Monthly Archives: September 2009

Crisis at Infinite Publishers

Posted on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 11:26 AM

The news that Paul Levitz is "transitioning out" of his position as publisher and president of DC Comics is not good news for the publishing industry. Note the word "publishing" in that sentence. The revenues generated by Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other DC-controlled properties are a bigger issue which others are hurriedly discussing. What Paul's move will mean there is anyone's guess, hinging on whether more or more successful TV shows and movies get made. The presumption is we'll see more. Will they be more successful? Depends on who does them and how well they do them.

Meanwhile, I think those of us who care about printed-on-paper comics will see this day as a turning point…or maybe a downturning point. Publishing comic books has not been all that important at either DC or Marvel for a long time. Movie deals, TV shows, videogames, branding, licensing and all the other ways to "monetize" beloved characters have all yielded a lot more cash lately…and by a Hulk-sized margin. Batman used to be a comic book character that also generated revenue via its appearances on TV, in movies and by adorning toys. Now, it's a multimedia property that brings in dollars from a great many directions, one of which happens to be the publishing of comic books.

So the question for some of us becomes: How much interest will DC have in doing that, in publishing comic books? Paul was great at dealing with the movie deals and the videogames and the merchandising but he was also a publisher of comic books. He learned the business when that was Job One and everything else was ancillary income. The same question hovers over the recent Disney-Marvel deal. Disney hasn't cared for a long time if there were Mickey Mouse comic books being published or not. Will they care if Amazing Spider-Man comes out every month? Will they care when sales decline? Keep in mind we will probably never again see the day when there'll be a thousandth as much money in publishing Iron Man comic books as there is in one good Iron Man videogame.

DC is not going to replace Paul Levitz with someone who knows more about how to publish DC Comics because there is no such person. But in light of all the restructuring being done, you have to wonder if they're even going to look all that hard. I mean, the lead-off announcement in the press release is that they're launching a company called DC Entertainment. If you're wondering what this all means, look no further than that first sentence.

Major News in the Funnybook Biz

Posted on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 10:36 AM

Nikki Finke is reporting rumors that Paul Levitz will "transition out" of his role as publisher and president of DC Comics. The rumors are true. I'll have more to say later.

Good Deed Deal

Posted on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:01 AM

My pal Bob Beerbohm has been a seller and historian of comic books for a very long time. Right now, he has a dire need for hip replacement surgery and he has such an operation scheduled for September 24. Trouble is: These things cost and he's still a few thousand bucks short.

Since this country is not likely to enact Health Care Reform between now and then, Bob's trying to raise the dough by having what for collectors of vintage funnybooks is The Sale of the Century, and you can look at this one of two ways. It could be your chance to help out a fellow human being and to purchase some great collectible at the same time. Or you could see it as a chance to take advantage of someone's medical problems and to score some goodies at distress prices. Bob won't care. Either way, you get a new treasure (cheap) and he gets a new hip (not so cheap).

Whichever kind of person you are, go visit his eBay store and buy something. In fact, buy several somethings. The offerings are grand, the prices are great…and you'll be doing a mitzvah. If you don't know what one of those is, you need to eat more latkes.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:16 AM

Back when I had a family — we're down now to just my mother and me — family dinners often revolved around the latkes. The entree, which was usually some permutation of brisket, was never as important as the elaborately-prepared potato pancakes that accompanied it. My mother was in charge of the kitchen but Aunt Dot would often assist, and I'd sometimes go out and grate spuds for a while. I was darn good at it, if I do say so myself. And since Aunt Dot's gone and my mother doesn't blog, I guess I do have to say so myself.

The latkes had to be cooked just so, and in accord with a book called The Art of Jewish Cooking by Jennie Grossinger. Ms. Grossinger was the founder of the famous Grossinger's Hotel in the Catskills…a temple (with schmaltz herring) for a couple generations of my people. She probably did not personally author this book, which was a bible for those who had to learn to cook knishes and kasha and such, but everything made according to it tasted very, very good.

My mother's copy disintegrated some time in the seventies and the book appears to be long outta print. A few years ago, I spotted one on eBay, bought it and for the first time ever, gave it the once over. That was when I learned why everything in it tasted so good. Darn near every recipe called for a cup of chicken fat. You could make asphalt taste good if you mixed it with a cup of chicken fat.

I don't know where my copy is at the moment. If I find it, I'll post the recipe for latkes…but it was a lot like what the lady does in this video, though she omits the most vital element. No matter how you cook latkes, it's essential that you have one or more Jewish people hovering around and saying, "That's not how you cook latkes."

