Monthly Archives: June 2007

You should've watched the Tony Awards, instead. Nothing happened there either, but at least it was well-choreographed.

Various folks who wish to be your next President are stopping by the offices of Google in Northern California and being interviewed in a slightly different context than the norm. A month ago, I linked you to a video of the appearance there by John McCain. I won't embed the videos here but you can now view similar chats with John Edwards and Bill Richardson. Each of these runs well over an hour and begins with samples of the candidate's political ads. Thanks (again) to Tom Galloway, who I think is in one of them asking a question.

If you get a chance, you might want to read this piece over at Media Matters, which essentially says that Carl Bernstein's new book about Hillary Clinton is a mess of contradictions and a bad attempt to construct a fictional Hillary and to then force the details of reality to fit that model. I have a friend who, whenever we talk politics, always leaps to the "character issue," discussing each candidate or elected official in terms of what kind of person they are. That would matter to me a lot more if I had any confidence that we really know that.

I tend to think we know a lot less about "the real Hillary" or "the real George W." than we think we do. To the extent we can get a sense of character and personal integrity, I think we only get it from extended conversations like these. We generally don't get it from books that — like many, including apparently Bernstein's — seek to cash in on the eagerness of certain book buyers to read bad things about a candidate they already don't like. And we certainly don't get it from these game show format "debates." I don't want to cast my vote for a guy based on how he can summarize what he'd do about Iraq in 45 seconds. In fact, I'm suspicious of anyone who can summarize what he'd do about Iraq in 45 seconds.

Gary Sassaman reviews a new documentary about Jack Kirby. Which of course raises the question of why he has the DVD and certainly individuals who were interviewed for the documentary have yet to received their promised copies. Ahem.

The Tony Awards are on tonight, not that anyone will be watching. I thought I'd link you over to a memorable moment from the 1990 ceremony. Here's the backstory: An actor named Michael Jeter, whose life had hit rock bottom due to substance abuse, made an amazing personal comeback in that year's Broadway production of The Grand Hotel: The Musical. In it, he played a bookkeeper who was dying but still managed to perform an amazing, energetic dance number. Immediately after that on the telecast came the category for which Mr. Jeter was nominated. Here's the video and you can probably guess who won. But you'll enjoy the audience delight and might be rather moved by the acceptance speech…

What's that you say? You can't find a hotel room in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con International? Well, I can't help you with this year or next year or even the year after. But if you attend the 2010 convention down there, you may be able to stay in a room, courtesy of SpongeBob SquarePants. A suite with a view of Bikini Bottom costs extra. (Thanks to Tom Galloway for the link.)

Tomorrow night, I will be one of as many as a hundred people watching the Tony Awards on CBS. The annual celebration of Broadway's best never draws much of an audience and this year's nominees are of uncommon disinterest even to people who usually wouldn't miss the program. There are gay men who won't be watching. That's how little excitement there is over the ceremony this time.

There's also the matter of the Sopranos finale. That might lure away a viewer or two. Or three. Or almost everyone.

My pal Bob Elisberg has some suggestions on how the show could be improved. I'm pretty sure that if they followed everything Bob says, they'd have a much, much better show…and instead of a hundred people tuning in, they'd have two hundred.

The Tony Awards are the Tony Awards…and what's more, they will always be the Tony Awards. Even if someone could arrange for Paris Hilton to host, live and nude from the Correctional Treatment Center at Los Angeles County's "Twin Towers" jail facility and for the show to end with Bob Barker being spayed and neutered, the evening would still be about giving awards to people most of America has never heard of for performances in shows that most of America has never heard of, let alone seen.

