Category Archives: To Be Filed

• By Election Day, Trump will have been firmly on both sides of every issue in this country except the size of his fortune and penis.

Mark Thorson has a question…

I've asked before, and you replied you'd do it, but you haven't. Repeating my request, have there been cartoons voiced by one voice actor? When you consider how talented some voice actors are and how cheap some studios have been, it seems to me this must have happened a few times if not frequently. I don't know of any examples, but if it were done well I wouldn't have noticed. Maybe the Road Runner cartoons, but they don't count because there were only two characters and they didn't talk.

Yeah, there have been plenty of them, mostly prior to 1968. Lots of theatrical cartoons were just one guy, usually Mel Blanc. On TV, you had things like the Tom Terrific cartoons (all voices by Lionel Wilson) or the Felix the Cat cartoons (all voices by Jack Mercer) or Deputy Dawg (all voices by Dayton Allen) and there were some episodes of Huckleberry Hound or Quick Draw McGraw where all they needed was Daws Butler.

Once upon a time, voice actors working under the Screen Actors Guild contract were paid by the session. The actor received a flat fee for the cartoon whether he did one voice or twenty. Most of the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons had a cast of two: Daws Butler and Don Messick did the Pixie & Dixie cartoons. The Secret Squirrel cartoons were voiced by Paul Frees and Mel Blanc. The Atom Ant cartoons were Howie Morris and Allan Melvin until Howie quit H-B, at which time they became Don Messick and Allan Melvin. Once in a while, they'd spring for a guest voice — usually a woman — but the writers were told not to write in too many female parts so that wasn't necessary. (There are early H-B cartoons where small female roles were voiced by men.)

Most cartoons were done with small casts. The Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons were voiced by June Foray, Paul Frees, Bill Scott, William Conrad and no one else. I don't think there's a single other actor in any of them…and in some, some of those folks play five or six roles.

In '68, the SAG contract was changed to limit the number of voices one actor could do for one fee. The math changed over the years but it pretty much came down to three voices per session fee per actor. Before, if a cartoon called for twelve speaking parts, you could have Daws and Don each do six and it cost you two session fees. After '68, you were going to have to pay four session fees…so you could pay Daws and Don each two fees per session or for the same money, you could bring in four actors. In most cases then, they would hire four actors.

This made things better for the kind of actor — like Hans Conried or Gary Owens — who couldn't do multiple roles. A voice actor no longer had to be like Blanc, Butler, Messick or Frees — guys who could do a couple hundred different voices. It also increased the opportunities for women since it led to shows having more female characters. And it even led to some of the multi-voiced guys making more money. I wrote a CBS Storybreak once which had a ton of tiny roles and we decided that we didn't want to bring in a parade of voice actors to each do 1-3 lines. It was easier to have Frank Welker do them all so that day, Frank — who was in the studio for about 90 minutes — played twenty characters and was paid for seven sessions.

And yes, there are still short cartoons that use only one voice actor…but if it's a SAG show, he or she usually doesn't do eleven voices.

My favorite vlogger (video blogger) John Green explains all about non-denial denials. My favorite is "That's a collection of absurdities!"

Hey, someone made a multi-part documentary on the end of The Late Show with David Letterman. I can't embed it here but you can watch it on this page. If you notice before I do, lemme know when they post the next chapter.

Here's Matt Taibbi with an overview of how Trump became the nominee and what it means for the future of the Republican Party — what little there may be of one.

Actually, I don't think Trump is or will be destroying the G.O.P. Just changing it for now.

• Nice of Trump to reassure his supporters he'd only appoint white people to the Supreme Court. Like we all couldn't have guessed.

That's a writing credit from Happy Days and as you can see, it was written by my pal Ron Friedman, who has a long, long résumé including The Danny Kaye Show, Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, The Odd Couple, Starsky & Hutch, Fantasy Island, All in the Family, Chico and the Man, Vega$, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, The Andy Griffith Show, The Fall Guy, The Dukes of Hazzard and many, many more. He's also written a lot of cartoons. He was one of the key writers for The Transformers and G.I. Joe and also worked on The Bionic Six, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four and quite a few others. He's the guest on today's episode of Stu's Show.

