From a 1976 episode of The Muppet Show, Dr. Teeth (Jim Henson) sings a song co-written by Stan Freberg…
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Recommended Reading
Fred Kaplan on the big problem with Afghanistan. What it is, Fred sez, is that it isn't just about Afghanistan.
Building Blocks
While the battle over the deliberately-misnamed "Ground Zero Mosque" rages on, another (quieter) debate is transpiring about another proposed new building in Manhattan. Developers want to build something called 15 Penn Plaza, which would be a towering skyscraper opposite Penn Station. The controversy is that it would be 1,216 feet high. A few blocks away, there's this thing called the Empire State Building, which is 1,250 feet high. Ergo, it would make for a major change in the New York skyline, rendering all scenic postcards obsolete…or something. Anyway, you can read about the debate here.
What's of special note to us is that 15 Penn Plaza would rise on the site of what is now the Hotel Pennsylvania, a venerable enterprise that for about twenty years now has looked like it was about to be demolished. I've stayed there a few times and you got the idea that if a doorknob was broken, the owners didn't want to go to the expense of fixing it because, you know, the hotel may get torn down any day. Or maybe just collapse on its own accord. The place has a lot of history, including being the site of (perhaps) more comic book conventions than any other building in the world…and certainly my first.
I have no opinion on whether that structure should come down and 15 Penn Plaza should go up…and up and up. I just wanted to mention it and add this…
The Empire State Building is not the tallest building in the world or even the country, though most folks probably think it is. (What is: The Willis Tower and the Trump International in Chicago are both taller, as are more than a dozen others worldwide.) The Empire State was the tallest in New York until the North Tower of the World Trade Center was completed, whereupon the E.S.B. fell to second place. When the W.T.C. fell to nothingness, the Empire State reclaimed the title…a pretty crummy way to become #1 but not its fault. Anyway, because of its height, that place King Kong scaled is Numero Uno in its own turf and enjoys a certain fame and stature because of it.
If you were putting up a building that was going to be 1,216 feet high, wouldn't you go the extra distance and seize the title? It would only take another 35 feet. What is that? Three more stories? How much extra could that cost? Maybe you could even do part of it with a smaller section of tower or something, the point being it's a shame to come that close to skyline dominance and fall short. I don't know the developers at all but they have to have either the healthiest egos in the world (because they feel no need to show off) or the sickest (because they so easily concede defeat). I mean, how many men look down at their own genitalia and say, "Oh, that's plenty big enough?" I mean, besides you and me?
Today's Video Link
This is a "pitch" video from back when Jim Henson and George Schlatter were trying to sell The Muppet Show to CBS. It stars a character named Leo (voiced by Henson) who'd previously appeared in projects Henson's company did like sales training films, and though it's very funny, it did not result in CBS buying the program. Neither did any other network and later, sans Schlatter, it wound up in syndication where it was a tremendous success.
Granted, this is hindsight but I don't think it's surprising that this reel failed to sell the product. The network execs to whom it was addressed already knew the credits of Mssrs. Henson and Schlatter and didn't doubt that those two, individually or collectively, could produce three minutes of funny stuff. What the suits probably wanted to know was what The Muppet Show would be: What's the format? Who'll be on it? What would a typical episode be like? This pitch told them none of that. Presumably, Henson and Schlatter submitted other material, verbal and written, that would convey all that…but this pitch just sounds like empty hype for an undefined product.
Years ago, I worked with a gentleman named Kim LeMasters who had been for a few years, the guy at CBS you pitched your show to if you wanted to sell a prime-time show to that network. He was out of that job by the time I worked with him but willing to discuss it. I asked him how often someone had walked in, pitched him something and he knew on the spot he wanted to buy it. He said it had happened twice. He'd purchased many shows but only two had been first-round knockouts.
One was when Barry Kemp walked in with Newhart — the series set at the inn in Vermont. Kim said, appoximately, "He had Bob Newhart and he had the perfect format with everything all worked-out." The other show was Magnum, P.I. and I'm not sure if Tom Selleck was attached at that point but Kim said the pitch was very complete with all the regular characters clearly defined and a good handle on the kind of stories that would be done. Obviously, there was also a lot of confidence in those who'd be producing and writing…but one of the things that had impressed Kim was a lack of hard sell. The pitchers had not come in and said, "This is going to be a huge hit." Almost everyone says that and if you hear pitches all day, as network execs do, you tend to get sick of that and to just tune it out.
I suspect Henson and Schlatter intended the following as a parody of the kind of thing they knew their target audience (i.e., the CBS brass) heard ad nauseam. But maybe it didn't come off that way. Fortunately, the idea refused to die, moving way past material like this…
Edward Kean, R.I.P.
