Category Archives: To Be Filed

The release of the new X-Men movie means I'll probably be subjected to another round of questions from folks as to how I liked it. It probably shouldn't annoy me but it does that these queries are never preceded with the question, "Say, did you see it?" People I know in and around comics just kind of presume not only that you've seen the film but that you raced to see it Opening Day. Sometimes, they even frame their question as, "So, how many times have you seen it so far?" and they're almost crushed when I answer, "Counting the next time once."

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie and promptly paid money to see it a second time. It may have been Network, and then only because I was then dating a lady who I knew would love it. The only times I can ever remember hurrying to catch a film right when it opened were a couple of Mel Brooks movies, back when he was in good form. This was not because I couldn't live without seeing the movies themselves but because Mel tended to turn up at the early screenings in Westwood and put on an extra show, chatting with the audience and heckling the trailers. Right in the middle of the inevitable ad for L.A. Times home delivery, you'd hear this very Jewish voice from the back of the house yell, "SHOW MY MOVIE, DAMN IT!" That was worth a battle of Opening Day crowds. Nothing else I can recall ever was to me, and now that movies are so promptly available on DVD and on my little satellite dish, there seems like even less reason to rush.

Actually, I have no desire whatsoever to see the new X-Men movie, just as I had no desire to see the Daredevil movie, the Spider-Man movie, the Blade movie, the last few Batman and Superman movies, etc. I saw the previous X-Men movie only because I was then working for Stan Lee Media and Stan hosted a special screening for the staff. One day in lieu of working, we all trekked over to a nearby theater and free box lunches were distributed. So I was being paid to be there and fed, and I think that's about what it would take to get me to the sequel.

I came to the realization some time ago that though I've collected comic books all my life, I'm not particularly a fan of the characters as they exist apart from certain creators. I love Spider-Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita, and perhaps a few other incarnations…but I'm not particularly a fan of Spider-Man, per se. I haven't read the comic in about…well, for a year or three after Peter Parker married Mary Jane, I dragged myself through a lot of issues I didn't much care about and finally stopped. I'm not saying there haven't been some wonderful issues in there — I haven't looked — but my affection for one body of work did not transfer with the characters. It isn't that I dislike a new version because it isn't the old version. I just feel no reason to automatically like it. I loved James Bond movies when they starred Sean Connery. When others took over as 007, it was, for me, a brand new ball game. I enjoyed the first few Roger Moore films but I enjoyed them the same way I might enjoy any new movies: On their own merits and not because they "continued" something for which I'd had a passion in the past.

The first X-Men movie left me generally cold. I had seen and loved Chicken Run the week before and what with all the conspicuous make-up and special effects in X-Men, found myself connecting a lot less with its characters than I had with a batch of animated hens. Others at the screening were just thrilled to see Wolverine and Storm and Professor X and I don't even know all their names up there…but I was not a huge fan of the comic book, or at least of the version of it that was adapted to the screen. I respect the craft that went into many of its issues but I'm afraid that I have just read too many super-hero comics in my life. I was starting to o.d. by the time the new X-Men came along and was never able to give it the kind of attention that it seemed to ask of its readers. Had I followed the comic more religiously, I'm sure I would have received a certain tingle to see much of it brought to life. But I didn't.

When I described these feelings to a friend, he urged me to go see the Spider-Man movie: "You loved the Steve Ditko version, right? Well, that's what this is." I'm sure he's right, and I'm also sure that I'll get around to seeing it and that I might even enjoy it. Actually, there might be a kind of Catch-22 here: The more it resembles the Lee-Ditko version, the more I'd probably connect with what's on the screen. At the same time, the more of Ditko that's in there, the more I'll probably sit there resenting the fact that he's not receiving a cent for it. It's a small, perhaps unimportant emotional point but one that is easily deferred. I'll deal with it someday, maybe if the film's on a double-bill with Chicken Run 2, just as I'll see all of these super-hero movies. Right now, I have other things to do that strike me as preferable — so I'll do them, and put up with all the questions about how much I liked the new X-Men movie and how many times I've seen it. If I were a better fibber, I might just tell them, "Six and I'm going back tomorrow to sit through it three more times." I'm sure it would make some of them happy.

This Thursday, early in the AM, Cinemax is running a rarely-seen Jerry Lewis movie called Don't Give Up The Ship which holds a great many memories for me. Please forgive the rambling nature of what follows and the fact that my recollections of the film itself are a bit fuzzy, but there's a fine reason for that. The last time I saw it, I was seven years old.

I think it was the first movie I ever saw, at least in a theater. My parents took me to the Paradise, which was located on Sepulveda Boulevard less than a half-mile north of Los Angeles International Airport. This would have been in 1959. The second time I set foot in that theater was in 1974 to see the animated Disney Robin Hood. A week later, the Paradise closed down "temporarily," never to reopen. The structure is still there but it was refashioned into the Paradise Office Building a few years later. Soon after, the other movie theater in that area — the Loyola — was turned into the Loyola Office Building, though they left its free-standing box office out front, almost to taunt us as we drove to the airport.

But back to Don't Give Up The Ship and what I recall of it: The Paradise had a "crying room" — a little private booth in the back where the parents of bawling babies could sit and watch the films with their noisy offspring and not disturb others. There were no crying kids in the place that afternoon — not even me — so my parents sat us in there. That was in case I didn't behave (I did) and so that they could explain things to me, if necessary. It wasn't necessary. I enjoyed the film, and I recall laughing myself silly at one scene where Jerry played a baby taking a bath and someone stuffed a sponge in his mouth. The storyline — and again, this is from memory and going back 44 years — had Jerry as some sort of Navy official who was in trouble with highers-up because he had misplaced a battleship. He scurried around for the whole movie trying to find it until it turned out that one of those highers-up had ordered the ship used for target practice. Throughout the film, my father kept going out and returning with popcorn, sodas and ice cream bon-bons.

That's about all I recall, but that isn't bad for 44 years ago. There was another movie on the bill but I was too restless at that age to sit through two, plus I was full of bon-bons, so we left after the one. The next day (or maybe a few days later), my father bought me the Dell comic book adaptation of Don't Give Up The Ship. That may be part of the reason I remember the plot. The comic was a lovely souvenir, expertly drawn by a superb artist named Dan Spiegle. Thirteen years later, I would begin a long, pleasurable association with Mr. Spiegle, writing comics for him to draw.

At age seven, I was often taken to the pediatrician for shots and to treat a wide array of stomach aches. My pediatrician was a lovely man named Dr. Arthur Grossman who kept getting written up in local newspapers because he was also an accomplished musician, and because his medical practice welcomed a lot of stars' kids. A day or two after I saw my first movie — or at least, my first Jerry Lewis movie — I was sitting in his waiting room talking with a kid around my age with some comic books I'd brought along, including that Dell adaptation of Don't Give Up The Ship, and the kid — like it was the most natural thing in the world, said, "Oh, yeah, my dad did that one." Just as I was wondering if I should believe him, Jerry Lewis walked into the office. Thinking it would please him, I quickly told Jerry that I had just seen his new movie and I showed him the comic book. Jerry's reply was along the lines of, "Who the hell cares?" and "Leave me alone." For some reason, this did not bother me or cause me to stop going to Jerry Lewis movies. I guess I just figured I had said the wrong thing and that Mr. Lewis was grumpy because his kid was sick.

Twenty-three years later, I was writing a TV show on which Jerry Lewis was guesting. Attempting to strike up the kind of immediate friendship you need in such situations, I told him how much I'd enjoyed many of his movies. He asked me which ones I'd liked. I mentioned The Bellboy, which pleased him since I hadn't said The Nutty Professor. Apparently, though the latter was the one he thought was best, it was also the one that people who didn't know much about his career always named. The show's producer, Marty Krofft, was listening to all this and, trying to get Jerry to show a smidgen of confidence in our writing staff, said, "Mark here knows every microscopic detail of your life and career" — a slight exaggeration. I instantly found myself challenged to tell Jerry something unbelievably obscure about himself. Racking my brain, I told him he'd taken his kids to a pediatrician named Dr. Arthur Grossman who had offices on Wilshire Boulevard, just east of Robertson.

Mr. Lewis did a double-take greater than anything he ever did in front of a camera and you could tell he was very impressed. He asked me how the hell I knew that, and I told him about meeting his son in the waiting room and I pulled the comic book out of a folder I had it in.  I'd brought it along in case I could get him to sign it…which he did.

But also since I never know when to shut up, I went on to tell Jerry the story of him being rude to me, which led to him apologizing profusely. I apologized back for mentioning it and told him how much I'd enjoyed Don't Give Up The Ship. To prove this, I explained that I remembered its basic plot even though I hadn't seen it in (then) twenty-three years, and I gave the summary that I gave above. Jerry grinned and said, "That's about how long it's been since I've seen it…and you remember more about that movie than I do."

