Monthly Archives: August 2005

I'm back from Canter's, posting via conventional means with no potato salad in sight. Right now on my TV, I see live coverage of a white Honda that led police on a high-speed chase beginning about an hour ago. The car is stopped on the eastbound 10 freeway with about a dozen police cars stopped a few yards away, waiting for the passenger(s) to come out. There are probably at least a half-dozen helicopters hovering overhead and they've been there for about half an hour…

Oh, wait. The police are finally moving in and the suspect is coming out with his hands up. He's being arrested while police with guns drawn advance cautiously on the car, just in case there's someone else inside…

…which there isn't. Okay, it looks like this one is over. But the traffic out there has to be a nightmare with one of our busiest freeways shut down for 30+ minutes as rush hour commences.

All through the standoff, you could see that the person operating the helicopter camera was poised to zoom out to a longshot if there was a chance of us seeing a person shot to death on live TV. I still don't know why the local stations don't all agree to cover these things on a seven second delay.

Okay, back to work. Nothing to see here. Show's over.

This is an amazing post. Why? Because it's being done from a table at Canter's Delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue here in Los Angeles. I'm lunching with Josh Jones, one of the high muck-a-mucks (that's a technical term) of Dreamhost, the company that hosts this website on its massive servers. Josh just had a turkey melt and I wolfed down the half-sandwich and a cup o' soup special, then he let me play on his Sony Vaio T140P with a wireless Verizon EVDO card that connects to Ye Olde Internet. I couldn't resist trying to post from it and if you can read this, it works. At this moment, I have full, wireless access to the Internet and full, wireless access to deli food. Ain't Science wonderful?

How many mistakes can you find in this paragraph from an article written by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich at The Jerusalem Post? It's a review of a new Fantastic Four videogame.

There is more of a story behind this action adventure game than inside it. Fantastic Four was created in 1961 by Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber in New York 83 years ago) after he helped to create the unforgettable Superman, Spider-Man, The Hulk, X-Men and Daredevil characters. But after comic books' readership declined and poor management sent Marvel Entertainment into bankruptcy in the late '90s, two Israeli businessmen named Avi Arad and Isaac Perlmutter took over the ownership and, demonstrating Superman-like acumen and courage, saved it from collapse. They managed to restore the past glory of this forefather of the comic book industry – largely developed by American Jews after the Depression and reaching its heights in the '60s. Its new Twentieth Century Fox superhero movie (from which this game was a knockoff) is, despite disapproving reviews by critics, making money nevertheless.

There's more to the article than that one paragraph but it alone should keep error-finders busy for days.

Never underestimate the power of this weblog. Here's proof of it.

Who really broke the story that Mark Felt was Deep Throat? Well, a number of us made educated guesses but only a few journalists managed to nail it down before Felt's family took him public. One was my pal Dawna Kaufmann, who's just set up a weblog. Her first entry tells all about how she broke the story.

Saul Bass was a great designer of advertising and especially of movie titles. He elevated the latter area to a true art form, as you can see over at this webpage devoted to his work. You will especially enjoy the little interactive feature where you can click your way through many of his most famous title sequences. [Thanks to Steve Horton for telling me about it.]

A surprising number of folks have written in to say I misspelled "Merlin" in my piece about Camelot. That's the way the wizard's name is more commonly spelled but according to the script by Alan Jay Lerner and the program book for the show, the character in Camelot is named Merlyn, with a "Y." So that's why I spelled it the way I did.

Nice to hear that Dick Clark will return to anchor the New York segment of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on New Year's Eve. The absence of public appearances had worried a lot of folks, causing them to presume that the reports of his "minor stroke" were fibs to hide a much more serious condition. I worked with and for Dick a few times and liked him a lot. He's a genuine broadcasting legend and it'll be good to see that whatever he's been through, it isn't as bad as some feared.

