Monthly Archives: April 2007

We were talking here the other day about the new NBC show, Thank God You're Here, and how it isn't real improv comedy. Last evening, I went to see real improv comedy…a performance by The Spolin Players.

The "Spolin" refers to the late Viola Spolin, hailed by many as "The Grandmother of Improv Comedy." She was, among other things, a teacher and an awful lot of fine actors either studied with her or studied with someone who was offering a second-hand version of her curriculum. She more or less invented the idea of Theater Games, a set of little exercises that hone the skills of an improvisational actor. A lot of what they do on Whose Line Is It Anyway? is the kind of thing — often, the same games — that Ms. Spolin invented. There are presently two troupes — one in Seattle, one here in Los Angeles — that carry on her work and do occasional shows.

The troupe at tonight's L.A. show consisted of David McCharen, John Mariano, Anna Mathias, Danny Mann, Harry Murphy, Donna DuBain, Edie McClurg, Gail Matthius and I know I'm leaving someone out. Forgive me, whoever I left out. Everyone was very good in ways that will not mean anything if I start quoting lines and snippets here. The great thing about true improv is that it's in the moment. There's a loose structure for a game and then the audience throws out some specifics: Who are the people on stage? Where are they? What is their relationship? And so on. Then you see the scene created before your eyes.

There are certain regulations, one of the most important being the "Yes, and…" rule. In improv, you must not deny anything that is said. If you enter the scene and someone says, "Ah, you're back with the pizza," then you're back with the pizza and that's part of the scenario. You don't say, "I wasn't going out for pizza." If you're going to take things in another direction, you have to say something like, "Yes, and…" and then append your new information to what's already been established. Once or twice last night when someone violated this rule, you could hear moans from the audience.

That was because the audience was full of actors, most of whom had extensive backgrounds in improv. In fact, I think I knew about half the audience, which included Ann Ryerson, Shelley Long, Dani and Jim Staahl, my pal Teresa Ganzel, cartoon voice director Ginny McSwain and cartoon voice actor Michael Bell. (Michael's the guy we had on the voice panel at San Diego who told the great anecdote about working with Mel Blanc.) I may have been the only one in the place without a SAG card and it was fun watching one group of fine actors be appreciated by another.

Amidst the intermission and post-show chatter, I heard a lot of talk about Thank God You're Here, all of it quite negative…although when I spoke with Edie McClurg, who was on the show (and very good on it), the subject didn't come up. Everyone else though was negative about the series for being edited, for having all but the main actor so well scripted and for violating principles like the "Yes, and…" rule. There seemed to be a general horror that the tradition of improv games had been corrupted so for television, particularly when the real thing would have been far more entertainining…and honest. In fairness to the TV show, it never claimed to be classic improv — though I agree that the kind of thing Viola Spolin taught her students would have made for a much better program.

This troupe of the Spolin Players currently has no future performances scheduled but they'll be back soon. When they are, I'll let you know here in case you watch Thank God You're Here and would like to see what real improv looks like.

It is now possible to pre-order my forthcoming book on Jack Kirby (one of two, with the second still a few years off) at Amazon. That's right. We have an ISBN and everything!

Kirby: King of Comics will retail for forty smackers but you can order it now at Amazon for $26.40 and lock in that price for yourself. There may also, I'm told, be at least one "fancier" edition from a book club but if there is, or if there's a significantly cheaper place to order it, I'll announce it here in plenty of time for you to cancel your Amazon order and get it elsewhere. The thing won't be out until October.

With the help of Jack's daughter Lisa and other folks close to him, I'm finding some amazing treasures to include, including a lot of drawings he did in his teen year, signed with his birth surname of Kurtzberg. There's a self portrait he did of himself during his World War II days that's probably worth $26.40 all by itself. Plus, of course, there'll be lots and lots of Kirby art, some of which you've seen before, some of which you haven't.

The photo above probably won't be in the book. That's Jack at an art exhibition with Frank Frazetta on the left of him and Frank Kelly Freas on his right. Think of it as a picture of three guys who gave the world some of its greatest fantasy imagery.

I'll be telling you more about the book here out of enthusiasm, not as a sales pitch. I figure if you're familiar with Jack's work, you'll purchase this book and if you're not, you won't. If you're unsure where you stand, I leave you with Jack's advice from the cover of one of his books…

Reader Peter Avellino informs me that the name of the new game show pilot hosted by Tucker Carlson is actually Do You Trust Me?, not Who Do You Trust? The online article to which I linked had it wrong, which means the show has no connection to Johnny Carson's old program.

'Tis an awesome responsibility having a weblog like this. A reader named Marc just tipped me off that a site I linked to a few months ago has apparently been hacked. When I linked you to it, it had beautiful imagery of Earth's scenery on it. Now, it holds some pretty awful porn…the kind that no one could find erotic, only disgusting.

