Monthly Archives: January 2025

As you may recall, I liked the second half or so of Saturday Night, the movie about the first telecast of the show we now know as Saturday Night Live. The first half, I was too distracted by (a) noticing how much the actors did or did not replicate the real people they were playing and (b) tallying how many times the movie departed from what had really happened or even could have happened that night. I said here, "One of these days when I can do so without paying Amazon Prime another twenty bucks, I intend to watch the movie again with the proper mindset from the beginning."

Last night, I did. I received one of those FYC free links from the studio because they hope if I watch, I'll vote their way for some award. So I watched…with a friend who is too young to have seen the show the first night or even in its first two dozen years. She was born about the time Chris Farley died so after the film, I had to explain to her what the show represented to the world of comedy…and entertainment in general. I kinda like that the film ends the moment Saturday Night Live starts but that doesn't mean a lot if you don't know what it became in the years that followed.

(Then again, my friend didn't sit there comparing that John Belushi to the real John Belushi or that Chevy Chase to the real Chevy Chase…and she doesn't know a lot about how TV shows are made. So maybe she had more of a chance to enjoy the film than I did.)

This time around, I enjoyed it more than I had before because I was resigned to the premise that it was a fantasy in much the same way that Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood didn't pretend to show us what really happened to those Charles Manson disciples. I agree with those who felt Saturday Night could have trimmed out about nine subplots and still had more than enough. If they'd done that, they might have had time to focus a bit on Gilda, Jane and Laraine. (Or was the point that the real show often neglected them so the movie had to?)

I'll try to do this with as few spoilers as I can. There's a moment when NBC exec Dave Tebet (played superbly by Willem Dafoe) is challenging Lorne Michaels (played well by Gabriel LaBelle) to explain what the show is about. If Michaels doesn't give a satisfactory answer, Tebet won't let the show go on and they have contingency plans to instead substitute a Johnny Carson rerun. In real life, Lorne Michaels would not have been put on this spot only minutes before the show is scheduled to go live and he would not be having this discussion with Dave Tebet.

But remember: We've decided this is a fantasy so let's go with it. Michaels delivers a speech that goes roughly like this, which I cut-and-pasted from a copy of the screenplay that's online here. That script differs from the film in a great many ways but this speech is roughly what he said in the film…)

It's an all nighter in the city. It's catching Richard Pryor at a drop in, or finding Paul Simon strumming in the back of a dive bar. It's meeting a girl outside a bodega and getting lucky in a phone booth. It's everything you think is going to happen when you move to the city.

That's kinda poetic but it's largely double-talk. Being honest in real life, Michaels might have said something more like this…

It's NBC's chance to corral a segment of the viewing public that is increasingly becoming the most important audience. They're younger and they have tremendous buying power — the kind advertisers crave. Just as they don't want to listen to their parents' music, they want entertainment made for them. They aren't laughing at Alan King bitching about all those crazy dances "those kids today" do. They're buying comedy records by people like our host tonight, George Carlin, and other comedians like Richard Pryor and Robert Klein I expect to have host in the coming weeks…comics who speak to them. They're buying records by performers like our musical guests this week, Billy Preston and Janis Ian, and Paul Simon, who's on next week.

There's nothing wrong with a Johnny Carson rerun but he's not doing a show for that demographic and it's about time someone did. Even if you don't find it funny, Dave, you're not our target audience. You're 62 years old and you're sounding like the people who told Ed Sullivan he shouldn't put the Beatles on his show. Ed wanted to attract those younger viewers so he put on their music. This show is their music and their comedy.

Now to be fair, in the movie, "Dave Tebet" was right to be worried about putting the show on the air because up until this point in the movie, what he (and we) have seen of it has been largely a disorganized mess. But that's the fiction. The real show was rehearsed within an inch of its life before that Saturday evening. It had two highly-professional musical acts and its host, cocaine aside, was one of the most reliable and experienced comedians in the business…a guy who Carson wasn't afraid to put on or even let guest-host. There were also pre-filmed commercial parodies, a film by Albert Brooks and a bit by the Muppets, who knew what they were doing even if there was no one on the premises who wanted to write for them.

I feel sorry for some of the real people depicted in this film but especially for Dave Tebet, a man I never met. But here's something I do know about him: He was for a time the NBC executive in charge of Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. Remember the This Is Your Life parody they did where Carl Reiner drags Sid up out of the audience in the sketch a lot of folks think was the funniest sketch ever on television? This sketch?

Well, when Carl goes into the audience, the man sitting in the aisle seat next to Sid is Dave Tebet. Honest to God, that was Dave Tebet. So he knew all about doing wild comedy on live television…and taking risks…and how quickly a sloppy rehearsal can turn into a wonderful show. (And being at NBC so long, he also knew the value of not destroying a pet project of his boss. Saturday Night Live had NBC president Herb Schlosser solidly behind it. No one below him was going to yank it off the air…but you often need a real bad guy to make a real good story.)