I've set my TiVo to record the movie on Thursday. If anyone reading this is in touch with Jerry, please let him know it's on. I'm curious as to whether either of us will like it now.

My private menagerie began one Spring day in 1991 when my then-secretary spotted a sadly-underfed cat foraging through my garbage pails.  Tracy immediately emptied my cupboard of canned tuna, fed the kitty, then ran out to buy a supply of proper cat food.  From that day forward, I fed the little charcoal-colored stray, whom we initially named Jack.

(How did we arrive at that moniker?  Well, we were trying to think of what to call the cat when my phone rang, and Tracy said, "Let's name him after whoever that is who's calling."  The person calling was a fine writer-comedian named Jack Burns, so that was that…for a while.  We later realized we had the gender wrong, so we amended it to Jackie.)

For over twelve years, Jackie showed up once, sometimes twice a day to be fed.  For about half that time, she defended her claimed turf against all encroachments, chasing off every bird, every squirrel, every animal who ventured inside the fence.  There were moments there, I thought she was going to come after me.  But she eventually became too secure, or perhaps too old, to be so territorial.  It's like a really cheap petting zoo out there now.  Jackie began allowing in possums, raccoons, rodents of all sizes…even other cats.

I never knew where Jackie lived, though I sometimes spotted her crossing a very dangerous boulevard to get here.  I imagined her making the rounds, calling on other homes where they knew her by other names, checking out what they were serving.  If she didn't like the menu, she'd head over here for "comfort food" — usually either Alpo canned meals or Friskies dry.  For a time, I tried having her share my home, but Jackie hated being an indoor cat, and the litter box I bought for her exuded an odor that Hans Blix would quickly identify as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.  So I finally gave up and returned her to the outside world where she clearly belonged.

But I took care of her.  One night about eight years ago, a friend who tried petting Jackie found a huge swelling on the cat's abdomen.  We boxed Jackie up — which she liked about as much as you would have enjoyed being stuffed in an old file box — and drove her over to one of those 24-hour pet hospitals on Sepulveda Boulevard, just south of Santa Monica.  There are three or four there, which are said to charge a small-to-medium fortune for emergency animal care.  This turned out to be true.  They drained an abscess and deduced that Jackie had been spayed/neutered by a gross amateur who had done more harm than good.  "If we do the rest of the repair here," they told me, "it'll cost about the price of a new car."  Instead, they recommended a fine, compassionate vet who could redo the incision for a more reasonable fee.  By a happy coincidence, the recommended vet turned out to be located on the same block on which I live.  He was also nice enough — since this was not technically "my" cat I was bringing him — to charge me half-price, which still ran $300.  (The worst part was that I had to keep Jackie inside for a few days of healing.  She liked it even less, and the aroma was even worse.)

Until recently, Jackie was a happy pussycat and a regular part of my life.  Every evening, and sometimes in the afternoon, she'd turn up on the back porch.  She'd eat.  She'd patrol the yard.  She'd eat some more.  She'd drink from the pool.  Sometimes, she'd demand to come in, whereupon she'd walk around the kitchen for two minutes, rub her scent glands against all the cabinets, then insist on going out.  Every once in a while when I let her in, she'd make a bee-line for the living room where I have exact replicas of Paul Winchell's ventriloquist dummies seated on a couch.  I'd go in there and find her washing herself while sitting on Knucklehead's lap.  She never much liked being held by people…but Knucklehead was okay.

By now, you probably see where this is heading.  The last two weeks or so, there was no sign of Jackie at the back door.  She'd occasionally missed a day or two in the past, but never a whole week.  Since she was at least twelve years old, I had to accept that it was over; that I probably wouldn't see her again.  Yesterday afternoon, my maid noticed a foul smell emanating from my basement, and I guess I knew what it was, but I had a brief moment of denial.  I called my plumber, told him I thought I had a busted sewer line or something, and he came right over…and told me I did not have a busted sewer line.  What I had was a dead cat under my house.

I checked around outside.  Every possible entrance under the structure seems sealed to me, so I don't know how Jackie managed to crawl in there to die.  Somehow though, she managed it.

It always strikes me as ludicrous when people try to project human thought processes onto animals; to presume they think like we do.  But at the moment, it seems oddly logical that Jackie's dying instincts led her to the place where they always took good care of her.  Maybe that's true, or maybe I'm just grasping for a comforting notion at a time of loss.

You know, at a moment like this, you tell yourself that it's just a cat, and that she had a longer, better life than most of them do.  You tell yourself that it's silly to get emotional about it.  And I'm sure that, in a day or so, I'll be over whatever sadness I'm feeling at the moment.

In the meantime, there was an ugly job to do.  I'd told the plumber I could handle the removal, so he departed — but then I discovered I wasn't up to the task.  It wasn't that it was a dead cat.  It was that it was that dead cat.  I finally paged my gardener and had him come over and put Jackie in a large trash bag out in the front courtyard.  Later today, the "Dead Pet Removal" squad of the Sanitation Department will come by and haul her off.

That may sound insensitive but I look at it this way: The average life of an outdoor cat is only three years.  Jackie lived four times as long just since Tracy found her.  If I could last four times the average life span of an indoor human, they can stick me in a Hefty bag and haul me off the same way.

While testing out the channel-changing hook-up for my new Series 2 TiVo, I chanced to alight on Court TV and — shame on me — got hooked watching a little of their coverage of the preliminary hearing for Robert Blake.  The case against him seems overwhelming, and his attorneys are spending a lot of their time impugning the integrity of those who gathered evidence.  One investigator was asked, "Isn't it true you told friends that you were upset you hadn't gotten on TV during the O.J. Simpson trial?"  There was also a brief dust-up when a prosecutor referred to the date of "the murder" and Blake's lawyers objected, insisting the word was prejudicial and that it would be better to refer to "the killing."  This does not make it sound like they're sitting on a pile of exculpatory data.

Court TV is practically orgasmic to have a Hollywood Murder Case to exploit, and is throwing up specials and daily summaries and Breaking News bulletins.  For some reason, during the chunk I saw, they kept cutting to comments by a lawyer who was pointedly identified as "Michael Jackson's lawyer."  No, I don't know what he has to do with Blake, other than that tabloid-type journalism loves to link hot stories together.

The defendant is upset with Jay Leno for treating him as if he's already been found guilty.  On the one hand, I think that's misplaced anger.  If the police are announcing they have associates of Blake to testify that he tried to hire them to whack his wife — and one was testifying when I tuned it — Leno is hardly jumping to or spreading unwarranted conclusions.  On the other hand, there is something about Robert Blake that strikes me as so pathetic, the jokes are almost like picking on the mentally ill.  (And I guess it's theoretically possible that he didn't do it, in which case the jokes are just helping to destroy an innocent man.)

I know it's not fashionable to feel sorry for violent criminals and if he did it, he deserves the maximum penalty.  Surprisingly — for a case in L.A. involving a celebrity — he may very well receive it.

But there's something else here that differs from the O.J. case.  Jokes about Simpson always had to be tempered by a proper reverence for the loss of the two people he hacked to death.  In l'affaire Blake, no one is mourning the victim because there seems to be a consensus that the deceased was not a very nice person.  Blake's whole defense, such as it is, seems to be that there were a lot of people who had reason to want her dead.  That changes the dynamic.  It opens up new areas of humor and makes the whole thing one big Freak Show with no compassion required for anyone.

Simpson also looked maddeningly arrogant and determined to have a life after the trial.  His one-time gridiron heroism caused many to want to believe he didn't do it, and his skin color gave an opening to those who wished to make the case that the L.A.P.D. had racist underpinnings.  So he had some people on his side, whereas Robert Blake just looks like a loser; like a guy who did what he's alleged to have done because he was already on the downside of life.  He did it, as he did the interview with Barbara Walters, almost as if he had nothing left to lose, his career and a large piece of his mind having long since departed.

I am all for what some would call Bad Taste Humor.  As long as it's funny, do it.  But I recall that Johnny Carson would sometimes stop doing jokes on a given topic because he sensed that it was beginning to turn too tragic to be funny.  And I guess the whole subject of Robert Blake offing his wife is starting to look that way to me.

• Sunshine Patriot by William Saletan, Slate
• Vice Grip by Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly

Disney's stage version of The Lion King opened in New York on November 13, 1997 and immediately became one of the biggest smash-hits the town had ever seen.  About a month later, I called in a favor (a very big favor, obviously) and obtained tickets to see it at the New Amsterdam Theater.  What follows is the review I wrote after that night…and what will follow this flashback is my review of the touring company performance which I caught last night in Los Angeles.  Here's what I wrote back in '97, and please note that the rumors about them adding a second company or doing more than eight performances a week never evolved into anything more than rumors…

Before I turn reviewer here, I should own up to a possible conflict of interest: I am a Disney stockholder.  I own one share.

This means I get all sorts of neat mailings and stockholders' reports.  For those of you who are into science-fiction, I recommend the latter, especially the parts about Michael Eisner's salary.

