Monthly Archives: December 2006

The Fox Home Video people have already issued all 121 half-hours of Garfield and Friends in five volumes of DVDs. Now, they're going back and issuing single DVDs, each holding a batch of selected episodes. The first one is out now, I'm told. It's called Garfield and Friends: Behind the Scenes and it spotlights cartoons in which the lasagna-gorging cat explained to viewers how a cartoon show is assembled, or otherwise lectured on the vital issues of the day. There are fifteen of them included. These were among the episodes that the crew on the show liked the most and certain folks at CBS liked the least, so that says something for them.

You can order it two ways, assuming you want to order it at all. There's the plain, old fashioned DVD for thirteen bucks at Amazon, and they also have the deluxe model for eighteen bucks. The deluxe model is the same DVD but it includes a Garfield "mini beanie" plush toy that I just know you can't live without. A similar DVD package featuring Odie will follow shortly…and maybe someday, Mark will get his royalty payments, although I fear they're going to pay me off in those little dolls.

What do you do if you backed the Iraq War and things aren't turning out there the way you confidently predicted? Why, you blame the media, of course. They're the ones spreading all those questionable stories about car bombings in Baghdad and killings in the streets. Eric Boehlert discusses this spin on reality.

We're hearing that it's finally going to happen: A DVD release of WKRP in Cincinnati. But as we've warned here before, they will not be as the shows originally aired. The disc jockeys in the popular sitcom often played records and at the time the shows were produced, it didn't cost that much for the producers to use real records. So they did. Then later, when the shows got to the land of syndicated reruns, the rates had changed and it cost more to leave those real records in. So they didn't. Other, generic songs were substituted…and where there were lines of dialogue referencing the now-excised tunes, they either (a) left the lines in so they made no sense or (b) had someone try to imitate the actors and redub new dialogue. Neither worked all that well.

I'm told a first season DVD set will be out next Spring and that a number of songs will be changed. I'm not sure if that means these are the syndicated prints or if they're redoing the replacements. Either way, it's something of a shame…though I suppose an altered collection is better than no collection at all.

The last time we discussed this here, it sent another blogging friend into a tirade, the jist of which was, "How dare those greedy record owners try to hold up the DVD company for money, thereby making it impossible for the folks who made the WKRP shows to market them in their original form?" That may be the case or it may be that the company that now controls WKRP in Cincinnati (which is not the company that made them in the first place) is just being penurious. That has been known to happen, too. Unless you're privvy to the negotiations, you don't know.

If you've been watching Late Night With Conan O'Brien, you're already familiar with their great new website. If you're not, here's the story of how it came to be…and a direct link to www.hornymanatee.com.

This is another Garfield cartoon that I wrote and which shouldn't be up on YouTube. It's called Skyway Robbery and it features a recurring conman character named Mr. Swindler who was in four or five episodes.

Interesting story how we cast his voice. I decided to introduce a larcenous scam artist who'd pop up every few weeks to try and cheat Garfield's owner Jon out of his hard-earned mazuma. To play the role, I cast a wonderful character actor named Jesse White. Most people remember him as the Maytag Repairman in the commercials but most of the jobs Jesse got during his long, rich career had him playing agents and con-artists and crooked salesmen, and I thought he'd be perfect. And if we'd gotten him five years earlier, he probably would have been.

But Jesse was old and Jesse was ill, and it just broke your heart. He simply wasn't up to the job. The recording session took a long time and even then, what resulted was barely satisfactory. I decided then and there that that particular conman character wasn't coming back and that I'd create a new one and find a different actor to play him. About two minutes after Jesse White left, I was walking into the waiting room at the recording studio, wondering who I might get for the job when I noticed an actor sitting there. It was Carl Ballantine and he was waiting to do a radio commercial in one of the other studios.

You may know Carl Ballantine from his role on McHale's Navy. You may know him from one of his hundreds of other TV and motion picture appearances. You may even know him as The Amazing Ballantine, performer of the lamest, funniest magic act in the world. I know him from all those and from appearing in the 1971 stage revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers. It was the most hysterical, magical thing I've ever seen in a theater and Ballantine was one of the reasons. (I wrote about this production here and here.)

So that day at Buzzy's Recording Studio, I saw Carl sitting there, said the word "perfect" aloud…and he soon became Mr. Swindler. I thought he was quite wonderful in the role and he was a joy to work with. One of the reasons I kept bringing Swindler back was so that I could keep bringing Ballantine back.

