Monthly Archives: June 2003

Bill Clinton on the situation with the F.C.C. giveaway ruling. (Thanks to master illustrator Dan Gheno for the link.)

As mentioned a few items back, I saw Fred Travalena this afternoon at the Hollywood Collectors Show. I love impressionists and Fred is one of the best…one of those guys who surprises you not only with his range but with the way he gets inside whoever he's doing. There are some samples of his fine work over at his website.

Frank Kelly Freas isn't really a comic artist. He's an award-winning illustrator and painter working primarily in the areas of science fiction and fantasy. But he did wonderful covers for Mad Magazine for years and that's a good enough reason for me to direct you to his website.

Because Strom Thurmond lived so long and managed to occasionally turn on the charm, a lot of people have been able to minimize or rationalize his past as a rabid racist and advocate of segregation. Lest we forget, The Smoking Gun offers us this peek at the platform on which he ran for the presidency.

I wished the senator no ill but if he didn't want people to hold this against him, he should at some point have declared that it was wrong. Even George Wallace (our last major presidential candidate who couldn't pronounce "negro" without making it sound like that other "n" word) managed to repudiate his segregationist positions.

Dropped by the Hollywood Collectors Show up at the Beverly Garland Hotel in North Hollywood. These are those quarterly gatherings where a wide array of actors and actresses sell autographed photos and books and such. Shirley Jones (squired by hubby Marty Ingels) was probably the biggest "new" name in attendance…though there was also a pretty large line for Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer. They had Mr. Troyer and several other little people on one side of the room and a bevy of Russ Meyer starlets on the opposite side. I was worried the room was going to tip.

Chatted with Fred Travalena, Bruce Kimmel, Eddie Deezen, Stella Stevens, Felix Silla, Leo Gorcey Jr. and a few others. Ran into Chuck McCann, who was wandering the aisles. Bought some autographed books. Fun time. Stopped and got the car washed on the way home. No Spraywax or Armor-All. End of report.

One of the sweetest, funniest ladies I've ever worked with is Victoria Jackson. You know her best from several seasons of Saturday Night Live. She was part of that show during what I consider its best years…and yes, I'm including the first five in that evaluation. Before SNL, she was a wonderful presence on Los Angeles stages and at comedy clubs…and if you go see her do that kind of act today, you'll see why she was so popular. Over on her website, she sometimes posts where she's going to be.

Maybe I'm wrong but this whole notion of Arnold Schwarzenegger running for governor strikes me as a publicity stunt — one that the muscular thespian would have cut short if he didn't have Terminator III coming out right about now. Assuming the governor's mantle would be a nightmare job. The state's finances are in a mess and it will require hard, long-term planning to even begin to right the ship of state — especially difficult for a Republican who would have to deal with a Democratic legislature. As governor, Arnold's salary would go down, his standard (and locale) of living would decrease, and he would be interrupting a successful movie career in what may be his last few years of being able to land starring roles with multi-million dollar salaries.

And for what? Jesse Ventura jumped into politics but Jesse's wrestling days were over and he needed a new career. Ronald Reagan's days as a movie star were long behind him and anyway, he wanted to be president — a job for which the foreign-born Schwarzenegger is ineligible. Yes, there is a certain prestige and honor that Arnold may crave…but there are too many potential humiliations out there, starting with the possible losing of the election and alienating a large chunk of the electorate in the process. Looking like a loser won't help the opening weekend of Terminator IV or whatever else he wants to do in Hollywood in the future.

Mr. Schwarzenegger always struck me as a pretty smart guy. His success as a movie star has turned to some extent on his willingness to go out and hustle and promote, even to the extent of mocking his accent and physique. He has a lot of years invested in that success. Odder things have happened but I can't see him being willing to risk it all for what could — win or lose — turn out to be a humiliating situation. He just doesn't seem like a guy who's eager to cut short his acting career…especially with so few apparent upsides.

Al Feldstein was the editor of MAD Magazine for more than a quarter of a century and before that, he was the editor-writer of most of the EC comics of the fifties, including Tales From the Crypt, Weird Fantasy and Crime SuspenStories. Those are stunning achievements…so it's easy to forget that before he was an editor and writer, he was an artist. And when he retired to a ranch in Wyoming, he returned to art — to painting western scenes and the occasional EC re-creation. You can see some of his lovely work over on his website.

At some point during his long, intolerant career, Strom Thurmond must have said, "They'll legalize homosexuality over my dead body."

An upcoming TV-Movie tells the story of George W. Bush on the morning of 9/11 and from all reports, it depicts him as heroic, tough, determined, etc. At one point, it supposedly has him yelling, "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me. I'll be at home…waiting for the bastard." And with that, Bush makes the decision to head back to the White House from Florida. I'm not sure there's one human being on the planet who believes that really happened but that's what they're saying is in the film.

I'm always reticent to critique a movie I haven't seen yet but I sure don't have a good feeling about this one. It's being produced and written by a gentleman named Lionel Chetwynd who some in the TV business still haven't forgiven for his conduct during the 1985 Writers Guild strike. Basically — to condense a long, tortured tale — the '85 strike was about payments to writers for shows and movies that were released on the then-new medium of videocassettes. The Guild had earlier won a very nice deal on this format and the studios wanted to roll it back and lower the formula by which you'd be paid if a show or film you wrote was sold on tape. Mr. Chetwynd was the very vocal leader of a group that called themselves the "Union Blues" and the Blues' position was that a strike on this issue could not possibly be cost-effective; that home video would never be an important source of income and that most writers would never see serious money from tape sales. Still, they insisted, the studios were prepared to keep us out on strike forever if we didn't give in.

