Monthly Archives: January 2005

And I just remembered an article that I wrote about Mr. Carson back in 1990, discussing what his work meant to me, and the first time I met the man. I don't recall where this appeared (someone, help me) but I had it on my harddisk, so here it is. A few of my opinions on him have changed since then, plus you'll note that I said his departure was nowhere in sight. A year later, it was suddenly in sight, but I was hardly the only one who didn't see it coming.

My pal Aaron Barnhart, a TV critic who specializes in late night, writes a nice piece on Johnny. Of course. And here's a piece by Tom Shales.

For those of you who feel the need to read or hear about Johnny Carson on this sad day…

• Roger Ebert has a nice essay up on what it was like to appear with Mr. Carson.
• ABC News is out interviewing celebrities on Johnny's impact.
• TV critic Sid Smith has a pretty nice overview of Johnny's skill. [registration required, I think]
• NBC will do a Carson tribute tonight on Dateline NBC, which runs at 7 PM in most markets. And there seems to be a special on MSNBC at 8 PM.
• Here's the Los Angeles Times obit [registration required] and here's the New York Times [registration not required]. The latter also reprints this old Frank Rich column [registration perhaps required] on Johnny's last night and the text of Johnny's last monologue [registration maybe required but maybe not].
• Looks like Larry King will have Ed McMahon and many close associates on his show tomorrow night. One assumes Mr. Leno will do some kind of long tribute tomorrow night. Letterman is scheduled to be in reruns this week but, rumor has it, will not let this go unnoted until the following Monday.

One of many other things I could have mentioned in the piece I posted earlier: Johnny did a lot to boost the careers of certain stand-up comedians who appeared on his show…but he also did a lot to simply boost the art and commerce of stand-up comedy for all. Before the advent of HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central and other venues that like to air stand-up acts because that means you don't have to hire writers, Carson's show was one of the few places where a stand-up could get on television, perform and bolster his career as a stand-up. A lot of the clubs, like the Comedy Store, almost seemed to exist as try-out rooms for Carson. We all know how it helped Leno, Letterman, Seinfeld, Stephen Wright, Roseanne, Ellen, Shandling and so many more to do well on the Tonight Show stage. But everyone who performs stand-up owes a little something to the Tonight Show, to Johnny Carson and to his scouts, like Jim McCawley.

Someone wrote to suggest I link to this article I have elsewhere on this site. It's chock full of trivia about The Tonight Show.

My first two thoughts at hearing that Johnny Carson has died of emphysema: Do we need any more proof of what smoking can do to the human body? And he actually did what he'd decided to do: He retired, gave up public life, and resisted all temptations to get back in. After he left The Tonight Show, he was offered anything and everything…but he decided it was classier to exit the stage and stay off. Having seen an awful lot of stars who lingered in the spotlight long enough to become sad caricatures of their former selves, I have to admire that decision and the ability to stick with it.

There will be no shortage of tributes to the King of Late Night TV. Most will, I suspect, overemphasize how many careers he launched: Leno, Letterman, Seinfeld, etc. I always felt too much was made of that side of Carson. Yes, he cleared time for new comics, sent out his scouts to find them, then gave them a good showcase and encouragement. But that helped The Tonight Show as much as it helped the comics, and it's not like Johnny actually went up to the Comedy Store, sat through hundreds of bad acts and picked out the good ones.

He will also be praised for knocking off all competition, which I suspect is giving him too much credit. Who else tried a talk show opposite Johnny? Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Alan Thicke, Pat Sajak, Joan Rivers, Rick Dees, David Frost and not all that many others. A couple of those shows would have failed even if they'd only been opposite a test pattern. Carson's rep probably scared off a lot of contenders who might otherwise have gone against him…but one reason he achieved a shade over thirty years was simply a lack of competition.

What was amazing about Carson was his dedication to keeping The Tonight Show fresh and funny. I got to see Johnny backstage a few times and you could almost see the perspiration. Long after audiences fell madly in love with him, Mr. Carson declined to coast. He worked just as hard on his last shows as he probably had on his first. Before each taping, Carson was a mass of nerves. I will never forget seeing him make that walk from his dressing room/office down to the stage to go on. The times I saw him, he was accompanied by his director, Bobby Quinn, and a uniformed Burbank police officer. It was verboten to interrupt Johnny, and you wouldn't have dared anyway, just from the tension that surrounded him. Quinn would hold his hand, almost literally, assuring him everything was in order, that the audience was "hot," that there was no reason to be nervous. Then, at the appropriate moment, Quinn would not only cue Johnny through the curtain but practically shove him out there to do the monologue. Hard to believe Johnny Carson, about to appear before an audience that adored him, was nervous…but he was.