Most people probably think of Camelot as in the same category as My Fair Lady, Music Man, Oklahoma! and Guys and Dolls. That category is "Timeless Smash Hit Musicals." In truth, though Camelot now seems quite timeless, it was not a hit when it first opened in 1960. Unlike all the other shows in that category I just mentioned, reviews were mixed and audiences had a tendency to walk out well before the final curtain.

They didn't do that at My Fair Lady, the previous Broadway collaboration of director Moss Hart, writer-lyrist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe. When Camelot was first advertised, audiences expected another show of the same caliber and stampeded to purchase tickets. (Lerner and Loewe had also just done the movie, Gigi, which won many Oscars including Best Picture, so that probably raised expectations further.)

But Camelot was just not as good, especially when it opened for out-of-town tryouts in Toronto. The show ran five long hours then and Lerner had a devil of a time trying to figure out how to cut it down and have it still make sense. The stress of trying to do that plus tumult from his latest semi-annual divorce, gave Lerner a bleeding ulcer and put him in the hospital.

All repair work on Camelot stopped when this happened. For weeks, the cast (headed by Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet) continued to perform what all knew was a deeply-flawed script while they waited for the author to recover. Finally, the day came when Lerner was to get out the hospital and resume work. He was released a few hours early because they needed the bed for another patient…who turned out to be Moss Hart.

So now they had a writer but no director. While Hart recuperated from a major heart attack, Lerner began rewriting and also took over as director. Among his many problems was that Camelot, which was then the most expensive musical ever mounted, was a nightmare of huge sets and costumes. Lerner would later say that the show was overwhelmed by its pageantry; that it was hard to find and fix the story amidst it all. In an article he wrote several years after, he mentioned one smart thing he did just before the show opened on Broadway…

Fearing the intimacy had been lost, I called a full dress rehearsal without the "dress" part. I insisted that the actors wear their street clothes, even to the extent of ordering several who arrived on stage in costume to change back to civvies. I also ordered the crew to keep the set changes as simple as possible, creating more of a rehearsal hall ambience on the stage. The result was the most moving, personal performance of Camelot and the one I best remember. When we resumed work with the sets and wardrobe, much of that intimacy was lost and we all regretted that audiences could not experience the show as we had in that rehearsal.

Camelot, sets and all, opened on Broadway on December 3, 1960. If unknowns had been behind it, it might not have lasted a week. But the reps of Lerner, Loewe and Hart had sold enough advance tickets that it was destined to run at least six months, during which two "miracles" (as Lerner called them) occurred. One was that Hart, released from that Toronto hospital, came to see it and helped Lerner to do a significant rewrite. Shows rarely change much after they open but in this case, Camelot was said to be substantially improved. This is the version performed ever since.

Then came the second miracle: Ed Sullivan, who then had the most popular show on TV, devoted an entire program to the works of Lerner and Loewe. (This miracle may have been aided by the fact that the show was on CBS, and CBS had financed Camelot.) At the time, current Broadway shows rarely "gave away" their best moments on television, on the theory that audiences wouldn't pay after experiencing them for free. Camelot had nothing to lose so they did all the best songs on the Sullivan show and the next morning, the box office finally had a line of ticket buyers befitting a smash hit.

Soon after, there was a third miracle, albeit one born of tragedy. Everyone felt that the first act of Camelot was stronger than the second but after the assassination of President Kennedy, that changed. The connect of Kennedy and Camelot was dodgy but it was strong enough to alter the play's impact for many. As Lerner wrote, "Ever since that day in Dallas, the ending has taken on new meaning. God knows I would have preferred that History had not become my collaborator."

All of this is the lead-up to a brief review of what I saw Sunday evening: A one-performance, "concert-style" production of Camelot at the Hollywood Bowl. Jeremy Irons played King Arthur, Melissa Errico was Guenevere, Paxton Whitehead portrayed Sir Pellinore, James Barbour performed the role of Lancelot, Orson Bean did Merlyn, Malcolm Gets was Mordred and they had a fine supporting cast helping fill the stage.

The result was a wonderful performance…easily the best of the several Camelots I've seen. That would include the major revival with Richard Harris who, though he'd then been doing the play for months, forgot more of his lines than did Mr. Irons, who learned his for the one night.

