Monthly Archives: December 2010

Monday night, an actor (some reports call him a stuntman) was seriously injured during the performance of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark on Broadway. Some reports say he fell 8-10 feet. Others give other numbers and the highest I've seen is 26. Whatever it was, it was nasty. I said here that the New York State Department of Labor and Actors' Equity would now have to get involved and sure enough, Tuesday morning they both did. This website seems to have the most up-to-date info.

No performance was scheduled for Tuesday evening. The matinee today was cancelled and I gather that for a brief time this morn, there seemed to be some concern or belief around that one or both of those agencies would insist that all performances be suspended…but it's all scheduled to resume tomorrow evening.

A lot of folks have to be asking themselves the musical question, "What happens if there's another accident?" The union has to balance two conflicting interests. On the one hand, they want to make sure that their members are protected; that producers understand that they must take every safety precaution or their show could be shut down. On the other hand, if they close down the show, they put a lot of actors out of work…and unions aren't supposed to cost their members work. There are also statements all over the web regarding OSHA and the New York State Department of Labor, both of which have to be pondering and debating what they'll do if more people get hurt.

But you know who we're not hearing a word from or about? The entity which may ultimately have the final say on whether this show runs, closes, cuts back on stunts, whatever. It's the insurance company…and there may be more than one involved. A Broadway show is insured in case Acts of God or health issues impact its earning power or even force it to close, and there's also liability insurance for anyone who is injured. You may recall that a key point of the movie All That Jazz was that Roy Scheider's character, who was directing a Broadway show, had a heart attack…and the producers of his show learned that because of the insurance money, they might show a profit by closing the production.

I'm not saying the Spider-Man musical might close for that reason. Ultimately, that will come down to how much it's taking in and how much it's putting out. But factored into that math now is what insurance is costing and what the insurance firm is willing to cover. A friend of mine who was once directing a movie was told by the insurers that if he insisted on filming a certain scene they deemed dangerous, his insurance would be cancelled…so he didn't (couldn't) film the scene. The alternative was that they could bring in another firm which would charge ten times as much. Risking lives can get expensive.

They're telling me that Season #2 of The Garfield Show will begin airing in the U.S. on Cartoon Network around the end of February or the beginning of March. The exception to this is that since the first episode of the season is a half-hour Christmas story, they're running it now. It airs once or twice a day every day through Christmas Day…and then I'm not sure it will be broadcast much (if at all) until next December. So if you want to catch it, catch it now. It has a nice script by Jim Davis and the voice actors and animators do very fine jobs. I know this is not true of some of you but I've started to get used to Garfield in CGI.

Fred Kaplan on how Obama appears to be winning a decent victory on the New START treaty.

Someone has written an interesting, even funny article about popular misconceptions that many Americans have about Islam. And amazingly, it's on the website of Cracked Magazine. Of all places.

Apart from the fact that the tiny font is as tough to read as some of his songs are to sing, Stephen Sondheim's new book Finishing the Hat is a treasure…maybe, for those interested in the writing of lyrics, the most important book ever published…at least until the next volume emerges. You can order a copy here but that's not what this post is about.

BBC Radio, which does so many things that no radio in this country ever does, is running a series of 15-minute segments in which Mr. Sondheim reads and discusses excerpts from said book. You can listen (and if you're as crafty as some of us, download) from this page. Do not delay because each installment is only available online for a limited time. And if you're grateful for this information, thank Greg Ehrbar, who is usually the first person to tell me about something like this.

An actor was injured during Monday night's performance of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. That's either the fourth or fifth injury associated with this show…enough that folks at the New York State Department of Labor and at Actors' Equity have to be talking about stepping in. And there's probably some department somewhere that's concerned about, say, an actor falling on an audience member.

Back when Camelot was in out-of-town tryouts, they had a series of health problems. The first Costume Designer died unexpectedly. The author had a nervous collapse. The director had a heart attack. People began to say, "Camelot isn't a musical. It's a medical."

Joshua Green recalls a time when John McCain seemed so eager to "reach across the aisle" and work with Democrats that some thought he might become one.

In our effort to understand the change in this man, I wonder if some of us aren't overthinking the matter. Maybe it's as simple as what another Josh — Josh Marshall — tweeted today: "Global Theory That Explains Everything: Losing the 2008 election has made John McCain a very, very, very angry man."

Christopher Beam discusses Jon Stewart's efforts to resuscitate the bill to pay health costs for sick 9/11 Responders. It looks now like the bill's going to get passed before the Lame Duck Congress flies home. Stewart doesn't deserve all the credit but he seems to deserve a lot for a guy who claims he just criticizes from the sidelines and doesn't play any of the games.

Assuming this passes, by the way, that'll have been a helluva Lame Duck Congress: This, the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the tax deal, the thing about food safety…and it looks like the START treaty's going to get through, as well. Not bad for the home of Partisan Gridlock. Then again, if they nuke Net Neutrality as it looks like they're going to do tomorrow, we'll be wishing they'd done less.

This is not the greatest photo in the world but it will have to do. When Leslie Nielsen left us recently, I wrote here about how he used to use (and pass out crates of) a little novelty item called…well, the punctuation is arguable. The one he gave me, which is lost somewhere in this house, said "Handi-Gas" on it. I've also seen it spelled "Han-D-Gas" and "Hand-i-Gas" and there are other brands with other names. A current version which I mentioned here is called the Pooter Tooter.

All of them embrace the same basic scientific principle…and if Thomas Alva Edison didn't come up with this, he should be ashamed of himself. Imagine wasting all that time inventing the light bulb when he could have been the Father of the Hand-Held Fart Sound Simulator. The idea is that you conceal the little rubber cylinder in your hand and then when you're chatting with someone or getting into an elevator, you use it to make a little fart sound and you jerk your body as if the sound came from your very own orifice and that's supposed to be funny. To some people, I guess it is. It certainly was to Mr. Nielsen, who did it everywhere he went, up to and including the upper right hand box on The Hollywood Squares.

And yes, I know there are now battery-powered digital versions of this apparatus. How friggin' lazy can you get?

Anyway, I searched for my Handi-Gas (or whatever it was called) so I could take a photo of it and slap it up here. When I couldn't find it, I searched the 'net with similar results. So I asked my pal Bob Logan, who was with me when Leslie presented me with mine and who was a previous recipient, if he could take a picture of his. There it is and that's his hand. Bob is a fine producer-director, currently working on a TV project with Paul Rodriguez which I'll tell you about one of these days here, and he directed Leslie Nielsen in a funny movie called Repossessed, which is well worth Netflixing. When Bob and I have lunch in a restaurant to which I might wish to return, I make him leave the fart machine in the car.