Monthly Archives: April 2007

We said back here that the Critierion company would soon be announcing a DVD release of the Billy Wilder film, Ace in the Hole (aka The Big Carnival). Well, it's been announced. No release date yet but we're hearing June or July.

A week after the death of Johnny Hart — who wrote and drew B.C. and wrote The Wizard of Id — we have word of the death of Brant Parker, who drew the latter. Parker was 86 and had been ailing for several years. He stopped drawing The Wizard of Id completely in 1997 but the strip had featured much work by assistants — mainly his son Jeff — for years before that. Jeff is expected to carry it on. Brant was also involved for a time with the newspaper strips, Crock, Goosemeyer and Out of Bounds.

I'm afraid I know very little about Mr. Parker beyond what you can get from obits like this one. But everything I said about Johnny Hart being funny applied to The Wizard of Id, a strip that was very popular in this country and wildly so in Australia. I used to have a friend down there who'd send me the reprint books that they put out in that country — huge, wonderful volumes that caused you to laugh out loud every page or two. I wish we had collections like that of the strip here.

Here's a message from Don Porges…

On your 2:21 pm posting: you're painting with a terribly broad brush, and it follows jarringly on the heels of the Colbert posting, in particular this of Colbert's: "Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us."

I think you're expressing a cynicism (that isn't typical of you, from what else I've read) that all political debate is just opportunism, and that it is inappropriate to take the bloodiest school shooting in history and use it to talk about those elements of gun policy that someone sincerely believes contributed to it. I disagree, presuming that we're talking about people arguing in good faith. I can certainly understand you not wanting to invite a swarm of gun control emails, and perhaps your sarcastic both-sides-be-damned approach seemed like a way of avoiding that.

Nevertheless, "referring" to both sides at once, by abstracting away any actual position and turning to phrases like "whatever you believe," comes across as spitting on the concept of having a position, or believing that it matters. You also seem to show contempt for the idea that one side might actually be right, even though both sides continue to behave in the "same" manner by persisting in arguing for their side.

The point of the discussion that I'm sure is playing out on blogs and on TV is not to "honor the memory" of those who died. Their survivors will not be spending the next several days hitting refresh on their RSS readers to follow the discussion, or watching cable news. If I strongly believe that implementing my position would save 32 more lives in another event, the time to argue for it is now, not later, and I think that can be done without disrespecting the dead.

Finally, that bit about "you may even be glad all those people were shot": that's another thing that's worse, not better, from naming no names, or sides of the issue. Maybe you've been watching cable news all day, and someone you've seen deserves it, but from out here, it's just a terrible accusation looking for a target.

I think you're reading a lot into my remarks that I didn't say and don't believe, starting with any criticism of having a position or believing that it matters. Obviously, the deadliest shooting spree in our nation's history matters. How could anyone think it didn't matter? Having a position therefore matters.

You disagree with me "presuming that we're talking about people arguing in good faith." There's the problem right there. The kind of thing I was talking about — pouncing on the issue to further one's view of gun control, particularly under the guise of honoring the dead — does not strike me as arguing in good faith. It strikes me as opportunism…exploiting the tragedy while it's hot, while people can still be manipulated by their emotions. If there is a reasoned argument to be made here, it will be valid when there aren't fresh bodies to use as selling points. And the time to make it is all the time…because this problem will always be with us until we do something about it. Which is not going to happen.

I wasn't really saying anything beyond that but since you've got me going here, I will: I don't think the solution is anywhere in all the Internet postings I read this afternoon in the immediate aftermath of the shootings. They all fell into the predictable, extreme positions of "we need less guns" versus "we need more guns." As long as the debate ping-pongs between those positions and those people control the issue, nothing will change.

I don't believe that in every issue, both sides are always wrong. Often, one side is right. In the quite-serious matter of the Iraq War, one side sure seems to me to be right and getting righter. But in this particular matter — the ongoing, constant issue of guns in America — I think neither side is right; not in the sense of doing anything to lessen the chance of more incidents like today's. They've effectively paralyzed this issue to the point where each new bloody massacre is an occasion for a lot of yelling and posturing and donation-collecting, much of it justified in the memory of the victims…but no meaningful changes.

Those would have to come from the middle…but the middle doesn't have a voice in this discussion. It never has, and as each mass murder further empowers the extremes, the chance of that voice ever being heard goes increasingly from slim towards none. Whenever the next "deadliest shooting spree in our nation's history" occurs, it will occur under the exact same set of gun laws we have today.

I know that sounds like cynicism. If you'd like to convince me it's not realistic, then tell me what changed after the last "deadliest shooting spree in our nation's history." Or the one before.