Edward Kean, the writer behind the legendary TV show Howdy Doody, has died at the age of 85.
Mr. Kean made an amazing contribution to early television, almost single-handedly writing the popular series (including authoring many of its songs) and doing it on a daily basis. This obit will tell you all about his life but I wanted to append that Kean scripted many of the Howdy Doody comic books, as well as other kinds of Howdy Doody books for Western Publishing. In the late fifties, after Kean made the transition from Doody-writing to stockbrokering, he occasionally wrote for Western's New York office — more kids' books of a non-Doody bent, along with intermittent comics. They were the least of his accomplishments but they should be mentioned.
Sergio on the TeeVee
The episode of Futurama which airs this Thursday evening features a story about a comic book convention and among the guests is my amigo, Sergio Aragonés. He no longer has a body or (worse) his chin but the rest of him is reasonably intact, including his voice…which Sergio himself provided. I hope this appearance doesn't cause him to get a swelled head because, apparently, that will soon be all that remains of him.
Today's Video Link
William F. Buckley hosted the TV interview show Firing Line for 33 years of often-pretentious speech and pontification. He sounded eloquent, at least to those easily impressed by excessive syllables, but if you listened hard enough and could figure out what he was saying, it always struck me as shallow and selfish. There was this odd subtext that the world should be run by smart (by his measure) and wealthy people and that the poor and stupid should just do everyone a favor and comply or, better still, disappear. That's an exaggeration on my part but, at times, not a huge one. He was also darn good at over-intellectualizing topics to the point of missing the entire point. The first few minutes of a 1967 interview with Groucho Marx, which is our video embed below, demonstrates this.
I remember one time on his show Buckley really lost whatever remaining respect I had for him. It was a discussion about capital punishment…and I must admit I've never fully understood the Conservative point-of-view on the topic. It seems to be that though the government is always inept and that it should have as little control of our lives as possible…we can trust and even encourage it to execute people. That is, as long as it executes the people "we" (i.e., the upper class) know should be executed. In one discussion that amazed me, Buckley said he wasn't concerned about innocent people being put to death. We just needed to make sure we had smart jurors because, after all, any intelligent person could hear a case — or even just read the newspaper accounts of a trial — and know for certain who was guilty.
Mr. Buckley lived well into the time when efforts like the Innocence Project were using DNA to free (to date) 258 people from prison, many from convictions for First Degree Murder. To my knowledge, he never commented on this.
The Groucho excerpt — which I'll warn you ends abruptly — is from a new series of manufactured-on-demand DVDs that have been issued of Firing Line episodes. It's one per DVD for ten bucks and you can order the one with Groucho or ones with Ronald Reagan or Norman Mailer or Muhammad Ali or Hugh Hefner or dozens of others. I may get around to ordering the one with David Merrick. Here's a few minutes with Dr. Hackenbush looking like he's not entirely sure why he agreed to appear…
Recommended Reading
Dick Cavett weighs in on the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. By now, this whole thing seems to me to have devolved into one of those issues where both sides want to win because both sides want to win.
Today's Great Money-Making Idea
Here's how someone could make a decent amount of cash. They take the time and energy to learn the ins and outs of all the different phone company plans, especially the cell phone rates. Then they charge some bewildered person — like, say, me — $25 to look over our recent bills and to have a phone conversation where they tell us if we have the right rate plan and if not, what to switch to. Maybe for $35, they teach us how to truly understand the bills we're paying and they do it slowly and in a way that doesn't presume we know anything. But even if we only went for the first option, I bet most of us would save more than the $25 and we'd all save time trying to understand that which was designed to not be understood.
From the E-Mailbag…
My longtime (40+ years) friend Bruce Simon read what I wrote about the last TV series hosted by Skipper Frank, my fave local kids' show host. Bruce sent me this…
I remember Skipper Frank's last series of live remote shows very well. In the Summer of 1963, I believe, every morning the Skipper would be somewhere else with the KTLA remote truck and there would be a contest to see who could figure out where he was. One morning, I was happy to see the Skipper at Rancho Park in West Los Angeles, halfway between our childhood homes. I hopped on my bike to hop over there and by god there he was, working in front of a station wagon with a painted plywood backdrop attached to the side of it that was hinged to open up.
