Wednesday, January 20, 2010

T.G.I.F. (Tickets Gone Indicating Friday)

Forgot to mention that Friday tickets sold out a few days ago for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Four-day passes were gone some time ago, as were tickets for Saturday. You can still buy a ticket to go on Thursday or Sunday...but you won't be able to for very long.

• Posted at 3:50 PM · LINK

A Benny Saved...

Over on this page, someone who signs their name "Film Preservationist" has posted another view of this matter where CBS is refusing to release certain episodes of The Jack Benny Program from its vaults. I'm not taking sides here and I'd be more comfy if we knew who "Film Preservationist" was. But I thought since I linked to one side of this discussion, I should note the other.

• Posted at 2:23 PM · LINK

The Latest...

They're saying that deals for Mssrs. O'Brien and Leno will be signed today. Then again, they said that yesterday. Conan's shows this week have been fiercely entertaining. Leno's have been awkward but they were awkward before this whole controversy started. And David Letterman...well, I like Dave almost any time he isn't whining about not getting to sit behind Johnny's desk or being ungracious to the guy who did. Yeah, he's funny...but he's starting to remind me of Orly Taitz making her case that Barack Obama was born in Kenya (or wherever it is this week).

It's hard to say how Jay Leno will do when his Tonight Show resumes. I think it'll depend a lot on whether he can surprise people with strong and fresh material. If he's doing Pumpcasting and that Jeopardy-for-Stupid-People bit by Wednesday, I think he's in trouble.

Still, one of the interesting things about the guy, and I think I made this point a few days ago here, is that people are always underestimating him. They underestimated how he'd do as Johnny's guest host. They underestimated how he'd do as Johnny's replacement. They underestimated how he'd do against Letterman with total viewers, then they underestimated how he'd do against Dave in the younger demographic. Once he had exceeded expectations in every one of those instances — and it really was this that triggered this whole, messy melodrama — his own network underestimated how long he could possibly stay in first place.

Want to know the one time he was overestimated? They overestimated his ability to deliver an audience at 10:00...and we all saw how that turned out. Maybe we oughta do him a favor and expect him to bomb big upon his return to 11:35.

Sources are saying that Conan is dickering with Fox, and I'm wondering what kind of terms he can possibly get since he doesn't seem to have an alternate competing offer. It's not like his agents can say, "Give him everything he wants or he's going to The Food Network." I hope he finds a slot soon because I'm looking forward to whatever he does, wherever he does it.

A number of folks have written to ask me who I think is "next in line" for David Letterman's job and if I agree with speculations that Craig Ferguson is a lock. No, I don't. Of Dave, Jay, Conan, the two Jimmies and Craig, I think Craig is offering up the most enjoyable show at the moment and I also suspect he's the only one whose powers of entertainment aren't fully developed or exploited in what he's currently doing. But here's my guess on this...

It's another one of those "we don't know" situations. It's possible that there's already some pre-negotiated deal in place; that in order to get Craig signed through 2012, as apparently was just negotiated, he has some contractual guarantee there. It's also possible that it's built into Dave's simultaneous renewal that he's annointing his successor. Letterman, like Conan and Jay, has always been concerned about what will become of his staff when he's no longer hosting. It would not be surprising if his pact says that if he leaves in '12 or before, they move Ferguson not only into that time slot but to New York and maybe even into that theater with as much of Dave's crew as is still present and eager to work. Letterman could also perhaps be repulsed at the thought of a battle over his throne, such as he endured and inflamed over at NBC, and he could want to pre-empt that from happening. So there's always the possibility of a deal of that sort. (One might note reports that suggest the current deals for both Dave and Craig expire at the same time. That would sure make it easier for the Scottish kid to replace Letterman.)

It's also possible that there is no already-secretly-arranged line of succession. CBS may simply not want to get trapped with a certain guy down the line, especially after seeing how badly things went when NBC decided to plan five years ahead for Conan to take over from Jay. If it's a free agent situation, I would suspect Mr. Ferguson is not at the absolute top of the standby list. He's more like that girl in the bar who's cute enough that you wouldn't mind taking her home but you're not quite ready to commit in case someone better walks in.

Assuming there's no deal in place, it would be in CBS's interest to see who else was available. By the time Dave needs a replacement — which might be a lot farther in the future than even he now imagines — another prospect could emerge as a bold and fresh comedy star. If Letterman left today and Ferguson didn't already have a guarantee of the job. I suspect CBS would first see if there was any way, financially and contractually, to manuever Jon Stewart behind the desk. Failing that, they might go after Stephen Colbert and one or two others (maybe Chris Rock) before they got down to Craig Ferguson. By 2012, that list will probably change somewhat. It might even include a name that would never occur to us right now.