I've deleted the whole item but I just wanted to remind you, my fellow surfers of the Internet: It's a jungle out there. Old links often don't work at all…and when they do, they occasionally don't go where they used to. If you see any such thing on my site, please let me know. But don't be surprised.

Another example of why we like Jon Stewart so much…

Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, who seems to go from one failed enterprise to another, is hosting a game show pilot for CBS called Who Do You Trust? This article tells about the show but doesn't mention if it's a revival of the show by the same name once hosted by Johnny Carson. From the description, I'm guessing someone acquired whatever rights there are to the earlier program but is changing it so much that a comparison seems inappropriate.

I'm a little surprised that they picked Carlson. I (sorta) understand his value to a station like CNN or MSNBC of even PBS. He has solid Conservative credentials so that group can't wail and scream "Liberal media." But he's also good-natured and rarely shrill with his viewpoints so Liberals don't mind him as much as they mind, say, a Glenn Beck or Michael Savage. He's kind of the right-wing version of Alan Colmes, tolerated and perhaps even welcomed by the opposition because he's never going to win an argument.

So programmers overlook his unbroken string of flop shows and they also overlook his wretched track record at predictions. (You know, Hillary Clinton's never going to come close to winning that New York Senate seat she's talking about.) He's especially useful if you're dumb enough to think you can program in a way to attract both rabid Liberals and strident Conservatives to your news channel, which is why MSNBC's ratings for everything but Olbermann are where they are. And besides, in the media today, we never hold always being wrong against a guy who's supposed to tell us what's going to happen.

But…game show host? Well, maybe. He can't predict and he can't dance. Maybe he can do that.

As you all know, David Hasselhoff has been appearing in the streamlined Las Vegas production of The Producers. Though he plays Roger Elizabeth DeBris, the cross-dressing director, Hasselhoff is being billed as the star and his is the only name or image on most of the billboards. To the surprise of many, he's leaving the play in early May, earlier than expected, because of the demands of his "day job," the America's Got Talent TV show. He'll be replaced on May 7 by Lee Roy Reams, who's been playing the role in the Broadway production, which conveniently closes on April 22.

This bit about America's Got Talent probably sounds a little suspicious to some. I mean, Hasselhoff signed for the The Producers knowing full well that his series would need him around this time. How did that schedule not get properly coordinated? I have no inside info here but the obvious (perhaps erroneous) assumption is that it's a cover story to get him out of the show because…well, maybe its producers no longer want him because they don't think its grosses justify his superstar salary. Or maybe he's not happy in the job for some reason.

Or maybe the schedules just weren't as easy to juggle as someone once thought. You never know. Sometimes, someone in show business actually quits a great job "to spend more time with the family" because they want to spend more time with the family.

Right now, the question is what this will mean for The Producers. I have no idea how good Mr. Hasselhoff is in the part but I doubt those who buy tickets will have any less of a time. Reams is a wonderful performer. He was in the first Broadway show I ever saw on Broadway and I saw him do The Producers with Jason Alexander and Martin Short, and he was splendid in both.

The question is how many people are buying tickets. Unlike shows in New York where the grosses are a matter of public record, no one on the outside seems too sure how The Producers is faring at the Paris hotel in Vegas. Anecdotal evidence does not suggest a huge hit but in Vegas, with all the comps and discounts and freebees, it's sometimes hard to tell. Certainly though, the substitution won't help ticket sales. Reams is a great performer but he's not a "name" the way Hasselhoff is a "name." The producers of The Producers obviously thought they needed a star in the show in order to sell tickets and now they ain't got one.

(Or have they? Tony Danza, who recently played Max Bialystock in New York for a while, recently visited the Vegas production. That certainly fuels the rumor mill. Danza is a "name" and while he apparently didn't boost sales in Manhattan, the folks behind The Producers might figure he would in Vegas. And he might be a lot cheaper than David Hasselhoff.)

Why all this matters is that a few years ago, there was a very real belief out there that Las Vegas would become a serious venue for theater, possibly even to the point of challenging Broadway for that honor. Given the finances and facilities of the town, it seemed plausible if — and it's a Big If — Vegas audiences were interested in seeing book musicals there. Then a couple of shows flopped — most notably, Avenue Q, which should never have been booked there in the first place — and lately, theater in that town is kind of on probation. It's too early to tell if the current productions of The Producers, Phantom and Spamalot will prove that musicals can make a go of it amidst the casinos…but a failure by any of the three would not bode well for the future. In fact, if all three fail, it'll probably be a long time before Vegas sees another musical. I mean, if those shows can't attract an audience, what could?

