Saturday, January 30, 2010

Today's Political Rant

Did you see the Q-and-A that Barack Obama did the other day with House Republicans? Here's a link to a transcript and video and I recommend you experience one or the other. It was a remarkable discussion if only because of the sudden reappearance of the guy some of us voted to put in the White House. He stood his ground and at least tried to establish a healthier working relationship with the opposition party. I dunno if anything can make that happen but this was sure a noble effort.

He also demonstrated that though he may use a TelePrompter a lot, that's just to tidy up his sentence structures. The thinking was all there in an utterly ad-lib setting. Anyone think George W. Bush could have done that in a hall full of House Democrats? Or would ever have tried?

A lot of folks are noting a couple of exchanges where Obama, with great diplomacy, engaged certain reps on specific facts. I thought a key moment was when he told them that all the demonizing they were doing of his Administration was making bipartisanship impossible — for themselves...

I mean, the fact of the matter is is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you've been telling your constituents is, "This guy's doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."

He said it gentler in the State of the Union speech when he itemized a number of tax cuts that his Administration has made and then noted that Republicans, who claim to love tax cuts, weren't applauding them. They couldn't...because they were Democratic tax cuts. (I also think they weren't applauding because a lot of the cuts were for lower and middle-class folks. Republicans in general love all tax cuts but the ones in Congress only really like the ones for rich people.)

Once you tell your constituents that everything Obama does is evil, you can't meet him halfway on anything without appearing to be compromising with evil. You can't even support him when he does things you like. I think that's a lot of our problem right there.

• Posted at 10:35 PM · LINK

Late Night Dreams

It may be time for me to stop following the Leno/O'Brien mess as closely as I have been. I actually had a dream about it last night, and I rarely dream about things that are occurring in reality unless they're really, really close to me. This matter isn't and shouldn't be, though I have spent some time the last few days talking to folks who are living with it, mostly over at NBC. The discussions have been fascinating as spectator sport, and in trying to understand better the bizarre manner by which networks operate. If it doesn't make sense to you from afar, take some comfort in this: There are people who know a lot more about this than you and I could since they're in the thick of it...and it doesn't make complete sense to them, either. Such confusion is, by the way, not unprecedented in network television.

The conversations have also made me aware how so many who are outraged over this silly bit of network bungling simply have the basic factual recital wrong, and how many of the hysterical insults of Jay Leno are way out of scale even if he committed all the treachery they ascribe to him. Apparently, not giving Conan O'Brien a strong lead-in at 10 PM or taking back a job you didn't want to leave in the first place is now a capital offense. Well, I guess I can see that.

Some of the differing perspectives are, I suppose, a matter of personal experience. Those who are furious that NBC made some bad calls seem to be expecting a level of perfection at the executive level that I sure have never seen. Not there, not anywhere...and certainly not with regard to any show I ever worked on. While it's obvious some very bad decisions were made, it's not so obvious what the right ones might have been. Even armed with hindsight and the knowledge of how the ratings would go, no one seems able to say, "Everything would have been peachy if Jeff Zucker had done X, Y and Z." At best, they seem only able to come up with scenarios for a series of lesser disasters.

I also have been around Leno enough to see that he's a decent guy with some unusual, but not at all unethical notions of how to handle the business end of his business. They work for him and he generally gets what he wants, much to the angst of competitors and the many peers he bypasses. In this case, it's all led (unfairly, I think) to a lot of vilification...which is not to say I fret for his future or reputation. One moment when I really liked the guy occurred back when he was getting slammed by TV reporters and critics who saw it as inevitable that Letterman would drive him from the airwaves and back into the comedy clubs. Leno was asked if he wasn't crushed by all the bad press and he said to the fellow who asked him this, "Hey, tell you what. I'll give you my paycheck and I'll call you a moron. See if you can handle it." When he gets slammed, he keeps it in perspective and somehow endures.

Life is seriously askew when anyone feels sorry for any of the characters in this psychodrama. I cringe inwardly and outwardly when someone rails on about the injustice of poor Conan O'Brien having his dream yanked away from him after a mere seven months. Conan, Dave and Jay are all guys who've gotten about 95% of everything they ever could have desired in their chosen line of work — and to put that percentage in context, you have to remember that this is an industry where the average player is lucky to achieve 2%. These guys are at the level where on the extremely-rare occasions that they don't get what they want, the consolation prizes are in the tens of millions of dollars. Conan himself said it well in his classy closing speech.

