Monthly Archives: December 2007

I've been telling you for some time now (here, for example) that the old episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. — you remember that show — have been refilmed to make them look cheap and shoddy. When I catch one today, I can't believe I once thought that was a first-rate production. Ken Levine has just had the same revelation.

I have nothing to say about the strike today but I suggest you go read Patrick Goldstein. I think he has a good handle on the situation. We are now in the stage when the AMPTP is going to do everything it can to sow discord within the Guild and undermine confidence in its leadership.

This is another one of those cartoons that the UPA cartoon studio (the folks who brought you Mr. Magoo, Gerald McBoing-Boing and that Dick Tracy cartoon show that barely had Dick Tracy in it) animated for the Hill & Range Music Company. The latter firm placed them on Chicago kids' shows of the fifties and I'm not sure where else.

This one is their version of Frosty the Snowman, featuring a terrific vocal rendition of the tune. I'm told Bobe Cannon directed this and have no evidence to the contrary. If you'd like to buy a DVD of this and other cartoons that became perennials on Chicago TV, click on this link.

It has been called to my attention that I keep presenting the Writers Guild's side of the current labor dispute. In fairness, I think we all oughta take a look at the AMPTP website and get their side of things. It's amazingly honest.

Comic book artist Wayne Howard has died. One of the few African-American comic book artists at the time he broke into the field, Howard learned his craft in the fanzines of the sixties and at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. But he told me he learned most of what he knew about comics from his brief time assisting Wally Wood from 1968 to 1969. (Some sources say '69 but you can see Wayne's name hidden all throughout the backgrounds of Captain Action #1, which Wood and his crew produced in 1968.)

I only knew Wayne from a couple of phone calls in 1970, shortly after he left Wood. When Jack Kirby left Marvel to edit his own comics for DC, Wayne kept phoning Jack and also me, hoping he could draw or at least ink something for the new projects. Unfortunately, DC didn't want Jack employing other artists so there was nothing there for Wayne. At one point, Jack arranged for him to take his samples in to show Carmine Infantino, who was the head guy at DC.

A few days after the scheduled appointment, I asked Jack if he'd heard how Howard's work was received. Jack replied, "Carmine thought he wasn't ready yet so he sent him to Connecticut."

I didn't understand the response so I asked Jack to explain. "I said Carmine sent him to Connecticut," Kirby replied.

Again, I didn't get it. "Are you saying that Carmine looked at his work and said, 'I don't like the way you draw. Go to Connecticut!'?"

"Yes," Jack insisted. "Carmine told him to go to Connecticut."

It took a few minutes but I figured it out. Charlton Comics, the lowest-paying company in the business, was based in Derby, Connecticut. I asked Jack, "Are you saying Carmine told him to go try and get work from Charlton?"

Jack, a bit exasperated with me, said, "Yes, Carmine sent him to Connecticut!" To Jack, "Charlton" and "Connecticut" were interchangeable.

Howard did go to Charlton and did get work there…a lot of work, though he occasionally managed to get a job here and there for DC, Marvel or Gold Key. I remember he inked one issue of Marvel Team-Up over Gil Kane pencils and did — I thought — a better job than a lot of folks who, unlike Wayne, got more work there. I have here the original art to an unpublished mystery story he did for DC over Mike Sekowsky pencils that wasn't very good, though.

Wayne's most notable work for Charlton was the mystery title, Midnight Tales, which he created and drew most of and often wrote, as well. As Charlton cut back on publishing, Wayne's career in comics pretty much went away and he freelanced here and there until around 1982, whereupon he stopped working in comics altogether. Someone told me once that he'd become a policeman but I don't know if that's true or if the person was confusing him with Pete Morisi, another Charlton mainstay who did work as a cop. Whatever, sources are reporting that Wayne Howard died yesterday from a heart attack. He was 59.