I also receive quarterly dividend checks, the most recent of which was for 13 cents.  They spent 32 cents in postage to send this to me, plus probably a buck or two in processing costs.  How this company can possibly stay in business, throwing around money like this, is beyond me.

Actually, one of the things the Disney organization does very well is to throw around money.  They tend not to throw much of it towards employees below the executive level, and it sure doesn't make it down to us stockholders.  But they do lob it around and usually to good effect.

Nowhere is this more in evidence than on 42nd Street where the New Amsterdam Theater, shabby and in disrepair for too long, has been reborn.  This is the work of checks, from both the city and the Disney folks, far larger than the ones the latter sends me.  The theater — the whole block, in fact — has received a stunning makeover and is now magnificent.  I dunno what scalpers are getting lately for seats to The Lion King, but it's probably worth it just to walk into the New Amsterdam and stare at the ceiling.

Large amounts of Disney Dollars have also been spent to put The Lion King on the boards, and it already looks like a brilliant investment.  They're hurriedly putting together new companies of the show to play other theaters.  Okay, that's how it usually works.  A show's a hit on Broadway and they assemble a road company to go play Toronto and Chicago and so on.  But what's staggering about the success of The Lion King is that they're reportedly discussing another company to play New York City.

That's right.  They're turning so many folks away down on 42nd Street that someone thinks it would be cost-efficient to procure another theater in or around Times Square and open a second production of The Lion King in town.  And if that cannot be arranged, word along the Great White Way is that they're dickering with the unions about adding some cast and staff, rotating them about and doing more than the customary eight performances a week.

This is almost unprecedented in theatrical history.  Apparently, there was a now-obscure show way back in 1917 that was then so non-obscure and in-demand that its producers opened a second, concurrent production at another theater.  That was the last time doubling-up was even a viable notion.

Disney, of course, has one big advantage if they decide to clone The Lion King: No one is coming to see the actors.  As must delight the corporate hierarchy, the sets and costumes and especially the staging are the stars, so duplicating the show is just a matter of writing checks — something, as noted, Disney does well.

And the sets, costumes are staging are wonderful.  Director Julie Taymor has placed a surreal, colorful impression of the jungle on the stage of the New Amsterdam.  Though not one real animal appears anywhere in the production, the theater is alive with antelope and giraffes and hyenas and birds and even an elephant, all limned in costuming and puppetry.  The impact is, with a few exceptions which I'll get to, artfully stunning and effective.

So I should be writing here that it was a wonderful evening and that it's one of the greatest shows I've ever seen.  The truth is — and I'm just as amazed at this as you may be, especially if you've read the reviews — I didn't like it very much.

I am, I must admit, darn near alone on this.  The audience this evening stood and cheered and generally left as happy as I've ever seen a crowd exit.  Despite the fact that the plotline precisely replicates the movie, which I liked a lot, I found the show uninvolving and even, particularly in the second act, occasionally boring.  My problem — and it may just be my problem — is that I think the staging is so wonderful, so much the show, that it smothers the story.

This was not the case with Beauty and the Beast.  For me, the Broadway incarnation expanded upon and enhanced the scenario, bringing it to life on a whole new level.  But then, that property enjoyed an advantage: It was the tale of a lord and his palace staff transformed into monstrosities, and of their struggle to regain human forms.  This was all done well in animation, but it simply meant more to see them, on stage, transformed back into actual human beings, as opposed to more realistically-drawn cartoon characters.

No such enhancement occurs with Simba and the tale of his ascendancy to the throne.  In the movie, there is a key plot moment: Simba is caught in a stampede and nearly trampled into a smear before he is rescued by his father.  It is a scary and memorable scene, and I don't see how the film could have done a better job of it.  The moment is re-created on stage for the musical and, again, they do a clever job, the ingenuity of which brings applause.

But it isn't scary.  Not in the least.

You're not watching a life-threatening stampede, you're watching a staging trick.  That's what the audience applauds: Look how resourcefully they're symbolizing a stampede on stage.

Well, that's not what you're supposed to be thinking; not if there's a genuine narrative in progress.  You're supposed to be thinking: Geez, Simba's in a lot of trouble.  Therein, to me, lies the problem.  I never stopped watching the staging and started watching the characters.

It's especially unsettling with regard to three animals from the movie — Timon, Pumbaa and Zazu.  (In the animated edition, Timon was the meerkat voiced by Nathan Lane, Pumbaa was the warthog voiced by Ernie Sabella, and Zazu was the uppity hornbill voiced by Rowan "Bean" Atkinson.)  It may have been due to someone's concern for the ongoing merchandising of those characters, or it was just felt that kids would notice their absence or remodelling.  The lion characters — Simba, Mufasa, Scar, etc. — are just played by folks wearing mane headdresses.  But Timon, Pumbaa and Zazu have been faithfully replicated as puppets and, while their handlers do skillful jobs of manipulating them and aping the film voices, the puppeteers are intentionally and jarringly visible.

We're supposed to just ignore them, and we try, but it's like trying to overlook one Siamese twin.  Zazu has a little clownlike man in a derby hat sticking out of him for the entire show and it's impossible to look at the puppet and not at the funny little man.  (By the way, they expanded Pumbaa's part by adding a seemingly-endless array of fart jokes and, yes, they even used that word.  Walt would have been so proud.)

So that all didn't work for this reviewer.  I also found the songs undistinguished, particularly the new ones but also those I'd liked in the movie.  (There are some splendid musical moments involving African dance, but they have little or nothing to do with Simba or his crown or any of this.)  For me, the whole evening was one of those Grinch-like experiences, where you're up on the hillside, looking down at Whoville, wondering why everyone but you is having such a wonderful time.

I didn't…and I am well aware that it won't make one bit of difference to the Walt Disney Company.  The Lion King is one of the biggest hits to ever roar on Broadway and it will probably be running there when the kid playing the Young Simba is old enough to play the Adult Simba.  Though I didn't like the show, there are two reasons I'm pleased for its success…

1. Broadway needs future playgoers.  Some years ago, someone — it may have been me — was suggesting that the theatrical community should subsidize a permanent and ongoing production of Peter Pan in some Times Square house.  No matter how much it lost, they should underwrite it and keep it going, so that youngsters can be taken to it, and introduced to the theater.

This may no longer be necessary, thanks to Disney.  Beauty and the Beast — which I think is a wonderful show — is still running, and The Lion King may at least work well on that level.  Disney plans other such productions and, in light of their success, others will doubtlessly follow.  So Broadway — which in many years past offered nothing to which you could take a 9-year-old — is becoming more the kid-friendly environment.  That's great.  And the other reason I'm delighted to see The Lion King succeed is —

2. Like I said, I own the one share of stock.  This show is making millions and — who knows? — maybe one of these days, my dividends will be half the cost of the stamps to send them to me.

Okay, that's what I wrote back then.  Lemme tell you about last night.  (By the way, my stock has since split and I now own two shares of Disney.  But in spite of this, I shall pull no punches…)

I enjoyed it more this time.  I still found the show quite non-involving, still found myself watching the staging more than the story.  But, perhaps because I went in expecting that, I found more to admire — mainly, the dancing and the art direction.  It may have helped that, this time, my seats were farther back, better situated to watch pageantry instead of people.

But I also found myself thinking about the show a slightly different way, which is to say not as a standalone from the movie.  Back when I was in elementary school, we were taken one year to see a production of The Magic Flute, and we did not attend it cold.  The group putting it on had issued a study guide and, in advance of our field trip, our teacher explained the plot to us, told us who Papageno and Tamino and Pamina were, and even played us some of the score and told us to watch for certain moments, and what they would symbolize.  We were not taking the field trip to see a story but, rather, to see an interesting interpretation of a story we sort-of already knew.  (In this particular case, we wouldn't have had a prayer of grasping one moment of what occurred on stage without all that briefing.  Even with it, we all were frequently lost.)

It dawned on me last evening that The Lion King, to some extent, works on that level as a theatrical production.  The staging tricks do not always serve the story but it's like, so what?  We already know the story.  We can fill in the blanks.  The movie was the study guide, and inherent in this presentation is a presumption that we already know and are familiar with the movie.  (The Broadway production of The Producers seems to make a similar assumption at times.)

Viewed on that basis, I liked the show more this time around, though I still liked Beauty and the Beast more, probably because it was less about the stage trickery.  I do think The Lion King is a worthy effort, if only for its sheer beauty, but I still don't get why Tony Award voters chose it over Ragtime.  Maybe I'm just bitter because, for all its unprecedented success, I still haven't seen that big jump in my Disney stock dividends.  And that means a lot now that my portfolio has doubled.