Mel Tormé was my favorite singer. The following is not his finest hour…

On Monday, there will be a segment on CNN spotlighting Joe Simon, co-creator of Captain America and a true legend of the comic book industry. I'm told it airs in the news blocks at 10 AM and 2 PM but I have no idea what that means in terms of time zones. I'm just going to set my TiVo to record a lot of the daytime programming and hope to snag it. It'll probably get bumped by Breaking News about who fathered Anna Nicole Smith's cat's last litter.

The above is currently the headline story on the website of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. I read it and my first reaction was that the paper has an odd definition of "breaking news." With all the disasters and scandals and life-threatening things happening in the world today, the fact that Tony Bennett has the flu and can't do two shows at the Las Vegas Hilton hardly qualifies as important.

But then I thought: If I had tickets to that, it would matter to me…not as much as some other things but I'd still appreciate knowing about it, a.s.a.p. so I could rearrange my life and not waste time going to the hotel. Wouldn't it be nice if every event you might attend had a website that you could trust to be updated with last minute info or a confirmation that everything will happen according to schedule? I wonder why the Ticketmaster people haven't set up something like that. I'm sure there are logistic problems with getting the various theaters and concert halls to keep it updated but there are also logistic problems if something's cancelled and hundreds of people show up for it. Just a thought.

If you care about the Don Imus matter — and I could sure understand if you didn't — this article by Joe Conason makes some pretty good points about it. It's a Salon link and if you're not a subscriber, I believe you need to view a short ad before they'll let you see the article. But I'm told the ads are shorter now than they used to be.

Incidentally: When is Al Sharpton up for re-election? I often find the Reverend Al remarkably entertaining and there are times on talk shows and in debates when he speaks with an honesty that folks who might ever hope to get elected to some position never seem to muster. Still, I've never understood his role in all these controversies upon which he seems to pounce. If I were a black guy, I think I'd wonder who appointed him and Jesse Jackson to speak on my behalf and to decide whether those who sin against my race were worthy of forgiveness. As Conason notes in his piece, it's not like Sharpton's hands are completely clean when it comes to accusations. Even leaving that aside, whenever there's an issue that touches upon race, the Reverend Al has a way of turning up and suddenly making it all be about the Reverend Al. That doesn't help.

Also, for a prescient view of the Imus situation from a few years back, read this.

Every time I post about the radio show I'm doing this afternoon, I get the time wrong and have to come back here and correct it. The episode of Time Travel with me as the guest is today at 4 PM East Coast time, which is 1 PM West Coast time. If you see me telling you anything different, don't believe me. It's 4 PM East Coast time, 1 PM West Coast time. Duh.

And this probably won't be the last message on the topic, either.

It's interesting that there is this recurring discussion about whether comic strips should end when their creators die…or even when they've been around for a certain, undetemined amount of time. I can't think of another art form where this kind of thing is even considered. No one is suggesting that now that Vonnegut's dead, we get all those copies of Slaughterhouse-Five off the bookstore shelves to make more display room for new authors. Or — and this may be a better analogy — that today's musical performers should not record old songs, thereby creating more opportunity for new songwriters. Should great movies not be remade so as to make it easier for today's screenwriters?

I guess there are a few people out there who have those sentiments but I think it's awfully unrealistic to think the system will ever work that way. You and I can sit here and decide that James Bond should have been laid to rest when Ian Fleming died and/or Sean Connery turned in his License to Kill. But I'd hope we wouldn't waste a lot of time thinking that anything will kill off 007 except a lack of interest in his adventures on the part of the paying public. Rarely does anything creative go away unless there's no market for it. Why should any other consideration be controlling in comic strips?

A lot of wanna-be strip cartoonists seem upset that reprints of Peanuts are still in newspapers — something like 2,400 of them, last I heard, making it one of the three most successful "current" strips. Why didn't it go away when Mr. Schulz died? Because readers still wanted to see those characters in their newspapers and the folks who make money off the property still wanted to make that money. Here's an excerpt from a message I received from Roy Wallters…

I understand where you're coming from on this but what if someone came up with the next Calvin & Hobbes and there was no room for it on the comics page because of reprint strips like Peanuts and Popeye and old strips being continued?

Yeah, but there was room for Calvin & Hobbes. Old strips being continued didn't stop it from attaining a truly impressive client list of papers in record time. If and when another strip that good comes along, the folks who edit the newspaper comics pages will find a place for it. If it means dropping another strip, fine. They'll drop whatever strip they perceive as their least popular…which will probably not be reprints of Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Mr. Wallters also asked, "What if the people who will be continuing B.C. can't handle it and it becomes much less funny than it's ever been?" Well then, the same thing happens that would happen if Johnny Hart were still at his drawing board and the strip became much less funny than it had ever been. It might even lose enough audience to not be worth its makers' time to make or its syndicate's to syndicate. A bad strip is a bad strip whether it's done by the guy who created it or by his grandmother. Al Capp showed us what that was like, the last few years he and his crew did Li'l Abner. And when papers started dropping it left and right, he packed it in.

