Okay, so Trump's former campaign chairman and associate have been indicted on money laundering, tax and foreign lobbying charges. I think we can assume that since Robert Mueller chose them as his lead-off catches, he's pretty confident he's got a strong case there. The question is whether they have sufficient dirt on others that they can reduce the trouble they're in by testifying against those others.
But the bigger story today may turn out to be that in a separate matter, George Papadopolous admitted that in his capacity as a Trump adviser, he met with an unofficial representative of the Russian government to arrange meetings with Putin's office and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. That makes it a bit harder for Trump to claim this whole "colluding with Russia" story is "fake news."
I keep remembering that what did Nixon in was the slow drip-drip-drip of revelations that scared away prominent Republicans from defending him. Increasingly, G.O.P. members of the House and Senate became afraid of linking their careers to him because who the hell could guess what would be revealed next Tuesday? And at the time, Nixon was a lot more popular in this country than Trump is now.
I'm back from my Secret Mission and no, I can't tell you what it was. It was nice though to not look much at the news for several days. If you wake up each morning with a clenched face wondering, "What has he done today?", you might want to try it. Tomorrow, of course, we may find out just who gets the honor of being the first person indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller. My money's on Flo from the Progressive Insurance commercials. She's really getting on my nerves.
Jon Maki writes to tell me that back in 1986, there actually was a short-lived sitcom based on Fast Times at Ridgemont High…
It didn't air on Saturday mornings. I believe it aired, for its brief run, on Wednesday evenings and it was on CBS. It was just called Fast Times, with Ray Walston and Vincent Schiavelli both reprising their roles from the movie. Dean Cameron, who played a lovable stoner goofball in several teen movies in the '80s, had the role of Spicoli. Also of note were a young Patrick Dempsey and Courtney Thorne-Smith. I remember it being not entirely terrible, but I would have only been 13 or 14 at the time, so who knows how good it actually was? (Mostly, I think I just liked it for Claudia Wells, who filled in for Phoebe Cates, although, there was, of course, a significant lack of bikini-top-removing with her version of the character.)
I have no memory of this at all…but as you note, they didn't produce it for Saturday morning.
Entertainment Weekly has an article up about the new attention being paid to Jack Kirby for his part in creating all those popular characters now appearing in popular movies. One quibble: The author says "After returning home from the war, Kirby teamed up with Stan Lee and Marvel owner Martin Goodman, and together they came up with the Fantastic Four and birthed the Marvel Universe as we know it." That makes it sound like Jack did that while taking off his uniform and returning to civilian life. Jack came home from the war in 1945 and the Fantastic Four started in 1961.
Other than that, good article…as are most of those that quote me.
One more thing and then I'm heading for bed: My friend radio-guy Paul Harris recently had the unpleasant shock of tuning in his own station and hearing one of his colleagues giving much glory and air time to an alleged psychic. Actually, all psychics are alleged because there's no such thing as an actual one. I am amazed that anyone with an I.Q. higher than their inseam measurement ever falls for the claims of psychics but then I look at who won the Electoral College and I scale back my amazement.
Paul debated with himself long and hard and finally decided he had to say something on his own show about this and every other con-artist who claims to have psychic abilities. You might want to give it a listen.
I posted this here back on January 10, 2004. A few days ago, I got into a discussion with someone who thinks they're going to receive a writing credit on an upcoming movie for which they made a few story suggestions. They did not ever sit down at a computer or even a typewriter and write anything resembling an actual script but they feel they have input into what happens in the film and what the actors say…or naturally, it's logical that they get a writing credit.
I asked them how many other people they thought had "input" into the story. They said, "Oh, maybe a dozen of us or so." I decided it was time to rerun this piece. Everything in it still applies except my reticence to get involved in this matter with the Writers Guild. That reticence is now even much greater…
According to this article in The New York Times (which you may have to register to read), the end credits for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King run 9 minutes and 33 seconds. They don't say how many names that involves but the previous Lord of the Rings movie (with apparently a shorter crawl) had 559 names.
