Category Archives: Uncategorized

Some might call it sacrilegious but I've long thought that the classic "first five years" of Saturday Night Live weren't the only time that show was good.  The years when the show was dominated by Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey were pretty good, too. So I found it interesting that near the close of last evening's special — Saturday Night Live in the 80's: Lost and Found — Lorne Michaels, who presided over both versions, came close to saying the same thing. It was almost like he was trying to say it without saying it, if you follow me.

Actually, the two-hour overview NBC aired Sunday evening was unsatisfying because it tried to cover so much. That meant only brief fragments of sketches and frustratingly short interviews with cast and crew members. So much went unsaid about the intervening years and little was included that hasn't been covered in past histories of the show.

It would have been nice to hear more than the standard line about how the show plunged to embarrassing lows when Jean Doumanian took over from Michaels as producer in 1980. I don't know Ms. Doumanian and can't defend the show she put on the air…but it always seemed to me like NBC stuck an unqualified person in an impossible job and then she somehow got all the blame for the resulting failure. No one could have delivered what they were expecting of her, which was a show that would debut, with a very short lead time, with something approximating the magic that everyone imagined the first regime had displayed. Plus, at the same time, she had to discover "The Next Chevy," "The Next Gilda" and other stars with spin-off potential. Others might have done a better job but I doubt anyone could have succeeded. Still, it's a compelling tale to note how others built back after that catastrophe.

Among other things missing from the two-hour special was any mention of the many variety acts and stand-ups that appeared on the show. Come to think of it, some pretty impressive hosts went unmentioned and I don't recall any reference to the show's political humor which got rather potent in some of those years. I seem to recall that when a similar special on the first five years aired some time ago, it was reported that there would be a DVD release of an expanded version letting many of the sketches and "talking heads" run longer. As far as I know, no such DVD ever materialized but it should have. And they really should do a longer version of the cursory overview that ran last night. There's a lot more of that story.

I think it's very nice that Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney's legendary "nine old men" was honored this last week with the National Medal of Arts. But really…did someone say, "Hey, almost all of the greats of theatrical animation are dead. Maybe we'd better give this award to one of them while there's still time"? They started this award informally in 1983 and more formally in '85. They could have given it to Chuck Jones and Walter Lantz and Grim Natwick and four or five of the other Nine Old men. Ollie had to be sitting there thinking, "Why couldn't they have done this fourteen months ago when Frank [Thomas] was still around to receive it with me?"

Just finished watching the entire Penn and Teller special, including the first nine minutes. Maybe the most amazing feat was that they got a network to spring for a prime-time magic special. David Copperfield hasn't done one in a long time. Lance Burton stopped doing them. Those "World's Greatest Magic" spectaculars have vanished without magically reappearing in the rear of the house.

Specials in general aren't seen much anymore. Viewing patterns have changed and the current network thinking is that if you love a certain show, it's risky to preempt it for a week and put something in its place. There was a time when viewers were patient enough to wait for their faves but now they're more inclined to sample something else and perhaps fall in love with it. (This is not unrelated to why Leno and Letterman rarely air reruns older than a month or two. When Johnny Carson took a night off, he often ran a year-old program. Jay and Dave don't dare because, the thinking goes, the out-of-date references will make viewers think, "Old show. Let's see what else is on." And they may find something they like better.)

Penn and Teller: Off the Deep End was fun but a little long. I suspect that's just a matter of tight budgeting. Ten years ago, this would have been an hour special with a similar budget or higher. Today, networks are looking harder for the "bargain" license fee and they like their shows to either come in cheaper or fill more time for the same money. That probably explains why Penn and Teller are still in the TV special business when the other guys aren't. They aren't better magicians but they're cleverer and almost every trick has a concept and a story behind it…so they not only do the trick but they show you the set-up and later, they show you how they do it…and in this special, they even showed some of the rehearsals and screw-ups. Mr. Copperfield would rather show you his private parts than show you his rehearsals and screw-ups. He's the master when you have major bucks to spend but when money is tight, as it seems to be these days in prime-time television, Penn and Teller have the edge.

Okay, I'm going to go watch the Saturday Night Live special that followed. I may or may not be back.

I'm watching the satellite and it looks to me like Nascar coverage ran over and NBC just lopped off the first nine minutes of the Penn & Teller Special for the east coast. This kind of thing is among the many reasons the networks are losing market share. I can (presumably) watch the whole thing on the west coast feed but if I were on the opposite coast, I'd be pissed — especially since it wasn't that the race ran over. It was the post-race interviews.

I haven't written anything political here for a little while because every time I try, things quickly descend into the Painfully Obvious. Does anyone not know that Bush is in trouble? That the torture scandal is a no-win game for him? (For more on that, read John McCain, Larry C. Johnson and Frank Rich.)