The video may be preceded by a brief commercial announcement. Whatever they're selling in it, buy it and try mixing it in when you make latkes…

VIDEO MISSING

Recommended Reading

Posted on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 4:11 PM

Dahlia Lithwick on the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, the Texas man who was executed for arson. Experts now seem unanimous that the verdict was flawed and that Willingham was, as he insisted to his dying moment, an innocent man. But those who have a lot of emotion invested in the Death Penalty don't care…and if they continue to have their way, the prevailing attitude towards the wrongly-convicted will be: "Too bad. But you had your day in court and lost!"

I think it's enormously disingenuous for Justice Scalia and others to insist that no one has ever proven an innocent person has been put to death. The sheer number of wrongful convictions, including folks who would have been executed but for the relatively-new science of DNA testing, suggests there have probably been many. The trouble is that once the government executes someone, the people in that government have a compelling, almost desperate need to not allow innocence to be proven. So they make it darn near impossible.

Recommended Reading

Posted on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 2:32 PM

My chum Robert Elisberg has a good piece up about the dismantling of the Motion Picture Home, a facility that has done so much good for folks in show biz who weren't wealthy and needed aid in their declining and ill years.

Take it as a dire sign that the Motion Picture and Television Fund folks don't think they can afford to keep that place open. It's bad enough that we have so many people in this country who can't afford and/or get health insurance. Even if all those people just die off (as some will do because they can't pay for doctors), the system is failing those who have Honest-to-God, real, paid-for health insurance…and I don't see a single projection that it won't get a lot worse unless something major is done.

Tuesday Afternoon

Posted on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 2:03 PM

Barack Obama gave his speech to school kids this afternoon. There's an elementary school down the block from me and I guess they heard it because all the students are out goose-stepping and wearing little Hitler mustaches. They're even demanding health care for all because as we all know, that's the first thing Nazis care about. And it's such an easy slippery-slope from "Stay in school" to "Don't be stupid, be a smarty…"

I'm not mad at the crazies. If anything, we should be grateful to them for driving the moderate voters towards the Democrats. I guess I'm a little disappointed in the "have it both way" statesmen like John McCain who want to preach sanity to their party but not in any way that's going to alienate the insane.

They remind me of those sixties' politicians who didn't want to side with the separatists and racists but also didn't want to lose their support. A lot of them learned to pronounce the name they used for the African-American race as "nigra." That way, they thought, the Equal Rights crowds would hear it as "negro" and the Klan voters would hear the other "n" word. It was like that scene in that Red Skelton Civil War movie where he walks between the warring troops with a two-sided flag — Union on the side facing that army, Confederate on the side facing them. John McCain thinks all this talk about "Death Panels" is nonsense…but of course, Sarah Palin is still a woman of great integrity.

Recommended Reading

Posted on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 3:04 AM

Matt Taibbi on how bad Health Care is in this country and how it won't get fixed.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:55 AM

This one runs a little over a half hour but you might want to watch all or most of it. It's an episode from Great Britain of That Was The Week That Was, a satirical review that ran in the early sixties. It was hosted by David Frost — who's now Sir David Frost to the likes of you — and it featured a bevy of the best British comic actors and writers, including at times, John Cleese and Graham Chapman. This installment seems to be from around January of 1963.

The show lasted 'til the end of that year, which was about the time an American version (also hosted by Sir David) got going on NBC. It was not a big hit and it got a lot of Republicans angry. Back then during our elections, it used to be fairly common for political parties to buy an hour or a half-hour of prime-time TV for their advertising. During the '64 elections, the G.O.P. arranged to preempt TW3 (as everyone called it) almost every week, not so much because they wanted the time slot for their Goldwater ads but because they wanted to keep the show off the air. Amazingly, there wasn't a lot of outcry that this was censorship or suppression of anything of the sort. Imagine what would happen today if an advertiser bumped even one broadcast by Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann.

I remember the U.S. version as a great show. It certainly had incredible talent involved. Along with Frost, you had at times Tom Lehrer, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Henry Morgan, Alan Alda, Buck Henry, Woody Allen and many others. Puppeteer Burr Tillstrom, who'd been responsible for Kukla, Fran and Ollie, invented a new art form — a thing he did called "Hand Ballets," in which you just saw his hands miming a little story.

