Every time Paul Rudd goes on one of Conan O'Brien's talk shows, he shows a clip from his current movie. And it's always the same clip…

Lorne Michaels has been under criticism for some time for a certain lack of racial diversity on Saturday Night Live. Recently, he did a marathon of auditions of potential black female cast members and he's told the press he will hire one in the next week or so. That sounds to me like the wrong way to achieve the right goal. I mean, how about just hiring one because she's funny? But here's what the article about this made me think of…

Years ago, a then-former member of that show's cast — someone from its "middle" era — said something to me. I said something that this person thought was unlikely and she said to me, "That's about as likely as Lorne Michaels hiring an SNL cast member who didn't have a full head of hair."  At the time, he hadn't.  Has he since?

I must admit I haven't followed the show closely enough to notice if that's ever changed. When I see sketches, I can't tell who half the cast members are anyway, and many of them seem to be wearing wigs as part of being in character. I get that they don't hire older performers to join the cast…but there are some pretty funny young guys around who are losing their hair or have shaved what's left off to make it appear they wanted to be bald.

She said — and again, this could have been disproven since — that Michaels didn't even like guest hosts or musical acts who were thinning or hairless.  Years ago when Sinead O'Connor performed on the show, the crew joked that she was the first and last bald performer Lorne would ever allow on the premises.  And around that time when Kelsey Grammer hosted, he came out in a wig and the whole monologue spot was about how he wanted the world to think he had more hair than he did. I seem to recall that Michaels was on-camera in the segment and he brought on Sy Sperling, the "president" of the Hair Club for Men to counsel Mr. Grammer on follicle restoration options.

I'm not sure I trust my source here.  Can anyone cite evidence that Mr. Michaels either has stopped caring about hairlines or never did?

Thanks to a number of generous, caring folks — many of them readers of this here blog — Bob Kahan may have achieved in two days of donations, the amount of loot he needs to not get tossed out of his apartment for Christmas. I say "may have" because a few of the donations may not be legit and Bob has wisely increased his target amount so he can take in enough to make certain. Please…go over there and let's get him over the five grand mark so when he goes to court next Friday, he absolutely has the cash he believes will keep him in his home.

And while we're at it: I have worked with a lot of editors in comics, ranging from the legendary (Archie Goodwin, Julius Schwartz, Chase Craig) to guys who couldn't find the Men's Room unless a freelancer told them where it was and what to do in it. Bob was very good at putting together books and getting them off to press…and there are plenty of publishing houses — not just of comics — that could profit from having him on the premises. A guy like that shouldn't be out of work for a week, let alone a year. Spread the word, people.

I kept getting invited to advance screenings of Saving Mr. Banks but deadlines and my knee kept me away from all of them. Finally, it's come to me: A screener DVD arrived in my mailbox yesterday and I'll probably watch it here this weekend instead of limping to a theater near me. I'm curious. The trailers and advance footage I saw made me think that Tom Hanks had way too much of the performer about him to be convincing as Walt Disney, a man who was famously awkward in front of a camera. But both Floyd Norman and Richard Sherman told me they thought Hanks was a perfect Walt…so what's my opinion compared to theirs? They worked with the real Walt. I just watched him on TV.

Being a writer, and having a natural belief that a writer's work should not be tampered with or wrested away by others, I've always been a little uncomfy with the notion that Walt took Ms. Travers' creation and did things with it that she hated. I think it's a great movie made from an unimpressive work, and I have no doubt that P.L. Travers profited mightily in many ways from the experience. Still, all the stories I've heard about the making of Mary Poppins leave me with an image of Walt saying to his staff — this is not an actual quote, just a figment of my imagination — "I'm gonna do what I want to that woman's work and I don't care how much it pisses her off." Given my profession, I have a bit of a hard time rooting for that attitude to succeed, even if it does result in a classic motion picture that I love very much. So I want to see how I feel about that after I see the movie.

I'm also curious to see how much, if at all, the Disney organization allows worries about its (and Walt's) image to get in the way of the real story. Back in the mid-eighties, I was hired by the studio to write a TV movie called The Duck Man. They had that title and a simple premise: One of the famous Nine Old Men (the legendary "A" Team of Disney classic animation) is about to be retired. This was not to be one of the real Nine Old Men. I was to make up one and we'd say he was one of the Nine Old Men. The whole film was to be a celebration of folks like that.