This doesn't matter to a lot of people since they aren't going to sit through them, anyway. Theaters may even like it since it helps clear the place out and lets the crew get an early start at sweeping up the Raisinets boxes. But it raises a big issue for uncredited writers.
As you probably know, a lot of movies, especially action flicks and comedies, employ more writers than are listed on the screen. The first Flintstones movie allegedly had more than 30. A lot of folks who get hired to write movies now just automatically presume that someone, or perhaps many someones will follow them.
The Writers Guild of America has the sole power to determine the screen credits on a movie. (Quick aside: In my travels through the entertainment biz, I occasionally encounter someone who's involved in a potential movie in some capacity and though not a screenwriter, says they've been promised a writing credit or will demand one. They're not going to actually write in the accepted sense but they're going to make suggestions and they think they can negotiate a writing credit. If I have the energy, I explain to them that except on a non-Guild film, the studio cannot guarantee them a writing credit. The WGA can always arbitrate and award the credit to the person or persons they decide actually wrote the film. And while that arbitration process is flawed in some ways, it never awards screen credit to anyone who didn't actually produce a script.)
Back when the WGA won jurisdiction over screen credits, it became customary for them to attempt to limit them to two names or in extreme cases, three. The thinking was that (a) more names than that devalued the role of all screenwriters on a film and (b) keeping it down to two or three names might induce studios to keep it down to two or three writers, minimizing how often our work was rewritten by others. Obviously, the latter hasn't worked as intended and some writers are happy about this. They figure more writers being hired to rewrite means more writers being hired, period. But let's turn our attention to that first reason.
That it was more dignified for writers not to be part of a huge list was the thinking back when movie credits were 20 or 30 names. There was usually one credit for Make-Up and it went to the head of the department, not to the 25 folks who actually did the make-up. The head of the Special Effects division got the one credit for Special Effects, regardless of how many guys actually did the work. So it didn't seem that ignoble for someone to write a large chunk of a movie and not get his or her name on it. Most of the people who worked on the movie didn't get their names on it.
Today, most of them do…all 40 Make-Up people, all 348 guys who made the Special Effects happen, the caterer, the insurance broker, the insurance broker's secretary, the security guards, the guys who drove the Craft Services truck to the set, the people who loaded the crullers onto the Craft Services truck…
…but not the guy who wrote 20% of the movie. His name is nowhere to be seen.
Several times, I've been asked to serve on WGA committees that will explore how the credits guidelines might be revised. I would sooner put some vital body part in a drill press. Even opening the floor to discussion gets some writers so angry that flecks of foam begin appearing on their computer monitors and they accuse those who want to change things of being traitors and idiots and sell-outs and…you know, all those things Ann Coulter calls Democrats. I don't need that in my life. Still, I can't help but wonder aloud if now that credits credit almost everyone, it isn't far more ignoble to say that writing a large chunk of a movie still doesn't deserve even cursory recognition. Aren't we now saying that writing 20% of the movie is less important than doing 2% of the wardrobe handling?
The more I think about it, the more I think the whole concept of what screen credits mean has changed, and that it's nuts for the WGA to cling to the perspective of 1946. But I don't expect it to be changed. Not without some serious bloodshed within the Guild.
I watched Saturday Night Live through some of its grimmer years because no matter how bad I thought the show was at times, I was always impressed that they could do it at all. Even the worst episode was a miracle of technical proficiency and an unbelievably skilled crew. They make it look easy but I know enough about television production to know that it is anything but. This video should give you a tiny idea of how they do the seeming impossible…
This is my new annual post about why I don't like Halloween. It is an amalgam of several past "Why I Don't Like Halloween" posts with some new thoughts tossed in. Nothing that follows should be taken to suggest that I don't want you to celebrate and enjoy Halloween. It's just to explain why I don't. Here is me explaining…
At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I've never liked Halloween. For one thing, I'm not a big fan of horror movies or of people making themselves up to look disfigured or like rotting corpses. One time when I was in the company of Ray Bradbury at a convention, someone shambled past us looking like they just rose up from a grave and Ray said something about how people parade about like that to celebrate life by mocking death. Maybe to some folks it's a celebration of life but to me, it's just ugly.
