IF you send me a friend request on Facebook and I don't accept your request, it doesn't mean I don't like you. I currently have 4,818 "friends" on the system. 5,000 is the limit and while you and I know I should have 182 slots open, Facebook doesn't know that and usually thinks I'm maxxed out. This may have something to do with the fact that I have something like 1200 requests for Facebook Friendship. So nothing personal. And…
IF someone in the comic book field dies and I don't write about them, it does not mean I disliked them or thought they were insignificant or anything of the sort. It probably means I didn't know them and/or their work — which may well have been my loss — and that I think their passing is being sufficiently covered elsewhere by people more qualified to write about them than I am.
In 2019, Fiddler on the Roof was revived on Broadway for about the nine millionth time…but this production was different. This production was in Yiddish. And it was directed by the great Broadway star, Joel Grey.
Each year, a group called Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS puts on various fund-raising events in New York and one of them is the annual Easter Bonnet Competition in which almost every show puts on a little skit or sketch. This is what the cast and crew of that production of Fiddler offered up that year — with a well-received appearance by Mr. Grey himself…
Rob Rose read this post here and then sent the following my way…
I had to watch a few minutes of the video you linked just because that was one hell of a cast.
When you mentioned that June Foray was unavailable, my first thought was "Well, if you can't get her, Tress MacNeille is the obvious next choice." But I hadn't taken the dates into account until I saw someone asking in the YouTube comments if it was her first voice acting role, and someone else answered "Yes." I quickly checked IMDB, and if it is to be believed, while it was not her very first voice acting job, it is the first for which she is credited as something besides "Additional voices." Since she has gone on to become such a giant in the field, I wouldn't mind hearing anything about how you came to pick her and whether it was clear from the start that her name would one day seem perfectly at home next to those of folks like Daws Butler and Frank Welker.
(I also had no idea she was the lady who played Lucy in Weird Al Yankovic's "Hey Ricky!" video…)
When you add in the rest of the cast, you have a list that really spans several generations of voice-acting greats.
If I had a specific question, it would probably be to wonder how intimidating that would be, to have such talent in front of you on your first voice directing job. On the one hand, as you say, it surely makes your job easier; you wouldn't have to push anyone to get great performances. On the other hand, if you *did* find yourself in a place where you needed to give some direction, I can imagine you might feel like you really had no place telling some of these people how to do their jobs. (I am reminded of your story of having to ask Mel Blanc to read the line "What's up, Doc?" again more slowly…) I don't know if that kind of thing would get easier over time. At least I suspect that, whatever the actors you worked with may have thought of your directing (or writing) talent, they couldn't really get the "This kid doesn't even know who I am!" feeling for very long.
Anyway, fun story, and it gave me an excuse to send this email instead of doing some other things I probably ought to be doing.
I first met Tress via The Groundlings, the great L.A. based improv company from which came Phil Hartman, Laraine Newman, Paul Reubens, Jon Lovitz and a whole lot of other folks you know and have enjoyed. You would often see someone on the Groundlings stage and instantly think, "Hey, that person's going to have a great career!" So it was with Tress…and it didn't take any experience at talent-scouting to think that. Pretty damned obvious if you ask me.
Before I made my voice-directing debut with that Wall Walkers special, I asked Gordon Hunt at Hanna-Barbera if I could sit in on some recording sessions and observe. There was briefly a policy at the studio that writers and story editors could not attend recording sessions because they had a tendency to slow things down by asking to change lines or to usurp the director's authority. Also, I think Bill Hanna wanted us in our offices writing and editing as much as possible.
This was not Gordon's decree but he had to follow it…but he said I could sit in on recordings of shows I didn't write. That was fine with me and I think the first one I attended was a Scooby Doo in which Tress did guest star voices. My recollection is that by the time I cast her in the Wall Walkers show, she'd done a fair amount of animation even if she hadn't done lead characters…and I'm not sure she hadn't.
I didn't give a moment's thought to whether "her name would one day seem perfectly at home next to those of folks like Daws Butler and Frank Welker." I just knew she'd do a good job in the show…and she did.
I was not intimidated by having such a stellar cast on my first directing job. On the contrary, I thought they were so good that I couldn't possibly botch things up…and that is not false modesty or any other kind. I actually thought that. As I quickly learned, the secret to voice-directing was to hire actors who were so good, they didn't need much directing…if any.