This runs a little under three minutes and it asks the musical question, "How many times can a politician avoid answering the same question?"

The politician is Michael Howard, who at the time of this interrogation was the Home Secretary in Great Britain. There was a controversy in 1997 when a report was about to come out about prison conditions and in particular, a series of escapes. Derek Lewis, who was in charge of the prison system, said that Howard had threatened to overrule him on a controversial decision. This would have been quite improper.

In the following clip, newsman Jeremy Paxman keeps repeating a question that Howard pretends to answer and doesn't. I wish more American journalists would do this but I'm afraid that if they did, no one who needs to be interviewed would ever consent to it. Paxman doesn't get an answer but apparently the interview so embarrassed Howard and created pressure on him that a few days later, he issued a statement denying that he'd issued the threat. He claimed he hadn't answered it on Paxman's show because he didn't recall and needed to check his records.

In any case, you probably won't care about the issue at hand but you might recognize the techniques of Answer Avoidance…

Fred Kaplan explains John McCain's stance on the Iraq War. It pretty much comes down to backing the George W. Bush plan in order to get the Republican nomination and then — in the unlikely event that he does — retreating from that position so that he has a shot at winning the election. I can't think of any politician who's ever disappointed me more.

At least 31 people are dead and many more have been wounded on a Virginia college campus when a guy with a gun went on a shooting spree.

I think we can best honor the memory of the victims by using the tragedy to lobby hard for our particular views on Gun Control. Whatever you believe, just insist that this proves you're right. Hey, if you can use it to swing a little public sentiment in your direction, you may even be glad all those people were shot.

I mentioned recently here that my one-time love of Woody Woodpecker cartoons flowed from the drawing lessons that the character's "boss," Walter Lantz, used to give on his cartoon show. Let me expand on that and mention a book that I suspect figured big into the lives of many folks my age who got into animation or drawing. Around 1958 (though possibly before), the Whitman Publishing Company brought out Walter Lantz Easy Way to Draw, a "how to" cartooning book written clearly and properly for a young audience.

I doubt Mr. Lantz (seen above in the photo at left) had much to do with its contents. The book is credited to Frank McSavage and Norm McGary, two artists who worked a lot for Western Printing and Lithography, publishers of Whitman books and tons of coloring books, games and puzzle books featuring Woody and the rest of the Lantz menagerie. Western also created and printed the Lantz-licensed comic books published at the time by Dell…and this was such a lucrative relationship for Lantz that he seems to have surrendered a lot of control of his properties to Western. The designs of his characters were constantly changing on screen and when Western standardized them for their books and magazines, Lantz recognized that those artists (McSavage, especially) knew what they were doing and adjusted his films and the other merchandise to match. He also employed McSavage and McGary directly from time to time.

Easy Way to Draw is a great book and my copy, which I must have gotten soon after it came out, moved me to sit for hours and attempt to replicate the drawings it featured. There was a concise, understandable explanation of the principles of animation along with step-by-step diagrams on how to draw Woody and his pals. Lantz had all these characters like Homer Pigeon that I didn't really know that well…and as an avid reader of Walter Lantz comic books and watcher of Walter Lantz TV shows, if I didn't know them, no one did. But I learned to draw them about as well as a kid my age could have learned to draw them and I'm sure it made me like them more. One day in school — I don't remember exactly why — I did a big drawing of Homer Pigeon on the blackboard. All of the kids in class were impressed, even though none of them knew who it was, either. Alas, these skills had limited value. When I got a little older, I learned you couldn't attract girls by showing them how you could draw Wally Walrus.

I'd wager big that I'm not the only person in my age bracket who was encouraged in a career towards drawing and/or animation by this book. It appears to have been kept in print for some time even if that meant dropping chapters and slapping a more "modern" cover on it, which they did. Still, you don't see a lot of copies around because it encouraged its owners to draw right in the book or cut out certain pages. So either you loved the book enough to despoil your copy or you loved it enough to keep it in pristine condition and never want to part with it. I'm in the latter category. I wonder if anyone's done a "how to draw cartoons" DVD or computer program that is now having the same impact on the nine-year-old Future Cartoonists of America.

Over on Salon — where you may have to watch a brief ad to get in — Glenn Greenwald has a weblog post that I suspect rolls out a new set of "talking points" against the Iraq War. It's that the war is becoming overwhelmingly unpopular among Americans (that part's true) and that the folks lobbying for The Surge and "staying the course" are really only interested in keeping it going over there so they don't have to admit how much of a disaster their plan has been. I think Greenwald's focusing too much on the pundits supporting the war and not enough on the guy in the Oval Office who actually keeps us there (i.e., The Decider). But I think there's something to the view that it's more about not being wrong than it's ever been about being right.