But now here I am…letting Reality creep into this discussion again. That's probably a mistake so I'll just say that I liked the Saturday Night movie the second time more than the first. My friend liked it but she liked it more once I'd explained to her how the series became a turning point for comedy in this country, both on television and in the movies. It'll be streaming and more widely available any day now. If you watch it, don't make the mistake of thinking it's a documentary. And if you do make that mistake, watch it again with the right frame of mind.

In my opinion, one of the best late night hosts of the last few decades was Craig Ferguson, especially years 2-9 of his ten-year run. The first year, he seemed to be trying to figure out the job and what his show was. The last year, he sometimes seemed bored and he spent a lot of time dancing, seemingly to amuse himself. But when he was good, he was very, very good and his show had the spontaneity that others lacked.

He didn't have the budget that some of the others had. He didn't have a band. He didn't get a lot of the big guests. He sometimes had to tape two shows a day. For a time, he didn't even have a sidekick or a bandleader to talk to and when he did get a sidekick, it was a robot skeleton. But I thought he was very clever, very honest and very humble.

You'll only see a little of that in this video. It's his first show once he was named the regular host following a lot of different tryouts, including his. This aired 1/3/2005…

This is a barbershop quartet called Midtown and this is their version of the theme from the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon show. They do sing the hell out of it…

Once again, Mark links you to feature films that are currently — and by that, I mean as I post this — free for viewing without ads on YouTube. Any second now, they may suddenly contain commercials or cost money to view. But at this precise moment, they don't…

This is Airplane!, the 1980 comedy written and directed by Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker. A very funny film which people quote to this day…

And you can also watch, from some of the same people, The Kentucky Fried Movie, an earlier effort by Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers. Since this has a few mild naughty bits, YouTube won't allow me to embed it and insists you watch it on their site. If you can, you should.

NOTE, ADDED LATER: It has been called to my attention that the linked version of this film has been severely laundered and cleaned up. You may want to ignore my suggestion of "If you can, you should."

This may not be my pet peeve but it's a peeve nonetheless. I just saw a message in the vast wasteland that is Facebook from some comic book fan who was hating bigly on a long-deceased comic book artist of the past. His gripe about this artist? That he didn't always get the costumes "right" on supporting characters, especially super-villains. In Super-Marvel-DC-Team-Up-Tales #43, he didn't draw the costume on Dr. Dastardly the exact same way some other artist drew Dr. Dastardly's uniform In Ultra-DC-Marvel-Adventures-Annual #6.

There are three reasons this is a peeve for me, one being that it's usually impossible to tell who made such a mistake. Was the penciler not given adequate reference material? Did the inker misread the pencils or not fix what he or she was supposed to fix? Did no one in the office notice? Is it possible someone along the line decided they could improve Dr. Dastardly's duds and the non-match was intentional?

Second reason: Dr. Dastardly is an alien/robot/energy force of enough power to rule and/or destroy the planet. He has a super-secret lab filled with devices that can vaporize his opponents or control their minds or make them dance the Macarena against their wills. Are we to assume that he doesn't have a change of clothes? That he absolutely must be wearing the exact same thing anytime we see him?

And the final reason is a big "Who cares?" I wonder if this guy goes to 007 movies, points at any starring actor who isn't Sean Connery and yells, "The producers made a stupid mistake! That's not James Bond!"

Carl's friend James Shegas sent me this…

I went with Carl to the San Diego Con somewhere in the late 1970s. He had brought a big painting of the Silver Surfer and Galactus to give to Jack Kirby, who attended every SDCC up to that time. We came up to Jack's table at the dealer's room where he and his wife Rosalind were. Jack was very impressed with the painting and Carl wanted him to take it as a gift. Jack hesitated to accept it, since he believed every artist should hold onto his work but was quickly overruled by Roz, who told him "Can't you see? He really wants you to have it."

Carl happily gave it to the King. He was so happy his hero appreciated his devotion and artistry. Carl was one of the good ones, always friendly, always helpful. His self-published mini-comics were very imaginative and exciting, and comics could have benefited from his energy and dedication to the form. Very sad day. REST IN POWER, Carl!

I recall Jack was impressed with Carl's work…and also Carl's love for the form and his general attitude. One of the reasons Jack attended all those Comic-Cons is that he wanted to meet people like Carl and he was aware of the power of his encouragement. That's a nice story, James, and I'm glad to be able to share it here.

I was a big fan of the late Richard Jeni, who I think was one of those stand-up comics who never got the attention he deserved. He was an imitator of no one and a guy who always scored big any time I saw him live or in one of his comedy specials. This special (my favorite) was called A Big Steaming Pile of Me and he recorded it at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in Irvine, California. It aired in 2005 and two years later, he took his own life…for what reason, folks who knew him seemed not to know.

