Monthly Archives: December 2008

So how did the Obama campaign arrive at its logo? It sounds like the premise for a MAD Magazine article but here's an actual look at some logos that were rejected.

Frank Miller's motion picture of The Spirit is now playing on two out of every three billboards I see. It'll be in theaters shortly. In the meantime, Steven Paul Levia writes about an earlier attempt to transfer Will Eisner's classic character to the screen.

This runs 52 minutes and you may encounter some advertising. It's an episode of The David Susskind Show from 1965 — a one-on-one interview with Jerry Lewis.

For those who aren't familiar with Susskind: He was an agent who became a producer (of TV shows, movies and plays) who eventually became a talk show host. In 1958, he started a program called Open End on New York local television. It was called that because it was done at the close of the broadcast day and each episode lasted until Mr. Susskind felt the topic and/or guest had been exhausted. So some nights, it might last 50 minutes and some nights, it might run over two hours. Eventually, it was syndicated in a standard length and renamed The David Susskind Show. It ran for twenty years, often in fringe time slots…but even there, twenty years is quite a run.

Here's Susskind's chat with Jerry…

The economy must be in bad shape. Yesterday, I actually managed to find a parking space on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills…less than two weeks before Christmas.

I was over there for a business-type meeting but while in the area, I decided to visit a clothing store I rarely but occasionally patronize. I'd shop there more often but their prices are…

Well, let me tell you a story.

About fifteen years ago, I was in Times Square in New York and I passed one of those discount electronics places they have there in between Ray's Pizza restaurants. In the window of the electronics store, I noticed a camera I'd been planning to purchase. I'd priced it in L.A. and it was around $200. Its price there wasn't visible so I went in and when I looked at the price tag, I couldn't believe it: Eight hundred smackers. Plus tax.

The salesman saw me do my Tex Avery take and he rushed over and said, "That's not the price you'd pay. That's the foreigners' price. I'll let you have it for $175."

It took me about three seconds to grasp the concept. They'd put the $800 price tag on it because every so often, someone would walk in who didn't understand American money or didn't have a conversion chart from their native dollar or something. Every so often, some "foreigner" would, I guess, actually shell out the eight hundred clams.

Even though the camera was cheaper than in L.A., I couldn't buy it there. Not in a store that did that. The salesman, seeing me heading for the door, went down to $160 but I still didn't buy it from them. I'm sure you understand.

That little incident stayed with me. I'm not stingy about paying for things and I often think it's cost-effective to buy the best, even when the best costs more. But I don't like paying the "foreigners' price" for something even when I could easily afford it. It's not the money. I just don't like that feeling of being taken. (Well actually, it is the money. When people say, "It isn't the money," it's always the money. But in this situation, I think: "Gee, instead of buying this here, I could buy a comparable one somewhere else and give the cash I save to charity or put it to better use.")

That clothing store in Beverly Hills has wonderful shirts and pants and jackets. First rate stuff. But most of it is priced in a range that makes me feel I'm being charged the "foreigners' price." I could pay it and people do. (I've been in there about six times and twice, I've seen Penn Jillette shopping there. It's a store for large 'n' tall people.) But I've only bought a few items because I'd feel like a rube to pay those prices.

The other day, I got a coupon in the mail from them: Fifty bucks off if you come in and spend money between now and Christmas. That's not bad, thought I. As far as I could tell, it was fifty bucks off any purchase. Nothing in the fine print suggested that if I selected a $51 shirt, I couldn't take it home for a dollar. So since I was going to be in the neighborhood anyway, I thought I'd hike over and do a little for-myself Christmas shopping. Besides, I'd found that wonderful parking space and I didn't want to waste it on one stop.

So I strolled in, looked around…and I couldn't help thinking that right after they sent the coupons out, they'd marked everything in the store up at least $75. I looked at a shirt very much like one I'd bought there a few months ago for $80 and it was $200. I thought, "Everything is marked with the 'foreigners' price' and I turned and headed for the door. I'm sure if I'd looked around, I could have found something that with the coupon would have been desirable. But I suddenly found myself really, really not liking the store.