Granted, it's a slow process and if you believe some newspapers are way too reticent to chuck an established strip that's way past its prime, I wouldn't argue the point. I'm arguing that they shouldn't drop it just because one person died, especially if that person has arranged for assistants and collaborators to carry it on.

Let me give one more example here and I'll pick an oldie so I don't insult anyone currently trying to make a living. Bud Fisher created the comic strip Mutt & Jeff in 1907 and before long was making some serious money off it and employing many assistants. Around the late twenties or early thirties, Fisher decided he didn't even want to spend as little time as he was spending on it. His then-current assistant, a gentleman named Al Smith, began doing more and more of it and by 1932, Fisher wasn't even touching his strip. From all reports, he did nothing on it for the rest of his life except to give interviews in which he lamented the long hours he put in at the drawing table, and to pay Smith to ghost the strip and sign "Bud Fisher" on it. Fisher died in 1954, at which point Smith was allowed to sign it…and he kept on doing it for a couple more decades, during which it was one of the most popular, beloved entries on the funny pages. (Interesting aside: DC Comics published the Mutt & Jeff comic book from 1939 through 1958 and for many of those years, it outsold Superman.)

During the sixties, it was still a pretty good feature — Smith won the National Cartoonist Society award for the best humor strip in '68 — but in the seventies, its quality declined and a lot of new and better strips were coming along. Mutt & Jeff lost papers and therefore, income. Smith gave it up in 1980 and amazingly — at age 78 (!) — created a new strip and tried to make a go of it. It didn't succeed and meanwhile, others took over Mutt & Jeff and couldn't reverse its decline. It ended in 1982.

Now, if you believe that strips should end when their creator dies, tell me when Mutt & Jeff should have ended.

Lastly for now, here's a message from Russell Myers, who writes and draws one of my favorite newspaper strips, Broom Hilda — which was one of those great new strips that came along in the seventies and shoved Mutt & Jeff to one side. Russell, by the way, does his strip without a whole support team and still puts in a helluva lot of love and caring. He wrote me with the following to post here…

Over the years I've heard comments about how cartoonists doing older strips should step aside and make room for the new wave. Of course it was the new wave saying that. There has been plenty of commentary about comic strips as art. What I don't remember ever seeing is an in-depth explanation that producing a comic strip is a business. Woody Allen once said that if show business wasn't a business it would be called show show. The same applies to a comic strip.

Yes, as a kid I loved the comics and always wanted to do one. Then I grew up, more or less. I got me a wife and I got me some kids. Doing a comic strip was the only skill I had and it became vital to our welfare. What's more, it was a job that had no pension plan or benefits. Having had a school teacher for a father meant I sure as heck wasn't going to inherit much, so I had to plan ahead in case I outlasted my job by a decade or three. There are a few blessed comic strip creators who make it into the rarified realm of Big Money. Most of the rest of us make a living. Some make a very good living, some barely get by. From what I understand there are several people that make a living from B.C. and The Wizard of Id. More power to them. They should do everything in their power to hang onto what they have. In case the self-proclaimed purists haven't noticed, the Money Truck doesn't come down the street every day passing out free samples.

So to those who suggest that B.C. should be folded because Johnny is no longer at the helm, I say, most respectfully, kiss my inkwell.

I concur with the above except that the Money Truck does come down my street, not every day but Monday through Friday, passing out free samples. It's one of the perks you get from living in Los Angeles. Well, that and the new Third-Pound Angus Burger at McDonald's.

I'll have more on this topic later or, more likely, tomorrow.

This is a Budweiser commercial that I believe was produced for this year's Super Bowl. For some reason, I'm a big fan of Budweiser commercials, which is not to say they've ever caused me to consider buying their product. I'm also fascinated by how, beginning only a few years ago, Dean Martin's 1960 recording of "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" had turned up in movies and TV shows and commercials, over and over and over. I don't recall hearing it anywhere before about 1993. I don't even recall Dino ever singing that song on The Dean Martin Show, which was on for nine years. But somehow, in a kind of delayed reaction, the record caught on big, at least among those who make movies and commercials. And as you'll hear, it pops up in this ad…

Here's a stunning reversal: Tomorrow, Don Imus will not be on the radio but I will. I'm the guest on the Friday the 13th edition of Time Travel, which is heard on station WRNJ and on the station's website. The show starts at 4 PM East Coast Time and its hosts, Dan Hollis and Jeff O'Boyle, will begin ruthlessly interrogating me about…well, I'm not sure what we're going to discuss but since I'm involved, you can bet it'll be trivial. Find out more about their show and listen to some past episodes at the Time Travel website. And tune in tomorrow to hear me say something even stupider than what Imus said. I'm good at it.