Don't be too quick to click on this one. It runs 27 minutes so you might want to wait 'til you have the time to watch a long interview with comedian Lewis Black. This is an episode of the PBS series, InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse. It's a serious chat and a good one.
Earlier today in this item, I joked that Harold Lloyd had more new movies coming out than Chevy Chase. Half the known free world has informed me that Mr. Chase has a new film called Zoom coming out in a week or so. Perhaps I should have said that Harold Lloyd dead is still funnier than Chevy Chase alive.
Also, in this item, I mused that the idea of raising the minimum wage must have shocked the execs at Walmart. According to this article, their CEO has urged Congress to up that wage. I'm a little skeptical that the company really wants that — it sounds to me like good P.R. to get behind something that will probably happen anyway — but it wouldn't be fair not to make note of their statement.
And if the Minimum Wage does get raised and you suddenly find yourself with a little surplus income, here's a good cause to which you can put it…
My buddy Len Wein and I are both fans of the TV game show, Deal or No Deal so today, we went over to watch the taping of an upcoming episode. A friend got me V.I.P. passes but it turns out we probably could have received much the same admission if we'd gone to this page and filled out the online application.
I think we had a good time, though we had plenty of complaints, including the sheer length of the session. We were there more than five hours for the taping of one one-hour show…and for much of that time, we were all treated like it would be a capital crime to leave early and a serious felony to go use the bathroom. The seats were enormously uncomfortable and the audio, at least where we were seated, was frustrating. We couldn't hear half of what was said by the contestants and host Howie Mandel, but the warm-up guy was way too loud. (I should write a sequel to this article about warm-ups at TV tapings. It used to be that they were hosted by someone connected with the show who'd answer questions and talk about how the program was done. Nowadays, the trend — and what they do on Deal or No Deal — is bring in someone to play games with the audience, getting people up to sing and dance, and awarding them t-shirts and other prizes.)
The Deal or No Deal games themselves were also rather boring. During a break, Mr. Mandel told the audience that during recent tapings, contestants had been experiencing a run of bad luck, going home with less than exciting sums. We saw the end of one game, a complete game with another contestant and the start of yet another game with a third contestant…and none of them seemed to be breaking that streak.
So what did we like? Well, we had a good view of the show's twenty-six prize models, so that was nice…though I could have done without the guys seated behind us who were speculating out loud on which one they'd pick if they were given their pick of having sex with any one of them. Amazingly, as of the time Len and I left, no one had given them that choice. I always love how men invent those little discussion games like that kind of thing ever actually happens.
I enjoyed watching how the show is done, studying the little technical details. It's slickly-produced and apart from the constant delays, done with great efficiency. The set, like all sets for TV shows, is smaller than it appears on your home Plasma screen and most of the twelve cameras are robotic and unobtrusive. There's a nice feeling of intimacy and audience involvement the way the stage is designed. Unlike most shows where sightlines aren't clear and you wind up watching much of the proceedings on a monitor, you can see almost everything from most seats and there are no monitors.
We also got to see The Banker as he walked up to take his place in the skybox. He's kind of an average-looking guy with reddish hair…and he has the easiest job in television. He just sits there while they tape and does nothing. (The "offers" that allegedly come from The Banker actually are from the show's producers.)
The thing I don't like about the program as I watch it at home is the heavy editing and the "pasted together" feeling it sometimes has. At the taping, one can see why this is. There are a lot of pick-ups (doing something over for the camera) and a lot of inserts where the audience is asked to "act" (applaud, moan at a bad break, etc.) when nothing is actually happening so that footage can be edited wherever needed into the show. I did a show once for ABC where we weren't allowed to do that. If you cut to a shot of the audience laughing, that had to be footage of them actually laughing at whatever they were represented to have laughed at. Either the rules have changed or NBC is more lenient on that count.
But all in all, it was an interesting field trip that makes me even more impressed with how the producers have made their game work. And that's pretty much all I have to say about it because I need to get back to work on something. Hey, Len! Did I leave anything out? If so, send me an e-mail I can post here.
In 1929, Harold Lloyd was the number one comedy star in America…and determined to remain that way. He had made a silent comedy feature called Welcome Danger and was readying it for release when he became aware of a seismic shift in his business: Talking pictures. Suddenly, that's what the public craved and Lloyd wanted to be at the forefront of talkies.
So at considerable personal expense (he financed his own films), he decided to scrap the silent version of Welcome Danger and to immediately remake it with sound. He recast the actors who couldn't talk well with actors who could and rushed right back to what were mostly the same sets to redo the feature.
