Category Archives: To Be Filed

Reviews and articles say the HBO Phil Spector movie begins with the following disclaimer…

This is a work of fiction. It's not "based on a true story." It is a drama inspired by actual persons in a trial, but it is neither an attempt to depict the actual persons, nor comment upon the trial or its outcome.

The film by David Mamet — who is fast becoming one of my least-favorite writers — then proceeds to make the case that Phil Spector didn't kill Lana Clarkson and that her death was somewhere between a suicide and an accident, emphasis on the first. Mamet has stated his belief that if Spector wasn't so famous, he never would have been charged with a crime.

I don't buy any of that. Phil Spector had a history of waving guns at people — especially women who wanted to leave his Alhambra mansion before he was ready for them to leave — and being generally irrational. I knew Lana Clarkson casually, know a lot of people who knew her well, and the notion that she killed herself because she was depressed about turning 40, as Mamet's film posits, has zero basis in reality. It's just something a lawyer made up because he didn't have any sort of viable defense and he had to say something.

I understand and in some cases have no problem with the intermingling of fiction and fact; of a writer devising dialogue and twisting known truths in telling a tale of real people. If someone hired me to write a boffo box-office screenplay about Martin Van Buren, I'd probably invent all sorts of things that didn't happen…maybe argue that ol' Marty was an alien from another world with the ability to do martial arts and make women's tops disappear. But I wouldn't do that with a story people cared about or as a propaganda effort to hope I could get the world to believe it. That was my objection to Oliver Stone's JFK, a dishonest effort (I thought) to blur fact and fantasy because sticking to facts would not "sell" people on what Stone wanted to believe but could not prove without fibbing.

It's one thing to say "Here's a version I believe of what really happened." It's another to cobble up a meld of truth, lies and spin, make it look as much like reality as you can and then try to escape responsibility for the fiction you inject by saying, as Mamet does, this is "…neither an attempt to depict the actual persons, nor comment upon the trial or its outcome." Clearly, Al Pacino is trying to replicate the actual person. Clearly, a filmmaker who believes Spector was convicted because of his fame — in a state where fame is usually a "Get Out of Jail Free" card — is trying to comment on the trial and its outcome.

That's as much as I want to say before I see the film…which I may not be able to do. It might be a wonderful viewing experience, as most of Pacino's performances usually are. I just think it's kinda disingenuous to base a movie on a true story, warp that true story into something that isn't true, then hide behind the excuse which will go largely unnoticed that it was never meant to be a true story. It's also cowardly to trash a lovely lady as you try to rehabilitate the image of the psycho who murdered her.

Jon Cozart, who goes by the name of "Paint," has a new release you'll want to watch…

David Lazarus on why "Obamacare" is a good thing.

I don't think it'll be possible for Republicans to repeal or de-fund the Affordable Care Act. What's more, I think a lot of them know that but also know that to say they can or will generates loyalty from a loud sector of their base. So the debate rages on…

The Paul Ryan budget is never going to come close to reality in this country. Neither is the House Progressives budget.

I never saw the musical It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman during its brief Broadway run in 1966 but I've seen four or five local productions of it. That's enough for me to decide that I don't like the show and am not surprised it wasn't a bigger hit. Usually, a non-Sondheim musical that only ran 129 performances on the Great White Way would disappear and never be seen again. I think it's because people so love the character that it keeps being revived here and there for limited runs.

The storyline has a fundamental problem: At the beginning, Lois Lane is in love with Superman and doesn't know he's Clark Kent. At the end, Lois Lane is in love with Superman and doesn't know he's Clark Kent. Very talented folks worked on it but I don't think they were able to juggle that limitation and create a storyline that anyone would care about. They were also torn between treating Superman as a serious hero or as a campy figure to be laughed at. So they more or less tried both and succeeded, insofar as I'm concerned, at neither.

Ergo, I won't be hustling to New York next week to see the four performances that the Encores! series is doing at City Center. If you're going or if you're interested in the show, you might be interested in this 26-minute preview of that production. Edward Watts, who's playing the Man of Steel, sure looks the part and he's surrounded by good actors. I just don't really care if I ever see this particular musical again.

