Monthly Archives: April 2005

He'll probably be performing it tonight on his HBO show, Real Time, but Bill Maher has a funny "New Rules" piece up on Salon about the failure of sexual abstinence campaigns. Here's the link, and I have no idea what non-subscribers now have to do to read a Salon article. But it's probably worth it, whatever it is.

Jonathan Chait has an op-ed piece this morning in The Los Angeles Times [they may make you register] that uses the Schiavo case to illustrate a larger political point. It's essentially the same point that Thomas Frank seems to be making in What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, a book that I started reading and must go back and finish. The thesis is that there's a voting bloc in America that cares primarily about what they see as issues of morality — banning abortions, rolling back gay rights, etc. — and that it keeps getting fooled. They think, when they vote for someone like George W. Bush, that they're voting for those things. What they get are token gestures in these directions and a lot of genuine action to lower taxes for the wealthy and to aid corporate interests, which may not be what they want.

Anyway, in case you don't want to read the whole Chait piece or register over at the Times, I'm going to quote his last paragraph…

Three years ago, a casino-owning Louisiana Indian tribe called the Coushatta hired [GOP activist and lobbyist Jack] Abramoff to help stop another tribe from opening a casino, which the Coushatta feared would dilute their business. Abramoff hired former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, who enlisted Focus on the Family's James Dobson, who spurred his followers to send thousands of letters opposing the new casino. The poor souls riled up to stop legalized gambling had no idea that they were pawns of another casino. It's a perfect metaphor for the relationship between the Republican elite and the voters who put them into office.

Democrats are hoping, obviously, that there's a fracture coming in the G.O.P. constituency. The anti-abortion voters will probably never go in any significant numbers to the Dems but they might be persuaded to either move the Republicans farther to the right, thereby losing more of the center, or to split off and back a third party ticket. If nothing else, they might just stay home. It's a nice theory but I don't think the Democrats should count on it. They ought to look into finding a candidate someone will vote for.

Turner Classic Movies seems to be playing an unintentional April Fool's Day joke on those of us who've set TiVos or VCRs to record today's Laurel and Hardy treasures. It's the old Phony Start Time trick.

This morning, they scheduled Beau Hunks to run 7:15 to 7:45 (all times Pacific), which would have been great except Beau Hunks is longer than that, a fact that someone there even knew. Their own schedule, shown above, says it's 37 minutes and while I haven't run a watch on it, I think the print they ran may have even been a minute or two longer than that. The film before ran a minute or so over so, allowing for the TCM openings and billboards, Beau Hunks actually aired from 7:17 to about 7:55. This means that a 7:15-7:45 recording, such as all our TiVos made, cut off the last 9 or 10 minutes.

The following film, The Bohemian Girl, was scheduled to start at 7:45 and run until 9:00. It actually started at 7:57. (At 7:56, an on-camera graphic still gave its start time as 7:45 and so does the TCM website.) The schedule says it's 68 minutes, and maybe the print they're showing as I write this is indeed that length…but a complete one would be 70 or 71, depending on which source one believes. Even if it's only 68, it will end at around 9:05. Your 7:45-9:00 recording will therefore consist of the last 10 or so minutes of Beau Hunks — followed by all of The Bohemian Girl except for the last 5-7 minutes.

Up after that is Them Thar Hills, which is supposed to start at 9 AM but will actually commence around 9:07 or 9:08. It's to be followed by Tit for Tat at 9:30. Both of these are in half-hour time slots but both are around 20 minutes each so this may fix the problem and allow Pick a Star, which is scheduled for 10 AM, to actually start at 10 AM. But it could actually start before.

This is frustrating because it's so simple. I mean, how difficult is it to not schedule a movie you know is 37 minutes in a half-hour time slot? TCM is usually so good about restoring and showing complete prints of great movies. Can't they at least let us know when they start and end? As Mr. Hardy would say when Mr. Laurel drops a brick on his head, "Oooow!"

