Monthly Archives: January 2007

Rod Dreher is a devout Conservative who has come to not think much of George W. Bush or the current war efforts. In a recent commentary for N.P.R., he said so and it's causing much talk around the blogosphere. This weblog post by Glenn Greenwald discusses Dreher's conversion.

Judging from the e-mail, many of you "enjoyed" (in some odd sense of that word), Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title, which ran last week on Turner Classic Movies. If so, you're the kind of person who needs to know about Stop! Look! And Laugh!, which runs this coming Tuesday on TCM…at 5:30 AM Pacific Time.

Interesting story about this film. For several centuries, the Three Stooges made two-reel shorts for Columbia Pictures on ever-diminishing budgets. The studio's attitude was, more or less, that a Stooge short would bring in X dollars and if they could be made for less, fine. They'd keep on making them. If they couldn't, that was it. For a time, they could…though this was achieved by some of the most outrageous cost-cutting techniques imaginable. Many of the new shorts released in the last few years of their Columbia contract were "new" only in that they had new titles and a few new scenes, while the bulk of the footage was culled from earlier films.

By 1959, it became impossible for a short comedy to make back its cost, even shooting them the way the Stooges did. They made a feature for Columbia called Have Rocket, Will Travel and then their association with the studio ended. This was the first film with the new third stooge. "Curly Joe" (Joe DeRita) replaced Joe Besser, who had replaced Shemp Howard, who had replaced Curly Howard.

As it happened, Have Rocket, Will Travel was quite successful at the box office. The Stooge shorts had been released to television and were scoring big with kids who were eager to see the guys on the big screen. Columbia wanted the three knuckleheads back to make more features but Larry, Moe and Curly Joe got a better deal from Fox and began shooting Snow White and the Three Stooges there. Undaunted, Columbia decided that they really didn't need the Three Stooges to make a Three Stooges movie..and based on that realization, they whipped up Stop! Look! And Laugh! The popular ventriloquist Paul Winchell was engaged to film new segments and he, of course, brought along his dummies, Jerry Mahoney and another Knucklehead named Smiff. New footage was also shot of the animal act, The Marquis Chimps, who were about to star in a Columbia TV sitcom called The Hathaways. (You can hear June Foray's voice dubbed in during the apes' segment in Stop! Look! And Laugh!)

The new footage was combined awkwardly with segments pulled out of ten old Stooge shorts that featured Curly. As you can see from the above lobby card, star billing went to "The Original Three Stooges," which may have been some sort of dig at Curly Joe. The patchwork film was released, primarily for matinee programming, and it did rather well, especially for the Stooges. They sued and wound up settling for some of the best money they ever got out of Columbia. They also dumped their old manager, Harry Romm, who'd produced the Columbia paste-up film. Instead, they put their careers in the hands of Norman Maurer, a former comic book artist who'd married Moe's daughter, Joan. Norman used some of the cash from the lawsuit to fund the Stooges' own production company which made some of their later films.

You might want to set the ol' TiVo for Stop! Look! And Laugh! because individual segments are fun, especially the ones showing Winchell in his prime. The Stooge clips are well-selected and edited down to the essentials, too. The pieces just don't all connect into a real movie.

While we're here, let's see what else is interesting on TCM this week. Monday night, they have an interesting line-up: Lawrence of Arabia, The Gold Rush (with Mr. Chaplin), Rashomon and Judgment at Nuremberg. The logical theme that flows through those four movies should be obvious to anyone.

Tuesday night, they have Kiss Me, Stupid, a Billy Wilder film I've never been able to make it through. Then later that evening, they have If You Could Only Cook. This is the Jean Arthur comedy made in 1935 which Frank Capra had nothing to do with but Columbia (them, again) released it overseas as "A Frank Capra Production" because his name enabled them to charge more for it. Capra sued and wound up sitting out a year of his contract during a time he was at his filmmaking peak, only to finally drop the suit and return to making movies for the studio. He claimed in his autobiography that he did this out of personal loyalty to the studio head, Harry Cohn, who was going to be fired if and when Capra prevailed in court. But so much in that book is demonstrably false that it makes you wonder. In any case, it's not that great a picture and it certainly wasn't worth Capra making no movies for a year there.

There are plenty of other treasures on TCM this week but I'll just mention two more. On Thursday, they're offering Cain and Mabel, one of Clark Gable's more obscure films. If you want to see how good Gable was, you need to stop watching him in great movies and see how he could make stuff like this viewable and pleasant. The same could be said for Jack Lemmon in Phffft!, which runs on Friday.

Attention, Sergio Aragonés…

They say you're the fastest cartoonist in the world. Well, actually, I started saying it and others have fallen for my claim and picked it up. But you have certainly been known to amaze people when you draw. You have won every award that has ever been given for cartooning. In fact, recently, the Comic Art Professional Society started a new cartooning award and called it The Sergio and you won that, too. So you are truly quite remarkable.