Irons was fantastic — a little rough on the tunes, but so fine in the non-singing parts that you could forgive the missed notes. The whole cast was excellent and I got the feeling that this modest staging — with simple yet elegant costuming and no sets — may have approximated that "street clothes" performance that Lerner so loved. It surely had the same result. The play was truly about the relationship of Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot, rather than about the scenery. I don't recall being moved much by previous viewings of Camelot but last night, there were several moments — the ending, especially — that got to me, and made that canyon-like Hollywood Bowl arena feel small and intimate.

Gordon Hunt directed…and I'm sorry his efforts all went for just one performance because it was a wonderful one. Late in life, Alan Jay Lerner occasionally toyed with the idea of reviving Camelot in a "simpler" version so that audiences could see and feel what the play he wrote was really about. He never got around to that, so I'm glad Gordon did it for him. And for us.

This article in the Los Angeles Times [registration might be required] says that the network late night shows (Leno, Letterman, Nightline) are losing audience share to cable, and that they look highly vulnerable to further onslaught. This is probably so. I think both Jay and Dave have gotten too repetitive and predictable, and that audiences are starting to drift away. Whether the new shows coming into that market will be able to pick up those viewers remains to be seen. But if I were CBS, NBC or ABC, I'd be doing something about it.

Boy, here's a site that will cost you a lot of time. It's called New York Changing and one section of it is devoted to "then and now" photos taken around Manhattan and in nearby boroughs. See how some building looked in the thirties and how it looks today, side by side.

Frank Rich says the War in Iraq is over…George W. Bush just doesn't know it yet. I don't think I agree with this article but it may be more premature than wrong.

Tom Wolper informs me that the "Rue Brittania" storyline won't be on the third volume of Rocky & Bullwinkle DVDs since it's already on the second. So ignore what I said about that. In fact, while you're at it, ignore what I say about everything.

Vince Waldron informs me that the Aero Theater out in Santa Monica is running a Billy Wilder series and will be screening Ace in the Hole on August 25. It's all part of the American Cinematheque project, which screens classic films there and at the Egyptian in Hollywood, and which I keep forgetting to keep an eye on. Last July 25, they ran 1776, followed by a panel discussion with William Daniels, Ken Howard and the film's director, Peter Hunt. I would have liked to be there for it but I only found out about it just now when I set up the link to their calendar. In a few weeks, both theaters are presenting Terry Gilliam's movie, Brazil, and they're running the European cut, which is ten minutes longer than the version released in this country.

I had a brief happy moment (about ten seconds) yesterday afternoon when I was looking at a list of upcoming DVD releases and saw Ace in the Hole. Turned out it was not the Ace in the Hole made in 1951 by Billy Wilder. It was a new documentary of the same name about Saddam Hussein.

Someone ought to put out the Wilder film, which starred Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling, and was also released under the title, The Big Carnival. It was a cynical endeavor…one of those movies where you honestly can't find anyone to root for. Douglas plays a reporter who has sunk from the Big Time to working a dead-end beat at a rinky-dink New Mexico newspaper. When he stumbles across a mine disaster, he sees his chance to promote the accident into a story of national interest, and does so. In a time when every missing Caucasian woman is cause of 24/7 cable news coverage, the movie's message is more timely than ever before.

I have a tape from the one time I've seen it run on cable, but I'd really like a DVD. Surely someone who reads this website has the power to make that happen.

Most animation art is unsigned, and that includes animation-related artwork generated within a studio. I get a lot of e-mails asking me if I can identify the specific artist who drew a given drawing. Sometimes, I can. Sometimes, I can't.

The above drawing of Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole was apparently done in the sixties for some kind of educational book or toy. It's up for sale on a site that sells animation art, and it was e-mailed to me by someone who wrote, "I've studied this drawing for an hour and I can't figure out which of the Hanna-Barbera artists drew it. Can you?"

Gee, I dunno. Something about it suggests that it might have been drawn by Willie Ito.