I wonder how prevalent this kind of thing is this year. If we end up hearing "retail sales are down," that would suggest the consumers have not kept their usual end of the deal…but maybe in some cases, it's because retailers are getting too mercenary. We used to have a dealer who came to sell his wares at local comic book conventions and was always bitching about "stiff customers." He'd set up, sell very little, then complain loudly that the con management had failed to attract a buying crowd and should refund his table fees. A more likely explanation would be his insistence on charging 50% more than anyone else in the hall for the exact same things. I think what he really wanted was for the con to attract a lot of foreigners.

Like a lot of you, I'm surprised to hear that Jerry Lewis will be receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy Awards ceremony on February 22. The surprising thing about this, of course, is that he didn't get it a quarter of a century ago.

Sid Ganis, the president of the Academy, calls Lewis "a legendary comedian who has brought laughter to millions around the world and who has helped thousands upon thousands by raising funds and awareness for those suffering from muscular dystrophy." That's all true but wasn't it true in 1983? Before that, even? Whatever greatness Jerry has as a comedian, he had in equal measure in 1965. As for his charity work, he's raised a reported 2 billion dollars for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. When he was up to 1.5 billion, did the Academy think, "Not good enough. Let's wait 'til he raises some serious money and then we'll consider him"?

I guess if I'd thought about it before this, I would have figured either that Lewis had long since received this award or there was some reason…like he'd disqualified himself or the judges had seen Hardly Working or something. It's good that they're doing this. If nothing else, it'll be nice to see someone on the Oscar ceremony who's older than home video.

Here's something I'll bet some of you either don't remember or never knew about. We all know how Groucho Marx hosted a game show called You Bet Your Life on radio and TV from 1947 to 1961. You may recall that Bill Cosby hosted a syndicated revival of the program in 1992.

But did you know Buddy Hackett took a shot at the show? In 1980, there was a syndicated version that starred Mr. Hackett. It didn't last long. As I recall, it was on at 11 PM for a few weeks in Los Angeles and then they bumped it to 1 AM or thereabouts. Never a good sign.

Here's a promo for the Hackett version. I think the pretty blonde lady you'll see in there is Playboy model Debra Jo Fondren, who was a contestant and who can now be seen on the autograph convention circuit, still looking lovely.

Hey, want to see some photos of Buster Keaton you've never seen before? Cartoonist Alex Robinson has posted a couple that his grandfather took in 1964 on the set of the Samuel Beckett film, Film. Here's the link…and we have Greg Means (who describes himself as "a long time reader, first time e-mailer") to thank for it. There's also an embed over there of the first part of this unusual movie.

Pin-up queen Bettie Page has died at the age of 85…and boy, is it hard to think of Bettie Page as being any older than about 26. One time when Dave Stevens was over here, he asked my advice on something he was helping her with…and before I knew it, I was on the phone with Ms. Page, explaining my recommendation to her. You know how you get a mental image of people you're talking to that way? I couldn't help but imagine Bettie at the age she was in all those magazine photos…and probably talking to me from somewhere on a beach.

Dave asked me if I wanted to go meet her in person. I thought for a second and said, "No, I don't think so." He chuckled and said, "I know what you mean."

Dave was, of course, the brilliant artist whose depictions of her — in The Rocketeer and elsewhere — reminded so many men that they'd had a crush on this woman. He birthed a resurgence of interest in her. Thousands of women posed undraped for magazines in that era. Bettie was one of the few that anyone remembered and knew by name.

When he first began drawing her, he couldn't have imagined he would someday meet the woman, let alone become her friend and occasional caretaker. He didn't even know if she was alive…or if she was, whether she would ever identify herself. But they became close…and Dave, who like so many had once lusted after this woman, couldn't believe he was now driving her to deposit her Social Security checks.

Her story has been told in many forms and Dave told me that a lot of what was depicted was even true. I think most of what's in this obit is correct but you never know with someone who was the subject of so many fantasies.

Reports last year that the '62 sitcom I'm Dickens, He's Fenster was heading for a DVD release were either false or premature. That's disappointing. I recently saw some episodes of that old show, which starred John Astin and Marty Ingels as two luckless carpenters, and I was surprised at how funny they were. It was a short-lived series but a good one.