He was to be an eccentric old guy who talks to Donald Duck the way Elwood P. Dowd talks to his invisible rabbit friend in Harvey. In this case, Donald would be animated — and seen only by this one old animator — in an otherwise live-action movie that dealt with him coming to grips with his retirement. That was all they had story-wise, apart from the idea of having Fred MacMurray (or if he wasn't up to it, Dick Van Dyke in old man make-up that he would still need) play this animator being put out to pasture.

I still suspect I wasn't the first writer on the project and I may not have been the last. If there were others, I'll bet they encountered the same problems I did. I think I did six drafts of the script — for about the fee that should have bought them two — and each time, many folks at the studio loved it but it eventually made its way to one who was terribly, terribly concerned with how the Disney organization was portrayed. Comic books aside, I worked for Disney on three separate occasions, all of them major projects, and I had the same problem each time…

You'd hand in your script and if the person who read it liked it, he or she would pass it on to someone else to read and if that person liked it, they'd pass it on to someone else…and eventually, they'd find someone who hated it or who would at least say, "We can't make this!" That person would give you notes. So you'd rewrite to please that person and then the process would start all over again with everyone who liked it passing it on until they found someone on the premises who'd say "We can't make this!" And so on.

One of the three projects wound up getting made pretty much as I wrote it, but largely because the network insisted on that. One got made but not until I'd left it, removed my name and they brought in another writer to rearrange things. And The Duck Man didn't ever get off the pages. It was the only one of the three that was set in the reality of the Disney world and therefore subject to concerns about the company's rep.

The problem was that if the old guy is being retired against his will, then it makes the Disney Corporation look callous and ungrateful. Basically, it makes them the Bad Guys. But if the fellow is retiring on his own accord…well, then what's the story? What's so interesting about a guy who wants to retire retiring?  They'd somehow all okayed my outline in which the studio was nudging him out the door but once I made it into a whole script, this became an issue.

So then I did a draft where there's one officious, by-the-book Disney exec who insists on an obscure clause in some Disney Employee Manual that forces the old gent's ouster and at the end, with the aid of young Disney animators who worship the elderly artist and an assist from Donald, the senior Disney execs hear what's happening and immediately overrule the one zealot who insists on retiring The Duck Man. Six or seven mid-range Disney execs liked this version and some even congratulated me on solving an unsolvable problem.

Then it passed to someone who thought it still made the company look bad. This person actually wrote a memo that said, "Could we lose the part where even one Disney executive doesn't appreciate him?" I responded by asking, "Well then, why is he retiring against his will?" The answer was, "That's for you to figure out."  I tried a draft where the old man has a daughter, one he can't communicate with (that's why he talks to an animated duck all the time) and she's forcing his retirement.  The studio didn't like that because…well, I still don't know why they didn't like that.  It was something like, "Even an evil daughter who doesn't have his best interests at heart should recognize how good it's been for him to be part of the Disney organization."

At some point, I had to do one draft where The Duck Man himself feels it's time to retire but the studio, aware of his valuable contributions, is pressing him to stay and the whole film is about them trying to talk him out of it. I don't know how they did it but they managed to find someone on the lot who thought even that made the studio look bad.

My last draft was a mess where I tried to do a story about the old man retiring without him retiring and with his employers trying to keep him on but not if he wanted to retire and…oh, it was hopeless. It was like trying to write Snow White without the queen wanting her dead, lest it reflect poorly on royalty of any kind. I spent ninety pages trying to resolve a conflict without establishing one in the first place…and I was not surprised they gave up on me and maybe the whole idea. We should have given up four drafts earlier.

That was some time ago and I gather Disney the Corporation is no longer as worried about anyone believing they have skeletons that are not in the Haunted Mansion. So I look forward to Saving Mr. Banks. If they did it back when I was working on what felt like Draft #7846 of The Duck Man, it would have to end with P.L. Travers admitting Walt was right about everything, begging him to forgive her for ever doubting he could improve on her creation and asking, "Could you take me to Disneyland so we can ride those delightful teacups together?" I gather it doesn't.

Jerry Lewis made his Broadway debut playing The Devil in a revival of Damn Yankees in 1995. My friend Paul Dini and I were in the fifth row on his official opening night and we liked him…with reservations. Later, after that production closed in New York, he toured with it.