I've also never been comfy with the idea of kids going door-to-door to take candy from strangers. Hey, what could possibly go wrong with that? I did it a few years when I was but a child, not so much because I wanted to but because it seemed to be expected of me. I felt silly in the costume and when we went to neighbors' homes and they remarked how cute we were…well, I never liked to be cute in that way. People talk to you like you're a puppy dog. The man two houses down…before he gave me my treat, I thought he was going to tell me to roll over and beg for it.
When I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked even before I found out I was allergic to them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve went right into the trash can and I felt bad about that. Some nice neighbor had paid good money for it, after all.
And some of it, of course, was candy corn — the cole slaw of sugary treats. Absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?
I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against it. Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple big sacks of leftover candy myself every year.
That didn't seem healthy so one year, I actually did this: When I was at the market picking out candy to have on hand for the little masked people, I picked a kind I didn't like. So that year when no one came, instead of eating a whole bag of candy, I found myself throwing out a whole bag of candy…and wondering why that had seemed like a good idea. What I now do is that I always have on hand, not for Halloween but for me, little bags of Planter's Peanuts and if any trick-or-treaters ever knock on my door, that's what they'll get.
So I didn't like the dress-up part and I didn't like the trick-or-treating part. There were guys in my class at school who invited me to go along on Halloween when they threw eggs at people and overturned folks' trash cans and redecorated homes with toilet paper…and I never much liked pranks. One year the day after Thanksgiving, two friends of mine were laughing and bragging how they'd trashed some old lady's yard and I thought, "That's not funny. It's just being an a-hole."
Over the years, as I've told friends how I feel, I've been amazed how many agree with me. In a world where people now feel more free to say that which does not seem "politically correct," I feel less afraid to own up to my dislike of Halloween. About the only thing I ever liked about it was the second-best Charlie Brown special.
So that's why I'm home tonight and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Judge Roy Moore costume. I'm fine with every other holiday. Just not this one. I do not believe there is a War on Christmas in this country. That's just something the Fox News folks dreamed up because they believe their audience needs to be kept in a perpetual state of outrage about something. But if there's ever a War on Halloween, I'm enlisting. And bringing the eggs.
As I mentioned in the first part of this article some time ago, the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out in 1982 — August of '82 to be more precise. It was a pretty big hit and as some movie studios doubtlessly noticed, it was a pretty big hit on a rather modest budget.
There were no huge, costly movie stars in it. There were no exotic locations or costly special effects. So even before it came out, when the advance word within the industry was promising, there were imitations in every possible pipeline. One of those imitations was a screenplay I'd been commissioned to write. Its commissioner hoped it would have the same feel and appeal as Fast Times…and the same success.
I wrote a script and the outfit that hired me liked it but in the short time they gave me to whip up a First Draft, they changed their minds on one thing. They'd told me to put in nudity and naughty words and a few drug jokes because they were angling for an "R" rating like Fast Times. Once I handed it in, they were very happy with it but they had me do a quick rewrite to lose ten pages and to shoot for a "PG." Just a few weeks later, that suddenly seemed a more commercial way to go.
Among the things they liked: That the script, which I called Sky High, had no similar plot points and the characters were quite different. No one who'd seen Fast Times could say it was a direct copy.
An indirect copy? Yeah, probably. But not many people said that because not many people read my script. Once almost anyone realized it was that kind of movie, they said, "Thank you but we already have quite enough of that kind of movie in development."
