Yesterday here, I put up a link to a website called Perfectly Timed Photos. I have just deleted that item.
One person wrote and said it was possible to contract a virus by going to that site. Since it was only one person and since it wasn't flagged on my computer (which uses the same anti-virus program he has), it's probably nothing but I took the link down just to play it safe. If you went there and your computer is acting odd, you might want to run a scan. Or something.
By now, you've probably heard that Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is indeed getting a makeover and that its director, Julie Taymor, is no longer running the show. Exactly what she will have to do with it in the future is probably still being worked out with lawyer talking to lawyer. The folks now calling the shots probably don't yet know how much the show will be modified and Ms. Taymor can't yet know if she'll even want her name associated with the final product.
Reports are vague on if and when the show may shut down for retooling and the producers may not even know yet. Closing for a while would be a pretty extreme step and a costly one. The big question is how will the grosses hold up, particularly in light of this new announcement. People might rush to see the current version while they can or they may decide to stay away in droves. It's kind of a Broadway tradition that when a spectacular, notable flop is about to close, audiences stampede to see it while they still can…but this show isn't exactly closing.
How has it been doing? Well, the week before last it took in $1,559,341, which was 100.1% of capacity. (Broadway shows sometimes do that. They figure capacity by multiplying the number of available tickets at their standard pricing…but because there are premimum seat deals with some tix going at even higher prices, the total gross can exceed 100%.) Last week, it took in $1,281,776, which was 84.5% of capacity. 84.5% is still a good take — and if you can't make money at that level, you might as well close down. But it's also cause for concern when you drop more than 15% in one week without an obvious reason like a change of leads. I'm curious as to whether they'll go up or down in the next report.
L.A. Times obit for Eddie Brandt. It mentions, as I forgot to, that Eddie was a writer on the Beany & Cecil cartoons of the sixties.
I don't go to many fast food restaurants these days. Haven't even been in a Five Guys since last August. But I'm more than a little fascinated by the business and especially the history of the business — how chains are founded, how they expand, how they contract, etc. I've written before here about the territorial nature of the animal; how there are whole states into which In-N-Out or White Castle will not venture. Five Guys is just now creeping into California and after years of getting closer and closer, Chick-Fil-A is finally about to open in my area — at Sunset and Highland, displacing a Carl's Jr. Can Steak 'n' Shake be far behind?
As new places come in, old ones go away. The only two in the L.A. Weekly piece I miss are Kenny Rogers and Roy Rogers'. There's still a Roy Rogers' chain in the East but what it serves bears little resemblance to the menu they offered out here in the seventies. Why can't Arby's make a roast beef sandwich half that good?
Today on Stu's Show! Your enthusiastic host Stu Shostak will be welcoming two fine actors who'll discuss their work on the popular series, Not Necessarily the News, as well as their impressive careers elsewhere. In the photo below, Danny Breen is the guy with the mustache. He's one of most respected comic actors and writers around, especially in the area of improv comedy. Stuart Pankin is the fellow in the lower left. He's also a well-respected performer…one of my favorite actors, in fact. (One of the most impressive stage performances I've ever seen was Pankin's in a production of City of Angels I saw back in 2006.)
And Not Necessarily the News was a darn good series that among other things, introduced to American television a lot of comic devices and an attitude towards political satire that you now routinely see on programs like The Daily Show and all the late night talk programs. It was a smart series that among many gestures of respect to the viewers actually presumed that most of them had read a newspaper. I haven't seen any of those episodes for years but I'll bet they hold up better than a lot of other "topical" programs of the time because the cast was genuinely funny.
You can tune in today and hear Breen and Pankin on Stu's Show, the flagship offering on Shokus Internet Radio. It all happens live at 4 PM Pacific Time, which is 7 PM if you live on the East Coast, 9 AM if you live in Tokyo, 1 AM if you live in Copenhagen, 3 AM in Moscow, etc. The show repeats throughout the week but you'll enjoy it more if you go to Stu's website, click in the appropriate place and listen live.
Hotel reservations are now open for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. If you don't get one before they sell out, remember that more rooms will be added as time goes on.
You'll probably get your best deal by going through the convention bookers but I'm hearing it's also possible to find lodging on your own. Some folks were very happy last year with hotels or motels that they found along the San Diego trolley route. Happy booking.
Michael McKean: I detest violence. Having said that, I would probably watch a show where the rejected girls slap The Bachelor to death.
A few years ago, some of us watched with puzzlement a war within the family of Frank Frazetta over the control and possible liquidation of his work. I lost my interest at some point. If you still have any, you'll want to read the exhaustive article by Bob Levin about the entire matter.