There's a nugget of "advice" that I've come to dislike in most cases…the admonition to "Get over it," whatever "it" is. This has its applications. There are folks who obsess on certain issues long after the stage it's constructive, to the point where the obsession does more damage than the original issue. But too often, "Get over it" is a way of saying, "Yes, we know you have concerns about something and they may be legitimate, but we're just not going to deal with them so shut up." I'm not sure which this is. All I know is that there's no way to get even a significant section of America to watch the Tony Awards…so the people doing the telecast might just as well put on whatever kind of show they want. I'm thinking three hours of baton-twirling might be nice.

Roger Armstrong, a giant in the world of cartooning and a teacher to countless art students, passed away in his sleep on Thursday at the age of 89.

This is a very difficult obit to write because Roger did so much and meant so much to so many people. I want to underscore, so it doesn't get lost in the career details, that while he had an amazing life as a cartoonist, he had an equally important — perhaps more important — life as an art teacher and watercolor artist. His landscapes were exhibited in every major gallery in Southern California and hundreds of accomplished artists cite him as a great tutor and source of inspiration. He encouraged so many to paint and draw, and led by example.

Roger Joseph Armstrong was born in Los Angeles on October 12, 1917. His father was a writer and a gagman for silent comedies at Mack Sennett and later a screenwriter for Twentieth-Century Fox. Roger began drawing about the time he started walking and by age sixteen was selling cartoons to local advertising agencies. His first drawings adorned the walls of the Pacific Electric Streetcar Depot in downtown Los Angeles. He attended Chouniard Art Institute for two years (1938-1939) but when the family hit a bleak financial period, Roger was forced to quit art school and take a job at Lockheed working on airplanes. Soon after, through a mutual friend, he met Chase Craig, who was editing the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies comic book for Western Publishing, and Chase hired him away from Lockheed to draw Bugs Bunny comics.

A quick aside. Roger always told people he was in the first issue of Looney Tunes. One San Diego Con, I bought a copy of that rare book, took it over to him and asked him to point out his work in it, since I couldn't seem to find it. Roger hadn't seen the issue in thirty-some-odd years but he paged through it…and couldn't find anything he'd drawn. With semi-mock horror, he wailed, "I'm ashamed! I wasn't in the first issue of Looney Tunes!"

But he was in most of the ones that followed…for years after. Eleanor Packer, the senior editor at Western Publishing, hired him to draw other comics for the company, including many of their Disney and Walter Lantz comics. Packer also recommended him personally to Lantz, who hired Roger to work at his studio for several years as a layout artist and animator. He worked intermittently in animation but preferred the comic strip and book format. He drew several newspaper strips for long runs but somehow managed to never get his name on any of them. They included Napoleon and Uncle Elby, Ella Cinders and Little Lulu, plus he drew the Disney Scamp strip from 1978 to 1988. For Western, he drew most of the Disney comic books at one time or another, most notably those featuring Scamp, Pluto, Goofy (or Super Goof)…and he seemed to have a special affinity for the Seven Dwarfs whenever they needed to be drawn. He did all the Warner Brothers comics but often specialized in Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig. He even dabbled occasionally in adventure-style comics and was pretty good at them, though he said they took so long he couldn't make any money in that style.

I worked with Roger a number of times, writing Super Goof during a period when he drew it, and on The Flintstones for a time. In the seventies, we were hired to whip up a few weeks of a Woodsy Owl comic strip but it failed to sell. He was also one of the first members of the Comic Art Professionals Society when we formed it. I have a very vivid memory of him arriving at the first meeting and being introduced to another charter member, Don R. Christensen. Roger had been drawing Don's scripts for comic books for over twenty years and this was the first time they'd met.

Roger was everything you'd want a cartoonist to be. He was funny and he loved to draw. He sure did it well…and for a long time. I haven't heard any details yet about a memorial service but I can guarantee you that if there is one, it'll be packed with artists who'll credit him as a champion, as a role model and most of all, as a good and glorious friend.