If I could get to New York right now, do you know where I'd go? Well, yes, I'd go see The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, just on the chance they'd both be in it that night. But I'd also go to the Society of Illustrators Museum of Illustration on East 63rd Street to see the first major showing of the work of the great Angelo Torres. You can read here about him and this exhibit of his fabulous artwork. It's there until September 3 and a catalog for the showing can be purchased here.
We somehow never discussed the amazing five-minute number that Ariana DeBose and friends performed to kick off this year's Tony Awards ceremony. I watched it and thought, "Gee, I've got to watch this a few more times" and then I didn't get around to watching it again until a day or so ago. Let's watch it now to refresh the memories of those who did see it and to inform those who didn't…
Wow, there was a lot to unpack in that song…all the references to different past shows. And I didn't appreciate how much work went into it until I watched this fourteen-minute deconstruction of the five-minutes number. Watch it, then watch the whole number again. You'll be even more impressed…
Variety is reporting that the Arclight Cinerama Dome Theater in Hollywood is reopening. They don't know when or what it'll be showing and no formal announcement has been made. But the news is that the owners of the theater have obtained a license "to operate a restaurant and two bars on the premises." We have had false alerts in the past about this so I'm not assuming it's so until the Decurion Corporation — they own the place — announces an actual reopening date.
And I may not even totally believe that until they run the movie that this theater was (almost literally) built to show, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In the meantime though, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica is running my favorite film on Saturday, July 30. Tickets seem to still be available.
After a long period of finding nothing from the Trump folks in my e-mailbox, I've begun receiving a steady stream of messages like this…
Mark,
President Trump has texted you.
President Trump has emailed you…
We need you to understand how important this is, Mark.
We are concerned about missing our goal.
Our team ensured President Trump that we would do whatever it took to reach our goal. Therefore we knew we had to do something BIG.
We're INCREASING your impact offer from 700% to 800%.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to CRUSH our FEC fundraising goal and your gift will be INCREASED by 800%.
The President knows that if we FAIL to hit our goal, the FAKE NEWS media and Radical Democrats in Washington will attack us all like never before. Mark, we are all counting on you.
We expect to hear from the President any minute, so you MUST HURRY. We know he is going to ask about you. AGAIN.
Don't make us tell him that you STILL haven't stepped up.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT by 11:59 PM TONIGHT for an 800%-IMPACT and get your name on the FEC Deadline Donor List.
And it's signed "Trump Fundraising Director" because whoever wrote this didn't want to put his or her name on it, I guess. I also suspect because of recent revelations about how past donations have not been used the way the solicitations said they'd be used, whoever wrote this was told to not specify just where the money would go.
I still don't get this "impact offer" thing. They seem to be saying that if I gave $100 yesterday, someone (who?) would match it 700%. And now that they're getting desperate, that person or group is willing to match it 800% if only Mark Evanier will kick in. But they won't make that urgently-needed donation if I don't. Or something.
Another message I received that was time-stamped ten minutes earlier said "President Trump keeps asking about you. He knows YOU are a TOP supporter who will ALWAYS have his back NO matter what. We are handing him the FINAL Donor List soon, and we want to make sure YOUR NAME is at the VERY TOP."
I kind of like the idea that every morning, Trump walks into the office and asks his staff, "Any money yet from Mark Evanier?" And when they say no, he hurls his lunch — ketchup and all — at the fireplace.
Just finished watching episode two of Anna "Brizzy" Brisbin's Podcast. It made me think: How does somebody become a voice director…the person who gets to pick who does the voice, the person who tells them "You're not saying it right" (or whatever, etc). How did you get to do that the first time? Did you know what you were doing? Were you scared? Or did you just think "I've been studying this stuff for years — I know I can do this!" When you consider the history of voice acting, and all the different people who've done it, it's puzzling to think that somebody is in charge of all that…and their decisions could possibly make or break a show/movie.
I've told this story several times on panels but I guess I've never told it here. In 1983, I wrote a prime-time cartoon special for NBC which was produced by an in-house producer at NBC. They hired an animation company based in New York to do the animation but they needed to hire someone to direct the voice track in Los Angeles.
Today, there are dozens of professional voice directors around but at the time, there were probably around eight or nine…and the good ones were all under contract to studios not involved with this project. The folks at NBC handed me a list of the three experienced voice directors they could get and I thought all three of them were terrible. On an impulse, I said to the NBC execs, "I can't do a worse job than these guys. If you'll let me voice direct it and pick the actors I want, I'll do it for nothing."
