Monthly Archives: June 2002

Fox News is reporting here that Cartoon Network is reinstating Speedy Gonzales to its cartoon line-up.  As we predicted here, they're citing online petitions as one of the factors that prompted the decision.

Regarding the "Late Night Trifecta" mentioned below: Several e-mails this morn remind me that the three comedians not only all told the same joke, they were all factually wrong.  Southwest Airlines does not serve meals on their flights.

We hit the late night trifecta last night! Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien all did the same joke, which went roughly like this…

Southwest Airlines has announced that they're going to begin charging overweight passengers for two seats. The overweight passengers were upset until they realized it means two meals.

It happens quite often that two of the three happen onto the same topical joke. This is the first time I can recall all three doing one. (And, no, no one stole it from anyone else. No one ever steals jokes like that, especially on the same night.)

Anybody but me bothered by those new Denny's TV commercials featuring The Muppets?  It's not that the characters are doing commercials.  It's not even that someone other than Frank Oz is doing the voice of Miss Piggy.  It's that Miss Piggy is ordering and enjoying Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast — which includes two slices of bacon and two links of sausage!  Aren't those, like, her relatives?  Shouldn't Miss Piggy have been reacting in horror to the cuisine?  As I recall, The Muppet Movie was all about Kermit refusing to do TV commercials for a chain of restaurants that served frogs' legs.  Where did that independent, selfless spirit go?

One of the most talented people I know is an actor-comedian-inventor-silly person named Chuck McCann.  Once upon a time, he and Soupy Sales were a one-two parlay on New York television, making for a seamless bloc of hip kids' shows.  Later on, he appeared in films and on TV and did cartoon voices and…well, I can't begin to tell you all that Chuck has done.  Here's a link to his listing in the Internet Movie Database, which itemizes about a tenth of it.  (By the way: Ignore the credits they have for him as a film editor.  Those rightly belong to the other Chuck McCann.  Completely different person.)

As you can see, even without cutting film, this Chuck McCann has an awesome list of credits.  And one of the things that impresses me about Chuck is that he's done everything, met everyone, etc.  A year or three ago at a party, we were chatting and somehow, Edgar Bergen's name came up in the conversation.  Chuck works puppets and knows everybody so it didn't surprise me that Chuck knew him and had worked with him.  But even I was amazed when Chuck said, "Did you know I once did the voice of Mortimer Snerd for him while he was working the dummy?"  No, I didn't know…

Chuck went on to explain that it was on an episode of the game show, I've Got A Secret.  Bergen was the celebrity guest — with Mr. Snerd on his knee — and his secret was, "I'm not speaking for Mortimer…I have another ventriloquist under the desk."  Sure enough, Chuck was hidden uncomfortably down by the feet of Bergen and Garry Moore, and he copied Mortimer's voice.  Bergen worked the controls and — here's the part I love — moved his lips a little to complete the illusion.  The panel never guessed it.

I believed Chuck when he told me this.  Still, I was impressed to see it the other night when Game Show Network re-ran that ancient (6/14/61) episode.  It was just as Chuck described — his imitation of Snerd was flawless — and the whole spot was delightful.  I couldn't wait to call Chuck the next morning and tell him I'd seen it.

"It was on?" he gasped.  No one had told him.  I saved it for him, of course, and we're getting together for lunch next week so I can give him a copy.

But that's not why I recounted all this.  I just think it's great that things like this have been saved.  Chuck thought he'd never see that episode again; assumed it was lost forever, as so much fine work has been lost.  With eight zillion cable channels out there, why do they all have to be rerunning Dude, Where's My Car?  Why can't we have more stations rooting around in old film vaults, preserving and sharing treasures of the past?  I'm amazed how few old TV shows are available on my satellite dish beyond the biggies like M*A*S*H and I Love Lucy.  When is someone going to start The Old Sitcom Network?  Or The Cop Show Channel?  Why can't I tune in one of my thousand channels and see The Defenders?  Or Car 54?  Or even Bilko, for God's sake?

Sorry.  There's no answer to this.  I'm just venting.

By the way: Game Show Network is closing in on the end of their supply of What's My Line? episodes.  The last one (probably the actual last episode, featuring John Daly as the Mystery Guest) will air at the end of this month.  It'll be replaced on the schedule by old installments of To Tell the Truth.