Here's one of my favorite commercials from the sixties. The gent behind the counter is the wonderful comic actor, Jack Gilford.

Retired General John J. Sheehan explains why he joined the long list of military men who've declined the post of serving as Bush's War Czar. It is perhaps worth keeping in mind that this is not someone who can be dismissed as a know-nothing, washed-up, left-wing looney. This is a guy that the White House thought knew enough about the military to be in charge of overseeing it near the highest levels. And he thinks the Bush administration is going about things all wrong.

And obviously, one of the guys who went to University High School in the seventies who could have starred in Dumb and Dumber was me. In the previous posting, I confused Jeff Daniels (who was in that movie) with Jeff Bridges (who wasn't).

Thanks to all of you who wrote in to point out my error. All nine thousand of you.

Actually, these are eBay auctions that have already closed but I didn't bid and you wouldn't have, either. Someone was selling yearbooks from my era at Emerson Junior High School and University High here in Los Angeles. Here's part of the listing for the 1964 Emerson yearbook…

I am selling a 1964 Emerson Junior High of Los Angeles, California Yearbook featuring singer Bonnie Raitt, Singer and actor David Cassidy, Director and writer, John Landis, Jayne-Marie Mansfield, daughter of Jayne Mansfield and Mark Evanier, tv writer. See them when they were in Junior High School!

You learn the darnedest things on eBay. I never knew I went to junior high school with Jayne Mansfield's daughter. (I did know about the others. Bonnie Raitt once expressed amazement that I knew who her father was. By the way, the first time I read the above, I thought it was saying that I was the father of Jayne Mansfield's kid.) Here's part of the listing for the 1967 Uni Hi yearbook…

I am selling a 1967 University High School Yearbook from Los Angeles, California. It features the cool actor Jeff Bridges on three pages (two pictoral and one printed name) as shown on the photograph of the index page. He is in two pictures from the high school play, Romanoff and Juliet, he has one school portrait photo and there is a mention of his name on the student council page.

And I never knew Jeff Bridges went to my high school. What's more, I recall seeing that play and also a few unpleasant arguments in the student council meetings. I don't remember Bridges specifically but I knew a lot of guys at Uni who could have starred in Dumb and Dumber. As well as a few teachers.

This is a P.S. to my earlier post about The Spolin Players and about the "Yes, and…" rule of improv. Anna Mathias, who was one of the performers who was so brilliant not just in the show last evening but in everything she's done, wrote to remind me that Stephen Colbert discussed the rule in a commencement address he gave last year. Here's a link to the entire speech but here are the relevant sections…

But you seem nice enough, so I'll try to give you some advice. First of all, when you go to apply for your first job, don't wear these robes. Medieval garb does not instill confidence in future employers — unless you're applying to be a scrivener. And if someone does offer you a job, say yes. You can always quit later. Then at least you'll be one of the unemployed as opposed to one of the never-employed. Nothing looks worse on a résumé than nothing.

So, say "yes." In fact, say "yes" as often as you can. When I was starting out in Chicago, doing improvisational theatre with Second City and other places, there was really only one rule I was taught about improv. That was, "yes-and." In this case, "yes-and" is a verb. To "yes-and." I yes-and, you yes-and, he, she or it yes-ands. And yes-anding means that when you go onstage to improvise a scene with no script, you have no idea what's going to happen, maybe with someone you've never met before. To build a scene, you have to accept. To build anything onstage, you have to accept what the other improviser initiates on stage.

They say you're doctors — you're doctors. And then, you add to that: We're doctors and we're trapped in an ice cave. That's the "-and." And then hopefully they "yes-and" you back. You have to keep your eyes open when you do this. You have to be aware of what the other performer is offering you, so that you can agree and add to it. And through these agreements, you can improvise a scene or a one-act play. And because, by following each other's lead, neither of you are really in control. It's more of a mutual discovery than a solo adventure. What happens in a scene is often as much a surprise to you as it is to the audience.

Well, you are about to start the greatest improvisation of all. With no script. No idea what's going to happen, often with people and places you have never seen before. And you are not in control. So say "yes." And if you're lucky, you'll find people who will say "yes" back.

Now, will saying "yes" get you in trouble at times? Will saying "yes" lead you to doing some foolish things? Yes it will. But don't be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying "yes" begins things. Saying "yes" is how things grow. Saying "yes" leads to knowledge. "Yes" is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say "yes."

And that's The Word.