At the time, I think if I or anyone had told NBC, "If you'll fire Johnny Carson and let me host The Tonight Show, I'll do it for nothing," they might have jumped at the chance to save money. Anyway, they agreed on the proviso that I audition at least three people for each part — which I did and then I got most of my picks. The major players were Daws Butler, Frank Welker, Tress MacNeille, Howard Morris, Marvin Kaplan, Bill Scott (in what I think was his first non-Jay Ward voice job in a long time), Peter Cullen and a few others. We needed a young boy so I picked Scott Menville, who grew up to be a very fine adult voice actor.
And before anyone asks: June Foray was in Europe at the time.
I kinda/sorta/somewhat knew what I was doing, mostly from watching Gordon Hunt voice-direct shows at Hanna-Barbera. I'd also studied another voice director who was on that list of three and from him, I learned a lot of what not to do. He seemed to be on what some would call a "power trip," finding fault with perfectly fine performances just because he could.
The late Lennie Weinrib, who had worked for this director and fought with him to the point where they no longer worked together, told me, "He's perpetually mad that he can't do what we can do so he takes it out on us." One of the things I think I've had going for me as a voice director is that I am well aware I can't act as well as the worst person I would ever hire. I'm not saying a good voice actor can't direct — some do and do it well. I'm saying that there's usually trouble when a director resents being only on his or her side of the glass.
The day we recorded that special, I was a little scared but I figured that with the cast I'd selected, even I couldn't muck it up that much. The final show was not exactly what I'd wanted for a number of reasons but I did not think the voice track was one of them.
I did make some mistakes and I got a fair amount of help from Frank Welker, who by now had become a good friend of mine. On two occasions during the recording session, he asked if I could come out of the director booth and speak to him one-on-one so he could ask me some questions about certain lines in the script. That was a fib on his part. When I called a short break and went over to talk with him, he told me — making sure no one else could hear — of a couple of directing errors I'd made. I was grateful that he told me when I could still correct them and especially grateful that he did it the way he did.
Since I've come this far, I might as well link you to the show which, as I said, I wasn't that happy with. It was a prime-time special called Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls. I did not come up with that name, nor did I create the characters, nor did I have anything to do with the songs…
The end credits are mostly missing from this video but the producer was Buzz Potamkin and most of the character designs were done by Phil Mendez. The special was a pilot for a Saturday morning series and it was well-received and almost got on the NBC schedule. Why it didn't is a long, brutal story of how sometimes, a big and powerful studio can crush a small newcomer.
I was just happy that I got to work with such a fine cast, including Howard Morris, who soon became one of my favorite people of all time. And it did get me other offers to voice-direct, though I declined most where I'd only be doing that and not writing the show.
Very hectic day so here are two long videos that might interest you. And they might not…
I occasionally like watching videos by Devin James Stone, the "Legal Eagle" who explains lawyer-type stuff. He sometimes talks at the pace of a tobacco auctioneer but he seems to know his stuff and he debunks an awful lot of false information or impressions. Here he is explaining the alleged logic of the Supreme Court decision kicking Roe v. Wade outta the ring.
The argument doesn't convince me it was a dispassionate, reasoned decision. I think it was a decision made for political and person reasons and then Justice Alito found ways to justify it with questionable interpretations of laws and precedents. But if you want to understand the arguments for and against, you might learn something from the Legal Eagle. Take a look at the length of this video before you click to start watching it…
What's that you say? You're more interested in the January 6 Hearings than you are in the whole abortion battle? Well then, you might enjoy 44 minutes of Jon Stewart and his staff discussing what happened the other day in the hearing room. To the extent I have an opinion on it — I'm still kinda forming it — it's close to Mr. Stewart's…
Lastly: I'm not spending a lot of my life on the hearings and there is much I need to read before my viewpoint solidifies a bit. But when I find myself talking to friends about it, I find myself comparing and contrasting with the Watergate Hearings…and I find myself wishing Barry Goldwater was still around to go tell Trump the jig is up.
