I said earlier here that I didn't know why Barack Obama doesn't fill the largest stadium available, as he easily could, and give a big speech for Health Care Reform before a packed, cheering crowd. Well, obviously he reads this blog and rushes to do everything I suggest. Bill Stiteler informs me that Obama's giving just such a speech this Saturday in Minneapolis.

Screenwriter Supreme Josh Olson writes an article that a lot of professional writers would like to write. It's about how we all get assailed (yes, even lowly me) to read the hopeful spec scripts of amateurs and how it creates all sorts of problems for us.

If I'd written this piece — and I think I have, only I was probably more tactful and therefore less effective — I'd have added that the opinion of another writer really doesn't (or shouldn't) matter to you. What should matter is the reaction of someone who has the power to actually do something with your script, like buy it or get it produced. Secondly, I would have told the tale of a guy about two years ago who oughta be the poster boy for How Not To Have Your Script Read.

He interviewed me briefly about a mutual acquaintance of ours — a real and interesting person who was the subject of the screenplay he was writing…only I didn't know at the time he was writing a screenplay. He later called and said, "I've written something about him and I'd like you to take a look at it." Thinking he'd penned a factual-type article for something and was responsibly fact-checking, I told him to send it over. Three days later, I received a huge package.

It started with a statement I was asked to sign and send back to him along with the enclosed script and my comments. In the statement, I acknowledged that I'd read the screenplay and that if I ever wrote anything even vaguely similar, it would constitute admitted plagiarism and he could sue me for everything I owned. And as if that wasn't enough to make me scurry to read his work, the enclosed script was 325 pages.

So I called the guy and told him his script was winging its way back to him, unloved and unread. And trying to be helpful, I told him, "No one is going to read a screenplay that's over around 120 pages."

He replied, "I have a copy here of the script for Apocalypse Now and it's 325 pages." (I don't know that it is but that's what he said.)

I said, "Well, maybe but this story isn't Apocalypse Now and you aren't John Milius and/or Francis Ford Coppola." I also tried gently to explain to the guy that there's a difference between a script that you write so someone will read it and the Apocalypse Now script he had, which was probably a shooting draft that didn't have to "sell" anyone.

He said, "If their screenplay can be 325 pages, mine can be 325 pages."

So as not to trigger a deluge of 325-page spec screenplays, I almost wish I could end this anecdote by reporting that no one ever read the script. As it turns out, it's Gus Van Sant's next picture and it starts shooting in January of 2010 with a cast that includes Sean Penn, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton and Frank Langella. And yes, I'm lying about that and no one has ever read the script. Or ever will.

Thanks to Shelly Goldstein for telling me about Josh's article. And please do not ask Josh to read your script because he's already twice had to postpone lunches we had scheduled.

I thought Obama's speech last night was pretty good and I don't know why the guy doesn't give more of them. For that matter, I don't know why he doesn't fill the largest stadium available, as he easily could, and give a big speech for Health Care Reform before a packed, cheering crowd. It would go a long way to countering any impressions out there that the troglodytes who scream at town hall meetings are in any way speaking for the majority of the American public. Didn't Republicans misplay this hand before? I seem to recall them thinking they could play to the extreme right in their party, hate Bill Clinton right out of the White House and parlay his ouster into a permanent majority.

Joe Wilson, the yutz Congressguy who yelled at the president unwisely, was just on the news apologizing yet again and fumbling to explain how a bill which explicitly says —

Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

— would actually cover folks who are in this country illegally. It's hard to believe he acted, as he now claims, out of emotion. Easier to believe is premeditated thought that such a heckle would make him a hero with the wingnut crowd and they'd shovel cash into his re-election campaign. What he didn't figure was that he was giving the elder statesmen of his party a chance to seem mature by scolding him, and that his opponent in the next election would instantly receive a flood of donations. So which one of the late night comics will have someone in their audience tonight yelling "You lie!" at their monologues?

Several folks have sent me a widely-circulated recipe for latkes that purports to be the Jennie Grossinger formula. It sounds about right to me…

2 eggs
3 cups of grated, drained potatoes
4 tablespoons of grated onion
1 teaspoon of salt
¼ teaspoon of pepper
2 tablespoons of cracker or matzo meal
½ cup fat or butter

Beat the eggs and add the potatoes, onion, salt, pepper and meal. Heat half the fat or butter in a frying pan and drop the potato mixture into it by the tablespoon. Fry until browned on both sides. Keep pancakes hot until all are fried and add more fat or butter as required. Serves 8.

My mother omitted the pepper, used a little more onion and instead of the fat or butter, she fried in about a half-inch of oil — corn oil, usually. She used, of course, matzo meal, not cracker meal and then, when the latkes came out of the frying pan, she'd lay them on paper towels to absorb some of the oil. They were quite wonderful…even cold, later in the evening.

Not that I want to keep sending traffic to Nikki Finke's site but she's all over the news that a Writers Guild trial board cleared Jay Leno of all charges of scabbing during our last strike, and even said that he was due an apology for the accusation.