The New York Times says that the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark "…were negotiating on Monday with their director, Julie Taymor, for her to work with a newly expanded creative team to fix the critically derided $65 million musical or possibly leave the show." That basically means they're telling her, "Either you surrender control or you're outta here." And one suspects someone — probably those producers — arranged for this article to be in the New York Times this morning in order to put pressure on Ms. Taymor to yield without putting a curse on the enterprise and to perhaps make financial compromises. The Times also says that the opening will almost certainly be postponed again from the March 15 date, which would not be a surprise. You don't talk about changing directors and then open a week later.
I don't know anyone involved with this production and I have no inside information from those who are. Strictly as a spectator, I'm going to guess/predict what the producers have in mind. What they have in mind (I think) is Spider-Man 2.0 — a major reboot of this production.
Here's how it would work. They'd acknowledge that the show needs more revision than can be done in one week or even one month. While heralding the fine work of Julie Taymor and others who have constructed the current show, they will announce new creative participants being brought in — a new director or co-director (depending on whether Taymor hangs in there and agrees to a shared credit), a new book writer certainly, possibly new composers, etc. They will announce that the show will not open next week…maybe not even next month. They may or may not set a new, highly-tentative opening date but in any case, it will be after there is sufficient time to perform major surgery and to present a very different version of the show to the public. It might close for a while. It might even have a new title.
The current version will continue to play the Foxwoods Theater…and people will probably continue to flock to see it. The show has been selling out and the odds are good it will continue to do that once word gets out that you can only see it for a limited time. And once a revamped version displaces it, that will probably sell a lot of tickets, many of them to folks who saw Version 1 and want to see Version 2.
Will it work? Depends on how good the revamp is. But I think they're figuring they don't have much of a chance with what they have now; that to open 3/15 is to invite a replay of killer reviews and for the public to assume the show is what it is. Declaring that they're going to, in effect, tear much of it down and start over will leave open the possibility that a great musical can rise from the ashes. And I have a strange hunch that a large percentage of the potential theater-going public would love to see that happen. When this show first came to light, that wasn't the attitude. People saw arrogance and waste in its $65 million budget and were rooting for failure. Now, we're past that. The interesting scenario now would be for some creative super-hero to ride to its rescue and give the world a Spider-Man musical as inarguably grand as we'd all like a Spider-Man musical to be. Let's see if they give that storyline a chance to play out.
A show called The Best of Laugh-In runs this week on various PBS stations. It's on tomorrow night on KOCE in Los Angeles, which is where PBS lives now that KCET is no longer an affiliate.
I was a tremendous fan of Laugh-In when it was first on the air and spent a number of fascinating afternoons poaching on their stage at NBC in, as they say, Beautiful Downtown Burbank. A few weeks ago, I attended an event at the Paley Center to honor the show. The guests were Gary Owens, Arte Johnson, Joanne Worley and Executive Producer George Schlatter, with a number of behind-the-scenes folks in the audience. I didn't report on it here because there was really nothing quotable but it was good to see those folks in person and on the screen. The show is dated in some ways but remarkably fresh in others, and while I haven't seen the special yet, it's always interesting to me to watch those old shows and recall that era.
The most argumentative e-mail I receive of a political nature comes from folks who are (a) anonymous and therefore not to be taken too seriously for that reason alone and (b) of a mindset I can never quite understand. It's the notion that your guy is your guy 100% of the way. Whether it's Barack Obama or George W. Bush, he's always right and everything he does must be spun accordingly. Even when he says or does one thing, then does a one-eighty and says or does the opposite, he was right both times. In the extreme cases where some action is so egregious, so immoral or wrong-headed that it can't possibly be spun to support his flawlessness, then it was somebody else's fault…untrustworthy advisors, faulty intelligence, etc.
Not only did I not think Bush was right most of the time, I never even thought that those who argued that really believed it. If you were a Bush supporter, my heart goes out to you. It must have been rough to have to pretend that invading Iraq was a wise, good faith decision or that waterboarding isn't really torture or that cutting taxes for the rich would help and not hurt the lower and middle-class. I could never bring myself to do that with some of the things Bill Clinton did and now at certain actions of the Obama administration. One such is what's reportedly been happening with Bradley Manning, the soldier who was arrested and charged with passing classified info to Wikileaks.
Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been all over this as have many others placing principle over partisan loyalty. Basically, Manning is being abused in a Marine Corps jail in Virginia, the goal apparently being to beat him down emotionally to the point where he'll confess to everything and anything. The man may well be guilty and he may well be deserving of long-term incarceratation…but as many of us said when the Bush administration was torturing human beings, this is not the kind of thing America is supposed to be doing. This is the kind of thing that when other countries do it, we declare them uncivilized and speak of how much better we are than that. If there is really a mountain of evidence against Manning as we've been told there is, we don't need to physically and mentally brutalize someone to obtain a conviction. And if there isn't a mountain of evidence against him…well, maybe he's, y'know, innocent?
In any case, in the American system of justice, the punishment is supposed to come after the conviction, not before. I'm very disappointed that Obama has allowed this to happen and is making no efforts to stop it.