I attended the memorial service for him and it was packed with top comics who all respected the hell out of him. You could tell because only one of them — well, maybe two — got on that stage and tried to turn the moment into an audition for themselves. Most spoke of how fresh and inventive he was and how he did everything so well. Here he is doing everything so well…and yes, this runs close to an hour but if you stick with it, I think you'll feel it was an hour well-spent…

Please forgive the paucity of posting today but I spent a lot of it at a doctor's office, not being examined or treated but merely waiting.  And then there was a hurried rewrite on something and a long phone call about a proposed project that — this is a guess — has at most a 25% chance of growing up to become an actual project.

Kevin Shaw, who was good friends with the (sadly) late Carl Taylor wrote to remind me that Carl had at least one solid published credit — a story in Big Bang for Image.  He was working on a couple of other stories for that comic but it was terminated before they could see print.  Kevin also reminded me that Carl had been in bad health for some time including having one of his legs amputated.  Like I said, he was a great guy and he certainly didn't deserve to go so soon.

I'm not watching much news but I heard about the cybertruck explosion at a Trump property and about the truck attack in New Orleans.  And what I heard was a lot of public figures kinda admitting they had no idea quite what happened or who was responsible but were not going to let that stop them from suggesting or stating outright that one or both could be blamed on their political enemies.  This is one of the main reasons I'm not watching much news.

 

 

A lot of folks who in the Southern California comic book community were saddened the other day by the news that Carl Taylor has died.  The cause isn't known, at least to any of us, but we'd heard he'd been ill lately.  Carl was a devout comic fan and an aspiring comic artist who never quite found the right place to apply his skills.  He drew exciting pages in a style that merged his two favorites — Jack Kirby and Gil Kane — and Jack especially was delighted with Carl's enthusiasm and imagination.  Though Jack and others gave him pointers and encouragement, Carl somehow never managed to make it out of the fanzines.

He seemed to be at every local convention and it was always fun to be around him.  He had a wonderful sense of humor and the talent to do vocal impressions of the folks he admired in the industry and a few he didn't.  Just a very nice, clever guy.  We need more like that.

For our top spot this year, here's another interpretation of Mr. Lehrer's great song — as performed by Deborah Silver and the Count Basie Orchestra. Deborah don't fool around with no ukuleles…

Earlier this morning, something that was said reminded me of this story so I told it and the person to whom I told it said, "Hey, I don't think you've ever told that one on your blog!" I said, "Sure I have," but when I later did a search here, I couldn't find it. So here it is…

As you probably know, I enjoy hosting panels at comic conventions and have done, by actual count, about ninety-four gazillion of them. This story occurred during the time that the first few issues of Groo the Wanderer comics by Sergio Aragonés and Yours Truly were coming out…so around 1984. From it, I learned a valuable lesson.

A gent staging a one-day comic convention here in Southern California called Sergio and asked if the two of us would be guests. That meant that we'd sit behind a table all day and sign copies of our comics for no money. The "no money" part didn't bother me and it still doesn't except when dealers bring half the press run for signatures that will theoretically raise the resale value of the books a smidge. But I just don't like signing my name all day and if I sit next to Sergio, the line extends well into some adjacent zip code. Then I'm expected to sign as much as he does and as swiftly, which is just not humanly possible.

Sergio said yes on behalf of us both, which was fine, and then the convention organizer called me to double-check and to also ask if while I was there, would I be willing to host a panel? I agreed and he said he'd would arrange everything including what the panel would be about and who'd be on it…and I'll tip the valuable lesson of this story before we get to it. The valuable lesson of this story is NEVER AGREE TO THAT.

But I did. I have since learned that I need to have some say as to what a panel will be about, who the panelists will be and — and this is vital — how many panelists there will be.  I've found that six is usually the max for a one-hour panel.  If you have more time, you might accommodate seven.  If you have too many, some or all of your panelists will sit for long stretches of time without being able to say anything.  They'll get bored and when your panelists are getting bored, so will your audience.

Our story now jumps ahead to the day of the con…

Sergio and I arrived at the hotel with me having no idea what panel I'd be hosting, when and where it would take place or who'd be on it. The con organizer — a genial fellow who was trying to do a hundred and eleven things all at once, greeted us warmly, showed us to our signing table and then he handed me a copy of a printed program for the day's festivities. He then scurried off to attend to some of those hundred and ten other things and I looked at the program he'd handed me. It was quite informative.

