Monthly Archives: January 2011

According to this story, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has received over $680,000 over the years from a Conservative group…but when Justice Thomas has filled out his disclosure forms, under "Spousal Income," he writes, "None."

I don't know how big an ethical breach this is. But I do know that if it came out that Justice Breyer had a wife getting that kind of money from a Liberal group and not disclosing it, we'd have already heard demands for his resignation and talk of impeachment.

This is the kind of thing I was talking about. Here's a newspaper clipping about Jack LaLanne swimming from Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco while handcuffed and pulling a thousand-pound boat. Of course, he was a much younger man at the time. He was 60. Guess what I'm not going to do on my 60th birthday.

Jacob Heilbrunn says that Ronald Reagan would not align himself today with those who constantly invoke his name as their role model. Reagan has stopped being an actual past president for some and has become this mythological creature formed and shaped by current imaginations.

As has been discussed here, the two unions that represent actors in Hollywood — the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild — darn near committed seppuku in the last contract negotiations by going it apart. There are many stories as to why this happened but it almost doesn't matter. They divided, they conquered themselves and for a time there, it looked like they might never bargain together again, let alone merge as has been repeatedly proposed.

Wonder of wonders, much has changed. They recently concluded joint bargaining…not a great deal but better than might have resulted had they gone it apart again. And now they're about to commence talks about how to become one big, happy union. Well, let me take that back. Neither is a big, happy union on their own and not just because they're splitting the job of representing actors. No performers' union is ever going to be that happy. There are always too many members who aren't working and who take their lack of fame 'n' fortune out on their guild. Every time I think that's fatally true of the Writers Guild, I see something that's going on with the actors and I think hey, maybe we don't have it so bad. But a joint union of SAG and AFTRA should be a very good thing. I hope it happens.

Turner Classic Movies continues with its Hal Roach Festival this week…and my apologies for not briefing you on what was on last week. (If you knew what was occupying me, you'd forgive.) Tuesday, they run two of the best Laurel and Hardy features. At 8 PM, it's Sons of the Desert. That's the one where the boys fib to their wives so they can go attend a convention and there isn't a dull or unfunny minute in the entire movie. At 4:30 AM Wednesday morn (these are all Eastern times), it's Way Out West, which is the one where they have to deliver a deed and on the way, they stop and do that famous dance that everyone likes to use in music videos. Laurel and Hardy buffs may argue (and do) as to which of these films is better but surely both are in The Boys' Top Three.

Later on Wednesday morn, at 7:30 AM, they're running Pick a Star, which is not really a Laurel and Hardy film but they have a nice, long extended cameo in it. That and the peek the film affords to movie-making in the thirties are reason enough to watch/TiVo it. Then at 5:30 PM on Wednesday, it's Bonnie Scotland, which is really a Laurel and Hardy film…not one of the Top Three in my book but easily in the Top Ten. Stan and Ollie make a wrong turn in life and wind up stationed in India as part of the British Army…yet another reason England lost the empire.

Other films of interest: At 1:45 AM Wednesday, TCM is running Zenobia, which is a film Mr. Hardy made in 1939 without Mr. Laurel. How this happened is a long story that I recount here. This is not a great movie but there's great delight in watching Hardy's every move and gesture, as well as his brief interplay with co-star Harry Langdon.

At 9:15 PM on Tuesday, we get General Spanky, the one Our Gang feature. Roach was seeing a drop in the income from making short comedies by 1936 and he decided to see if he could migrate his star attractions into longer movies. One of his other stars, a wonderful comedian named Charley Chase, made a feature-length comedy called Neighborhood House that year and Roach deemed it unfit to go into the marketplace. Instead of releasing the film, he released Charley Chase…and Neighorhood House was cut down to a two-reeler. General Spanky was released as a feature but didn't do well, perhaps because it took the kids out of their usual world and stuck them in a Civil War setting. Audiences of the day didn't much like it and Roach gave up the idea of any more Our Gang features. It's a pleasant film but not a classic.

There are other Roach classics on Tuesday and Wednesday, including all the Topper films. Consult their website over there for info.

Lastly, this has nothing to do with Hal Roach…or good movies, for that matter. But tomorrow, TCM is running Dondi at 7:45 in the morning. This is the 1961 feature starring David Janssen and Patti Page, based on the comic strip of the same name. In the second part of this interview I conducted, the man who drew that comic strip — Irwin Hasen — called it "the worst movie ever made." It's not that but it's close.