I have another theory. It's that many old TV shows have been secretly refilmed to make them cheap-looking and less entertaining.  I formulated this notion a few years ago when I caught a couple of vintage reruns of The Man From U.N.C.L.E..  I just know this series didn't look that chintzy and wasn't as silly when it first aired.  Using doubles of Robert Vaughn and David McCallum — or perhaps employing sophisticated computer imagery — someone has managed to drain the entertainment value of them.

I started thinking the same kind of monkeying had been done to David Frost's 1977 interviews with Richard Nixon.  I watched them when they first aired and I watched the first two hours again the other night on the Discovery Civilization Channel.  Something, one can't help but think, has changed.  Maybe it's CGI animation or maybe they found David Frye and got him to redo Nixon's role…but I don't recall our 37th president being that rotten a liar.  He's really terrible.  My recollection is that while Frost landed some solid punches, Nixon held his own for much of it and made some solid points on his behalf with regard to Watergate and its allied scandals.

I could then understand how his supporters could have believed him…something I cannot fathom after the other night.  He seems nakedly insincere and his tactic for diverting questions is in full view and utterly ineffective.  I never liked or trusted the man but I thought he was a better fibber than this.

Perhaps the tapes (Frost's tapes, that is) have indeed been altered.  The shows now airing have been recut to include material that was previously unused.  Still, I find it hard to believe they cut out Nixon's better moments for this version, or that they omitted his worst, the first time around.  I find it more credible to believe that in the quarter-century since, we've endured so many lying, weasely politicians up-close and personal on the cable channels, the art form of political misdirection has had to advance.  They've had to improve on what Nixon did, and his skills of misdirection are no longer State of the Art.  I wonder if people who once supported him watched these shows this week and said, "I can't believe I voted for this guy."

Three of you wrote to remind me that Roger Broughton's small press comic book company is reprinting old Herbie comics in black-and-white.  I guess what I meant was that the comic probably won't get reprinted in a quality, full-color volume.

I've posted a list of the panels I'm hosting at this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego.  Here it is.

The interview I did with Paul Harris on his splendid radio show earlier this week is now available for on-line listening on Paul's website.  Here's a link to a page with it and a number of vastly more interesting chats.

Just noticed: If you don't want to wait 'til next Monday to see Triumph the Insult Comic Dog abuse Star Wars fans, the complete video — it's ten and a half minutes, by the way — has been posted to several websites.  You can try this link or this link or this link or even this link.  One of those oughta work, at least for the next day or two.

I have a theory that God watches the monologues of the late night TV comedians and, every so often, he decides they're weak in subject matter.  It's like, "Hmm…Dave and Jay don't have much to talk about.  I'd better give them something."  If the material is really weak, he'll have a Congressman or even a President caught in a sex scandal.  If it's only so-so, he'll arrange something that offers less opportunity for jokes, like the President choking on a pretzel or Michael Jackson getting in trouble again.

And then, about once a week, he'll see that there's one news item that's so silly — so fraught with possibilities for humor — that it's good for at least 20 monologue jokes per comedian.  Here's this week's.  Watch and see if any of them can resist this.  (It's the first item…the one about the bras.)

I couldn't help it. I purchased and devoured John Dean's on-line e-book about Deep Throat (the informant, not the porn film) that is currently being hawked over at www.salon.com.  Dean originally announced he would reveal on June 17, the name of the secret source within the Nixon administration who abetted Woodward and Bernstein in their research.  When he said this, he intended to finger a man named Jonathan Rose who worked under Nixon, and who would have been Dean's third (at least) identification of the mysterious snitch.  He previously named Earl Silbert and Alexander Haig, then backed off on both.  On the way to those public announcements, he briefly believed it was Al Wong and several others.

This time, after he'd committed to a revelation on 6/17 but before it could happen, his target denied it, threatened to sue and convinced Dean he was wrong.  Stuck with the deadline and a book without a pay-off, Dean went ahead and, in this version, he proudly boasts that he has winnowed it down to several candidates and that one of them is absolutely, definitely, positively Deep Throat.  Maybe.

But it all made me realize what it is I find interesting about the search for Woodstein's famed tattletale; it's that it's a mystery that probably has an answer.  The reporters swear that there was a Deep Throat and that, when the person dies or releases them from their pledge of confidentiality, they will name him.  Having read dozens of articles and books in which learned men have analyzed the data and concluded that D.T. is definitely this guy or that guy, I think I'm less interested in the right answer than I am in who was wrong, and why.