Here's three minutes from one of those tour performances. The lady playing Lola is Susan Ann Taylor. Unfortunately, the clip ends just as she starts to sing but you'll get a little taste of Jerry as Applegate…

In an interview today, NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt says his network is looking at three possible musicals to do live for Christmas of 2014, the way they did The Sound of Music. He didn't name them but did say, "We're looking for another show, a well-known title, something that people already know and love that can interest kids and adults and can be produced live, which is no small feat." I'm guessing it'll be something like The King and I, Oliver!, Annie, Guys and Dolls, Camelot, My Fair Lady, The Music Man, Grease, Fiddler on the Roof, Mame or Hello, Dolly.

Grease and The Music Man have probably been performed too recently on television. Fiddler on the Roof might evoke some charge of trying to crowd Christianity out of a month that belongs to Christmas. One thing seems likely: Whatever show they pick is probably going to involve a lot more dancing than The Sound of Music.

Mame would be an interesting choice. It's not as well known as the others but it does have a kid in it, a strong "family" theme and some of it's about Christmas. Best of all, it has a couple of songs in it that are rather well-known. Greenblatt does note that there may be rights problems with some of the shows they want to do.

By the way: I wasn't that serious about A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It's not really for kids, it doesn't have songs the whole world knows and loves and it isn't a family/Christmas thing. And I forgot to mention the biggest argument against doing it on TV like that: It would be harmed a lot by commercial breaks. The whole show plays pretty much in real time with no change of setting, no dissolves to later the same day or the following weeks, etc. There's no room for a word or ten from our sponsor.

Meanwhile, Mr. Greenblatt was also asked about the situation with Jay Leno and he said…

I've made it clear to him and all of his reps that we'd love him to stay. He's been very focused on the final months of the show and has said he's not going to make any decisions about his post-Tonight Show life until after the show. But nothing would make me happier than to find ways to keep him involved with this network. That's really up to him.

I would translate that as follows: There's nothing we can offer him that he really wants. If there were, we'd have made a deal by now. Jay's going to wait until his contract with us permits him to accept offers from other seekers of his services and see where he is then. If and only if he can't find a deal he wants to take elsewhere will he come back and accept some sort of contract with us.

Or at least, it means something like that. I have heard that the buzz about The Tonight Show is that Jay has received if not other offers then at least communications from parties that have said the equivalent of, "Don't sign with anyone else until you hear what we have in mind for you!" He is saying nothing. Two interesting aspects of this are…

1. Not only is Leno being paid by NBC through September but much of his staff is, as well. So a lot of them are not rushing off to line up other jobs. They can afford to wait a bit and see if Jay comes up with something that they can work on.
2. Since the days he guest-hosted for Johnny, Leno has been on the NBC Burbank lot. He was in Stage 1 (Johnny's stage) for a while. Then he moved to Stage 3, across the hall. Since he started his 10 PM show, he's been in another, newer stage on the other side of the lot…but it's no longer NBC Burbank there. NBC sold the facility off and now it's a private rental lot. If he made a deal to do a new talk show — say, for Fox — when his current contract is up, they might be able to rent the same studio and offices for him so he wouldn't have to move.

In other words, he could work in the same place with a lot of the same folks. In Bill Carter's last book on the Late Night skirmishes, he said that one of the reasons Leno opted for that 10 PM deal on NBC over, say, going to ABC at 11:30 was that he liked the idea of staying on the NBC lot and keeping the same crew and the same offices and the same parking space. Just a point of interest for the folks following this story.

I'm not sure how much of this piece by Amanda Marcotte I agree with. She says that the current positions of the extreme right are driven by a belief that if America doesn't function the way they want it to, then it isn't America and might as well be destroyed. I'm sure that's true of some. It's even true of some people I know and they don't deny it. I'm not sure it's as widespread though as Ms. Marcotte makes it to be.

Bob Kahan is a good guy who, like many good guys these days, has fallen on hard times. He's bright and talented and a nice person, and I know this because I worked with him when he was editing terrific reprint collections for DC Comics. Unable to find work for way too long, he is now facing eviction from his apartment and has had to ask for donations. I'm sure this was not easy for him to do. Why not help him out? If everyone who bought and enjoyed books he worked on gave him 5% of what they spent on them, it would probably keep him in his home until he finds employment…which can't be too far in the future.

Here's where you donate. It only takes a moment and you'll feel better if you help out. Try it and see.

Dick Van Dyke is 88 years old today. Ordinarily, when someone you like hits a number like that, you politely don't mention how old they are but in Dick's case…well, the guy doesn't look 88 and he sure doesn't act 88. I'd say "I hope I'm that fit when I'm 88" but the truth is I'd like to be that fit today.