I actually don't understand the logic behind Bush's new excuse about how Congress had the exact same intelligence and most of it voted to authorize the war in Iraq. Even if that's true — and I don't see Republican leaders racing to assure us it is — it's a pretty lame admission from a guy who claims that even if he'd had better info, he still would have done all the same things. I don't think even supporters of the war are comfy with the notion that the President of the United States and Congress operate off flawed intelligence, even if that somehow leads them to the proper course of action. They need to be reminded that bad information is always dangerous and that this administration doesn't seem all that upset about it.

But I also don't get why Democrats keep harping on this "lie" thing and saying he "misled us into war." Some people will buy that it was deliberate but others will write it off to good intentions and bad sources, and we shouldn't tolerate that, either. Seems to me, Democrats would be better off (and perhaps more accurate) saying, "Our Iraq policies have been a mixture of faulty intelligence, misleading intelligence, cherry-picked intelligence and intelligence slanted to justify what this administration already intended to do. It doesn't matter how much of this was done intentionally. None of these are acceptable, especially when sending Americans off to war." Then again, I also don't get why some of them — John Kerry, especially — aren't more careful about quotes that include the word, "intelligence." When politicians are out there saying, "We didn't have the intelligence" or "our intelligence was insufficient," you wonder if something Freudian isn't in the air.

By the way: I have now had TimeSelect, the new subscription service for the New York Times, for two months and I've yet to read an article there that I couldn't find for free elsewhere on the Internet. The Frank Rich column linked above is a good example. I don't think they're getting another fifty bucks out of me next year, especially since this year's fee is all going for Judith Miller's severance package.

John Cleese gets something named for him.

This article in the L.A. Times says that the TV and motion picture producers' organization is girding for possible strikes by the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild. The two unions' respective contracts don't expire for quite some time but in both labor organizations, officers are being elected on militant platforms and in both groups, staff members are being fired who don't seem in tune with that thinking.

The studios are right to be concerned. There's a very bloody battle waiting to happen if they persist in keeping to the old financial model of paying writers and actors. The industry's revenue sources are changing and the methods of compensation are going to have to change. The only good sign is that everyone seems to recognize, this far in advance, that a war is inevitable. That may give them enough time to play the games necessary to settle things before they explode. (That's not the best sentence I ever wrote but you know what I mean to say…)

Whenever I have been with Jonathan Winters, it's been the same: Everyone around stops and tells him, "You are the funniest man who ever lived." Sometimes, they go on and on about how often they've played his albums, how much they loved him in this or that movie or on some TV show. Often, unaware of the insensitivity in their questions, they ask him why he isn't on TV more often and/or how he feels about so many other performers — Robin Williams, especially — borrowing material from the fertile Winters imagination.

It is also not uncommon for people to try and coax him into a little improvisation, throwing some question at him that just might provoke him to lapse into character. Depending on his mood, Jonathan may or may not comply. I once stood on Cahuenga Boulevard for twenty minutes and watched him turn into an ambassador from some nation with indeterminate dialects, spewing paranoid fantasies about other countries, their ambassadors and, for some reason, the ambassadors' house pets. It was as funny as anything I ever heard on TV, only I didn't hear it on TV. I heard it on Cahuenga, in front of a French restaurant.

Mr. Winters is not the only human being I've been around who is incessantly called the funniest comedian ever. When I worked with Sid Caesar, everyone who passed would stop and tell him the same thing. I've always wondered how it was on the set of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with not just the funniest man in the world but two of them. (And they also had Buster Keaton and a few other contenders around…)

Still, Jonathan is one of a kind. In a lifetime of talking comedy and comedians, I have never encountered anyone who mentioned his name and was not in awe of his mind, his characterizations, his sheer ability to pull funny out of thin air. The talent is truly organic. You could quote most comics' acts and get at least some of the laughs. With Winters, you have to be there. It's only wonderful when he says it and often, only when he says it.

He's eighty years old today. Here's hoping he and Sid both go on being the Funniest Man Alive for a long time.

Some PBS outlets are running an hour called Broadway's Best at Pops, which includes clips of Ethel Merman, Ray Bolger, Carol Channing and Ben Vereen performing with the Boston Pops on past shows. (I guess that last part goes without saying. It's very hard to book Ethel and Ray these days.)

As we all know, late Saturday night/early Sunday morn, NBC runs a complete vintage episode of Saturday Night Live. My TiVo claims the one this weekend is the April 21, 1990 episode hosted by Alec Baldwin with musical guests, the B-52s but NBC press releases say it's the March 12, 1983 show hosted by Bruce Dern with musical guest Leon Redbone. This is the one with the Assassination of Buckwheat, which was among the better things they did that season.

I'm guessing they switched to the 1983 episode because Sunday evening, NBC is running a two-hour special on Saturday Night Live in the eighties. This is preceded by a two-hour Penn and Teller special which I'll also be recording.

