Monthly Archives: September 2010

The "Mosque at Ground Zero" (i.e., the Community Center a couple blocks away) is one 9/11-related building controversy in New York. Another is what, if anything, will someday be built on the site where the World Trade Center once stood. I've been following both discussions and at the risk of seeming tasteless or cowardly, I'll bring up one rarely-discussed aspect of the latter. If you were the CEO of some big company looking for office space, would you lease it in a new World Trade Center? I mean, if we have this oft-expressed reason to rebuild there — to show terrorists they can't intimdate us — don't the terrorists have as much reason to attack it again in some way? I'm not saying they could bring it down again or that another attack would necessarily wreak comparable amounts of death and destruction…but if you were that CEO, would you want the responsibility and guilt if you moved in there and something did happen?

This keeps popping into my brain when I read about plans because one of my most vivid memories of 9/11 is watching some gentleman — and he was obviously a very gentle man — sobbing uncontrollably on the street outside the rubble. He was the boss at some company housed in one of the towers and almost every employee had been killed. He would have been too if he'd come to work earlier that day and he almost wished he had. The official body count of 9/11 didn't begin to itemize all the human tragedy of that day. That boss was one of many who were devastated by the planes flying into the buildings. I felt so sorry for that poor man, punishing himself like that when he did nothing wrong.

Leaving aside matters of economic practicality, which I'll get to in a moment, I'd like to see the World Trade Center rebuilt — bigger, bolder, more defiant than before. It would say something about the American spirit and determination. But I also think it would say something like, "We double-dog dare ya to come try something with this one, ragheads!" Even if I were courageous enough to place myself into that building, I don't think I'd say to my hypothetical employees, "Hey, we're all moving into the new World Trade Center. I know it may make some of you uneasy and I know your family may worry about you going to work each day there…but if you want to keep your job, that's where you're going to have to go." And if, God forbid, even one employee or office visitor did get hurt in even one terrorist attempt…well, I wouldn't want that guilt. I'd certainly feel more responsible than that crying gent whose entire staff perished on 9/11.

This is almost never mentioned in all the discussions I've read about how and what to build there. Would enough companies lease space in a new WTC that the enterprise wouldn't be a colossal failure? And if it were, wouldn't that at least partially nullify the "We'll show those $@#&* terrorists they can't harm us" reason for erecting anew? After a big air crash, there are always a lot of people who give up flying, if not forever then for quite a while. How many people might simply balk at setting foot in World Trade Center II?

Add to all this the apparent fact that even without that hanging over it, a new and bigger WTC might not make monetary sense. Joe Nocera cautiously and respectfully makes the argument that the proposed Freedom Tower (aka 1 World Trade Center) would be a bad place to rent office space just because of the price per square foot. Like most of you probably, when they knocked it down, my immediate reaction was, "Well then, we'll put it back up!" But of course, that's easy for me to say. I don't have to pay to put it back up, nor am I a prospective tenant. Maybe we oughta put the legendary American ingenuity to work and think of something else that would be appropriate to build there.

Here are two questions I get from time to time, usually in tandem. Jen Carter is the latest to ask…

Have you ever had any jobs other than writing? And at what age did you decide that's what you wanted to do with your life?

Taking the last part first: As far back as I can recall — and I can recall pretty far back — I figured I'd wind up doing something like what I do for a living. Never wanted to be a fireman or a movie star or president or shortstop. Friends my age were always flitting from one dream to another, changing future careers more often than they changed their socks. My big indecisiveness was over what I'd write: Was it going to be comic books? Non-comic books? Cartoons? Magazine articles? Situation comedies? Screenplays? As it turned out, I've gotten to write all those things, often at the same time. Not only that, I've worked and continue to work with a lot of the specific characters and human beings who'd starred in those aspirations. In 1958, I was thinking how neat it would be to work with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera on Yogi Bear. In 1982, I was writing a Yogi Bear special for the studio, working with (and occasionally arguing with) Bill and Joe. I'm still processing a lot of time warps like that.

I guess I was around six or seven when I settled on my life's work…not that I couldn't or wouldn't have changed if some better alternative had presented itself. No viable option ever did and the following is not meant as a joke or faux humility. I really never found anything else I thought I could do. When they gave me those tests they gave kids then to determine the jobs for which you might have a smidgen of aptitude, I could just sit there and check them off: "Can't do that…can't do that…can't do that…" Tomorrow, if I had to make my living via manual labor or anything involving math or even serving the public directly, I'd wind up bunking with that homeless guy who sleeps behind the Jack-in-the-Box near me.