This will have to be brief (for me) because any minute now, I have men arriving to begin ripping out half my kitchen. They've already "demoed" (short form verb for "demolition") about a third of my dining room and made it unusable for — they say — about six weeks of reconstruction. Now, they're going after where I'd prepare the food I can no longer eat in my dining room. This is all because of a burst supply line on an upstairs toilet that leaked into walls, flooring and ceiling while I was in Ohio. The least fun part of my trip.

So…to the strike. We're in an uncomfortable place right now. The AMPTP says the talks are over until we assure them we're dropping six demands. A few writers elsewhere on the 'net are arguing that we should drop some or all of them in order to get the talks going again. Of course, there's no guarantee that if we drop all six, the other side won't engage in meaningless chat with us for a few days — just so they can say they're honoring their side of the ultimatum — and then announce the talks are over until we abandon six more of our demands. Or all of them. One thing we know from past deliberations with the AMPTP: When they have a strategy that gets them what they want, they do it again and again and again.

I think compromises are possible on at least some of those six areas — animation, for instance. The WGA is not, insofar as I know, demanding that jurisdiction over animation just be wrested from The Animation Guild…which the AMPTP probably couldn't do if they wanted. But there is language in the WGA-AMPTP contract that we'd like dropped because it makes it more difficult for the Writers Guild to organize via traditional labor organizing methods. The same thing is true of "reality" shows. If some of our demands in these areas seem like overreaching…well, a lot of that is like when they offer you $10,000 for a script and you and your agent think (and know) it'll be $15,000 so he asks for twenty. You often have to play the High-Low Game in bargaining. And sometimes, you have to be prepared for them to tell you you're crazy and unreasonable and to break off negotiations for a while before you get around to the $15,000 price.

And of course, sometimes you never get there. That's the risk in haggling. But you never get there when you capitulate and agree to the ten.

Sure, it would be nice if this thing was over. In most negotiations, the other side counts on you thinking that. In a game of Chicken, which is what too many business disputes devolve into, the one who acts less afraid of the head-on collision is usually the victor.

I don't think the WGA is going to blink on this. When the history of this strike is written, I suspect it's going to yield the overview that the AMPTP guys consistently underestimated the resolve of the membership. Almost every strike in Hollywood history has been about that…about someone on the Producers' side saying, "If we offer them X, they'll grab it" and just plain being wrong. In a sense, the AMPTP position is self-refuting. They're arguing there's no guaranteed money to be made on the Internet but they're willing to endure a long strike and screw up most other facets of their business in order to not share that "no money" with us.

If we are truly asking for cash that doesn't exist, it's real easy to arrive at a formula that handles that: We get X% of whatever does come in…or Y% of whatever comes in after $Z has been earned. Something of that sort. For the most part, the AMPTP is still sticking with "There's no money there so we won't discuss sharing it with anyone." Which is not a logical position and, of course, the "no money" part is not what they're telling their stockholders.

My doorbell is telling me the guys with the sledge hammers are here to whack my kitchen but I guess I'm done with this. It went on longer than I'd expected. But then, like strikes, my postings often do.

In the 1950s, the UPA cartoon studio was producing some of the most innovative animated shorts the field has ever seen for both theatrical exhibition and for various commercial usages. One of the ones they did that kind of split the difference was this version of Peter Cottontail, which appears to have been done mainly for airing on the legendary kids' shows that ran in Chicago. At least, I'd never seen it before it was put up on YouTube as a promotion for a new DVD of several cartoons produced for Chicago kidvid. I believe the legendary Grim Natwick was one of the main animators on this, and it features a particularly jazzy vocal arrangement of the song which you may enjoy. It runs two and a half minutes and the whole DVD can be ordered here. I'll be linking to other cartoons from it in the following week…

Norman Quebedeau is one of the many talented artists who worked with me on the Garfield and Friends TV series. Norman's gone on to many other shows, and he also occasionally works as a courtroom sketch artist, a job that fascinates me. A number of fine cartoonists including Bill Lignante and Dick Rockwell did work as courtroom sketch artists and found it to be a job for which a career in comics or cartoons well-prepared them.