Hoping to drum up some interest in a DVD set, producer Leonard Stern has set up a website to promote the notion. It features clips and it also has an entire episode for online viewing — at the moment, the pilot, which I don't think is as good as the later episodes I recently saw. There's also an article over there about how Stan Laurel was a fan of the series. Take a look.

It's been a long time coming but here's Part Five in our trip down Memory Lane with Scrappy Doo, nephew of Scooby and a somewhat controversial cartoon character. Since you've no doubt forgotten what came before, you might want to refresh your memory by reading Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. Once you're up to speed, we can resume…

Where were we? Oh, yes: Scrappy finally had a voice and my pilot script was recorded…and that was the end of it. Or so I thought, having failed to anticipate problems with the ABC Standards and Practices division. I know of no such oppressive force in children's television today…but back then, each network had this department that had to approve everything that got on the air. In other words, In-House Censors. In most instances, these folks had a simple, understandable function: Prevent the network from getting into trouble.

TV networks, because they reach so many people, are always being sued and/or protested, often over things you could never imagine would create problems. Most of the time, the network position is defensible and the outrage falls into the "nuisance" category…but even nuisance suits and protests can be a nuisance. And expensive to defend against. In kids' television, the stakes seem higher. A protester yelling, "This show is poisoning our children" will usually get more traction than someone bitching about a show for general audiences. The sponsors of kidvid are especially frail and known to atomize over very little negative feedback.

Censorship of broadcast television has declined greatly in the era of HBO, Showtime and DVDs…but in the early eighties, if you were creating a show for CBS, NBC or ABC you usually found yourself in the following dilemma. You had to please the Programming People who bought the show and prayed for ratings. They wanted your program to be edgy and sexy and full of action and excitement. And then you had to please the Standards and Practices People. They wanted your show to be nice and quiet and non-controversial. The two divisions rarely spoke with one another. In fact, in some cases, they hated each other too much to converse. Either way, they fought their battles by playing tug-o'-war with you and your show.

We quarrelled often and usually unproductively with these folks over what we called "action" and they called "violence." Sometimes, their definitions were insane. You'd write a scene where the good guy grabbed the fleeing bad guy and held onto him until the police could arrive and the Broadcast Standards people would react like your hero had chopped off someone's head. Criminals could rob banks and cops could stop them but neither could brandish weapons. One time, a writer friend did a script (a pretty good script, I thought) where the climax depended on the hero cutting a rope at a precise moment. The hero, it had been established, was a former Boy Scout…so my friend had the hero whip out his Boy Scout pocket knife and use it to cut the rope.

Well, that couldn't be allowed. Encouraging children to carry knives, even though the Boy Scouts do? You might as well have them packing howitzers and blowing bodies away on the playgrounds of America. There was much arguing and the scene ended up being staged with the rope being cut by the edge of a sharp rock, which was just silly. The rope was being used to lower a car. Given how sturdy it would have to be to do that, it was already stretching reality for it to be cuttable with a pocket knife. A sharp rock was ridiculous.

At times though, the bickering went beyond Broadcast Standards trying to prevent the network from being sued or having its advertisers shrink from advertising. Every so often, someone there got it into their heads that childrens' television could mold the youth of today into the good citizens of tomorrow. That's a questionable premise but let's say it's so. The question then becomes what you teach, how you mold. I found that those who approached the arena with that in mind had some odd ideas of what we should be trying to impart to impressionable viewers. Acts of extreme violence — like carrying a pocket knife — weren't as big a problem as what they called "anti-social behavior" and what I called "having a mind of your own."

Broadcast Standards — at all three networks at various times — frowned on characters not operating in lockstep with everyone thinking and doing as their peers did. The group is always right. The one kid who doesn't want to do what everyone else does is always wrong. (I rant more on this topic, and show you a cartoon I wrote years later for another show just to vent, in this posting.)

Scrappy Doo was intended, as per his name, to be scrappy — scrappy and feisty and in many ways, the opposite of his Uncle Scooby. Faced with an alleged ghost, Scooby Doo would dive under an area rug and you'd see the contours of his doggie ass shivering with fear beneath it. Scrappy, as I wrote him in his first script, would go the other route: He'd say, "Lemme at him" and go charging after the bogus spirit of the week.

