Monthly Archives: January 2008

…for a commercial. Amazon is having some sort of sale on pre-ordered books where you get another 5% off if you order now. If I understand it correctly, this means that you will be charged no more than that price when the order ships and you may even be charged less. Amazon has this "lowest price" guarantee. If you order something and the price goes down before the item ships, you will receive the lowest price.

I'm not sure what this means if you've already ordered a not-yet-released book like, say, Kirby: King of Comics, which they're saying will be out February 1 but won't. Their policy states, "Whenever you pre-order a book, CD, video, DVD, software, or video game, the price we charge when we ship it to you will be the lowest price offered by Amazon.com between the time you place your order and the release date." But they actually haven't dropped the price of my book. It's still (at this moment) at $26.40, which is where it's been for some time. So you may need to cancel your order and reorder to get the discount. This is if it matters to you to save another $1.32.

If you order right now, you'll get the 5% discount, which would bring the price to $25.08. This is an interesting amount because it's a few pennies over the $25 minimum order you need to place to qualify for Free Super Shipping. If you're ordering only my book, that's good news. (If they gave you a 6% discount, it would wind up costing you more because you'd have to pay for shipping.)

About the publication date: I'm being told I'll have a few copies in a week or two and I'll let you know when I have one. I'm also told there'll be copies at the Wondercon in San Francisco, which is February 22-24. I would guess Amazon will have a supply to ship around then or maybe within a week. The books are being printed overseas so some of this depends on how fast the crates make it through Customs. (By the way, I will be soon be announcing the list of panels I'll be hosting at Wondercon. One will be a panel about Mr. Kirby and his work.)

Here's a cute little ad for the book. If you click on it, magical things will happen.

A campaign is already being mounted by some members of the WGA to urge the Negotiating Committee and Board of Directors to hurry up and accept something similar to the deal that has been announced by the DGA. This worries me because as I mentioned, I'm not sure we fully know or understand the DGA deal yet.

It also worries me because based on what we do know about it, I don't believe the DGA deal is all that great. If it's better than I think, terrific! But let's make sure it is before we start telling the studios that it's good enough for us. That kinda undermines our negotiating position if we want to better some aspect of it. We also need to address some areas that are of concern to members of the Writers Guild and which didn't come up in the DGA negotiations.

Jonathan Tasini has an interesting analysis of the DGA deal as explained in the summary. Keep in mind that he hasn't seen all the terms of the contract, either.

Some of the obits for Allan Melvin, who died last Thursday of cancer, are missing the whole point of Allan Melvin. They say that Sam, the butcher from The Brady Bunch, has died and then mention all the other stuff in a kind of "Oh, and he was also in these other things" manner. The point of Allan Melvin is not that he was on The Brady Bunch. It was that he was in everything.

He was a regular on the Sgt. Bilko series (aka You'll Never Get Rich and The Phil Silvers Show). He was a semi-regular on The Dick Van Dyke Show and All in the Family. To have been a part of one series of that stature would be impressive. To have been on all three? Amazing. That's in addition to the fact that he was the "go-to" guy time and again for the producers of The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Joey Bishop Show and so many others. That's all in addition to The Brady Bunch.

In an amazing number of these, he played a soldier — a typecasting that dated back at least to his role on Broadway in Stalag 17. I always liked to think of all those soldiers as the same guy changing his name and rank as he moved from camp to camp and decade to decade. (There was a nice in-joke once on Dick Van Dyke, where Melvin played a buddy while Rob Petrie was in the Army. In one episode, everyone was confined to the base while a crime was investigated. At the end, Melvin's character tells Rob that they caught the culprit…some soldier named Henshaw. Henshaw was, of course, the name of the soldier Melvin had played for five years on the Bilko series.)

Allan was also a cartoon voice actor, usually cast in tandem with his close pal, Howie Morris. The two of them did all the male voices on the Beetle Bailey cartoon show and, until Howie got himself fired from Hanna-Barbera, on Magilla Gorilla and Atom Ant and several others. (Melvin was the voice of Magilla.) Howie and Allan also did uncredited voices on the movie, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear, and Melvin was on many H-B shows without him, including The Popeye Show, where he spoke for Bluto.

