Friday, December 11, 2009

Recommended Reading

Andrew Leonard does more correcting and disagreeing with that Matt Taibbi article.

• Posted at 9:53 PM · LINK

Gene Barry, R.I.P.

Quite a few e-mails have asked me, "Where's your Gene Barry obit?" I wasn't going to post one because I have no special insight or experience with Mr. Barry to share. I enjoyed him in his many TV shows and I thought he was quite good in the musical, La Cage Aux Folles. I told him that the one time I met him...a brief chat at one of those Hollywood Collector Shows. We also talked a bit about the Bat Masterson and Burke's Law comic books that people were bringing to him for autographing. He hadn't seen much of them back when he was starring in those shows and was only now discovering what was in them. (I identified for him the artist he thought drew him best. It was Gene Colan.)

Pre-Masterson, Barry had been a Broadway actor and a successful one. In 1983, he startled many by returning to the stage there as one of the leads in La Cage Aux Folles. Today, it would not be risky for a "leading man" type to play gay — whether he actually was or wasn't — but back then, a lot of them would have feared damage to their reputations. The job resurrected Barry's acting career and I doubt too many thespians worry about such things these days, thanks in part to the courage of Gene Barry.

He seemed like a nice man. He had a great career. That's about all I have to say. Here's a link to a real obituary.

• Posted at 8:24 PM · LINK

Funny Book Report

There have been an awful lot of books released lately about comedians and comedy writing and just, in general, being funny. Back here, I recommended William Knoedelseder's book, I'm Dying Up Here, which is all about Comedy Store and about the 1979 strike that occurred there.

I would also recommend The Second City Unscripted by Mike Thomas, which is an oral history (i.e., a buncha interviews) with performers and writers who passed through the portals of the Harvard of improv comedy. There have been other books of this sort but this is one of the best...and being the most recent, it includes Stephen Colbert and other recent superstars of the Second City style of mirth. There is much to be learned herein by actors, even if they never venture into improv, and about how to play well with others.

And I'd also recommend Last Words, the posthumous autobiography of George Carlin. I dunno how much of it was written (or dictated) by Mr. Carlin before he left us and how much was the work of his co-author, Tony Hendra, who completed the work after. It's a pretty seamless whole though, and a nice insight into the life of the gent I think is the best stand-up comedian who ever lived. My one little quibble with it has to do with George's legendary Change of Life — the point in his career when he shifted from being a short-haired comedian entertaining the Merv Griffin audience to a long-haired one aiming at a younger audience. No doubt it was wrenching and courageous and ultimately satisfying for the man...but I always thought he was a bit of a pretentious bore on the topic, treating it as a major turning point in American culture. Since he was never pretentious or boring about anything else, it really stood out, and this book gives it a bit more importance than I think it deserved. But hell, he was George Carlin and he did plenty to erase pretension and fraud from our lives.

Lastly, I have less enthusiasm for Twenty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss, the autobiography of Tom Davis, who with Al Franken was a charter writer (and occasional performer) on Saturday Night Live. I always liked the man's work (or at least, the team's work) but his book rambles and it skips over vast gaps of his life and you can tell it was written by a fellow who did an awful lot of drugs. That is, you could tell if he didn't mention it on almost every page. His recollections of certain events are at odds with what has been reported elsewhere. Compare, for example, his account of the death of comedian Steve Lubetkin to what is said about it in the Knoedelseder book. Starting with his title, Davis makes a joke of how much he doesn't remember and then proceeds to prove it, even to the point of sharing e-mails he sent to Franken asking him to refresh his recollections. If you're interested in the early days of SNL, there are some good anecdotes and insights but it's one of those books where you want to reach in, tap the author on the shoulder and ask a lot of follow-up questions.

I have a whole pile of other books on comedy to get through. Watch for a follow-up post one of these days.

• Posted at 6:08 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Tim Fernholz believes to have found many an error in Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece — the one to which I linked a little while ago here. So if you read Taibbi, read Fernholz.

• Posted at 3:01 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

It's about time to start linking to some of the Christmas videos that people like to watch every year...

• Posted at 11:27 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Fred Kaplan liked the speech Barack Obama gave when accepting the Nobel Prize. So did a lot of people except, of course, those who are determined to find fault with everything the man does.

• Posted at 11:16 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Another Matt Taibbi article. This is a longish piece for Rolling Stone that argues that Barack Obama has sold out supporters who thought he was going to clean up Wall Street.

• Posted at 1:51 AM · LINK

Goodbye, Larry

Back from an evening at the Motion Picture Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The occasion was a memorial/tribute for the great comedy writer, Larry Gelbart who left us last September. Family members spoke. Co-workers spoke. (Among those you've heard of: Kirk Douglas, Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Norman Lear and Alan & Marilyn Bergman.) Clips were shown from TV shows Larry wrote (M*A*S*H) and movies (Oh, God!, Tootsie, etc.) The program got monotonous in a good way as person after person spoke of Larry's generosity, his lightning wit and his enduring talents.

Many funny stories of Larry were told. My favorite was recounted by Gene Reynolds, who was Executive Producer of M*A*S*H. He was going through a bitter divorce with a nasty battle over the division of property. One day during it all, he was having lunch in a Japanese restaurant and the waitress brought over a gift from a diner in another booth. It was Gelbart and what he sent over was one chopstick.

Perhaps the most touching moment came from Sid Caesar. I'll say this as delicately as I can: The great Caesar is not in great shape. He is frail and largely confined to a wheelchair. Unable to get up on stage, he delivered his speech from the front row of the audience, helped to his feet by an aide.

Now, in the best of health, Sid Caesar was never good at speaking as Sid Caesar. In fact, earlier in a clip that was shown, we'd seen Gelbart talking about how uncomfortable Sid was when not enveloped in some sort of character. Now, he tried...but the words just wouldn't come. He started a sentence, lost his way in the middle of it and just froze up. The audience squirmed uncomfortably...

...and then a smart person in the front row — someone said it was Mel Brooks but I don't think it was — called out, "Sid, try it in Italian!"

Instantly, Sid began speaking in the double-talk Italian for which he's so famous. It was utter gibberish but it was wonderful, eloquent gibberish that was somehow infused with love for his friend, Larry. The audience went crazy. Because we love Sid and always will...just as we'll always love Larry.

• Posted at 12:04 AM · LINK