I think this is great advice for the stage and almost great advice for life. On a stage, especially in an improv show, the worst thing that can happen is that you ruin a scene and move on to the next one. In real life, the worst thing that can happen is that you ruin a life and — depending on your religion — may or may not move on to another. So maybe a little bit of reticence to say "yes" is a good thing…but certainly not to the point of closing off opportunities, as too many people do. Given the choice of yes and no, I'd err on the side of yes. It gets you places including, alas, places you may not wish to go. But that still can be preferable to not going anywhere.

On one of our cartoon voice panels last year at San Diego, voicing superstar Maurice LaMarche spoke of how he'd looped the part of Orson Welles in the Tim Burton movie, Ed Wood. Vincent D'Onofrio played Welles and as you'll see, he really looked the part. But as Maurice ("Moe" to his friends) told the story, D'Onofrio used a somewhat high-pitched, effete voice for Welles and when Burton got into the editing room, it became obvious it wouldn't do.

Burton was a fan of the cartoon show, Pinky and the Brain, on which Moe played the latter role with a dead-on Orson Welles imitation. "Get the the guy who plays The Brain," Burton said…and indeed, they did. Moe went in and for a nice piece o' change I'm sure, redubbed the part. Here's that scene…shot, I believe, in the Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard — one of my favorite places to eat and, I would hope, yours. If you're familiar with the LaMarche simulation of Welles, you'll note how cleverly and appropriately, Moe "dialed down" the impression from the on-camera (or on-mike) Orson to something that matched the character's mood in the scene.

By the way: One of my favorite "star-spotting" memories occurred not far from the Musso & Frank Grill. Across the street and down a bit is the Hollywood Magic Shop, which like most magic shops caters to a lot of amateurs and beginners. But it also serves many celebs and seasoned professionals, and one day in the seventies when I was walking by, I spotted two men standing out front — Orson Welles and Carl "The Amazing" Ballantine. Carl was heckling tourists who walked by and Orson was roaring with laughter at everything Carl said, which is still not an uncommon response around Ballantine. I stood there for maybe ten minutes, taking in the show until a huge convertible pulled up at the curb and Welles, with great effort, went over and got in. Years later, when I became friends with Carl, I reminded him of that day and thanked him for that moment. It was one of the rare times Hollywood Boulevard was ever as colorful as we all wish Hollywood Boulevard was.

Here's the scene from Ed Wood…

Reader Marc Horowitz wrote to ask me, "I am curious do you think the words that got Imus fired are racist or just a bad joke and if a bad joke, what kind of apology is necessary? Do we go to rehab for saying something stupid?"

Well, I think going to "rehab" has become kind of a stunt and a way of escaping personal responsibility…which is not to say some of the folks who do it aren't in need of medical-type attention. I just wonder how many who do it are serious about dealing with the problem in other than a public relations sense. So kudos to Imus for not going that route.

Beyond that, I'm quite conflicted about the whole matter. I never thought the guy was that entertaining and felt he'd lucked into a vicious circle of success. Because of his huge listening audience, he got a steady stream of important guests who'd never have come near the same program if it was on a tiny FM station…and the steady stream of important guests got him that huge listening audience. Every time I heard him or watched him on the MSNBC simulcast in the wee small hours, he struck me as a monotonous presence who felt his duty was to say something nasty and condescending about every person, place or thing that crossed his gaze.

Were his remarks racist? I dunno. There's a fine line between racist and stupid, and what he said could go either way. As utterances of Imus, they were typical and thoughtless. I guess my reaction, as Free Speech Junkie, is that it's just another one of those things that we have to defend even though we don't like the speech or the speaker. To believe in the First Amendment, you have to do a certain amount of that.

On the other hand, no one has a Constitutional Right to have a radio show…and advertisers certainly have every right to distance themselves from something they find offensive or even bad for business. I think they're usually way too cowardly in this regard, reacting to two or three threats of protest and boycott as if they represented the entire buying public. But they have the right to be craven and they certainly have the right to not sponsor a radio personality they find tacky. If I had a company that bought time on shows like that one, I hope I would have long since turned to my advertising department and said, "Let's see if we can find other programs that give us the same bang for our dollar."

I mention the advertisers because obviously, that's what this is all about. The huge salary Imus drew was because advertisers flocked to him. When they start running the other way, it's not unreasonable for his employers to think they're better off without him. I guess this is kind of how the system is supposed to work: You lose your sponsors, you lose your show. And it doesn't matter if they're bailing because they don't want to be associated with you or because they just don't think your program's worth what they're paying. The only real mystery to me here is why, of all the stupid and possibly racist things Imus and other radio personalities say these days, this one comment did a guy in.

For an interesting (if also conflicted) view of all this from a frequent Imus guest, check out Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times. I won't link to it since it's behind a "pay" firewall. But if you do a bit of Googling or a search at Technorati, it ain't hard to come by.