The first time I met Allan Melvin was an unpleasant experience. It was in the Denny's restaurant over on Sunset Boulevard, across from KTLA Studios. I was doing one of the Krofft shows there and I went to lunch with Lennie Weinrib, who was the voice of H.R. Pufnstuf on that series. Nearby was KTTV Studios where All in the Family taped, and Allan went to lunch that same day with Carroll O'Connor. We all happened to converge on the Denny's at the same moment. I recognized Melvin and assumed, since Lennie had been a recurring player on the Dick Van Dyke Show as well that the two of them had crossed paths. So, finding myself standing between the two of them, I said, "Well, you two must know each other," which caused each to notice the other was there.

Well, it turned out they were acquainted and not in a good way. When the 1969 Pufnstuf feature film was made, Weinrib had been holding out for more money and Melvin wound up doing the voice of the title character replacing Lennie. It had been the cause of much bad blood between them and they'd almost had a slugfest once because Lennie felt Allan had done something unprofessional and Allan felt that all he'd done was take a job that Lennie had quit. Angry words were exchanged that day at the Denny's and we separated the two men and dined in separate rooms. A few days later, I was back there without Lennie and as it turned out, Allan Melvin was having lunch there, as well. He recognized me and came over to apologize for the squabble and tell me (briefly) his side of the dispute. I have no opinion as to who was right or wrong, but Mr. Melvin struck me as a very nice man who was deeply bothered that anyone thought he'd done anything unethical. If he did, I'm sure it was an atypical lapse.

Later, I worked with him on cartoons a few times and it was easy to see why everyone always wanted to hire Allan Melvin. He was a thorough professional, a very good actor and a man with a wonderful, wicked sense of humor. I cannot recall him ever in his long career appearing on TV in an unscripted capacity…say, on a game show or talk show. If he had, he'd have surprised people with how funny he could be out of character and out of uniform. Another one of the good guys gone.

A number of my fellow WGA members have e-mailed me analyses of the DGA deal. Some of these, particularly in the numbers department, come to quite different interpretations. Others say that some important details (including at least one major gain) were oddly — presumably, innnocently — omitted from the summary that was released.

My conclusion so far? We may not know as much about this deal as we think we do. So while I'm still inclined to think the percentages are disappointing, I'm open to the possibility that the terms may be better than they appear to be from the summary. At least, I hope they are.

One of things e-mailed to me — twenty times so far, thank you — is a positive assessment of the deal by John Wells, a former WGA president and the producer of E.R., West Wing and many other successful shows. I also have some messages from folks who claim Wells has misunderstood some of the details or who offer the inevitable, probably unfair criticism that Wells is letting his producer side do the thinking here, rather than his writer side.

This is one of the occasional conundrums of officer status in the Writers Guild. If you're not a very successful writer, people complain that you may not understand the business and you're lacking a certain stature in the industry that a leader of the WGA oughta have. On the other hand, if you are a very successful writer, you're probably also doing some producing and/or directing, and then you get the complaint that you're not a pure writer and may have other interests at heart. The Wells administration was criticized for not taking a harder line against the studios. (My own feeling was that Wells was the right leader for that period…a period when the mood of the Guild was not conducive to a stronger stand. A lot of people, I know, think the WGA is "strike-happy" but my observation is that it's usually the opposite of that. It's just that every so often, we find ourselves in a position where we don't have any other viable option.)

So about the DGA offer, I dunno. I'm leaning towards pessimism but waiting to learn more, waiting to hear what the numbers crunchers say. Apparently, some of them do not yet have the full text of the deal to study and what they have may not be accurate or complete.

In the meantime, my buddy Bob Elisberg has an article in the L.A. Times to rebut one of their sillier editorials.

The saga of Gary Coleman's pants continues.

No, this time I'm not haranguing you to listen to Shokus Internet Radio. I did an interview a few days ago for Comic Book Talk Radio, mostly about Jack Kirby and my upcoming book on him but also, a little bit, about my other work. You can listen to it in two parts, and both parts can be accessed on this page.

It's difficult to fully evaluate the DGA settlement with the AMPTP based on the summary that's presently available to us. The fact sheet released so far is a mixture of low numbers coupled with a lot of "Well, what does this mean?" The percentages paid to directors for work downloaded from the 'net are very low and the breakpoint numbers are very high and I can't imagine why they think this will amount to any sort of meaningful financial participation.