It may or may not have been worth the expense. Lloyd was never as good nor as popular once films began to talk. The sound version of Welcome Danger was a decent film but far from his best. The following year, he made Feet First, which was another one of those films in which he dangled on window ledges…to much less comedic impact than when he'd done the same kind of material silent. Demand for Harold Lloyd movies decreased from that moment on and he only made a few more films before his last picture, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, in 1947.
Technically, that was the last Harold Lloyd movie to be released apart from some compilation films. But next month, that changes. On September 15, the silent version of Welcome Danger will be rescued from the vault and screened (with musical accompaniment) at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. Only a few film scholars have seen it so it is, in effect, a "new" release. If it gets a few more screenings before the end of the year, it might even be eligible for an Oscar…not that I'd bet real money on its winning one.
I'm looking forward to it, if only for the comparison with the talking version. And also because it's been something like thirty years since I saw a Harold Lloyd movie I hadn't seen before. I also think it's funny that the man has been dead since 1971 and he has more new movies coming out than Chevy Chase.
This runs a little under eight minutes. It's a segment from The Soupy Sales Show featuring Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis and Trini Lopez and disc jockey William B. Williams. The annoying kid is played by Frank Nastasi, who was Soupy's sidekick-puppeteer on his New York shows. This originally aired September 10, 1965.
Earl Kress writes about the strike currently being staged by the writers of America's Next Top Model — one of many TV shows that employs writers but calls them something else in order to avoid paying them Writers Guild minimums. (There's actually a secondary, non-monetary reason. Some of these "reality" shows don't want to have a credit that says "Written by" because they don't want to call attention to how much of the show is carefully scripted.)
You can guess where my sentiments lie. I'm going to try to get time to go by and join the picket line. The Guild has allowed this kind of thing to go on for way too long.
Matt Yglesias says that the original Bush administration estimates of the cost of the Iraq War — which ranged from $200 million to nothing at all — were waaaaay wrong. The total cost is going to be over one trillion dollars. How many businesses would just shrug and not get upset if some cost estimator was off by that many jillion percent? And if so much of the overage had just gone into contractors' pockets without work being properly completed?
Heading to Vegas soon? I might go, just so I can see one of my favorite comedians, Pete Barbutti. Pete's set up shop at the Four Queens downtown with singer King Errisson in a show called "Back to Back." Sounds like a winning parlay to me.
Pete holds the world's record for more appearances on The Tonight Show with Mr. J. Carson than any other comedian. There's a reason for this. He's awfully funny in front of an audience. Matter of fact, a few years ago, I got to hang out backstage with Pete a few times and he was even funnier back there, telling stories about Vegas and other performers and working for sleazy club owners. Someone is missing a bet by not grabbing guys like that (and alas, there aren't many guys like that left) and doing a cable show where they could share their anecdotes. In the meantime though, get thee to Sin City and see Pete Barbutti live and in person. You won't regret it.
Stephen Colbert causes trouble.
Here is a very important article in Vanity Fair about what happened the morning of 9/11, complete with audio excerpts from tapes made in the NORAD control room. Among other things, the piece demonstrates that a lot of what is commonly believed about the government's actions on that dreadful morning has been misreported.
With temperatures like that, how could they not be killing each other in the streets?
A beer commercial from 1958 starring one of the funniest men who ever lived.
Larry Gelbart writes about…oh, just go read it. You'll understand what it's about.
Every poll says that Americans overwhemingly favor raising the minimum wage in this country…and it isn't just Democrats or Liberals who feel this way. In the latest Gallup Poll, Democrats are in favor 94% to 5% but even Republicans approve of the idea by a margin of 75% to 22% or more than three-to-one. So why don't Republicans just pass the thing and make everyone except Walmart executives happy?
Along with his cohort Chet Stover, W. Watts "Buck" Biggers was one of the founders of Total Television, the company that brought us Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo, Go Go Gophers, King Leonardo and his Short Subjects, The World of Commander McBragg and a number of other popular cartoons of the sixties. Mr. Biggers will be appearing on Sunday, September 10 at the one-day Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention down at the Shrine Auditorium. There, he will sign copies of his new book, How Underdog was Born, as well as an exclusive Special Collectors Certificate that comes with the purchase of the new Underdog Vinyl Figure from Dark Horse Entertainment. He'l be there from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM and I plan to get down there and buy a book because I've never met the man and would like to. If you'd like to do likewise, check out the details at this website.