot of e-mails asking me to post my Mel Tormé Christmas story. It's right here year 'round and it's the "most hit" page of my website.
Also, every year I point you to some wonderful online animation over at the ICQ site involving Santa and his reindeer. They used to do a new one of these each Christmas but they seem to have discontinued the tradition. The old installments are still available here, however. [WARNING: Music may begin the second you go to that page. And make sure you check out all four cartoons.]
And I really like Garfield's 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar. Check it out every day between now and December 25. (Full disclosure: I work with the Garfield company but I had nothing to do with this.)
There's still no news about the AMPTP returning to the bargaining table with the Writers Guild. One presumes this will occur after the first of the year and probably after the AMPTP has opened discussions with the Directors Guild on their contract. A lot of folks seem to be assuming that the DGA will rapidly make one of its quickie deals that gives it a little bump while setting up some sort of precedent that undermines other unions.
I doubt that. For one thing, the DGA is in no real hurry. Their contract doesn't expire until the end of July. Secondly, a lot of DGA members — especially those who are also writers and/or actors — have made it clear to the guild leadership that they don't want to see the DGA allow itself to be used against the other unions, nor do they want to accept a deal that concedes many of the points that the AMPTP is refusing to give the WGA. Lastly, if played right, the DGA could have a lot of leverage as a result of what's happened with the WGA. It's too good an opportunity to blow on a fast sellout.
Or so all the logic tells us. Then again, this is the Directors Guild that sometimes thinks the best way to deal with the AMPTP is to not make trouble for them.
The AMPTP is out trying to sell the idea that the current strike is all the fault of those stupid writers, not of the organization that has refused to bargain in good faith or, lately, at all. I don't see this p.r. campaign as gaining any real traction, nor do I see it weakening WGA resolve. For every one writer who begins to doubt that we're doing the right thing, another twenty get angry and more determined. But I guess Nick Counter has to say something.
David Letterman's company is about to open talks with the WGA about the possibility of an interim contract...and do take note of how many news sources were reporting last week that such a deal was close or near-certain or even already completed. It's a good reminder of how totally wrong and rumor-driven some of the news coverage of this strike has been. They commence discussions tomorrow, and the consensus in the WGA seems to be not to grant such a deal.
I know there's a respectable argument that the WGA should pact with Letterman's outfit, Worldwide Pants. Dave is likely to return with or without an interim deal, and having his writers back — and the removal of a picket line that will scare away desired guests — would give him an advantage over competition with no interim contract. If that would help Dave clobber Jay, wouldn't that put additional pressure on NBC to settle? (Answer to that: Maybe but maybe not. And CBS, which would see two of its key programs probably return to at least their old levels of profitability, might figure that they then had less reason to settle.)
There may, however, be even a better reason that the WGA will not make that deal with Letterman. According to this article in Variety...
Situation is complicated by the fact that while Worldwide Pants owns the CBS latenighters, company cannot dicker with the guild on the
central issues of new-media distribution because CBS controls most of the new-media rights on those shows.
This whole strike is about new-media distribution and if Letterman's company can't make a deal in that area, that's a contract-killer right there. We're on strike against companies that don't want to share those revenues.
So it looks like Dave will be going back to work on January 2 but without his writing staff. It seems highly appropriate that his only announced guest for that night so far is Donald Trump, a man who believes that in any dispute between employer and employee, the employer is always right.
Lastly: Folks keep asking me how long I think the strike is going to last. The other night over dinner with some writers, I made what everyone seemed to think was a strong case: All logic-based indicators would, I think, point to the AMPTP trying to make a deal on or around February 1 and not, as some have suggested, keeping the WGA out until next June or so. When I get some time, I'll write up that argument for this page...but it will have to be qualified with a reminder that so far in this strike, and many times in other labor disputes, the Alliance has not done what you'd think would be in its best interests. Sometimes, the execs involved are stubborn, much as some of our elected officials cling to strategies long after they should have course-corrected.
The AMPTP also has this "rule of one" where one of the core member companies can veto a deal that the others all want to make. In the '88 strike, there were several major studios that thought it was insane to let the thing go on as long as they did. But they were not unanimous so that strike went on longer than even some on their side wanted. This one may, too...but when I get a chance, I'll tell you why I think it would be really foolish of the AMPTP to let this one go much past Groundhog Day.
Jeannie Schulz — widow of that guy who drew Charlie Brown, plus she's also a very bright, lovely lady — has some comments on the David Michaelis book on her late hubby. I recently got a copy (free) which I'm working my way through and so far, it seems to be everything Schulz's associates have been telling me it is: A lot of good, well-researched revelations about the man interspersed with so many odd deductions about his character and personality and too many questionable factual assertions as to despoil the good parts. I think, when an author who never met you says you never hugged people, and all your friends and family are saying you did, the author is on wafer-thin ice.
Steve Martin's new book, Born Standing Up, is quite a surprise. It's kind of an autobiography, though he says it comes close to being a biography because he feels so detached from the person he's writing about. He covers his childhood, his adolescent days working at Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, and then his break-in to comedy writing and performing and stardom. It stops when he makes his first movie, The Jerk, and gives up stand-up forever. Amazingly introspective — which is not to say all his self-observations ring true — he depicts his subject (himself) as not particularly gifted in the way we think a successful comedian is born funny. To Martin, it was all a matter of figuring out how to do something that, he seems to feel, did not come naturally to him.
It is not, in some ways, a particularly flattering self-portrait. I came away from the book admiring Martin's candor and willingness to display his warts but I'm less certain of how I feel about him as a comedian. In portions of Born Standing Up, he seems to be conducting a final burial for his stand-up act, drawing a hard line between that guy and the person he is today...and even the old Steve Martin, the guy in the white suit with the arrow through his head, doesn't seem to have ever been the real Steve Martin. He writes of anxiety attacks and of feeling lost in his own career...and at time, I found myself wondering why he wrote the book.
Which is not to say it's not a fascinating read. You can order it from Amazon by clicking here and I'm going to recommend you do that. It's a quick read and a good chance to get inside the brain of a very successful performer. You'll understand that stardom, especially in the area of stand-up comedy, ain't always as wonderful as it may look.
In two recent messages here, I said that The Simpsons Movie was covered by a Writers Guild contract. I said that because I'd been told as much by a couple of folks who should have known. I am now informed by one of the Simpsons writers that is not so.
On the other hand, I have it directly from Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the recent Beowulf animated film that it was covered by the WGA. And I'll bet he's right.
2008 will mark seventy (70) years since Superman first appeared in Action Comics. Michael Sangiacomo, who writes for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, is challenging locals to do something about it. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created one of the great figures in American popular fiction, hailed from Cleveland...and yet the city has no official recognition of this. No Siegel and Shuster Street, no statues, no plaques, nothing. Thanks to Jef Peckham for the link...and thanks to Mike Sangiacomo who at the Mid-Ohio Con last month, gave me copies of his fine graphic novel, Tales of the Starlight Drive-In.
My latest excuse for being behind in answering your e-mails is a good one: I seem to have a Toxic Waste Dump in my kitchen.
Remember that trip I took to New York, Indiana and Ohio a few weeks ago? The last Saturday night of it, I was in Ohio, leading a group of folks from the comic convention out to dinner, when I got one of those phone calls you never want to get when you're outta town: The lady who was house-sitting for me was calling to say that water was dripping out of my dining room and kitchen ceilings. As we soon discovered, the supply line carrying H2O to an upstairs toilet had burst. Fixing the toilet cost about thirty bucks. Fixing the water damage will be a little costlier...to me (a $1000 deductible) and to my insurance company (a lot more than that).
My dining room is usually lined with bookcases and piled high with boxes of "to be sorted" books. About a third of the room was seriously damaged...although, miraculously, only one box of books. Perhaps fittingly, it was a box of books that I wrote and they're easily replaceable. It was almost like the leak knew which things not to get wet.
In the kitchen...well, I now have about half a kitchen. The wall oven was destroyed, along with several cabinets and their contents. The wall behind the sink was soaked and in order to fix it, they started by ripping the walls open and leaving some huge dehumidifiers in there, running 24/7 for a week to dry things out. Then they came and ripped out almost everything in there — the cabinets, the counter, the sink, the dishwasher, the garbage disposal, etc. Before they did any of this, they put up floor-to-ceiling plastic walls to create what they call a "containment area." It contains half my kitchen and a third of my dining room. To get into it, you need to go through a little airlock, which is what you're looking at in the above photo. The black thing at right is my refrigerator. To the immediate left of it is the access into the containment area, carefully posted with warning signs in English and Spanish. The Spanish is there, I guess, for when Sergio Aragonés comes to visit me.
Monday and Tuesday, three men were in there all day, wearing respirators and full-body protective gear. They finished opening all the walls and removed all the lath and plaster. Then they carefully washed and vacuumed everything else. The enemy here is mold and it sure looks like they got all of it out. This morning, a man from another company came to by to take samplings. If the analysis shows that all the biological no-nos are gone, reconstruction work can begin. The firm that's doing it says six weeks so I figure I'll be lucky if it's done in ten. If I decide to do some remodelling in the process, as I probably will, it could run longer than an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
'Til then, I'll be washing dishes in the downstairs bathroom and living out of the boxes we packed of all the food and utensils that could be saved from the ailing half of the kitchen. There won't be a lot of cooking, which is fine. Even under normal conditions, my cooking leads to other kinds of biological hazards.
Still, it's a bit disconcerting, when I walk in there to get a tomato juice or a sandwich, to see health warnings posted next to my icebox. After it's all done, I may leave the signs up. Just in case my new oven looks so neat that I get the urge to bake.
Here's a short trailer for a reissue of The Music Man, which features Robert Preston doing some special lyrics just for the trailer. The longer, original version of this trailer (which I can't find) had more of this and didn't have the bad edits in it. But for now, you'll have to settle for this...
John Pekkanen on one of our country's greatest exports. We may not be good at spreading democracy but we're darn good at encouraging people to smoke cigarettes.
Hey, kids! It's Sourpuss and Gandy Goose, who were two of my favorite characters until I actually saw them in a cartoon. Even when I was six, I gave a lot of animated films the "Springtime for Hitler" look and about half the output of Paul Terry's shorts did that for me. Nevertheless, I liked a lot of Terrytoons so I'll be listening tomorrow when Animation Historian Jerry Beck discusses them and other classic cartoons on Stu's Show, the endlessly-plugged talk show that you can hear on Shokus Internet Radio. Each broadcast can be heard live on your computer on Wednesday — from 4 PM to 6 PM on the West Coast and from 7 PM to 9 PM on the East Coast and if you're somewhere else, you can probably figure out the time from that information.
Better still, I won't just be listening to the show. I'll be on it. At the top of the program, I'll be on the phone for a brief but pungent discussion of the Writers Guild strike with host Stuart Shostak. Listen to that, then stay tuned to hear Jerry talk about cartoons, including (I'm sure) some well-deserved pride at the recent animation DVDs that he's helped midwife to great sales and even greater critical acclaim. Jerry, who's also one of the Brewmasters over at Cartoon Brew, is highly responsible for getting some of your favorite animation onto DVD and getting it treated with loving care.
You can listen to Shokus Internet Radio at the appropriate time by going to that website, selecting an audio browser and clicking your way to the fun. You can actually listen right now. There's always something good on there.
The press loves a horse race and often invents them even when there's no evidence of one. If you read the coverage lately, you'd think that Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul were surging ahead with the former likely to grab the G.O.P. nomination and the latter making a stronger showing than anyone had expected...and maybe that's right. But maybe The Gallup Poll is correct when it indicates that Huckabee is more or less tied for a distant second place finish behind Giuliani...tied with McCain, Romney and Thompson. And Paul is way down at 3%, tied with Alan Keyes, who not one person on the planet thinks has a chance of being the nominee. What's more, the numbers show no momentum for either man in recent weeks. Huckabee is right where he was a month ago (with Giuliani even farther ahead of him now) and Paul is down a point from where he was a month ago.
Yet still, you read how Huckabee and Paul are coming up from behind, gaining on the others. Why do I have the feeling that neither man is even running for the Republican Presidential nomination any more? Huckabee's running for the veep slot and Paul's getting ready to make an independent bid.
Publishers Weekly has an article up about how the WGA strike is affecting folks who write both that kind of material and also comic books. And I am one of them.
A lot of folks this AM seem very happy that the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild are doing something that should hurt the Golden Globe Awards — the writers refusing to allow WGA talent to write it, and SAG encouraging its members to stay away. This joy is actually unrelated to the strike. It's that no one seems to really like the Golden Globe Awards very much.
The awards are voted every year by something called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Who are they? No one seems to know. They throw a good party and they hype the importance of their awards, especially as a precursor to the Oscars. Basically, they have tradition and a good name. If you're in charge of advertising a movie and it wins three Golden Globe Awards, you say that in all the ads, presuming (correctly) that no one is going to go, "Who the hell even votes for those?" The Golden Globes therefore become a bit more famous and people assume they must mean something.
I've heard people debate whether the Academy Awards even mean a lot, above and beyond the fact that people think they mean a lot, and they do bolster careers and box office revenues. There is a convincing argument as to whether the voters have actually seen all the nominated films or if they just handed their ballots to their maids to fill out. Some, it is assumed, vote mindlessly for everything that is connected to them in any sort of business sense or friendship. (Back when movie studios had a lot of people under contract, it was not uncommon for the studio to circulate lists of who they wanted their employees to vote for in each category...or even to say "Just give us your ballots and we'll fill them out for you!") But at least with the Oscars, we know some people are voting whose opinions mean something.
But the Golden Globes? The industry joke is that when you win one, you thank "whoever votes for these things" and don't ask questions. When you get an Oscar, you can pretend that all your peers gave it to you; that the elite of the business unanimously thinks you're swell and that, in the words of Sally Field, they really like you. With the Golden Globes, no one who gets one wants to know too much because they're afraid they'll learn (or others may learn) that their lovely trophy was voted to them by caterers and parking attendants.
Basically, it's all a starfest. America watches because famous people show up...and famous people show up because other famous people show up, especially famous people who are campaigning for Oscar votes. This year, with Boycott in the air, we may be watching to see if famous people show up...or if so, which famous people show up and if any of them use the forum to denounce those who've caused or prolonged the strike. But I think a lot of people in the industry will be watching because they've long believed that the ceremony achieves a level of Phoniness that is offensive even for a Hollywood P.R. stunt, and they'll enjoy seeing it crash and burn.
Eight years ago today, I started blogging. In fact, it wasn't even called blogging then and there was no neat software like I'm now using to post my every-day-or-so comments. Back then, I was hand-coding my messages and figured to do it once a week, if that often...but I've found it to be fun and useful. It keeps me in touch with all sorts of people I know, gets me in touch with folks I'd like to know...and you'd be amazed at how many old friendships I've renewed. Once, I asked a question here about a famous Big Name Comedian and ten minutes later, the man himself e-mailed me with what I later learned was the wrong answer.
I should thank all the people who've made this possible but I've thought it over and decided it's only me.
Well, I guess I should thank all of you who've tipped the website (hint, hint) and helped make me feel that the effort is appreciated. You've also helped me feed animals in my backyard, buy really weird stuff off eBay and tip other websites. That's all I do with that money.
And I should also thank those of you who've sent in links and comments that were worth passing on. So I guess it isn't only me.
People always ask me, "Where do you get the time?" But I'm a professional writer and to me, posting here is like what an artist does in the morning, sketching to loosen up his drawing hand for the day. It's also very comforting, when I'm in the middle of writing an assignment for someone else, to write something that is wholly mine, even if it stinks. It's like Recess.
In fact, I have to get back to an assignment right now. Thanks to everyone I just thanked and anyone else I should thank.
From the late 1940s, here's five minutes of The Morey Amsterdam Show. The other guy in this clip is Art Carney in what was probably one of his first TV appearances. He imitates some radio performers of the day and does a decent job of it.
This is me back from the Writers Guild Informational Meeting, held this evening at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.
Well, I was wrong. I told friends that I expected some vocal dissent at the meeting. I guess I'm so used to WGA Strikes where there's a small but loud minority that goes against the leadership that I'm expecting it even when there's been so sign of one. As of when I left the meeting, well into the "questions from the floor" section, there still was no sign. The assemblage was solidly behind our officers, negotiating team and chief negotiator — so much so that even those who spoke in criticism prefaced their remarks with statements like "I think you're doing a great job but..."