Norman covered the arraignment of Barry Bonds for Reuters and you can find an example of his drawing here. He's also sketching the murder trial of Hans Reiser for Wired.com. See some of his fine work for them here.

Someone just wrote me to ask, "I see you took down the banner for donations to your blog. Does this mean we can no longer thank you for it by making a donation?" No, I took it down because I needed the space for a banner supporting the WGA Strike, which is obviously more important. If you'd like to send me money so I can buy more neat stuff off eBay — that and feeding stray animals in my backyard are pretty much all it goes for — then feel free to click here and PayPal me some loot.

(Oh — I also occasionally use those funds to tip other websites. You should also do that…tip other websites.)

Things seem quiet today. I suspect they'll be quiet for a few days but who knows? One thing you ought to avoid is giving much consideration to predictions based on just about nothing. I read one blog this morning where someone said, "I'm hearing the strike will last until April." Hearing from whom? Whose forecasts on this have any particular worth?

April could be right. So could January or June. You could randomly pick almost any date between just before this Christmas and just before the next one and you could be right. But J. Nicholas Counter and Patric Verrone don't have any idea when the strike is going to be over and may not even have sound hunches as to when negotiations between the combatants will reconvene. So how could anyone's prediction be any more than a wild guess? We know that given where things stand, even if on-the-record talks resumed tomorrow, they probably couldn't settle matters in the next week or two. We also know that the longer this thing goes on, the more pressure there will be on both sides to concede points and get this thing over with. But beyond that, you might as well lob darts at a calendar.

Here's a chunk of an e-mail from Stan Pauley…

Does the AMPTP have a point in their position? I read over all the press releases and statements and it gave me a headache. While I am very much on the Writers' side in this, despite not being a writer myself, it does seem to me like the WGA is asking for some things that are outrageous. Please explain.

Gladly. Yeah, our side is asking for some things that may be a bit excessive…although you should never go by one side's summary of what the other side is demanding. Of course, their description of what the WGA is seeking is skewed to make us seem unreasonable and overreaching. I wouldn't go by our summary of their positions, either. One of the nice (and new) things about labor disputes in the age of the Internet is that it's possible to read a lot of the actual proposals online. The AMPTP version of what the WGA is seeking in the area of animation, for example, strikes me as about as accurate as any given presidential candidate's quoting of his opponent's positions that he wishes to rebut.

(The AMPTP is saying that our demands in this area are "…unacceptable because the WGA is trying to achieve through these negotiations what the WGA has failed to achieve through traditional labor organizing techniques." My understanding is that what we're demanding there is removal of some specific language in the AMPTP-WGA contract that has made it more difficult for the WGA to engage in traditional labor organizing techniques, even in situations where there presently is no union coverage of any sort. To organize any body of workers, a union still needs to win an election and get the consent of the governed.)

But okay, so let's say some of our demands are excessive. So? This is a contract negotiation. The other side comes to the table with all sorts of excessive demands, some of which they seek to achieve, some of which are just in there so they can be dropped at what seems like an opportune moment. This is how bargaining works. You don't lead with your bottom line and you don't unilaterally drop everything the other side says they won't give you.

I know it's frustrating and you'd think grown men and women could sit down today and dispassionately make the deal they'll make in January or February or whenever so things could get back to normal and lives would not be disrupted. Unfortunately, that's not how it works, and that's more the fault of the AMPTP than it is of us. This is their game, their playing field, their bat, their gloves and — especially — their balls. They set it up that way because they usually get what they want that way. This is just turning out to not be one of those "usual" times.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has been examining George W. Bush's assertions of executive power and which ones he has. Apparently, the assumption in the Oval Office is that he has whatever powers he says he has and no one can say him nay.

From what I can gather, Bush supporters do not dispute that this is how their guy operates, nor will they entertain the notion that it is not right and proper. At least, not until some Democratic President wanders into the same territory.

HBO has been running Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, a documentary by John Landis all about Guess Who. It's filled with clips of Rickles in Vegas, interviews with Rickles at home, excerpts from old Rickles appearances and — of the greatest interest — interviews with Rickles friends and his fellow performers. It's a nice tribute to a guy who deserves a tribute if only for sheer energy and endurance.