Our cartoon today was his second appearance. In addition to Carl, the voice cast consisted of Lorenzo Music as the cat, Thom Huge as Jon, and Gregg Berger as Odie and everyone else. You may click when ready. It runs about six and a half minutes.

Congrats and sighs of relief to my longtime friend (and one of the best artists in the realm of fantasy), Bill Stout. Bill has just come through a nasty brush with cancer and he reports on his weblog that they got it all. In fact, his weblog has a very candid, chilling diary of his experiences. The accounts may be too raw for some people but if you want to brave it, go to this page, locate the entry for November 16 and then read sequentially upwards to the happy ending. I'm horrified by what he's been through but glad we'll have Stout around for a long time.

And good thoughts go out to a great veteran comic book writer — the man who gave us The Doom Patrol, Deadman, Stanley and His Monster and so many more. Arnold Drake has been hospitalized with a couple of broken bones and I'm told he's doing well. I'll call him tomorrow and try to get you all a more complete report, as well as an address for Get Well wishes.

My Congressman at work. I don't know why more people aren't outraged at evidence that some companies have taken tax money for war-related work, gouged us on the amounts and then either not done the work or done a slipshod job. Shouldn't these be the kind of scandals that unite us all? Is there anyone who doesn't think this kind of thing is shameful?

Here's a new CBS poll on Bush and Iraq, and here's Mark baffled about something.

21% of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush has done handling Iraq, as opposed to 75% who disapprove.

31% of Americans approve of Bush's overall job performance, as opposed to 63% who disapprove.

So, uh, what's on the minds of those people who think he's done a rotten job with Iraq but still think he's been a good president?

I'm serious with this question…well, sort of serious. I can understand thinking Bush has botched the war badly. Actually, I can understand that from two fronts: I can understand thinking he made a colossal mistake taking us to war in the first place and I can understand believing the war was the right move but that it's been lost by bad strategizing and/or not committing sufficient troop strength and/or mishandling the occupation. I can even understand (again, sort of) believing that Bush has made all (or mostly) the right decisions and that he's been a good Chief Exec. I don't agree, of course, but

But this presidency has become all about the war. It overwhelmingly dominates every poll about what Americans think is important and it impacts the runner-up answers like The Economy and Immigration and Combatting Terrorism, and probably not in a good way. How does someone disapprove of the war but approve of the guy who started it and ran it? I mean, even if you think Donald Rumsfeld's the one who screwed up, Bush is the guy who picked Rumsfeld, okayed everything he did and insisted, long after members of their own party were calling for the man's head, in keeping him on.

Now, it may be that the poll is just full of manure…but I don't think that's it because there's a similar gap in all the polls. My suspicion is roughly as follows: There are, of course, a lot of people out there who believe in the over-all, non-Iraq goals of the Republican Party. They've lost faith in Bush himself and they wish we'd never invaded Iraq and could get out without it helping the Democrats. When they're asked about the war, they don't want to encourage its continuance so they say no, they don't approve of the handling of the war. But when they're asked about Bush, they don't want to repudiate the domestic issues he seemed to stand for. They still think a G.O.P. in the White House is the ticket to lower taxes, banning abortion, more God in public settings, no gay marriages, etc., so they answer that they approve of Bush. But it's not him they like. They just don't want to have him seen as a failed president because some of that failure will rub off on their non-Iraq agenda.

Does that make any sense? Or is there some other explanation I'm missing here?

Are there people reading this who disapprove of Bush's handling of the war but approve of his over-all presidency? Would one of them like to send me a message I can post here explaining this? I'm really curious.

The New York Times has corrected its obit on Sid Raymond. They now quote his favorite joke in a way that makes sense. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this earlier item on this site.) Naturally, we would like to take credit for this…so we will.

The Times credits Sid as having provided the voices of the Terrytoons magpies, Heckle and Jeckle, and several folks have written to ask me if this was so. Yes, it is was…briefly. There are one or two cartoons in which Raymond appears to have done the voice of Heckle and/or Jeckle.

I say "appears" because those of us who profess to know a lot about animation voice work are all still a bit puzzled by the credits for many films that came out of Paul Terry's studio. A gentleman named Tom Morrison, who also worked there as a storyman, did an awful lot of voices. So did a New York based singer named Roy Halee. The two of them swapped off certain voices from time to time. Both were Mighty Mouse at different times, occasionally in the same cartoon — Halee singing, Morrison speaking. Sometimes, one of them did Heckle and Jeckle, sometimes the other did the magpies and sometimes they split the chores. There are also other, unidentifiable voices in Terrytoons, some of which sound like the director grabbed a janitor and stuck him in front of a microphone.