From it, I discovered that at 2 PM in Room I-don't-remember, I was moderating a panel on the works of the eminent science-fiction writer, Robert Heinlein. There was also a list of ten panelists who'd be appearing to discuss this man's reknowned body of writing. Instantly, I saw two problems with this…

1. I had never heard of any of these panelists and…
2. I had never read anything written by Robert Heinlein.

Neither of these seemed like insurmountable problems.  I assumed the panelists would all be familiar with Mr. Heinlein's work so I could have them each introduce themselves and then answer questions like, "Which of his many books is your favorite and why?" or "If someone was unfamiliar with Heinlein's work, where in his oeuvre would you suggest they start?"

"Oeuvre" is an excellent word for a situation like this because it makes you sound like you know a lot of things even when all you know is the definition of the word "oeuvre."  In case you don't, it means "the works of a painter, composer or author regarded collectively."  Remember that.  It may come in handy someday when you have to fake knowing something about something.

And lest you think I'm a Neanderthal for not have read extensively the works of Mr. Heinlein (i.e., his "oeuvre"), let me say this: I read lots of science-fiction, mainly when I was in my teens and early twenties, but there are a lot of great books in this world that fall outside that genre. You just can't get around to all of them and I never got around to Heinlein and still haven't.  But I figured that would be okay for this panel because my ten panelists would have, right?

No, not right.  Because as I found out when I got to the panel room a little before 2 PM and met them all, to continue our numbering…

3. Not one of the panelists had ever read anything written by Robert Heinlein and…
4. They were all mystified as to why the hell they were put on this panel which they knew no more about in advance than I did.

By the time I realized the magnitude of this problem, it was 2 PM and the room had filled with about 40 people.  I decided to just go ahead with the panel.  It might be a total disaster but, hey, that can be entertaining.  Sometimes.  So I quietly told each panelist that I'd start by asking them who they were and what they'd done and to please not mention their total unfamiliarity with the works of Robert Heinlein.

Then I welcomed the audience, introduced myself and had each panelist introduce himself or herself without mentioning you-know-what.  Then I asked the audience, "How many of you have read books by Robert Heinlein?" And you can probably guess what the response was…

5. No one raised a hand.

Not a one.  Not one person in that room — in the audience or on the stage — had read anything by Robert Heinlein. A lady who worked for the hotel came by to fill up water glasses for each of us and I'd bet my house that she hadn't read anything by Robert Heinlein either.

I asked why they'd come to a panel about Robert Heinlein and a couple of them said things like "I saw there was this panel and decided to see what it was all about."  I asked if anyone had any questions about Robert Heinlein and one guy said, "Yeah, who is he?"

That's when I said, "Okay, as moderator, I declare this is no longer the Robert Heinlein panel.  It's now the "Let's talk about anything that interests us" panel.  Ask about anything you like — comics, TV shows, movies, famous Bar Mitzvahs, people named Arnie…anything.  Someone on this panel may know something about it." The first question was, "What table is Sergio signing at?" That one, even I could handle.

Then someone asked a question about Groo and I could field that one, too. Someone on the panel had said they were writing mystery novels and they were asked a question about writing mystery novels. Someone else asked about having to write when one isn't in the mood and that was a good question — the kind I should have asked — because everyone on the panel was a writer of some sort. The whole panel suddenly turned into a panel about professional writing and getting into the mood to write and/or deal with know-nothing editors or making a living as a writer…and it turned into a pretty good panel.

There was no further mention of Mr. Heinlein. But I did manage to work the word "oeuvre" into my answers once or twice.

When it was over, I returned to the table where Sergio and I were signing. He was way ahead of me and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying and failing to catch up. Later, as the convention was closing down, the organizer came by to thank us and he asked me how the panel went. I told him it went okay and then asked, "Why did you decide there should be a panel about Robert Heinlein?"

He responded in the tone of voice you'd use if a child asked you what 2+2 equals. He said, "Because he's the greatest writer who ever lived, of course."

I asked him if he'd thought to ask any of us if we'd ever read Heinlein and he answered, "I didn't have to. You're all professional writers so naturally, you've read everything he ever wrote. Was there a problem?"

I said, "Well, since none of us had ever read anything by Robert Heinlein, yes, there was a bit of a problem."

He said, "Well then, that's on you. Hey, if you guys parked in the lot outside, let me have your ticket and I'll have it validated for you."

One great thing about the Internet is that it makes it easy to comparison-shop. I just made up the graphic below to show you what you can learn if you look before you buy. A lady friend of mine asked me to get her a supply of Glucosamine Chondroitin with 1500 mg of Glucosamine and 1200 mg of Chondroitin.  So I looked around and it didn't take long to realize that I had two options…

I could use my Costco membership and buy 280 tablets that contain 1500 mg of Glucosamine and 1200 mg of Chondroitin for $19.12 from Costco or I could go on Amazon and purchase 220 tablets that contain 1500 mg of Glucosamine and 1200 mg of Chondroitin for $32.20.  Same brand.  Probably the exact same tablets although one is labeled "Advanced" and the other is labeled "Extra Strength."

Which one to buy?  Which one to buy?