Monthly Archives: October 2003

My pal Paul Harris does a fine talk radio/interview show Monday through Friday on station KTRS, which is 550 on your dial if you're in or around St. Louis. You can find online audio excerpts of his best celebrity interviews at this site, along with his weblog and lots of other fun stuff. Not long ago, I chatted with him about my book on MAD Magazine, Mad Art, and he's replaying that conversation on Monday as he takes a rare day off. (My segment is scheduled to air at 12:35 PM Central Time, but I think you can also find it on Paul's site and listen to it any time you want.)

Also, on the Thursday edition of All Things Considered on N.P.R., another pal is interviewed. Joe Bevilacqua is a radio producer and performer who studied with the late, great Daws Butler and has recently co-edited this book of sketches that Daws wrote for his legendary voice acting classes. Some time during the All Things Considered hour, there'll be eight minutes with Joe discussing Daws and the book.

Which brings us to the question of how you're going to listen to these shows. Lately, I've been playing around with and generally enjoying Replay Radio, which is a piece of computer software that functions like TiVo for the recording of Internet radio feeds. If you have a good, swift 'net connection, you can set Replay Radio to record any channel that you can access at the time you want it to record. It will make an MP3 or WAV file or even burn the recording right to a CD if you like. A list of shows is built into it, as is a list of Internet addresses for channels, but you can set it for any radio station for which you can find a web address. A demo version of the software can be downloaded from their site. It will only record five minute hunks but it'll give you the idea and let you see if it's compatible with your system. Once you register, which costs thirty bucks, you can record broadcasts and webcasts of up to four hours. There's also an add-on piece of software that will you let you listen to these recordings easily on a Pocket PC. So far, it's working fine for me.

An unannounced walk-on at the end of Mr. Leno's monologue tonight on The Tonight Show. Maybe Jimmy Kimmel can get Gray Davis.

By coincidence, my friend Nat Gertler was at the same performance last night of The Producers. His reaction is over here on his weblog. While you're there, browse around the entire 'blog because Nat's a bright guy and a good writer.

One way in which the recall seems to have been good for George W. Bush is that it distracted attention from David Kay's report on the hunt for those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. For months now, one of my conservative friends has been e-mailing me that when that report was in, it would prove that Saddam had weapons and was about to use them on the U.S., no doubt about it. Well, if anything, it proves the opposite. Here's Fred Kaplan's reading of it, which among other things extracts the claim that the policy of sanctions and inspections was working just fine. If it wasn't more fun to talk about Arnold grabbing ladies' breasts, the press might have pointed this out.

Michael Kinsley on "Why Bush Angers Liberals."

Interesting, of course, to see everyone spinning the recall verdict in the most positive light for their faction. Depending on which weblog you visit today, it either represents a victory for the conservative movement in California because of how much of the vote Schwarzenegger and McClintock got between them…or a loss because of how many liberal positions Arnold had to have to get that. It could be good for Bush because it means that Arnold will presumably be governor in 2004 and may be able to help the state and raise money, or it could be bad for Bush because it could start the trend of throwing out elected officials who run up deficits. It could be good for the Democratic and Republican establishment because Independents did so poorly or it could be bad because it represents an electoral urge to toss out career politicians and bring in outsiders.

It could lead to cleaner elections because all the reports of Arnold grabbing women didn't hurt him and maybe helped, or it could lead to dirtier elections because the hatchet job on Gray Davis worked and because Arnold proved you don't have to define your positions to win. It could lead to lower taxes in California because Arnold will be a better manager or it could lead to higher because he'll feel the need to quickly wipe out deficits and the sooner he raises taxes, the easier it will be to blame them on Davis. It could lead to elected officials not only in California but across the nation becoming more responsive to the people because they fear they'll be recalled or it could lead to them catering more to the special interests that could defuse any recall attempt.