I'm glad someone was skeptical about Sid Raymond's credit. There's a lot of misinformation out there about the voices on these cartoons. Many sources say that character actor Ned Sparks was the voice of Heckle and Jeckle at one point. As far as I know, this is wrong. Impressions of Mr. Sparks turn up in a lot of cartoons produced in this country in the thirties and forties but I don't think he ever actually did animation voice work. Comedian Dayton Allen voiced the magpies a few times in the fifties, including redubbing old footage to serve as interstitial segments on the CBS TV series, but he's often credited as if he did all the voices in all their cartoons. Also, some sources say that Roy Halee went from voicing Mighty Mouse and the magpies to producing records by popular recording artists, including Simon and Garfunkel, The Lovin' Spoonful and Bob Dylan. Actually, Roy Halee Senior was a singer and cartoon voice and his son, Roy Halee Junior, became a top record producer.

Incidentally — getting back to the first topic for a moment — isn't it interesting that the Times, which published many assertions about Whitewater, and later about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, has never corrected those stories…but someone there was conscientious enough to fix Sid Raymond's joke?

Here's another cartoon I wrote which should not be on YouTube and which the legal folks will soon have removed. But in the meantime, I wrote it. I can link to it. I can even tell you a little story about it.

I don't think it happens as much these days but those of us who do cartoons have been occasionally pressured, in much the same way a guy with a gun pressures you to hand over your wallet, to include certain "social messages" into our work. There's nothing wrong with trying to include a benevolent moral in a cartoon if — and here come a couple of big IFs — it doesn't despoil the entertainment value and it can be done without a condescending, lecturing tone…and especially IF the message is a sound one.

For a time in the eighties, a lot of us had to include a message with which I did not agree. It was, basically, that the group was always right; that one should avoid the anti-social behavior of not going along with what everyone else thought. This was embedded in many cartoon shows in many ways. On a show I launched called Dungeons and Dragons (the DVD of which is just now being released), I had to make one of the kids a sour presence who always wanted to go in a different direction from all the others. The same network also had a show called The Get-Along Gang, which was about a batch of cute, furry animals who always had to be reminded to get along with the gang. There were other examples.

I thought this was a foolish value to be teaching children. So did the programming folks at the network but it was forced upon them by outside interests. Later, when I did the Garfield and Friends show, things had changed and I not only didn't have to include that message, I could attack it…as we did in this U.S. Acres cartoon. U.S. Acres was Jim Davis's other newspaper strip — the one he retired because it was "only" in 300 papers…an impressive number for anyone but the creator of Garfield. In some other countries, the strip was called Orson's Farm so the cartoons we did were filmed with both title cards, and today's video clip has an Orson's Farm logo on it.

They all took place on a farm where Orson the Pig, Roy Rooster, Wade the Cowardly Duck and others cavorted. In the episode you're about to view (assuming the link is still good and you click on it), the voices of Orson and the agent were done by Gregg Berger, who I should mention also had a small role in the movie I saw last night. Thom Huge was Roy Rooster and the late, great Howie Morris supplied the sound of Wade Duck. All three, with their voices sped a la Bagdasarian, spoke for The Buddy Bears, three extremely annoying characters who popped up every now and then on the Garfield show singing their little tune which was written by Yours Truly and Ed Bogas. Which brings us to the cartoon entitled Big Bad Buddy Bird…

Joe Galloway, who covered an awful lot of wars and military interventions in his days as a reporter, calls for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

In 1967, two reporters — one of them, a gent named Murray Fromson — filed stories which quoted an anonymous "senior American general" about how badly the war in Vietnam was going for the U.S. The article enraged the White House and the Pentagon, and I seem to recall a lot of their supporters insisting that no general would say such a thing; that the reporters had to have made it all up. Today in the New York Times, in this article, Fromson reveals the name of his source. And it really doesn't matter who it was…only that he appears to have really had one.

I'm just back from a screening of Dreamgirls, which I guess is opening in most of the country on Christmas Day. Actually, the movie ended at 9:00 but we had to sit through the end credits, which ran longer than some studio deals I've had.