I heard a little about this from folks involved in it all at the time. What's being reported now is not exactly what I heard but it's also not utterly at odds with it. In any case, I'm glad the WGA looked into the matter. Leno was in a position where he could easily have violated Guild rules and there were some (apparently spurious) reports that he had. It would have been very easy for the WGA to just decide that no matter what he did, they were not going to investigate the allegations and risk a public battle with a man who had his stature…and ability to hire good lawyers. I'm also glad that they found nothing wrong and I wish they'd just announced that and issued the apology.

In a sense, I'm happy for Paul Levitz. He can probably have a happier, more creative life when he's not in the position to occasionally have to play Bad Cop or deal with a thousand deal points and corporate concerns. He may also be able to move back towards a long-neglected love of writing, as well. But for the comic book business, it's a potential negative if what fills the void doesn't care as passionately as he always has about print media. It will be especially unfortunate if his successors-in-interest fail to build upon (or even more foolishly, reverse) the principles and momentum he helped establish with regard to how the company treats talent.

Let me get some Full Disclosure stuff out of the way here: I've known Paul for over 35 years. Back when he barely had one foot in the comic book business — and was scoffing at the notion of ever getting in with both — I helped him put out fanzines in his basement in Brooklyn. That's how far back we go. As he climbed the slipperiest of ladders at DC, we had our occasional differences but that was another time, another place…another industry, almost. We still have our intermittent disagreements but he is a superb practitioner of the belief that you can settle differences, even in the business arena, without mud-wrestling. You can even be mature enough to recognize that you and/or your company have erred and you can go back and do whatever is humanly possible to right past wrongs.

When I got into comics around 1970, the business was on shaky ground, both morally and financially. Sales were bad and not one single person was predicting a recovery. In a not-unrelated manner, there was also an ugly tendency to treat writers and artists (and to a lesser but palpable extent, staff personnel) as indentured servants who had to at all cost remain indentured. That was possible back when the core of the talent pool was still folks who'd grown up in or around the Depression and who still lived in constant terror of even short-term unemployment. That, and the fact that most of them knew no other way to make a living made it feasible to treat freelancers like cattle and to still have freelancers.

Today, if you handled artists that way, there'd be nobody around to draw Batman. That's because the new generation that bled into comics around then simply and wisely wouldn't put up with it. Some of us would endure a lot to turn our hobbies into our careers and to get to play with our childhood favorites…but we hadn't grown up in the thirties. More to the point, we'd seen what The System, as it was then configured, did to writers and artists whose work we loved, and were well aware of the Dead End in which so many of them were trapped. One reason I never made comics my entire life was that I saw how my friend/employer Jack Kirby was treated. I looked at his track record in terms of making money for publishers. It was one I could never hope to approach, let alone equal. Then I looked at how little he'd attained in terms of savings or job security and…well, the top of his profession, which was where Jack resided, didn't look all that desirable. Then.

I also heard him argue as to how the business had to change, if not for moral reasons than merely in order to survive. Almost without exception, his arguments were dismissed, in some cases as the ravings of a looney who simply did not understand the business he was in. But even those who nodded in concurrence felt helpless as he spoke of treating talent with respect and of respecting the work, and of giving writers and artists a chance to participate financially in their creations. On a more pragmatic level, he talked of artists having their original art returned and of matters like proper credits and health insurance. In '70, both DC and Marvel had recently experienced corporate takeovers and in light of them, Jack was surer than ever that better working conditions had to come…

…and come they did. Every last thing he advocated.

Kirby lived to see that day, even if most of the improvements came too late for him to profit directly from them. It was a testimony to his general classiness that he was not the kind of guy to say "I told you so." Since I am nowhere near as classy, I feel I can and should say it often on his behalf.

And the comic book industry is still here. Jack isn't but it is. It's had some rough times and there are still blemishes…but the fact that it didn't all go the way of pulp magazines in 1980 has much to do with its becoming more mature in how it has treated its creative talent, both past and present. A change in distribution methods was the biggest lifesaver but even it would not have worked if the pages were being generated under the old plantation mentality. DC and Marvel could not now interface with Time-Warner and — assuming the deal goes through — Disney if they had not evolved from hot dog joints into real businesses.

Many have taken credit for that evolution, including some who fought it until it became inevitable and a few who resisted even after that time. Among those who honestly do deserve great credit is Paul Levitz.

Just how much he deserves is not something I'm prepared to gauge in a weblog, nor can I start listing others who made the change occur, made it possible for so many to make decent livings in the field. But Paul's in for a big share. There's a reason that last year at San Diego, he became the first person in any sort of "executive" capacity to receive the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award.

Even harder would be to assess how much of what he made happen was shrewd business strategy and how much was simple human decency. I suspect the answer is that at some point, Paul figured out those two values did not have to be mutually-exclusive. Even if that's all he realized, that puts him way ahead of some folks who've been in charge at companies I've observed or worked for.