I'm guessing there were around 2,000 people there. That's a very wild guess but it was definitely a very encouraging, enthusiastic turnout, especially for a drizzly Monday night meeting called without much advance notice. I lost count of the standing ovations given to our Board, negotiators and even to Alan Rosenberg, the President of the Screen Actors Guild, who was a very active participant.
News? There wasn't much. The WGA has voted to deny a waiver to the Golden Globes telecast. That show will have to go on without WGA writers, and Rosenberg suggested that it would probably go on without a lot of actors putting in appearances. He's already hearing that many will not be present and his union is beginning a member "outreach" (the word he used) to encourage more non-participation. The WGA will also not grant a waiver to the Academy Awards if the strike goes long enough for that to be an issue.
There was a question about the WGA possibly making an interim deal with David Letterman's Worldwide Pants company. Our executive director (and chief negotiator) David Young said he would not comment on any specific deal...but based on his non-specific comments, everyone present probably left with the impression that Letterman ain't getting his contract. The WGA is prepared to make such deals but only with players in the industry whose signing will change the dynamic. Granting Letterman the contract he seeks would only enable CBS to get fresh programming for two trouble spots while still fighting the main war against us...or at least, that's the thinking of our leaders and it seemed to be the overwhelming consensus of the hall, as well. I'm not as sure as some are that this is the right way to play this...but a rather compelling argument was made that to allow a company like Letterman's to sign would be, as one speaker tonight put it, "...the Writers Guild playing 'divide and conquer ourselves!'"
(Let me underscore here that no one spoke specifically about the Worldwide Pants situation. But they did speak of how it seemed like bad strategy to make that kind of deal.)
There was some other news about picketing and other protest events, and some folks are putting together something called StrikeTV, which sounds like a WGA version of YouTube...but really, that was the news. The WGA stands ready to negotiate at any time — "...even Christmas Day," someone said. I guess the big news was the great turnout, total lack of dissent and the strong support for our leaders. If someone thinks this Guild is weakening, they're out of their ever-lovin' minds. If anything, the tactics of the AMPTP have just made members mad and reinforced their feeling that we are standing on the highest ground. I feel even better about the strike than I did this morning...and I felt pretty good about it this morning. Still, you may notice that I have changed the graphic to 2008.
A couple of quick points. This article from The Wall Street Journal (dated today) includes the following paragraph...
As of yesterday afternoon, the guild hadn't responded to Worldwide Pants' request to begin separate negotiations. People close to the guild said there was some disagreement among members over whether the guild should make way for late shows to return, with some primetime showrunners — writer-producers responsible for the day-to-day operation of TV series — arguing against it. A WGA representative said no independent deal has yet been worked out with Worldwide Pants, but declined to comment further. Worldwide Pants had no further comment on the deal.
If you do a quick Google News search, you'll see that a lot of sources were saying that Worldwide Pants was already in negotiation with the WGA or even that a deal was almost signed. Those reports were just moonshine, based on nothing. No one at the WGA or at Worldwide Pants said they were already talking but it was reported as if they had. And as I said, it may be a lot more complicated than people expect. (It's even a bit more complicated today with the announced returns of Leno and O'Brien to the air...and before the date that was mentioned for Letterman's possible return.)
Also, a note on terminology: A lot of news stories are saying that Jon Stewart (or someone else) is seeking a "waiver" so his writing staff can resume work. Wrong word. A waiver would be like what the WGA granted for the Screen Actors Guild Awards show, saying that we suspend the strike for a specific event and allow writers to work without a contract. What Letterman is seeking, what Stewart may be seeking is an Interim Contract. That is an actual deal that is made outside the purview of the AMPTP. There may be a clause in it that, later on, would allow Worldwide Pants to shift to the terms that the AMPTP will eventually negotiate with the WGA...but it's still a valid contract, not a waiver. They are not the same thing.
That's all from here. I'll try to resist the urge to blog from the meeting tonight and instead, post something whenever I get home.
And I just got these press releases from NBC, statements from Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno. Looks like I spoke too soon when I said posting here would be light today. Here's Conan's...
For the past seven weeks of the writers' strike, I have been and continue to be an ardent supporter of the WGA and their cause. My career in television started as a WGA member and my subsequent career as a performer has only been possible because of the creativity and integrity of my writing staff. Since the strike began, I have stayed off the air in support of the striking writers while, at the same time, doing everything I could to take care of the 80 non-writing staff members on Late Night.
Unfortunately, now with the New Year upon us, I am left with a difficult decision. Either go back to work and keep my staff employed or stay dark and allow 80 people, many of whom have worked for me for fourteen years, to lose their jobs. If my show were entirely scripted I would have no choice. But the truth is that shows like mine are hybrids, with both written and non-written content. An unwritten version of Late Night, though not desirable, is possible – and no one has to be fired.
So, it is only after a great deal of thought that I have decided to go back on the air on January 2nd. I will make clear, on the program, my support for the writers and I'll do the best version of Late Night I can under the circumstances. Of course, my show will not be as good. In fact, in moments it may very well be terrible. My sincerest hope is that all of my writers are back soon, working under a contract that provides them everything they deserve.
I have mixed feelings about this. I agree that it's awful for staff members to be tossed out of work. It would be awful if Conan's crew lost their livelihoods, just as it's awful that other people throughout the TV and motion picture industries are losing their jobs. On the one hand, it's tough for an outsider to assess the pressures, both from business associates and circumstance, that Jay and Conan are under. On yet another, it's hard not to think that their going back may add some weeks to the strike and cost more people their paychecks.
The statement from Leno is shorter and in serious need of a good writer to punch it up...
This has been a very difficult six weeks for everybody affected by the writers strike. I was, like most people, hoping for a quick resolution when this began. I remained positive during the talks and while they were still at the table discussing a solution "The Tonight Show" remained dark in support of our writing staff. Now that the talks have broken down and there are no further negotiations scheduled I feel it's my responsibility to get my 100 non-writing staff, which were laid off, back to work. We fully support our writers and I think they understand my decision.
I'm a big fan of Jay Leno both as a performer and as a human being. I've seen this guy do some wonderful things for other people just out of plain old human decency. But I remember when there was the big strike at the Comedy Store and other local clubs, trying to establish that comedians should be paid for their work at these places. Leno was a major ringleader of that effort. I marched with the guy carrying signs that said, "No Bucks, No Yuks" and "Catch a Rising Scab!" And I think that if someone had crossed our picket line with that kind of rationale and pretense of showing support, Jay would have run over the guy with his 1955 Buick Roadmaster.
As predicted here, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien will be returning to their late night shows even earlier than the theoretical date announced for David Letterman. I just received this press release from NBC...
BURBANK — December 17, 2007 – After two months of repeats, "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" will resume broadcasting all-new episodes beginning Wednesday, January 2, 2008 (11:35 p.m., 12:35 a.m., respectively).
The late night shows suspended production due to the strike by the Writers Guild of America on November 5 and have aired repeats since.
"During the 1988 writers strike, Johnny Carson reluctantly returned to 'The Tonight Show' without his writers after two months. Both Jay and Conan have supported their writers during the first two months of this WGA strike and will continue to support them. However, there are hundreds of people who will be able to return to work as a result of Jay's and Conan's decision," said Rick Ludwin, Executive Vice President, Late Night & Primetime Series.
Guest lineups for the shows will be announced at a later date.
If I were Leno and O'Brien, I think I'd be pissed at that line about it being their decisions. And if I were a celeb that either show wanted to book for the first few weeks back — especially the first night — I think I'd find another way to get on television.
But it's good to know that Jay and Conan will continue to support the WGA strike. I think that means passing out doughnuts to the strikers as they cross their picket lines.
I have a busy day ahead of me. For a guy who's on strike, I sure seem to have a lot to get done. Then tonight, I'm going to try to make it out to the Writers Guild informational meeting out at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, a building I'm always amazed is still in existence. I think the last time I was there was when my mother insisted on us going to a Cat Show around 1967.
So posting here may be light today. To those of you interested in this whole matter of David Letterman's company signing an interim deal to get his shows back into production, I suggest you keep an eye on the details. A lot of press reports over the weekend I think jumped the gun, referring to negotiations 'twixt the WGA and Dave's Worldwide Pants as being in progress, almost concluded or even a done deal. Most of these had as their only source, this article by Bill Carter and Michael Cieply in The New York Times which, as you can see, says nothing of the sort; merely that Letterman was going to seek a deal. To date, I have seen no WGA spokesperson even comment long enough to say "No comment."
There is a valid argument, and I'm not sure which side of it I'm on, as to whether it will help or hurt the strike effort to make such a deal with a relatively small company. The WGA is open, even eager to see major production companies break ranks with the AMPTP and accept our terms but a deal with Letterman might just be a way to help CBS solve a crucial problem it has with two shows, thereby removing an incentive for them to settle with us as a whole. On the other hand, if an interim contract with Dave's outfit would be the first of many, that might get more momentum going in our direction. I really don't know. I just think that the assumption and news reports that it's definitely going to happen are premature. Wait until you see some WGA official quoted before you believe it.
In the meantime, I refer you to another fine piece by my friend Bob Elisberg for a good overview of the strike. The one thing I might quibble with, and this is minor and almost not worth mentioning, is that I don't think the AMPTP wanted this strike, or at least not this particular strike. I think they wanted a strike like we had in '85 where the whole thing collapsed in three weeks and we took a terrible deal and went back to work. The current strike, I don't think they wanted at all. I think someone pulled a Paul Wolfowitz and said the war would pay for itself; that they'd make so much off the rollbacks and lowballs — and establishing the precedent for them with other unions — that it would be worth a few weeks of a writers' walkout. I also think they didn't expect the strike to happen when it did; that they figured we'd work a few months longer, sans contract, thereby enabling them to get more product stockpiled.
None of that, of course, changes the fact that we are where we are. If we absolutely have to be out on strike against the monolith of the giant media conglomerates — and I don't see that we had a lot of choice — I still think we're in a pretty good place. I'll tell you after the meeting tonight if I still think so.
I've made mention on this site several times of a great old burlesque comedian named Irv Benson. Many years ago on a trip to Reno, I dragged a friend of mine — a fine cartoonist named Shary Flenniken, who went along to humor me — to the old Sahara Hotel there to see a show called The Penthouse Pet Revue. It wasn't that I wanted to see Penthouse Pets parading about in the near-nude. It wasn't even that I wanted to see the show's headliners, the singing duo of Sandler and Young. I just wanted to see the comedic interludes, which were provided by the last surviving straight man from the Minsky's days, Dexter Maitland, and his partner, Irv Benson. Even Shary, who was dubious on the way in, had to admit that they were very funny.
Thereafter, I'd go to Vegas now and then to see them...usually in the long-running Minsky's Burlesque Revue at the old Hacienda Hotel. I also saw Irv once without Dexter. The Plaza Hotel (then the Union Plaza) had a dreadful, cut-down version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum which starred Alan Young in the Zero Mostel role. Young was great and so was Benson in the role of the befuddled old man...though Mr. Benson didn't stick particularly to the script and was for some reason telling Liberace jokes in Ancient Rome. I dragged my friend Marv Wolfman to that one. Another time in Vegas, I dragged Len Wein and Marv to the Hacienda to see the Minsky's show there. Even they admitted that watching Maitland and Benson performing ancient routines was as good as or better than the parts of the show involving women with no clothing.
One trip, I got to spend some time with Dexter Maitland who, I'm sad to report, passed away some time ago. I'm not sure when but he must have been close to 100. Irv, I am happy to report, is alive and well and nearing his 94th birthday. Even better is that he is the subject of a forthcoming documentary that I'm sure eager to see. Here's a preview...
I've linked to a couple of Charles Krauthammer columns when I thought he was spectacularly wrong...so in fairness, I'll link to this one where I think he's almost (I'd quibble with a sentence or two) spectacularly right. And I'll add that I think a lot of people are so eager to vote for a person they think shares their religious beliefs that they overlook (a) that the person might not have a clue how to do his elected job or (b) that the person might be feigning his faith to get elected and then pursue a more selfish, sectarian agenda.
I am hearing now from two sources that the deal between the Writers Guild and David Letterman's Worldwide Pants company — the one that would allow Dave's and Craig Ferguson's shows to resume production — may be a lot more complicated that current press reports indicate. The WGA, for one thing, may still take the position that it's on strike against all of CBS and that it won't allow the network to solve two of its most desperate problems. If all of CBS wanted to sign on to the WGA agreement, that would be one thing. But there's a powerful argument to be made that the networks shouldn't be allowed to get their most critical shows back while still keeping most of the industry shut down, and there may also be complications in the deal from the Letterman side. It may happen...but then again, it may not. No word yet on how it will impact the Leno/O'Brien situation at NBC (or Jimmy Kimmel's at ABC) if Letterman doesn't return soon.
Also, several sources in reporting about the Worldwide Pants situation are saying that Johnny Carson came back to work during the '88 WGA Strike on a similar arrangement. This is from the website of Broadcasting & Cable, an industry trade paper. In an article headlined "Letterman May Follow Johnny Carson and Cut Side Deal," it is stated...
There is precedent for Letterman's move: Johnny Carson returned with his writers thanks to a side deal with the WGA during the 1988 strike. Like Letterman, Carson owned his own show.
Carson did own The Tonight Show while he hosted it but as far as I know, he did not make a deal with the WGA in '88 in order to resume production. My recollection is that he just said "It's time to go back" and he went back and the WGA — because it was Johnny Carson and because they were too busy with other matters — didn't make an issue of it, just as they do not contemplate taking action against Ellen DeGeneres. I could be wrong but I don't think I am. If Carson Productions made an interim WGA deal, it was some time after he returned to the air.
Ezra Klein makes a good point about Hillary Clinton's "negatives," which are a key reason some people think she can't win the Presidency. Yes, she's a polarizing figure. Yes, there are a lot of people out there who really, really hate her. But the way politics works these days, that's going to be true of anyone with a good shot at winning. No matter who gets the nomination, the opposition will be out there — on both sides of the aisle — demonizing and SwiftBoating and giving out reasons to loathe the candidate. I don't particularly think Senator Clinton is anyone's best choice but at least she comes pre-slimed.
Chris W writes with the following question, which has also been asked by others...
Why can't Leno make an interim deal for the Tonight Show (with his writers, for that matter)? In theory, all he'd need to do is have a commitment that he and the writers would be paid retroactively according to whatever deal is reached, wouldn't he? It would be neat (and very funny) if he took the opportunity to go back, and dissed the producers at every opportunity.
They're taking the show away from him anyway, and since guests and entertainment would be sparse, why not? He can show how well he works under pressure, for a show he's going to lose no matter what, a show that NBC (presumably) regards as a jewel in its crown, and would be faced with losing in a way they hadn't considered with the re-runs. He might even have Letterman on as a guest, and just think of how much fun they'd have complaining about NBC. No writers needed, just two funny guys making fun of the suits on a prime network show when it's practically the only game in town. My info comes from your blog, but it certainly looks like Leno (and Letterman) believe in the strike, and aren't going to undermine it for bad reasons.
I don't know if they particularly believe in the strike or just in solidarity with their fellow writers or both. Both men are WGA members, both men receive writing credits on their shows and both men surely consider the verbal ideas they come up with, before and even during a show, to constitute writing contributions. If Leno's going to be back, doing his show without his writing staff and performing any sort of monologue, he's going to have to reconcile what he does with the charge that he is violating his union's picket line. Writing a joke for yourself to tell is still writing.
In any case, I would think the chances of Leno getting Letterman on as a guest, or Dave welcoming Jay onto his stage, aren't much better than the odds of getting Abbott and Costello back together again to perform "Who's on First?"
But to get to your main question: No, Leno can't just make a deal as Letterman is reportedly about to do. The Writers Guild enters into contracts with production companies. Dave's show is produced by his outfit, Worldwide Pants. Worldwide Pants can sign an interim agreement with the WGA that will cover all its shows. Jay's show is produced by NBC. The official position of NBC and its parent company, Universal, is presently that the Writers Guild's demands are outrageous and will destroy the industry and must be seriously reduced before any company with an ounce of sanity could sign onto them. NBC is part of that group that walked out of the negotiations and said it wasn't coming back until we came to our senses.