Ah, but can you do this?

This is kind of interesting. Anthony Cordesman, who I guess is a political analyst, has taken Bush's speech from the other night and written commentaries and corrections on many of its key phrases. The New York Times has it up as an interactive feature.

The proposed Broadway stage version of Young Frankenstein is proceeding apace. A debut date for later this year will soon be announced, along with the signing of Kristen Chenoweth to play the role that Madeline Kahn played in the original movie. Or so says the grapevine.

I don't intend to devote a lot more of this weblog to the Iraq mess. There are plenty of places online that deal in such trivia, whereas I need to focus on the important topics of the day like dead cartoonists and Doodles Weaver. But I posted a message yesterday from someone named Greg and responded to it. And now here's Greg again, and I'm going to insert my responses as we go along. He's the one with the narrower margins…

Thanks for your reply. Regarding your comments about inherent references and assumptions on my part. I'm not sure I see how you came to that — I actually made no comments that came close to discussing what percentage of people currently support our ongoing efforts towards a safer, self-governing Iraq. Speaking of my quasi-question to you along those lines: "…we should help Iraq become a country stable and safe enough to govern itself, as much as possible, as soon as possible" — I'm still curious to know whether or not we agree on that.

It's a commendable goal, of course. I don't know that it's attainable, or that it's attainable at a price we'll want to pay. There are a lot of noble things we might be able to do around the world if we don't care how many of our soldiers die or how many of our tax dollars we spend. I always remember the saying that "politics is the art of the possible." So my question would be to wonder if a safer, self-governing Iraq is even achievable or if that's the best use of our human and financial resources. And at what point in the Body Count, do we decide maybe that it is not? Mr. Bush scares some of us because we worry there's no point at which he'll think too many soldiers have died.

In any case, my reference to the percentage of people who support the war was a response to your saying that "the left" has no solutions. I don't think anyone has any great, workable solutions but it isn't just "the left." There are plenty of people on the opposite end of the political spectrum who are saying the exact same things about this war.

And, I found this fairly contradictory — you say it's not your job to know how we should proceed in Iraq — that it should be decided by folks experienced in these things (sounds good, I think I'll go with the Commander in Chief and his administration). Anyway, even though you say "not my job," you then provided two plans of action — and you even give predictions as to what will happen! Even more, both outcomes are guaranteed "disasters." It seems you've taken the option of things moving in a positive direction completely off the table! I can understand that some people have that point of view, I suppose, of giving up on things getting better in any way? But I can also see it as being negative, bizarre, and counter-productive. (Not to mention that for some people, I believe, it involves a large amount of petty wish
fulfillment. Personally I wouldn't guess that would apply to yourself, but to some.)

Yeah, I'm pessimistic about things getting better in any way. The claims by some that we're gaining ground strike me as so empty (and quickly discredited, like Cheney saying the insurgency was in its final throes) that they don't instill optimism. You say you'll trust the Commander in Chief and his adminstration. I'd love to but I haven't seen them do anything right yet. Bush couldn't even tout great progress in his speech the other night.

But I think the thing that worries me — and this is the point I was trying to make — is that I don't trust these guys to change courses or cut our losses if that's truly the best option. They're convinced we need to go North and even with so many experienced voices saying we should go South, the Bush crew is going to go North, even if it means driving us off a cliff. We don't expect our leaders to be infallible but we also don't want leaders who think they are, and will press on in the wrong direction rather than admit they were wrong. At some point, the possible good we can achieve in Iraq may be totally out of balance with what it will cost us to make happen. (This is assuming we aren't already past that point.) Bush seems to have taken that consideration completely off the table, and that scares me and a lot of people.

You wrote that you're not sure that anyone has a plan, "…unless it's to cut our losses and get out." What? Lots of people have plans that don't have disaster in them! Don't you have any recommendations in a positive direction regarding Iraq?

Nope. And I somehow have a feeling that if one does emerge, it's not going to originate with the guy who writes Groo the Wanderer. I believe in expertise. I expect my doctor to know more than I do about medicine. I expect my lawyer to know more than I do about law. And I expect the guy who runs our military to know more than I do about how to deploy troops and wage war. I wouldn't excuse incompetence by any of them on the grounds that I don't know their jobs better than they do. They're supposed to know more than me. In fact, if our military leaders don't have a much better idea of what to do in Iraq than I do, we're in more trouble than anyone imagines.

Got another Spike Jones clip for you this morning. This one spotlights Doodles Weaver, a very silly comedian and character actor who was a part of Spike's stock company for many years, often performing this assault on "The William Tell Overture." You may also remember Doodles from his occasional appearances on Jack Webb's Dragnet, his three second cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or his prestigious family ties. He was the brother of Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, who was a major player in early television as the guy in charge of NBC. That means that Doodles was also the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver.