I have dozens of stories of Paul being a gentleman in a position where some would fear being gentle. One anecdote I haven't the time or space to tell in detail didn't even involve DC. It involved another company where there was a dispute over ethics and policy versus immediate monetary considerations. It was finally settled with the parties involved asking, "What would Levitz do?" Because even though they were competitors — or perhaps because they were competitors — they recognized that Paul had demonstrated that pursuing the right approach from a moral standpoint will almost always lead you to the proper business decision.

We're entering a new era in how a comic book company will fit into a larger corporation and into a marketplace where interest in print media of almost any kind is plunging. A lot of the old jobs and the folks who fill them are subject to realignment. Paul had an astounding run at DC, enduring more than twice as long as anyone would ever have imagined. One of the reasons they pay corporate execs so much is that most of the jobs don't last anywhere near that length and breadth of time.

He still has a role at DC and that company will be fortunate to have him contributing for some time to come. And when he's finally done with it, whenever that is, he can look back with pride. He made the comic book business a much more decent place to live in.

The news that Paul Levitz is "transitioning out" of his position as publisher and president of DC Comics is not good news for the publishing industry. Note the word "publishing" in that sentence. The revenues generated by Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other DC-controlled properties are a bigger issue which others are hurriedly discussing. What Paul's move will mean there is anyone's guess, hinging on whether more or more successful TV shows and movies get made. The presumption is we'll see more. Will they be more successful? Depends on who does them and how well they do them.

Meanwhile, I think those of us who care about printed-on-paper comics will see this day as a turning point…or maybe a downturning point. Publishing comic books has not been all that important at either DC or Marvel for a long time. Movie deals, TV shows, videogames, branding, licensing and all the other ways to "monetize" beloved characters have all yielded a lot more cash lately…and by a Hulk-sized margin. Batman used to be a comic book character that also generated revenue via its appearances on TV, in movies and by adorning toys. Now, it's a multimedia property that brings in dollars from a great many directions, one of which happens to be the publishing of comic books.

So the question for some of us becomes: How much interest will DC have in doing that, in publishing comic books? Paul was great at dealing with the movie deals and the videogames and the merchandising but he was also a publisher of comic books. He learned the business when that was Job One and everything else was ancillary income. The same question hovers over the recent Disney-Marvel deal. Disney hasn't cared for a long time if there were Mickey Mouse comic books being published or not. Will they care if Amazing Spider-Man comes out every month? Will they care when sales decline? Keep in mind we will probably never again see the day when there'll be a thousandth as much money in publishing Iron Man comic books as there is in one good Iron Man videogame.

DC is not going to replace Paul Levitz with someone who knows more about how to publish DC Comics because there is no such person. But in light of all the restructuring being done, you have to wonder if they're even going to look all that hard. I mean, the lead-off announcement in the press release is that they're launching a company called DC Entertainment. If you're wondering what this all means, look no further than that first sentence.

Nikki Finke is reporting rumors that Paul Levitz will "transition out" of his role as publisher and president of DC Comics. The rumors are true. I'll have more to say later.

My pal Bob Beerbohm has been a seller and historian of comic books for a very long time. Right now, he has a dire need for hip replacement surgery and he has such an operation scheduled for September 24. Trouble is: These things cost and he's still a few thousand bucks short.

Since this country is not likely to enact Health Care Reform between now and then, Bob's trying to raise the dough by having what for collectors of vintage funnybooks is The Sale of the Century, and you can look at this one of two ways. It could be your chance to help out a fellow human being and to purchase some great collectible at the same time. Or you could see it as a chance to take advantage of someone's medical problems and to score some goodies at distress prices. Bob won't care. Either way, you get a new treasure (cheap) and he gets a new hip (not so cheap).

Whichever kind of person you are, go visit his eBay store and buy something. In fact, buy several somethings. The offerings are grand, the prices are great…and you'll be doing a mitzvah. If you don't know what one of those is, you need to eat more latkes.

Barack Obama gave his speech to school kids this afternoon. There's an elementary school down the block from me and I guess they heard it because all the students are out goose-stepping and wearing little Hitler mustaches. They're even demanding health care for all because as we all know, that's the first thing Nazis care about. And it's such an easy slippery-slope from "Stay in school" to "Don't be stupid, be a smarty…"

I'm not mad at the crazies. If anything, we should be grateful to them for driving the moderate voters towards the Democrats. I guess I'm a little disappointed in the "have it both way" statesmen like John McCain who want to preach sanity to their party but not in any way that's going to alienate the insane.

They remind me of those sixties' politicians who didn't want to side with the separatists and racists but also didn't want to lose their support. A lot of them learned to pronounce the name they used for the African-American race as "nigra." That way, they thought, the Equal Rights crowds would hear it as "negro" and the Klan voters would hear the other "n" word. It was like that scene in that Red Skelton Civil War movie where he walks between the warring troops with a two-sided flag — Union on the side facing that army, Confederate on the side facing them. John McCain thinks all this talk about "Death Panels" is nonsense…but of course, Sarah Palin is still a woman of great integrity.