Monthly Archives: February 2009

This is from a reader of this site named Jane Rusher…

I disagree with you about the acceptance speech last night by the man who wrote Milk. Wouldn't it be better if we just agreed that the Oscars are not a place for politics?

Sure…that would help remove another way in which they might be interesting and relevant. Better to have the winners spend more time congratulating themselves on being in show business and pretending that's the only world that matters.

Seriously, I think one of the things a person wins when they win an Oscar is that 45 seconds to talk to the world. Are we so fragile and incapable of dealing with loud opinions that we can't endure certain things someone might say? If they want to get up there and sell Amway products or list their favorite foods, fine. It's their 45 seconds.

The remarks about Milk were totally appropriate. I thought the way Sean Penn said what he said was clumsy and likely to alienate those who most need to be convinced. But he and the screenwriter were both talking about what the movie they'd just won for meant and what they hoped moviegoers would take away from it. They were talking about what was relevant about the film and about the story of Harvey Milk. That's more meaningful than if they spent the time thanking their agents.

There's another matter I'd like to address. A lot of folks today are discussing what certain Oscars mean and how the victory of Sean Penn over Mickey Rourke means that Hollywood was making a statement about gay rights or Proposition 8 or something of the sort. I think that's assuming an awful lot of facts that are not in evidence.

First point: Anyone who believes "Hollywood" speaks with one mind hasn't spent any time in Hollywood. I don't think I've ever been in a meeting here with more than three people where everyone agreed about what time lunch should be. Secondly, even when a majority votes one way, it doesn't mean they all had the same thing in mind. Imagine if all you knew about the last presidential election was that Barack Obama won. You didn't know if he got 97% of the vote or just one person more than John McCain. You didn't know which states he'd carried, which ethnic groups, which age groups, etc. All you knew was that he won. How much would you really know about what America was saying with its vote?

Well, that's about how much we know about the Oscar voters.

The Academy has about 6800 voting members…people who could have voted. How many did? We don't know. It's rumored (rumored, now) that about half vote each year. Let's say 3400 did. For all we know, 1300 members voted for Mickey Rourke, 1301 voted for Sean Penn and the rest was split between the other nominees. What would that say about the mindset of the Academy, as opposed to Penn winning in a landslide?

And maybe the margin, whatever it was, was because the advertising campaign mounted to persuade Academy voters to cast their ballots for Milk was just plain more effective than the one for The Wrestler. I was mailed a screener DVD of Milk but I don't think I got one for The Wrestler.

It's even possible that some voters didn't care about gay rights when they voted. Maybe — and yeah, I know this is a stretch — someone voted for Sean Penn just because they thought he gave a better performance than Mickey Rourke. It could happen.

I can name a hundred reasons someone might have had for voting for Penn over Rourke…and yes, some of them might only have tipped a vote or two. But we don't know that Penn didn't win by a vote or two.

As you may recall, I thought Rourke would win. There seemed to be something in the air…some way in which that felt like a better ending to the story than another Penn victory. But some number of voters, the quantity of whom we'll never know, thought Sean Penn belonged up there. Why? I dunno. And neither do you.

When the complete boxed set of Get Smart came out, it was $200 plus postage and handling. Now you can get it on Amazon for $86.99. Isn't that the perfect number? Get DVDs of the adventures of Agent 86 and Agent 99 for $86.99.

The best thing about the Academy Awards? Ken Levine's annual Oscar post-mortem.

It will soon be March and we all know what that means. The chain of restaurants known variously as Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes will be featuring Mark's favorite soup, their version of Creamy Tomato. It's nice of them to do this each year for the month of my birthday but maddening that they don't just wise up at corporate HQ and make it one of their year-round offerings.

I will be going often to Souplantation (that's what they call 'em in Southern California) during the month…and the soup should be even better this year than it's been in the past. Why? Because I've mentioned it so often here, and even prompted a mention of it on the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, the Souplantation folks sent me a mess of free passes to dine in their restaurants. I've been saving them, for obvious reasons, for March. I mean, what's better than Souplantation Creamy Tomato Soup? Free Souplantation Creamy Tomato Soup.

There is, however, one possible downside. I fear Souplantation will suffer a drop in their usual grosses this March. In fact, I know they will because I won't be paying for my many meals there. They'll compare the take this March (when I'm not paying) with last March (when I was) and some yo-yo will conclude, "Hmm…the Creamy Tomato Soup seems to be losing popularity. Maybe it's time to stop making it altogether and to replace it with Purée of Toad or some other equally yummy variety!"

So if you were ever thinking of trying it, try it this year. Just to make up for what I won't be spending there.

Here's a link to their website so you can see if there's one near you. If you join their Club Veg program, they occasionally e-mail you with discount coupons. Discounted Souplantation Creamy Tomato Soup isn't as good as Free Souplantation Creamy Tomato Soup but it's something.