Anyway, if you want to flashback to that period, the folks at 60 Minutes have uploaded several interviews with the key players to YouTube. In hindsight, some of these conversations don't seem as hard-hitting as I thought at the time but most provide an excellent tutorial on how to try and weasel out of your own misdeeds when it's obvious you've been caught. You can watch the conversations with Alexander Butterfield, Donald Segretti, John Ehrlichman, Alexander Haig, G. Gordon Liddy and Egil Krogh. Butterfield and Haig were by and large good guys.
One of the most popular songs in the show Hamilton is "You'll Be Back," which is sung in Act One by the actor portraying King George III. In the song, His Majesty addresses the colonists (not directly) warning them that they will regret their movement for independence from British rule. The role was originated on Broadway by Jonathan Groff and here is how he performed it in the show and on the cast album…
And now, here's the Varsity Choir from "MHS," which I guess is a high school whose name starts with "M." Anyway, this is the way the song should be performed…
If you ever need a reminder that there are stupid people in the world, just peek in your spam folder. You'll find an awful lot of messages that were sent en masse on the premise that somewhere out there, there was someone dumb enough (or in some cases, dumb and desperate enough) to respond.
Lately, I've gotten this one about forty times, all allegedly sent by different women with different names. This one is from Lorelei…
Are you up? Let's chat!
I'm aching to do something, really naughty, with you in your bed. It's so naughty, in fact, I'm afraid to even ask it. Can I? Do you want to hear it here, or somewhere else?
Call me a cynic if you like but I get the feeling that Lorelei just might not be a woman who really wants to do something really naughty with me. In fact, the odds are good that it's not from a woman at all. Maybe a guy. Maybe an enterprising bot. If the fact that I got forty of these with different feminine names attached didn't make me suspicious, I might still have some questions, the first of which would be "Why me?"
It would be followed by "How does this alleged woman know I'm in any position to do this naughty thing with her?" Lorelei got my e-mail address (God knows where) but does she even know my bed and I are on the same continent as her? She can ache all she wants to do this really naughty thing with me but if it can't be done over the Internet, it can't be done.
And how does Lorelei know that if we did meet, we wouldn't take one look at each other and one or more of wouldn't run off, screaming in horror? And why do I suspect that what she wants is not my body but my Visa card number? And if by some chance this is from a real woman who really wants me, how could I get properly aroused with someone who has such weird comma placement?
Millions of these things are sent out every day in this world. I get at least ten a day telling me that I am due for a settlement in some amount of five to seven figures and I need to get in touch with the stranger who e-mailed me to collect. There must be some success rate that makes the sender figure it's worth their time.
Since Bill and Hillary Clinton first burst onto the national scene — well before either ran for President — one persistent correspondent has sent me a steady stream of e-mails that basically say this: We have incontrovertible proof of massive crimes committed by Bill (and/or Hillary) and we can put him (or her or both of them) in prison but we need your donation to make it happen.
I've been getting these since at least the early nineties. For the sake of discussion, let's say 1992 so that's thirty years…and no less than three a week. So that's like 4,600 messages…and the only way they've changed is that they used to be mostly about Bill and now they're almost exclusively about Hillary.
As we have all seen once again with the "Big Lie" about Trump winning the last election, if someone says they have firm proof of something outrageous and they don't produce it, they don't have it and never did. If my constant e-mailer does have evidence that will send Hillary to prison, he's done her an enormous favor by sitting on it for three decades.
But someone's got to be sending him some loot or he wouldn't have taken the time to compose 4,600 messages. Either that or he's just terribly lonely with nothing to do. I'm thinking maybe I should try and fix him up with Lorelei. They might be very happy together assuming they both exist at all.
March 18, 1981 — Garry Shandling's life changes a lot, mostly for the better, with his first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. I knew Garry briefly when I was working on Welcome Back, Kotter and he wrote a pretty good script for the show which was wholly — and I mean every word of it — rewritten by the staff, mostly by my partner Dennis and me.
It wasn't Garry's fault. The show had changed producers and direction, and if the producers who'd hired him had still been in charge, much of what he wrote would probably have made it to air. But the new producers had to prove they were different from the producers who'd been fired so they couldn't just go with what the fired guys had commissioned and midwifed. Garry later cited that experience as one of several reasons he decided to try stand-up. It was a long, slow journey from that to this…
Raphael Martinez wrote to ask — and he isn't the first person to ask some version of this…
As one of those writers who can't not write and seems to have no trouble getting assignments, is there anything that would make you retire?