Here, from the same interview I quoted from earlier, are Phil Silvers' recollections of working on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  In this case, I've edited out a few of my questions…

It was a great honor.  Everyone wanted to be in it.  Stanley Kramer?  Spencer Tracy?  No one turns down being in a movie with them.  Plus, the idea was to include all the great comedians in Hollywood so everyone wanted to be in it.  I knew comics who said, "They wanted me but I turned it down," but they were lying.  Nobody didn't want to be a part of it.  Even when we were out in the desert and it was 120 degrees in the shade, no one said, "I wish I hadn't agreed to do this picture."

The best show was off-stage.  Jonathan Winters carrying on.  And Milton [Berle] and Mickey Rooney.  Everyone had stories.  We used to drive each other crazy.  Like with Berle, he was always trying to steal the scene, get a little extra.  If there was a scene where he didn't have a line, he'd be trying to insert something.  One time, I let it drop that Stanley had invited me to view the dailies.  That wasn't true.  Stanley didn't let anyone see the dailies.  He couldn't.  He already had too many stars, too many egos to deal with.  But I let it drop that I was seeing dailies and I told everyone, "Watch.  In ten seconds, Berle will be on the phone to his agent yelling about, 'How come I don't get to see dailies?'"  So I told him and sure enough, ten seconds later…"How come I don't get to see dailies?"

I almost got killed twice during the filming.  Well, not exactly killed.  But they had this scene where I ride my car down into the river and it sinks.  I thought the stuntman was going to do it but Stanley said, "No, your reactions are what will make it funny," and he was right, of course.  The car was on pontoons or some sort of raft, so they could lower it like it was on an elevator.  There were — what do you call them?  Guys in suits with tanks? — frogmen there to pull me out because I can't swim.  I almost drowned but it was a great gag.  I didn't want them to cut it.  The same thing happened with that film I did for Disney.  [Boatniks]  I swim now but I didn't swim then.  What I'll do for a laugh.  I almost drowned, both times.

The other time in Mad World, I actually did get hurt.  I had to run after Spencer Tracy and I pulled a muscle in my groin.  It hurt like hell and I was out of commission for three or four days.  Every day, they're calling and asking, "Can you come back?  It's just a close-up, no movement."  I didn't want to screw up the film so I came back.  It was agony but I did it.  If it had happened to Berle, he'd never have missed a day of shooting.

I wore this suit and tie throughout the whole movie.  Actually, it wasn't the same one.  They kept getting ruined.  I think we had five or six when we started and finally, the last week of shooting, we were down to one.  No, wait.  They started with ten or so because the stuntmen were always destroying them.  The wardrobe people kept saying to me, "Don't ruin this one."  I don't know why.  It was just a plain, off-the-rack men's suit.  I could have gone into any men's store in L.A. and bought ten more exactly like it.  But everyone was worrying that I'd ruin my last suit so they wouldn't let me eat lunch in it.  There were some other actors who were in the same situation.  Sid Caesar and Edie Adams had these clothes that were all torn and stained with paint so they couldn't even be dry cleaned, and there were several duplicates of each.  But they weren't as worried about running out of them as they were about me ruining my last suit.

I loved working with Spencer Tracy.  We had a couple of scenes that got cut.  I loved working with all those comics.  Buster Keaton was there but I didn't really get to know him until we did A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in Spain.  I spent most of my time with Berle and Ethel Merman.  They were like an old married couple, yelling at each other.  Jonathan Winters…God, to watch him just improvise.  I improvise all the time but he kept turning into different people, making different sounds.  The only guy I never really got along with on the set was Dick Shawn.  Strange guy.  Very talented but it was like he was speaking some other language.

Kramer didn't have to direct me much.  I played the same Bilko I always played.  I could have done it in my sleep, except that you couldn't sleep with all those comics around.  Buddy [Hackett] — I used to call him "The Bear" — said, "Blink and you lose your position."  No one was stealing scenes or catching flies but if you weren't at your best, they were ready to pounce and move in.  You know what "catching flies" means?

I did but he told me, anyway…

Catching flies is what we used to call it in burlesque when another comic moved on your line or did business.  You're trying to talk and he's doing something — maybe even pretending to be catching flies — to get the audience's attention away from you.  Berle was the master at it and also the toughest taskmaster when he caught anyone else doing it.  Kramer didn't let us do any of that.  Sometimes, he'd say, "It won't match."  Whatever you wanted to do, he'd say, "It won't match," but he wouldn't explain why.

It was probably the best movie I was ever in.  Maybe Cover Girl was better, I don't know.  But I know we all felt like something, like it was really something special.  I would've been crushed if they'd left me out.

Later, when the tape wasn't running, Mr. Silvers said (approximately), "The greatest thing is when you work with talent, when you're surrounded by performers who are really good, like I was in Mad World.  That's when you think, 'I guess I must be as good as they are.'  And if you aren't, you have to become that good in a hurry."

What a night, what a night.  Last evening (12/4), around 600 fans of the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World crammed into Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.  The occasion was a special 39th anniversary screening and panel discussion of one of the longest, richest comedies ever made.  And what fans they were of it, as expertly produced and directed by the late Stanley Kramer.

One of the interesting things about this movie is that a certain amount of its humor flows from having some knowledge of the actors involved.  For example, there's a scene where Phil Silvers — cast in his eternal role as an avaricious con-artist — is in desperate need of a ride somewhere, lest he lose out on his shot at the $350,000 everyone is chasing after.  (I'm assuming here you already know the plot.  If not, basically, it's that that amount of money is buried somewhere and one person after another gets caught up in mad pursuit of it.)

So Silvers flags down a car and as it pulls up, we see that its driver is Don Knotts.  Enormous laugh.  Even before anything is said or done to Mr. Knotts by Mr. Silvers, the audience is laughing…because they know that Phil Silvers is a predator and Don Knotts is prey, and the match-up just seems so perfect as to be funny.  It's like a joke where the set-up is so good, you're chuckling long before you get anywhere near the punch line.  Mad World is full of such moments in which the audience is one notch ahead of the film.

Tonight, some in the house knew the film so well, we were two notches ahead.  In the above scene, we were laughing before we even saw that the driver was Don Knotts.  We all knew it would be Don Knotts because we all knew the movie.  So we laughed before we saw Don and when we finally did, we applauded him.  Matter of fact, most of those present applauded the first on-screen appearance of each great comedian and character actor, which meant a lot of applause.

Some of it was for folks who were actually present.  Not all those who were announced showed…but Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters and Peter Falk were there at the beginning, and Mickey Rooney, Marvin Kaplan, Stan Freberg and Edie Adams were there throughout.  The latter four participated in a panel discussion that followed the screening, where they were joined by casting director Lynn Stalmaster, editor Robert C. Jones, agent Marty Baum and one of the stuntmen.  (I am embarrassed that I missed the stuntman's name, especially since I enjoyed talking with him afterwards.  But he was the person who, though Caucasian, donned a rubber mask and doubled Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.)  [UPDATE, later: It was Loren Janes.]

Here are some general thoughts and revelations from the discussion…

Marvin Kaplan revealed that he replaced Jackie Mason (!) who was originally slated for his role as one of the gas station attendants.  I'd never heard that before.  I also didn't know that Arnold Stang's stunt double was Janos Prohaska, who later gained fame playing animals (like Andy Williams' bear) and creatures in science-fiction movies.  I worked with Janos many years ago and never heard him mention this.

Marty Baum, an agent who represented many of the stars of the film, told a very funny story about how Stanley Kramer wanted character actor Ed Brophy for a key role.  Baum didn't represent Brophy but, smelling a commission, fibbed that he did and almost made a deal, only to find out later than Brophy had passed away.  The punch-line to the anecdote was Kramer shouting, "You sold me a dead actor!"

Mickey Rooney said…well, I'm not sure just what Mickey Rooney said, except that he loved It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,which was a total departure from his past comments on the movie.  He also told us his life story and mentioned something about Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable being dead.  Basically, Mr. Rooney seemed to be doing the Dana Carvey impression of him, only not as well.

The stuntman whose name I have thoughtlessly forgotten [Loren Janes] said that the stunt crew — maybe the best ever assembled for a movie — loved working for Stanley Kramer.  At one point, a clip Kramer showed on a TV talk show was found to be a few seconds over the length that the Screen Actors Guild allows without additional fees to its members.  Kramer was ordered to make a substantial payment to all the stunt folks, all of whom tried to decline the extra bucks.  Kramer insisted…so when they received the checks, the stuntmen all endorsed them over to Mr. Kramer and sent them back.

Stan Freberg told the tale of trying to direct the commercials for the film — a difficult task, for it involved getting the actors to stick to his script.  At one point, watching Freberg floundering in the attempt, Kramer wandered over and told him, "Now you know what I go through."

And of course, there were other fine tales that were a part of the discussion.  Kramer's widow, Karen Sharpe Kramer, co-hosted and accepted an award on his behalf.  She spoke of how pleased her late husband — known primarily for dramatic films with a "message" — would have been proud that so many people turned out for his one grand attempt at comedy.