Shortly after the last of many recordings of "The Mark of the Scarab" (that first script), it dawned on ABC Broadcast Standards that maybe Scrappy was a bad role model for the kiddos. He was — and one person in that department actually used this term to me — "too independent." Weeks after I thought that script was out of my life, I got a call: Joe Barbera needed me in the studio, tout de suite, to discuss rewrites the network was demanding. I hopped in the car, zoomed up to the H-B plant on Cahuenga and was directed into a meeting with Mr. B and a covey of censor-type people.

Scrappy, they said, had to be "toned down." He was too rebellious, too outspoken…I forget all the terms they used but I vividly recall the "too independent." I made all the counter-arguments you'd have made. Mainly, I pointed out that Scrappy, as written, was an effectual character. He got things done, always (eventually) for the better. Our heroes, Scooby and Shaggy, fled from danger, panicked, hid, trembled, etc. If they contributed to the resolution of the problem and catching the villain, it was only by accidentally crashing into him. "Why," I asked, "do you want to make that the role model Scrappy and our viewers should emulate?"

The debate went on for maybe half an hour…and usually in these, no one scores a TKO and you wind up compromising. In fact, a compromise is so often the resolution that we often write with some wiggle room, inserting more sex 'n' violence than we really want to put on the screen. That's so that when the censors censor and we wind up compromising, it gets us down to the level we wanted all along. This time though, I had not done that. I'd written what I thought the cartoon oughta be. And this time, I thought, I'd won the argument.

Suddenly, everyone in the room had said everything three or more times and my talking points somehow prevailed. One of the Standards and Practices people shrugged and mumbled, "Well, maybe Scrappy can stay as he is." Another said to me, "You sure talked us out of what we had in mind."

Mr. Barbera, who'd been largely silent throughout the mud-wrestling, leaned forward in his chair and said, "That's because Mark didn't grow up on shows that you people f*cked up." I think he even pronounced the asterisk.

I left the meeting in the warm glow of triumph. I had saved Scrappy Doo's testicles, small though they might be.

The next day, someone (I don't know who) had another writer (I don't know who) rewrite a couple scenes in that first Scrappy script to tone him down, and the affected lines were re-recorded. The other writers working on Scrappy Doo scripts were told to adjust the character accordingly. Scrappy was still somewhat scrappy but nowhere near as scrappy as I thought he should be. For what it's worth, I suspect that the decision to capitulate was made within Hanna-Barbera. Someone, I theorize, feared that even if ABC would now accept Scrappy my way, at some point down the line, they might change their minds. And if they changed their minds, they might not rerun the episodes we were now doing and H-B would lose out on those revenues.

That's just a hunch based on other experiences. I never found out for certain. At Hanna-Barbera, those kinds of decisions would be made and you could have put everyone who could possibly have been involved under oath and they would all swear convincingly they hadn't done it. It had just been changed, apparently by no one. I used to think maybe the janitors at night would stop mopping floors for a while and do surreptitious rewrites on my work.

Anyway, that's how I lost the battle and Scrappy lost a little of his scrappiness.

I think I'm only going to get one more chapter out of this saga and it'll be along soon. In it, I write another episode, Scrappy saves Scooby's ratings, Lennie Weinrib gets replaced as Scrappy's voice and, years later, the world is blanketed with lying anti-Scrappy propaganda. Tune in whenever.

The other day here, we talked about some of the problems that actors face. Here with a song about The Biz is the talented writer-actress-chanteuse Shelly Goldstein…

As I've mentioned here, I've been teaching Comedy Writing in the Master of Professional Writing program down at USC. The fall term just ended so today, I took my students on a field trip — out to NBC Burbank to watch the taping of tonight's Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It was a good show with guests Wanda Sykes, Michael Phelps and Lyle Lovett, and — no surprise since they've been doing this a long time — the crew out there really has their act together. Everything started on time (4 PM), ended on time (5 PM) and went precisely according to plan.