I don't know which way a lot of these things will play out and neither do you. My guess is that people who supported Arnold will like him a lot less once we get down to the specifics of what state programs will be cut and what sources of revenue will be increased. Some have suggested that former governor Pete Wilson and his crew will really be running the state with Arnold as figurehead. I sure hope that's not true. I can't think of a single rotten thing you could say about Gray Davis that wasn't equally true of Wilson. If that becomes the power structure in Sacramento, the Schwarzenegger era will probably be a lot more like the Davis era than anyone in either camp is now prepared to admit.

While many of you were watching an Austrian bodybuilder become governor, I was watching a German dictator become the toast of Broadway. An acquaintance asked why I got seats to see the Los Angeles company of The Producers on the evening of Election Day. I had to remind him that when I bought these tickets, there was no election scheduled this month. Besides, even if I'd known, it was a lot more fun to watch Jason Alexander and Martin Short prance about than to view any conceivable kind of election coverage. Then again, you could say that about almost any show.

Since I was fortunate enough to see Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick do The Producers in New York (report here), it raises the obvious question: How do Jason and Martin compare? Friends of mine who've seen the L.A. company have mostly reported that they liked one but not the other and have been pretty evenly split on which one they liked. I guess we got a good night: I liked both of them. A lot. This production seemed broader than the Broadway version, which may be because the Pantages Theater is larger than the St. James in New York, or it may be because the cast has been doing the show longer and actors often find little schtick with which to get laughs that weren't there before.

It may even be because though Alexander chews no less scenery as Max Bialystock than Lane, Short is a lot more physical and cartoony than Broderick. His version of Leo Bloom writhes on the floor and does "takes" they probably saw in the last row of the balcony…in the theater across the street and down a block. At times, he misses the humanity in the character but he's so funny, you almost don't mind. I wish he'd lose or at least not overdo that strained "inhale" voice he does…but boy, talk about taking a part you didn't originate and making it work for you. Which is also what Alexander does. I'm not sure I liked him more than Nathan Lane but I'm pretty sure I didn't like him any less.

The rest of the cast was pretty good. Lee Roy Reams is playing Roger DeBris and I always thought he was terrific, ever since I saw him in the first Broadway show I actually saw on Broadway — 42nd Street. Bill Nolte is playing Franz Liebkind. (If you're tracking the players in the various companies of The Producers: Gary Beach, who originated the role of DeBris, was out here but he has now returned to the New York company. Fred Applegate was playing Liebkind out here but he went back to New York to take over as Bialystock since Lewis J. Stadlen had to leave due to a hip injury. In fact, Applegate debuted and Beach returned to Broadway last night.) Our Ulla is Angie Schworer who, in keeping with the tone of this production, made her character even more of a caricature than what I saw back east.

It's interesting how the Pantages up in Hollywood has turned into a first-rate (albeit, too large) legit theater. I first knew it as a movie palace. I remember my parents taking me there to see The Great Race in 1965. I'm not sure when it switched to housing plays but I'm pretty sure that's where I saw — not in this order — La Cage Aux Folles with Gene Barry, The Music Man with Dick Van Dyke, Barnum with Jim Dale, My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison, Camelot with Richard Harris, Fiddler on the Roof with Herschel Bernardi, and Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan and again with Cathy Rigby. I'm sure there were others. Owing to a bad case of food poisoning, I saw half of I Do, I Do there (i.e., I saw one I Do) but I don't remember who was in it; all I remember is the men's room. For several of those shows, the acoustics in the place were not wonderful but they are now. It's really become a pleasant place to see a musical. Especially if you can secure seats in the same zip code as the stage.

Well, the exit polls tell me that I just wasted my time walking close to two miles to and from my polling place. Then again, I did get some exercise.

The polling place wasn't crowded, and everyone was joking about chads on the punchcard ballots. One elderly woman was asking for assistance, not because she didn't know how to use the voting machine but because she said, "I want to be sure I vote how I want to vote." You wonder how difficult it would be in this computer age for someone to design a voting machine that gives you a little paper printout of your vote to check and take home with you. With so much suspicion about the accuracy of these devices, it might help keep the system honest.

