Monthly Archives: January 2010

For those of you who aren't thoroughly sick of the whole Conan/Jay story: Bill Carter breaks down some of the ratings problems that Conan O'Brien had with his Tonight Show. Conan was being consistently beaten by Letterman in all the significant demographic groups except viewers aged 18-34…and in that area, Conan was being beaten by The Colbert Report and almost being tied by Adult Swim. Leno's Tonight Show even fared better with that group.

Hey, what's the difference between catsup and ketchup?

I haven't seen it yet (and may not be able to even get tickets if and when I can go) but the revival of Pee-Wee Herman's show seems to be a big hit down at the Nokia Theater here in Los Angeles. Friends who've been say it's great and the ol' rumor mill is saying it'll tour, playing Vegas, maybe even stopping off on Broadway for a while. This all sounds like good news and it prompts me to recall seeing Paul Reubens playing Pee-Wee at the Groundlings Theater here in L.A., developing the character until it finally became what it became.

Around '81, it got to the point where there was a Midnight show done every Saturday night…a surreal evening that went on a little long, though its length somehow added to the quixotic nature of it all. Pee-Wee showed cartoons and public service films. He lobbed Tootsie Rolls into the audience, including one, inadvertently, directly into my eye. He welcomed an endless array of odd friends onto his playhouse stage. And at the end of the show, he learned how to fly, which I gather is the plot of the new show, as well. Two people who later became friends of mine separate from one another — Dawna Kaufmann and Bill Steinkellner — were highly responsible for assembling the proceedings, and it was full of fine performers including Phil Hartman, Edie McClurg and John Paragon.

Pee-Wee had a sweetness then. The character changed back and forth in the years after. Sometimes, he was a real innocent ten-year-old boy who just happened to be played on stage or screen by a much older man. And sometimes, he was a much older (and meaner) man who in some sort of sick dementia thought he was a ten year old boy. On the Saturday morning program, you generally got the sweeter Pee-Wee, and that's why I thought it all worked. That was the Pee-Wee of the Midnight show.

The night I went to it was one of the more memorable and oddest nights I've spent in a theater. It was sold out for the duration of its run and I was only able to get seats because I'd met Bill Steinkellner, who'd directed it. I took a lady friend of mine named Bridget Holloman (sad obit here) and we were there on time but the show was not. An understudy was going on and needed extra rehearsal so we all stood in the lobby for a half-hour or so…and then there were tech delays. The festivities started around 1 AM and went on and on and on, apparently a lot longer than they usually did. To make timekeeping matters even stranger, it was a night when we set the clocks ahead so when we got out two-and-a-half hours later, it was not 3:30 AM but 4:30 AM. And the show wasn't over.

No one at the theater had uttered the words "Canter's Delicatessen" aloud but somehow everyone there knew that was the place to go. Without consultation, we all piled into our respective vehicles and caravaned over to that wonderful open-24-hours deli on Fairfax. This included many of the cast members, some still in costume or at least character. It was like the third act of the play with corned beef added. People were performing at their tables or in the aisles and the Canter's waitstaff was sidestepping them and acting like this was the most natural thing in the world. In the booth next to ours was Phil Hartman, still wearing about half his makeup as the gruff Captain Carl and barking out his order for Matzo Brei the way an old sea cap'n would order Matzo Brei.

It was well after 5 AM, maybe closer to six when Bridget and I finally got back to my home. I asked her if she'd enjoyed the experience and she said, "I don't know…but I wouldn't have missed it for the world." The folks enjoying the current offering down at the Nokia may well feel the same way but I can't believe it's as memorable as the all-encompassing dinner theater production we attended. It was so very special to visit the playhouse and stay up with Pee-Wee 'til that close to dawn.

Deborah Blair writes to ask…

I'm a little puzzled on one aspect of all this. Was Conan O'Brien fired or did he quit? And do you think this whole thing has damaged Jay forever?

As to the first question: A little of each, actually…and I think the man deserves great credit (this is not sarcasm) for spinning the whole story as "Conan being screwed" instead of "Conan not getting the ratings." It could have gone either way. At the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, NBC sent one of their execs, Dick Ebersol, out to try and spin it in the latter rotation and no one was buying. O'Brien had already claimed the high ground and defined the narrative.

Conan and Jay both were doing shows that were performing well below expectations. Due to some combination of affiliate unrest and a simple reading of the numbers, NBC decided that neither show could be left in place for as long as they'd told the hosts they would have. It is hard to say from afar how much wiggle room the network had to leave one or both on in their respective time slots.

