Saturday, December 13, 2008

Riders to the Stars

The website The Smoking Gun likes to locate and post "riders" for acts that tour around the country. These are the portions of a contract that specify the non-financial details of the act's appearance — how the dressing rooms are to be set up, what kind of catering there will be, etc. In some cases, the demands are exorbitant or silly...but also, like the secrecy clauses in David Copperfield's rider, understandable.

Recently, they finally got their mitts on what they call their "Holy Grail" of such documents — the famous Van Halen rider in which the group demanded that the candy dishes backstage contain M&M candies but no brown ones. It is now possible to buy M&Ms by color so that request would be easily-filled today...but back then, it meant someone had to go through the bags and remove the brown ones, and the clause was oft-cited as an example of rock star arrogance. The explanation is offered that the demand was inserted just to see if the promoters were paying attention but I dunno...

• Posted at 8:06 PM · LINK

Symbols Crashing

So how did the Obama campaign arrive at its logo? It sounds like the premise for a Mad Magazine article but here's an actual look at some logos that were rejected.

• Posted at 5:15 PM · LINK

Go Read It!

Frank Miller's motion picture of The Spirit is now playing on two out of every three billboards I see. It'll be in theaters shortly. In the meantime, Steven Paul Levia writes about an earlier attempt to transfer Will Eisner's classic character to the screen.

• Posted at 12:37 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This runs 52 minutes and you may encounter some advertising. It's an episode of The David Susskind Show from 1965 — a one-on-one interview with Jerry Lewis.

For those who aren't familiar with Susskind: He was an agent who became a producer (of TV shows, movies and plays) who eventually became a talk show host. In 1958, he started a program called Open End on New York local television. It was called that because it was done at the close of the broadcast day and each episode lasted until Mr. Susskind felt the topic and/or guest had been exhausted. So some nights, it might last 50 minutes and some nights, it might run over two hours. Eventually, it was syndicated in a standard length and renamed The David Susskind Show. It ran for twenty years, often in fringe timeslots...but even there, twenty years is quite a run.

Here's Susskind's chat with Jerry...

• Posted at 12:15 AM · LINK