I haven't been mentioning the upcoming Mystery Guests on the GSN What's My Line? reruns. But if it matters to you, the next eight shows should be Shelley Winters, Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Jonathan Winters, Bob Cummings, Laurence Harvey, Gertrude Berg and Jimmy Cagney. They're now running shows from March, 1960 so we're starting to hear comments about the presidential election of that year, which makes for an interesting bit of history.

My friend Buzz Dixon, whose name you've seen many a time on this weblog, is a writer of all sorts of things: Screenplays, animation, comics, games, etc. He has recently turned editor/packager with a new line of what his people are calling "America's Premiere Inspirational Manga." Serenity is a comedic teen soap opera about an unhappy girl who finds a happy ending in today's world. She's a lonely teen from a broken family who's coping with certain anger issues as she enrolls in a new school and gets "adopted" by a Christian prayer group. Buzz wrote it and it was drawn primarily by Min Kwon, a young Korean-American woman who's steeped in Asian storytelling techniques yet immersed in American culture as well. I like the fact that the story is written with conviction but without hectoring, and that the kids seem to talk and act like actual kids.

Each bi-monthly paperback edition is issued by Barbour Publishing, a long-time publisher of Christian and inspirational material. You can pick up the first one (and all to come) from Amazon. Here's a link to order. Good luck with this, Buzz.

Disneyland revamping the Pirates of the Carribean ride to bring it more in line with the movie series of the same name? This site says it's so.

A press release from NBC…

NEW YORK – November 10 – "Late Night" host Conan O'Brien and his wife Liza Powel O'Brien are thrilled to announce the arrival of their son, Beckett O'Brien. This is the couple's second child. He was born Wednesday, November 9 in New York City at 8:27 PM. He is a healthy 8lbs 4oz. Mother, baby and father are all well.

The other day, we helped spread the rumor that the Tail o' the Pup, the hot dog stand shaped like a hot dog, may be forced to close soon. This article in the L.A. Times says that its owner is hoping to move it to a new location in Westwood Village. Good news if it happens.

TiVo is rolling out a new software upgrade that made it to one of my machines the other night. It simplifies some menus but the main new feature is something they call Overlap Protection. The message you receive with this doesn't explain it well so I did a little research and I think (note the italics for emphasis) I have it figured out.

First of all, you should know that when TiVo installs this software upgrade, it turns the Overlap Protection feature on. You can turn it off if you like. This is done in the Settings section and the control is on the Recording menu.

If the feature is turned off and you accidentally schedule recordings of two shows that overlap, one will not be recorded. If it's turned on and the shows overlap by six minutes or more, that will still be the case.

But if the shows overlap by five minutes or less, TiVo will record both and merely trim the beginning or ending of one. If you look at your To Do List, a clipped show will be marked with an asterisk.

How does TiVo decide which show to clip and which one to record in whole? If one show is a Season Pass and one is a one-time recording, then the one-time recording will be the one not clipped. If both shows are Season Passes, then the one with the higher priority number on your Season Pass List will be the one not clipped. If both shows are one-time recordings (i.e., neither show is a Season Pass), then the most recently-scheduled one will be the one not clipped. In any case, a TiVo Suggestion will have the lowest standing. It will probably not be recorded at all if there's an overlap but if it is, it will be the one clipped.

There. I think I have that right. Someone tell me if I don't.

In other TiVo News, it is now possible to do an online scheduling via the Yahoo TV Listings page. You'll need to have a Yahoo e-mail and also sign up for online scheduling over at the TiVo site. Once you do, it makes things very easy, especially if your TiVo is connected to the Internet so it can receive the data quickly. We like this a lot.

Lastly: TiVo has started a new promotion on its site where you can get a 40-hour TiVo for free if you sign up for a full year of TiVo service and pay a slightly higher subscription fee for the first year — $16.95 a month as opposed to $12.95. That comes to $203.40 for the box and Year One of its usage and then, I assume, they let you go down to the lower subscription price. The standard best deal for a 40-hour TiVo is $49.99 for the machine and then the first year is $155.40 –which equals $205.39. So it's not much of a savings, though it may be greater because I think you have to pay sales tax on the latter deal and don't on the new one. Still, you may not want to avail yourself of the "free machine" offer because a 40-hour TiVo may be too small for you. I bought an 80-hour TiVo for my office and a few years later, I took it in to these people and had its hard disk replaced with two that jointly give me 317 hours at Basic Quality or 142 at High Quality. I record most things at High Quality though I always have the fear that my TiVo is going to look at what I watch and tell me, "Sorry, you can't record a low quality show at High Quality."

Michael Hiltzik, who blogs for the L.A. Times, has a view of Arnold Schwarzenegger that I find interesting. It includes the prediction that Arnold will not stand for re-election; that he will find some excuse to go do other things. Having predicted that Schwarzenegger would not run in the first place, I'm not about to venture another Arnold projection. But you might want to read Hiltzik's take.