Today
Yes, I know this site has been down a few times today. Not my fault. […]
Author: Mark Evanier
Posts by Mark Evanier
Pooh on Pooh…
A Superior Court judge has thrown out the lawsuit against the Disney organization regarding unpaid royalties on Winnie the Pooh. The ruling states that the plaintiffs (the company that controls licensing rights) had unlawfully obtained certain documents. I have no idea if that's so but I did wince when I read this quote from Daniel […]
More on Maddox
Bill Sherman reminds me (and you, I suppose) that when Lester Maddox walked off the Cavett show, the event inspired Randy Newman to write some songs about rednecks. […]
Peter Ustinov, R.I.P.
Last night, writing about the witty guests who frequented The Dick Cavett Show, I wrote but deleted a partial list which started with Peter Ustinov. I never got to see as much of Sir Peter as I would have liked, but every time I saw him on anything, he made me laugh, almost always by […]
A News Item to Piss You Off
John Ashcroft isn't the only one feeding the Bill of Rights into a shredder these days. There goes that nonsense about the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. […]
Maddox Memories
A couple of folks wrote to ask about the famous incident where Georgia governor Lester Maddox walked off The Dick Cavett Show. Here's what I recall about it: It was a night when the other two guests were author Truman Capote and football player Jim Brown. Cavett asked Maddox a question that suggested that some […]
Dick Cavett
One of the more insensitive moments I've ever seen on a TV interview show occurred on the old Tom Snyder Tomorrow program when he was chatting with Dick Cavett. I thought they were the two best interviewers of their day but all broadcasters occasionally phrase things wrong and that night, Snyder did. Cavett's late-night show […]
On C-Span
I'm currently watching C-Span 1 where they're running a 1971 Dick Cavett Show on which John Kerry, then a Vietnam activist, debated a fellow Navy veteran, John O'Neill. The thrust of it is that Kerry charges that a vast amount of war crimes were committed in that conflict by American forces, while O'Neill is there […]
Recommmended Reading
Why was U.S. pre-war intelligence on Iraq, particularly about Weapons of Mass Destruction, so stunningly wrong? This article in the L.A. Times tells why. Assuming this report is true, it's amazing how our top officials put so much trust in a third-hand account by someone they didn't even know. […]
The Campfire Scene…in Dolby Digital 5.1 Stereo
Coming your way at the end of June: The 30th Anniversary DVD of Blazing Saddles. It will include a documentary on a recent cast and crew reunion and another on the late, great Madeline Kahn. There will be "scene-specific" audio commentary by Mel Brooks, plus the unsold 1975 Black Bart TV pilot inspired by the […]
Read More… from The Campfire Scene…in Dolby Digital 5.1 Stereo
Font of Information
I love typography and clever graphic design, and am a fan of many folks who do this kind of thing and do it well. For umpteen years, I've admired the output of a gent named Leslie Cabarga, whose work you've seen in many venues. He's also the world's foremost authority on the Max Fleischer cartoon […]
Attention, Stan Freberg!
Go read the letter near the bottom of this page. […]
Set the TiVo!
If your cable or satellite receives The Biography Channel…and if you're a fan of Sesame Street and/or the Muppets, you might want to set your TiVo or VCR for the wee small hours of next Saturday morn. They're rerunning a two-part "Biography for Kids" that Harry Smith did, visiting the set and interviewing the folks […]
Radio Wrassling
As my e-mail buddy Ben Varkentine notes on his blog, a lot of the publicity surrounding Al Franken's new liberal radio show is coming from right-wingers complaining that Al Franken's new liberal radio show is getting too much publicity. One such complaint comes from Hugh Hewitt setting up the (false, to me) premise that if […]
TV Funnies – Part 2
Here we go with two more looks at Gold Key Comics of the sixties and seventies based on then-popular TV shows. Don't spend a lot of time searching for these on eBay as they rarely turn up. Perhaps that's why they go largely unmentioned in most of the official comic book price guides. The only […]