By the way: If you watch this preview, you'll hear the interviewer say something very dumb about how people who are into comics will probably see their first-ever stage musical when they flock to see this show. He don't know us very well, do he?

Little girls in super-hero costumes. Almost as cute as baby pandas.

The folks who told us the Iraq War would "pay for itself" were only off by a little less than four trillion dollars. That's above and beyond the 4000+ U.S. soldiers killed and the 32,000 wounded and other human costs. Remember that the next time you hear Dick Cheney saying the Obama administration is screwing up….or anyone say George W. Bush wasn't a bad president.

Quite a few folks have written me about the "Five-Timers" sketch on last Saturday night's Saturday Night Live. No one wrote who was actually present in the studio but a lot of people wrote who have been to SNL telecasts and they said that many sketches are performed in areas of the stage where few (if any) audience members can see directly and that most wind up watching on the monitors. I guess that's the explanation as to why the audience didn't react to the surprise guests before they were seen on camera.

Also, it turns out that it was indeed Justin Timberlake's fifth time hosting the show, not his sixth. Several folks wrote to me that it was his sixth and they all seem to have gotten this from Wikipedia…which was for the first time ever in the history of Wikipedia, incorrect about something.

In other late night news, there's been no announcement from NBC or Jay Leno responding to reports that the network would soon announce Leno's departure. The last few nights, Leno and Jimmy Fallon have both done jokes as if it's true but those are, after all, jokes. Leno has Craig Ferguson on his show this Friday night so that might be an occasion to mention the topic. I'm still skeptical…not that NBC might decide to replace Leno next year but that they'd decide that now. You'd think that after all that mess with Conan, the one thing they might say at that network is "Okay, from now on, we don't cancel Jay until he's really losing." But more obvious lessons have gone unlearned in network television.

I've also received a lot of info about Miss Miller, the lady who used to practically live in studio audiences for TV tapings and live telecasts. Before long, I'll compile them into a nice post here. It's kind of an interesting story…I think.

I get quoted in the New York Times again. It's an article about how a tea company is employing the graphic novel format.

Fred Kaplan thinks things in the Middle East are soon to worsen…thanks to a Bush administration that just plain didn't know the region it was out to reform.

So Billy Joel is doing a Q-and-A at Vanderbilt University with a little bit of performing thrown in. A young man in the audience asks if he can accompany his hero on a song — and Billy Joel says "Okay." Here's what happened…

Did you try to book a hotel room for Comic-Con in San Diego and fail? Try again now. There are rooms available.

Andy Marx, grandson of some guy named Groucho, tells the story of how hundreds of episodes of You Bet Your Life could have been lost forever…but weren't.

In a similar Marxian vein, my pal Steve Stoliar has recorded an audio version of his fine book about his days working for Groucho. You can order one here and if it's anything like hearing Steve tell these stories over lunch, it's very entertaining…and somewhat less fattening.

I was fascinated — not necessarily in a good way — by Bob Woodward's biography of John Belushi many years ago. It was called Wired and it was done at the behest of Belushi's widow…and she and all or most of the performer's friends were pretty unhappy with the final product. They felt Woodward had been such an outsider to their world that he'd not really understood what he was writing about and that he'd sensationalized the truth to the point of oblivion. Woodward countered by suggesting that, well, the truth sometimes hurts and that's what he'd reported. As an old Watergate junkie with mixed feelings about Woodward's role in that episode, I came to be more interested in the controversy around Wired than I ever was in John Belushi.

A writer named Tanner Colby worked on another Belushi bio years later, which meant covering the same ground, interviewing the same people. Granted, as the co-author of a less famous book about the Saturday Night Live star, he could well have an underlying resentment of Woodward's…but I tend to think not. As he states in the linked article, the consensus among the folks in Belushi's world was that even where they'd been quoted directly, Wired did not depict the guy they knew or the incidents they related to its author. Colby didn't make that part up…and it makes you wonder about other things Woodward has written.

This runs a little under an hour but I think it's worth it. It's the entirety of the recently-broadcast episode of Live at Lincoln Center entitled Ring Them Bells! A Kander & Ebb Celebration. If you're a fan of the tunes of John Kander and Fred Ebb, you're already getting ready to click…