It really was a nice evening.  It had been too many years since I'd seen the film with a live audience and I enjoyed it far more than any home video viewing.  I had forgotten just how funny most of those people were in the thing.  You remember the stunts and the "big" gags and the special effects…but the most wonderful part of it all is watching great comic actors wringing every dram of humor out of their roles — the little "takes" by Milton Berle, the perfectly-timed facial tics of Sid Caesar, the voluminous smile of Phil Silvers, etc.  I know a similar kind of film (The Rat Race, which I didn't see) was recently attempted but I think it's futile.  There simply aren't the kind of great character thespians now that they had then.  Sad but true.

One of the more thrilling afternoons of my life came about when I had a brunch-interview with the great Phil Silvers.  It took place at Nate 'n Al's delicatessen in Beverly Hills in 1982, a little less than three years before he passed away.

Expecting it to last an hour, I only brought along about 90 minutes of tape, but Mr. Silvers was in a talkative mood.  This was in spite of the lingering effects of a stroke that had thickened his speech and created odd holes in his memory.  He could recall the name of the landlady at a hotel he'd lived in for two weeks while touring in burlesque, but not his current phone number.  He could (and did) rattle off whole pages of dialogue from plays he'd done on Broadway decades earlier but had no memory whatsoever of The Chicken Chronicles, a movie he'd made five years before our chat.

My recorder ran out of tape long before Silvers ran out of anecdotes.  Fortunately, I captured this remembrance about the "Make Way for Tomorrow" dance sequence in the 1944 film classic, Cover Girl.  (I did not have to edit any questions from me out of what follows.  Charmingly, Silvers did not require questions.  He jumped from one topic to the next without prompting.  And I just sat there and listened.)

Cover Girl was another Blinky role for me.  I played the same character in every movie…Blinky.  The guy who ran in in the next to last reel and said, "I got the stuff in the car."  I never found out in all those movies what the stuff in the car was.  Cover Girl was my first good movie.  In this one, Blinky was named Genius but I was still Blinky.  I was Blinky in every movie I made until I did Bilko.  After that, I was Bilko in everything I did, which was fine.  Bilko paid a lot better than Blinky.

We made Cover Girl at Columbia.  At the time, Harry Cohn was God there.  There was a different God at every studio.  When you worked for M.G.M., Louis B. Mayer was God.  At Columbia, it was Harry Cohn.  I got along with him but no one else did.  He liked me because I was a gambler.  I gave him tips on horses.  They always lost but he didn't blame me because to a gambler, a bad tip is better than no tip at all.

A man named Charles Vidor directed Cover Girl but from where I sat, Gene Kelly was the man in charge.  He and his assistant Stanley Donen took over the choreography from the man they hired to do it.  I don't remember his name but he choreographed the scenes with the chorus girls and then Kelly did everything else.  Stanley Donen did some of it but it was mainly Gene.  There was this song, "Make Way for Tomorrow."  It was supposed to be a six minute dance down the street with Rita Hayworth and Gene dancing and leaping over trash cans and doing cartwheels.  I watched them rehearse it for three days and I thought, "Thank God I don't have to do that."

The fourth day, Gene came over to me and said, "I think it would strengthen the story if you were in the number."  There was a drunk who had a tiny part in it.  I think it was Jack Norton, who was the drunk in any movie that had a drunk in it.  I thought Gene meant I'd do a little bit like that in the number so I said, "Yes, sure, I'll do whatever you want."  The next thing I know, Gene and Stanley had redesigned the whole number for three people and I was one of those three people.

He did not design it for a non-dancer, which is what I was.  It was designed for Gene and Rita, who were the two best dancers in the business.  I had to come up to their standard.  They danced up and down stairs.  I had to dance up and down stairs.  They leaped over boxes.  I had to leap over boxes.  All the time, I'm thinking, "I'm dancing next to Gene Kelly, doing the same steps.  Everybody's going to be comparing us.  If we're out of step, no one's going to assume Gene's the one who's wrong.  Gene was still a newcomer on screen but everyone knew he was the best dancer to come along.

It was rough.  They were going to shoot it in pieces but Gene insisted we rehearse it straight through, start to end.  I don't remember how long it took to learn.  Rita, I think, required four weeks.  It must have been longer with me but I did it.  Whatever Gene and Rita did, I did, and I did it as well as they did.  And Gene was right.  It did strengthen the story.  It was a surprise for me to be in that number and to dance it like that.  When we were done shooting, I ached all over.  Every muscle in my body hurt.  But I felt like I could do anything.

In later years, every time I had something to do in a film or a TV show that I thought I couldn't do, I thought back to that number.  And I said to myself, "If you can do that, you can do anything."

Phil Silvers was, indeed, a man who could do anything.  Later, after the tape recorder was no longer running, he lamented the physical problems from his stroke and said, "If I could do that number in Cover Girl, I ought to be able to walk across the street on my own, don't you think?"

My TiVo recently decided I must like old reruns of Hawaii Five-O and has been recording them whenever it has space available. In truth, my TiVo is wise, though a bit out of date. I did like Hawaii Five-O, at least for the first half of its 284 episodes. Along about its eighth year, it began to get a bit too repetitive. I also had a little problem watching its star, Jack Lord.

Mr. Lord, rumor had it, ruled his show with an iron fist and the belief that he was its one and only S*T*A*R. Such was his mania to preserve this reality that word began to leak, even while the show was up and operating, that its cast and crew seriously disliked the man who played Supercop Steve McGarrett. Writers and producers complained — within earshot of reporters — that he was rejecting scripts because they even slightly showcased other members of McGarrett's squad or didn't properly portray his character as brilliant, flawless and loved by women everywhere. Other cast members, sometimes anonymously, suggested the S*T*A*R had come to believe he was all that and more in real life. (Here's a link to an article that ran in TV Guide in 1971. For its time, it was surprisingly harsh about a major TV star.)

Ordinarily, I would not take such bad press at face value. But I ran into Jack Lord twice in bookstores, and heard tales from friends who'd also had the dubious pleasure. The way he acted — brusque and demanding, treating salespeople as servants to be ordered about — certainly made the reports easy to believe.

And ordinarily, I would not let that affect my enjoyment of a TV show or movie. But in this case, it did…at least a little. It somehow made the whole character of Steve McGarrett seem pompous and hollow.

That, coupled with the repetition, kind of ruined Hawaii Five-O for me, at least as a weekly pleasure. Recently, thanks to TiVo, I've been watching a few again. I like them as an occasional treat, but am reminded of the fact that every episode seemed to be a new arrangement of about eight of the same twelve scenes. Here is a list of them…

1. The governor puts pressure on McGarrett. Someone is murdering people all over Hawaii and getting away with it, but the governor somehow thinks that alone doesn't motivate McGarrett to catch the killer. The state's chief exec has to make it clear that, despite the fact that McGarrett's office has solved every crime in the state for the last ten years, they'd damn well better wrap this one up soon or there could be some big changes. (This scene sometimes prompts a brief outburst from McGarrett — "Get off my back!" — but he quickly recovers his equilibrium, apologizes and promises to work harder. And the governor understands that McGarrett is under a lot of stress because he cares so.)
2. McGarrett seals off the island. With a known criminal out there somewhere, McGarrett decides to prevent anyone from arriving on or departing the island of Oahu. "This island is like a rock," he usually says. "No one gets on or off until we catch this guy." One can only wonder what impact this would have on Hawaiian commerce or tourism if the Hawaiian police did it once, let alone every other week.
3. McGarrett sends the Hawaiians to search the island. The Hawaiian aides who work for McGarrett are there largely to be sent out on ridiculous missions. So McGarrett has evidence that the suspect eats grilled cheese sandwiches and he says to Kono (played by Zulu), "Get the boys and search the island. Visit every delicatessen, every coffee shop, every place someone could possibly get a grilled cheese sandwich. Someone must have seen something."
4. The Hawaiians quickly find an incredibly good witness. This one usually connects with the previous one: "We're in luck, Steve. Chin Ho found a druggist who runs a lunch counter on Molokai. Seems he distinctly remembers selling a grilled cheese sandwich to a man just four days ago. He thought the man was acting odd so he watched him walk to his car and wrote down the license number."
5. McGarrett gets philosophical. Sitting alone in his office, usually late at night, McGarrett muses on the nature of the criminal they're pursuing. One of McGarrett's aides (usually Danny Williams) finds him there and hears a speech that includes the phrase, "What kind of man…?" as in, "What kind of man would murder six accordion players, three stationers and an overweight nun, and leave a large bowl of tapioca to identify himself?"
6. McGarrett gets mad. This usually consists of him staring out his office window and saying, "He's out there, Danno…and he's mocking us."
7. The beautiful witness in swimwear. McGarrett, in a suit and tie despite the 90-degree weather, visits and interrogates a beautiful woman who is lounging by a swimming pool. She is obviously attracted to him.
8. McGarrett goes casual. McGarrett's underlings visit him at home or on a weekend retreat with either a new nugget of information or just to hear him brainstorm the problem at hand. In this scene, they're all in suits and ties despite the 90-degree weather while McGarrett is lounging by a swimming pool wearing shorts, a loud Hawaiian shirt and a broad, floppy straw hat. Just to show he's a regular guy who doesn't always wear a suit and tie.
9. McGarrett is windswept. This one seems to have begun in the later seasons, when comedians and TV critics were making jokes about Jack Lord's hair being sculpted of plastic. At some point, McGarrett's investigation would carry him to a high cliff or pier where breezes would blow his hair around. (Also sometimes achieved by having him meet someone coming off a helicopter or riding in one, himself.)
10. The Amateur Actor. After about the third season, there was apparently a shortage of professional actors in Hawaii who hadn't appeared several times on the show, and the producers didn't want to fly someone in from the states for a bit part. So there's always one scene where someone (often, a uniformed cop) has two lines and is so awful, you just know it's one of the camera operators or the caterer's brother. This one is invariably a highlight.
11. Some innocent remark gives McGarrett the answer. This one was actually seen in about half the TV detective shows ever done. Someone makes a stray comment like, "Well, let's get your mind off the case for a while. How about a cup of coffee?" And then Mannix, Barnaby Jones, Cannon, McCloud, McMillan or McGarrett says, "Wait a minute…coffee. Coffee is made of beans. That's it! The killer is hiding in the old abandoned bean warehouse, just outside of town!" And, of course, he is.
12. "Book him, Danno. Murder one." He didn't always say this as the last line of an episode of Hawaii Five-O. It just seemed that way.