They came up with this idea to have a half-hour of Jay at 11:35 followed by a full hour of Conan at 12:05. Mr. O'Brien objected, saying he thought it was an insult to the grand and glorious tradition of The Tonight Show. I'm not sure I buy that as his prime concern…and let's note that many of the folks who cheered that stance probably still think Tonight would be in better hands with Conan at 12:05 than with the obvious alternative of Jay at 11:35. What I think Conan was thinking was that it was a halfway step towards shoving him back to 12:35…or off the schedule completely. NBC would also pay a larger settlement to get him off 11:35 than to remove him from a later slot if it came to that.

So what he and his managers did was cleverly arrange things so he didn't exactly quit and wasn't exactly fired — as close to a "no fault" separation as is possible in a mess like this. Such resolutions work out better for both sides. Forevermore, he can say, "I could have made 11:35 work but NBC didn't give me the chance." And the network can say, "We didn't fire Conan. We were willing to keep him on indefinitely but at a slightly later hour." I'm not entirely sure that the 11:35/12:05 proposal wasn't NBC's way of setting up precisely that situation.

As to your second question — has it damaged Jay forever?: In a business where Mel Gibson is still considered a top box office draw, I don't think very much can damage a star forever. You lose stature when it's perceived that your success/failure ratio has swung too far into the red…but personal stuff? You kind of have to go the O.J. Simpson route for the public to shun you. And of course, I think the case that Jay did anything wrong is pretty flimsy to begin with.

NBC's Jeff Gaspin was asked the question recently in a press conference of reporters and he said something that I think was basically accurate. He said, "I don't think most of America cares about this stuff as much as we do." If Jay loses audience share — and I expect he'll lose some — it'll probably have more to do with people not liking his show, as opposed to not liking him. Basically, he needs to remind viewers what it was they enjoyed about him before the Conan magilla and before the 10 PM show.

'Twill be interesting to see what kind of guest bookings his renewed Tonight Show will get right away. A number of celebs, even if they see Jay as the injured party in all this, may not want to appear to be taking sides. I don't think very many folks in show biz are like Rosie O'Donnell who, contrary to the evidence, seems to think Conan got bounced because Leno came in and demanded The Tonight Show back. But everyone in the industry (including, I'm sure, Jay) is sympathetic to the concept of a performer who wasn't given enough of a chance. Whether or not they think Conan was, they may want to steer clear for a while of being too supportive of his replacement. Let's see how fast Jay has to call on buddies like Jerry Seinfeld and Arnold Schwarzenegger to sit in his guest chair.

In the mid-to-late sixties in L.A., the radio station to listen to was 93 KHJ, Boss Radio. They played pretty much the same Top 40 list as competing stations but KHJ had a great between-records sound and some colorful disc jockeys…and most of all, they always seemed to have some fun promo or contest going on. For a week or two there, for example, you could win a lot of money (a lot for a local station to give away, at least) if you could identify Location X.

Location X was a spot somewhere in Southern California. Every hour, whoever was on the air would play about ten seconds of audio recorded at Location X. He'd give out a little clue as to its whereabouts. And some lucky caller would get a chance to guess. I remember we all got caught up in the mystery at my school and spent a lot of time trying to parse the hints and deduce the elusive answer, not so much because we thought we'd win the loot but because it was an intriguing puzzle. Eventually, some caller got it. It turned out to be the merry-go-round at Lincoln Park.

Where is Lincoln Park? I don't know now and I didn't know then. None of my friends did, either. We all felt cheated when the answer was revealed, the way you'd feel cheated if, for example, you read a thick murder mystery and on the last page, the killer turned out to be someone who hadn't even been mentioned in the book before. In protest, a few of us switched our allegiance to a competing station, KRLA.

Perhaps the biggest promotion KHJ ever did was to announce the coming of the Big Kahuna. Who was the Big Kahuna? Just some actor they'd hired. The idea was to create a celebrity D.J. for personal appearances and to promote the station and it succeeded wildly. No one in L.A. really knew who The Big Kahuna was or why it was the event of the decade that he was arriving in Los Angeles and joining the Boss Jocks at Boss Radio. But they made it sound so important that crowds turned out, people tuned in and a genuine media event was manufactured.