I watched the last part of the Academy Awards (from Jerry Lewis onward) live and then went back and used TiVo to get through the first part in well under an hour. It seemed like a decent show to me. I think a lot of people expect the Oscars to be something they can never be. I mean, a lot of the show is about giving awards to people who do Art Direction and Sound Editing. The folks in those categories are totally deserving of their moments in the spotlight but there's a limit to how much entertainment value you're ever going to realize from those portions of the show.

The idea of having five presenters in the acting categories struck me as a good one. Some time ago here, we did a little poll on who they could get to present who might be exciting. The consensus seemed to be that no one living person would be that exciting but that certain combinations of presenters might make things extra special. I think it did, though some of the dialogue — the little speeches where past winners told the nominees how brilliant they were — seemed a little excessive.

The audience ovation for Jerry was moving but the honoree almost looked like he was back on the Percodan. I half-expected him to lapse into his profound mode and say something overly schmaltzy. Instead, he said very little and you got the feeling the audience was disappointed he wasn't more like Jerry Lewis. But good for the Academy for finally honoring a guy they should have recognized decades ago…and wasn't it nice to see one person on that stage who'd been in the business longer than Steve Martin? (Yeah, I know there were a few others. But it sure didn't feel that way.)

Hugh Jackman seemed like a pleasant-enough host. The guy's impossible to dislike…and the irrelevant music number wasn't as bothersome as they usually are since the show moved along at a good clip. It ran 3 hours and 30 minutes, which is probably what its producers were aiming for. Yes, I know they said 3 hours in the listings but that's just what they put in the listings. They never really intend it to be that length. I also liked the fact that I didn't see anyone get played off in mid-speech because their thank yous were running long.

I was surprised that Sean Penn bested Mickey Rourke for Best Actor…and I got the feeling everyone else was too, including Sean and Mickey. Penn's speech seemed a bit clumsy and inelegant, and also unnecessary given the earlier, more moving acceptance speech from Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the screenplay for Milk. I agree with what Penn said but wish he'd said it better.

All in all, it was a pretty good show…at least if you make good use of the Fast Forward button on your TiVo or VCR remote. If you found it dull, you oughta try my method.

The Reprise Theater Company is currently presenting a superb production of Man of La Mancha. It's up at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA and it runs through March 1. Michael Michetti, who did such a good job staging their production of Li'l Abner last year, really outdid himself…and there are two especially interesting changes in the material.

One was to eliminate the overture. That sounds like a mistake since the overture is usually quite a treat…but without the overture, the orchestra doesn't start playing until Cervantes begins telling the story of Don Quixote. Therefore, all the music occurs more or less within his imagination and the effect is worth the sacrifice.

Then they changed some dialogue. Dale Wasserman, who wrote the book for the musical Man of La Mancha, had written it previously as a non-musical play for television called I, Don Quixote. With Mr. Wasserman's blessing, some lines from the TV play were interpolated into the Reprise production of the musical. (Mr. Wasserman literally gave his approval on his death bed. He passed away last December 21 at the age of 94.) It all worked. All of it.

Most of that was due to a superb cast. Brent Spiner is playing Cervantes and therefore Don Quixote. He's great in the part, just as he was great playing John Adams when I saw 1776 on Broadway a few years ago. What a shame that some people only think of this superb musical comedy talent as "that guy from Star Trek." Lee Wilkof is a great Sancho Panza…and I hear opera star Julia Migenes is wonderful as Dulcinea but we deliberately didn't see her.

Carolyn and I went to the matinee today and at matinees, Dulcinea is played to perfection by a lady named Valerie Perri. Let me tell you about Valerie Perri.

Thousands of years ago, when I was a story editor on Welcome Back, Kotter, the night receptionist — the lady who answered phones when we worked late — was Valerie Perri. She used to sing around the office and, ever-so-politely, invite us to see a little musical she was appearing in on weekends. I went and was blown away by her talent. (There was also another new performer in the show who was obviously star material — a then-unknown actress named Wendie Jo Sperber.)

When Valerie went on to better things, I was utterly unsurprised. Just a few years later, the biggest theatrical event in Los Angeles was a production of Evita that ran a long time at the Shubert Theater. They had a big star playing the title role at evening performances and this unknown named Valerie Perri playing the role at matinees. One of the local theater critics wrote a piece that said, approximately, "Hey, the lady playing Evita at matinees is better than the lady playing Evita in the evenings!" Before long, Valerie was the evening Evita in many other productions — Harold Prince personally cast her — and she went on to other roles and other plays. She now divides her life between raising handsome twin boys and performing in shows all around the country. You can find her schedule (and hear some of her singing) over on her website.

Aiding her in her great performance today was another friend of mine. Brad Ellis was the Musical Director of this production of Man of La Mancha. Everything sounded great and after, when I told Brad that, he said it was because Reprise splurged for a full orchestra, the same size the show had on Broadway, and it had "no garage band instruments." That means real horns, real violins, etc., and no synthesizers and such. That's probably one of the reasons the music was so magnificent but I also think Brad had a lot to do with that. Maybe one of these days, I'll post some audio here and let you listen to some of the songs we've written together. He's real good, too.

