One nice by-product of the Yogi Bear movie may be that the cartoon superstar has written a book about his life, times and crimes. It's an "as told to" that was told to my friend Earl Kress and it's a fun little book that nicely captures the spirit and spunk of its furry author. It's called Life is a Pic-a-Nic: Tips and Tricks for the Smarter Than the Av-er-age Bear and you can order a copy right about here.
On Tuesday, December 7, Dick Cavett will be interviewed about his new book, Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets, and he'll be interviewed by Mel Brooks. It's an event held by the Writers Bloc, a local concern that stages evenings where one interesting person questions another interesting person. The second interesting person usually has a new book out and you can usually buy a copy at the event and get it signed, and I assume that will be the case here. It takes place at 7:30 PM at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills and further details may be found at this link.
On Thursday, December 9, The Hundreds (a new store out in Santa Monica) is kicking off a major promotion involving clothing and merchandise featuring everyone's favorite lasagna-guzzling cat, Garfield. There will be an art show featuring many depictions of said feline by artists other than Jim Davis. There will also be Jim Davis, who will be signing stuff there and a lot of the voice actors from The Garfield Show will be present, as will I…and I'm told Garfield himself will even put in an appearance. It starts at 8 PM at The Hundreds, which is located at 416 Broadway in Santa Monica…and that literally is all they've told me about it.
Even Conservative pundits like Dan Drezner think it's stupid to not repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Drezner makes mention of "…pop psychoanalysis about what's exactly driving John McCain's truculence." There are a lot of theories out there, most of which involve some desire to kiss up to the extreme right-wing for political advantage. The more I think about it, the more I think that's not it. Even if McCain runs for another term, that's six years from now…a lifetime in politics. If ever there was a guy who now could afford to reach across the aisle and maybe even actually be a maverick, it's John McCain at the moment.
Hey, how's this for a diagnosis from afar of a man I don't know? Having lost his last shot at the presidency, McCain is just trying to show he can still be the most important man in Washington. If he quietly went with the G.O.P. flow, everyone wouldn't be running around asking how they can get John McCain to approve a major policy change. So it's not about gays in the military. It's just about McCain proving he can make people jump through hoops…and oh, yes — it does get him on TV an awful lot, doesn't it?
Just a thought.
Looking back at the musical Camelot, fifty years after it first opened on Broadway.
This may not interest some of you but heck, it's my weblog and it interests me. I'm oddly fascinated by the business models and practices of the fast food industry. I eat very few of my meals in such establishments these days but it still intrigues me how they market their products and how territorial some of the large chains are. In-N-Out, for instance, has only been in California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona and is just now working its way into Texas. Five Guys (my fave burger joint) is all over some states but just now establishing a presence in mine.
White Castle has long refused to move beyond the borders of certain states. About fifteen years ago, I was at a party in Las Vegas and I met a gent who was a senior exec in a hotel venture that was about to break ground…and he let me in on what he called a "big secret," one which would help ensure that his project was a smash success. Its food court, he told me, was going to include a White Castle. My eyebrows must have gone up about three stories and I said, "Gee, I thought they always refused offers to come out here." He replied that they'd repeatedly refused his but that didn't matter. "I get what I want," he said…and he went on to explain how he was going to crush those bastards at White Castle and force them to sell their sliders in his casino.
That casino has now been open for at least twelve years. There is no White Castle in it, nor is there one anywhere in the state of Nevada. The bastards won, as bastards so often do.
Another one of those territorial chains that some people love is Steak 'n Shake, which is currently in 22 states, none of them out west. As of some time this week though, there's an exception: They're opening one in the South Point in Las Vegas. That's the hotel from which Jerry Lewis does his annual telethon. It's located way off The Strip…one of those places that has to figure out gimmicks to get the tourists to drive there or take a cab. I'll bet Steak 'n Shake brings in a few. There are a few In-N-Out burgers in Vegas and they've become ritual tourist stops. The one on Dean Martin Drive, not far from New York, New York is always jammed with folks from states that don't have In-N-Out. People have been known to get in a taxi at their hotel and have it just take them through the In-N-Out drive-thru, then right back to their hotel. A cab driver once told me a fare had done that and tipped him a double-double with fries and a large Coke. He thought that was great.