As Carson, Quinn and the bodyguard walked down to the stage, you could hear Ed McMahon concluding the warm-up and Doc Severinsen cuing up the theme song. They were neither thirty seconds too early or too late: Carson had the timing down to a science. But then, he always did, on-camera and off. He sensed when it was right to cut Tonight from its original 115 minute length to 90 minutes and then to 60. He knew when it was time to move the show from New York to Hollywood. He knew when it was time to stop inviting certain guests or to stop making jokes on certain topics. He even knew the precise moment to retire…while he was still a legend and not one in decline.

Carson's monologues were the most amazing marathon in the history of television comedy. Night after night, he went out there with totally untested material, much of it topical to the extreme. He had an almost-unerring knack for judging what would work and for "saving" the moment when it did not. He also had the skill to make almost any interview work, even when the person in the guest chair was tongue-tied or (worse) full of themselves and hell-bent on plugging some current endeavor.

It's also easy to forget that Johnny was a comedian. He didn't need to do all those "Mighty Carson Art Players" sketches on his show but — and this gets back to that willingness to work hard — he did them. For several years, the first one of each year would be an interview with "The New Year's Baby," and Johnny could fill either role. Some years, Ed McMahon would be the interviewer and Johnny would come out in a diaper and play the kid. Other years, Johnny would interview and they'd have writer-performer Pat McCormack in the bonnet and Pampers. I always thought one of the secrets of Johnny's longevity was that he was one of the few comics who could play Abbott or, when necessary, play Costello. That was also a key skill he demonstrated in the interviews. If the guest was funny, Johnny could work straight and set the other guy up for the laughs. If the guest wasn't funny, he could slide effortlessly into the other role. Most of those who have hosted talk shows can do one but not the other, and some aren't even willing to not be the funny one. All Johnny cared about was that the show was entertaining. If people went to bed chuckling at the guest, not at him, that was just fine.

I met Carson three times, I think, plus he called me once on the phone after his retirement to thank me for some information I'd relayed to his secretary. He was always disarmingly gracious. People called him cold and impersonal off-camera, but I think that was a bum rap. He simply could not be friendly with all the people who wanted to be his buddy and, like many performers, coped with the onslaught by erecting fences. One of his associates told me that post-abdication, Johnny became a much happier and friendlier person because he was no longer suspicious that everyone he met was angling to get something out of him, especially a Tonight Show appearance. When I heard that, my admiration for the guy went up another notch. It was more important to him to be at peace than to hear applause.

This is all just off the top of my head. I'll post more later.

They once asked him what he'd like his epitath to be. He said, "I'll be right back."

Sadly, that's not likely to happen…nor will anyone else probably ever dominate one corner of television the way Johnny Carson did. I'll post some more thoughts later today.

I cribbed this link from Jerry Beck over at Cartoon Brew but it's too good not to spread. Not only does Scrappy now have his own website but there's an entire site devoted to the legendary TV kids' show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie. It has pictures and clips and info and…oh, just go there and see for yourself.

It also has a clip of one of the "hand ballets" that the show's puppeteer, Burr Tillstrom, performed on the NBC TV show, That Was the Week That Was. He did several but the one about the Berlin Wall was the most famous…and you have to wonder: If you walked into one of the major networks today and said, "I want to do a political commentary piece that will only show my hands acting as puppets," exactly how far do you think they'd drop-kick you out of the industry? But someone let Tillstrom do it back then, and it was amazingly effective and entertaining. I wish someone would dig out the old episodes of TW3, as it was usually abbreviated, and put them out on DVD. The series was full of wonderful moments like that one.

Our pal Harry McCracken has filled a shameful void on the Internet by erecting Scrappyland, the best place to learn about the long-forgotten (by most) Charles Mintz/Columbia cartoon character. It's also just about the only place but, hey, you gotta start somewhere. You sure can't go out and watch a lot of Scrappy cartoons, as the output of that particular studio isn't exactly exhibited with any frequency. One of these days, the boys at Sony will wise up and release piles of DVDs but right now, you're going to have to be content with Harry's site, plus artifacts like the Big Little Book cover at left and the poster at right. (You can see a much bigger version of said poster by clicking on it. Go ahead. Try it.) I don't quite share Harry's enthusiasm for the cartoons but they're quite watchable and it's a shame that anything like that is not available.

