Category Archives: Uncategorized

Daniel Engber discusses why 3-D movies, which briefly seemed about to shove 2-D out of this dimension altogether, are now dying out. Probably the same reason they didn't do that the last time such predictions were made, back in the fifties. If the movie's good, people don't care if it's in 2-D or 3-D and if it's not, then 3-D is a gimmick that only takes you so far and costs you more money.

This wouldn't have happened if Jack was still around.

Is your local post office in trouble? Here's a list of the ones they're considering closing.

I hope all this talk of the U.S.P.S. going under or being sold to the highest bidder doesn't happen. I'm a big fan of the post office which I think provides a vital service for way less than it oughta cost and does it much more efficiently than most folks admit. I really don't understand how a lot of things would work if we didn't have it and folks had to pay FedEx rates for what we can now send for U.S.P.S. rates. I look at the mail my mother receives: Notices of doctor appointments, cards from friends her age, desirable coupons and ads for local merchants, etc. I've converted most of her bills to online billing and I handle those that way…but there are still some that have to be handled via paper.

She doesn't and can't do e-mail or go online. A lot of folks can't and many don't have someone like me to do what can be done online for them. How would they get what they now get via postal delivery?

There are a couple of events coming up next month in the L.A. area to mark the 50th anniversary of The Dick Van Dyke Show. The first one is on October 1 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and is being presented by the American Cinematheque. My pal Vince Waldron, author of the definitive — an adjective I use sparingly — book on that show, is involved with this one that will involve the presence of (at least) Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke and Rose Marie. They're going to show three episodes selected by Mr. Reiner and then have a Q-and-A…and really, how much more do you need to know than that?

Tickets have been selling briskly to Cinematheque members and the seats they haven't purchased have just (like an hour ago) gone on sale for the general public. I'll betcha they're sold out by this time tomorrow so if you want one, go order now. That's an unannounced link that you can't find on your own but it should work as long as tickets remain.

Vince will be there signing the new edition of his book, in which he actually manages to improve on a book that was darn near perfect. Even if you have the first version, you'll want this one. If he didn't do justice to my favorite TV series, I'd be maligning him and calling him rotten names now and terminating our friendship. Since I like Vince, I'm relieved that I can instead recommend that you order a copy. (Note: Amazon says it's in stock but I don't think it is yet. It will be very soon, though.)

A number of newspapers are refusing to run this week's Doonesbury strips.This has happened before when Garry Trudeau did something that seemed to some to be in poor taste. What has he done this week? Quoted a new book that is unflattering about a prominent politician.

I don't recall ever watching a Benny Hill sketch and looking at Benny and thinking, "Oh, I wish that was me in that sketch." But if you've had that dream, here's your chance.

And another clip I can't embed: Here's a little bit of what I saw Monday night.They showed a great new print of Raiders of the Lost Ark and then my pal Geoff Boucher of the L.A. Times interviewed Steven Spielberg. More excerpts will follow.

Here's a piece of remarkable footage, apparently not faked.There was a traffic accident in Logan, Utah. A car caught fire. A motorcyclist was trapped under the car. People nearby ran up and got together to lift the car up long enough for someone to drag the motorcyclist out from under it.

I can't embed the video but you can view it here.

Fred Kaplan takes time out from explaining U.S. military policy to us to rave about the new Blu-ray edition of Citizen Kane. I said earlier that I hadn't upgraded to Blu-ray because (a) I have so many regular DVDs I haven't watched yet and (b) I figure that when I finally do invest in Blu-ray, that's when they'll come up with something better. But Fred's review almost makes me want to chance it.

Yesterday, I directed a voice session for The Garfield Show and one of our actors was the brilliant Maurice LaMarche, who was rewarded last Saturday for his brilliance with one of those Emmy things you hear about. One of the voices he did on our show was his uncanny Orson Welles impression which you heard coming out of the face of Vincent D'Onofrio in Ed Wood and from The Brain on the series, Pinky & The Brain. We were lamenting that an entire generation or two is going to someday see Citizen Kane and say, "Hey, that guy sounds a lot like that mouse on the cartoon show!"