The Blues' argument didn't make a lot of sense but then most arguments don't in the imperfect institution we call the Writers Guild of America. In this case, it set everyone to fighting…and then some of our leaders did a spectacular job of muddying the issues and making us look rudderless. We had a short strike that collapsed in great rancor, the producers got what they wanted…and hindsight has certainly proven that the Guild was bonehead stupid to give in as easily as it did. I don't blame Chetwynd completely for this — a lot of people believed what he believed — but I had a few arguments with him in the lobby of strike meetings, and one post-strike encounter in the offices of Orion Pictures. He sure impressed me as being willing to believe whatever he thought would put the most money into his pocket that week.

If the Bush film, which is called DC 9/11, is what current leaks say it is, I doubt even Bush supporters will want to defend it. One bit of evidence that suggests G.W.B. wasn't a heroic man of action that day is this video which is now available on the Internet. It's on a website called The Memory Hole which digs up old news stories and footage that history might otherwise forget.

In the video, Bush is reading a story to children in a Florida classroom. I don't know why that alone is not sufficiently embarrassing. Didn't the man have anything more important to do that day? I think all our presidents waste way too much time and effort on ceremonial matters and silly photo-ops. Anyway, in the tape Chief of Staff Andrew Card gives Bush the news that America is under attack and Bush immediately snaps into action…and does nothing. Let's see how far the Chetwynd version goes to preempting this portrait of our Chief Exec.

One suspects the White House is breathing a sigh of relief today, now that the Supreme Court has struck down anti-sodomy laws. The last thing Mr. Bush needed was to be accused of ushering in a new era of sexual repression.

There will be jokes about this for days in the late night monologues. I haven't figured out any myself but I have the punch line to one: "…and Clarence Thomas dissented but admitted that he likes to watch." Let's tune in Jay, Dave, Conan, Jon, etc. and see how the first part of that one will go.

A lot of folks liked this article that I posted about Redd Foxx. Some of them may enjoy visiting this website that his estate has set up to recall his incredible career. Whatever he was, he was one of a kind.

Watching the hoary programs that Game Show Network broadcasts in the wee small hours, I'm struck by all sorts of realizations. One is that adults in the fifties and early sixties actually thought rock-and-roll music was an annoying fad that would be gone before long. The panelists on What's My Line? (GSN is currently airing shows from 1958) are forever making little parental mutterings about how what "the kids today" listen to isn't really music. The other night, Bennett Cerf congratulated a priest who was moonlighting as a disc jockey for never playing rock-and-roll.

Last week, the panel and host gave short shrift to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who came on as contestants — and not even celebrity contestants or anonymous contestants. They signed in under their own names even though by then, they'd had a number of hit records. (In case anyone reading this is unaware, Leiber and Stoller were for years the all-time champs when it came to writing Top Ten songs. The list includes "Charlie Brown," "Searchin'," "Ruby Baby," "I Keep Forgetting," "Love Potion No.9," "Neighborhood," "Poison Ivy," "Some Cats Know," "Framed," "Fools Fall In Love," "Love Me," "Riot In Cell Block No. 9," "I Who Have Nothing," "Spanish Harlem," "Stand By Me," "Kansas City," "Smokey Joe's Cafe," "That Is Rock n Roll," "Bossa Nova Baby," "Saved," "Trouble," "Pearl's A Singer," "Young Blood," "Don't," "I'm A Woman," "You Ain't Saying It," "Loving You," "Is That All There Is?," "Yakety Yak," "On Broadway," "Jailhouse Rock," "Little Egypt" and "Hound Dog.")

Elvis had recorded that last one two years earlier but the What's My Line? panel didn't recognize the songwriters' names and treated them like kids working at a burger stand. John Daly even said — thinking he was being nice, I guess — "Well, maybe someday you'll do something serious." Ouch.

Maybe Mr. Daly can be forgiven. No one then could have imagined that Leiber and Stoller — and others of their profession — were doing work that would endure if not forever then certainly through several generations. Recently when I saw a local production of Smokey Joe's Cafe — a revue of Leiber-Stoller material that ran on Broadway for five years — an entire auditorium of adults knew every word to many of the tunes. The fellow who runs the theater came out to introduce the show. To demonstrate the impact of Leiber and Stoller's work, he yelled out, "Yakety Yak" and the whole audience instantly responded with, "Don't talk back!" Bet you couldn't do that with anything John Daly ever thought of.

Another artist profiled in my book Mad Art is the guy who's presently doing Spy Vs. Spy. Peter Kuper draws in a style quite unlike the late Antonio Prohias. Well, to be accurate, Peter doesn't draw the strip. He sprays it. His unique "look" is achieved by sketching the design and then cutting a stencil through which he'll spritz good, old-fashioned spray paint. The technique is visually arresting and as the work you'll see on his website will attest, it has many fascinating applications above and beyond what he does in the pages of MAD Magazine. I really like his work and so will you.