Once upon a time, Chinese Food was a major attraction in that town. There were cities in this country where it was difficult if not impossible to get a decent order of Moo Goo Anything. Around the same time as that party where the man was promising to bring White Castle to its knees and Vegas, an aging Casino Host (a guy who'd worked there since he built the city) told me a long, fascinating story of how he'd been sent to San Francisco and the Chinatown therein. His assignment was to find a family that operated a great Chinese restaurant there and make them an offer to relocate to Vegas and run one in the establishment for which this man worked. He spent several days going from Chinese restaurant to Chinese restaurant sampling cuisines — "Greatest job I ever had" — and he finally picked out the one and got them to move. At some of the older hotels like the Barbary Coast and the Stardust, you used to see signs outside that advertised "Chinese Food" like that was some unique offering you could get nowhere else.
So now it's fast food burgers. Fine. Five Guys, by the way, has just announced their first outlet in Las Vegas. I'll let you know when there's a White Castle on The Strip. The bastards can't hold out forever.
Leonard Maltin reviews the new DVD/Blu-ray release of Fantasia…and reveals a secret I hadn't heard about the narration provided in it by the host, Deems Taylor.
When the economy is bad — and bad it is these days without a lot of quick relief in sight — aspiring authors get exploited. Actually, aspiring authors are exploited when the economy is good, too. There has never been, nor will there ever be a paucity of sleazy agents, publishing houses, vanity presses, teachers, literary managers and advisors or other predators looking to cash in on someone's dream of becoming the next Stephen King or David Mamet. It just gets worse when unemployment is high because you have all these people outta work, looking around desperately for a new and lucrative career.
A good/honest teacher of writing (now sadly deceased) was a gent named Bill Idelson, who also had a nice career as a writer and actor. Idelson used to teach his students that, "In order to break into the business, you have to let someone else exploit you a little." Depending on how big that "little" is, I might argue the point. I would say that any situation where you pay someone else to submit or publish your work, no matter how reasonable the fee may sound, is unacceptable exploitation. So is writing on "spec" on someone else's project. It is Kosher to pay for a good, legit writing teacher or seminar to help you learn your craft and how to market it. That's assuming the fee is reasonable and if you don't know what reasonable is, you need to find out before you write so much as a check.
But anything more than that is…well, I'd use one of those metaphors about volunteering to bend over, grab your ankles and invite someone to service you from behind but I think Rush Limbaugh now has them all copyrighted. And also conceivably you might enjoy the physical version of that whereas paying money to get your work submitted or published will just make you poor and unhappy.
I have occasionally encountered wanna-bes whose attitude is, "Yes, you're probably right but I'm determined to become a successful writer and that's the only opportunity I have." That's brain-dead stupid. Imagine if your goal was to play for the Seattle Mariners…or maybe even to get on a professional baseball team. Imagine that some odorous homeless guy came up to you on the street and said, "Gimme a thousand dollars and I'll introduce you to their talent scout" and you forked over the cash and said, "Well, gee…it was the only offer I had."
Well, paying someone to submit your writing or to publish it or — the big new scam — entering a "contest" is even stupider than that. Because in the one-in-a-zillion cases where it does lead to a real writing gig, the following rule applies: If you come into the business as an exploited amateur, you pretty much stay that way. You become the guy they go to whenever it's like, "We need someone for this project who'll do tons of work on spec and won't complain if we pay him bad money…or never pay him at all." They don't usually say it quite that explicitly but that's what it amounts to.
As you might imagine, this post was inspired by a real-life incident. I get a lot of calls from writers I know who are outta work — some good friends, some not…some I barely know but they've suddenly decided we're bosom buddies. The other day, I got one from a fellow who is desperate and not because he's not working. This guy is working his butt off. The problem is he's not getting paid for all the stuff he's writing.