I can't help but feel that no matter how the vote comes out, everyone loses a little. None of them — Davis, Arnold, Cruz or McClintock — strikes me as someone who will ultimately please voters. I voted as I did (against the recall) because I believe it's a very bad system, and if a recall is mounted against Governor Schwarzenegger, we'll hear all the people who now defend it do a fast backflip and decide that. It might make sense if it had been used to remove a bad executive and insert a good one, but it looks like it's going to install a man of no experience. You wouldn't let an inexperienced doctor operate on you, you wouldn't let an inexperienced lawyer defend you in court…but somehow, some people have decided that the state is in deep, deep trouble and what it needs is a guy who has never spent one day in a real government position. I don't understand how casually people can brush that aside or even see it as a positive. I could have voted for Dick Riordan, or even for Peter Ueberroth, who has at least done this kind of work. But I couldn't get behind Arnold for the same reason I could never cast a presidential vote for Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton, Ross Perot or anyone else trying to make an important job into an entry-level position. Experience isn't everything but it also isn't nothing.

Here's a pretty interesting article about the comments that got Rush Limbaugh fired from ESPN. (Yeah, I know. He resigned. In TV, when someone quits a good-paying job and doesn't fill the void immediately with a more lucrative one, they were fired or about to be fired.)

I don't know from football but it seems to me that Rush got a bit of a raw deal here. He may have been wrong in his thesis but it sounds to me like ESPN was more worried about future comments and the reaction to them. My guess is that when they hired Limbaugh, they figured he would draw in a certain additional audience without alienating their base, and this controversy made them decide they were wrong; that if he said something more controversial, even if he said it over on his radio show, it would upset the core ESPN audience. In other words, it wasn't that they were shocked that he acted like Rush Limbaugh but that they found out that had a downside.

A number of articles have compared the controversy to what happened with Al Campanis, and I don't think that's fair, either. In case you don't remember, Al Campanis was an executive within the Dodgers organization who went on Nightline back in '87 and suggested there was perhaps some genetic reason why blacks weren't fit for leadership positions in sports. It was an odd interview because Ted Koppel tried to help the man out of the hole he was digging for himself but Mr. Campanis, exhibiting a certain cluelessness, took it deeper. There was an outcry there too but the situation was quite different from the one with Limbaugh. Campanis was in the Dodgers front office. He had apparently had a say in selecting which of the team's two coaches had succeeded Walt Alston as manager, and they'd picked Tommy Lasorda (Caucasian) over Jim Gilliam (Afro-American). The choice was ostensibly on the grounds that Lasorda was a tad more qualified…and Campanis's remarks suggested the difference may have been skin color. That's a big difference from the matter with Limbaugh, who was and is completely outside any team's decision-making process. Even if the statement was racist — and I'm not saying it was — it's one thing just to be racist, quite another to hire with race as a criterion.

That said, every time I've heard Rush, I thought he was misquoting and distorting the positions of others, so I'm not too worked up over this. Besides, I have to go vote.

Here's an amazing (to me) article over on the Newsweek site. A reporter who has covered the California recall election writes about how bad the coverage has been.

Over on Salon, Eric Boehlert makes a very good point about the current downtrend in the popularity of George W. Bush. It's that it started on September 7 when he unveiled the price tag for rebuilding Iraq: $87 billion…

Within days of Bush's prime-time address, his approval ratings, and the support for his reconstruction plans in Iraq, began a steep decline. In retrospect, it's clear the speech became an unlikely presidential turning point — and possible tipping point — and one the White House has yet to recover from. Pollster Stan Greenberg told the Wall Street Journal he couldn't "find a parallel moment" in history when a president's approval rating dropped so dramatically following a nationally televised debate.

