The Negotiating Committee of the Writers Guild of America West has announced a tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on a new three-year contract. That news will prompt deep exhales on the part of some who perhaps feared a long battle and threats of a strike. I don't think that was ever possible but these days, folks worry about a lot of things that aren't going to happen.
The announcement members received says in part, "The Negotiating Committee will meet tomorrow to officially vote on sending the tentative agreement to the WGAW Board of Directors and WGAE Council for approval prior to member ratification." I'm not sure I understand this. Why are they telling us they have a deal when they haven't even voted among themselves to submit it to the two Boards? Maybe this is some kind of protocol that's above my pay grade.
Precise details of what's in the deal have not been released but there seem to be no shocking improvements and it doesn't seem to be out of line with what the Directors Guild and the actors have already accepted. This means that several vocal members of the WGA will decry it as a sellout and the charge will be made that the increases are way too low and the gains, few and far-between. Even the triumphant press release admits that many crucial areas remain unaddressed.
Those who say it's not good enough will probably be right. They usually are about any deal made without a strike and even some that are. The question though is whether the resolve and resources are there to reject this offer and to say we will go out if a better one doesn't come along. I don't think anyone really believes that this guild at this time is ready to picket rather than accept a deal not unlike what the directors and actors went for.
Here's a real treasure. One of the greatest people I ever had the honor of knowing was a man named Daws Butler. I grew up on his voice, which was heard in most of the good cartoons produced for television in the fifties and early sixties. He spoke for many characters including Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snooper and Blabber, Hokey Wolf, Snagglepuss, Mr. Jinks, Wally Gator, Augie Doggie, Elroy Jetson...and the list goes on and on. He was a wonderful actor and a wonderful man.
He was also a wonderful teacher. He turned a guest house behind his Beverly Hills home into a workshop and a studio...and there he would teach aspiring voice actors. It was a building that overflowed with enthusiasm and talent, for Daws wouldn't take just anyone on as a student. You had to audition and he had to think you had promise. If you passed, the lessons were not expensive but they were priceless.
Daws did not teach, as some teachers do, by regurgitating what others had taught them or what they'd read in books. He taught that which he had learned throughout decades of work and he taught in his own terms with his own theories and his own vocabulary and his own standards. There are some great actors who do not quite understand what it is they do or how they do it. Daws knew exactly what he did: Why he took this pause, why he accented that syllable, etc., and he could explain it in a useful way.
He was largely above ego. He knew he was among the best at what he did but he knew it in a kindly, non-arrogant way. He loved watching talent emerge and he talked to you like you were an equal, even though you both knew you weren't and you knew you probably would never be.
Having zero flair for acting, I did not study with him but fortunately, he also loved writers and would have me over to just sit and talk about writing and creativity and anything that popped into anyone's mind. I was occasionally intimidated and once in a while, I'd just get lost in the realization that that voice — the one I knew so well from all my favorite TV shows as a kid — was coming out of the little man sitting eighteen inches from me. And it was telling me how much he hated Richard Nixon.
This video was shot by Bill Simpson on April 3, 1986, a little more than two years before we lost Daws. It's a brief tour of his workshop...and perhaps out of humility, he doesn't dwell on how many younger actors had their lives forever changed for the better in that building. Trust me. There were a lot of them, including many who are among the top voice actors of today. (The pride he had in his students does show through, though. He had their photos all over the place. I see my pal Earl Kress's eight-by-ten is next to the coffee urn.) Thanks to another of his students, Joe Bevilacqua, for posting this so I can share 14 minutes of Daws Butler with you. It's not nearly enough. Fourteen years wouldn't be, either...
So I'm thinking of buying an iPad 2. I played with one owned by my friend Mickey Paraskevas for about one minute before I decided this.
I didn't expect to get one without a wait but I was wondering just how long that wait might be. I went over to the AT&T store near me. A man there said, "We were supposed to have received a batch of them by now but they're shipping them all to the Apple Stores and not giving us any. I have no idea if we'll ever have them. I'd try the Apple Store if I were you."
So I went over to the Apple Store and asked when they might have one in I could buy. A man there said, "We get new ones in every morning and we sell them on a first-come, first-served basis to folks who line up outside. We open at 9 AM and I think the line starts forming around 6:00 or so. Of course, you could wait for three hours and then discover that we didn't get in enough of them or didn't get the model that you want. I'd try ordering online if I were you."
So I looked online and it said that if I ordered now, my order would ship in 2-3 weeks. I went back to the site an hour later to stare at it and decide if I wanted to do that but now it said 4-6 weeks. I'm afraid to look again.
I think I'll wait until the Apple Store has enough of them so you can just walk in, buy one and take it home. My logic is that by the time I can go in and do that, there'll be something else out I want more and I won't have to buy the iPad.
Believe it or not, a TV network is now airing old episodes of The Soupy Sales Show — a mix, I'm told, of surviving black-and-white kinescopes from this New York show from the sixties and color episodes of his syndicated series from the seventies. And also believe it or not, the network is Jewish Life Television, a somewhat new (launched in '07) channel that also broadcasts programs like MenschLifeTV, The Shalom Show, Everyday Kosher Cooking and reruns of The Goldbergs. How Soupy fits into this lineup is, uh, obvious.
JLTV is viewable in a lot of cable lineups across the land. Here's the list. It's also available on DirecTV satellite on Channel 366 so I should be able to get it on my set but I can't. It seems — and I didn't know this until I called up and inquired — that some DirecTV channels are only on certain of their satellites and you can't get those channels on older receivers such as the one I have. I don't feel like upgrading just so I can get Soupy. But if you can get him, enjoy. I didn't think the shows they're reportedly airing were his strongest stuff but even his weaker work always made me laugh. You'd think though that for Jewish Life TV, they'd go in and do some digital fixes so that instead of whacking him with a pie, White Fang hit Soupy with a pound of Rugalah or maybe a nice Hamantashen.
March 19, 2011
