Vanity Fair offers an oral history of the outgoing Bush Administration. Even buying the interpretations of many within that administration, it ain't a pretty picture.
Popeye doesn't look so happy. As this article explains, his copyright is expiring...though not in the United States. His trademark is not expiring...just the copyright on Elzie Segar's original creation. Not being an intellectual property lawyer, I won't attempt to explain precisely what the difference means except that there will be a big gray area.
It will be possible for overseas publishers to do certain things with the one-eyed sailor that they could not do before...not without making a deal with King Features Syndicate, which has long controlled the rights to the spinach-guzzler. There will also be things that cannot be done as they would constitute infringement on the trademark. In-between is that gray area, which I imagine will generate loads of billable hours for the King Features lawyers.
I dunno what this will mean for the creative health and legacy for this great character. Over the years, King Features has okayed a number of pretty awful Popeye products and comics...but there have been some good ones. I imagine someone out there will do something wonderful with Mr. Segar's sailor while others will put out crappy merchandise and reprints...and we'll probably see (or have to avoid seeing) some Popeye porn. I know some folks out there think Public Domain for something like this is nirvana but I have a bad feeling about it.
In the meantime, if you'd like to see Popeye at his absolute best, buy the new Fantagraphics volumes. They're reprinting Segar's work in handsome, well-crafted volumes. Here's a link to their latest release. It doesn't get any better than this.
Someone is spreading the word around Ye Olde Internet that the great comedy writer Larry Gelbart was recently incapacitated by a stroke and is on the cusp of taking the permanent dirt nap. Mr. Gelbart has since posted a few messages here and there suggesting that as far as he knows, this is not true. I hope, for his sake and all of ours, he's right.
Some time before Larry does leave us, it would be nice if someone would put a certain great, neglected masterpiece out on DVD. I'm talking about Movie Movie, a 1979 release which starred George C. Scott, Art Carney, Eli Wallach and a bunch of other fine folks. Stanley Donen directed and Gelbart co-wrote with our pal Sheldon Keller, who left us last September. I once heard Sheldon talk about the film over lunch at Jerry's Deli and if you could have recorded that and put it out as a commentary track, there would have been the danger of the commentary track being funnier than the movie...and the movie's pretty damn funny.
The film is actually two short movies in one, plus a trailer for a third movie. All feature the same cast. All feature the same warped sense of humor, spoofing their respective genres with great affection. This article in The Washington Times makes the case that a DVD release is waaaay overdue and it's the first thing in that paper all year I've agreed with. Let's make a little noise in the direction of seeing that happen.
I have yet to make good on taking my friend Bob Elisberg to lunch. That's why he has time to write articles for The Huffington Post like this one, which explains why Dick Cheney is about as popular as cholera.
You might want to read the interview with Cheney in which he said, among other things, "...you can get just about any result you want out of a poll." That's true. Unfortunately, you can also get any result you want out of foreign intelligence reports when you're horny to start a war.
The fine comedy writer Marvin Silbermintz just sent me links to two great clips on the CBC Digital Archives, which is a website full of goodies once broadcast on Canadian TV.
In this link, a young comedy writer named David Letterman talks about his work, long before anyone had ever let him host a talk show. This was back in '78. He also spars a bit with his fellow guest, director Otto Preminger. It runs a little less than seven minutes.
And in this link, Buster Keaton (from back in '64), reflects on his career, including an eloquent discourse on how to make a good throwing pie. The sound goes in and out so it isn't your speakers. This one runs close to 25 minutes.
Then, on my own, I found this clip of Gilda Radner and Lorne Michaels discussing their new endeavor, Saturday Night Live, for about nineteen minutes. I also located this one which is a few minutes with a young Jay Leno and this one with John Candy working as a field reporter for a Canadian TV program. There are probably other goodies there but some of us have things to do today.
There's been yet another study — like the last nine thousand studies on this topic didn't prove the point — that "abstinence" sex education doesn't work and that "virginity pledges" aren't kept. (I wonder how many of those studies pause to consider opportunity. I had a friend in college who loudly and sincerely vowed to remain "pure" — his term — until his wedding night. And he staunchly kept that vow right up until the first time a woman was willing to have sex with him.)
Anyway, this morning the popular political blogger Atrios writes...
While the fact that virginity pledges and abstinence-only sex "ed" don't stop teens from having sex is unsurprising, I doubt that even proponents are particularly surprised. They aren't interested in abstinence, really, they're interested in making sure "bad girls" get punished for having sex by being subject to the appropriate consequences. So it actually works as designed.
I think that's right...but he's missing part of the equation. A lot of parents love the idea of their kids taking "virginity pledges" because then Mom and Dad can pretend that when their daughter doesn't come home 'til 2 AM, it's because she and her friends got so engrossed in Bible Studies that they didn't notice the time. And if and when she gets pregnant outta wedlock, they're not responsible because, you know, they got her to take that wonderfully effective pledge.
Every time one of these studies is done, it yields the same result...and the kind of parents I just described ignore the study because it tells them something they can't accept. I guess that's why the folks who do the studies keep doing them but they're wasting their time. Those who don't want to believe will never believe.
Here's Walt Disney as the Mystery Guest on the 11/11/56 episode of What's My Line? Years ago, I met an animation art dealer who had acquired, at great expense and trouble, a 16mm print of this appearance. He was in the business of authenticating Walt's autograph and this was the one example he had of a Disney signature that he was absolutely certain was Walt's. As you might imagine, there are a lot of forgeries around...including many that came from Mr. Disney's office but were signed by someone else.
Note if you will that Walt says something about not wanting to disguise his voice with a falsetto because that would be "The Mouse." I'm not sure if he was afraid of being too recognizable if he did a voice in Mickey's range or if he just didn't want to be seen on TV with that voice. With one or two minor exceptions, he always avoided doing Mickey in front of audiences or cameras. The Disney organization was thrilled to have Clarence Nash demonstrating how he spoke for The Duck. They even kept him on the payroll to do that. But Walt seemed to think it was undignified for him to be seen talking like Mickey Mouse and there's very little footage of him speaking in that register.
Also: By 1956, he'd pretty much given up doing Mickey's voice, passing the mantle on to Jimmy MacDonald and occasional others. One of the last times he spoke for "The Mouse" was in the wraparounds that were animated for The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955. The little films where Mickey welcomed viewers or told them to make sure to watch tomorrow were Walt's last real performances as his studio's superstar.
Here he is trying to stump a panel that included Mr. Jerry Lewis...
December 30, 2008