And I'll bet NBC is quietly having discussions about who could take over The Tonight Show if Leno crashes and burns, either figuratively or on one of his motorcycles. I don't think it'll be Jimmy Fallon. Not at least until he starts consistently winning his current time slot.

• Posted at 11:07 AM · LINK

Your Benny or Your Life!

Several of you have written me about this. The International Jack Benny Fan Club has been attempting to gain access to about 25 old episodes of The Jack Benny Program that exist in the CBS vaults and, perhaps, nowhere else. They are apparently in the public domain and the fan club was willing to undertake the cost and responsibility of transferring the shows to digital format and making them available in some way to the world. At one point, the network folks seemed to think it would be no problem...but now it's somehow become a problem. Here's the story from the fan club's point-of-view.

This kind of thing is, alas, all too typical. I don't know precisely what happened here but I'd bet the request reached some lawyer who said, "Hmm...we stand to gain nothing from allowing this. On the other hand, we may start getting angry calls and legal threats from unions or the families of people who worked on these shows. If they feel their rights have been violated and that there's money due them, they're not going to go after The International Jack Benny Fan Club. They have no money. They're going to go after CBS. And so if I okay this and there's trouble later on, my bosses are going to think I didn't do my job very well. My job, after all, is protecting the interests of CBS, not protecting the interests of Jack Benny's legacy." I've seen folks in Business Affairs think that way even admitting that there was less than a 1% chance of such a thing happening.

The answer to this kind of stalemate is usually to get the material in question to a third party that can assume responsibility. For example, CBS could donate the shows in question to some university or museum. Back in the late sixties though, I dealt briefly with a person in the CBS Archives who would have solved it an even easier way. He would have gotten the necessary parties at his network to sign off on disposing of the films in question and once they did, he would have thrown them out...

...but he would have made sure that certain people knew which dumpster and when. Maybe you've seen the episode of Mr. Benny's show that guest-starred Humphrey Bogart, in which Benny and Bogey did a parody of old crime movies and Bogart sang the jingle for Lucky Strike cigarettes. In 1968, that was one of many I helped a friend fish out of some big trash cans behind CBS Television City in Hollywood. It was a 16mm print and it wouldn't surprise me if all the copies in circulation today were duped, several generations removed, from that 16mm print.

Anyway, I hope someone at CBS some day does the right thing and lets these episodes out. In the meantime, we can at least enjoy Jack Benny's memorable performance in the movie, Casablanca. (Or can we? The vote in our little poll as to whether or not it's him has hardly been a landslide one way or another. Right now, 38% of you think he's in the movie and 30% think he isn't. I'm thinking he isn't but darned if there isn't a Nazi in the background of one scene who's a dead ringer for my old gym teacher.)

• Posted at 10:18 AM · LINK

Today's Video Links

I can't embed this clip here but you might want to click and watch it. It's from the 1974 Academy Awards ceremony. Jack Lemmon presents an honorary Oscar to Julius "Groucho" Marx. Go watch it.

And while we're at it: At the 1977 ceremony, the Best Actor award went to Peter Finch for his performance in Network. Since Mr. Finch had passed away, someone had to be designated to accept on his behalf. (They stopped doing this at some point, at least on the lesser awards. I'm not sure if they still do it on the major ones.) Anyway, the Finch family and all his friends wanted the accepter to be his widow, Eletha. The Academy said that was not possible. After 1972 when Marlon Brando dispatched Sacheen Littlefeather to accept — actually, decline — his award for The Godfather, the Academy made a rule: A substitute accepter had to be a member of the Academy. Eletha Finch was not.

So Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote Network and was an Academy member, was selected to accept. When Finch won, Chayefsky did a smart and classy thing. He got to the podium and called the widow to the stage to accept the trophy. On some interview show the next day, he said, "What were they going to do? Have Security tackle her on her way to the stage and wrestle her to the ground to stop her?"

But I've always been a tad suspicious about whether Chayefsky did this on his own accord. I suspect the producers of the telecast knew about it in advance and perhaps suggested it. After all, it enabled them to get that nice, emotional moment for their show without violating the Academy's rule. Notice how quickly the camera is on her. The director sure knew where she was sitting. (And you may notice that when she's led down the aisle, she passes our old pal, Pat McCormick.) Here's that clip.

One more: George Burns in 1976 winning Best Supporting Actor for The Sunshine Boys. I remember being surprised that he didn't mention Jack Benny in his acceptance speech but it was still great to see him win. Go see him win.

• Posted at 12:24 AM · LINK