Speaking of Laurel and Hardy, as we just were: Very early Monday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running Utopia, their last feature. I am not necessarily recommending you watch this, as great comedians' last features tend to be very sad, and this one runs true to form. It was made in Europe by a crew that lacked certain basics, like proper financing and a common language. Both Stan and Ollie (but especially Stan) were sick during the filming, which was supposed to take two months but stretched over much of one year. As a result, you can notice Laurel's weight fluctuate from scene to scene and in some, he looks pretty awful. The film has some clever moments when it almost seems like genuine Laurel and Hardy…but for the most part, it's rough going.

(If you want to watch it on your computer, by the way, Utopia can be downloaded here.)

To redeem itself, TCM is also running two Robert Youngson compilation films later that morning. Mr. Youngson was a filmmaker who liked to take vintage silent movies and cut 'n' paste them into feature films that showcased the great moments. His work was criticized for truncating scenes…or even going in and rearranging or trimming shots…and some faulted the music, sound effects and narration he added. Still, he did preserve and promote what otherwise might have become lost treasures, and his movies are wonderful introductory samplers to that era. If you or someone you know needs that kind of intro to the material, you might enjoy his creations.

TCM is offering two — The Golden Age of Comedy (1958), followed by When Comedy Was King (1960). Both are filled with scenes of Ben Turpin, Will Rogers, Harry Langdon and others, and both derive their best moments from Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Golden Age of Comedy is especially loaded with Stan and Ollie, though it has an unfortunate emphasis on scenes films where they're among large crowds having big, destructive fights in the street. You see them ripping up cars in Two Tars, ripping off folks' pants in You're Darn Tootin', hurling pies in Battle of the Century, etc. It's a bit repetitive but the footage is hilarious.

(An interesting sidelight: The 1927 Battle of the Century features a spectacular pie fight — the biggest one ever filmed until the 1965 film, The Great Race, which wasn't a twentieth as funny. The Laurel and Hardy custard brawl may only exist today because Youngson duped the decomposing negative to include that scene in his compilation. Shortly after that, it was either lost or decayed to the point where the rest of the film was considered "lost." A copy of the first reel eventually turned up but there's no known copy of the second reel in its entirety. All that exists of it is the last few minutes — the pie fight — because Youngson grabbed it for his movie.)

Among the joys in When Comedy Was King are large chunks of several shorts. One is Laurel and Hardy in Big Business, arguably their funniest silent comedy. Another is Buster Keaton's Cops, with Buster being chased all over 1922 Los Angeles by hundreds of policemen. But a special "find" is A Pair of Tights, a 1929 short made by the Hal Roach Studio and starring Edgar Kennedy and Stu Erwin. It's basically a Laurel and Hardy comedy without Laurel and Hardy, and it demonstrates how infectious their style of comedy had become.

And then next Saturday, a week from today, Fox Movie Channel is running The Dancing Masters and The Bullfighters. These are for those of you who watch Utopia and then wonder if you've seen the worst movie Laurel and Hardy ever made. No, sadly, you haven't.

Here's a Laurel and Hardy film you probably haven't seen. It was made in 1943 for the United States Department of Agriculture and The Boys shot it over their lunch hour during the time they were making films on the Twentieth-Century Fox lot. In fact, last time I was over in that part of the backlot — must be fifteen, twenty years ago — that street area looked pretty much the same as it does in this film.

This short is called The Tree in a Test Tube and this is the first half of it, which runs around five and a half minutes. The rest, which you don't want to see, is more boring educational stuff and doesn't involve Stan and Ollie. The voiceover is by a gent named Pete Smith, who produced and narrated comedy short subjects for MGM for more than twenty years.

The most interesting thing about this film, apart from the sheer fact that it's obscure Laurel and Hardy, is that it was shot in color. In their long careers, Stan and Oliver only made two films that were shot in color and the other one, the 1930 feature The Rogue Song, is largely lost today. So this is pretty much it for Laurel and Hardy in color. Have a look, why don'tcha?