It hasn't hit the press yet but I'm hearing that longtime TV director-producer Greg Garrison died on the 25th due to complications of pneumonia. I barely knew Mr. Garrison but there was a time around 1969-1971 when I used to prowl NBC Burbank, sneaking in to watch Bob Hope tape a sketch or Johnny Carson do his monologue. And whenever I could, I'd slip down to the studio where Dean Martin was doing his series. I was always hoping for a Golddiggers rehearsal but I'd settle for watching Dom DeLuise, Kay Medford, Nipsey Russell and/or Lou Jacobi rehearse a sketch. Once in a rare while, I might even see Dean but he wasn't there very often.

The great open secret of The Dean Martin Show was that Dean barely showed up for work. He did for its first season, but the program wasn't working, and Dean was unhappy with how hard he was working. That was when Greg Garrison, who'd been hired as director only, came up with an idea. To make the show more spontaneous — and to keep Dino interested in doing it at all — he would arrange the schedule so Martin only had to come in one day a week, and not even for the entire day. Rehearsals were done with a stand-in, and everything that didn't involve Dean was taped when he was nowhere on the premises. There were people who appeared on The Dean Martin Show without ever meeting Dean.

On tape day, Dean would come in, watch a run-through with the stand-in, then go out and replicate the stand-in's actions. Everything was configured for maximum speed. Dean almost always wore a tuxedo, thereby minimizing costume changes and making it possible for any segment to be edited into any other show. The lines were all on cue cards and the songs, which were performed live, were all tunes that Dean already knew. If something went wrong, Garrison would usually not start over. He'd work some kind of paste-up edit, often inserting a freeze-frame in a manner that made other TV directors wince. Once in a while during a musical number, Dean wouldn't be able to hear the orchestra and if you watch, you can see him rubbing his ear to signal Garrison to have the audio cranked up a notch. Anyone else would have restarted or edited…but Garrison promised his star he'd be done by 10 PM, and did whatever was necessary to make that happen.

I used to watch Garrison at work and there was something amazing about how fast he could tape a prime-time network variety show. His relationship with Dean was also fascinating. To get his one-day-a-week schedule, Dean had traded off a star's right to reject material or have input into the script. He just showed up and did whatever he was told to do. One time, Garrison needed some reaction shots of Dean that would be edited into a musical number by someone else. He told Dean, "Stand there, look to the left and stick out your tongue," and Dean stood there, looked to the left and stuck out his tongue. He did everything Garrison commanded with no idea of the context or what the routine was about. That was the kind of trust he placed in his producer-director and business partner. At the same time, Garrison knew that his career was dependent on that relationship, and did everything possible to make Dean happy and to earn that trust. Nick Arnold, a friend of mine who wrote on the show, never once met its star…but once a week, he'd ask Garrison, "How's Dean?" Every week, Garrison would give the same answer: "Dean's beautiful!"

The Garrison Technique was much debated in the TV business. On one hand, you had a very successful show, and it could certainly be argued that he'd figured out the perfect way to package his star for weekly television. On the other hand, NBC would never have tolerated some of the odd, patchwork edits on another show, and a lot of guest stars were upset that they never got to rehearse with Dean before tape rolled. I once saw Juliet Prowse tape a duet with Dean, then explode in anger when informed that there would not be a second take. She was sure it could have been done better, especially once she had some idea where Dean was going to stand or when he was going to put his arms around her…but the schedule was more important than doing it again. Other performers, including most of the regulars, just accepted it but none of them liked it.

I have some other stories and observations about Greg Garrison which I'll try and post over the next few days — like how he managed to tape "roasts" featuring people who were taped at different times, sometimes in different states, but looked like they were all in one room. I'll also tell why Marty Feldman wanted to strangle him, which is kind of an interesting tale. For now, I'm just sorry to hear that we've lost another true pioneer of the television industry.