Since Google's saluting him, I should. The late Will Eisner was a much-loved individual and not just because he wrote and drew such wonderful comics. People just liked Will. They admired his industry and his willingness to go to conventions and not be The Great Will Eisner but just one among many equals. One could argue whether there was more reverence at Comic-Con for Will or for his one-time employee, Jack Kirby. But after Jack passed, Will had the place to himself in that regard and he wore it well. He was, like Jack, accessible and within reason, humble. He was also sharp and productive, right up to his last year. The comics he produced at age 75+ compared favorably to those produced by anyone, himself included, at any age. Even if you can't write or draw, you ought take another look at that guy as a Role Model…because you are pretty likely to get old and Will did that as well as anyone, too.
I always have a book around that I read in small increments when I suddenly have ten minutes with nothing to do. At the moment, it's Will Eisner: A Dreamer's Life in Comics by Michael Schumacher. He could have substituted words like "leader's" or "pioneer's" for "dreamer's" in the title and it would have worked too…but "dreamer's" is also accurate. I'm enjoying the book a lot and have yet to come across anything with which I disagreed. What I have come across are dozens of stories that make me say, "Gee, I wish I'd asked Will about that." As long as we had him around and as much as we got from him, it wasn't enough. Here, by the way, is an Amazon link to order a copy of this fine volume.
In it, Schumacher mentions the 1999 panel I moderated at Comic-Con which brought together, for the only time ever, Eisner and another of his one-time employees, Chuck Cuidera. It was an interesting panel because the two men did not like each other. Chuck was jealous of Will for obvious reasons, money probably being the biggest. I got the feeling Chuck didn't like anyone very much but since Will represented success in comics and Chuck hadn't had much, Will was a special target. There was a genuine dispute as to which of them (if either) had created Blackhawk, which was a pretty successful comic in its day. Chuck was determined to lay sole claim to that credit. Will wasn't but he wasn't about to let Chuck get away with it, either.
Given that contentiousness, Will might have been forgiven for avoiding any face-to-face with Cuidera altogether…but since they were both going to be at the con, I had to ask if there was any way to get them in the same dais at the same time. I sent him a fax, didn't hear anything for a week or so and figured, "Well, I can't blame him for not wanting to do it." I didn't know he was out of town. When he got home, he immediately faxed me back that he'd love to do it…
After the fax arrived here but before I'd noticed it sitting in my fax machine, Will phoned me to make sure I'd received it and to apologize for not answering sooner. He made me think that I'd been wrong and that there was no tension between them. When we got them in the room together at San Diego, I instantly realized I'd been right the first time. They were not old buddies being reunited and Will knew exactly how much Chuck resented him and the fact that people said Will Eisner had created Blackhawk. Will also realized that the best way to deal with it was to confront Cuidera in this forum and to come at it from a friendly attitude of camaraderie and giving Chuck as much respect as possible, up to but not including the words, "Chuck created Blackhawk." A partial transcript of that panel can be read here.
I was seated between them. My "read" was that Chuck walked into the room wanting to make it clear to the assemblage that he thought Will had taken more credit than he deserved for Blackhawk and some other things. But then he noticed the reverence that the audience had for Will…and Will, as you can see, began to speak well of Chuck and to treat him as an equal and one who warranted more recognition. And because of it all, Chuck's resentments got stuck in Neutral and never did get into gear. I don't know if either Will or Chuck deserves whole or shared credit for creating Blackhawk but I do know Will handled an awkward situation well by meeting it head-on and being a true (if crafty) gentleman about it. Yet another thing to admire him for.
If you are not familiar with the works of Will Eisner — there must be someone reading this who isn't — here's another Amazon link. It's so you can buy a copy of The Contract with God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue, a collection of stories created about residents in a Jewish tenement section of New York back when Billy Eisner was a wee lad. Will was 60 when he started producing material like this and kept it up, getting better and better at it, for the rest of his life.
One year, not long before he left us, Will won an Eisner Award. The next day, I had him on a panel and I asked him how it felt to finally have done work that measured up to the standard of Will Eisner. He laughed and I forget what he actually said in reply. But he later said to me, "I've spent my whole life trying to do work that lives up to the standard of Will Eisner." I said something like, "We all do," and he said, "Well, then you know it just gets harder and harder."
Lyle Davis is a very smart man.
So has everyone seen that the Google page today celebrates what would have been the 94th birthday of Will Eisner? Go take a look at it while the special logo is still up…and make sure to read the accompanying tribute by Scott McCloud.
I have a posting coming up one of these days — it's about half-finished — about the dilemmas of those of us with food allergies and how we cope with restaurants that don't know how to leave the guacamole off a dish…or won't. But in the meantime, read this article in the N.Y. Times about how some restaurants simply refuse to change dishes or supply condiments. I will have much to say about this.