A self-described manager-publisher-producer had an idea for a new comic book that, he said, would easily become a smash hit in that format, a bigger hit as a line of toys and the biggest hit as a $50 million+ CGI animated feature. My friend thought he was being hired to write the first issue of the comic and would be paid. Nope. The manager-publisher-producer appended a little codicil: "You get paid when I get paid" and there was no deal in place to publish or pay anyone. And then the m-p-p asked my friend to also write up a bible for the potential animated series, a treatment for a potential live-action movie, a set of character descriptions for toy companies to consider, a scenario for an XBox game, etc. My friend invoked the "it's the only opportunity I have at the moment" rationale and did all or most of that for, of course, no money.
Finally, he refused to write another syllable without pay. The m-p-p came back to him and said, "Look…you have a lot of time invested in this project…" Which was true. And what my friend was all too aware of is that he didn't own this project. The manager-publisher-producer-asshole owns this project so my friend can't take all his work elsewhere to try and sell it. The producer guy said, "What we need to get all these investors and studios interested is product. We need to get the comic book published so we have something tangible to show them." My friend agreed that made sense…up until his exploiter suggested that he, the unpaid writer (a) find a brilliant artist who'd also work on such speculative terms and then (b) self-publish the comic. In other words, he was told, "You finance this book with my characters so maybe I can sell a movie."
My friend couldn't have felt like more of a pigeon if you'd tied a little message to his leg and told him to flap his wings and fly somewhere to deliver it.
This is the worst example I've heard in a long time of a writer getting manipulated into a horrible deal because of his desperation 'n' dreams…but the lesser cases end no more happily. This especially applies to vanity presses and "writing contests." Another writer friend I have — a successful one named Lee Goldberg — spends a lot of time on his blog exposing such writer-screwing scams. First rule of professional writing: They pay you, you don't pay them.
I know times are tough. Believe me, I know times are tough. But there's never a good moment to let yourself be exploited by people who think you're so hungry, you'll work for promises…not until MasterCard accepts promises from scumbags as payment.
I find Samantha Bee of The Daily Show to be funny in a very refreshing way. Turns out she's also a refreshing kind of parent as this interview will show.
According to this, the first preview of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark did take place last night. The show was stopped five times for technical adjustments and wound up running three hours and 20 minutes. No word on how long the show actually is…that is, how long it would have run without the unplanned stops. Just for the sake of comparison, Wicked runs two hours and 30 minutes plus a 15 minute intermission while The Lion King runs two hours and 40 minutes and that includes the intermission. The folks seeing Spider-Man now are probably seeing a lot of things that won't be in the show by the time it officially opens on January 11.
I can't embed it here but if you want to see a TV commercial for the about-to-start-previewing Broadway show, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, here it is. [Caution: Depending on which browser you're using, the video/audio may start immediately upon the loading of that page.]
Let Fido Dido read your mind.
Someone asked me the other day what old TV show that hasn't had a formal DVD release I would like to see so issued. A few months ago, my answer would probably have been Car 54, Where Are You? but I recently found out that a collection of Season One is on the way. My friend Hank Garrett, who is one of the few surviving cast members, was recently flown to New York. He and his fellow cast member Charlotte Rae were interviewed by Robert Klein for a Special Feature that will be included on the DVD. Hank has no idea when it'll be out but the fact that it's on the way is great to hear. If you're not familiar with those shows, you're in for a treat.
My second choice might be the American version of That Was the Week That Was, which aired here from 1964-1965. I remember it as an uneven but often brilliant comedy show that skewered events in the news with a rotating cast that included Alan Alda, Henry Morgan, David Frost, Buck Henry, Burr Tillstrom, Elliot Reid and many others. I also remember it being preempted almost constantly during the '64 presidential election. Back then, it was not uncommon for parties or candidates to buy up a half-hour or hour of evening network time to air political ads, sometimes with little advance warning. The Republican National Committee somehow decided it would help Barry Goldwater get elected if they prevented TW3, as it was affectionately called, from airing. So each week for months, we'd tune in when TV Guide said it would be on and each week, we'd be disappointed to find a Goldwater ad in its stead. Anyway, I'd love to see some whole episodes of that show if any exist. Some collectors have told me that not much has survived.
