Sunday, December 16, 2007

Go Read It!

Stephen Sondheim discusses the changes necessary to turn Sweeney Todd from a stage play into a movie.

• Posted at 12:58 PM · LINK

Strike Update

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.

• Posted at 12:51 PM · LINK

From the Strike E-Mailbag...

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.

• Posted at 9:21 AM · LINK

David Gantz, R.I.P.

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.

• Posted at 8:53 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

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.

• Posted at 1:07 AM · LINK

December 17, 2007 • Current • December 15, 2007