In the early seventies, I worked briefly for a firm that published teen and gossip magazines. I never worked on the gossip ones but I knew the editor. She used to sit in her office, look over photos of all the people who were currently considered gossip-worthy and try to imagine the perfect headline story. This had nothing to do with reality. It was just fantasizing: What could possibly happen to one of these people that I could put on my cover and sell a lot of magazines?

Sometimes, she'd dream up a headline and assign it to a writer. She'd call someone in and say, "The title's going to be 'The secret love nest of Elizabeth Taylor and John Lennon!' Go write me a story to go with it." And then the writer would have to figure out some way to justify the headline. Sometimes, they could do it via half-truths…like writing about some great hotel that both Liz and John had visited at separate times. Sometimes, they'd just plain lie, citing spurious anonymous "close friends of the couple" about the torrid Taylor/Lennon affair. But either way, it started with this editor asking herself what could happen that would sell a lot of magazines to those who loved gossip. I remember her saying that every now and then, she'd imagine up a headline and — well, whadda ya know? — it would turn out to be true.

Paris Hilton going to jail. That's the kind of thing she'd think of. And to make the story even better, Ms. Hilton would get sprung after a few days due to some secret, life-threatening medical condition…and then she'd be dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the pokey.

Yeah, that's just the kind of thing this editor would think of, were she still at it. It's just too perfect.

Meanwhile, Channel Four here in Los Angeles broke into scheduled programming to cover a press conference being held by a senior official in the Sheriff's Department about Ms. Hilton's back-behind-bars drama today. They preempted Martha Stewart's show for this, which was only fitting. The last time Channel Four did this was when Martha, another much-despised "rich bitch," was convicted. They wouldn't do that to bring us the capture of Osama Bin Laden…unless, of course, it was at the end of a high-speed chase.

There may be more baby pandas in our future. There's nothing in this world as cute as a baby panda. That includes you and even me.

Here's another version (different from this one) of Jack Benny and Mel Blanc doing the Sí/Sy routine. What's fascinating to me about this one is that it was obviously shot without a live audience. Benny, of course, controls the timing of the entire scene with Blanc responding to his cues. What Jack is doing in it is more or less replicating the timing of the bit as per previous times when they'd done it in front of actual, laughing human beings. He's leaving the proper intervals, presuming that whoever will add the laugh track later will follow his pacing and properly dial down the laughs. Benny even allows himself a slight smirk or two, like he's trying to prevent himself from breaking up, as he probably did when they performed this sketch on a live broadcast. And of course, Mel throughout is perfectly deadpan.

It's also a pretty good job of laugh-tracking, including the faint sound of recognition when Mel is revealed and the "audience" realizes it's this bit again…

The "regulating business" part of the Bush administration seems to consist of letting anyone do any damn thing they want if they think it'll boost corporate income. But according to this article by Daniel Gross, the Federal Trade Commission is inexplicably attempting to block a proposed acquisition of the Wild Oats grocery chain by the Whole Foods grocery chain.

Not being a Wild Oats patron, I have no idea if that would be a good thing from that end…but I do shop Whole Foods to my not-infrequent disappointment. I like the feel of the place. I like the philosophy via which they stock their shelves. I especially like the diversity of selection because I can find many items there I can get nowhere else…or at least not as easily. But I have to keep reminding myself every time I go to one that everything's a little more expensive than you think and that nothing, especially the prepared food, is as good as it looks in the store. The meat comes close but too often, I feel like someone has repackaged an upscale Ralphs to make it seem healthier and trendier, and they're charging you an extra 40% for that.

If you're as confused as everyone else seems to be about our current relationship with Russia, fear not. Fred Kaplan can explain it to you.

Those of you who live in and around Los Angeles are in luck. The live What's My Line? show which I wrote about here last year (in posts like this one) is back for a limited engagement! Every Sunday night at 8 PM, join host J. Keith van Straaten for a fun and faithful re-creation of the classic game show, complete with celebrity panelists and an actual Mystery Guest! Go here for details.