So I guess my choice would be The Defenders, no relation to the current program of that name. Aired on CBS from 1961-1965, it was a courtroom drama starring E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed as a father-son lawyer team that handled important, polemic cases. Unlike the concurrent Perry Mason (which also aired on CBS), the accused was not always proven innocent and the stories were not whodunnits. Often, they had to do with the morality of our laws and the legality of our morals. A few years ago, someone sent me a VHS tape of four episodes and I thought they held up quite well…and every one of them gave me a lot to think about. Every bit of controversy in them was still controversial, though often not in the same way as in the sixties. So that's my vote: The Defenders. Will someone get on that, please?
I am not particularly excited about the upcoming Spider-Man musical because…well, though I like Spider-Man and I like musicals, they don't seem to go together. I like clam chowder too, and if someone decided to make a musical about clam chowder, it would not automatically command my attention, either. Maybe Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will surprise me. It's supposed to open soon on Broadway with previews commencing this weekend. That is, assuming they don't postpone it all for the hundred-and-ninth time. (You may not be able to read it but the above ad announces an opening date of February 18, 2010.) I know little about it except that the budget has swelled to the point where a lot of theater observers are shaking their heads, thinking what a spectacular success or disaster it could be and what either outcome will mean to the business. And I suppose there are those schadenfreude folks out there rooting for disaster. The theatrical community is full of loving, passionate people but there's a seamy flank that lives to trash the efforts of others.
Jesse Green has written a long article about the current status of the show and we also have one by Patrick Healy in the New York Times. Being me, I can't help note that neither article contains any mention whatsoever of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko or anyone who was ever important to the success of the property. Both focus mainly on the money and the technical wizardry, not on the characters or story. If that's how the show works, that may be a problem right there. Then again, if the plot and songs aren't wonderful, they may still sell a lot of tickets to folks who just want to see the money.
One thing I wonder about a show like this: A lot of Broadway hits don't make huge sums of cash in New York. They break even there or show a modest profit…and then the real bucks come from all the touring companies and regional theater productions that ensue. The original Fiddler on the Roof ran on Broadway for over 3200 performances and made a lot of people rich just with that…but that's nothing compared to the money that comes in from the revivals and the umpteen-zillion productions of it done of it around the country each year. Most of those are possible because the show is not expensive to stage. You and I could get a small theater and couple thousand bucks and put it on, assuming we could find some Jews somewhere. Or at least, people who can pass for Jews. The point is the cost does not provide a disincentive. It doesn't require much capital to mount A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum or Guys & Dolls or Company or Damn Yankees or any of those. You can even stick one in (and I have seen all of those in) a 99-seat theater. I once saw You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in a theater with a capacity of 30 and I doubt they spent more than $300 on sets and costumes and tuning the one piano that comprised the entire orchestra.
Assuming the Spider-Man musical is a smash, what else can happen to it? Where will it be seen apart from that one house near Times Square and maybe one touring company that will probably have to simplify the effects and sets? There has recently been a trend in local theater towards "minimalist" productions…people staging Camelot, for instance, with a cast of eight and a small orchestra. You can sometimes do that with a show where the "stars" are the story and the songs. I've also seen a couple of versions of It's A Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman done for eleven dollars but those were all spoofs where they made fun of the cheap sets and lack of, for example, money to fly their star around onstage. Somehow, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is feeling like a show that isn't going to go either route. It's feeling like theater as one-time spectacular event as opposed to theater for the ages. Some folks are probably worried that if it succeeds on that level, what's the next step?
The other day here, we linked to a video of The Danny Kaye Show from 1964. Every time I see one of these, I marvel at how talented that man was…and how we don't have that kind of variety show these days because we really don't have that kind of performer. Name me someone prominent of the current generation who could do a monologue, play characters in a sketch, sing a duet with some vocalist guest star and then perform a dance number with the chorus.
I'm not saying there's no one but certainly no one springs instantly to my mind. Most likely if such a person exists, they're known for only one of those skills — the one that brought them their fame — and to our surprise, they could actually handle the others. And they wouldn't even have to be that proficient in all those talents. Garry Moore, seen below, sure wasn't. But he could do a little of each and he had great connectivity as a host (the ability to connect with an audience) and he was apparently and happily deficient in Performers' Ego, meaning that he didn't mind if someone else on his show grabbed the spotlight. That's how Carol Burnett happened. Moore happily allowed a supporting player to outshine him.