Apart from #10, I grew tired of seeing some sequencing of these scenes in every episode. If you think I'm oversimplifying, they run the show every morning on the WGN Superstation. Watch and see. Aloha!

The Writers Guild is currently engaged in one of its semi-annual screaming matches over whether to amend the credits manual.  Long ago, the WGA assumed the right of final determination over who gets to have their name come after the words, "Written by…" on a movie.  This was a good thing since too many screenplays wound up being credited to a star or a producer or a studio executive's nephew who didn't write a consonant.  (Mae West used to have it in her contract that she would be credited as the writer of her movies, regardless of who actually filled the pages.  There were other, less blatant but still unfair applications.)

The WGA established strict rules as to how much you must have contributed to a screenplay in order to get your name on the movie.  These rules have always been a source of contention but lately, with Hollywood on a kick of having 93 people work on every script and end-credits that run longer than some movies, the sore feelings have gotten exponentially sorer.  The guidelines favor the original writer, even when little or nothing he wrote makes it to the screen, and prevent any more than (usually) three writers from receiving screen credit.

As per usual for WGA brawls, emotions are running high and a lot of writers are accusing one another of unconscionable greed and un-writerlike motives.  Also as per usual, both sides have some valid points.  One group argues that it demeans the role of the writer to put a laundry list of authors on-screen; that saying "Fifteen people wrote this movie" is tantamount to saying nobody wrote it and certainly not the first guy, who probably did most of the heavy lifting.  Against that, another faction argues that it demeans the role of the writer for someone to make a large contribution to a script and not receive any credit at all.  If the Caterer's Assistant gets a credit and someone who wrote several key scenes doesn't, that doesn't say much about the importance of the writer.  Or of the believability of screen credits.

I think both sides are at least partly in the right.  The trouble is they're working towards separate goals.  You can configure the rules so that their main goal is to reflect the reality, whatever it is.  That means if 22 guys worked on a script, you put 22 names on the screen in some fashion.  Or you can hold, as some do, that it's desirable to discourage producers from hiring 22 guys; that they shouldn't be so hasty about firing one author and bringing in the next.  Awarding all or most of the credit to the first guy might nudge the business towards that attitude.

As I said, there's a lot of yelling and screaming about this, in part because loads of money is involved.  A movie earns its credited writers all sorts of residuals and home video fees.  If you write a movie and it's rewritten, you would not only lose prestige if the rewriter gets screen credit, you could lose a hell of a lot of cash.

What we have in the current credits manual creates, I believe, a lot of problems.  Credits often do not denote who really did what, and dishonesty is never the best policy.  It also does cause some to assume that the guy who got his name on the movie is just the guy who got his name on the movie, and not necessarily the person whose work we're seeing.  At the same time, I think it's Head-in-the-Sand Time to not admit that restricting the number of screen credits has utterly failed to stop producers from calling in a legion of rewriters.  Producers are going to hire as many of us as they want and nothing will stop this, other than the WGA passing and enforcing a rule that forbids rewrites.  The majority of the Guild membership would never forego the income and allow such a rule, let alone the studios.

So am I therefore on the side of those who want to revise the WGA Credits Manual to allow more "reality?"  To make it easier for production executives, directors, stars and other rewriters to get their names on a movie with which they fiddle?  No, I don't think I'm in favor of that, either. I believe that we presently have a flawed system which can only grow more flawed via repair.

As with the last time credit manual revisions were proposed — a stormy, angry vote that went down to overwhelming defeat — the changes being proposed are relatively minor and are barely a baby step to addressing the problems.  The main amendment presently before us hinges on the dubious (I think) concept of assessing the percentage that a given writer contributes to a script.  Presently, for a production executive to receive credit on a script he or she rewrote, that exec has to have written more than 50% of what gets on the screen.  The proposal now before us would lower that to the same standard as any participating writer, which is one third.

Those numbers are discussed as if someone could just feed a script into a calculator, punch two buttons and arrive at a firm percentage.  This is ridiculous.  You can study different drafts of a script and say that Writer A wrote 40% of the final version but that's going to be a very approximate number.  A writer's contribution is just too subjective, too open to different weighings.  If you write an unfilmable 300 page screenplay and I go in and, without adding a word, rearrange all the scenes and chop it down to a filmable 105 pages, what is the exact percentage of my contribution as a writer?  If I write a murder mystery that doesn't make a lot of sense and you come in and author two key scenes that clarify everything and change whodunnit, what is the percentage of your contribution?

Suppose someone writes a movie for Eddie Murphy to star in and Eddie hates all the dialogue and you're called in to rewrite it.  You paraphrase everything and then, when it gets before the cameras, Eddie starts ad-libbing and he further paraphrases everything.  What is the precise percentage of your contribution to the finished film?  (Keep in mind that arbitrations are based wholly on what's committed to paper, so what Eddie does is not considered writing.  What you did is, even though little of what you did got on screen.)

This is all so arguable that it's not worth fiddling with.  Why substitute one set of vague numbers for another?  It is certainly not worth the level of rage we had the last time this kind of proposal was made.  I am all for protecting the credit of the first writer, especially when we're dealing with his or her original idea.  I am all for making it difficult for production execs, stars, rewriters and especially directors to claim they wrote or co-wrote the movie.  On the other hand, there are cases where the film that gets made is the one the rewriters wrote and, for good or ill, it bears little resemblance to anything the first scribe envisioned.  In those cases, I think it's unfair to history — let alone, the individuals involved — to give all or most of the credit to Writer #1.

Those who think our system of credits is imperfect are right.  But that's not because of the difference between someone writing 33% of a movie and someone writing 50%.  It's because weighing the respective contributions of several writers to a collaborative project is an impossible judgment that can only ever be approximately correct.  And it's because, as a Guild, we can't decide if the goal of screen credits should be to reflect who actually writes the movie or to try and influence who actually writes the movie.

If the latter, there might be merit in a much talked-about suggestion, which is to allow participating rewriters to receive some acknowledgement in a film's end credits — like, say, "Additional Dialogue by…"  This idea is not part of the current proposal.  I need to hear more debate on that one before making up my mind, if and when that's ever actually proposed.

But with regard to the current proposals, changing arbitrary percentages is silly.  Given that the last thing the Writers Guild needs is more of its members yelling at each other, I think we ought to accept the current credits manual, flaws and all, and leave it alone.

And by the way, this entire article was written by one person.

I have this friend named Pat O'Neill.  We get along fine in person and on the phone.  Nice guy.  On various discussion forums on the Internet, however, I rarely agree with him and often strenuously disagree to the extent where people write me and say, "Boy, you must hate Pat O'Neill."  I don't.  I don't think I "hate" anyone in this world…but if I did, it would have to be for something a lot more offensive than posting things I utterly disagree with in newsgroups.

I mention this because I'm about to disagree with Pat again.  The other morning, over in the rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe newsgroup, he posted the following…

Most commonly on these groups any decision a publisher makes that cancels a "critically acclaimed" title whose sales are in the toilet is derided.  In general, these groups act as if publishers were in business to publish the GROUPS' favorite comics, as opposed to publishing the comics most likely to be profitable.