A complete drying up of work or not being able to write at a level of quality you're satisfied with would be the only things I can think of, but neither seems to have been an issue throughout your career. And of course health issues, but that could cause any given person to retire.
Folks who ask this question usually conflate the act of writing with the pleasant experience of being paid for writing. It's great when the first thing leads to the other but with some of us, the latter is not mandatory. A sense of what will yield payment (or an actual, binding deal that will pay for sure) does often give direction to what we write. As long as I've been doing this, a high percentage of what I've written has had a lot to do with what I knew or thought would result in a check. The only thing that has changed since 1969 when I began is that nowadays, it sometimes leads to a direct deposit.
I suppose I might consider retiring from writing if there was anything (spelled a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g) else I wanted to do in its place but there never has been. I like writing and if I someday can't write for you or someone else, I'll just write for me. In fact, my increased "@home" presence during The Pandemic has given me keyboard time to write some things that may turn out to be just for me. I have no idea where, if anywhere, I can send them when they're completed to my satisfaction…assuming they'll ever be finished on that basis.
So no, I can't conceive of ever retiring. But then a lot of things about my life have surprised me so who knows?
Arnie Kogen has long been one of the top comedy writers in the business. Among the shows he's written for — and this is a very partial list — are Candid Camera, The Les Crane Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Dean Martin Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Rich Little Show, The Tim Conway Show, Donny and Marie, Evening at the Improv, Newhart, Empty Nest and MADtv. He's been nominated for six Emmys and won three, all for The Carol Burnett Show. Personally, I'm more impressed that he began writing for MAD magazine in 1959 and had articles, including some of the best TV and movie satires, in 179 issues.
I mentioned in this piece here that I did my earliest writing, including that naughty book I authored under the revered name of Mary Margaret Underburger, on an Olivetti-Underwood typewriter. That brought the following e-mail last Tuesday from Mr. Kogen, accompanied by a scan of his old business card. Here's Arnie and that card…
My full-time occupation from 1959 to 1963 was typewriter salesman for Olivetti-Underwood.
My part-time occupation was comedy writer for MAD Magazine, Morty Gunty and almost every other stand-up comedian except Stewie Stone. Perhaps that 122 page novel written by Mary Margaret Underburger was typed on an Olivetti sold by Arnold Kogen or one of his associates. If you're still in touch with Ms. Underburger would you ask her if it was written on a Lettera 22 (an award winning portable) or some other Olivetti-Underwood model. Just curious.
Hope all is well, Mark. Enjoy the rest of springtime.
And I thought it was very nice of the man to wish me that on the first day of Summer. The following is what I wrote him in return…
Glad to hear you once had honest work as a typewriter salesman. Frankly, I think this world could do with more typewriter salesmen and fewer comedy writers. I'd be out selling typewriters if I had the necessary skills.
I still have the typewriter of my youth. It was a Lettera 32 and a photo of the actual one I typed on is attached. It was obtained with Blue Chip Stamps, which were like Green Stamps, only blue. So was the Lettera 32.
The Blue Chip Stamps redemption catalog described it only as an Underwood. My mother ordered it and was somewhat upset when it turned out to be an Olivetti, figuring it was from a foreign country and therefore cheaply made and inferior. But it worked well even if the scripts Mary Margaret and I produced on it were cheaply made and inferior.
I would still be using it but it's impossible to buy ribbons for the damned thing, thereby forcing me to use this friggin', more complicated computer. The Olivetti-Underwood could do everything the computer can do except order from Grubhub and blog. It could even — and I'm not sure how it managed this before there was an Internet — download porn.
Arnie wrote back to me and said, "Next time we meet I have a few interesting Olivetti-Underwood stories for you. They're not as hilarious as that Flip Wilson story on the Tonight Show but perhaps more amusing than watching 600 ganache chocolate cakes being made." I don't know about that.
By the way: I do know my readership and many of you are probably searching the 'net already to see if there's anyplace to buy a typewriter ribbon for an Olivetti-Underwood Lettera 32. Well, I beat you to it. Before the Internet, they were impossible to find but today, I can find them and they aren't even that expensive. One online merchant has them for eight bucks, which isn't much more than I paid for them in 1969. I also notice that there are dozens of the typewriters themselves being offered on eBay for a low of about $70 including postage up to $700 and up. It was a fine machine in its day but I can't imagine even addressing an envelope on one today.
