Friday, March 6, 2009

Today's Video Link

From just the other night: Jon Stewart and his crew eviscerate CNBC. This is one of the sharpest bits I've seen on what is always a very sharp show...

• Posted at 11:37 PM · LINK

Go Watch It!

The N.Y. Times has posted an entire half-hour of The Dick Cavett Show (the PBS one) in which Cavett interviews John Updike and John Cheever. Good stuff.

• Posted at 11:28 PM · LINK

Batman and Robinson

Photo by David Folkman

Almost forgot to tell you about last night. That's not Batman in the above photo at left. That's me, listening as Comic Book Legend Jerry Robinson captivates a sellout crowd at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. People think you're a great moderator when the program is interesting but really, all you have to do is to get someone like Jerry talking about a subject that fascinates people. In this case, it was the early days of comics when he went to work for Bob Kane drawing some of the earliest Batman comics. Jerry told how he came up with the idea for The Joker and discussed the dozens of other things he's done in his career besides drawing great superhero comics.

Many folks who attended our little presentation went first to see the exhibit and loved it. It's there until August Something (the 9th, I think) so you have some time to get up there. Jerry, his wife and son and I had dinner first with the Skirball curators and they're thrilled with the turnout so far. If you'd like to be a part of that turnout, click here.

Anyway, a great time was had by all, as they say. Historians of such things might be interested, by the way, in a panel that I'm hoping to arrange for the Comic-Con International in San Diego this year. Jerry is probably coming and so are Sheldon Moldoff and Lew Sayre Schwartz. If we can arrange it then, I'll be interviewing en masse the last three surviving Bob Kane ghost artists...and darn near the only people alive who drew Batman comics prior to about 1962. (I get the feeling there's someone else but I can't figure out who it might be.)

• Posted at 10:22 PM · LINK

Time to Shoot the Dog

Have you been following what's happened with the National Lampoon brand? Once the title of a brilliant, best-selling humor magazine founded in 1970, it long ago morphed into a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for low-budget teen comedies...and now it's teetering on insolvency and someone may be heading for prison.

Past NatLamp contributors and fans debate just when and why its Golden Age ended but it was surely over as of 1989 when its first publisher Matty Simmons was no longer involved. That was the year of a transaction that has variously been described as an outright sale or as a hostile takeover. However one characterizes it, the business was acquired by a company fronted by actor Tim Matheson, who had appeared in the movie, National Lampoon's Animal House. A year or so later, it was sold to a firm called J2 Communications that was apparently less interested in publishing a magazine than in merchandising the name. Publication became more intermittent, diminished to annual status...and ceased altogether in 1998. You probably didn't notice. No one did.

Still, the name has continued to appear on movies, videogames and other forms of entertainment with, sometimes, great success. And other times, not. I've been a little mystified at the business model and at a general instability. One keeps hearing of plans by various entrepreneurs to acquire the right to revamp or resurrect the magazine but these never materialize. Then in 2002, a company named Four Leaf Management bought the name and formed National Lampoon, Inc., which is currently in a mess of financial/legal trouble. Last December, federal prosecutors filed charges of stock manipulation against seven people, including the outfit's former CEO. And now, National Lampoon, Inc. is scrambling to not be evicted from its West Hollywood offices for non-payment of rent.

Talk about how the mighty has fallen and it can't get up. There was a time when the good name of National Lampoon denoted a little brain trust of comedic excellence...in the magazine but also in films, radio, records and live shows. An amazing number of great humorists got their start or an important boost via that name but that was in a long ago land. At some point in the future, all the legal mishigoss will get settled and someone will wind up owning the trademark. One can only hope they'll do more with it than slap it on a product to promise it will contain tits.

• Posted at 8:34 AM · LINK