I was paid in full for Sky High and then my agent began to use it as a sample of my writing to get me other work…and it did. It brought me a number of jobs from folks who said in effect, "We don't want to produce this but we would like to hire the guy who wrote it to write something else for us." One of the producers he sent it to was the lady who'd recommended me for the job in the first place. I will call this person The Producer Lady. The Producer Lady read it and had a very odd idea.
By now, it was early 1990. Not long before, NBC had begun shaking up its Saturday morning lineup. Once all cartoons, it suddenly contained a live-action situation comedy called Saved by the Bell that aimed at a slightly older audience. It did well in the ratings and brought a whole new flock of advertisers to Saturday morn. Indeed in the next few years, there would be less 'n' less animation on NBC Saturday AM and more shows like Saved by the Bell.
From the real Fast Times…
The Producer Lady's idea, inspired in a way by my script, was that her company would procure the TV rights to Fast Times at Ridgemont High and turn it into a series that could run on Saturday morning, maybe even on NBC, right after Saved by the Bell. At the time, Fast Times was still a big hit on cable channels and she had seen some sort of poll or survey that said it was very much beloved by the target audience for the sponsors that Saved by the Bell was now attracting. She said, That plus your Sky High script, which will show you can write funny material for that setting, is all we need!"
I was skeptical. Fast Times on Saturday morning? A lot of it was about teenagers getting laid, and while network TV was getting bolder about sex, that was only with sex between people over the age of 18 who were seen in the evening hours. In fact in prime time, they were getting more timid about minors — kids in high school — "going all the way." So the kind of somewhat-honest boy-girl relations in the movie wouldn't/couldn't be in a TV series. I didn't think they could even put on some of the PG-rated things I'd written in Sky High.
Also, the most interesting character in Fast Times, the one who hands down stole the movie, was Spicoli as played by Sean Penn. Spicoli was a well-fried pothead and if you took that away…well then, he wasn't Spicoli now, was he?
And of course, there'd be no naked people. Call me cynical but I did have the crazy thought that one of the reasons the film had done so well was the scene where Phoebe Cates takes off her bikini top. Just a hunch.
I asked The Producer Lady, "Do you think you can even get the rights?"
She said, "We'll pitch it to the network" — and I knew that basically meant that I would pitch it to the network. "It's a hot property," she continued. "It's too famous for the network to turn it down. They'll at last feel they have to develop it and if they're willing to put up development money, someone at Universal will sell us the rights."
So then I asked the Producer Lady, "Yeah, but don't you think they'll say, 'If we take out the sex, drugs and nudity, it won't be Fast Times at Ridgemont High.'"
She said, "No, the name is what they want." She added that the movie of M*A*S*H had had sex and nudity and a few drug references and that removing all those elements had not prevented it from being turned into a rather successful TV show." Off my reply of "Not on Saturday morning," she scrunched her nose and said, "Let's go in and pitch it. You'll see."
I went along with it, plotting out a pitch for Fast Times: The Kid Show, though I didn't call it that. One sunny afternoon, we went into the executive building at NBC in Burbank for an appointment with the Vice-President of Childrens Programming, who was surrounded by her aides. As is customary in such meeting, we first engaged in the customary pre-pitch banter, telling jokes and swapping gossip.
Then, suddenly, everyone in the room knew it was time. The Producer Lady made a brief speech about how she had this idea and we all thought it was the most super, spectacular, exciting idea ever to be heard within in the executive offices of a major television network." She then nodded to me and, feeling as awkward as I always do in these situations — and more awkward because I was selling something I didn't think had a prayer — I began…
"You're probably familiar with the movie, Fast Times at Ridgemont…"
And I don't think I even got to the High before the Vice-President person said, "We'd have to take out the sex, drugs and nudity and if we take out the sex, drugs and nudity, it won't be Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
I got up and said, "Thank you for your time" and I headed for the door. The Producer Lady scrambled right after me and that was the end of that, forever and ever.