Do nothing for two minutes. I did it but it wasn't easy.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, currently running on Broadway, is still in previews and will be until (they claim) March 15. How many other plays ran a long time under the mantle of "previews" before opening? Not many. This article will tell you about one that Jackie Mason attempted as both star and co-author back in 1969. It ran 97 previews before it finally opened and critics gave it the finger. Thanks to Bruce Reznick for calling this to my attention.

I sense some muted glee on Conservative websites about the abrupt end of Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC. There is, of course, the hooting and huzzahs that come when any enemy suffers a loss…but there's also the underlying worry that it's unlikely Olbermann is going to disappear from this planet and not resurface somewhere, perhaps where he will do them more harm. On MSNBC, his audience had settled down to a bit more than a million viewers per night on his initial broadcasts, a little more than half that on the first of his two nightly rebroadcasts and around 300,000 on his second rebroadcast. On a good night, his combined viewership might hit around two million people…an inarguable fact from the actual ratings books but one fiercely denied anyway by his detractors. The leading anti-Olbermann website, while hammering him for any statement that could possibly be twisted into an inaccuracy, routinely has said his audience could be measured "in the tens of thousands." Newsflash to all who aspire to work in TV, even on basic cable: You do not get repeated renewals of a contract that pays you up to $7 million a year if your audience can be measured "in the tens of thousands."

Mr. Olbermann has made no statement about why it's over or where he's going. The prevailing theory out there today seems to be that he anticipated that with the pending takeover of MSNBC by Comcast, things would be changing around him and so formulated a list of demands. He went to them, the rumor is, and said in effect, "Guarantee me these or let's settle my contract now" and they opted for the latter. I don't think anyone expects that MSNBC will continue its block of left-oriented political programming for long. Even if they want to stay that course, yanking Olbermann outta there will probably cause the whole thing to crumble like a big game of Jenga. This all leads to the speculation that some other network — or maybe a group that wants to start one — will see an opportunity to launch a full-press Liberal News Network with Olbermann as its anchor.

MSNBC has sometimes been called the left-wing version of Fox News but to the extent that's true, it's been a tepid mirroring. So many key hours are given over to non-political programming, much of it with an odd fixation on prisons. Their key morning show gives us three hours of programming toplined not by unabashed partisans like on Fox but by a former Republican Congressman who hovers slightly right of center. Someone has to be mulling the notion of really launching a network that would skew as much to the left as Fox News does to the right. I dunno if the advertising revenues would be there…though Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have never had any trouble in that area. The problem is that it could take years to develop enough on-air talent and to build an identity…and if it's a brand-new network, to get enough cable companies to agree to carry it. Starting something like that takes a lotta time and a lotta money.

Air America, the failed attempt at a Liberal Talk Radio Network, never had enough of either…never had enough clearances, never had many shows that even hardcore Liberals wanted to follow. A friend of mine who auditioned unsuccessfully for a slot there said, "The trouble is that Rush Limbaugh over the years learned how to do Conservative Talk Radio, creatively and financially, and set up a model for others to follow. Liberals have no such model and no one who, politics aside, is as compelling a talker." (The flip side of that may be that Conservative TV programmers would love to cobble up a right-wing version of The Daily Show but they have no right-wing model comparable to Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.)

Olbermann's settlement with MSNBC reportedly involves a waiting period that will keep him off the air for a period of time. It may, like Conan O'Brien's settlement with NBC, also prevent him from doing interviews or lashing out at his former employers. As of this moment, he has not even Twittered, "Thanks to all for the good wishes" or anything of the sort. Since we don't know how long that exile might be or what other offers he may already have been exploring, it's pointless to speculate on what will happen. Somehow though, I don't think he's going to be going back to ESPN and the wild 'n' wacky world of sports.

Number sixteen in a series…

Greg Sargent parses the polling and shows that the notion of repealing the Affordable Health Care Act isn't as popular as some would make it out to be.

Author Gore Vidal is attempting to sell his Hollywood Hills home for $3.49 million dollars. That may seem like a lot of money but apparently it comes with him included.

Jay Bookman reminds us that no matter what the Republicans may now claim, the recession and the massive unemployment we've been experiencing in this country were not caused by government spending.