That is why it is a bit remarkable that CBS (which is also part of that Alliance in the AMPTP) is not forbidding Letterman to make such a deal. They are perhaps even seeing it as a good thing for them in that it will get a couple of their most important shows back into new episodes. During the '88 WGA strike, the networks were pretty firm in not allowing suppliers to make interim deals with the Guild. I would guess that CBS and/or the AMPTP will have a press release out in the next day or so which will try to spin this as follows: Yes, it might not be a disaster for David Letterman's company to sign an interim deal since it doesn't do reality programming, animation, shows with DVD potential, etc., but it would be suicide for any other company to sign the dreaded WGA agreement.
There would even be some truth to the idea that Worldwide Pants would not be impacted as much as, say, Sony or Disney. Still, it's a chip out of the stonewall that the studios have erected. If other chips follow, it might be quite significant.
David Gantz has passed away at the age of 85. A native New Yorker, Gantz was a graduate of the High School of Music and Art, the National Academy of Design and, for some reason, the University of Iowa. Immediately after his schooling, he landed a job with what was then called Timely Comics, drawing and sometimes writing humor comics, including Mighty Mouse and Patsy Walker. (Timely is today known as Marvel.) He worked for an array of companies through the fifties at which time his career segued into magazine cartooning, political cartooning and the writing and/or illustration of books, primarily for children. His political cartoons were especially popular and he received the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award in 1997 for his feature, Gantz Glances.
One especially delightful creation of Mr. Gantz's was a newspaper strip called Don Q, which ran from 1975 to 1981 and deserved more attention than it received. It was the first, perhaps only comic strip ever syndicated by The New York Times, although it never actually appeared in that paper. (Before that, he'd written and drawn a strip called Dudley D from 1961 to 1964.) Gantz was also the author of Jews in America: A Cartoon History, along with his 75+ other books. A very prolific, talented man.
This is from the episode of I've Got a Secret from July 3, 1957. The panel has to guess a man's secret and his secret is that he invented electronic television. That's because the man is Dr. Philo T. Farnsworth. In addition to TV, he also invented or co-invented the electron microscope, incubators for babies and the system used by Air Traffic Controllers to stop planes from running into one another. An amazing person...and one who somehow managed to not reap many financial rewards for all his brilliance. On this show, as you'll see, all he gets is $80 and a carton of Winston Cigarettes which is about as much as he made off some of his inventions.
A couple of the questions asked by the panelists seem to me to be examples of a practice on some game shows (especially Goodman-Todman game shows) called gambitting. That was when the producers planted innocent questions with the panel that they thought would be funny to an audience that knew what the panelist didn't know. Bill Cullen, for instance, asks Dr. Farnsworth if his invention might be painful when used. I'm pretty sure they didn't tell Cullen what the secret was but it's likely they told him to ask that question in order to get a laugh. In fact, you'll notice they wait until after he asks it to buzz him and end his questioning. This was done a lot on panel shows in the fifties, though it was curtailed around '58 when the quiz show scandals broke. Shows like What's My Line? and I've Got a Secret weren't rigged — and of course, no one won any large sums of cash on them — but the producers were afraid that the public wouldn't understand if it got out that the panelists were being briefed in any way.
Anyway, here's Dr. Farnsworth. This isn't a particularly funny segment but how often do you get to see a genuine American genius? I mean, since I'm not on TV very often.
This whole thing with the strike is getting odder and more fraught with possible scenarios. David Letterman's company is going to seek an interim deal with the WGA that would allow its writers to go back to work and therefore, Late Show (and Craig Ferguson's show) to resume. CBS has issued a statement that says — well, here: Read it for yourself...
Regarding David Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants, seeking an interim agreement with the WGA: We respect the intent of Worldwide Pants to serve the interests of its independent production company and its employees by seeking this interim agreement with the WGA. However, this development should not confuse the fact that CBS remains unified with the AMPTP, and committed to working with the member companies to reach a fair and reasonable agreement with the WGA that positions everyone in our industry for success in a rapidly changing marketplace.
Nothing in there about CBS stopping Worldwide Pants from making a deal. That was not the way the network played it in past strikes. In '88, a lot of companies in a position comparable to Letterman's wanted to sign interim deals with the WGA and their networks stopped them. (By the way: I don't know how interim deals will work this time but in the past, they were "favored nations" contracts. The company signs with the WGA on the WGA's terms and then, whenever a deal gets struck with the AMPTP, the company can elect to switch to its terms, which presumably will be more favorable.)
Letterman, of course, doesn't have to worry about some of the "deal killer" issues that are presently said to be an obstacle to a WGA/AMPTP settlement. He doesn't produce any "reality" shows. He doesn't produce any cartoons. Excerpts from his shows do stream on the Internet via the CBS site but that could be curtailed or kept within a window that the WGA would agree was promotional. There are, as yet, no DVDs of old episodes of Dave's show. So it's hard to imagine they won't be able to make a workable interim deal.
Meanwhile, NBC is telling reporters that on Monday, it will announce the return of The Tonight Show and Late Night in new episodes, possibly January 7. (One source told me it may be even sooner than that.) Since those shows are produced by NBC, the network probably can't and won't make interim deals for them so if Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien elect to go back, they'll be crossing picket lines and working without their writing staffs. So far, no one has said for certain that Jay and Conan will do that, which leads me to suspect that's being argued about right now. It certainly puts those guys in an awkward, perhaps dangerous position. Apart from the obvious anger they'll feel from the Hollywood community — look at what's been directed towards Ellen DeGeneres and Carson Daly — there's the question of whether major stars will want to be a part of those shows.
Just taking Leno's situation, it sounds like lose/lose. He'll be out there doing a limited version of his show — hampered by a lack of writers and probably of top name guests — against Letterman with his full show and a lot of good will. If Jay does his usual long monologue, he'll be accused of employing scabs. If he doesn't do it, he'll lose his most valuable segment. His show has already taken a lot of hits from critics and doing it without writers will just give them fresh ammo to go after him again. And of course, he'll be working to save a program that NBC has already arranged to take away from him. About the only thing that may make him happy is not having to pay the staff out of his own pocket...which I thought was kind of a raw deal, the way he was pressured into it. (Hollywood is full of very wealthy people who are not paying their staffs during the strike, and no one faults them for it. And some of those people, unlike Leno, own their shows and are the actual employers.)
But the big question is what Letterman signing an interim deal will do to the strike situation. Will Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert follow? Will other shows? Is it just Dave who has enough clout that his network is not going to do what they've all done in the past and blocked interim deals? If Dave goes back on and starts clobbering Jay, will that add pressure to NBC to push for a quicker settlement? We're in uncharted territory here so it's gonna be interesting.
Fifty years ago yesterday, a new era in the field of animation began. NBC telecast the first episode of the first show produced for television by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, Ruff & Reddy.
It was not the first cartoon produced for television but it was darn close. More importantly, it was the business role model for all that followed. Bill and Joe showed there was money to be made in TV animation and others followed.
Ruff & Reddy wasn't a great show, especially compared with what followed. Today, the animation looks primitive even by Hanna-Barbera standards and the narrative seems a bit leaden. Still, the show had intriguing stories and colorful characters, as well as the expert voice work of Daws Butler and Don Messick, and I wasn't the only kid hooked from the start. I'm pretty sure I saw that first broadcast, which was hosted by a gentleman named Jimmy Blaine, assisted by two bird puppets, Rhubarb the Parrot and Jose the Toucan. That week and each week for years after, he showed two episodes of a Ruff & Reddy serial along with a vintage theatrical cartoon produced by the Columbia Cartoon Studio (usually, a Fox & Crow short).
I remember the impact on me of new cartoon characters. I was five and a half years old at the time but already, I had a lot of the constantly-repeating Bugs Bunny and Heckle & Jeckle cartoons committed to memory. Ruff the Cat and Reddy the Dog were new friends, so appealing that I didn't notice that they didn't move as smoothly or as much as other animated superstars. Or if I did, I didn't care. The following October, Bill and Joe introduced their second show, which was even better and all-cartoon...Huckleberry Hound. Before long, they were the kings of Childrens' Television.
When I'm around cartoon buffs and the topic turns to Hanna-Barbera, I hear two distinct reactions, sometimes from the same folks. One is negative, especially from those who began watching cartoons when the H-B output consisted of things like Scooby Doo and The Smurfs and Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch. The other is positive, fixing on how many people loved the shows and how many animation folks bought homes and fed their families thanks to Bill and Joe. Some called them the guys who saved the animation business when theatrical animation was dying out. There's some truth to all of that but it's especially positive to those of us who remember those early Hanna-Barbera shows and discovered them when they firsy debuted...starting with Ruff & Reddy.
We're hearing that David Letterman's company will attempt to make an interim deal with the Writers Guild to get his show back on the air. This could be interesting. In past strikes, the network hasn't allowed a supplier to make such contracts. Moreover, Leno and O'Brien couldn't do it as easily because their shows are produced not by their own companies but by NBC. Stay tuned.
Some time next week, I'll change that logo to say "Contract 2008," since that's becoming a foregone conclusion.
Not a whole lot to talk about today. The Writers Guild has announced an informational meeting out at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Monday evening. This figures since I have another event I was looking forward to that evening and now must choose between them.
The Guild is about to try an end-run around the AMPTP, seeking to get companies to negotiate with us on an individual basis. I will be surprised if this yields anything in the way of results and I suspect we're doing it more for the p.r. value — hey, we're trying to make a deal here — than with any optimism than Universal or Sony or anyone will break ranks. This will probably be discussed at the Monday evening meeting but I wouldn't expect any real major announcements there. What I would expect is a couple of angry members (we always have angry members) getting up and arguing over what, if anything, we should do to get the negotiations going again. Personally, I think anything we give up to get the AMPTP back to the table is setting a suicidal precedent. It's telling them they can get us to give up things we care about just by refusing to negotiate if we don't.
I don't sense that there's a lot of sentiment in the Guild to go that route and start abandoning demands. But one thing I've learned about the WGA is that there's always dissent...about everything. It sometimes is very loud and it almost always gets publicity far in excess of its actual strength. The Guild has a tendency, because it's so firmly committed to Free Speech, to sometimes afford too much dignity and attention to complaints and contrary views. There's nothing wrong with fifty people expressing an opinion opposed to our leadership but they oughta be treated as fifty people, not as a meaningful faction in a union with 10,000+ members.
My pet peeve in the area of Member Complaints would best be described by example. All I have to do is re-create a conversation I witnessed during the 1988 strike between an angry WGA member and a man named Brian Walton, who was our Executive Director and chief negotiator. It was during a period when the AMPTP had walked away from the bargaining table (they like to do that) and was making noises like they were never coming back. The angry member told Walton that the strike was being egregiously mishandled and Walton asked him, "What would you do differently?" The exchange then went almost exactly like this...
MEMBER: I would get in there and negotiate with them.
WALTON: They're refusing to negotiate with us.
MEMBER: Well then, you have to make them negotiate with us.
WALTON: And just how are we supposed to do that?
MEMBER: You sit down with them. You establish a dialogue.
WALTON: Sit down with who? The people who are refusing to talk to us?
MEMBER: Whoever you have to talk to to get a dialogue going.
WALTON: We've been trying since Day One to have a dialogue with these people. They give us their terms and then they throw us out.
MEMBER: That's because you didn't get a dialogue going with them. My agent told me that if he'd been representing the Guild, he would have established a dialogue and that would have segued into a negotiation where he could have gotten us everything we want.
WALTON: When your agent negotiates for you, does he get you everything you want?
MEMBER: No, but then he doesn't have the clout of representing the whole Writers Guild.
As a general rule, you can't make even a great deal in this town without some agent telling you, "I could have gotten you more."
Meanwhile, the AMPTP is hammering our current Executive Director, David Young, selling the idea that he's the problem, especially because he's never negotiated this kind of deal before. It's more or less a fact of life that anyone we send into negotiations is either going to be attacked for inexperience or, if he has experience in this area, attacked for what he's done in the past. If the AMPTP weren't attacking our chief negotiator, I'd figure he wasn't doing a very good job for us.
I understand we're going to have the regular picketing schedule on Monday. Then Tuesday, whoever pickets is going to be waving signs outside AMPTP headquarters. Then after that, there'll be no picketing until 1/7/08. So I think I'll try to get some in Monday or Tuesday...and now that I'm in the mood, I'm leaning towards going to the meeting on Monday evening.
Kevin Drum makes what seems to me like a sound observation as to why so many Conservatives are lining up against Mike Huckabee when he would seem in so many ways to be their ideal candidate.
The Bullfighters was the last American feature to star Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. I think it was their poorest film and you can almost tell that from the trailer...
The WGA has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board charging that the AMPTP is in violation of labor law by refusing to negotiate in "good faith." I'm not sure the AMPTP has ever negotiated anything in what the other side of the table would consider "good faith." Perhaps some DGA contract has been that way...but part of the current dispute is about the Alliance's usual modus operandi, which is to decide what they're going to give the union in question and make them accept that without any meaningful give-and-take. The AMPTP has responded by declaring the WGA actions are "desperate," which is not a surprising rejoinder. Right now, the WGA could send out for Chinese Food and the AMPTP would issue a statement calling it an act of desperation.
I wouldn't expect the N.L.R.B. to do much, if anything. Traditionally, they don't like to get involved in this end of contract negotiations and they boot decisions down the line, delaying them until they're meaningless. Maybe this time will be different but the most likely outcome of this filing is no outcome. It's still worth a few P.R. points for the Guild, though...one more notch in a rather successful campaign by the WGA to make sure that most of those who are paying attention to the strike see that we're not the problem.
Often in a strike, there's a tendency to blame the workers for walking out, rather than blame Management for offering them a deal they couldn't accept. Obviously, either party could be in the wrong but that possibility usually doesn't occur to those who really, really want the strike to end. It's simply faster for the workers to surrender. There are also those out there who think (in this case) that those who write TV shows and movies should be so glad to have that glamorous job that it's sheer greed to expect anything more. For some reason, it's not sheer greed for the companies to try and maximize their take...and it's not even greedy for them to try and lop a few million off some union's health plan and add it to some CEO compensation package. But somehow it's greed when writers don't want their incomes to go down. Right. You can find that viewpoint expressed in some news articles and on the Internet but it's not as prevalent as it was in our past strikes.
(I don't think, by the way, that writing TV and movies is usually as glamorous as it may seem to some people. I guess if you're stuck in a career you hate, any job of choice can look like Nirvana, and the paychecks you hear that some writers receive can sound like all the money in the world. But it's one of those "you have to be there" things. I don't know what good pay or working conditions would be in the dry cleaning business and my dry cleaner can't really evaluate those matters in mine.)
Lastly: There are reports today that the late night hosts — Leno, Letterman, O'Brien and maybe Kimmel and/or Ferguson — will all return to their shows in January, perhaps on the same day. So far, the reports don't quote a single person involved with any of those shows, nor do they say anything that would suggest that anyone spreading the rumor has talked to anyone involved with any of the shows. The story in The New York Post quotes Letterman writer Bill Scheft as saying of Dave, "...when and if he decides to come back, it will be the right decision." But that quote is several weeks old and was not sparked by any current developments. The Post also spelled Scheft's name wrong which may give you a hint as to the accuracy level of the whole article. For now, file this one in the "I'll believe it when I see a real announcement" category.
The other day, I posted a link to a video of Abbott and Costello doing "Who's on First?" with Spanish subtitles. I just received an e-mail from my amigo, Sergio Aragonés, who says, "The translation is pretty good, but it is not funny as is it in English."
Here's a nice little mini-documentary (four and a half minutes) on the voices in some Disney cartoons. One of the guys you'll see in it is my pal Will Ryan who says he reads my weblog every day and can prove it by calling me when he reads this to set up a lunch. I think that's Buddy Ebsen narrating.
People are talking about George Mitchell's report on steroid use in baseball and many of them are acting oddly shocked that it goes on. I don't really care a lot about it one way or the other, nor is it something I think about. In fact, when I saw the headline —
Mitchell's 'Roid Report Fingers Baseball Stars
— my first thought was that someone was making a fuss because a bunch of ballplayers had hemorrhoids. And someone was (ick!) fingering them.
Go read my pal Bob Elisberg on the current status of the WGA/AMPTP Negotiations (or lack of any). Bob and I didn't discuss this at all but we both thought it over and came out in pretty much the same place. The Guild will get royally hosed if it starts giving in to ultimatums just to get the AMPTP back to the bargaining table...especially since the AMPTP will just repeat the tactic to try and get us to give in on more points.