I've never believed that you can be anything if you put your mind to it. Maybe it works that way in your world…and if so, great. In my world, people have limitations and the trick is to recognize yours, eliminate the impossible and find something you like within what's left. When I speak to classes of wanna-be writers or actors, I always tell them the following; that the key to success in those areas is, I think, to locate that sweet spot between Idealism and Pragmatism. This is probably true to some extent in every field but those are the only two I know well enough to comment upon. I certainly have a nice cache of anecdotes about acquaintances who've failed, professionally and personally, because they were all Idealism and no Pragmatism or all Pragmatism and no Idealism.

Skip these last two paragraphs if you're the kind of person who gets annoyed to hear people say how happy they are with their lives. I feel quite fortunate that I somehow manuevered into the area where I felt least incompetent…and that I knew what that was, early on. I still run into guys from high school who are trying to decide what they want to be when they grow up and it's getting late in the day. They all have the problem my father had. He never found anything that he could do that he wanted to do, so he spent his life working a job he hated. I saw what that did to him and it was just plain unhealthy. He practically came home from the office every day with black lung disease. Ultimately, he had to derive most of his happiness in life from watching that not happen to his son.

I have occasionally made money as an editor, an artist, a letterer, a producer, a teacher, a voice director or even — gasp! — a performer. My work in most of those areas has been very limited because my competence in most of those areas is very limited. In any case, I consider all of those to be adjuncts to my life as a writer. So though it may not be technically accurate, I feel like the answer to the question "Have you ever had any other jobs than writing?" is no. In fact, I often don't even feel like I've ever had a job, period. Once in a while, there's a producer or editor or network exec who can make me feel that way but the feeling, like those associations, never lasts very long.

My pal Aaron Barnhart gives us a preview of the new PBS show, Roger Ebert Presents At The Movies. This is around the eighty-thousandth attempt to replicate the success of the original Siskel/Ebert programs and I have no idea if it'll succeed, ratings-wise. But every time I see one of these shows, I have the following thought: I wonder if the folks behind them understand that what Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert did was a series that was a lot more about them than it was about films.

I don't think America has ever been that interested in watching a couple of strangers tell us their opinions of the latest flicks. For years though when Siskel and Ebert were on, folks developed an interest to watching those two guys argue. It could have been about sports or recipes or any topic if they'd been equally enthusiastic about it. No other combo of movie critics has ever matched that chemistry, even when one of them was Ebert.

Gene and Roger came to the arena as established competitors and there were times on the show when they seemed genuinely pissed at each other and eager to prove the other wrong. That made it all the more meaningful when they agreed and especially when they hit upon some common ground of passion and it seemed like, just for the moment, they really liked each other. It reminded us of all those nice moments in our own lives when we find ourselves bonding with someone who, not that long before, we regarded as an adversary. It was, in a way, a genuine Reality Show. That particular friendship, stormy as it was, mattered to us.

The hosts of the new program may be fine, articulate folks who truly know movies. I'm not saying they're unqualified. But if I were charged with casting a series like this, I don't think I'd go searching through published reviews looking for witty print reporters. I think I'd look for two guys who've been sitting around some bar for years, yelling at each other about whether Daniel Craig is a better James Bond than Timothy Dalton and if either of them is fit to carry Sean Connery's toupee.

As I mentioned, Jason Alexander and Stephanie J. Block will be starring in a short-term production of They're Playing Our Song up at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA. This is the musical by Neil Simon, Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager and I expect it to be a fine evening (or matinee, if you prefer) in the theater. It's there for sixteen performances only starting September 28 and I have a special deal for you. Order here and enter the code SONIA to get $10 off any ticket for any performance.

The matinee on Saturday, October 2 will be preceded by a special lecture/program. At Noon, I will be speaking about the history of the show and interviewing some of the people involved in the design and staging of this production. Our presentation lasts around an hour and then the show starts at 2 PM. Last time I did this, some people brought picnic lunches to eat on the UCLA Quad lawn in the hour between. I hope that wasn't the best part of the afternoon.

Fred Kaplan on the latest in Afghanistan. I'm glad he seems to understand this stuff because I sure don't.

How does The Daily Show with Jon Stewart get written and produced each day? Here's an article that will tell you much about the process which starts with finding idiocy in the news. That's the easy part.

For years, I've been going to Canter's Delicatessen here in Los Angeles. It's a place where you can get a great corned beef sandwich, terrific chicken kreplach soup and the best potato salad I've ever had. As it turns out, you can also get the inspiration for an award-winning font design. Thanks to my old pal Bruce Reznick for telling me about this. I went to high school with Bruce and he now lives way outta town. But when he's in town and we can get together, we get together at Canter's.

I should explain what's in front of Russ Heath in the photo below. It's a copy of a newly-released book on the history of the National Lampoon called Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great. Michael Gross, who was that magazine's art director (and from all accounts, design saviour) was at the dinner and he presented Russ, who often drew for the Lampoon, with a copy. Looks like a pretty good book to me and I'm getting one. If you'd like to get one, here's an Amazon link.