The folks in and around Monty Python keep finding new ways to repackage the old (wonderful) material for sale. The latest is a series of releases where famous funny people select their favorite Python sketches. Here are five classic M.P. skits as chosen by Tracey Ullman, Noel Fielding, Richard Curtis, Jim Carrey and Robert Lindsay. This video will be taken offline in ten days so watch now. I didn't expect the one Robert Lindsay chose…
This Saturday, November 8, preregistration will open for Comic-Con International 2015. I am kind of a dolt on how this stuff works and I don't want to give out faulty info so I'll just say what I'm sure of: That this Saturday, November 8, preregistration will open for Comic-Con International 2015. If you want to know if you qualify or if so, what it means, go read this page and any others it suggests.
Then do the most important part, which is to not (repeat: not) write me and tell me something went wrong or you didn't get in or some computer malfunctioned or any of that stuff I don't understand and can't do anything about.
As you may know, I get incessant, unsolicited calls from contractors seeing if they can sell me any of their handiwork.
Actually, a lot of the calls are not from contractors but from people who are working on commission (I assume) to find prospects for contractors. They say they're with a contracting company but I think they're just people who answered an ad on Craig's List and got a list of prospects and the promise that if their calls lead to any business, they'll get their cut.
Today, I got a call with a new sales pitch. The caller was young and female…
HER: Hello, my name is Abby and I'm calling on behalf of my father, Harold Black. He's a licensed contractor working in your area and he's very experienced in building, painting, roofing, tile work, plumbing, electrical work of all kinds and anything else you might be in need of. My father is a very good man and he would be glad to come by and give you a free estimate…
ME: You're reading a script.
HER: No, I'm not.
ME: Yes, you're reading a script. If you want my business, tell me again about your father but don't use the exact same words.
[CLICK!]
So she was gone. Less than one minute later, the phone rang again. I answered and heard a different young female voice…
HER: Hello, my name is Lauren and I'm calling on behalf of my father, Harold Black. He's a licensed contractor working in your area and he's very experienced in building, painting, roofing, tile work, plumbing, electrical work of all kinds…
ME: Hold it, Lauren! Less than sixty seconds ago, I got a call from a young woman who read me the exact same script about this contractor.
HER: Uh, well, sometimes my sister makes these calls…
Wise words about today from Groucho Marx — except that today is Election Day, not November 6th…
You might want to check out…
Take your pick!
I will be glad when tomorrow's election is over. I don't expect to like most of the results because I think we're going to be making the transition from almost nothing getting fixed to nothing getting fixed. Still, I'll be happy to just not get those hourly robocalls from former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa telling me how to vote. I haven't heard what he's doing now but based on the persistence of those calls, he's got to be either a building contractor or someone who installs solar panels on your house.
So what did you do last night? I co-produced a tribute to one of my heroes and I don't mind telling you: Jeez, was that a lot of work! I did not do all of it. I was one of three producers — the others were Howard Green and Arthur Greenwald — and I'm not sure I even did a third but I was still exhausted.
Arthur, along with his creative duties, was in charge of a lot of the physical requirements — making sure additional lighting was brought into the theater, making sure a stage was constructed and made properly safe, etc. As I have learned in television, you need someone who anticipates everything that could possibly go wrong and who has the devotion to make certain it doesn't. Howard did a lot of that throughout the project. Arthur did an insane amount of that the last few days.
If I'd known how much of my life it would consume for several weeks…well, I probably still would have done it. Stan Freberg has been that important to me. And I will say this: The job would have been even more difficult if Stan hadn't been so important to so many other people. Everyone, when they heard we were doing a Stan Freberg Tribute, was eager to help. There was total cooperation everywhere we turned.
One of the great things about the evening was that the audience was filled with bright, successful people, mostly engaged in creative enterprises. There were actors, writers, producers…a lot of Stan's peers and co-workers. I probably need to apologize to many friends to whom I did not say the right things because I was pretty busy at times.
We brought the show in at about 2 hours and 14 minutes. Approximately 1:15 of that was clips of Stan's past work. We had a lot of things you'd expect like the Lone Ranger commercial, the Ann Miller commercial, excerpts from his major records, etc. I was pleased that we also had some things no one in the house (Stan included) had seen — like Stan, Daws Butler and June Foray performing the entirety of "St. George and the Dragonet" live on Ed Sullivan's TV show in 1953.