Of course, I haven't seen an episode since '64 so maybe it wouldn't seem as wonderful today. I hear conflicting things about whether tapes of those old broadcasts even exist. If they do, I wish someone would make them available. In the meantime, here's that episode of the British version…

VIDEO MISSING

Jerry Blogging

Posted on Monday, September 7, 2009 at 9:06 PM

The 2009 Jerry Lewis Telethon raised $60.5 million, down a notch from last year's $65 million. Given the state of the economy and unemployment, that's probably still an impressive total. I generally enjoyed the "show" part of it, especially the first 12 or so hours, which seemed to contain (with a few exceptions) better acts and less melodramatic tales of illness. Years ago, the telethon was often criticized — sometimes even by patient groups — for not treating the afflicted with sufficient dignity. They've toned that down and it may be why they were able to raise as much as they did.

Jerry was Jerry. As I said earlier, I think he tries too hard to do his old act. Is there any other performer who goes on national television these days with a Jolson medley? I have the feeling that if Jolson was alive, even he wouldn't go out there today and do a Jolson medley.

There's also something endearing about Jerry's rambling monologues and his attempts to interject "topical" references by mentioning Vic Tanny and Liberace. Usually, he's good for at least one Helen Keller joke per telethon. He did one this year but for some reason, he said "Anne Bancroft" instead of "Helen Keller," and I don't think anyone in the audience had any idea what he was talking about. He also seemed crankier than usual, especially during the too-plentiful tech problems.

That's about everything I wanted to mention. If you TiVoed the show and haven't watched the wee small hours, make sure you at least seek out my buddy Charlie Frye, who did some great magic stuff around 2 AM. I called Charlie this afternoon to say I'd seen him and he said, "You and about seven others." But that was a joke because there were probably an awful lot of people watching. I wish Jerry could or would attract more major stars for prime time because it seems kinda sad when you realize that the biggest name of the hour is Charo. But I'm glad they have on folks like Charlie who just plain do good acts. They had a lot of them overnight.

Dean 'n' Jerry

Posted on Monday, September 7, 2009 at 6:31 PM

Several folks have written me to say that they heard (in one case, from one of Jerry's sons) that when Dean walked out onto the telethon in '76, Jerry knew about it in advance. That's possible, I suppose…but I tend to believe not. Two people who worked on the telethon that year told me Jerry didn't know. Moreover, it seems to me that if Jerry knew, he'd have been a lot better prepared with clever things to say. He comes across kinda stunned and out of control of his own show. I just think that if he'd known, he would have ready with something wittier…maybe hand Dean money and say, "Here's the five bucks I owe you." Or something.

And I suspect the staging of the whole thing would have been neater. It's all so clumsy — with Frank not knowing where to stand and all that weird stuff with the microphones. Frank and Jerry are standing there. Each has a microphone. Dean enters. Frank takes Jerry's microphone away from him. This is apparently so Jerry's hands are free to hug Dean, which is fine.

But then Frank hands Jerry's mike to the bandleader so we have this moment where Martin and Lewis are standing there…reunited but neither one has a microphone. Frank, whose utterances matter the least of the three, has the only mike and he keeps babbling, trying to be a part of a moment that is about two other guys. Finally, they hand Dean and Jerry each a microphone so they can talk a little — interrupted needlessly by Frank, I might add — and then Frank comes in and takes Jerry's mike so he and Dean can perform the medley.

That's not how you stage things if you've had thirty seconds of planning with the host involved. First off, you tell Jerry to turn more towards the camera so they can get a decent shot of his face when he sees Dean. Secondly, you have Frank hold Jerry's mike until the two men hug, then you have Frank give it back to him and hand the other mike he's holding to Dean.

Then when it comes time for Dean and Frank to sing, you have Jerry suggest it so he doesn't look like Sinatra just took his telethon away from him and kicked him off the stage. And then when the medley is over, you have Jerry come over to personally thank Dean and give him another hug…and you don't have that awkward staging of the exit.

Jerry is way over on the other side of the stage, looking like he's afraid to go near his former partner. Frank is trying to drag Dean off. But Dean is the only one there with enough show biz savvy to realize that the historic Martin-Lewis reunion needs a closing and that he can't exit without saying something to Jerry. So he has to yell across the studio and fight Sinatra trying to get him off stage.

Dean goes for a joke. He says, "All you got is $733 and nineteen-sixteen cents," and if there'd been any prep on all this, any rehearsal with Jerry, Jerry would have known enough to say, "That's the phone number." But Jerry doesn't know what to say and he's on the other side of the room so Dean has to button the joke himself.