Years ago, I spent many wasted hours/days/weeks/etc. reading up about the Kennedy assassination and watching as intelligent and wise individuals came logically and assuredly to wildly different conclusions.  Some of these folks were well-credentialed educators or experienced journalists — i,e., the kinds of people from whom we learn so much of what we "know" — and many penned essays that seemed to make absolute sense; that, taken in standalone fashion, seemed to nail down precisely how many dozens of shooters were on that grassy knoll or scurrying about in Oswald masks.  You could almost become convinced by some of them, but for the fact that there were other, equally-credible works that came to totally different conclusions.  (I especially loved the authors — and there were several — who came to finite, irrefutable conclusions about who killed J.F.K. and how it was done…and later authored other books saying it was someone else using a different plan.  And they would defend both books to the death, even though if A was right, B was wrong and vice-versa.)

But they could get away with that to a great extent because we were long past the stage when any assassination theory would or could ever be proven.  Today, if you came up with movie film of the shooter actually pulling the trigger, most folks would just say, "Aah, coming to light so late, it's gotta be fake," and press on with their old conspiracy theories.  I believe a lot of those who've written about the Kennedy killing have done so in full confidence that, no matter what silly thing they write, they'll never be proven wrong.

It's not quite that way with the Deep Throat Mystery.  Someday, I like to believe, Bernstein and Woodward will single out the guy.  And while a number of folks will loudly claim they're lying, no matter who they name, most of the world will probably accept it as final, especially if nothing about the person contradicts anything they said in the book of All the President's Men.  I'm interested in what all the wrong guessers will then say.  How did all those smart people get it so wrong?

John Dean is an extremely smart man.  I can't vouch for his ethics, especially back in his Nixonian days, but one of the reasons that administration went bye-bye was that Dean was a terrific witness.  When he testified, Republicans were poised to find the teensiest discrepancy in his testimony and use it to smear and discredit him.  If he'd said Nixon drank tea and it was actually coffee, you'd have had Howard Baker decrying, "If a man can't tell the difference between tea and coffee, we cannot take his word for anything, so I demand that his testimony be totally disregarded."  That Dean was so letter-perfect accurate — that he didn't make even the microscopic errors that any honest witness might make — is one of the reasons Gerald Ford got to be prez.

So here's this guy who knows Washington — at least during the Nixon era — as well as anyone.  He's very smart.  He's a lawyer.  And he keeps being wrong about who Deep Throat was.  After all the names he's tossed out, he may still be wrong.  Dozens of others, equally savvy, have been wrong…and if anyone turns out to be right, it may only be via the stopped-clock principle.  In the long run, I don't think it matters much who Deep Throat was, unless it turns out to be someone like Henry Kissinger.  I just think it's great that, for once, a public controversy is actually going to turn out to have a right answer.

I really enjoy Late Night With Conan O'Brien.  At times, I think it's the smartest, funniest show on TV.  I feel this at other times about other shows but Conan's often takes the lead, especially when the hand of Robert Smigel is in evidence.  Smigel is a writer and occasional performer who contributes in many ways, one of them being Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.  Recently, America's rudest hand puppet did a segment that was, like most of what he does, hysterical if one could get past its fundamental cruelty.  Triumph went to a Manhattan movie house where dedicated Star Wars fans were camped out to see the new release and "he" (Smigel, via the puppet) interviewed and unmercifully ridiculed them.

It was very, very nasty but — I'm almost ashamed to admit — very, very funny.  And this is an early TiVO ALERT (bwoop-bwoop) that the episode reruns next Monday night, June 24.  It's so funny they put it at the beginning of the show, spinning off from O'Brien's opening monologue.

Actually, since Conan starts at 12:35 in the morning in most time zones, this episode technically airs on Tuesday A.M..  This is a concept that seems to have eluded the makers of TiVos and VCRs that allow you to program a Monday-Friday recording pattern.  Late Night is actually on Tuesday through Saturday, as are all sorts of shows that air early in the morn.  You'd think they'd add this recording option, wouldn't you?