What intrigues me are the excerpts from the man's current Vegas act, which is not all that different from what he was doing when the world first heard of him. Along the way, there were detours — attempts to position him as an actor, as a sitcom star and even as a musical performer — but they never stuck. In the early eighties, I saw him at either the Sahara or the Riviera in Las Vegas. I forget which it was but I recall my reaction to his performance. He was truly awful. A lot of people walked out on him and my party would have joined them but we couldn't believe that what we were seeing was all he was going to do. It was about an hour of singing and dancing and talking about his life and career…and most astonishing, a long speech about how each and every one of us should be constantly thanking God for blessing us with the greatest human being who ever walked this Earth…Frank Sinatra.

It was the most amazing example I've ever seen of a performer not knowing what he did for a living. Imagine you go see the world's best juggler and instead of tossing things in the air, he comes out and just tells "Knock Knock" jokes for an hour. That's kinda what it was…Don Rickles not insulting anyone and as a result, not being particularly funny or entertaining.

At some point though, the old act seems to have kicked in. One imagines God visiting him one dark and thunderous night, appearing before Rickles in a dream, telling him, "Don, you big dummy! I put you on this planet to call your fellow man a hockey puck!" However it happened, I'm glad it did. Rickles started being Rickles again. When I heard, I went back to see him again in Vegas and breathed a sigh of relief when he came out on stage, spotted a fat guy purposely placed in front by the ushers, and called out for Captain Ahab to come spear Moby Dick in Row A. (I was also relieved the designated fat guy wasn't me.)

Thereabouts, he stomped about on stage, sweating and free associating, spitting out semi-coherent but always amusing palaver. He said something about sitting in a hot tub and watching a duck sink. He suggested something about going to Vermont to suck sap out of rubber trees. He even offered up my favorite, which was the line — I'm not sure what it means but I love it anyway — about dropping his pants and firing a rocket. Every third sentence began with "I tell you this" or sometimes, "I tell you this, gang." Over and over: "I tell you this, I tell you this…"

It was wonderful. I don't know why it was wonderful…maybe just the rhythm and attitude. He was just so Don Rickles. The documentary is 90 minutes of Rickles being Rickles, and that's why it's wonderful. Try and catch it if you can. You hockey puck.

Forbes Magazine offers a wise and perceptive report on what's going on with the WGA-AMPTP negotiations…or maybe we should call them non-negotiations. In any case, I think any report is wise and perceptive when it quotes me.

Al Scaduto was born in 1928. I don't know anything about his personal life and I never met the man but I can tell you about his neat and tidy career. In 1946, he graduated from the School of Industrial Art and immediately got a job for life with King Features Syndicate. At the time, one of their star cartoonists was Jimmy Hatlo, who was responsible for two strips — Little Iodine and They'll Do It Every Time. (Little Iodine started as a recurring character in the other strip and proved to be so popular that she graduated to her own, Sunday-only feature.)

Hatlo was assisted by a guy named Bob Dunn and in '46, Scaduto began assisting Bob Dunn, working on both strips and on the comic books of Little Iodine, which ran from 1949 until 1962. Hatlo cut back on his work during the fifties and died in '63 but the transition was seamless, with Dunn and Scaduto there to pick up the slack and replicate the Hatlo style. Generally, Dunn wrote the gags and did some of the pencilling, while Scaduto did most of the pencilling and all of the inking on They'll Do It Every Time. Hy Eisman did much of the art on Little Iodine until that strip ended in the mid-eighties.

Dunn passed away in 1989 and Scaduto took over writing They'll Do It Every Time along with drawing it. He was reportedly still at it when he died yesterday on his 79th birthday. His pal and fellow cartoonist Mike Lynch has the sad news.

You've probably heard the new outrage that CIA interrogation tapes were destroyed, perhaps in violation of the law. Of all the pieces I've read about this, this one by Kevin Drum seems to have the most logical handle on the whole situation.