Me, I remember Doodles because I used to see him at the Silent Movie Theater here in L.A. when I was a frequent patron in the mid-to-late sixties. So was he. He'd arrive before an evening performance, usually on a bicycle which he chained-up outside like it was King Kong and he feared it would break free and go on a rampage. Then he would just wander around and tell jokes to the other folks waiting outside. He was very odd and very funny and it was almost impossible to have any sort of a conversation with the man. Thinking back on him, I am reminded of what David Letterman once said of Andy Kaufman: "When you look into his eyes, you get the feeling that somebody else is driving." Here's Doodles…

Terry Jones on a better way we could have spent the money we've been spending on the Iraq War.

Also, Bob Elisberg explains that Bush really didn't admit mistakes in his speech the other night. The Los Angeles Daily News had a headline on its print edition that said "BUSH ADMITS MISTAKES" and I imagine other press accounts did, as well. But Bob is right so I guess I owe him yet another lunch.

I'm getting a lot of e-mails tonight from people saying, "The video clips on your weblog are missing." I guess I need to explain that there are no video clips on my weblog. The things you click on here are on some other site — usually YouTube or Google Video — and I just embed links to them on my site. Each link creates a little window on this page that lets you see a video that's really part of someone else's website on some other server located God-knows-where. At this very moment, YouTube is down for maintenance so the embedded links can't connect there. Ergo, there are blank holes on my page where video gems usually reside. YouTube will be back up soon — maybe even by the time you read this — and the video fun will magically reappear.

A reader of this site who identifies himself as Greg sends the following, which I felt like answering here…

I'm going to assume that you don't want us to leave Iraq 100%, right now. I'm going to assume we both agree that we should help Iraq become a country stable and safe enough to govern itself, as much as possible, as soon as possible.

So, unless I'm assuming incorrectly — how would you recommend we go about that? Solutions are what don't seem to be coming from the left. And the few solutions that sort of, kind of seem to be mentioned, seem to sound like ways to lose in Iraq rather than the above.

This message incorporates a couple of (to me) false assumptions. One is inherent in the reference to solutions not coming from "the left." With many prominent Conservative voices saying the same thing that the Cindy Sheehans of the world are saying, this has long since stopped being a left/right issue. The AP-Ipsos poll today (this one) says that 70% of all Americans oppose The Surge. This is not because 70% of Americans are left-wingers.

Frankly, Greg, I don't know if we should just pull out of Iraq right now. Knowing that is not my job. But I do think that those keeping us there should be open to a possibility being suggested by a lot of folks experienced in military actions and/or geopolitics. It's that our options are coming down to (a) pulling out now and having a certain level of disaster descend on Iraq…or (b) pulling out at some point in the future, having the same or worse level of disaster hit Iraq then, and a staggering number of American lives and dollars lost unnecessarily in the interim. Those who oppose this war now may not have a proposal to make everything in Iraq hunky-dory…but I don't see that those who favor staying having any plan beyond "Let's keep trying all those things that haven't worked at all the way we predicted."

I'm not sure if I want us to leave Iraq 100% right now. What I want is for us to have leaders who would do that if that's our least objectionable alternative…and George W. Bush has not convinced me — along with an awful lot of people who once voted for him — that he could make that call.

So no, I don't have a Plan B. I'm not sure anyone does, unless it's to cut our losses and get out. I don't have to have a Plan B to suggest that Plan A ain't working. If my doctor prescribes something and my fingernails start falling out, I don't have to know what I should be taking in order to decide that he gave me the wrong medicine. I can just decide to go to a different doctor. Would that it were that easy to change our president.

George W. Bush's Iraq policy sure makes a good Monty Python sketch.

This one was suggested by my longtime pal, Russell Myers. Russell draws the wonderful comic strip, Broom-Hilda, which can be read online on this page. But he didn't suggest you read his strip. That's my suggestion. What he suggested is that I favor you with the following Spike Jones clip. It runs almost eight minutes but, hey, you have nothing better to do for the next eight minutes. So sit back, click and watch as Spike — wearing one of his more conservative outfits — conducts "The Poet and Peasant Overture." The funny guy with the banjo is Freddie Morgan and of course, you'll all recognize Jim Backus…

Fred Kaplan didn't think much of Bush's address to the nation.

I have a couple of friends who still support…well, I'm not sure if they support George W. Bush because they support the War in Iraq or if they support the War in Iraq because they support George W. Bush. But some of them do and a couple of them don't seem to understand why so many of us support neither.

To them…to anyone who's wondering…I recommend spending two and a half minutes and watching Keith Olbermann tick off a list of past rationales and statements that have been offered in support of our nation's efforts in Iraq. It's rather an amazing list and you can watch it over at this link.

That's about how I looked when I was eight years old and I had to go to a neighbor and apologize for breaking their swimming pool thermometer.