If you're in or around L.A. and want to catch Man of La Mancha before March 1, here's a link. I've raved enough.

Next Saturday evening while I'm in San Francisco for the WonderCon, I'm taking a bunch of friends to see Frank Ferrante perform his glorious Groucho simulation at the Jewish Community Center. And hey, why shouldn't an Italian guy play a Jew? Chico Marx was a Jewish guy playing an Italian.

Anyway, one of the friends I'm taking, Tom Galloway, sent me a link to this article about Frank. See? I'm not the only person who writes about him.

On Sunday, March 8, Frank's doing his show for one matinee performance at the La Mirada Theater in, of all places, La Mirada, California. That's as close to Los Angeles as he's been in years and he probably won't be Hackenbushing anywhere near L.A. again for quite some time. So a number of folks I know in town here (including me again) are going down to see him there. La Mirada isn't as far as it sounds. It's about midway between downtown L.A. and Disneyland and they have a very nice theater down there.

Here's a nice article about Teller of Penn & Teller. Most people think Teller is shorter than he is. He just looks short because Penn is so tall. Some people think he can't talk. He can, and is very articulate when he does. Some people even think what Penn and Teller do is not really magic. It most definitely is, and Teller is an excellent magician by any standard. As you'll see from the article, he's very serious about what he does.

I don't even know where to start with the current Screen Actors Guild situation. Their Negotiating Committee hit an impasse bargaining with the AMPTP. After many months, SAG's national board ousted that committee and its Head Negotiator, replacing them with something they called a "task force" and sent it in to try and get an acceptable deal. The task force made some major concessions and the AMPTP made some major concessions. But when the two sides failed to reach a deal, the talks collapsed. The Producers sent out what they called their "last, best, final" offer…and now the SAG national board has rejected it with a 73% vote.

So where does this leave things? Up a creek, sans paddle. The SAG national board doesn't want to put this offer to a vote of the membership. They don't want to ask for a strike authorization. The Producers are refusing to restart the talks. So whatever brief light there might have been down at the end of the tunnel has now been extinguished and no one seems to know what happens next.

The scenario some people are hoping for is something that might be called The Lew Wasserman Move. Lew Wasserman was an old-time Hollywood agent-mogul who more-or-less ran the town in the sixties. When things were at an impasse with some union, Lew was known to pick up the phone, make a few calls and broker a deal. Everyone seems to be hoping something of the sort will happen now…or at least, that's the fantasy. The reality is that today, at a time when entertainment companies are owned by international super-corporations, there's no one with the expansive power of a Lew Wasserman…no one who can call all the principals and say, with a note of Threat in his voice, "Hey, let's get this settled."

I have no idea where things go from here. It may depend on whether this new impasse causes the rival factions in SAG to bond and unite against their common enemy. Three days ago, this seemed about as likely as me winning Best Supporting Actress tonight. Now, that reconciliation is a remote possibility…and if the studios see they've overplayed their hand and are fixing a broken SAG, they may scurry to better the offer.

The big obstacle at the moment seems to be the expiration date of the three-year contract. SAG wants it to run out three years from when the old deal did. The AMPTP wants it to expire three years from when it gets signed. If SAG got its way, the union would be in a much better position for the next negotiation. If the AMPTP date prevails, SAG would again be last in line behind the other unions, most notably AFTRA which undercut them this time by going first. This is probably solvable if both sides put their mind to that goal. At the moment though, no one is trying to solve it. Jeez, what a mess.

Manohla Dargis profiles Jerry Lewis, the man who tomorrow night will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Why do I have the feeling that at this very moment, Jerry is at home, carefully rehearsing how he'll say the wrong thing?

A month or two ago, TV reporter Aaron Barnhart and I sat in a delicatessen not far from CBS and discussed the fate of NBC late night in its forthcoming reconfiguration. At the time, Aaron was starting to predict not-good things for the Peacock Network in that daypart…and his reservations have blossomed into this firmer foreboding. I think he just may be right.

At the same time, I'm surprised there aren't other players in this game. If I were running a cable network or a big syndication company, I'd think this was the ideal time to jump into late night with something altogether different. As Aaron notes, America's interest in Jay, Dave, Conan and the rest is in decline. Maybe the new configuration of Jay, Conan and Jimmy Fallon will turn things around. Maybe. Or maybe it'll just make viewers feel oversaturated with the same kinds of shows, whereupon they'd flock to something more spontaneous. The talk shows of today have cribbed everything possible from Steve Allen except the notion that it can be fun when the host doesn't know everything that's about to happen and is prepared for anything.

Anyway, go read Aaron for why the new NBC layout may have problems.