It is good that the AMPTP is acknowledging that they must share Internet revenues with the folks who create the programming. Their entire approach to the WGA has been to try to deny that or keep the numbers down to token payments. The terms of the DGA deal, to the extent we know them, seem like a little more recognition that they cannot exclude us (writers, directors, actors and others) from New Media revenues…but the numbers are way below what they should be. The deal still allows the networks to take a show produced for network television — a show which would traditionally pay substantial sums to its writers, actors and director for its rebroadcast — and to instead slap it up on a website, sell advertising and pay us a very low amount of money. And even that's after a "free window" where they can do that without paying anything.

I'm trying to seize upon one good thing about this deal and I may have found it: "Payments for EST [Electronic Sell-Through] will be based on distributor's gross, which is the amount received by the entity responsible for distributing the film or television program on the Internet." One of the six demands that the AMPTP had before they walked out of negotiations with the WGA was for us to drop our demand that payments would be based on distributor's gross. My question then is if there are any other details in the new DGA contract that would enable the studios to fudge the amounts that they report as distributor's gross and whether there's a truly effective way of monitoring payments. The summary assures us that "the companies are now contractually obligated to give us unfettered access to their deals and data." That would be good if true.

Also of some concern is this statement: "Additionally, if the exhibitor or retailer is part of the producer's corporate family, we have improved provisions for challenging any suspect transactions." I'd sure like to see some lawyers check the final language for loopholes before I believe that will arrest a major problem. Corporations like to agree to certain terms with a union, then set up "shell companies" to operate in violation of those terms. If the DGA has secured language that will effectively stop that, good for them.

At the end, it says there's a "Sunset provision" that "Allows both sides to revisit new media when the agreement expires." I'm not sure what that means. It may mean another strike in three years.

All in all, I'm extremely disappointed. I wouldn't hazard a guess at this moment on the mood of the Writers Guild or the Screen Actors Guild. But if I'm given a choice of accepting terms similar to what I fear it all means or remaining on strike, I'll be out on the picket lines until a real offer comes along.

So yesterday, I taught my first class at U.S.C. It's called "Writing Humor: Literary and Dramatic" and it's part of the school's Master of Professional Writing program. (The current semester is not yet listed on the school's website but will be shortly.)

Things began appropriately. I determined the right hour to leave my house and allow sufficient time…then got out to the garage and found my car battery was dead. Someone — I'm not mentioning any names because it might have been me — shut a rear car door on a seat belt so it didn't close all the way. I took a cab to and from U.S.C., musing how it was somehow appropriate that a class in Humor Writing was starting off that way.

After that, things went well. "My students" — there's a phrase I never thought I'd type — seem bright and eager to absorb whatever I can impart to them…though I'm thinking the most useful skill I may be able to impart is how to carry a picket sign.

I had a great cab driver on the way back. In L.A. for some reason, you can't phone a taxi company to pick you up on a street corner. They insist on an address. The way U.S.C. is laid out, there is no easy address where they could find me so I walked three blocks over to Jefferson and Figueroa where the famous car dealership, Felix Chevrolet, is located. I didn't go in. I just used their address when I phoned, then waited next to a big statue of Felix the Cat for a taxi to come get me.

The cab driver was a very old gentleman from Kenya who told me he'd gone off-duty when he heard the radio call that they were looking for someone to pick up outside Felix Chevrolet. "I signed back in to get you," he told me. "I love Felix, always have." As a tiny Kenyan, he said, he had a Felix the Cat shirt that he wore everywhere until it was so ragged that his Mama started insisting he give it up. He refused and refused up until the day it came out of the laundry in tatters. He said that sixty years after the fact, he still suspects sabotage on his mother's part.

I asked him if he'd ever seen a Felix cartoon. He said he didn't think so. I asked him if he'd ever read a Felix comic book. He said he didn't think so. I asked him what it was about Felix that made him so special. He said, "Felix always seems so happy. When things get me down, I just look at him and he makes me feel better." As good a reason as any, I'd say.

Well, the DGA didn't announce a deal today so we'll put another $50 in the jackpot. I've received a number of e-mails asking what I think this means and what I think it means is that they haven't finalized a deal yet. Speculation beyond that is really flying blind. As I said, I thought predictions that a deal would be announced on Monday were premature but not impossible. Another week is not impossible, either. Heck, it's not even impossible that the DGA won't be able to make a deal at this time. I wouldn't bet on that but you never know.

In the meantime, Jonathan Handel says some of the same things I said here but says them better and with more authority and less optimism.