I just think Jerry comes across as dazed and clueless and not sure where to stand or what to say…and this is a guy who goes to every possible length to be in command of every situation. A few years after the telethon reunion, he was a guest star on a show I wrote. He arrived with a huge entourage of employees who had to make sure everything was to Mr. Lewis's liking…even (and I am not making this up) the toilet paper in his dressing room.

The tissue had to come off the roll from the front as in the left-hand picture. It could not come off the back as in the right-hand picture. Before Jerry arrived, someone had to check because, we were told, it could affect Jerry's performance. As it turned out, our stage manager had already gone in to make sure it was right. He'd worked with Jerry before and knew all about the toilet paper thing. That's the level of control that the man exerts.

It's possible Jerry knew and he said, "Sure…just send Dean out and we'll wing it." But watch the clip again and show me one moment when anyone seems to know where to stand or how to get to the next item. That's what makes me think it was a genuine surprise for Mr. Lewis.

Animated Audio

Posted on Monday, September 7, 2009 at 1:46 PM

The above smarter-than-average bruin is there to catch the eye of anyone who loves classic TV cartoons and folks like Daws Butler, the brilliant gent who supplied Yogi's voice. If you are one such person, have I got a show for you. It's another fine program on Shokus Internet Radio, the station I plug often here in weblog items and in my right-hand margin.

Joe Bevilacqua (lazy folks call him "Joe Bev") is an animation voice actor, animation historian, producer, writer and all-around cartoon cool guy. Today, he kicks off his new program, Cartoon Carnival, which can be heard every day on that channel at 6 PM Eastern, which is of course 3 PM Pacific. Don't worry if you miss today's installment as each show repeats throughout the week in that slot. Do worry if you miss it altogether, though there'll be a new episode next week and a new one the week after and so on.

On each, Joe will be dipping into his vast archives of cartoon-oriented goodies — rare soundtracks, interviews he's done, etc. — and there'll also be new interviews and treasures. Joe studied with The Master (i.e., Daws) and has rare tapes of Mr. Butler and his contemporaries. (I was going to say "…his peers" but Daws didn't have a lot of peers.) If you're interested in this kind of thing, I can't imagine you won't have a great time.

You can have that great time by browsing over to Shokus Internet Radio at the proper hour and clicking where you're supposed to click. Sounds like sixty minutes of great fun to me.

Good Night, Internet!

Posted on Monday, September 7, 2009 at 5:40 AM

It's 5:40 in the morning. Jerry, in a pre-taped spot, just introduced Celine Dion, singing a pre-taped number. More importantly, the script I'm up writing is starting to read like it was written at 5:40 in the morning. Good time to go to bed.

Today's Bonus Video Link

Posted on Monday, September 7, 2009 at 3:04 AM

Here's a pretty clear video of the famous Martin and Lewis Reunion from the 1976 Reunion. There's such a wonderful jolt when Dino strides out with that big grin on his face…but watching it, I find myself wishing that Mr. Sinatra had realized that the moment wasn't about him; that he should have just brought Dean out and gotten the heck outta the way.

I know Dean and Jerry had nothing prepared or rehearsed but you can almost hear audiences across the nation groaning when Jerry gets shoved aside so the other two guys can perform. Yeah, I know a Sinatra/Martin medley was a big deal but seeing Martin and Lewis together was a bigger deal…and it's not like they had to keep it short because Norm Crosby's appearance couldn't be delayed. If an 18 hour telethon has nothing else, it's plenty of time.

Still, it's one of those moments…

Jerry Blogging

Posted on Monday, September 7, 2009 at 2:46 AM

Watching the telethon. I thought we'd reached the point where Jerry disappears for the night but he keeps popping back up. He looks shaky and a little too determined to be the "old Jerry," singing and tap-dancing and doing his old routines. Please…someone tell this man that there's no shame in changing your act as you get older.

A lot of interesting acts, including Jerry's regulars like Bob Zany and Maureen McGovern. Sad to see that Charlie Callas apparently isn't well enough to be there and had to be represented by a tape of an old appearance. My buddies Charlie Frye and Ronn Lucas are soon to appear.

It's nice to see all these folks getting national exposure. Still, you wish the telethon had the kind of importance that would come from some superstars dropping in, the way Frank and Sammy used to. Bill Cosby's playing Vegas this weekend. Is he not there because he didn't want to appear? Or did someone think Jer couldn't cope with another comedy legend on his stage?

Speaking of which: I just thought of a clip I oughta link to…