This is not an early April Fool's Day joke. Turner Classic Movies is devoting much of the month of April to comedy movies and they're running a lot of goodies. On April 1, they have a 20-hour marathon of Laurel and Hardy movies. This is a good thing. As you can see from past postings on this site, we really like Laurel and Hardy movies. Then…on April 4, they've scheduled a 24-hour marathon of flms starring Charley Chase, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Harold Lloyd. Also a good thing. And on April 8, they're running a marathon of eleven Marx Brothers movies, which is almost all of them, and on April 11, we get a full day of films starring Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. April 15 brings a mess of Abbott and Costello pictures and…well, just peruse the schedule. Many fun things in there.

Tom Spurgeon gives you the chance to read or download the judge's opinion in the case of Stan Lee vs. Marvel Enterprises.

On a happier note, my friend Carolyn and I went last evening to see The Chieftains performing at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, a beautiful hall located a hellish freeway commute from L.A. in Cerritos, California. I wish I could communicate to you how much I hated the drive so you might understand how wonderful it would have to be to hear The Chieftains perform their unique interpretation of (mostly) traditional Irish music. (That sentence doesn't make sense but it's late and you know what I mean.) Here's a fan website that will give you some history of the group and here's their current tour schedule, which may well include a venue near you. If it does, go. They put on a wonderful show that leaves the audience yearning for more. It's almost quarter-to-three in the morning as I write this…but if they were still playing, we'd still be in Cerritos, listening to 'em.

Maybe it's because my parents were so good at it, but I have lately found myself around a number of really inept mommies and daddies. At least four or five times in as many months, I have been in a public place and seen some small child either injure him or herself or come close to injury because his/her parents had the I.Q. of a drill press and no concern for keeping an eye on their offspring. The latest occurred this afternoon when I was in a Costco, not shopping for an original Picasso.

I had loaded my cart full of mass quantities and I'd dined on Costco Dim Sum, which is what I call all the free samples of food you can get if you shop before around 3:00 in the afternoon. I assume they do this because the store sells such large packages of most items and you can't purchase a "small" to try something new that intrigues you. So all over the warehouse, they have these women in shower caps and aprons cooking up things in microwaves and on hot plates…and for some reason, a lot of frozen and canned food items prepared that way taste really good, at least for a bite or two. (The tricky part of Costco Dim Sum is planning your route. Like today, the first free sample giver-outter I came upon had little creme puffs and I didn't want to start my dining experience that way. So I skipped her, went on to the lady with the chunky potato soup and the one with the microwave lasagna and the one with the chicken strips…then I circled back to the Creme Puff Lady and had dessert.)

I finally made it to the check-out line where, in the line next to the one I was in, a kid of about six years of age (I'm guessing) was acting like he'd just ingested the entirety of a Costco-sized sack of sugar. He was standing up in the cart and waving his arms and dancing about…and I just knew he was about to topple out of that cart and land on his head. Somehow, his parents didn't know or care. They were arguing over whether the caseload of Planter's Dry Roasted Peanuts they were purchasing could be completely consumed by the expiration date, which was some time in '08. I interrupted them, pointed to their young'un and said, "Better watch out for the kid."

They looked at me like I'd just spoken Swahili, then went back to discussing goober consumption. Sure enough, about a minute later, the kid lost his balance and fell out of the cart, landing head-first on slab concrete. Looked to me like he was hurt bad…and the parents still didn't have a clue. Too bad Costco doesn't sell them because these folks were in dire need.

Store employees had to come over and administer first aid to the child as Mom and Dad did zero to help. Instead, they announced to everyone around that it wasn't their fault — "You can't watch them every minute" — then resumed the Great Peanut Debate. When I left, the boy was sitting up, crying in pain and starting to grow a bump the size of the Costco 24-pack of Bounty Paper Towels.

I don't know why I told you this story except to wonder aloud if parents in this world are getting more irresponsible or if I'm just running into the bottom end of the species. I don't know what's going to happen to that kid of theirs but I have a hunch it won't be pretty.