In other news: The DGA says it will hold off on negotiating its usual "early deal" with the AMPTP until January, which is not much of a delay, especially with the holidays looming. The DGA never really strikes. They did once for fifteen minutes but they do not have any sort of serious strike capability. There are a couple of reasons for this, the main one being that the Directors Guild does not merely represent directors. Its membership includes assistant directors, stage managers, production associates, unit production managers, technical coordinators and other folks who are not as directly impacted by most of the so-called strike points. Many of these people, for instance, only receive residuals indirectly through their health and pension plans. Many have no stake in the "creative" issues.
The other problem the DGA has in striking is that many of its members who are directors are rather entrepreneurial. They often own pieces of the movies they direct so aren't all that concerned with DVD revenues, or think of themselves more as employers than employees. That's a generalization, of course, and many DGA members are fine, dedicated creative types who care about everyone. But it's not easy for a union that contains so many disparate types to find the common ground necessary for a successful strike. What the DGA usually does is to make quick-and-dirty deals that get them a little more of whatever they want, and the AMPTP tries to build concessions into those deals that don't matter much to the DGA but which will matter to SAG and the WGA if the same terms can be forced on them via Pattern Bargaining.
Standard Operating Procedure for the AMPTP in this case would be to figure out a deal covering Internet Streaming that would benefit the DGA but if applied to actors and writers, would not result in any real revenue for them. The DGA would grab those terms and then the AMPTP position would be, "This is the deal. The DGA took it so the WGA and SAG must take it and we will not discuss any other formula, end of discussion." The 1981 WGA Strike was essentially about us refusing to accept the deal that the DGA had accepted for home video and cable.
In that case, we had a three month strike and in the end, the AMPTP backed down and gave us a different deal...one tailored for writers and their different situation. It was not only better for us than what the DGA had accepted but the directors later decided it would be better for them, too. (It was also such a good deal that in 1985, the AMPTP insisted on renegotiating it and cutting it back...but that's another story and not a pretty one.)
Something similar may happen this time but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that DGA negotiations can help the WGA by knocking down some stone walls. The AMPTP will have to give the DGA something better than they've offered us regarding the Internet and that may open the door for us there. They also may not be able to figure out a way to give the DGA a good deal there that won't be good for us and SAG. Moreover, there are points on which the AMPTP has dug in its heels with us that they'll have to relent on to sign the DGA — this idea that they can call anything they want "promotional" and not pay for its use, for example. I can't imagine the DGA buying that even if it does mean going on strike. If they can get rid of it, we can get rid of it.
And who knows? The AMPTP may just overplay its hand — it wouldn't be the first time — and not be able to make a deal with the DGA. The Directors have until the end of July before they'd have to walk out, by which time either the WGA and SAG will have made their deals or the town will be in full-scale chaos. The DGA doesn't have to have a new contract for a long time so they don't have to accept something markedly less than what they want. They don't have to undermine the other unions. And if they can't arrive at reasonable terms with the AMPTP, that will pretty much prove that it isn't the WGA that's the problem.
John McCain said something in yesterday's debate about Global Warming that I thought was very wise...
Suppose that climate change is not real and all we do is adopt green technologies which our economy and technology is perfectly capable of, then all we've done is given our kids a cleaner world. But suppose they're wrong and climate change is real and we've done nothing? What kind of a planet are we going to pass on to the next generation of Americans?
I don't think it'll change any minds but I think it's a good way to look at the problem.
In the old e-mailbag, we find a message from Jim Teiner asking...
I don't understand why people who write cartoons aren't in the Writers Guild. Can't you just belong to the union you want to belong to?
Would that it were that easy...
A bit of history. In the forties when the entity that eventually became the Writers Guild of America was being formed, there was little thought of them representing folks who wrote cartoons. For one thing, the organizers had enough trouble then just establishing their right to represent live-action writers. For another, the storylines and gags for cartoons back then were created in a different manner than is today the norm. That work was done by "storymen" who were usually artists and who often dabbled in other phases of production...also drawing or designing characters or such. It seemed right and proper for them to be in the same bargaining unit as other artists.
Those were cartoons for theatrical exhibition, produced on deadlines and budgets quite different from today's animation business. The demands of producing animation for TV, both in terms of schedule and finances, led to cartoons being written in script form, not only much like live-action scripts but in some cases, identical to them and by the same people. Starting as early as The Flintstones, there were folks in Hollywood who made their living as writers of both live-action shows and cartoons. This led to a steadily-increasing yearning on their part to be represented not by Local 839, which then called itself the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Union or somesuch, but by the Writers Guild.
There were many reasons for this yearning but most fell into two categories. One was that it was a hardship for writers who did both to be in two unions. It was (and still is) quite possible to work an awful lot and make a darn good living...but to still fail to qualify for health insurance in either of your two unions. Usually, if you do enough work, you qualify but often, a writer would do 90% of the necessary quantity of work to get health insurance through the WGA and 90% of the work necessary to qualify through 839...and would wind up with a lot of payments going to two unions but no health plan to show for it.
But it was even more unfair than that, which brings us to the second category. Local 839 was designed to represent artists who come in, punch a time clock, sit and draw all day, etc. At times, it has been rather effective for those folks (and at times, not) but the whole structure of the union has understandably been tailored to them. It has never worked as well for people who do what I do. As one example, in the hearings I'll describe in a moment here, we showed the National Labor Relations Board that one year, the highest-earning writer in the business did not qualify for the 839 Health Plan at all, while some writers who earned a lot less did.
That has never been the least of it. Back in the seventies and eighties, most of us writers who were in 839 were amazed not only at how little our union did for us but that the gentleman who was then Business Representative of the union — i.e., the guy who ran things there, ostensibly on our behalf — was openly hostile to our needs. We pointed out to him that the WGA covered matters like arbitration of screen credits, separation of rights, banning "spec" writing, etc., and 839 did not. His response was along the lines of, "I'm too busy to bother with you overpaid whiners."
This was the guy who was in charge of representing us...and you'd think, well, at least we were overpaid, right? I mean, our union got us at least that, didn't it? Amazingly, no. For one thing, we weren't overpaid. We were just paid better than he thought we should be.
The least you expect from your union is that they'll negotiate a decent minimum scale wage for you...enough cash for the lowest-ranked workers (the ones with no clout to demand more) to make an actual living. In fact, the amount that 839 negotiated as scale for writing a cartoon script was so low that most studios raised it voluntarily. Even beginners at some of the stingiest companies in Hollywood received 50% above the fee the union had negotiated for us, and some of us got between double and triple that amount...which still didn't make us overpaid, by the way. We were just in a situation where the amount that our union said was a fair price for a script was an amount that even Bill "Do it as cheap as possible" Hanna was embarrassed to pay anyone. At one other studio, the writers fought a constant battle to not have the rates lowered to union scale. That's how mind-numbingly rotten 839 was back then as far as writers were concerned.
Before I tell you how it's better now, let me explain a bit about how we tried to change unions in the past, prior to the current WGA campaign. I was heavily involved in two separate suits before the National Labor Relations Board, neither of which succeeded. The second attempt was the outright organizing of a non-union studio. We won the case, won an election there and then lost on an appeal due to, I was told, a guy at the N.L.R.B. in Washington (a Reagan appointee) who was notoriously and admittedly opposed to workers being allowed to unionize. The precedents he cited in reversing our win were all later overturned but by that time, it was moot.
The first attempt was a lawsuit to bring about what is called Craft Severance, which means to cut a group of workers out of one union, thereby allowing them to join another. This is very difficult to do under labor law, which traditionally favors continuity over anything else. There are many management/labor relationships that exist today which seem to go contrary to common sense and/or the current statutes but the N.L.R.B. allows them to continue on the assumption that to rearrange things might destabilize an industry that has a long history. (When they do intervene to change things, it usually works to the advantage of the employers.) The desire for stability is why they won't just let people change unions because they want to.
We lost that first battle before the N.L.R.B. for reasons I still do not fully understand. I think we had the first O.J. Jury making the call. In one part of the decision, the presiding official cited my testimony as an example of writers having "substantial interchange" with the animators on the shows they wrote, and said we should therefore be in the same union. But my testimony was that I didn't have any contact with the animators in my work because with very rare exceptions, they were all in Korea and didn't speak English. The rest of the ruling made about as much sense.
In any case, I will never forget — or forgive — the following scene. I am sitting in a hearing room of the N.L.R.B. huddling with Writers Guild lawyers who are seeking to get Animation Writers the right to join their union of choice. On the other side of the courtroom, allied against us, are the studios for which we worked — Disney, Hanna-Barbera, etc. — and Local 839. The Business Representative I mentioned above is sitting there, conferring with the folks he's supposed to represent us against, planning with them how to keep us in his union. And why do we think they wanted us in his union? Because he was the guy who was negotiating script fees for us that were below what they wanted to pay...and telling us baldly that our union wasn't going to address our other concerns.
That's why we didn't like Local 839 then. It is much better now. That gent was finally ousted and the current Business Representative is a bright, hard-working guy named Steve Hulett, who has helped remake the union into a vastly better organization. Unlike his predecessor, Hulett sees the advantage of working with the WGA where it can advance the interests of both organizations and he's been out walking the picket lines with us. However, it is still a union that is set up to serve people who animate and paint backgrounds and cels and such. It is still not equipped to do a lot of what the WGA does for its members. It is also part of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and you perhaps have read how openly nasty the President of that union, Thomas Short, has been to the WGA. He hasn't been much nicer to Animation Writers working within 839.
One thing to remember here is that the WGA's organizing efforts in animation are all on a "consent of the governed" basis. To organize any studio still requires an election and in this case, I doubt they would be close elections. Among Animation Writers, there doesn't seem to be much disagreement as to where we belong. I'm not in the thick of it these days but back in the eighties, if we'd been able to have elections and let writers vote as to which union they wanted to have represent them, I'd have bet my house that the WGA would get over 90% in any contest. At some studios, it would easily have been 100%.
This is not just because writers want and deserve residuals, which they expect the WGA to arrange. They do but two things should be noted here. One is my constant reminder to all that some Animation Writers do get residuals even without the WGA. Writing cartoons does not automatically mean No Residuals and that should never be taken as a "given" in any deal.
Secondly, residuals on all cartoon writing would not mean that much more money going to writers; not when you compare it to the over-all budgets of most animated projects. The payments would be important to the writers but the studios' pleas that this would disrupt the financial health of the business and drive profitable shows into deficit...that's all nonsense. They say that every time anyone wants a dollar more for doing anything. The last time it was said to my face over the issue of residuals, it was uttered by an executive who soon after received a boost in his own salary of, I think, four million dollars a year. That was somehow affordable for them but if they'd paid a couple hundred thousand bucks in residuals to writers — and that's all we were talking about — that would have "bankrupted the studio."
No studio has ever been bankrupted by residuals. They only pay residuals when they're selling reruns, which means they're getting paid. The desire to not pay residuals is never anything more than the desire to not share that new income.
Actually, the writers' desire to be repped by the WGA seems to me to flow mainly from what we might call the "moral issues," the desire to do our work protected from abuses that The Animation Guild, because it is not primarily a writers' union, is simply not set up to address. It is no longer a question of 839 being a bad union, as I believe it was in the seventies. It is now merely the wrong union, just as if you were a mailman, a union of textile workers might not be all that effective to cope with your particular needs.
What the WGA is attempting to achieve in its current bargaining with the AMPTP is to just take another step — and maybe not even a very big one — towards getting all those folks in the right union. The studios are opposing it because they don't like the idea of someone being in a union that might be truly effective in saying, "You can't do that to these employees!"
I have no idea how big a bargaining chip all this will be whenever the WGA Negotiators finally get to see the lovely faces of the AMPTP reps again. I would be disappointed but not angry if the WGA dropped its demands in Animation. I would especially not be angry it if were done as a trade-off for something more meaningful elsewhere in the contract. That would slow down the WGA organizing of Animation Writers but it would certainly not stop it. At the moment, I don't see that we're being offered anything in exchange for dropping our demands in Animation. At best, the AMPTP is saying that if we drop that plus some other things that we definitely should not drop, they'll come back to the bargaining table...probably long enough to tell us what else they insist we drop. I'd be disappointed and angry if we fell for that.
NBC has abandoned its bizarre idea of airing very old Jay Leno Tonight Show reruns. This week's are no older than 2004 (one is from last April) and next week's are all from 2006. I don't know what was on their mind but whatever it was, it didn't work.
Tomorrow, Turner Classic Movies is running The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again, back to back. If you've never seen them, at least the first is worth a peek. Both starred Larry Parks as the great singer...with the real Jolson dubbing the singing voice. (There's also one long shot in The Jolson Story where Jolson dances and it's the real guy standing in for the guy playing him.) Neither film is particularly accurate in its biographical storyline and the second one is really a case of no one having an idea for a movie but they went and made it, anyway. Still, there's something fascinating about the movies and most of the singing is wonderful.
And it's only twenty-one days until TCM runs my pick for the strangest movie ever made...Skidoo! Better start warming up the set now for that one.
This is the last of the four cartoons produced for the Hill & Range Company and aired annually on Chicago's kid's shows. If you want a DVD of them all, here's where to get one.
This is Suzy Snowflake and like the previous one, it was animated by Centaur Productions, the company run by master sculptor and special effects guy Wah Ming Chang. I'm told that the vocal group in this is the Norman Luboff Choir and that the female soloist is Norma Zimmer, who was one of Lawrence Welk's "Champagne Ladies" for around six hundred years. Take a look.
Here and there on the 'net, I see people making the suggestion that the WGA abandon its demands about representing Animation and Reality Writers. These are two areas near and dear to my aorta. I have worked in Reality Programming, back in the eighties when it was all represented by the WGA. I still work occasionally in Animation and was one of those who spilled a lot of corpuscles to try and move that area under the umbrella of the Writers Guild. It's important to note that the WGA does represent writers on some so-called "reality shows" — Dancing With The Stars, to name one. As far as I know, that series is still successful and has not been destroyed by its WGA contract.
We should also underscore that the WGA already represents some animation writing at some studios...and in some pretty significant venues like The Simpsons and The Family Guy. One of the sillier claims that's being made is that WGA coverage of animation writing would hurt the studios and cause profitable ventures to become unprofitable. The amounts of money involved are, to the studios, petty cash. They'd mean a lot to the writers but in the overall budget of a show, they're pretty insignificant. More to the point, shows already covered by the WGA are for the most part doing pretty well, and the ones that have failed would not have succeeded with cheaper writers. The Family Guy is a wildly lucrative cash cow and The Simpsons may soon prove to be the single most profitable TV series ever produced. So why would it kill someone else to make the same deals with us?
Equally important: Keep in mind that our current demands also would not give the WGA jurisdiction over all Animation Writing, either immediately or in the near-future. In fact, on the WGA site, it says that what we're now asking for is to...
Modify the definitions of "television motion picture" and "theatrical motion picture" to expand coverage of the MBA to all theatrical and TV animation except those that are covered by other labor organizations.
Those are my italics there. Disney, Warner Bros. Animation, Sony Animation, Fox Animation, etc., are all currently covered by another labor organization...The Animation Guild, Local 839. Writers on some projects at these houses have been repped by the WGA and that will probably continue and expand, but that's not what the current bargaining is all about. It's about allowing the WGA to organize where no one else currently has jurisdiction. Obviously, there's a long-term goal to cover everything but what we're presently asking for are some alterations of language that will make it easier for the WGA to bargain for Animation Writers not currently covered by 839. We will not wake up one morning soon — and perhaps not even in this century — to find that everyone who writes cartoons in this town is WGA.
I'm curious as to which AMPTP companies are stonewalling on this issue and how much they really care about it. Is Disney willing to keep the industry shut down over it? Even though the WGA isn't asking for jurisdiction over writers at Disney? True, expanding the WGA's representation of animation might impact Disney years in the future...but not now. Now, I suspect, the studios are a lot more eager to get the issue of "Distributor's Gross" off the table. One of the six areas they said had to be dropped before they'd return to the bargaining table is the one to which they responded as follows...
...we cannot agree to any new residual formula based upon the concept of "Distributor's Gross." That is, any residual formula that requires payment to be made based upon the receipts of an entity other than the signatory Company is unacceptable to us. Our agreement to share revenues with you must be limited to those revenues actually received by the signatory Company.