The cinematography and art direction are great. The performances — especially Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson — are great. The editing, the orchestrations, the mixing…all the technical details are great, and you probably smell the "but" coming so here it is: But I didn't like the movie very much. I know it'll probably take in serious megabucks. It's certainly the one everyone in Hollywood wants to see. (We were supposed to go to a screening last night but it and all the others that had been scheduled were overbooked, and a nice lady at Paramount switched us to tonight and one of several hurriedly-added additional showings. The fact that people in L.A. are eager for it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be storming the cineplexes in Wyoming…but it sure doesn't hurt.)

Why didn't I have a better time? Same reason I didn't like the original musical back in the mid-eighties: Don't like most of the songs, don't care about most of the people. In case you don't know, this is basically the story of Berry Gordy's Motown Records empire and more specifically of Diana Ross and the Supremes, but with the names and some details changed. I might have been interested in a story about how the group went from obscurity to stardom but that all pretty much happens in the first half hour, and it happens via cynical means that have very little to do with them being deserving talents…or even having any musical integrity. The Gordy clone demotes the lead singer with the thrilling voice to backup status, elevates a blander vocalist to sing lead and otherwise takes the guts out of their music…then he bribes a lot of disc jockeys to play their records and otherwise buys their success.

From then on, it's a film about a bunch of successful people squabbling over who's sleeping with who and getting hurt by the machinations of the guy who manipulated their way into stardom in the first place. The spine of the story is what happens with Effie White, who's played by Jennifer Hudson and who's based on the real-life problems of Florence Ballard in fitting in with the Supremes. Ms. Hudson is electric in the role — rarely do you see a screen debut with "Oscar" so boldly written across it — but I'm sorry. I didn't feel for Effie because she was relegated to back-up singer in the group…and for the same reason I never felt sympathy for George Harrison because John and Paul so dominated The Beatles. More interesting to me than Effie was the situation of James "Thunder" Early, played by Eddie Murphy…but that story ends abruptly and you don't see enough of it before it does.

Ultimately, I guess, it's all about the songs. In a movie like this, you want to love them. You need to love them because the superstar singing group has to thrill you with their performances…and I found the songs — most of them, anyway — forgettable. Jennifer Hudson stops the film with "I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," just as Jennifer Holliday stopped the original Broadway show with the same tune. I think it's a phony theatrical moment because the song is shrill and full of pain disproportionate to what's actually been done to the woman singing it. Matter of fact, I think that's the moment the film really lost me for good and here's what's really odd about it. Despite the title and many of the lyrics, this is not a song about a woman who's defiantly refusing to leave. It's about a woman who's not going along; i.e., she's quitting. As many critics of the original musical observed, she sings "I'm not going" and then she goes. And because she goes, her life gets even worse. For me, the whole story just has too many moments of people being self-destructive but acting like they've been victimized. I know people do that all the time but it doesn't make me care what becomes of them.

You may well enjoy this movie and you certainly shouldn't avoid it because of me. A lot of people at the screening loved it and applauded and like I said, I think it'll make a ton o' cash. I hope it does because we need more screen musicals to do well so they'll make more screen musicals. If they do, I'm sure there'll be many that I enjoy more than Dreamgirls.

The New York Times has a pretty good obituary up for Sid Raymond — the fine character actor who, among his many credits, provided the voices for Katnip the Cat and Baby Huey.

Well, it's a pretty good obituary except for the last part where the reporter attempts to quote one of Sid's favorite jokes…

One of his last jokes involved a son sending a prostitute over to his widowed father, in his 90s, still a self-proclaimed ladies' man. She tells him she is his birthday present and will give him whatever he'd like. "I'll take the soup," he says.

Doesn't make any sense. But it might if the obit writer had gotten the set-up right. The prostitute says to the old man, "I'm here to offer you super sex!" And then the old guy replies…

This shouldn't be on YouTube but since I wrote it, I figured it was okay to link to it. The lawyers will get it removed soon but before they do, you can watch a Garfield cartoon I wrote called Video Airlines.

For those of you interested in the details: The voice of Garfield was performed by the late, great Lorenzo Music. Thom Huge provided the voices of Jon and Binky the Clown. Gregg Berger was Odie, the announcers for The Mediocre Movie Matinee and the Spanish language station, and the monster at the end. Neil Ross did the voice of the actor in the movie, the video store clerk and the ushers. Jim Davis, the creator of the Garfield comic strip, read the part of the announcer on Adequate Theater. The song was written by Desiree Goyette and Ed Bogas. And the whole thing was inspired by when I got my first satellite dish and had a devil of a time finding a channel that wasn't showing the Hello, Dolly movie with Barbra Streisand. Here's what resulted…