Over on Salon, they have a good interview, mostly about politics, with Terry Jones who is described as a "founding member of Monty Python." For some reason, that phrase is often used to describe Mssrs. Jones, Cleese, Idle, Chapman, Gilliam and Palin, as if there were a lot of non-founding members of Monty Python. Anyway, here's the link but if you're not a subscriber, I think they make you watch an episode of Fear Factor or the editor's vacation slides or something.

Woke up this morning to this e-mail from "edmalexa," who I think is an actor named Ed Alexander…

I just read your thoughts on the new tentative SAG agreement and I think I need to point out that it's actually just as hard for SAG folks to strike as it is for any of the other unions. While no actors showing up would certainly stop a production, they're also the easiest folks to replace when compared with writers and directors. The desperation among those folks willing and wanting to be actors is such that there are always numerous folks willing to risk any future employment in union productions by appearing in nonunion or union boycotted productions. It's not that I, as a member of SAG, don't share a disgust in the appeasement policies of the current Union leadership. I do, and I try to work hard to remove these particular folks from the leadership whenever there's an election, but I have no illusions about the unity of actors working towards their own good. For what it's worth I'll probably be voting against this agreement (which will probably pass despite my reservations) because of it's refusal to properly deal with the DVD residual issues.

In order to actually accomplish change in this area the WGA, the DGA and SAG will have to enter into a strike support pact that binds all three unions to support a strike from any of the other two if there's to be any headway made. The chances of that are slim indeed, but the chances of any one of the three unions stepping up otherwise is probably slimmer.

I would say that the chance of those three unions entering into a joint agreement like you describe is slimmer than slim. I've been on WGA committees where someone has fantasized about that happening, and I think it's a waste of time and logic. If you can't even get actors to link arms for the good of actors, how does anyone imagine that the directors could be prepared to sacrifice for the people they direct? Especially when (a) the DGA historically makes most of its gains by undermining the negotiating position of other unions, and (b) it's so easy for Management to offer something that's way better for one union than another, thereby dividing their common purpose. Writers, directors and actors have certain mutual needs but, for example, writers are generally unconcerned with issues of overtime and safety on the set, while actors are generally unconcerned with development costs. It's real easy to drive a wedge between two crafts by proposing to transfer money from one area to another.

I disagree that it is easy to replace actors. Yeah, there are tons of folks out there who want those jobs, but those jobs are already filled by known quantities and established faces. If SAG strikes today, the TV networks can't recast all the soap operas overnight…and won't gamble that America will accept all new people playing the characters they know and love. The studios have billions of dollars wrapped up in ongoing programs that star certain people. The reason an actor on a hit TV series can negotiate a huge salary bump is because they need that particular actor. The reason even less-than-stellar stars command millions per movie is because the studios don't want one of those folks who's desperate to be an actor. They want Harrison Ford…and if he's on strike, they can't make that new Indiana Jones movie which might account for a third of the studio's income next year.

The problem SAG has — and the WGA has this to a great extent, as well — is the wide disparity of salaries and careers within its ranks. When SAG strikes, it means the actors who never work are expected to go out in support of the ones who make half a million dollars per episode or ten million dollars per movie. And vice-versa. When the WGA strikes, as we used to do every twenty minutes, we've had an almost tangible sense of the breach. The writers who work all the time are thinking, "We're the ones actually sacrificing here. We're the ones walking out on actual projects, losing definite paychecks, most of which were already way above scale. The guys who weren't working aren't losing anything. Most of them have other sources of income."

And of course, at the same time, the guys who don't work much are thinking, "We're the ones actually sacrificing here. The guys who work all the time have tons of money in the bank and ongoing residual income. We're the ones who really needed that job next week. They'll fly off to Europe while we picket or they'll write scripts they know they can sell after the strike." There's some truth to both sentiments…perhaps equal amounts. But in a time of combat, very few see it that way. Instead, you get a lot of Class Warfare from within. I suspect what has happened lately with all the unions is that with things so unstable in the U.S. economy, and examples like the recent, disastrous-for-all grocery store strike in Los Angeles, fear is running high and it inflames things betwixt the Haves and Have Nots. Until that changes, we're probably all going to be content with annual 3% bumps, minor rollbacks here and there, and not another nickel on DVDs.

Here's a report on that Picasso sketch sold by Costco. I don't know why I think this is so funny.