This is Ron's second visit and probably not his last. If you think I have a lot of great show biz stories, you should hear this guy…and you can today when Stu Shostak welcomes him again. Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a measly 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. If you didn't hear Ron's first appearance, make sure you grab that one.

One of the more satisfying aspects of Donald Trump's candidacy, at least to folks like me, is that it's exposing the phoniness of so many public moralizers. As Francis C. Beckwith notes, Mike Huckabee used to say that "Most people exhibiting crude behavior or language aren't doing anything illegal, but they're contributing to a culture that is abrasive, rude, obnoxious, and just plain mean." But he's fine with Trump.

Here's a 40 minute video — the first in a series being produced by the National Cartoonists Society — in which great cartoonists are interviewed. The subject this time is the great cartoonist Mort Drucker and he's quizzed by John Reiner, who draws the newspaper features, The Lockhorns, Howard Huge and Laugh Parade. Drucker is one of those cartoonists whose work causes other artists to stare with open mouths and mutter, "How does he do that?" He explains a little of how he does that in this conversation…

Ricky Gervais, a comedian I usually find brilliantly funny, wrote this piece about people being offended at jokes, primarily his. I would have been more impressed if he'd just written, "Hey, if you don't like what I do, don't watch me." Instead, he tries to blame "political correctness" and people who aren't smart or hip enough to understand what he's doing.

As I think I wrote here recently, the term "politically correct" seems to me to becoming pretty meaningless since so many people use it with such different definitions. One which irks me is when people employ it in to try and deflect or suppress criticism. Another is when their definition is that they should be free to say whatever they want without anyone disagreeing or making personal judgments about them.

My concept of Free Speech includes your right to make racist remarks or jokes but it also includes my right to say I think you're a racist. And my umbrage might not be because you're being "politically incorrect." It might be because I think you're a racist. Actions have consequences and so does speech.

Like I said, I usually find Gervais quite hilarious but that doesn't apply to every comedian out there. More and more, I hear the ones who don't evoke the laughter they seek blame their audiences for being too "politically correct." Well, maybe it's that. But maybe they just aren't as funny as they think.

Here's another review of L.A. Now and Then, the show I saw last Friday night. The final performances (hopefully not forever) are this weekend and there are still some tickets left…but not many. Details are over here. It's a fun revue, especially for someone who grew up where I grew up…in the city where no one grows up.

I may be away from the blog for the rest of the day. I'm directing cartoon voice actors this morning and then there's a meeting and a script I have to finish and somewhere in there, I need to make up about three hours of sleep I didn't get last night. But I will return to you soon and maybe you can find something else on the web to read. I hear a few people have posted things about Donald Trump…

True Facts About The Owl…

It's now been a little over six months since the second of my two knee operations…so time for a report. The knee's doing pretty well most of the time. I have problems getting up out of low chairs or car seats. I have trouble getting up after I've been sitting anywhere for a long time. And every once in a while, things hurt more than I'd like.

But other than that, the knee's doing well. I'm walking better than I have for a year and certainly better than I'd be walking now if I hadn't had them swap out the old knee for a new one. I'm still not driving much and especially not when I'd be in a lot of traffic but I hope to drive more in the coming weeks.

My assistant John has been driving me about and I've been taking a lot of Uber and Lyft cars — mostly Lyfts. There's not that much difference between the two services but at least in my area, Lyft seems to show up sooner and I've had a higher percentage of interesting conversations with Lyft drivers. Last Friday, my Lyft driver turned out to be a longtime comic book fan and an artist, not of comic books. His name was Jerry, he recognized me and we talked about Jack Kirby all the way to my house. A very pleasant ride.

The other day here, I told the story of how I was hired to write a cartoon special/pilot based on the works of cartoonist B. Kliban. You may recall that I started work on it and then we found out that the folks who'd hired me had somehow neglected to acquire the rights to do that with Mr. Kliban's material. Several of you wrote that you found it hard to believe that a professional company would make a mistake like that. Well, check this out: James Franco began work on a screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian. He cast it and made a distribution deal and began shooting test footage but guess what he'd neglected to do.

A sketch from Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris…