Monthly Archives: June 2001

Good article by Michael Kinsley (here) on the Republicans' silly belief that they have some sort of mandate or entitlement to lead.  What I'd like to see is someone point up the inherent silliness of talking about "the reds vs. the blues" and showing the map of which states went for Gore and which went for Bush.  They keep talking like everyone in the blue states voted for Gore and everyone in the red went for Bush.  Here's Jonah Goldberg in The National Review…

Everyone knows what RvB refers to.  The electoral map of the United States shows a stark political split in America that tracks geographically.  The blue parts hug the coasts and the major urban centers.  This is Gore country.  The red parts form the vast bulk of the United States — "fly-over country" according to people who order off-menu.  This is Bush country.

Will someone point out to these people that the red states are full of Gore supporters?  (Bush won Nevada 49%-46% and Tennessee 51%-48%)  And the blue states are full of people who wanted Bush.  (Gore won Iowa 49%-48% and Oregon by less than 1%)  Gore won New Mexico by less than 400 votes and, of course, we all know about Florida.  Even the landslide states contain hundreds of thousands of Americans who wanted the other guy.  Why are we pretending they don't exist and that the whole state represents one mindset?  Frankly, I think most of the states should be colored purple.

Programming note: Starting Monday, June 11, the Trio cable network is running old episodes of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Monday through Friday…and they're running them in the hour format, with only a few trims to accommodate more commercials.  These shows were briefly (and unsuccessfully) syndicated in chopped-up half-hours some time ago; oughta be interesting to see them today.  Of course, unless you have a satellite dish, you probably won't.  Not very many cable companies in this country carry Trio.

I want to elaborate on something mentioned earlier here.  There have been many histories written or, more often, written and televised about the making of Sid Caesar's various TV shows: Admiral Broadway Revue, Your Show of Shows, Caesar's Hour, Sid Caesar Invites You, As Caesar Sees It and a couple of subsequent specials.  Way too often, they treat the whole body of work as if it were one program called Your Show of Shows.  Not true.  Then they act as if anyone who was a writer on any of them was a writer on Your Show of Shows.  Also not true.  And, most annoyingly, they focus disproportionately on those writers who are today well-known for their other work — especially Woody Allen, who actually did relatively little work for Caesar and did it later, when Sid was generally in decline.  The core of Caesar's writing staff over the years was Mel Tolkin, Lucille Kallen and Mel Brooks plus Neil and Danny Simon.  To this were added, at various times — but after Your Show of Shows — Tony Webster, Larry Gelbart, Sheldon Keller, Gary Belkin, Aaron Ruben, Selma Diamond, Joe Stein, Lou Solomon, Mike Stewart, Woody Allen and a few others.  Sid, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris were also involved in the writing process, though they did not receive credit as writers.

For what it's worth, when I worked with Sid in the eighties, he told me that, as far as he was concerned, Kallen and the two Mels had probably, between the three of them, accounted for around 75% of everything he did on TV…and Imogene Coca felt that Kallen had written most of her best material.  So it was a little maddening that, when Lucille Kallen passed away, most of the obits made it sound like her great achievement was being one of the writers, along with Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen, on Your Show of Shows.  (Larry spends a lot of time correcting people who think he worked on that series and also that he somehow "created"  M*A*S*H, long after it was a book and a movie.)

This may all seem kinda trivial, and perhaps it is.  But if we can't get this stuff right when most of the people involved are still alive and being interviewed, what hope do we have of knowing who did what, a hundred years from now?

One of the great things about writing comic books is also one of the bad things:  It demands constant and consistent output over a long period of time.  To make anything resembling a living, you have to write three or four complete stories a month, often juggling them simultaneously, finishing one and then leaping, sans hiatus, to the next.  The playwright, George S. Kaufman, once said to Irving Thalberg, when Thalberg was demanding a certain script be handed in, "Do you want it good or do you want it Thursday?"  Writing comics is one of those fields where the answer is, "We want it as good as you can make it by Thursday."  The assembly-line hand-offs require us to keep churning it out.  And churning it out and churning it out.

There have been some very prolific writers in comic history — Robert Kanigher, Joe Gill, Gardner Fox, Paul S. Newman, Vic Lockman — and while he might fall short of matching those gents in page count, no one has maintained a consistent standard over more tales than Denny O'Neil.  Folks who recall his fine work on Batman and on Green Lantern/Green Arrow sometimes forget that all of that represents a fraction of the work he's done…and not a very large fraction.  How does he do it?  He tells some (not all) in a new book out any day now…The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics.  I'm among several "guest lecturers" who inhabit its pages but never mind that.  Anyone who aspires to be a writer — and not just a comic book writer but a writer of anything — can profit from reading what Denny has to say about story construction, pacing, crafting expressive dialogue, etc.  End of plug.

I expected not to like Laughter on the 23rd Floor, the new Showtime movie written by Neil Simon and drawn from his days working for Sid Caesar.  Critics have been generally unkind to it and, besides, I liked but did not love the Broadway play of the same name, which also starred Nathan Lane in a role corresponding to Mr. Caesar.  But of course, I had to watch this new work, fascinated as I am by the history of Your Show of Shows and Caesar's other programs.  (And isn't it interesting that, with no other TV show, do we see so little of the show itself but get endless documentaries and dramatizations about the backstage stuff and the writers' room?)  But I really enjoyed the film, in large part because I thought Mssrs. Simon and Lane, working seamlessly in tandem, etched an amazingly-penetrating portrait of Mr. Caesar.

That was, for me, missing in the stage version, where Lane seemed to be playing Jackie Gleason, and Simon seemed to be extra-cautious about not offending his former colleagues.  Neither is the case in the TV-movie, which skews more dramatic and gets more in-depth, not about the Camelot aspects of the Caesar output but of its slow, pain-filled disintegration.  For good or ill, it all struck me as an honest portrait, if not of reality, then certainly of the reality Simon witnessed.  And for those of you who need help with the little game of Who Represents Who?, here's a quick crib sheet…

• Max Prince was based on Sid Caesar and played by Nathan Lane
• Val was based on Mel Tolkin and played by Mark-Linn Baker
• Milt was based on Sheldon Keller and played by Dan Castellaneta
• Carol was based on Lucille Kallen and played by Peri Gilpin
• Kenny was based on Neil Simon and played by MacKenzie Astin
• Lucas was based on Larry Gelbart and played by Victor Garber
• Ira was based on Mel Brooks and played by Saul Rubinek
• Harry was based on Dave Caesar and played by Richard Portnow
• Brian was based on Tony Webster and played by Zach Grenler

Were it not for its roman à clef simplifications, this film might be the definitive biographical portrait of Sid Caesar, but I suspect it won't be.

Sweet, brilliant and sometimes even more befuddled off-screen than on, Imogene Coca has left us.  She was 92 and had been in and out of a Connecticut rest home, trying to fashion an autobiography between flare-ups of Alzheimer's.  We hear so much — rightly so — about the comedic genius that is Sid Caesar.  We hear not nearly enough about the lady who could do everything he did, plus go out and do a strenuous, hilarious dance routine while Sid, Carl and Howie were backstage changing for the next sketch…which she was also in.  All three men agreed that she had the hardest job on Your Show of Shows and the toughest constitution.  She may even have been the funniest.  I was fortunate enough to work with Imogene a few times.  She was a true delight and way too unassuming for her own good.

Once, when she was showing me around her New York apartment, I noticed an Emmy Award that was broken in two.  I asked how long it had been in pieces and she said, "Oh, it came that way."  She'd had it more than 40 years.  I told her that, during that time, she could have called the Academy and gotten a replacement.  She shrugged and replied, "Oh, I didn't want to bother them.  I figured I might win another one someday."

It was said without a scintilla of ego.  It just wasn't that important to her.

This was in 1994.  I had arranged while I was in Manhattan to take her to see the on-stage version of Laughter on the 23rd Floor, the Neil Simon play that referenced his days writing for Your Show of Shows.  Since I was bringing her, it was arranged for us to sit in Mr. Simon's house seats.

A few days before, Imogene began to worry that her attendance would be exploited for publicity purposes.  She was bothered, she told me, that all the articles and retrospectives about Your Show of Shows were giving less than proper credit to Lucille Kallen, who — in Imogene's opinion — wrote her best material.  She said, "I'd feel bad if I were used to promote a play that didn't give Lucille her due."  To prevent this, I called the theater's manager (or someone in his office) and was assured that Ms. Coca could attend, quietly and without fanfare.

That was insufficient promise for Imogene, who told me she was developing a "bad feeling" about it.  She asked if we could go to some other show and I did some reshuffling.  The night after, I was going to take another friend — cartoonist Carol Lay — to see Crazy For You, so I swapped dates.  I took Carol to Laughter on the 23rd Floor, with Nathan Lane brilliantly playing Jackie Gleason and calling him Max Prince, who was supposed to be Sid Caesar.  At the close of the performance, an obviously-professional photographer scurried down the aisle and began searching the front rows, looking in vain for Imogene Coca.

The next night, I took that very person to Crazy For You.  We dined first at Sardi's, where the reception could not have been more regal, had I arrived with Princess Margaret on my arm.  Mr. Sardi himself came over, kissed her and told me I was with the most talented woman in the business.  Yeah, like I didn't already know that.  Then, at the show, an array of fans approached her, endorsing that view.  One was a tall, skinny young gent who insisted on serenading her with the entire theme song of It's About Time, a short-lived situation comedy she did in the sixties.  Another was an even younger man who asked if she was — quote: "the old lady in National Lampoon's Vacation."  When she said she was, he asked with genuine curiosity, "Have you done anything else?"

After a few such folks, she turned to me with a genuine amazement and said, "You know, I think this is the first time I've been out in public and nobody's mentioned Sid Caesar."  But then the next fan to approach spoiled that record.

Following the performance, she asked if we could walk around the theatre district, where she hadn't ventured in many years.  We walked past the St. James Theater wherein, in '78, she scored a triumph with her performance in On The Twentieth Century.  We walked past Mamma Leone's restaurant and she recalled some wonderful parties that were held there, back in the Caesar days.  We stopped in front of a video store where there was a display from the Vacation movie and she said, "You know, I don't remember a thing about making that film…and when I saw it, I didn't have any idea what was going on.  I died in it and it was supposed to be funny.  I don't think that's funny."

She died this morning for real and I don't think that's funny, either.  One of the very few times she wasn't.

The late Bob Crane was best known as the star of Hogan's Heroes, though I recall him from when he was a darn good disc jockey/radio personality on KNX here in Los Angeles.  How he became "the late" Bob Crane apparently had a lot to do with his penchant for having sex with a wide array of women and taking pictures of these encounters.  Well, Bob Crane, Jr. is publishing a book…a fancy pictorial history of his father's life, including a generous sampling of the motel room photographs.  So if you're dying to see a dead sitcom star in the act of humping Denny's waitresses whose faces have been digitally obscured, hurry on over to www.bobcrane.com.

(Sarcasm Alert: I am not actually suggesting you purchase said volume or even visit the website.  I'm just reporting it because it's so weird and because it substantiates my theory that, eventually, every single piece of writing, video or audio that has ever existed will be available on the Internet.  Yes, that includes the Polaroids you keep in that shoebox in the back of the closet under your old sleeping bag.)

If you live in Los Angeles: On Sunday, before the Tony Awards, KCET (Channel 28) is rerunning the recent video of the Gershwin musical, Crazy For You.  Silly story, great dancing…and you can't beat the music.  I enjoyed it and it doesn't seem to be coming out on VHS or DVD, and it probably won't turn up on TV again for a while.  So record accordingly.

From my e-mail, I gather that many of you are as engrossed as I am in finding out what the hell happened with the voting in Florida last November.  A new "must read" is today's article in The Washington Post — a follow-up to the one I recommended the other day.  Here's the link…and for those of you who don't have time to click on it, here's a summary…

Boy, darn near everyone involved in running the election and counting the ballots screwed up royally, and almost all the screw-ups worked against Al Gore.