Here's the full article which I think is correct. Iraq sounded like a great American triumph to many until they started to realize what it will end up costing us to have deposed Saddam Hussein. I'm sure we're in for a roller coaster ride of viewpoints on this, as well as a lot of up and down on Bush's favorability rating. But it's interesting to note that, like so many things in this world, people change their minds about a war when they find out there's no money in it.

I am informed by several folks who seem to know that the Australian DVD release of Hellzapoppin' is region-free but it's also in PAL, meaning that it won't play on most American equipment. If you have a machine that will play PAL format, fine. If not, you'll just have to either buy one of the VHS bootlegs that abound or wait for Universal, which owns the film, to put out a DVD in our format. As far as I know, there are no plans in the offing for this.

I find myself strangely uninterested in the outcome of tomorrow's election. I think the recall is a gimmick form of democracy based on a flukishly bad law. The public should be able to recall elected officials but it shouldn't be this easy. (Have you noticed that absolutely no one outside of California is proposing that their state's recall standards be changed to match ours?) I'll vote against it but I don't have any reason to be positive about Gray Davis. Ergo, his ouster won't bother me that much. I suppose what I like least is the feeling that his unpopularity is based not on what he's done but on the fact that he comes off poorly when he speaks in public. I suppose that's a disqualification from public office but I wish it wasn't as big a factor as it usually is.

One aspect that I don't see being considered in the news coverage is what one might call the Jesse Ventura Factor. When voters of his state elevated "The Body" to the governorship, it was interpreted as a strong vote against the traditional Democratic and Republican machines. That was because he was an Independent but it was also because he was viewed as an outsider, and Minnesota voters were apparently seized by the desire to stick an outsider in there. (It was a short-lived notion. By the end of his one term, Ventura was pretty unpopular and would have had a hard time winning another.)

Now, Schwarzenegger's a Republican but only by a technicality: Pro-choice, pro-some gay rights and gun control, etc. Since there's no primary in this election, labels of Democrat and Republican are less important than usual and I suspect that a significant number of Arnold voters don't care about party affiliations. They just see him as an outsider, and perhaps they believe a certain image of him as a heroic figure.

Perhaps I'm reading one of my own prejudices into the situation but I think there's a pretty big block of voters out there who really don't like Democrats or Republicans, even if they're registered as one or the other. The recall has empowered that sentiment and they're voting for the most independent guy they think has a chance to win, as many of them once flocked to Perot. To them, voting down the recall means that the Democrat-Republican establishment wins again. Ultimately, I don't think they'll like Arnold any more but at the moment he's an Impulse Buy, not because of what they think he'll do — they don't know and don't care — but because it's a rare chance for voters to beat up on a politician. They don't want to let that get away from them.

A friend currently performing in a Vegas show says that the number one question being asked there is no longer, "Do you want insurance?" but "Have you heard any news about Roy?" Many answers abound, ranging from "It's better than they're reporting" to "It's much, much worse." What seems pretty certain is that the "Siegfried and Roy" show is closed indefinitely and no one's betting that it will ever reopen. Beyond the obvious tragedy here, it's sad to think about how many lives this accident has impacted. Most of the 150-180 people who worked on the show are suddenly unemployed at a time when no other show is hiring.

So far, I haven't seen any of the news stories mention that Dreamworks is deep in production on a CGI-animated series for NBC called Father of the Pride, all about a family of white lions who appear in the Siegfried and Roy show in Las Vegas. I have no idea if it'll be abandoned or altered but obviously, the lives of those working on that program will be impacted, as well. In fact, the ripples may reach anyone anywhere who's involved with dangerous performing animals. There are even silly but significant concerns: Someone on Late Night With Conan O'Brien is probably checking Monday night's rerun episode to make sure there's no Siegfried and Roy gay joke in there.

Years ago, I heard someone talking about what it meant to do a good job running a business…any business. He said, "One measure of being a good executive is to make sure that if you get hit by a car tonight, someone could walk in tomorrow morning and begin doing your job and keeping the company functioning." It probably doesn't work that way all the time in most industries but it almost never works that way in show business.