Years ago, when I visited a lot of TV tapings and filmings, I was amazed how often, even on long-running shows, there were delays and false starts and tech mistakes and going back to redo things. Then I'd drop in on The Tonight Show when it was starring that Carson guy and I'd marvel at the absolute clockwork. You could set your watch to the second by the pre-show time the band would start to play, the time Ed would start the warm-up, even the precise moments when Ed would do each of the six or so jokes he told at every single show. Then the right second, the opening would start just when it was supposed to and Johnny would make his entrance and proceed to do an hour show in exactly one hour. Not that long ago, I sat through a Deal or No Deal taping that lasted 5+ hours to arrive at sixty minutes of briefcase-opening.

Leno and his staff do a fine job of making exactly the product they intend to make. I wish all the late night shows were more spontaneous but that doesn't seem to be anyone's goal these days. So I sat there thinking, "Boy, they do this show well…if anything, too well."

I was a little disappointed in the warm-up. As discussed here, audience warm-ups used to be a form of entertainment unto themselves…and usually they involved someone who may or may not have been affiliated with the show coming out and being funny. (Leno, early in his career, did warm-ups for the Cloris Leachman sitcom, Phyllis.) Nowadays, they're more like bad game shows. Some guy comes out, gets audience members up to sing or tell jokes, and hands out t-shirts and other prizes. Jay's announcer John Melendez did the honors this afternoon.

Before Menendez did his spot, Jay came out in a work shirt and jeans to welcome everyone. He spoke a little about his new 10 PM deal but didn't say anything he hasn't said on the news. Then he asked for questions from the audience and as was the case last time I was there and as I'm told is true 98% of the time, everyone asked the same question: "Can I have a photo with you?" The guy with the camera was already standing by for just that purpose…and I guess they're going to have to change something pretty soon because he's using a Polaroid.

My students enjoyed the experience…though one seemed most impressed by the peanut butter cookies in the Green Room. Another of my students committed the capital offense of taking a photo on her iPhone. On the way in, we were only told about ninety-four times not to turn on cell phones or use recording devices and we were even told we could be prosecuted for copyright infringement if we did. Still, near the end, she snuck a snapshot and — whoosh! — a furious NBC page descended on our row and hauled her off for, we figured, tasering and waterboarding at the least. Basically, they scolded her and made her delete the picture. Had it been at the beginning of the taping, I'm guessing they would either have shown her out or confiscated the iPhone.

And that's pretty much it…a nice show. Jay had a good rapport with Wanda Sykes and seemed so happy to have Michael Phelps there and — oh, wait. The episode's just starting on my satellite dish. I'm going to go watch. I just saw the back of my head.

I've been having cable modem problems again today, as has been not uncommon lately. The thing keeps cutting in and out on me. If I go a long time without posting over the next few days, that's the reason. It doesn't mean something has happened to me.

Bill Zehme on what's happening with Mr. Leno. Thank Jeff Abraham for this link.

I apparently erred when I said Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich had a 6% approval rating. Last time it was measured, it was 4%.

How does a man get that low? Did Blagojevich bitchslap a nun and we didn't hear about it out here? George W. Bush did everything wrong and on a much larger, "getting people killed" scale and even he never made single digits. And if historians of the future get to wondering how a man who became as unpopular as Bush ever won a second term — meaning enough voters liked him enough to re-elect — what will they make of Blagojevich, who's also in his second term?

Here in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger is fiercely replicating all the financial disasters that he condemned when they were the handiwork of Gray Davis, the recalled governor who was his predecessor. And even Arnold's only down to something like 36% approval. He couldn't get it down to 4% if he announced he was making Kindergarten Cop II.

The immediate problem in Illinois is that Blagojevich is duty-bound to appoint someone to fill out the rest of Barack Obama's senate term…but of course, anyone he appoints will be under a cloud of suspicion and might not be seated in the senate just because he was Blagojevich's pick. The Illinois legislature is talking about taking the choice away from the governor and calling a special election which will cost $50 million plus whatever the aspirants spend to campaign in it. Blagojevich could do the honorable and wise thing by instead announcing that the legislature should just vote to pick a successor and he'll recuse himself from the decision and appoint whoever they recommend. He has nothing to lose doing that and it would show that he isn't totally immoral and foolish. It might even get his approval rating up to 5%.