As I explained here, Distributor's Gross is the money that the company actually receives. It's easier for an outside party to monitor Distributor's Gross and less prone to bookkeeping shenanigans, which is why we want any formulas that pay writers to be based on it. The studios would prefer to base deals on Producer's Gross, which is not only a lower figure but a number from which they can deduct darn near anything they want. A studio could offer to pay you 110% of Producer's Gross and then make so many deductions that Producer's Gross equals zero.
That has to matter a lot more to them than the WGA demands in the areas of Reality programming and Animation. When they say they won't come back to the table until we drop the six demands they listed, those aren't the ones they most want us to abandon. The Animation one won't change that much, at least for quite a while. The one about the Distributor's Gross is where the money is. (So, to a slightly lesser extent, is the one about "Fair Market Value.")
The strategy behind the Six Demands is to get us bickering over how much we want to hold out over Reality and Animation. They hope that we'll crater over that, agree to back off on those points...and maybe the ones about Distributor's Gross and Fair Market Value can quietly disappear along with them in a kind of package deal. Personally, though WGA representaton of Animation matters greatly to me, I don't think that even if the studios give us what we're asking for, it will change that much...which is as good a reason to keep it on the table for now as it is to take it off. It won't matter either way if we hold fast on the money issues and we ought to hold on those. The issue of Reality Programming is more complicated and I'll try to address in a future posting why I think that's still a noble and proper area for the WGA to assert itself.
Really though, I don't believe Animation and Reality are true obstacles to getting the Alliance back to the negotiating table. This strike is still about their determination to lower the compensation not just of Writers but for Actors, Directors and anyone else whose deals would be impacted by ours. And it's also about the fact that at some point, the AMPTP is actually going to have to negotiate with us instead of deciding what they want to give us and shutting down the talks if we don't accept it. I would hate to see their Six Demands strategy succeed because it will just lead to the Six More Demands strategy. And then Six More and Six More or however many it will take until we don't have any left.
Time for another of those animated shorts produced for (and rerun incessantly) on Chicago kids' shows. This one is Hardrock, Coco and Joe, and it was done for Christmas of 1956 and for the Hill & Range Company, which I guess was marketing the song involved. The actual animation was done by a company called Centaur Productions, which was run by a gentleman named Wah Ming Chang, who specialized in sculpture, stop-motion animation and odd props. He did a lot of the props on the original Star Trek TV show, for instance (he built the communicators that predated cell phones, as well as the Tribbles) and some of Elizabeth Taylor's most notable headdresses and jewels in Cleopatra.
In animation, he did most of his work over the years in commercials and for George Pal's company — much of Tom Thumb, to name one thing — as well as a few things for Disney.
Here's Hardrock, Coco and Joe. If you're interested in obtaining a DVD of the shorts done for Chicago which I'm showcasing here, click on this link.
The University of Southern California has a superb College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and that college has something called the Master of Professional Writing Program which outputs some very fine soon-to-be-professional writers. Some of them take this course that the school offers...
Writing Humor: Literary and Dramatic
This course analyzes the specifics of humor — wit, irony, satire, parody, and farce. Work is read in class for discussion. Assignments
are a six-page and 8-10 page essay or fictional work, a critique of a sitcom or film comedy, and a humorous radio commercial. The final dramatic comedy assignment is predicated on action/conflict and the probable inevitability of humor.
That sounds exciting until you find out that beginning with the Spring semester, the course will be taught by me. I've guest-lectured at classes like this before but this is the first time I've had a whole batch of wanna-be writers placed in my care. I mention this not to solicit students (the class is already full with a waitlist) but just to let you know what I'm up to. And who knows? Maybe, by the time the class is over and those who take it are prepared to venture out into the world of professional writing, the strike will be over.
I've been telling you for some time now (here, for example) that the old episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. — you remember that show — have been refilmed to make them look cheap and shoddy. When I catch one today, I can't believe I once thought that was a first-rate production. Ken Levine has just had the same revelation.
I have nothing to say about the strike today but I suggest you go read Patrick Goldstein. I think he has a good handle on the situation. We are now in the stage when the AMPTP is going to do everything it can to sow discord within the Guild and undermine confidence in its leadership.
This is another one of those cartoons that the UPA cartoon studio (the folks who brought you Mr. Magoo, Gerald McBoing-Boing and that Dick Tracy cartoon show that barely had Dick Tracy in it) animated for the Hill & Range Music Company. The latter firm placed them on Chicago kids' shows of the fifties and I'm not sure where else.
This one is their version of Frosty the Snowman, featuring a terrific vocal rendition of the tune. I'm told Bobe Cannon directed this and have no evidence to the contrary. If you'd like to buy a DVD of this and other cartoons that became perennials on Chicago TV, click on this link.
It has been called to my attention that I keep presenting the Writers Guild's side of the current labor dispute. In fairness, I think we all oughta take a look at the AMPTP website and get their side of things. It's amazingly honest.
Comic book artist Wayne Howard has died. One of the few African-American comic book artists at the time he broke into the field, Howard learned his craft in the fanzines of the sixties and at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. But he told me he learned most of what he knew about comics from his brief time assisting Wally Wood from 1968 to 1969. (Some sources say '69 but you can see Wayne's name hidden all throughout the backgrounds of Captain Action #1, which Wood and his crew produced in 1968.)
I only knew Wayne from a couple of phone calls in 1970, shortly after he left Wood. When Jack Kirby left Marvel to edit his own comics for DC, Wayne kept phoning Jack and also me, hoping he could draw or at least ink something for the new projects. Unfortunately, DC didn't want Jack employing other artists so there was nothing there for Wayne. At one point, Jack arranged for him to take his samples in to show Carmine Infantino, who was the head guy at DC.
A few days after the scheduled appointment, I asked Jack if he'd heard how Howard's work was received. Jack replied, "Carmine thought he wasn't ready yet so he sent him to Connecticut."
I didn't understand the response so I asked Jack to explain. "I said Carmine sent him to Connecticut," Kirby replied.
Again, I didn't get it. "Are you saying that Carmine looked at his work and said, 'I don't like the way you draw. Go to Connecticut!'?"
"Yes," Jack insisted. "Carmine told him to go to Connecticut."
It took a few minutes but I figured it out. Charlton Comics, the lowest-paying company in the business, was based in Derby, Connecticut. I asked Jack, "Are you saying Carmine told him to go try and get work from Charlton?"
Jack, a bit exasperated with me, said, "Yes, Carmine sent him to Connecticut!" To Jack, "Charlton" and "Connecticut" were interchangeable.
Howard did go to Charlton and did get work there...a lot of work, though he occasionally managed to get a job here and there for DC, Marvel or Gold Key. I remember he inked one issue of Marvel Team-Up over Gil Kane pencils and did — I thought — a better job than a lot of folks who, unlike Wayne, got more work there. I have here the original art to an unpublished mystery story he did for DC over Mike Sekowsky pencils that wasn't very good, though.
Wayne's most notable work for Charlton was the mystery title, Midnight Tales, which he created and drew most of and often wrote, as well. As Charlton cut back on publishing, Wayne's career in comics pretty much went away and he freelanced here and there until around 1982, whereupon he stopped working in comics altogether. Someone told me once that he'd become a policeman but I don't know if that's true or if the person was confusing him with Pete Morisi, another Charlton mainstay who did work as a cop. Whatever, sources are reporting that Wayne Howard died yesterday from a heart attack. He was 59.
This will have to be brief (for me) because any minute now, I have men arriving to begin ripping out half my kitchen. They've already "demoed" (short form verb for "demolition") about a third of my dining room and made it unusable for — they say — about six weeks of reconstruction. Now, they're going after where I'd prepare the food I can no longer eat in my dining room. This is all because of a burst supply line on an upstairs toilet that leaked into walls, flooring and ceiling while I was in Ohio. The least fun part of my trip.
So...to the strike. We're in an uncomfortable place right now. The AMPTP says the talks are over until we assure them we're dropping six demands. A few writers elsewhere on the 'net are arguing that we should drop some or all of them in order to get the talks going again. Of course, there's no guarantee that if we drop all six, the other side won't engage in meaningless chat with us for a few days — just so they can say they're honoring their side of the ultimatum — and then announce the talks are over until we abandon six more of our demands. Or all of them. One thing we know from past deliberations with the AMPTP: When they have a strategy that gets them what they want, they do it again and again and again.
I think compromises are possible on at least some of those six areas — animation, for instance. The WGA is not, insofar as I know, demanding that jurisdiction over animation just be wrested from The Animation Guild...which the AMPTP probably couldn't do if they wanted. But there is language in the WGA-AMPTP contract that we'd like dropped because it makes it more difficult for the Writers Guild to organize via traditional labor organizing methods. The same thing is true of "reality" shows. If some of our demands in these areas seem like overreaching...well, a lot of that is like when they offer you $10,000 for a script and you and your agent think (and know) it'll be $15,000 so he asks for twenty. You often have to play the High-Low Game in bargaining. And sometimes, you have to be prepared for them to tell you you're crazy and unreasonable and to break off negotiations for a while before you get around to the $15,000 price.
And of course, sometimes you never get there. That's the risk in haggling. But you never get there when you capitulate and agree to the ten.
Sure, it would be nice if this thing was over. In most negotiations, the other side counts on you thinking that. In a game of Chicken, which is what too many business disputes devolve into, the one who acts less afraid of the head-on collision is usually the victor.
I don't think the WGA is going to blink on this. When the history of this strike is written, I suspect it's going to yield the overview that the AMPTP guys consistently underestimated the resolve of the membership. Almost every strike in Hollywood history has been about that...about someone on the Producers' side saying, "If we offer them X, they'll grab it" and just plain being wrong. In a sense, the AMPTP position is self-refuting. They're arguing there's no guaranteed money to be made on the Internet but they're willing to endure a long strike and screw up most other facets of their business in order to not share that "no money" with us.
If we are truly asking for cash that doesn't exist, it's real easy to arrive at a formula that handles that: We get X% of whatever does come in...or Y% of whatever comes in after $Z has been earned. Something of that sort. For the most part, the AMPTP is still sticking with "There's no money there so we won't discuss sharing it with anyone." Which is not a logical position and, of course, the "no money" part is not what they're telling their stockholders.
My doorbell is telling me the guys with the sledge hammers are here to whack my kitchen but I guess I'm done with this. It went on longer than I'd expected. But then, like strikes, my postings often do.
In the 1950s, the UPA cartoon studio was producing some of the most innovative animated shorts the field has ever seen for both theatrical exhibition and for various commercial usages. One of the ones they did that kind of split the difference was this version of Peter Cottontail, which appears to have been done mainly for airing on the legendary kids' shows that ran in Chicago. At least, I'd never seen it before it was put up on YouTube as a promotion for a new DVD of several cartoons produced for Chicago kidvid. I believe the legendary Grim Natwick was one of the main animators on this, and it features a particularly jazzy vocal arrangement of the song which you may enjoy. It runs two and a half minutes and the whole DVD can be ordered here. I'll be linking to other cartoons from it in the following week...
Norman Quebedeau is one of the many talented artists who worked with me on the Garfield and Friends TV series. Norman's gone on to many other shows, and he also occasionally works as a courtroom sketch artist, a job that fascinates me. A number of fine cartoonists including Bill Lignante and Dick Rockwell did work as courtroom sketch artists and found it to be a job for which a career in comics or cartoons well-prepared them.
Norman covered the arraignment of Barry Bonds for Reuters and you can find an example of his drawing here. He's also sketching the murder trial of Hans Reiser for Wired.com. See some of his fine work for them here.
Someone just wrote me to ask, "I see you took down the banner for donations to your blog. Does this mean we can no longer thank you for it by making a donation?" No, I took it down because I needed the space for a banner supporting the WGA Strike, which is obviously more important. If you'd like to send me money so I can buy more neat stuff off eBay — that and feeding stray animals in my backyard are pretty much all it goes for — then feel free to click here and PayPal me some loot.
(Oh — I also occasionally use those funds to tip other websites. You should also do that...tip other websites.)
Things seem quiet today. I suspect they'll be quiet for a few days but who knows? One thing you ought to avoid is giving much consideration to predictions based on just about nothing. I read one blog this morning where someone said, "I'm hearing the strike will last until April." Hearing from whom? Whose forecasts on this have any particular worth?
April could be right. So could January or June. You could randomly pick almost any date between just before this Christmas and just before the next one and you could be right. But J. Nicholas Counter and Patric Verrone don't have any idea when the strike is going to be over and may not even have sound hunches as to when negotiations between the combatants will reconvene. So how could anyone's prediction be any more than a wild guess? We know that given where things stand, even if on-the-record talks resumed tomorrow, they probably couldn't settle matters in the next week or two. We also know that the longer this thing goes on, the more pressure there will be on both sides to concede points and get this thing over with. But beyond that, you might as well lob darts at a calendar.
Here's a chunk of an e-mail from Stan Pauley...
Does the AMPTP have a point in their position? I read over all the press releases and statements and it gave me a headache. While I am very much on the Writers' side in this, despite not being a writer myself, it does seem to me like the WGA is asking for some things that are outrageous. Please explain.
Gladly. Yeah, our side is asking for some things that may be a bit excessive...although you should never go by one side's summary of what the other side is demanding. Of course, their description of what the WGA is seeking is skewed to make us seem unreasonable and overreaching. I wouldn't go by our summary of their positions, either. One of the nice (and new) things about labor disputes in the age of the Internet is that it's possible to read a lot of the actual proposals online. The AMPTP version of what the WGA is seeking in the area of animation, for example, strikes me as about as accurate as any given presidential candidate's quoting of his opponent's positions that he wishes to rebut.
(The AMPTP is saying that our demands in this area are "...unacceptable because the WGA is trying to achieve through these negotiations what the WGA has failed to achieve through traditional labor organizing techniques." My understanding is that what we're demanding there is removal of some specific language in the AMPTP-WGA contract that has made it more difficult for the WGA to engage in traditional labor organizing techniques, even in situations where there presently is no union coverage of any sort. To organize any body of workers, a union still needs to win an election and get the consent of the governed.)
But okay, so let's say some of our demands are excessive. So? This is a contract negotiation. The other side comes to the table with all sorts of excessive demands, some of which they seek to achieve, some of which are just in there so they can be dropped at what seems like an opportune moment. This is how bargaining works. You don't lead with your bottom line and you don't unilaterally drop everything the other side says they won't give you.
I know it's frustrating and you'd think grown men and women could sit down today and dispassionately make the deal they'll make in January or February or whenever so things could get back to normal and lives would not be disrupted. Unfortunately, that's not how it works, and that's more the fault of the AMPTP than it is of us. This is their game, their playing field, their bat, their gloves and — especially — their balls. They set it up that way because they usually get what they want that way. This is just turning out to not be one of those "usual" times.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has been examining George W. Bush's assertions of executive power and which ones he has. Apparently, the assumption in the Oval Office is that he has whatever powers he says he has and no one can say him nay.
From what I can gather, Bush supporters do not dispute that this is how their guy operates, nor will they entertain the notion that it is not right and proper. At least, not until some Democratic President wanders into the same territory.
HBO has been running Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, a documentary by John Landis all about Guess Who. It's filled with clips of Rickles in Vegas, interviews with Rickles at home, excerpts from old Rickles appearances and — of the greatest interest — interviews with Rickles friends and his fellow performers. It's a nice tribute to a guy who deserves a tribute if only for sheer energy and endurance.
What intrigues me are the excerpts from the man's current Vegas act, which is not all that different from what he was doing when the world first heard of him. Along the way, there were detours — attempts to position him as an actor, as a sitcom star and even as a musical performer — but they never stuck. In the early eighties, I saw him at either the Sahara or the Riviera in Las Vegas. I forget which it was but I recall my reaction to his performance. He was truly awful. A lot of people walked out on him and my party would have joined them but we couldn't believe that what we were seeing was all he was going to do. It was about an hour of singing and dancing and talking about his life and career...and most astonishing, a long speech about how each and every one of us should be constantly thanking God for blessing us with the greatest human being who ever walked this Earth...Frank Sinatra.
It was the most amazing example I've ever seen of a performer not knowing what he did for a living. Imagine you go see the world's best juggler and instead of tossing things in the air, he comes out and just tells "Knock Knock" jokes for an hour. That's kinda what it was...Don Rickles not insulting anyone and as a result, not being particularly funny or entertaining.
