After every Comic-Con International, I get a lot of e-mails and calls from folks who bemoan that they missed certain panels and ask — pretty please with sugar on top? — if there's a recording, either video or audio. The panels are not formally taped but are sometimes informally recorded...and one of the folks who does this is Jamie Coville. He has a whole bunch of MP3 files of panels over on this page, including the Golden/Silver Age Panel and an event I hosted called "That 70s Panel." There are also recordings there of panels I didn't host, as well as many from other conventions.
The pics above were taken by Jamie at the Golden/Silver Age Panel in San Diego. The gents are, left to right, Jerry Robinson, Larry Lieber and Al Feldstein, who were joined on the panel by Al Jaffee and Russ Heath. A pretty good assemblage, I must say.
Hey, wanna hear my pal Greg Burson at work? Here's a minute and twenty seconds of him. This is what they call in the voiceover business, a "demo" — a little sampler of what a performer can do. Almost all of these snippets are from actual commercials that Greg had running at the time this was done, back in 1995. As should be obvious, he was really good at what he did.
A brilliant voice performer named Greg Burson died July 22nd at the age of 59. A native of Anaheim, he was a protégé of the great Daws Butler and after Butler's death in 1988, Greg was the natural heir to the Daws-created roles of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw and many others. He was also adept at imitating voices not created by Daws. At one point, he was the main replacement voice of Bugs Bunny, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe LePew and many of the classic characters voiced by Mel Blanc, and whenever you heard Mr. Magoo in anything since the death of Jim Backus, it was probably Burson.
To give you some idea of how good Greg was: One time, I was directing a session which included not only him but the legendary Stan Freberg who, of course, was Daws Butler's old partner. Greg rattled off a medley of Butler simulations and Stan turned to me and said, "If I hadn't seen him do those, I would have sworn it was Daws." I can't think of a better compliment a voice actor could receive. (Well, yes I can: Back when he was studying with Daws, there came a day when Daws told him, "Don't bother coming back. There's nothing more I can teach you." Daws was a man of impeccable standards and total integrity. That he said that to Burson is the ultimate endorsement.)
Greg also created original voices for animation. I cast him in three cartoon shows I voice-directed — Mother Goose and Grimm, Channel Umptee-3 and Dennis the Menace (in the role of Mr. Wilson) — and I was hardly the only one. All of the animation work was in addition to Greg's prolific career as a "straight" announcer, doing hundreds (if not thousands) of commercials, movie trailers, promos, narration jobs, etc. One of his earliest jobs, which didn't pay well but got him lots of attention, was a "Dianetics" spot he did for the Scientology people. It ran on TV as often as any commercial ever made.
Now comes the hard part of this obit, the part I wish I could just ignore, but I can't write about Greg without mentioning a disease called Alcoholism. If I ever had the idea that drinking was something a person could just stop doing by choice, it was well-rebutted by watching him battle it. It was a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle: He lost work because he drank...and that depressed him so he drank more.
Family and friends, including his agents and employers, tried to help. There were interventions, doctors, hospitalization, twelve-step programs, everything. Nothing reversed the trajectory of his life for very long. Eventually, those agents and employers dropped him...and then it got worse. One morning in May of 2004, a police S.W.A.T. crew surrounded his home in Tujunga because, it was alleged, he was armed and threatening to shoot someone. It all turned out to be a colossal misunderstanding, exacerbated by alcohol, but it was a lead story on the local news that "the voice of Bugs Bunny" had been arrested. If you ever want to torpedo a successful career, something like this will do it.
The cause of death is being given as complications due to diabetes and arteriosclerosis but obviously, drinking had a lot to do with it. Which is all so sad because a lot of us really liked Greg, at least when he was reasonably sober. In that condition, he was the kind of guy everyone wanted to be around — bright, gifted and the owner of a heart of awesome size. He was always trying to help others. I just wish he'd been able to help himself.