He's been my favorite performer for an awfully long time. I've written here before about how attending a filming of The Dick Van Dyke Show when I was 13 changed my life an awful lot. I'd already decided I wanted to be a writer if and when I grew up but it was that evening I decided I wanted to be, at least some of the time, a comedy writer.

And part of me wanted to be Rob Petrie because he got to sleep with Laura, while part of me wanted to be Dick Van Dyke because he was just so cool and likeable. He just lit up the set when he appeared and it was like that every moment he was there, even when he wasn't in character. During one lull in the filming, he entertained the audience by palming a business card. The next day, thanks to a magic book from the library, I learned how to palm a business card.

It's darn near the only thing I can do almost as well as Dick Van Dyke. I sure can't sing or dance or act or trip over an ottoman…and my English accent makes his sound like Rex Harrison's.

In the last few years, I've gotten to know Dick a little…a lovely man. He has a lovely wife, too…someone who knows how to take real good care of a National Treasure.

Meeting an idol can sometimes be a major letdown but that has not been the case here. He's funny and charming and just as nice as you'd want the guy to be. There's also a very nice aura of happiness about him. He's usually happy — a mutual friend says, "Well, since he married Arlene" — but unlike some happy people, he has a way of spreading his happiness to others around him.

I suspect that's a lot of the reason he doesn't look 88 or act 88. I also suspect it's a better thing to learn from him than how to palm a business card. Happy Today, Dick!

My amigo Bob Elisberg goes into greater, more informed detail on what I was saying yesterday about the Golden Globe Awards. Everyone in Hollywood who cares knows all this stuff but it doesn't matter. An award is an award, a good party is a good party and a good advertising line is a good advertising line.

Here's an even better performance of "Climb Every Mountain" by Audra McDonald. Gee, she's good…

If you're going to discuss gun violence — or even have any sort of opinion on it — you oughta take a look at a couple of charts.

This is from Gary Emenitove…

Since you've had a bit of an ongoing discussion about The Sound of Music Live!. I thought I'd throw out a question that I haven't seen answered…or even addressed…elsewhere.

What about the orchestra?

After much Internet searching, I finally found one reference that the orchestra was, indeed, pre-recorded. I presume that was done largely for cost purposes, but surely added an extra layer of complexity as the singers had to keep up with the recorded instrumentation. Do you know, is there a conductor present in such cases? Or do singers wear an earpiece with a click track?

Also, I saw no mention of the orchestra anywhere. No credit at all. What did they do, hire the Uzbekistan Symphony? Any idea?

They ballyhooed that this was the first live musical on TV in 50 years, but they left out the part about where the music was coming from!

I was wondering the same thing. Does anyone know?

• Fox News now insisting that Santa Claus is not only white but he's Republican, pro-gun and committed to the repeal of Obamacare.

Hollywood — or at least what passes for it on the Internet — is buzzing this morning with news of the Golden Globe Award nominations. This always amuses me no end because there is not one person in the industry who really, deep down, thinks these awards are meaningful except for this: If there's an award out there, it's better to win it than to not win it. Not winning it means you lost something, never mind that no one thinks the selection process is at all functional. Winning means you get to go to the big awards ceremony (they do put on a good party) and you get lots of attention and applause and your movie gets to say "X Golden Globe Awards" in its ads, which might trick someone somewhere into seeing it. More important, it might — and it's a big "might" there — create some momentum which will translate into Academy Award consideration and even wins. Maybe.

There's some question as to who votes for the Oscars and whose opinions they reflect…but the Golden Globes? Nobody really knows who picks them or who gives them or what the process is. When winners get up there and thank the voters and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, they have no idea who the voters are or how many there are or even WTF the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is. It's some sort of group that has promoted their award into a real attention-getter…and like I said, they do put on a good party. For all anyone knows, they pick their nominees out of a hat and then someone goes eenie-meenie-minie-moe to decide which one gets the trophy.

Still, there's a real Royal Nonesuch quality to it all. If you win one, you have to get up there and talk about what a great honor it is because…well, you've got one. It's up to you to sell people on the idea that it's a great honor. I get the feeling that most winners don't manage to ever sell themselves; that they get home, put the trophy on their mantle and then think, "Wow! One or more people somewhere thought I was the Best Actor of last year!"