At some point though, the old act seems to have kicked in. One imagines God visiting him one dark and thunderous night, appearing before Rickles in a dream, telling him, "Don, you big dummy! I put you on this planet to call your fellow man a hockey puck!" However it happened, I'm glad it did. Rickles started being Rickles again. When I heard, I went back to see him again in Vegas and breathed a sigh of relief when he came out on stage, spotted a fat guy purposely placed in front by the ushers, and called out for Captain Ahab to come spear Moby Dick in Row A. (I was also relieved the designated fat guy wasn't me.)
Thereabouts, he stomped about on stage, sweating and free associating, spitting out semi-coherent but always amusing palaver. He said something about sitting in a hot tub and watching a duck sink. He suggested something about going to Vermont to suck sap out of rubber trees. He even offered up my favorite, which was the line — I'm not sure what it means but I love it anyway — about dropping his pants and firing a rocket. Every third sentence began with "I tell you this" or sometimes, "I tell you this, gang." Over and over: "I tell you this, I tell you this..."
It was wonderful. I don't know why it was wonderful...maybe just the rhythm and attitude. He was just so Don Rickles. The documentary is 90 minutes of Rickles being Rickles, and that's why it's wonderful. Try and catch it if you can. You hockey puck.
Forbes Magazine offers a wise and perceptive report on what's going on with the WGA-AMPTP negotiations...or maybe we should call them non-negotiations. In any case, I think any report is wise and perceptive when it quotes me.
Al Scaduto was born in 1928. I don't know anything about his personal life and I never met the man but I can tell you about his neat and tidy career. In 1946, he graduated from the School of Industrial Art and immediately got a job for life with King Features Syndicate. At the time, one of their star cartoonists was Jimmy Hatlo, who was responsible for two strips — Little Iodine and They'll Do It Every Time. (Little Iodine started as a recurring character in the other strip and proved to be so popular that she graduated to her own, Sunday-only feature.)
Hatlo was assisted by a guy named Bob Dunn and in '46, Scaduto began assisting Bob Dunn, working on both strips and on the comic books of Little Iodine, which ran from 1949 until 1962. Hatlo cut back on his work during the fifties and died in '63 but the transition was seamless, with Dunn and Scaduto there to pick up the slack and replicate the Hatlo style. Generally, Dunn wrote the gags and did some of the pencilling, while Scaduto did most of the pencilling and all of the inking on They'll Do It Every Time. Hy Eisman did much of the art on Little Iodine until that strip ended in the mid-eighties.
Dunn passed away in 1989 and Scaduto took over writing They'll Do It Every Time along with drawing it. He was reportedly still at it when he died yesterday on his 79th birthday. His pal and fellow cartoonist Mike Lynch has the sad news.
You've probably heard the new outrage that CIA interrogation tapes were destroyed, perhaps in violation of the law. Of all the pieces I've read about this, this one by Kevin Drum seems to have the most logical handle on the whole situation.
Monty Python's Spamalot is playing all over the world. Above is a scan of a blurry Polaroid photo of me on stage with the national touring company when they were playing Columbus, Ohio a few weeks ago.
Meanwhile, an Australian TV reporter checks in on the London company of Spamalot. The gentleman wrongly thinks that "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," which is in the show, was from the movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail but otherwise, it's a nice little segment on the production with some good clips.
The other day here, I linked to a fine article by KC Carlson about what comic book collecting was like back in the (cough, cough) old days. Something later went amiss with the link so I took it down. This one should work.
In case you haven't heard, negotiations have broken down again in the WGA/AMPTP talks...although frankly, from what we've heard, it doesn't sound like a lot of negotiating was actually going on even when the two sides were together and talking. (In case you're not up to speed, here's a report on the breakdown from the AMPTP side and here's one from the WGA side. Guess which one I think is more rational and represents good faith bargaining.)
What does it mean? Well, the first thing it means is no negotiating for a while. The AMPTP has demanded that the WGA drop six topics from the talks or there will be no more talks. As a complete outside observer, it seems unthinkable to me that the WGA would just drop these issues except as trade-offs for genuine concessions. But the AMPTP is not offering anything in exchange for dropping them except a resumption of talks that, so far, haven't been particularly fruitful.
So it sounds like this strike ain't gonna end until '08. The AMPTP posture is not one from which they can easily back down. They can't come back in next Tuesday and say, "Hey, remember that stuff we said on Friday about how we weren't resuming meetings until you dropped six issues? Well, forget it. That was just the liquor talking." It's going to take a couple weeks of sidebars and backchannel talks before the two sides — probably with a couple of outside parties doing shuttle diplomacy — arrive at some sort of understanding that will allow the dialogue to resume. The AMPTP may even try to plunge into an early deal with the Directors Guild, although the DGA may decide its against their own best interests to be used that way.
One thing to keep in mind if you read over the AMPTP's list of the six areas they will not discuss with the WGA: In them, you'll see some references to the Guild demanding to be paid more than the producers receive for something. Here's an example from their press release...
The WGA proposed a system of compensation for Internet programming that, when applied to the WGA and the other guilds, could result in producers paying more to the guilds from Internet programming than the producers actually receive in revenue from such Internet programming.
What that's all about is what they call Hollywood Accounting...ways of hiding the money from people who receive a share. Here's how it works. Let's say I have a movie studio called Klopman Pictures. Let's say you write a movie for Klopman Pictures and according to our deal, you're to receive 2% of the revenues that the producer receives. Then let's say the movie makes a zillion dollars.
You probably expect to receive 2% of a zillion but that's not how it works, Bunky. You see, the zillion is what Klopman Distributing — a separate company that I just happen to also own — collects. Then Klopman Distributing has to pay its expenses, which includes half a zillion dollars to me as a consultant. Then they deduct a 25% distribution fee. Then they lop off their FedEx expenses and the cost of the staff and what everyone spent on lunch, plus they have to pay rent (to the Klopman Realty Company) for the suite of offices that house Klopman Distributing...and by the time all these amounts are subtracted, what they pass on to Klopman Pictures (i.e., "the producer") is considerably diminished. I just did a rough calculation and I figure it's about $17.45. So you get your 2% of that amount. Don't spend it all in one place.
So when you read that the WGA is demanding "more than the producers receive for something," it's all about that kind of math. It means the WGA wants some sort of compensation that's not reducible to 2% of seventeen bucks. The tip-off is that phrase: "...what the producers actually receive." That's language you stick into a contract when you're preparing to argue that there's some money involved that you didn't "actually receive." In our hypothetical example, I'd be arguing that $17.45 is what the producer "actually received."
So that's what that's all about. Most of the other areas they're resisting are ones that would give the WGA more power. It's all very depressing but I think they're wrong if they think it's going to weaken the Guild.
I've been feeling guilty lately because with my trip and with various deadlines and disasters at home, I haven't been able to picket as often as I feel I should. Looks like I'm going to have ample opportunity.
I am sitting here at Farmers Market, having lunch with my friend, Len Wein. Len doesn't seem to believe I can post to my weblog from my BlackBerry. So this is just to show him I can.
L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke is reporting pure pessimism about the WGA/AMPTP negotiations. Says she, the "moguls" are close to walking out and not returning until February at the soonest.
Which leaves us with the question of whether...
Ms. Finke has solid sources within the talks that know of what they speak...
Ms. Finke is being "planted," directly or indirectly by someone on the side of the AMPTP who wants to throw a scare into the WGA and thinks that will hasten their concessions or...
Ms. Finke is passing on an honest assessment from someone with a vantage point into the meetings, but it's just one view and there are others.
Which is it? I'm inclined to think "c" is most likely with "b" as runner-up. There must be dissension among the studio heads and labor lawyers who are bargaining...or in some cases, refusing to bargain. And even the ones most eager to make a deal and end this thing probably figure the way to get there is to act like they're ready to walk out and let the WGA hang for a few months. A certain amount of what's going on is probably the Persistence of a Strategy. That is, the approach the AMPTP is taking to these negotiations of stonewalling and occasionally offering something that sounds generous but isn't...that's an approach that usually works for them. They've increased their revenues by billions (that's billions with a "b") with that approach.
It isn't working this time. We wouldn't be 33 days into a strike that is destroying all their schedules if it had worked, and it's showing no signs of starting to work, nor is there any reason to suspect it will begin working when it comes time to dicker over the same sticking points with the Screen Actors Guild. But it's kind of the only trick they know or can all agree upon.
Turning to my e-mailbag for a moment, I have this from Gary Emenitove...
Does NBC have any connection with Johnny Carson's Tonight Show episodes anymore, or is their ownership entirely elsewhere? Perhaps NBC could run old Carson shows rather than the old Leno shows? I'd imagine the ratings might spike — at least for older demographics — and this could even be a sales boost for the Carson DVDs that seem to be available everywhere. Personally, I'd make it a point to watch.
You, me and probably not a lot of other folks, Gary. No, as far as I know, the Carson family owns all those shows and NBC doesn't own any piece of them. Generally speaking, there hasn't been much interest in the marketplace in Johnny's old shows. I don't think the DVDs have even done that well. A couple of other folks wrote to ask me if NBC could stick on old Steve Allen or Jack Paar episodes. The answer is that even if those tapes existed — and sadly, very few do — they'd be a huge gamble that would go contrary to everything that ratings trends of the last few decades have indicated.
Since about the early seventies, a belief among those who program the late night shows has been that age lessens an episode's rebroadcast strength. I don't think you could look at the ratings and come to any other conclusion: Audiences do not want to watch old late night shows...and the older the rerun is, the less likely people are to watch. This was certainly Mr. Carson's belief. In the seventies, he got rid of his "weekend" reruns because of it. He cut back on his weeknight reruns and increased the percentage of new shows, even though it meant a higher percentage of all Tonight Show broadcasts would be guest-hosted.
He even changed the time frame from which they selected their reruns. In the sixties, when it came time to select an old Tonight Show to rerun with Johnny on it, they usually reached back at least a year. By the eighties, they were only reaching back a few months...and were avoiding shows with too many references that would remind viewers they were watching an old one. Even then, there was a belief that the program was particularly vulnerable on rerun nights. The occasional period when some other show seemed to be gaining on Carson was blamed, probably rightly, on that. During the period when Arsenio Hall's syndicated talk show was giving Carson a strong challenge, it was attributed to new Arsenio shows having the advantage on old Johnny episodes. Mr. Leno's ascension to The Tonight Show had a lot to do with countering that. Since J.C. wasn't about to start working more days per week and since his reruns were underperforming, Jay was hosting the show more and more and keeping the numbers up.
This all explains why Dave, Jay, Conan and the others usually draw their reruns from only a few weeks back and sometimes run an episode a third time, rather than go back even farther for one that's never rerun before. The older a show is, the more likely viewers are to change channels in search of something current. That's a pretty solid principle these days in late night programming...which is why I don't understand for the life of me why NBC is running Leno shows from 1994-1996. Not only that but throughout each episode, they keep putting up the original broadcast date to make doubly sure you know you're watching what is, by the current standards of network television, a truly ancient episode. As if seeing Chris Farley doing belly-flops didn't make the point.
Was this someone's bold notion? Did someone think viewers were dying to see Jay with darker hair (and sometimes even his old bandleader) making contemporaneous jokes about the Clinton administration? We always admire buck-the-conventional-wisdom thinking but given the numbers, it ain't working. Is NBC reasoning that since they're soon to lose Jay in that time slot, this would be a good time to drive viewers away from it? Letterman is running shows from last year — older than they would normally have selected but not as old as Leno's. Both shows are suffering. Even Nightline is sometimes beating them, which is remarkable given that we aren't currently in a hostage crisis or another Katrina. But Jay's being hurt a lot more than Dave. (Tonight's Tonight Show is from 2004, which is a little better.)
I joked the other day here that NBC was running them to see if they could embarrass Jay into returning to work. A friend of mine who works for Leno and is equally baffled called to say that explanation made as much sense as any of them. Let's see how soon the network reverts to recent reruns. If they don't and if this strike goes on as long as Nikki Finke thinks it might, NBC could do what CBS, ABC and others have tried and tried to do but never been able to achieve: Destroy The Tonight Show.
Judging from the ratings, not a lot of you are watching the hoary reruns of The Tonight Show at NBC, for some reason, is showing while Mr. Leno and his writers are on strike. Last night, it was a show from January of '96 and the lead guest was Chris Farley, who was either coked-up or might as well have been. Back when we could pretend his excesses weren't likely to kill him — he died in December of the following year — Farley seemed like a very funny, lovable boy. It's a little harder to see him that way now.
I find the old shows fascinating in their way but I'm not surprised America doesn't want to watch jokes — there was one on Tuesday's rerun — about how President Bill Clinton wasn't likely to get elected to a second term. It's interesting to see what passed for Current Events back then and also to see what Leno's show was like back then before he decided, for example, to stop trying to do characters in sketches.
More interesting to me would be to know what was on the mind of whoever decided that during the strike, they'd dip back into the days when Leno's hair was just going charcoal, and he was doing shows that he never wanted to have rerun. They're not making audiences happy and I doubt Jay is thrilled about them. So how come they're not dumping that approach and doing what Letterman's doing, which is to dig back no farther than last year, even if it means running some episodes for the third time?
This annoys me. We're on stormwatch here in Los Angeles and at the moment, it doesn't look like that big a storm. But you wouldn't know that from the L.A. Times. Here's the lead paragraph from an article they put up at 9:06 AM...
A significant rainstorm is expected to barrel into Southern California late today, dumping up to 3 inches of rain over two days and prompting the National Weather Service to issue flash-flood warnings.
And then later on in the article, it says...
The rains, which could range from 1 to 3 inches from downtown L.A. to the mountains, are expected to bring a considerable snowpack — with up to a foot of snow at elevations above 7,000 feet.
At least an inch of rain in downtown Los Angeles? Up to three inches? That's what they're suggesting but that's not what the National Weather Service — the article's only source for forecasts — is actually saying. This is from the 5:30 AM Special Weather Statement from the NWS, which as of this moment is still their official forecast...
General rainfall amounts are expected to range between one half and one inch across coastal and valley locations...with locally higher
amounts possible across Los Angeles County and areas near heavier showers or thunderstorms. Most foothill and mountain areas can expect between one and three inches of rain...with highest amounts expected on the south facing slopes of the San Gabriel range.
1-3 inches of rain in the mountains is not uncommon from a storm that drops a third of that in the L.A. basin. Flash-flood warnings in mountainous areas that have recently burned are also pretty standard even with a weak storm. It looks to me like the forecast is really for a half-inch to an inch across most of L.A. and 1-3 inches in the surrounding mountains, especially the San Gabriel mountains, where the topography doesn't have a lot to do with what we commonly think of as Los Angeles. It could be seventy degrees where I am and snowing on those hilltops.
But the point is that there's a big difference between a half-inch to an inch of rain in the flatlands and 1-3 inches. This storm may do some damage and it may even be bigger than the National Weather Service is predicting. But their current forecast is being misrepresented here. I wish people wouldn't do that.
At the convention in New York a few weeks ago, I got to meet a lot of folks I previously knew only via e-mails and weblogs. One was Clifford Meth, who has become an important presence in publishing these days, especially working with a new firm called IDW. He has a new project coming out this month called Snaked, described as a "noir horror story." I've liked what I've read of Meth's work and the fact that he started developing this one with our mutual friend, the late Dave Cockrum, makes it especially intriguing. The art is by Rufus Dayglo, who's been working for 2000 AD, mostly on the Judge Dredd strip, so I'm going to keep an eye out for this one. Maybe you should, too.
Fred Kaplan on what should happen next with Iran. And I also think that a good indicator of what's going to happen there would be to watch and see when David Letterman starts booking new guests. Especially if he has Regis on.
The most interesting things currently going on with our favorite topic — the strike — are the reports (like this one) that the member companies of the AMPTP are not quite all on the same page with regard to how long they're prepared to take a hard line and not give the WGA enough of what it wants. In '88, as that work stoppage slogged on, we heard increasingly that this company or that one was eager — in some cases, almost desperate — to settle but that "The Monolith of Management" was holding together via its own internal pressures. And of course it stands to reason that, just as not all writers are being hurt equally by the strike, not all networks and production companies are looking at equivalent losses.