High on the list of Things Which Probably Didn't Need Doing, we find the notion of Neil Simon rewriting and updating The Odd Couple.  The play, originally done on Broadway in 1965, may well be the most-performed comedy of the 20th century with a good shot at a repeat in this one.  If Mr. Simon had passed away and someone else suggested a new version was in order, we'd stone the guy to death.  Nevertheless, this evening, I took in a performance of Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple, which opens this coming week in Westwood.

Press reports said that Simon had rewritten 75% or more of the play.  I didn't keep score but it felt more like 50% and I found myself wondering if, in the rehearsal period, some lines didn't get rolled back to their '65 versions.  For what it's worth, I felt that all the old stuff worked well…or will, once John Larroquette (who's playing Oscar) and Joe Regalbuto (as the other one) do more performances and find more ways to work the material.  Tonight, there were occasional moments when they seemed to be struggling to even remember it all — which, again, got me to wondering if rewrites weren't still in progress.  If so, they'd better hurry: The official opening is this Wednesday.

Some of what's new is merely updates or extensions of old lines.  Felix, for instance, no longer sends a suicide telegram.  Now, it's a suicide e-mail.  Oscar still offers the poker players their choice of green sandwiches and brown sandwiches but now the line is followed by one of them explaining he eats brown meat because, "My doctor told me to give up red meat."  (Don't worry.  I'm not giving away any more punchlines.)  A lot of it, I thought, was different but not better and about this, I have mixed feelings.  Changing one funny line to another funny line is a plus, in that we've all heard the old ones eight zillion times.  It's a minus in that we liked a lot of the old ones.  I did, anyway.  I sat there for much of the performance thinking, "That's not the next line…"  Perhaps, if you don't know the play by heart, this won't bother you.

Other changes: The British Pigeon Sisters have morphed into the Hispanic Costazuela Sisters (Maria Conchita Alonso and Alex Meneses), inheriting a lot of malaprops from the male Hispanic flight attendants who filled that function in Simon's earlier, "female version" of The Odd Couple.  The new ladies are very funny in a Jose Jiminez way, though somewhat more cartoony.  Other parts of the text deal a fraction more openly — and unnecessarily, I thought — with the notion that there's something a bit homosexual about two men living together, acting a teensy bit like each others' wives.  The closing moments, with Oscar and Felix making up after their big spat, are more serious, deeper and — I thought — vastly less effective.  If this version has a life beyond the Geffen Playhouse, I'm betting a lot of this changes further.

I didn't like either Larroquette or Regalbuto in the first scene but warmed to them as the evening progressed, possibly because they were improving.  I don't think either is ideally cast (Larroquette would probably make a better Felix) but they hit long stretches where they were as good as any Oscar/Felix combo I've seen…and I've seen a lot of them.  Peter Bonerz, by the way, directed and seems to have done a fine job.

In spite of all my reservations and quibbling, much about this play is bulletproof and a lot of the new lines are quite funny…so I had a very good time.  On the other hand, I think I would probably have had just as good a time if they'd done the old text with no update.

112 years ago today, Arthur Stanley Jefferson was born in Ulverston, England.  He eventually became a performer in British music hall revues, joined a troupe that toured America, decided to stay, changed his name to "Stan Laurel" and teamed up with a man named Oliver Norvell Hardy.  Your mileage may vary but I don't think any movie film has ever been exposed that contained more delight than the cinema antics of Laurel and Hardy.  There is something about seeing them that always makes me feel good.  Part of it is that they played charming, fascinating individuals, but part of it is just that they did what they did so well.  One of their film editors — a gent named Martin Bolger, who lived down the street from my folks' house — once said to me that nothing got into their films by accident.  They may have played two clueless babes but they always knew precisely what they were doing…and they did it just about as well as it could be done.  Happy birthday, Mr. Laurel.  Wherever you are.

For just shy of nine years, my longtime buddy Ken Gale has been broadcasting 'Nuff Said — America's only regular radio program devoted to comic books — over station WBAI in New York.  He's played host to everyone who's anyone in the field, and even a few of us who fall under the category of "anyone who's everyone."  But no longer.  Recently, the station reshuffled its line-up and 'Nuff Said was suddenly nowhere to be heard.

This may change.  The station, which is listener-supported — has received a number of complaints, though they could use more.  Ken has the particulars over on his new (change your bookmarks) website for the show, which is at www.comicbookradioshow.com.  While you're there, listen to some on-line audio of recent broadcasts and browse Ken's terrific guest list.  You will, like me, hope he gets this thing back on the air somewhere soon.