All I really remember of my dream last night is that it was about people yelling about Jay and Conan, Conan and Jay, all out of scale with what is basically a series of S.O.P. network business decisions. They may be wrong decisions. I mean, I think Conan's ratings would have gone up if NBC had left him at 11:35 for a few more months...and I have a friend who thinks they shouldn't have cancelled Ugly Betty. Somewhere out there, there's someone who thinks the NBC guys are brain-dead for not bringing back Phenomenon and stripping it five nights a week at 10 PM.

One or more of us may be correct, just as Armchair Quarterbacks are sometimes right when the guy on the field is wrong. TV programming is, to at least a significant degree, a hunch business. Yes, there's research and test audiences and focus groups and going with proven winners...but every time a network puts on a show that gets quickly cancelled, it means someone played a hunch and it didn't work. Or at least, it didn't work quickly enough. That happens all the time so it's silly to get emotional about it, especially when it really doesn't impact your life much. Those who make their lives in and around the networks learn how to roll with the inexactness of the science. A friend of mine who was briefly the Vice-President of Comedy Development at NBC — I think he held the post for about three hours — once said to me there was one surefire way to be right most of the time in a network job: "You merely predict that every single decision anybody makes, including you, will prove to be wrong."

Ultimately, I am more bothered by the incivility than anything done by the principal actors in this Kabuki. One friend of mine who has never liked Leno is going all Glenn Beck on this, twisting facts and ratcheting up the invective to no good purpose. I have an awful feeling we are one phone call from the end of that friendship.

March 1, Jay starts his new show. Most of those who said he'd irrevocably destroyed his career with his sinister machinations are now backpedalling to allow that, well, maybe he will start winning the time slot again. Even if he doesn't, no one seems to be wagering that he won't do better in March than Conan would have. I still think Leno's success will have a lot to do with whether he can fix one of the main things that was wrong with his 10 PM show — above and beyond the fact that it was on at 10 PM — which was the weakness of the material. I'm eager to see what he'll do but I'm even more eager for this all to be over. When it starts invading your sleep, something's wrong. I don't think I've ever dreamed about a show I was working on. Why this?

• Posted at 4:50 PM · LINK

Follow-Up

My pal Bob Claster thinks that Ross Bagdasarian was singing live to a pre-recorded track on the Sullivan show, not lip-syncing. He may be right but that would still give Mr. B. the problem I described of figuring out when to stop moving his lips as the track faded. Anyway, you can decide for yourself if he's singing live...if you care.

A number of folks wrote to ask me if the lady in the clip was either Noel Neill or Phyllis Coates, both of whom played Lois Lane on the Superman TV show of that era. I don't think so, and not just because they were both based in L.A. and Ed's show was done in New York. I don't think it looks that much like either one, though I see the resemblance to Ms. Neill that causes some to wonder. I think it's Jack Benny dressed as a waiter.

• Posted at 9:53 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

As we all know, songwriter-singer Ross Bagdasarian had a monster hit when under the name David Seville, he recorded "The Chipmunk Song," the record that introduced Alvin, Simon and Theodore to the world. That was in late 1958. Some folks don't know that that wasn't the first record or even the second he did employing the "sped voice" trick. The first, released earlier in '58, was also a huge success. It was called "Witch Doctor" and it was a number one hit for a few weeks there. He quickly followed it with another tune with a sped-up voice called "Bird on My Head." That was not a hit. Then came the Chipmunks...and thereafter, Mr. Basdasarian-Seville pretty much did nothing else on vinyl but Chipmunks for the rest of his life. They re-released some of his earlier records but he was too busy with Alvin, Simon and Theodore to do other things.

Here he is on Ed Sullivan's show in '58 doing a lip-sync to "Witch Doctor." Performers usually sang live on Ed's show but obviously that wasn't possible with the sped-up voice in there. I always think it's funny when a performer lip-syncs on TV to a record that has a fade at the end. They never seem to know when to stop moving their lips and you often see them stop, then realize they should still be flapping their gums. Here, Sullivan's live orchestra chimes in with a finale note and you can see a little look of relief on Mr. Bagdasarian's face that, as rehearsed I'm sure, they came in at just the right moment to get him out of that predicament. I will not pretend I understand the visual imagery they cooked up for this presentation but I think they got that way out of sync.

• Posted at 2:00 AM · LINK