Carolyn and I went to a special, one-night-only 30th anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. A very enthusiastic audience packed the place for that and what followed. My pal Geoff Boucher of the L.A. Times interviewed Steven Spielberg and Unannounced Surprise Guest Harrison Ford about the film we'd all just seen. Clips, I'm sure, will abound so I'll just say that the biggest applause probably went to Spielberg's promises that that the forthcoming Blu-ray of Raiders will not involve any tampering or "improvements" on his part, and that the next DVD/Blu-ray release of E.T. will be the original version and not the later, slightly-sanitized version. Best part of the evening for some was probably the warm banter between Spielberg and Ford, and the latter's announcement that he's quite willing to do another Indiana Jones film. One does not however appear to be on any horizon.

It was largely a show-businessy crowd, it seemed. We were sitting next to Damon Lindelof of Lost and Cowboys and Aliens and glancing about the lobby, it seemed like a good place to use Gary Belkin's joke: "I'm the only one here I've never heard of." When I used the men's room, I found myself standing between two guys who were each dressed as Indiana Jones.They were talking across me, discussing where they'd purchased their hats and leather jackets. and which of them had the best ones…and for a minute I had a sense of what it must be like to be in a gay bar.

I kept interrupting work yesterday to read articles online about 9/11 — not the best thing to do when you're trying to finish what's supposed to be a funny script, I suppose. But I'd go look something up on the web and everywhere you looked, there were pieces about 9/11 so I read a few. Our pal James H. Burns even wrote a nice piece about what that day did to the Broadway community.

A particularly interesting one I found was this short piece by Josh Marshall. In it, he makes the point, which I never thought about in quite this way, that all of that tragedy was achieved by a pretty small band of people, almost all of whom perished in the effort. I suppose that is one of the reasons for all the conspiracy theories that seek to gin up a larger enterprise and blame it for the crimes of that day.

During the years I spent too much time studying and talking about the assassination of President Kennedy, I kept reading discussions of the need some felt for "balance."The murder of J.F.K. seemed so earth-shattering, so monumental that it was hard for many to accept that it could possibly have been done by one lone nut with a mail order rifle. Even Kennedy's widow quoted some authors who noted that the crime seemed out of balance; that you wanted to put something bigger on the side of the scale that represented the perpetrator(s) so Kennedy would have been killed by something bigger. It hadn't occurred to me that the same yearning for "balance" may go a long way to explain all the 9/11 "Truthers" and folks who insist it wasn't that small band of fanatics. It had to be a worldwide conspiracy involving much, much more.

I don't think it was anything more than what we've been told. I also, after spending years in Conspiracy Buff Land, came to the conclusion that the Oswald-acted-alone explanation made twenty times as much sense as any competing scenario — and unlike the others, actually had pretty solid evidence behind it.The alternate theories will never go away and neither will all that rock solid "proof" that the World Trade Center was a controlled demolition and that darn near everyone but you and I were in on it. And by the way, I'm still not so sure about you…

I just took time out to do a fast surf of my fave websites. I can't think of a thing I can say about the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that many, many other sites aren't saying. If I do, I'll write it…but I doubt I will. So don't take my silence here to indicate that I don't share everyone else's residual horror over that day and deep respect for the many acts of heroism. At times, and perhaps not as often as I should, I think the best way to deal with a tragedy is to go on with life and not let fear or grief slow you down.

And back to work…

Not done but I'm past the key part I hadn't figured out yet. So I think I'll post a picture of Laurel and/or Hardy and then go to bed. Good night.

Okay, I laid there not sleeping for a half-hour so now I'm back at the computer, trying to finish this script. I'm two-thirds of the way through it and oh, this would be so much easier if it had a plot.