Monday, March 29, 2010

No Surprise

The 2010 Comic-Con International in San Diego, which takes place July 22-25 is officially sold out. And it isn't even April yet.

• Posted at 10:58 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Conservative columnist Daniel Larison doesn't think too much of Sarah Palin. And he suggests that her supporters must not think too much of her if the best they can say about her is that she makes Democrats mad and that they'd prefer her over the current White House occupant, who they think is the worst possible person for that job.

• Posted at 7:36 PM · LINK

If You Can Find It, It's Not Here Yet

We're hearing that the DVD release of Stephen Sondheim's Evening Primrose (discussed here) will be delayed a bit...but for a good reason. The folks assembling it were going to use a medium-quality 16mm black-and-white print but they've recently found what is apparently a better 16mm black-and-white print. So that has to be transferred and that will stall the release...how long, I do not know.

The show was originally done in color but that doesn't seem to exist any longer. Which reminds me of an informal debate I had some years ago with a bunch of fundamentalist film buffs. These folks were militant against "colorization" of black-and-white movies. Films, they insisted, should be exhibited and released for home video in as close to the original release version as humanly possible. They didn't even like it — and I always thought this was highly arguable on a case-by-case basis — someone restored deleted footage that the filmmakers wanted in and the studio wanted out...say, the "Cool, Conservative Men" scene in 1776.

The question naturally arose: Okay, so you detest "colorization." But what happens if a film is made in color, all the color prints are lost and it exists only in monochrome? Might not putting that film through a "colorization" not yield something closer to the original release version than using the black 'n' white print? In the case of Evening Primrose, that's probably moot. It won't be a lucrative-enough DVD either way to warrant the expense of adding color. But I can see both sides of this question and can sure imagine friends of mine arguing them for a long time.

• Posted at 2:36 PM · LINK

Not Broadway Bound

Nikki Finke is reporting that CBS has offered the post of hosting this year's Tony Awards ceremony to Conan O'Brien but that it's unlikely he'll do it due to the terms of his NBC settlement agreement. I suspect it's even more unlikely that he'll do it because it would be a lunkheaded career move for him. The next time O'Brien appears on TV, there's going to be a massive tune-in to see him, just because it's his first time back and because people want to hear what he'll say, particularly in the trashing of NBC. It's understandable that CBS would want that audience for a CBS show but I can't fathom why Conan would want to squander the moment on a project that would in no way benefit Conan O'Brien. A Conan O'Brien primetime special, maybe. A promotion for his next new ongoing venture or the debut of that venture, certainly.

But the Tony Awards? Come now. The Tony Awards aren't and shouldn't be about the host. Conan would have to cram his triumphant return to television into a seven-minute monologue and then turn around and introduce Alec Baldwin to present the Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. That would sure waste a lot of heat.

• Posted at 10:52 AM · LINK

More on Dick Giordano

Tom Spurgeon has a good, long obit up for Dick Giordano. It's so good I hate to quibble with a couple of things, one being that Tom makes the same mistake I did. Dick was not hired at DC by new editorial director Carmine Infantino on his way in. He was hired by departing editorial director Irwin Donenfeld on his way out. Also, Tom cites Bat Lash and Deadman as the outstanding projects of Giordano's 1967-1971 editorial stint at DC. As far as I know, Dick had nothing at all to do with Bat Lash, which was edited by Joe Orlando.

Dick did at least edit Deadman for a short time. He was handed a feature on the road to cancellation and could do nothing to change that. The same was true of most of his assignments then: Secret Six, Beware the Creeper, Bomba the Jungle Boy, The Spectre, Blackhawk, etc. His revamps of Teen Titans and Aquaman were much-admired around the office and by the more vocal fans but the former only lasted two years after Dick left the editorial division and the latter ended when he departed. A revival of All-Star Western also did not endure long after Dick left. Only one book he launched — The Witching Hour — did. Hot Wheels was not a success, nor was The Hawk and the Dove.