The Los Angeles City Council has passed, and the Mayor is expected to sign, an ordinance that would place a moratorium on the construction of new fast food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area inhabited by half a million low-income people. This sounds ridiculous to me...a case of government forgetting it's supposed to be government and thinking it's our parents.
I was curious to see just how they define "fast food" but was unable to find the actual bill online anywhere. I did read something about how it bars restaurants that have a "limited menu" and that McDonald's might have a wide enough selection that it would not be affected. Well, that would certainly make the bill effective. One report said that since Subway sandwich outlets don't have drive-thru windows and do make their food "to order" from fresh ingredients, they'd be exempt.
If this is so, then the bill is even dumber than it appears at first. I mean, I don't think the city has any business making it harder for you to get a Double Whopper with Cheese in the first place...but if it was in the public interest to limit fast food places, you'd have to define them in a way that addresses the real problems with them. It's not that they have drive-thru windows or small menus or pre-make their product. It's that the Double Six Dollar Burger from Carl's Jr. contains 1520 calories.
Is there evidence that the building of new KFC outlets is preventing entrepreneurs from building more sit-down restaurants that serve salads and grilled chicken? If so, there might be a case for limiting the Colonel...but I always thought the problem, such as it is, is that Americans just plain want what the fast food places offer. I always figured that if there was any sort of demand for healthier cuisine, it would be available. We have a fading chain in Southern California called Koo Koo Roo that offers fresh, non-fried fare...and they ain't doing so well. The Koo Koo Roo company's about as healthy as the folks eating those Double Six Dollar Burgers.
I eat very little fast food these days and would be happier if there were more places like Koo Koo Roo. But the only thing that's going to make that happen is a change in consumer tastes that changes a marketplace that is driven by what's already making money. People are going to eat what they want to eat, and right now what they want to eat is something that's been deep-fried, has a lot of cheese on it and has the potential to immediately close one or more heart valves. I think all the city council's going to accomplish is to make it harder for a lot of unskilled labor to get jobs.
Joe Conason points out something that a lot of pundits and reporters don't seem to realize, which is that John McCain is responsible for the John McCain campaign. Anyone remember when the senator from Arizona stood for a loftier, decent kind of politics? Now, it's all right out of the Bush/Rove playbook. The next thing you know, they'll be accusing Obama of having fathered a black baby.
I'm getting a little Tom Lehrer Theme Week going here. This is a clip from a 1974 series that the brilliant and bizarre Marty Feldman did for the BBC called Marty Back Together Again. For some reason, he performed a number of Mr. Lehrer's tunes as production numbers on the show. Here's his version of "The Vatican Rag."
The big labor news in show business is that Thomas C. Short has finally, as long expected, announced his retirement. Short was the president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, a post he's held since 1994. Assuming his successor (Matthew Loeb) is not a clone, this is good news for writers. Mr. Short was openly hostile to people who do that for a living, both as members of the Writers Guild and as members of The Animation Guild. The Animation Guild is an I.A.T.S.E. union, meaning it was under Short's supervision, and he wasn't much nicer to the writers who were members of his own organization.
Mr. Short was the man who authorized the Stagehands' strike in New York which shut down most of Broadway for many weeks, greatly inconveniencing the public and costing a lot of actors, producers and workers a helluva lot of money. He okayed or threatened other strikes by I.A. locals but when any non-I.A. union began painting picket signs, he was out there condemning them and wailing that they were greatly inconveniencing the public and costing a lot of actors, producers and workers a helluva lot of money. It was kind of stunning to see so much anti-union rhetoric coming from the guy who headed up the largest entertainment union in the world.
In other news, no one seems to know what's happening with the Screen Actors Guild but no one seems to think it's going to be anything but a disaster for that union. I've heard several possible scenarios from folks who know more about this kind of thing than I do. All are different ways in which the union folds, possibly with a major change of leadership occurring at or about the same time. So I don't know what's going to happen...only that it won't be pretty.
August 2, 2008