Obviously, it was not the best idea ever for a Saturday morning TV program. I could make the case it was not the worst but that really doesn't matter. What matters is that if you started the clock the moment I began telling them about the project, it was the shortest pitch in the history of network programming. If you'd gone in and said, "How about a wacky sitcom with Paul Lynde as Charles Manson?," you couldn't have been out of that room in less time than I was. I'm kind of proud of that.
Years ago, there came a time when I got real tired of hearing the word "genius" applied to absolutely anyone who could do anything. Someone's paperboy was a genius because he could hurl the Sunday Times and hit the porch. It was a compliment that, like standing ovations these days, was used too frequently and thoughtlessly that it lost all meaning, at least for me.
I've begun to feel the same way about the word "legend." It's hard now to have achieved anything in your lifetime without someone calling you a legend or using "legendary" as an adjective to describe you. In fact with some people, you didn't even have to do anything except not die. Once you hit a certain age, you were automatically presumed to be legendary. And of course, the problem is that if everyone's a legend then no one is a legend.
I wince when I see myself hyped as "the legendary Mark Evanier," the exception being when it's said with sarcasm or with one's tongue lodged firmly in one's cheek. Alas, it sometimes is not, especially in the world of comics. Interviewers like to do that — inflating their guests to legendary stature — because (a) it butters up someone they may need to do something for them in the future and (b), it makes the interview (and therefore the interviewer) seem more important.
I recall not so long ago someone on a podcast making reference to an upcoming guest…the legendary Jamie Farr. And I thought, "Okay. If Jamie Farr is a legend, what word would you use to describe Charlie Chaplin?
I can't stop talking about the production of Sweeney Todd that Amber and I saw in New York — the one staged in a small theater that's been converted into a pie shop for the occasion. If you still can't grasp what this is like, the video below has cast members explaining it and it gives you a good look at the venue. Most of the cast members here left the show before we went but the lovely and wonderful Carolee Carmello is among those we saw. In fact, Ms. Carmello kindly arranged for our seats, which were at the table the actors are sitting at when they were interviewed for this video. If you go, see if you can get those seats, which were D-11 and D-12. Best seats in the place. C-11 and C-12 or E-11 and E-12 would also be fine.
We did not go early and eat meat pies there. We went instead that night to one of the greatest pizza places in New York, which was about a block-and-a-half away. I was thinking, "Well, we can't do better than that place" but maybe we should have gone for the Whole Sweeney Experience, pie and all. Nevertheless, I still had one of the best evenings I've ever spent having dinner and then seeing a play…
I shall be away on a Secret Mission through late Sunday…and no, I can't tell you what it is. It wouldn't be much of a Secret Mission if I could now, would it? I can tell you that it does not involve medicine, government, the banning of candy corn or Donald Trump — which come to think of it, are the same color — or a certain well-known lasagna-eating feline. Do not contact me to guess what it does involve for I will have to tell you I can't tell you. I can't even tell you why I can't tell you, nor can I tell you why I can't tell you why I can't tell you.
But I'll not neglect my few-but-fervent followers. If I've configured things properly (unlikely but not impossible), this blog has been programmed such that New Content will appear every six hours until I return to you. It won't be all that exciting and it won't be timely but it'll be here. I'm telling you this so that if something monumental happens during my Secret Mission, you'll understand why I might not be commenting on it until said mission is successfully completed and I have returned. That is, if I return…
I'm puzzled by your insistence that the president is not a racist. It seems to me that if he talks like one, and acts like one, and hangs around with racists, and revels in their adulation, then what is one to conclude? And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that you need to declare him a racist. I'm just wondering why you feel it necessary to keep suggesting that he isn't.
Well, certain recent utterings of Mr. Trump have me puzzled a bit by my insistence that he's not a racist…and it's not so much an insistence as a current opinion, subject to ongoing revision. I agree with you that there's a fine line between being a racist and talking like one. In many senses, it's the same thing…but I find it useful to take note of that fine line.