Just out of camera range was the KTLA remote truck with its tall microwave tower. From inside the truck, you could hear the live feed of the show and the Skipper's theme for this series, "Good Morning" from Singin' in the Rain. I stood there in rapt attention with the other kids who had figured out the location and was pleased that, after the show, Skipper Frank was so friendly and talked to us all and answered questions as he packed Ziggy into his carrying case and loaded his props and plywood backdrop into the station wagon. Not the classiest end to a memorable career at KTLA, but Skipper Frank was, as was Tom Hatten, Jimmy Weldon, Engineer Bill and all the other kids hosts I've been privileged to meet, a real gentleman and class act. That's why even 50 years later, we remember them with such fondness!
I remember that show the same way except that I think it was a few years later. The fascinating thing about it was how little there was to it. It was just Skipper Frank Herman standing in front of a cheap backdrop ad-libbing for much of an hour every morning, introducing a few scratchy cartoons. He didn't have a script or a sidekick or a budget. He was just using whatever was around…his old magic act, his old dummy. If kids showed up on the location (as Bruce did) he sometimes put them on camera for a little chat, but really he just went out there and winged an hour every day. I wonder how many entertainers today could do that.
In the sixties, the kids' show hosts pretty much went away, at least in Los Angeles. There were a number of reasons having to do with parents' groups objecting to such hosts doing commercials and intermingling them with entertainment…but I always thought the main reason was just that local programming stopped being cost-efficient. It wasn't just the kids' show hosts that disappeared. So did the horror movie hosts. So did the afternoon movie hosts. So did most locally-produced talk shows, and most local news teams were pared down.
There was never a lot of money for the local hosts of childrens' programming. The Skipper Franks of the world were paid very little and some couldn't have afforded to even do the job but for the extra loot they made by doing personal appearances on the weekend. Still, the job seemed to attract folks who did it well. As much as young viewers today may love Spongebob or Dora or any of them, I don't think they bond with cartoon characters the way they connect with a real person who just looks into the camera and talks to them as a human being.
Back in the Booth
It was just announced that contrary to some expectations, Vin Scully will return for another year of calling the Dodgers games. That will make 62 years of doing that.
Remember that if anyone ever tells your résumé is kinda light on credits. If Vinnie were to clear all the unimportant stuff off his, it would come down to just one job since 1950.
BlagoCon I
Yesterday at the Wizard World comic convention in Chicago, you had your choice of getting an autograph from William Shatner, Adam West or Rod Blagojevich. Which one starred in the greatest work of fantasy?
Today's Video Link
Speaking, as I was a post or two ago here about being late: Some time ago here, I announced I'd soon be posting some new facts about the much-argued running times of the various cuts of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. That piece is still coming…when, I dunno. In the meantime, my pal Paul Scrabo has dug this up. It's a 1988 interview with the film's director, Stanley Kramer, discussing the 25th anniversary of the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Mad World was the first movie to play that theater and the place was in some ways built for it. Here's more about its history…
Additional Information
Hey, remember in yesterday's video link, I said I thought the last clip in the montage looked phony to me? Well, Robert Rose sent me an e-mail to note that the Snopes people not only thought so but had identified the source, which was a commercial for the 2008 Chevy Malibu. Thanks, Robert.
The Late, Late Show
My post here a week or so ago about meeting deadlines evoked a great deal of response…and a few curious ones. I received one vituperative message from a comic book writer I barely know who thought (a) I was lecturing him in particular and (b) I was advising all to "Hand in crap if you have to but meet the deadline." I dunno where he got any of that. He also seemed to think I was a devout reader, and therefore admirer or his work. Wrong again. I don't think I've ever read anything the guy's written…and if he writes like he reads, I'm not missing much.
I also got an odd message from someone who thought I was just echoing what publishers and editors and producers always tell writers because it serves the interests of Management. Well, yes, it probably does serve their interests when the work is in on time. The point I was trying to make is that it serves the writer's interests, as well. If you wish to get offered more opportunities — and if you wish to have more clout and control on the projects you do undertake — get the damned pages in on time. If you're not going to do it for those who pay you or collaborate with you, do it for your own benefit…because there's plenty.
The wondrous Colleen Doran wasn't wild about my comparison between a writer (or artist) meeting deadlines and Sir Laurence Olivier always being ready to go on stage when the curtain goes up. She wrote, "It is one thing to show up and perform in a play that runs two hours. It is another thing to draw the cast of thousands the writer gave you to draw in the same time frame as a pinup." She's right to some extent and I should have noted that meeting deadlines may also involve saying, of some assignment, "Sorry…it's not humanly possible for me to get that piece of work done in the allotted time." Of course, the time to say that is before you agree to do it in the allotted time.