The other day, I heard someone compare it to Tournament Blackjack, which happens to be a game I've been studying lately. In Tournament Blackjack, as opposed to regular Blackjack, all the players simultaneously play against the House but more importantly, they play against each other so it's possible to gain by losing. If I'm playing against you and the dealer beats us both, we both lose our wagers...but if you've bet more than I have on the hand, you lose more than I do. So I gain on you or even pull ahead of you. You can lose every hand in a Tournament Blackjack competition and still win the game because you bet small.
So it is with a strike like this. Some of the studios are being hurt less by the strike so they're gaining a competitive advantage on the others. No one could reasonably expect that Sony or Universal is going to break away from the Alliance and cut a separate deal with the WGA...but someone in their internal meetings is more anxious to end the strike than someone else.
Yesterday in this space, we told you that the WGA wasn't going to settle this thing without addressing some of the issues that don't relate directly to dollars and cents...and sure enough, yesterday in the bargaining sessions, our team presented demands for the Guild to expand jurisdiction over so-called "reality" or "writerless" shows. Tomorrow, at about the hour the National Weather Service says it'll stop raining in L.A., there's a big rally out in Burbank outside the office of one of the main companies that produces such shows.
(By the way: I noted that the rally was near the Bob's Big Boy restaurant in Burbank, which is where one can often find Drew Carey dining, and I mentioned the rumor that he owns the place. I am informed that he does not, but that he may have set up some sort of running tab there, whereby he pays for the meals of any diner who flashes a WGA card. Check before you assume that's true. Mr. Carey does apparently own Swingers, which is a coffee shop near CBS Television City that is feeding WGA members for free.)
No new predictions on how long this thing's gonna last but the more I think of it, the more I think the best indicator that it's close to ending will be David Letterman. The late night shows are taking a bad hit during this strike and they'll rush back into production as soon as the picket lines go down. Jay Leno's having all sorts of problems with NBC that relate to his future, or possible lack of one at that network. Dave's going to hit the ground at full sprint to get back up and running — that's one of the reasons he's paying his staff to keep working. So the second it looks like there's an end date for the strike, CBS exec Les Moonves, who's in the thick of the negotiations, will surely alert Mr. Letterman. When we hear that Dave is lining up a real guest list for even a tentative resumption of tapings, that's when I'll start believing the rumors that the strike is near settlement. Not before.
Quick! Check the time down in your system tray! Is it between the
hours of 4 PM and 6 PM Pacific Time? (That would be 7 PM and 9 PM in
the East and other hours in other time zones.) If it is, you can tune
in right this second and hear Stu's Show, a wonderful
talk fest on Shokus Internet
Radio that's on at this very moment with me as a guest!
We'll be discussing the Writers Strike. We'll be discussing the
life and times of Charles Schulz (with his son, Monte, and long-time
business partner and friend, Lee Mendelson). We'll even be discussing
the new, upcoming Garfield cartoon show I'm working on, plus
we'll be taking your phone calls if you want to comment or ask a
question.
"But how do I get there?" I hear you ask! It's as easy as falling
off a building. Go to the Shokus Internet Radio website.
There, you will find three different audio browser links. Pick one,
wait a few seconds for it to connect...and listen in! If it doesn't
connect, which occasionally happens, try another browser link. But
it's simple and it's free and it's all happening right this
minute...
...unless, of course, you've missed it! But fret not: The show
reruns tomorrow in the same time slot. It's not as good as hearing it
live but it's better than nothing.
No word on what's up with the strike other than assurances that they're talking and that everyone is considering everyone else's proposals. This could mean progress or it could mean that any minute now, both sides will be out there accusing the other of not knowing a good formula when they see it.
These things are always roller coasters, always a matter of hopes being raised and then dashed, raised and then dashed. It can make the strike seem longer and more painful if you allow it to keep doing that to you. My guess is that when we are close to a real resolution, there'll be no doubt about it. It won't be a matter of unsourced rumors. Dave, Jay and Conan will be talking about booking actual guests the following week for tentative new shows. The WGA will announce a general membership meeting. The AMPTP will find a way to assure advertisers and theater owners that new product is on the horizon.
Until then, assume the strike is indefinite.
Even when we have the above indicators, there may be stumbling blocks. The deal isn't the deal until the rank-and-file of the Writers Guild membership votes to accept. If the Guild's Negotiating Committee and Board of Directors vote to recommend it, then that will probably happen...but it isn't one of those George Tenet brand slam-dunks. Expectations among the members are high, not so much for the dollars and cents involved but that a number of the so-called "moral issues" will be addressed and improved.
The WGA never strikes only for money. We always have issues relating to the way the business works...matters such as screen credits, expanding the Guild's jurisdiction (into reality shows and animation, for instance), separation of rights, etc. Two big concerns that have loomed large the last few years are the matters of Late Payments and Free Rewrites. A number of employers have quite consciously opted to make the checks late so they can collect interest on the money a little bit longer. I once worked for a producer who had that built into his budget. It was planned that all checks would be two weeks late because this would net him an extra $1200 or thereabouts.
In the era of electronic payment, you would think this kind of thing would be ending...and in some areas, it is. I'm working on a project for a European company and when I hand in a draft, they sometimes have the payment in my bank account within six hours. But if I work for certain major studios in Hollywood, it will somehow take three weeks.
We'd like to mop that up and we'd also like to stop Free Rewrites. The contract between the AMPTP and the WGA specifies a certain number of drafts that you do on a script for the agreed-upon fee. Producers have been known to pressure writers to do more...and often, it can turn into writing a whole new script as an alleged "rewrite" of another. After you've delivered the final draft of the script in which everyone goes to the planet Neptune in search of water, the producer decides it'll be too expensive and instead, they want it to be a story in which everyone goes to Starbucks in search of Colombia Nariño Supremo. Well, okay, those decisions get made...but to get out of paying you or another writer to write that new script, they want to consider it a rewrite of your old one, the one you finished, and have you not charge them. We'd like that to stop, too. There are also matters relating to age and racial discrimination, product placement, honest accounting and several others.
Every negotiation, the WGA comes to the table with issues that are more involved with ethics and creative control than cash, and every negotiation, the AMPTP seems to take the attitude of, "Oh, they aren't really serious about anything but the money," which is always wrong. A large part of the Guild cares at least as much about the moral/ethical/creative concerns as they do about how much loot goes into our wallets. In the current bargaining, if you hear that they've settled the money questions, that may not be the end of it.
That's Charles Schulz, sketching his old friend Charles Brown, who sorta/kinda was the inspiration for Guess Who. As you may know, a highly-controversial book was recently written on Mr. Schulz. That book will be the second topic tomorrow on the first anniversary broadcast of Stu's Show on Shokus Internet Radio.
I will be the main guest for the two-hour program which you can hear live on your computer at 4 PM Pacific (7 PM Eastern). This is not a podcast that you can download at your leisure or listen to whenever you like. It's a streaming audio program and to hear it, you have to be at a computer when it's streamed. (It reruns in the same time slot for a week after but again, you have to tune in when it's being streamed.) This may sound a bit difficult in this era of TiVos and VCRs — actually tuning in to a show when it's broadcast — but those who make the effort seem to find it quite enjoyable. And you can also phone in while we're on the air and ask questions.
As I said, the book of Charles Schulz will be the second topic, which means we'll get to it after Topic #1, which will be my views on the Writers Strike for the benefit of anyone who's not sick of reading them here. So some time around 4:15 (Pacific), we'll begin discussing the book, and our host Stuart Shostak has lined up perhaps the two most-qualified people on the planet to join us for this discussion. Monte Schulz, son of Charles, will be participating and so will Lee Mendelson, who co-produced all the Peanuts animated specials and series. So you have the man's son and one of his closest business associates and long-time friends. Can't do much better than that.
Following that, if there's time, we'll be chatting about the new, upcoming Garfield cartoon show I'm writing and also about my past association with the character. And you can call in and ask me to talk about something more interesting than that.
Okay, now let me tell you how to listen to Shokus Internet Radio. Go to that website. Select an audio browser. Click and listen. And you can do that at any hour of the day because there are always interesting shows to be heard. Go there right now and try it out if you don't believe me. It's free. It's easier than you'd think. And it's addictive.
That's Stu's Show, tomorrow (Wednesday) from 4 PM to 6 PM on this coast, 7 PM to 9 PM on the East Coast, and if you're somewhere else, you can probably figure it out from that.
This will interest those of you who have a love for the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I write a lot about it on this site (here, for instance) and get a lot of mail about it. An oft-asked question is whether there's anything to the near-constant rumor that a full-fledged, updated remake is in the works. Answer: No, and I've long been skeptical that it even could be done. The joy of that film is in its celebration of a certain kind of comedian and character actor that just plain doesn't exist any longer. There are a lot of funny people in the world today but they're not funny in the same way that Phil Silvers was funny, that Buddy Hackett was funny, that Milton Berle was funny on those rare occasions when Milton Berle was funny, etc.
However, there have been movies that have attempted to replicate some of the spirit of Mad World. And as my fellow Mad World enthusiast Paul Scrabo reports in our video link today, there has even been one film that looks darn close to a remake...
Supposedly, a new offer is being presented in negotiations today, and the AMPTP guys are telling reporters that this will not be a "take it or leave it" offer but, rather, a starting point for further discussions. At the same time, the WGA is said to be readying some sort of proposal which, one assumes, will be on the same basis. That all sounds good if it actually comes down that way. My suspicion is that we're in for a few more rounds of the Producers presenting us with offers that they say are made of gold...then our guys do a little scraping and say, "Hey, this is just gold-colored lead paint over a lot of Play-Doh." Whereupon each side rushes to the press and accuses the other of not being serious.
Speaking of "the Producers," I have this from Jack Lechner...
I'm loving your analysis of the strike. But I do have to point out, as the Producers Guild already has, that it's a misnomer to refer to the AMPTP as "The Producers." Fact is, the AMPTP is the studios and the networks, and their affiliated lackeys, vassals, and subdivisions. Almost every producer I know is entirely sympathetic with the WGA. Hell, I've already suffered serious economic woe as a result of the strike — and I'm entirely sympathetic with the WGA. So please call a spade a spade, a producer a producer, and a greedy conglomerate a greedy conglomerate!
Well, the AMPTP does stand for "Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers" but in a sense, you're right. The noun "producers" does cover a pretty wide spectrum of folks in Hollywood. I've even been a "producer" on some of the shows I've written, though I can't recall doing many things on them that I wouldn't have done in my capacity as Writer. The title gets applied to folks who do the day-in/day-out business of getting a movie made or a show on the air and it also applies to the studio and the money men. I've also worked with people who had the title of Producer or even Executive Producer who insofar as I could see, didn't do a damn thing on the show except sometimes to watch it.
I've been using it rather generally and maybe I shouldn't, if only for the sake of clarity. I'll try to watch it...but everyone should be aware that not all "producers" are Mel Cooley. Some of them are Sumner Redstone.
While I'm in the "corrections" part of the e-mailbag, here's one from my pal Vince Waldron...
Nice piece on the oddly slanted coverage of Leno's damned-if-he-does-damned-if-he-doesn't behavior toward his workers and the strikers
outside. (Like you, I wonder why it's only talk show hosts who are expected to serve as mother hens to their studio hired staffs.)
But I'm actually writing about your parenthetical aside regarding The New Price is Right, in which you assert — jokingly, I assume — that the show has no writers. As you no doubt know, the show does indeed employ writers, and more than a few, to provide at least some of the words that Drew speaks, as well as pretty much everything his announcer intones, as well as all the words spoken by whoever it is that reads the prize descriptions. The fact that the show's writers aren't credited is almost solely due to show owner FremantleMedia's desire to avoid having to offer them the same industry standard benefits that accrue to writers on most other network shows. But, curiously, someone at FremantleMedia thought enough of their "writers" to submit three of their names to the TV academy for Emmy recognition, as Writers, for the 2007-2008 season — a strange gesture indeed for a company that claims not to employ scribes on their shows.
That and other subjects of more than passing interest to WGA members will likely be aired at this Friday's WGA rally to Win Industry Standards for Fremantle's writers, to be held this Friday at noon outside the company's Burbank HQ (at Pass and Alameda, just down the street from Bob's Big Boy.)
Hey, isn't that the Bob's Big Boy where Drew Carey always eats? Someone told me he owns it, and he may, but apparently he's there several times a week for meals. Maybe you could all go over there after the rally, see if he's eating at the counter and get him to spring for lunch.
But you're entirely right, Vince. That show has writers and like most writers on shows that are supposed to look spontaneous, they probably do a lot more than is readily apparent. This is one of our key issues in the current talks and I shouldn't have glossed over it as I did.
I'm hearing from a lot of folks who feel Jay Leno got slammed unfairly for...well, I'm still not sure exactly what the crime was. Something to do with assuring his staff they had nothing to worry about and not coming through with checks in the six hours after they were laid off. A lot of the pieces (starting with The Drudge Report, which is always a good place to get off track) said that Jay had fired his writers. Jay didn't fire anyone, especially his writers. They said he'd fired his staff...but the staff works for NBC. NBC laid them off, and this seems to have been done largely to send a message of fear out there. One of the Stupid Management Tricks that doesn't seem to be working this time is the concept that any time someone peripheral suffers as a result of the strike — a secretary being laid off, a business losing business, etc. — it's the fault of those awful writers for not just taking the rotten offer and getting back to work. It couldn't possibly be the fault of the AMPTP for giving them that rotten offer and refusing to budge off it.
That's worked in the past to ratchet up the pressure on us. But I don't think it's working this time.
Lastly, I need to clarify something that a number of correspondents and websites have gotten wrong. In 1985, a Writers Guild strike collapsed after three chaotic weeks and the WGA accepted what a lot of us think was the worst deal in the history of Hollywood labor unions. Some of us thought so at the time; others have since come 'round to that view. Among those who at the time campaigned for us to accept it, you now get a lot of, "Oh, no, I was never one of those idiots who were yelling that it was a good deal." What it was was an immense rollback in our compensation when a movie or TV show we wrote was sold on home video. As I've written here a couple of times, there was talk then of studies that would reassess the marketplace for video cassettes (this was pre-DVD) and some sort of upward adjustment if that industry turned out to be more lucrative than some thought.
Some people seem to think these studies were part of the '85 deal. They weren't. The settlement we accepted that year was that we'd take a whole lot less on home video, end of story. There was absolutely nothing in that contract that required the studios to spend ten seconds studying the marketplace or to give us ten cents more if, as it turned out, they were suddenly making billions selling movies on tape. The "talk" was all consolation statements...studio heads telling the press, "We're going to look into this...see if the writers deserve more..." But they were in no way obligated to do it so they didn't do it, and we all knew (or should have known) they weren't going to do it.
Moral of the story: We have a saying around the Writers Guild that if it ain't on the page, it ain't getting on the screen. It's the same way with deals. You don't get the money if it doesn't say so on the paper. And sometimes, not even then.
Here's a great example of someone furiously spinning the news to their advantage and getting slapped down for it. As you may have heard, two scientists — an American named James A. Thomson and a Japanese counterpart — recently announced they had developed an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells. This prompted columnist Charles Krauthammer to proclaim that the debate about embryonic stem cells was over and that George W. Bush had won. By insisting that science curtail the use of embryos in such research, Bush had spurred them on to find an alternative. Wrote Krauthammer, "Rarely has a president — so vilified for a moral stance — been so thoroughly vindicated." The piece, which ran in the Washington Post, was filled with quotes from Thomson that seemed to support all this.
That was last Friday. Today, the Post has a piece by James A. Thomson and a colleague, essentially saying that Krauthammer doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. The rebuttal, co-authored by the guy who was Krauthammer's star witness in support of Bush, says that Bush and Krauthammer were wrong both from a scientific perspective and as a matter of governmental policy. It's about as thorough a smackdown as I've ever seen in any newspaper and it concludes with a plea for Congress to override Bush's veto on the subject.
They should. There's no earthly reason to not pursue embryonic stem cell research other than a bunch of guys like Krauthammer, who don't have a clue about the science involved, have convinced themselves it's a variation on the abortion debate. They think they can't lose on one without losing on the other and they're wrong.
The new National Intelligence Estimate report says that Iran won't be "technically capable" of producing an atom bomb for quite some time. What does this mean? Fred Kaplan reads the thing so we don't have to.