True, the world and tastes in television have changed…but so has the talent pool. I was a writer on a batch of variety pilots and specials in the seventies and eighties, none of which starred someone who should really have been doing that. One critic, decrying the network's choice of star, had asked why they weren't instead bringing America the next Carol Burnett. Easy answer: They couldn't find her…or if they found her, they couldn't get her. (There was a brief moment when NBC wanted to star Gilda Radner in such a show but she declined.) Over the years, I have occasionally gone through meetings with stars who'd been proposed to star in variety shows. Here are three "blind" — meaning I'm not telling who they were — examples that reflect three reasons I've noted for the dearth of ideal variety show hosts…
Example #1 was a music superstar, at least if you define that term in number of records sold. This man had sold millions of them. A producer who thought the star could topline a weekly variety hour took me to his home to sell that premise and I, as the proposed Head Writer for such a program, laid out the format and some of the ideas I'd had. The star listened politely, laughed in all the right places, then asked the producer what kind of money he might make from such a gig and how much of his time it might require. The producer told him and the meeting was as good as over. "I make that in two nights in Vegas," the star said as modestly as anyone could say such a thing. The producer, treading water now, suggested that a weekly variety show would boost the star's fame and drive even more fans his way. The star, again with remarkable humility in his voice, pointed out that he already sold out every venue he played and asked, "Why would I want to work ten times as hard and give up most of those concerts to make one-fifth the money?" We couldn't answer that so we thanked him and left.
Example #2 was a musical act who'd had a few hits…and by a "few," I mean less than three. They were eager to star in a weekly, prime-time variety series but just talking to them in the conference room of the same producer as in Example #1, a problem was obvious: They couldn't talk. They could sing but if we'd wanted them to come out and just say, "Welcome to our show," we'd have had to put it on TelePrompter and cue cards, rehearse it for an hour and then tape it one word at a time and edit it all together. I'd done those shows and so had this producer…and complicating it was that the musical act had Managers (with a capital "M"). The Managers were sure the act would be the biggest thing since the Beatles — one even said that in those terms — and they weren't sure they wanted their Superstars of Mañana to be tied down to a weekly gig. They did, however, suggest that there were ways that would convince then…say, if they [The Managers] got to own the show, serve as Executive Producers and to book all the other acts they represented. The producer and I exchanged looks that suggested that meeting was effectively over and it was.
Example #3 was a comedian who very much wanted to do a show but wanted to know how I saw his role in it. How I saw it didn't sit well with him. It was as a host who served as the anchor and who reacted to funny guest stars and regulars much the way Jack Benny played off Dennis Day, Don Wilson, Mel Blanc and so on. The comedian had said Jack Benny was his idol but he told us flat out that if he was going to do a show that had his name in the title (The XXXX XXXXXX Show, which was the only title he'd accept) then he was going to be the funny one. I repeated myself about Benny and reminded him that Mary Tyler Moore let Ed Asner, Ted Knight, Betty White and Cloris Leachman be the funny ones, and how Andy Griffith let Don Knotts walk off with The Andy Griffith Show. "No one in television was ever more successful and beloved than Mary Tyler Moore and Andy Griffith," I noted. He didn't dispute my history lesson but said he would not do a show like that.
The moment I knew this meeting was over came when I said, "But if, let's say, we had Robin Williams as a guest star…" and the comedian said, "…then I'd damn well better get more laughs than he does." The producer in this case thought there was still a sale to be made so the project went forward…for about a week. That was how long it took the buyers at all three networks to say — and this is a quote from one of them — "Who'd want to watch a show starring that asshole?" I couldn't disagree a whole lot.
I have this odd idea in my head that variety shows are going to make a comeback one of these days. It'll take two things. One is, of course, an amazing star or stars. Just because that person/act isn't easy to name at the moment doesn't mean they aren't out there or on their way. The other requirement will be for someone to rethink the whole idea of a variety show and to reinvent the form…not in toto but the way shows like All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show reinvented sitcoms or the way Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? took prime-time game shows to a new level. This is not to say I think it's going to happen next year or the one thereafter. But it'll happen. In television, no good idea has ever gone away forever. Hell, we can't even get rid of the bad ones.