One of the things I've learned about time management, not just in work but in life, is that it's important to develop a realistic sense of how long things take, especially if you back-time. Back-timing (and this can be dangerous) means that you decide you can write the script, which is due on the 10th, in two days…and then you put indulgences or other, less time-sensitive tasks ahead of it and don't start 'til the 8th. Even if you can probably write it in two days, it can be lethal to count on that. What if it does take longer? Or what if your power's out for much of those two days or a relative dies or you get the flu? I used to have this colorful notion that I did my best work under pressure; that it might even result in a better script if I trapped myself into having to write it at the last minute. It wasn't always fatal but it often screwed up my life to make myself a prisoner of a deadline.
The only person I ever knew who seemed good at back-timing his life was Dick Clark. I worked for him (and as a producer, even hired him once) back in the eighties. If you said to Dick, "We need you on the set, ready to shoot at Noon," Dick would say — and this is not me exaggerating for effect — "Okay, that means I'll need to hit wardrobe at 11:53, which means I'll need to be at hair and makeup at 11:41, which means I'll have to get to the studio at 11:35, so I'll leave Malibu at 11:06." And somehow, don't ask me how, he'd leave his home at Malibu at 11:06 and walk onto the set at 11:59, ready to shoot.
He was never late. Traffic didn't stop him. Mechanical failure didn't stop him. One year, he wanted to me to fly back to New York with him to assist with the live broadcast from Times Square on New Year's Eve. I wound up not doing it but I saw the itinerary and it was scary, especially when you considered that there was no backup plan if he wasn't there on time. The rest of the show was already pretaped, with its hosts saying, "Let's cut to our pal Dick Clark in Times Square." Then they left a hole which had to be filled. (When that was taped, it was October…and Dick, in his capacity as producer, was standing near the camera in that studio.)
You'd think that, since he absolutely had to be there at the Midnight Hour and since Times Square and the surrounding streets can get a wee bit congested the last day of the year — to say nothing of the likelihood of snow — he'd go to New York a few days early and check into a hotel, preferably the one with the rooftop from which he'd be broadcasting to ring in the new. Maybe he did that some years but the year he asked me to go, we would have been flying back at the last possible minute with only a little pad in the schedule for contingencies. And somehow, we would have made it because he was Dick Clark.
Alas, none of us is Dick Clark. (And even more alas is that these days, Dick Clark isn't Dick Clark.) We mortals, mere as we are, must deal with the laws of space, time and physics. We can't plan our lives in that manner…as I learned the hard way when being around Dick for a time caused me to try. There are times when for reasons beyond my control, I do have to get something written at the last minute. But to the extent I can, I really (really, really) try not to get into that situation. It harms me and it can also harm the work.
I always remember a story a writer friend told me. For a brief time, he dated a stunning young lady who had once folded-out in the center of Playboy. The first date ended with a polite kiss. The second ended with a less polite kiss. The third ended with serious necking and he was pretty sure the fourth and all subsequent ones would climax with climax. Another alas: There was no fourth date. She was called to Europe for a modelling assignment and then she got involved with someone else and he got involved with someone else and…well, that was it.
A few years later, he was no longer involved with that someone else or with anyone. He was writing a cartoon show and had blown the last few deadlines. He was given a last chance and basically told that if this one wasn't in on time, he could forget about ever writing this show — or any show — ever again. The studio was going to send a messenger to his home Friday evening at 6 PM. If he did not hand that messenger a completed script, the career was over. It would be time to go apply for a job putting Jack Sauce on Jackburgers at Jack-in-the-Box.
You probably see where this is going…
Despite all that was on the line, he put off starting work on the script so he could go to dinner with friends, put it off so he could work on the boat he owned (and would lose if the assignment wasn't in), put it off for umpteen reasons. He finally buckled down on Thursday evening and worked all through the night.
By Noon the next day, he had it about two-thirds written and figured that he would just barely finish by the time the messenger showed at six. That was when the phone rang.
You guessed it. It was Miss April — or whatever month she was — calling from a hotel out by the airport. She described to my friend what little she was wearing and announced, "I have five hours before I have to leave for a year-long job in Japan. I've been thinking about you and about that date we never had. And if you can get out here right away…"
I'll spare you the graphic details of the offering. I'll even spare you the description of my friend weeping as he told me the tale, lower lip all atremble. The story had a double-sad ending because not only did he have to say no to the young lady but he didn't get the script done by 6. And though his career didn't exactly end, employment at that studio did.
I'll probably write more on this topic in the next week or so. I want to emphasize how being late not only destroys careers, it can also injure the work. Right now though, I have to get back to work on a script. It's not due for a while and even though I won't be getting any offers like my friend received, I don't want to put it off until the deadline's looming. After all, I'm not Dick Clark.