I vaguely recall that he was treated as some sort of trendsetting wiseman…kind of a Hawaiian version of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi but without the religious overtones. Instead of teaching us Transcendental Meditation, he was there to teach us how to be cool…though what his credentials were in this department, no one ever explained. And that's about all I remember. Basically, he was briefly famous for being briefly famous.

What prompted this recollection was reading Ken Levine telling us that the Big Kahuna is no more. The actor who played him, Chris Varez (I never knew that name before) has died at the age of 69. Aloha, Big Kahuna! I have no idea why I thought you were important but I did for a while there. And I certainly think it's sad to see another element of my teenage years get old enough to go.

My pal Jim Brochu is in New York these days, racking up unanimous raves for his one-man off-Broadway production, Zero Hour. In it, Jim transforms himself miraculously into the late Zero Mostel and enables us to spend some time with this most fascinating of men. He discusses his career, being Jewish, being Tevye, being blacklisted…all sorts of topics.

The play is currently at the Gotham's Theater at St. Clement's, where it's in a limited engagement that must end on January 31. But if you don't get there by then, don't panic. It's just been announced it will reopen at the DR2 Theater there on February 24 for an open-ended run. We are happy for our friend Jim, even though this means we won't see much of him back here for a long time.

On Conan O'Brien's last show, guest Tom Hanks was played on with the Beatles song, "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid" — a reference, of course, to Hanks' wife, Rita Wilson. This, by the way, is the same song that Paul Shaffer usually uses to play Mr. Hanks on when he comes on to converse with D. Letterman.

It has made the rounds of the Internet — and even been reported in articles like this one — that this was a departing act of sabotage by the O'Brien gang. To play that song, they reported, costs a fee of half a million dollars. ?uestlove, the bandleader on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, said as much in a widely-quoted Twitter posting.

This is not so. NBC will not pay a half-mil to Sony (which controls the Beatles catalog) for the use of that song, just as CBS pays no such fee when Mr. Shaffer plays it. The amount will be modest…a few bucks, nothing NBC doesn't expect.

I'm kinda stunned people believe that Conan O'Brien, after just asking America to donate to help the poor citizens of Haiti, would turn around and toss a half-million bucks away for what wouldn't even be much of a joke. Moral of the story: Never listen to a man whose name starts with a punctuation mark.

Back in this posting, I introduced some of you to the joys of a comedian of long ago, a gent named Charley Chase. He was a very funny person and he made very funny short films which are rarely seen these days.

Some of his rarest were the talkies he made for Columbia Pictures from 1937 through 1940. He did a lot of directing for Columbia (mostly of The Three Stooges) but he also starred in some films that languish in the Sony/Columbia vaults. They think there's no market for these pictures and so they plan no DVD, no release of any kind. Chase fan Yair Solan thinks otherwise and has set up this online petition, urging Columbia to release these wonderful comedies. If you have a moment, please go sign it. I don't think petitions to end the war or influence our government do any good whatsoever but we can (perhaps) make a difference over something like this. At least, it won't hurt to have the relevant folks at Sony see that thousands of people out here want to see Charley's Columbia films out on DVD.

To learn more about Charley Chase, go to Yair's site. Do not (I repeat:) do not Google Charley's name as its been seized by a porn actress and you'll only get pictures of her.

In the meantime and fortunately: There's a wonderful 4-disk set out that includes copies of many fine silent Chase comedies. We recommend it and him highly. Here's an Amazon link to order.

Dick Cavett recalls an encounter with John Wayne.

Here's a long profile of John Mackey, the co-founder and CEO of the Whole Foods Market chain. It's nice to hear Mackey is conflicted about his stores because so am I, though for different reasons. I frequent one and generally find things overpriced and with a high rate of disappointment. What's good at the one near me is real good (mostly produce and what's in the meat and seafood counters) but there's an awful lot that looks good and turns out to be not that wonderful once you get it home. I kinda like the idea of the place more than the execution, I guess.

In the movie of Mary Poppins, Dick Van Dyke played two roles — Bert, the Chimney Sweep with the rotten British accent…and Mr. Dawes, the elderly banker.

The stage version of Mary Poppins is currently playing in New York and Los Angeles. In fact, I'm seeing the L.A. version next week. The stage version does not usually include the role of Mr. Dawes but the other night in the Los Angeles production, they added in a new scene — probably for one night only — which featured the aged bank president. And you'll never guess who they got to play him!

Thanks to Shelly Goldstein (who's seeing the show on Tuesday) for the info.