Pat is right and wrong about this…and I should add that I was, as well, since I used to say almost the exact same thing in fanzines when someone would start weeping that their favorite funnybook had been axed.  But I think I was at least partly incorrect for two reasons, one large and one small…

One is that, first of all, a fan has every right to complain when something he likes is taken from him.  Such passions ought to be balanced with a little pragmatism and awareness of how things have to work in the Real World, true.  But I think it's unfair and probably unwise to demean or attempt to change that passion.  You can't expect someone whose only relationship to a work is as Enthusiastic Audience to suddenly snap to the mindset of one of the bean-counters in the accounting department…nor should they.  What a cold, unenjoyable media it would be if we all had to hook our sympathies up to the financial end of things and to accept every decision as a calculated profit/loss reality.  If I love something, I shouldn't have that love trampled by the business department expecting me to view it through their eyes.

That's the small reason.  The larger is this: When a publisher cancels a "fan favorite" comic book due to poor sales, there's a very good chance that publisher is wrong…often in the long term and sometimes even in the short term.

An amazing number of times — too often to dismiss as flukes, I believe — a publisher has cancelled The Invincible Flurp and all the Flurp fans get up in arms and protest, and the publisher says, "Don't you [idiot] fans realize that this is a business?  That Flurp sales are in the crapper and we're losing money and that we're not in business to lose money?"  And in the long run, with hindsight, there is ample evidence that the publisher simply gave up too quickly on a comic that might have built a new and profitable audience had the company stayed with it longer or done a better job of marketing.  (It has also been the case, though some have denied it, that someone in the office simply misread the numbers and terminated a profitable title, or killed one deliberately because of personal issues with its makers.  I don't think anyone will ever admit that in print, at least about themselves, but almost anyone who's been in the business for any length of time will tell you it's happened.)

Throughout comic book history, publishers have often been way too short-sighted and timid and terrified of losing even a very modest amount of money on new product.  At times, the financial risk in publishing the established sellers becomes so non-existent that they cannot bear to assume even a microscopic risk to publish something new.  Something different comes along and they don't know how to sell it and are afraid to try.  Usually, it works like this: Super-hero books are selling decently and, in a moment of uncommon wisdom, someone says, "We need to expand the audience and reach folks who don't like super-hero comics," so they launch some non super-hero comics, often with great confidence and a determination to build and nurture another marketplace.

That's until the first sales figures come in on the non super-hero comics and they don't immediately yield the guaranteed profits of the super-hero books.  Then someone has a panic attack and, without waiting for the folks who don't like super-hero comics to have time to find the new, non super-hero books, the publisher says, "Wait a minute!  Why am I publishing these when I could sell more comics per month by replacing them with super-hero titles?"  That has happened way too many times, despite the fact that the potential loss, even if the new books never catch on, is not all that great.  It also happens despite the facts that…

A. There are dozens of cases where a new comic was declared a flop and then, for reasons other than the publisher believing in it, it was brought back or continued a little longer…and it became not just a hit but a huge hit.  Marvel Comics' two biggest properties — Spider-Man and the Hulk — were both initially and prematurely declared failures and were cancelled.  And had we been around then and protested those cancellations, someone at the company could have said precisely what Pat O'Neill said above.  Later on, the publisher declared the then-new Conan the Barbarian comic an utter failure and actually did say what Pat said when fans protested its probable cancellation.  But as with Spidey and Greenskin, the Barbarian stuck around long enough to develop and show a following.

B. Sometimes, the sales of the comic book itself are only part of the story.  All the major companies have published comics that were, going strictly by this month's sales, unprofitable…but because the property was licensed for a movie or toy deal, loads of cash rolled in.  There were many years where Wonder Woman was technically losing all kinds of money on the newsstand but that comic served as a very effective loss-leader for very lucrative merchandise.

C. There are also dozens of cases where, years later, a cancelled comic still has a loyal following.  No one can ever prove that Bat Lash (to pick one example of dozens) would or would not have found an audience had it run another year or so but, given the extent to which people still recall it fondly, you have to wonder.  More to the point, some abruptly-cancelled comics are probably analogous to a movie that is declared a flop at the time of its debut but which, in re-release, proves to be enormously popular and profitable.  DC, for instance, has made an awful lot of money reprinting the old Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams issues of Green Lantern-Green Arrow which, back in 1971, was declared a money-loser that had to go.  Some don't think it was unprofitable then but, even if it was, the foreign sales and reprints have since made it one of the more lucrative things DC published that year.  Had they kept it going, it would have been a very good investment.

This is not unique to comics.  TV networks are often too quick to cancel a show if its initial ratings do not soar.  Seinfeld, which may turn out to be the most profitable live-action TV show of all time, was — like Spider-Man or Hulk — an "immediate flop" that many of the business-types wanted to junk, and might have.  The TV version of M*A*S*H, which may be the current holder of the "most profitable of all time" medallion, was definitely in that category, as well.  (I once worked for a producer who kept on his wall, a framed memo from a high executive at Paramount.  Going by early ratings, the exec was declaring Cheers a bomb and asking if the studio's lawyers could extricate them from having to produce any more episodes.  Next to it was framed a then-recent statement of the show's grosses, which of course made the first memo look even stupider.)

Fact is — and I'll bet it's the same in almost any field — business decisions are not always firm, intractable judgments.  A creative field like comic books is probably especially subjective.  The folks who have to decide what to publish and what to cancel might like to pretend that they have no choice…that they're only going by the numbers and you can't argue with them.  But you can.  Like William Goldman says of the movie business, "Nobody knows anything."

If you love a comic book and the publisher kills it, don't let anyone tell you you're naïve to protest or lament its passing.  Worrying about the profit or loss of the company is the company's job, not yours.  And besides, there's a very good chance that even as a dollars-and-cents decision, they're wrong and you're right.

Here's another one of those "incredible coincidence" stories you won't believe.  But I have witnesses to this one, and am quite prepared to take a polygraph that it happened just the way I say it happened.

For much of a decade, I wrote and voice-directed a cartoon show called Garfield and Friends.  This was great fun because the Powers That Be (aka Jim Davis, creator of the lasagna-loving feline) allowed me to write pretty much whatever I wanted, and to cast whomever I felt suitable to do the guest voices.

One week, I penned an episode entitled, Lifestyles of the Fat and Furry, which burlesqued the then-popular TV series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, hosted by Robin Leach.  The program chronicled the indulgent creature comforts of folks with vast amounts of fame and/or cash, usually both.  Teetering tenuously on the ledge of self-parody, the show drew much of its charm from the fustian, hyperkinetic narration of Mr. Leach.

Having written my parody of their parody, I set about to secure Robin Leach himself to do the voice of Robin Leach.  I figured he could handle the role.  About a week before we would be recording the voice track, I phoned his office in Los Angeles.  They told me to call his office in New York.

I called his office in New York.  They told me to call his office in Connecticut.

I called his office in Connecticut.  They told me to call his office in London.

I called his office in London.  They told me that Robin was on a six-week expedition down the Brahmaputra River, or somewhere equally remote.  Wherever it was, he wouldn't be back 'til long after our tape date.  So I shrugged and booked Frank Welker.

Frank Welker is the most gifted, amazing voice magician who has ever stood before a microphone in Hollywood.  Frank can sound like anyone or anything.  He is heard constantly in animated cartoons but also logs many hours doing voice matches and dubbing in live-action motion pictures.  You hear him often in movies without knowing you're hearing him.

I knew he did a mean Robin Leach so I arranged with his agent for Frank to come in and play the part.  I gave him a call time of 2:00.

Nine AM that morning, I walked into Buzzy's Recording Studio on Melrose Avenue for a full day of Garfield recording.  I asked Marie at the desk, as I always did, if we were in Studio A or Studio B.  She said — and I swear, I'm not making this up — "You're in Studio A.  Robin Leach is in B."

Robin Leach???

That was what the lady said.  I walked directly into Studio B and there — standing at a microphone, wearing a shirt imprinted with images of hundred dollar bills — was Robin Leach.  In person.

I explained to him what we were doing over in A, and how I'd attempted to contact him, and how I'd given up and hired an impressionist, and he couldn't have been nicer.  "Well, if the offer's still open, I'd be delighted to play me," he said.  About an hour later, after he finished the spots he was recording, he came over to our studio and played Robin Leach like he'd been doing it all his life.

In fact, he played himself with enormous good-humor and that same sense of show biz and self-mocking that had made his show a hit.  He exaggerated the vocal quirkiness of the Leach style more than I'd probably have allowed a mimic to do.

Robin was long gone by 2:00 when Frank Welker showed up.  "Well, I'm here to do that Robin Leach bit," Frank announced.  "I was warming up in the car on the way over."

"Uh, Frank," I said sheepishly.  "I'm sorry but there's been a change of plans.  I have a different role for you to play…not Robin Leach…"

Frank was puzzled.  "What happened to the Robin Leach role?"

"Well, I don't know how to tell you this but, uh, we found someone who does a better Robin Leach than you do…"

Frank is a wonderful, cooperative person but he seemed a bit affronted — like his honor had been besmirched.  He looked hurt so I added, "I'm sorry…I thought this other guy was a little better, Here — you can hear for yourself."  And I told Andy the Engineer to run a few seconds of the voice track we'd recorded earlier that morn.