I will be appearing (again!) this Wednesday on Stu's Show, the keystone program on Shokus Internet Radio. Matter of fact, it's the one-year anniversary of Stu's Show and since I was the first guest, host Stu Shostak is having me back to celebrate one whole year of his weekly broadcasts. We'll be discussing, among other topics, the Writers Strike, the new book on Charles Schulz, and the upcoming new Garfield cartoon show which I am writing these days since it is not affected by the strike.
The show can be heard live on Wednesday from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM to 9 PM in the east. I'll post a link here among the umpteen reminders to which you'll be subjected between now and then. But make plans to be at your computer then so you can listen in.
Back in the eighties, I did a comic book called Crossfire, which was drawn by a superb artist named Dan Spiegle. Crossfire was a super-hero (sort of) who in his other identity was a bailbondsman. He drove around L.A. in a 1957 Thunderbird that was identical to a 1957 Thunderbird that I then owned and often drove around L.A. One day, Dan was drawing an issue and he called up and asked me what our hero's license plate was. He had drawn a panel that required that info...so I thought for about two seconds and said, "BAIL4U." Thereafter, whenever Dan drew the T-Bird, that was usually seen on the plate.
A few weeks ago, I was driving through a parking garage in Century City when I did an automotive double-take. I literally passed another car, saw something, realized what I thought I'd seen, hit the brakes and then backed up about ten yards so I could see if I'd actually seen what I thought I'd seen. Sure enough, it was the license plate from Crossfire's car...
Fortunately, I had my camera with me. Unfortunately, the plate was not on a 1957 Thunderbird. It was on a late model Mercedes that I'm guessing belongs to a rather successful person in the bail bond business.
There's really nothing more to this story than that. I just thought it was amazing that I noticed the plate, and I figured there might be one Crossfire reader who visits this site who'd be amused by it. I didn't stick around until the owner came back to the car. I was afraid it might be my character.
Another Private Snafu cartoon. It's called Gripes and it was directed by Friz Freleng and released in July of '43. (Someone added Freleng's name on this print. When these films were released, they were without credits.) This one has kind of an interesting moral. It's that if you treat our soldiers well, you'll get your ass shot off. So it's dangerous to complain if they make you peel a lot of potatoes. I don't buy it, either but that's apparently the message that the Army wanted the animators to sell.
Mel Blanc does all the voices except that in the crowd scenes, you can hear Tedd Pierce, a WB storyman who occasionally played parts in the films.
If you eat in chain restaurants, you might want to check out this list of The 20 Worst Foods in America. It's really amazing sometimes how many calories are in something you'd think wouldn't be as bad as it is.
Yesterday, Jay Leno was the subject of some press reports that cast him in a bad light for declining to pay the salaries of Tonight Show staff members who have been laid-off because of the strike. Today, it's being reported that he is paying their salaries on a week-to-week basis, but he's being portrayed in a bad light because he didn't come through faster with the assurance...or something like that.
Here's a link to the article and I'm a little mystified. The staffers were laid off on Friday and on Saturday, Leno's producer was phoning around to assure them they'd be paid. That's not soon enough? The guy's shelling out a pretty large piece of change to people who don't even work for him — they work for NBC — and the response is that morale among the staff members is low because of Jay's behavior? That strikes me as finding a negative where there isn't one. Last night, I spoke to one Tonight Show employee who painted quite a different picture and who said that everyone there understands that Jay is having some tough negotiations with the network that are unrelated to the strike.
But this article seems to be going out of its way to spin positives into negatives. Here are a couple of examples...
"A lot of people don't want to work for Jay anymore," another staffer said. "His true colors have shown. We were told he won't cross the picket line until David Letterman or Conan O'Brien do so that he can look like the good guy to the WGA."
Even assuming that's a true summary of Leno's mindset — and it may not be, since it's at best an anonymous third-hand source from someone who may have been speculating in the first place — so what? If Letterman, O'Brien and Leno all stay out until the strike is over, they will be "good guys" to the WGA. That's all the guild is asking of them.
Beyond Leno's misplaced optimism about the financial well-being of his staff, he further damaged himself — in the eyes of some workers — with his public behavior. While he privately expressed concern for the jobs of all staff members, to the media he seemed preoccupied with supporting striking writers, including handing out doughnuts to picketers and mugging for press photos.
Translation: At a time when his staff members were still being paid, Leno was out supporting his union. In case no one's figured it out, the WGA has asked actors and performers to come out, join the picket lines and be photographed with us.
Just what is it Leno allegedly did wrong here? The staffers had not yet been laid off and might not have been laid off if, as many were speculating, the strike was close to a settlement. Apparently, he was supposed to not go out and back his guild. He was supposed to be lining up jobs for these people who don't work for him and might not have been laid off...this, despite the fact that employees are being laid off all over town and no star is helping them find work, and most aren't offering a dime out of their own pockets. (It is apparently only late night talk show hosts who are expected to come up with their staff's paychecks during a strike, not stars of sitcoms or dramas or anything else.) I don't get it.
I like the fact that Jay went out and bought doughnuts for the picketers. It's a good, blue collar way of telling America that he's behind the strike, as if closing down his show wasn't enough. I helped run the picketing of NBC in '88 and I don't recall Mr. Carson coming by and passing out crullers. That strike might have lasted a few weeks less if he had.
Actually, because I usually picket over at CBS, I really like the fact that Drew Carey, who's inside there most days hosting The Price is Right (a show without writers, let's note) has been arranging for pizzas to be sent out to the WGA members marching about outside. One day, he arranged for a dozen to be delivered and one writer outside told a reporter, "We want to thank Drew for sharing half his lunch with us."
I'm starting to lean towards the idea that The Strike could last a lot longer than the optimists among us have been suggesting. "Could" is the operative word in that sentence.
It's difficult to predict these things because at various points, the companies that comprise the AMPTP have to caucus among themselves and their CEOs or reps all have to sign off on a new offer or a new strategy. Outsiders are not privy to those discussions. At any given point, the Producers have a reasonably good idea of what it would take to settle with the WGA — how close to our demands they'd have to come to get 51% of the membership to vote to take the deal and get back to work. That they don't just offer that is because at least one of the member studios in the multi-employer bargaining unit thinks a better deal (for them) is attainable at a cost-effective cost.
Of course, it could be more than one member corporation that doesn't want to make that kind of settlement offer. It could be all of them. But during the long strike of '88, rumors circulated — who knows if they were true? — that at a certain point, Paramount wanted to make a real settlement offer, whereas Disney vetoed it. Or was it the other way around? There were also rumors that some of the companies were squabbling over matters unrelated to our strike, and that these squabbles were getting in the way of them getting together on an offer that would end our strike.
The point is we don't know. When the WGA has a rift in its ranks, as we did in '85, it's a matter of public record. When they get to fighting in the AMPTP, it's a carefully-guarded secret.
So that's one reason it's tough to forecast how this thing will play out. The other biggie is that there are wildly-varying estimates of how much money is involved in certain deal points, especially the ones that relate to new technology and expanding markets. You could see this vividly with the latest offer, the one that got summarily rejected last week. The Producers say they're offering a $130 million increase. The WGA analysts say it's a rollback. How good is it really? You can't answer that easily and since you can't, you can't say at what point it makes financial sense for one side or the other to pack it in, rather than hold out.
The other day, the WGA put out a statement that included the following...
On Wednesday we presented a comprehensive economic justification for our proposals. Our entire package would cost this industry $151 million over three years. That's a little over a 3% increase in writer earnings each year, while company revenues are projected to grow at a rate of 10%. We are falling behind. For Sony, this entire deal would cost $1.68 million per year. For Disney $6.25 million. Paramount and CBS would each pay about $4.66 million, Warner about $11.2 million, Fox $6.04 million, and NBC/Universal $7.44 million. MGM would pay $320,000 and the entire universe of remaining companies would assume the remainder of about $8.3 million per year.
Observers look at that and say, "So what's the standoff here? The Producers say they're offering $130 million and the Writers want $151 million. They're only $21 million apart. That's about what this strike if supposedly costing Hollywood per day! Why can't the two sides split the difference and end this thing so we can get fresh Colbert Reports?" The problem is that even if both sides' numbers are honest — and they may not be — nobody really knows how much loot will eventually be involved. We're talking a three year contract here and no one can say precisely where the home video and Internet Streaming markets will be in three years. The dollar figures cited are guesstimates extrapolating from where those markets are today.
And to further throw uncertainty into the mix, the Producers aren't thinking about how much it would take to sign the WGA. They're thinking of that amount plus how much they'll then have to give the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild and other unions that will demand and presumably get similar increases. (The precise multiplier is arguable because not every concession applies to every union...but for example, a movie has a lot more actors than it does writers. So conceding another dollar to writers might translate to four or five more bucks to actors.)
Beyond that, the Producers probably have two related concerns. One is that for the past 30 or so years, they've done a pretty good job of keeping the unions from making major gains. None of them expect a lot, which is why even the supposedly-militant WGA is (see above statement) willing to settle for a 3% increase in an industry that they project will grow at a rate of 10%. From the employers' POV, there's a certain value to not disrupting the momentum of not allowing unions to win demands. The 22-week Writers Strike of '88 could never, in and of itself, have been cost-effective from the Producers' standpoint. Some estimates say they lost $100 million for every million bucks they managed to deny us. But they also scared the hell out of all the unions in town. In the two decades since, no union or guild (including the WGA) has tried to gain much and most have eaten a few rollbacks, rather than get into another all-out war. That's worth something to the studios.
The other, connected consideration is this: Delivery of entertainment via Internet is a new frontier, a new place the industry seems to be relocating. There are undoubtedly those who dream of settling that territory without unions and labor getting a real foothold. The studios had to concede to principles like residuals and paying health benefits in the old venues and you can almost hear them saying, "Let's not make that mistake this time" or at least, "Let's not make it before we absolutely have to." That's one of the reasons all the other unions in town are lining up behind the WGA. They all sense that the business is being redefined and in their own ways, they'll all have to battle to not start over from scratch, fighting for the benefits they now take for granted.
All of this makes it very difficult to gauge how long it could be before the Producers decide they're losing too much. Could be tomorrow, could be April. I still don't think it'll be April because if they settle with us then, they'll be getting scripts just in time to face the possibility of a strike by the actors and maybe even the directors. That could throw the entire industry into chaos for all of '08 and do some irreparable structural damage to the biz, like putting theaters out of business for lack of product or causing major advertisers to largely abandon broadcast television.
Right now, a major date to keep in mind is February 24, 2008. That's the scheduled date for the Academy Awards. In order to have a relatively normal Oscarcast on that date, the strike would have to be darn close to over by the end of January. If it's still going strong the day of the Oscars, all the unions will boycott. Jon Stewart, the announced host, certainly wouldn't be up there in his tux and even if he would, can you imagine what that monologue would be like? I'm guessing twenty solid minutes of CEO-bashing, followed by no one of note presenting to a lot of recipients who couldn't be present to accept because they were outside with signs. The show would be a fiasco, sending word around the globe that the American film industry can't deliver product...can't even produce its annual tribute to itself.
If I were the AMPTP, I'd start pressuring the Academy to move the ceremony later in the year...maybe even into early April, which is when they used to have it. Like I said, I don't think the strike will last that long but if the Producers aren't prepared to settle by the end of '07, they're going to have to at least pretend they're willing to hang tough and hold out for several months beyond that. Delaying the Oscars, or at least trying to delay the Oscars, would be a convenient scare tactic. Let's see if they try it.
I just corrected Wikipedia on this for the third time: I did not create or co-create the 1992 sitcom, Bob — the one that starred Bob Newhart as a comic book artist. The show was created, produced and largely written by Bill Steinkellner, Cheri Steinkellner and Phoef Sutton. I merely wrote one episode and, in an unofficial capacity, provided some "technical advice" about comic books and the comic book business.
Someone keeps changing it back to say I created the show. I'm a little sensitive about usurping the credits of others, even accidentally. So if it's you who's been posting that, please stop doing it. Bill, Cheri and Phoef are great folks, they did a fine job on that show and they deserve recognition for their work.
It's kind of a toss-up as to who had the worse week, P.R.-wise: Rudy Giuliani or Carson Daly. "America's Mayor" is being battered by one revelation after another about trysts and cheating on his wife and using city funds and facilities to chauffeur his lady friend about. The host of Last Call with Carson Daly is losing respect left and right for his decision to cross the WGA picket line and resume the taping of his show.
Not that he had a lot before that. It is worth recalling the history of that show, which used to be called Later. It was hosted by Bob Costas. It was hosted by Greg Kinnear. It was hosted by Cynthia Garrett. It was hosted by a pretty wide array of temporary guest hosts who were auditioning for the permanent gig. What NBC came to decide was that it almost didn't matter who hosted it. The ratings were a rather predictable function of two factors: How "promotable" the lead guest was, and the size of the lead-in from Conan O'Brien's program. Of the two, the latter has probably been the more important. The host? Not that big a deal.
Mr. Daly, who does a nice enough job in the post, was chosen for a couple of reasons, one being that NBC felt they had to pick someone. Another was the hope — which has been generally realized — that his age and MTV background would draw in, if not a larger audience then at least a younger audience. The most important thing though was that NBC was hoping to use the slot to groom a new NBC star — someone who might be of value to them in earlier day parts. If Daly suffers in any way for his picket-line crossing, it will probably be in that area...but perhaps that was already a lost cause. It's been a long time since I heard his name mentioned as a possible replacement for O'Brien when he takes over The Tonight Show. Or for anything else.
It's easy to get angry at Daly...or at Ellen DeGeneres, who is also doing her talk show, sans writers. The decision to go back could be opportunism or it could be a genuine concern for the future of the show, the incomes of the staff, etc. The assumption out there seems to be that Daly was told, in effect, "Go back and do your show or you're fired." NBC can't afford to punish Conan O'Brien for staying out, and Jay Leno is leaving anyway...but they could put a gun to Carson Daly's head. If they indeed did that, it was probably just pique. The network's late night numbers are in the sub-basement, Conan O'Brien's show is delivering low lead-ins...and new episodes of Last Call probably won't do markedly better than reruns.
Obviously, as a loyal WGAer, I'd have preferred that Ellen and Carson not go back. Obviously too, we can't fully assess the pressures and reasons that both chose to risk damage to their images and the wrath of certain friends. I find it a little difficult to get too outraged over the choices they made, especially since I don't know much about the "why" of those choices. In any case, I don't think it does much to change the dynamic of the strike. The networks are still without too many of their money-making programs. They wouldn't be any more eager to settle thing if they didn't have new episodes of Ellen and Last Call.
Mr. Leno is presently getting some bad press because, though David Letterman and Conan O'Brien have announced they will continue to pay their staffs during the strike, Jay has not. Since he's soon to vacate his show — and since, unlike Letterman, he isn't sole owner of his show — he's in a little different situation. More significantly, Leno has been locked in his own negotiation for some time. I never thought NBC could have done much to change the "Who will replace Johnny?" scenario. I think there was really only one way that whole thing could have played out, which was the way it did. But now they're into a train wreck — Leno being ousted when his popularity is still high — that didn't have to happen. Last I heard, talks to keep Leno with NBC in some capacity (or at least, off Fox) were getting hot 'n' heavy.
Which makes me curious why, as noted here earlier, NBC is rerunning ancient Leno Tonight Shows, episodes that Jay himself has said many times he never wanted to have seen again. Does that mean the haggling is over? That NBC is now presuming Leno is going to be competition? Or is this just some sneaky way to pressure him to come back to work and/or sign a new NBC deal? I have no idea...but there's something going on there and it ain't just about the strike. Maybe when all the dust clears, NBC is going to need a new host for one of its three late night shows. I have a hunch Rudy Giuliani may be available.
Ben Wallace-Wells has an article up over at Rolling Stone entitled "How America Lost the War on Drugs." Its subtitle is a pretty good summary: "After Thirty-Five Years and $500 Billion, Drugs Are as Cheap and Plentiful as Ever: An Anatomy of a Failure." Looks like another one of those cases where no one will dispute that the problem isn't being solved but it's easier to keep staying the course and wasting $$$ than to admit that.
Michael Kinsley on the proposals currently being floated for flatter, fairer or simpler tax codes. Let me know if you ever see anyone propose any change whatsoever to the tax structure of this country that doesn't roughly translate to "Lower (or better still, eliminate) what my chosen group pays, no matter how much you have to raise them on anyone else."
January 1, 2008