Enumerated like this, it sounds like a pretty terrible batting average. What was interesting to me though was that, first of all, almost everyone thought that Dick had substantially improved the books he took over...and that their cancellations were in no way his fault. Just about everything new at DC during that period lasted six or less issues, a result of a declining marketplace, a dysfunctional distribution system and (I thought) a tendency to give up too quickly on a new comic that might have found an audience. There's a saying in the theater — "No one looks good in a flop." Dick came out of his "flops" looking pretty darn good...just as he'd looked good enough after the abrupt termination of his "action hero" line at Charlton for DC to grab him.

That was one impressive thing about Dick. Another was his rep for dealing squarely with talent. And yet another was his ability to find that talent in the first place. He really loved and understood the business and it showed.

Since I have you here, I'll tell a quick story about him. The first part of it occurred around 1983, give or take a year. I was at a distributors' conference at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas and I had to talk to Dick about an editorial-type matter relating to something I was then doing for DC. We left the conference room where retailers were arguing and went out into the casino and sat at the snack bar to have our own argument. This was not a good place for me since we were surrounded by very noisy slot machines and very noisy people playing them. In those surroundings, I had trouble making my case and I kept suggesting to Dick that we go somewhere quieter. He though kept saying, "Let's stay here and settle this."

I finally realized what he was doing. I knew and he knew that I knew. Though it was a bad arena for me, it was perfect for Dick. He was hard-of-hearing and he mainly read lips. "Conversing" there, he had the advantage. The ruckus didn't distract him one bit and he handily convinced me that he was right and I was wrong. I think I gave in, in part, because I realized I'd been outfoxed and I kinda admired that.

In 1991, we were at the Comic-Con in San Diego — also sometimes a noisy place — and we got to talking about Dick's hearing problems. "It's gotten so bad," he said, "that I can't understand three words in a row on television." I suggested he try adding a Closed Caption device to his set. This was back before that was a standard feature on all new TVs. You had to buy a standalone component and hook it up to get Closed Captioning. Dick said, "I've been meaning to try one of those but I can't figure out where to buy one." I told him I'd gotten my father one at Sears. My father had passed away a few months earlier but the apparatus had made his last few years more pleasant.

Suddenly, it dawned on me: My mother had recently had me take the Closed Caption device off the set in her living room and it was still in the trunk of my car, parked right outside the convention center. I went out, got it and gave it to Dick. He took it home and put it to good, happy use for a year or two...until he got a more modern set in his studio. And at one point, he sent me a lovely thank-you note with a lovely sketch of himself working at his drawing table and watching TV. It said, "If I'd been Closed-Captioned in Las Vegas, you would have won that argument."

• Posted at 9:50 AM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

The American Enterprise Institute is usually described as a "Conservative think tank," a phrase that in some circles prompts comments containing the word, "oxymoron." A few days ago here, I linked to a piece by right-wing strategist David Frum in which he opined that the G.O.P. had erred big with the way it thought it could bring down President Obama. Frum said it had backfired on them and been a tremendous loss and mistake.

His blog post got major attention...and it also seems to have gotten him fired from the A.E.I. (I say "seems" because they are claiming no cause-and-effect relationship, though the timing would suggest otherwise.) In any case, I'm kinda fascinated by the outrage to what Frum wrote. He didn't argue Conservative principles one bit...didn't suggest they rethink their positions on abortion or gun control or drowning government in a bathtub. He was arguing strategy, suggesting that (1) they got their asses kicked and lost big and so (2) they need to abandon their losing ways.

Near as I can tell, there's not a lot of disagreement on the first part. When you're furious and taking blood oaths to repeal what was passed, it means you lost big. And when you lose big in anything — politics, sports, playing Candy Land, whatever — shouldn't you at least consider that what you've been doing is the wrong approach? Not trying to give anyone advice here...just curious what it was about Frum's writing that pissed on the third rail for so many of his one-time colleagues. From their response, you'd think he was suggesting surrender on the battlefield instead of changing tactics in order to not have what just happened happen again.

• Posted at 2:14 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

From a 1972 episode of The Flip Wilson Show, Albert Brooks shows us what would happen if we decided to rewrite our National Anthem...

• Posted at 12:17 AM · LINK