For example, I've testified a few times as an expert witness in lawsuits, which means I've been questioned, sometimes almost maniacally, by attorneys who are relentless about denying reality that does not favor their client. It helps me to remember that most of them do not really believe the position they advocate; that if the other side was paying them $300-an-hour or $800-an-hour — and I was once run through a wringer by a $1000-an-hour guy who kept mentioning his hourly rate — they'd be selling fiercely for the other side. One guy who spent an awful lot of the judge's time trying to argue that I was not an expert witness later, for another client on another case, tried to hire me as his expert witness.
Trump strikes me as a guy who just says whatever works for him at the moment. He's really good at denying he said what he said last February and pretty good at getting away with it, at least with his base. That base is the reason he has his current position and if it wants white resentment and hostility to immigrants, that's what he's going to give them. He doesn't strike me as a guy who gives a damn one way or another about anyone of any color except according to one criteria: Are they of immediate use to the glory and/or wealth of Donald Trump? He fans the fires of racism not because he feels them in his soul. The guy doesn't have a soul. He just knows what's of benefit to him at the moment.
If you want to call that racism, I wouldn't waste a lot of breath arguing with you. But isn't there a microscopic speck of difference between a politician who honestly believes abortion is murder and one who says that but says that only because he's courting the votes and support of those believe that? Trump reminds me of a man I once knew of whom a mutual acquaintance said, "He doesn't hate any race or religion. He just hates anyone who isn't him!"
On my recent trip to New York, I didn't get to very many of my favorite restaurants back there. Didn't get to Peter Luger's Steak House or The Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station or a single delicatessen. The Carnegie and the Stage Deli are both extinct but Katz's is still flourishing, even without my business for over a decade.
It's really an impressive operation as Andrew Knowlton found out. He's an editor at Bon Appétit and he goes on these adventures where he attempts to work 24 hours straight in some restaurant or resort. He recently put in a tour of duty at Katz's where he did everything anyone ever does there except fake an orgasm. This is a little long but you may find it as interesting as I did…
The National Archives has released more than 2,800 previously classified or redacted records relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A few decades ago, back when I was immersed in the story, I met people who were living for this moment, certain that something in there would validate some grand conspiracy theory they had. Now that the day is here, I wonder how many of them care. It all seems so distant now. Once upon a time, it was possible to believe some revelation would change the world. Now, that seems pretty unlikely.
I was one of those folks who read all the books, went to lectures and even (once) attended a convention of conspiracy buffs. Meeting some of those people in person did a lot to change my mind and not in the way they intended. Most of those folks were willing to consider absolutely any theory as to how J.F.K. was murdered except the one where one lone nut named Oswald acts alone. That was the one that was off-limits. If you'd gotten up at this gathering and said Kennedy was killed by clones of the Three Stooges from the planet Beta-Blue, you would have gotten more respect than someone who thought Lee Harvey dunnit.
Why? Because that was the story fed to the masses…to the stupid people, meaning people who were not you. To some, that alone proved it could not be true. It also did not get you anywhere. The conspiracy theorists I met had fiercely declared that was a lie and would never in a zillion years consider that they might have been wrong.
I eventually came to two decisions. One was that, yes, Oswald acted alone and the Warren Commission Report was at most, only wrong on a few inconsequential details. The other decision was that it was brain-dead foolish to try debating this with anyone…so this is not a debate. It's just me saying what I believe. If you want to believe Peruvian Albinos offed Kennedy, fine. Go right on believing it but don't expect pushback from me.
A lot of these newly-released documents actually have been released before, sometimes in redacted form. I'll be surprised it there are any serious game-changers in there. If there are, I'll be surprised if anyone cares, even those who were alive on 11/22/63. If there's proof what I believe is wrong, I'll just believe what then seems to be right…but it really won't change my life or anyone's.