Jerry Beck and Eric Goldberg put together a great 12-minute reel of Stan's voicework in animation that caused a lot of folks in the house to exclaim, "I didn't know he did that!" We also had taped "wish I could be there" videos from Matthew Weiner, Dr. Demento, Penn Jillette, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
About 45 minutes of the evening was our guest speakers and hosts. Harry Shearer was a terrific Master of Ceremonies…and he turned out to be the biggest Freberg fan in the place. I was seated next to him for purposes of last-minute briefing and he was laughing, quoting from memory and singing along with most of the video we showed. "Weird Al" Yankovic, Micky Dolenz, Jerry and Eric, Leonard Maltin and animation producer Bob Kurtz introduced segments and I was delighted with what everyone did.
Finally, we had some moments with Stan and his wife/partner Hunter talking a little about his work, followed by the third or fourth standing ovation of the evening (I lost count) and a lot of happy milling after the show.
I should have some photos of the evening soon but you can see a gallery over at Wireimage.
Animator and artist Larry Latham has died from the cancer he'd been fighting for some time. Larry worked for 30-some-odd years in the Hollywood animation industry, including stints at Disney, Universal, Hanna-Barbera, Marvel and Filmation. It was at H-B where I met him and hired him to do a few of the comic books we were doing then for Europe. He was very good and very professional and I was sorry to lose his services when he got other, better-paying work.
Larry did just about everything. He animated. He designed. He directed. He produced. He was very much involved with the Tail Spin series for Disney. Before any of that, he did some work in underground comix (most notably, Betty Boop Funnies) and after his time in L.A., he returned to his native Oklahoma and taught his craft at the Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology. He also did a popular webcomic called Lovecraft is Missing.
I liked the guy and his work. Near as I can tell, everyone did.
You got ten minutes? Spend it watching my friend Christine Pedi perform a Beatles medley as 22 of the great ladies of show business…
This excerpt from Martin Short's autobiography is headlined, "My Saturday Night Live Hell." I don't think he gave it that title because it doesn't sound all that hellish to me.
Will Durst on the threat of Ebola. It's sounding more and more to me like the bigger threat is people who want to benefit from scaring others about it.
We set the clocks back an hour last night and I was so immersed in writing something that I got confused. I looked at the clock in my computer taskbar, saw it said 1:25 AM and had to wonder, "Is this the first 1:25 AM today or the second?" I had to look around the house until I found a clock that didn't automatically update itself to realize it was the second.
Tonight, of course, is the gala Stan Freberg Tribute at the Egyptian Theater. I'm not sure if any tickets are still available — there's no one I can call at this hour — but if you want to be there, you might try this link and see if it'll sell you a seat.
I'm co-producing the event with two great guys named Howard Green and Arthur Greenwald, and I'm amazed at how much there was (and still is) to do. I think Arthur and I talked on the phone twenty times yesterday. Howard and Arthur have both done a lot of these and their wisdom is invaluable but, as I'm learning, wisdom and experience are essential but so is the commitment to just plain doing the work.
I'll probably write a long post about the process next week. I'm less interested in telling you folks about it than I am in having a written reminder to myself. Next month when someone asks me to get involved with a tribute to Gallagher, I want to be able to re-read that piece, remember how much time 'n' attention the Freberg evening required and then say, "No, I don't think so…" I'd do it for Stan but not too many other people.
One friend of mine once told me something about organizing an event of this sort. He said, "Something will go wrong that you can't possibly anticipate. You can sit down and make a list of 100 things that might go wrong and what does will not be on that list." Can't wait to see what it'll be. I'm thinking the projectors will blow up and we'll have to simulate the clips from Stan's career with hand shadows. I'm going to go practice doing the Lone Ranger commercial…
A handful of remaining tickets are at this moment available for the Stan Freberg Tribute tomorrow night at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Fandango handles the ticket sales for the Egyptian and right this second, you can order tix via the Fandango app for iPhone or Android phones. The Fandango website does not seem to know about them. I have no idea why this is. However, you can access the mobile app page from your computer by clicking here. Once these are gone, there will be no more.
Hey, remember that play I saw the other night? The one I liked a lot? Well, here's a little sample of it. Tickets can be obtained here.