As the mellifluous tones of R. Leach boomed through the speakers, I saw shock upon the face of the best impressionist in the business.  There, framed by stark horror, was the realization that someone had bested him in the category of Robin Leach impressions.

(I finally told him the truth.  I didn't have the heart…)

It isn't there now but there used to be a wonderful old movie house in Culver City called the Palms Theater.  It was a friendly place to see a film — not fancy but comfy, not plush but cheap.  The big, first-run movies went to the fancier theaters in Westwood, all of them affiliated with national chains.  The Palms, fiercely independent to its dying day, usually offered up two second-run pictures, with a few trailers and a cartoon sandwiched between.

The best thing about the Palms was its recorded announcement.  I don't know who recorded them but he always commenced with "Shalom, Bubala," and he was always hysterical.  My favorite, which I shall now attempt to re-create, came when they booked a double-feature of Walter Matthau pics.  It went very much like this, and it will probably be funnier if you read it aloud…

Shalom, Bubala.  This is the exotic Palms Theater on picturesque Motor Avenue in beautiful Culver City.  This week, we are featuring Plaza Suite, starring Walter Matthau and Lee Grant, Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton, and Walter Matthau and Barbara Harris.  We are also featuring A New Leaf, starring Walter Matthau and Elaine May.  In other words — Walter Matthau, ad nauseum.  Here's your chance to get so sick of Walter Matthau you'll never have to see another Walter Matthau movie as long as you live.

Drive up to the theater where our parking lot attendant, Walter Matthau, will show you where to park.  Then buy a ticket from our box office attendant, Walter Matthau, and have it torn in half by our ticket taker, Walter Matthau.  Visit our refreshment stand where our counterman Walter Matthau will gladly sell you a large, Walter Matthau-sized soft drink and a box of Jujubees, every one of them in the shape of Walter Matthau.  You will be seated by our usher, Walter Matthau, and then our projectionist (Walter Matthau) will start the program, commencing with a Walter Matthau cartoon, a Walter Matthau newsreel, and coming attractions of more than seventeen thousand Walter Matthau films.

Next week, we're featuring two more movies.  We don't know what they are yet but we can guarantee you that they won't have Walter Matthau in them.  In fact, we will give you a double-your-money-back No Walter Matthau guarantee.

If you read it the way the guy on the phone read it, it's hysterical.  (And here's an interesting example of how just the right word is important in comedy.  If you read the same speech with Jack Lemmon's name in there, it's only about half as funny.  Try it and see.)

I used to go to the Palms about once a month — sometimes with my parents, sometimes with a date — but I made a point of phoning each week to hear what the "Shalom, Bubala" guy had to say.  I wasn't the only one.  People who had no interest whatsoever in going to the Palms Theater used to call in sufficient quantity that the Palms had to install extra phone lines.

I can remember some of the movies I saw there — Airport, Paint Your Wagon, The Odd Couple…(This last was obviously before the "No Walter Matthau" policy went into effect).  I even remember the first time I took a date to the Palms.

It was Blue Water, White Death, a documentary about sharks that I'd have passed on, had it not been for Liz.  She wanted to see it and I was willing to take Liz anywhere, just as long as I could sneak my arm around her.

I was just buying two General Admissions at the Palms (not from Walter Matthau) when Liz said to me, "I feel I have to see this movie.  I have a terrible fear of sharks."

I stopped in the doorway, right by the non-Matthau usher.  "Why do you have to see this movie if you're afraid of sharks?" I asked.

"I'm hoping that if I confront my fear, I will get over it," she replied.

Well, it sounded good in theory but she spent the entire movie with her nails dug into my arm and/or thigh, and left the Palms so upset that she asked me to take her straight home.  This was not what I'd had in mind for the balance of the evening.  I haven't seen Liz since that night.  I have, however, seen her fingernail marks on my arm and thigh.

And I haven't seen the Palms Theater since shortly after that.  One day when I drove past, the marquee proclaimed, in lieu of movie titles, that it was "Closed until further notice."  The next time I cruised Motor Avenue, it said, "Closed forever."  And the next time, there was no marquee…or Palms Theater.

It looks like Walter had the last laugh.

The E! Network is rerunning the very first episode of Saturday Night Live on Monday.  Actually, it wasn't even called that on its first broadcast in October 11, 1975.  The now-forgotten Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell had prior claim on the title so the new late night program was called NBC Saturday Night.  Didn't matter.  For some reason, everyone — fans, TV critics, everyone — just started calling it Saturday Night Live and a few months after the Cosell show evaporated, the SNL name went on the NBC show officially.  (I believe some prints of some of the reruns were altered to slap the name on them.)

What I find most interesting about that first NBC Saturday Night is that the idea seemed to be to throw everything at the wall and then see what stuck.  Today, we think of the show as 90 minutes of sketch comedy with one guest host and one musical act.  But when they started out, the sketch comedy was but one of many elements and not even the most important.  In addition to comedy sketches, the first episode featured…

• Stand-up comedy.  George Carlin hosted and he did three stand-up spots.  There was a monologue by Valri Bromfield and Andy Kaufman did his record pantomime to the theme from "Mighty Mouse."  (An additional stand-up spot didn't get in.  Just before airtime, a kid named Billy Crystal was told he'd have to trim his routine to the bone and at the advice of his managers, he walked.)
• Two musical acts: Janis Ian and Billy Preston performing two numbers apiece.
• "The Land of Gorch" featuring the Muppets.
• A film by Albert Brooks.
• A spot with Paul Simon plugging his appearance the following week.
• Five pre-recorded parody commercials.
• Weekend Update with Chevy Chase.

The Chevy Chase spot was probably the biggest hit.  The other sketches — the kind of material that would become the core of Saturday Night Live — were few in number and short in length.  There was the cold opening with Chase, Michael O'Donoghue, and John Belushi.  (Although he would not be counted as a member of the original cast, O'Donoghue had more to do in the first episode than some who were and was billed as one of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players."  So was character actor George Coe, who quietly disappeared from the troupe soon after.)  There were a few other short skits, the longest of which — a courtroom scene — was an old routine that had been done almost precisely the same way on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.

Then the second week, Paul Simon hosted and the show was devoted primarily to music.  In addition to Simon, they had Art Garfunkel, Phoebe Snow, Randy Newman and the Jesse Dixon Singers.  Add in another Muppets spot and another film by Albert Brooks and there wasn't much time for sketches.

It wasn't until the third week, hosted by Rob Reiner, that sketch comedy had a significant chunk of the show.  Even then, the longest comedy segment was the Albert Brooks film, which was so long they had to insert a commercial break in the middle of it.

Producer Lorne Michaels was later quoted as saying something like, "I had the ingredients from the start but it took me a while to figure out how much of each to include."  If you watched the episodes in sequence, you'd see it take around four episodes (over five weeks) before they decided they had a sketch show, and a while longer before they began to subordinate everything else to that.  That was a quick discovery process.  Michaels had originally negotiated a deal with NBC that gave them 17 shows and with it, an understanding that they'd tinker with the format and probably not solidify things until around Show Ten.  Ordinarily, one of the great lies of network television is when they say, "We won't even look at the ratings for the first few weeks" but in this case, they seem to have at least been sincere about giving the show room to develop.

That would probably not happen today.  Despite the history of shows like SNL and Seinfeld that were given time to grow and which became insanely profitable, a TV show is now expected to debut in pretty much its finished form.  Not long ago, a producer sent the following to me in an e-mail.  It's from an article he was writing about a recent, unhappy experience…

What I learned was that nowadays, a show goes on the air and based on the ratings of the first one, it's declared a provisional success (if they're good) or a provisional flop (if not).  If you're a provisional flop and your ratings go up the second week, you might have a fighting chance at proving yourself.  If you're a provisional flop and you go down the second week, it's pretty much over.  You're a bomb and the smell of death rises into the air.  Your promotion disappears, your guest stars drift away, and advertisers write you off.  It's a premature verdict but it has a way of coming true from its own momentum.

Lorne Michaels' new show had some things going for it when it debuted.  For one thing, it had no competition.  For another, NBC was looking to open up that time slot for new programming and it would have been embarrassing and injurious to that effort not to stick with the new show for a time.  They also had nothing else to put on.

As it happens, the first Saturday Night did pretty well and it was hailed as something innovative.  Looking back on that first episode, it's hard to see why.  So much of the show was George Carlin's stand-up act…funny but hardly a major breakthrough in television programming.  Apart from Weekend Update, the freshest bit of material on the first broadcast was probably Andy Kaufman's "Mighty Mouse" routine…and he wasn't even a regular.

No matter.  The show appealed to a generally-neglected, younger audience.  It felt new, even if it wasn't, and in TV, that can be the hard part.  In a few more weeks, it would actually start to be innovative.  One can only wonder how many hastily-cancelled shows might have managed that if they'd had a few more weeks.