Monthly Archives: February 2011

Here's a profile of Tom Kane, whose voice will be heard tomorrow night announcing the Academy Awards. That's about the most prestigious gig in the field of voiceovers.

A new production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is about to open on Broadway. Here are some interesting recollections of the making of the first one.

Keith Olbermann is blogging.

The Hollywood Reporter offers a few video clips of "failed" jokes at past Oscar ceremonies, leading off with David Letterman's famed "Oprah/Uma" joke that as you'll note in the clip there, didn't totally bomb the way some remember.

A friend of mine who worked on the Academy Awards that year told me the following: Letterman actually had a longer joke planned there that would have involved going through the audience and introducing a number of stars with odd first names to one another. The problem with it was that it would have involved getting cameras positioned to get shots of those stars…and Dave only decided shortly before airtime that he wanted to insert that joke into his monologue. When the director was informed of it, he said (approximately), "We can't do it. Right after his monologue, we're presenting Best Supporting Actor [or maybe it was Best Supporting Actress] and I need my cameras placed to get shots of the nominees. We mapped this out days ago and it's too late for me to rearrange everything to get shots of nine other people just before that."

Told that what he wanted couldn't be arranged at the last second, Dave instead opted to just do the first part of the joke, which was probably a mistake. The whole thing might have been a lot funnier. In any case, so what? It was just one joke that didn't get as large a laugh as someone hoped. You hear those in every monologue and I sure don't think it was the embarrassment that some made it out to be.

Within the Academy hierarchy though, they weren't fond of Letterman as host and the Oprah/Uma joke was a symbol of the problem. The complaint was along the lines of, "Dave didn't understand or care that this wasn't supposed to be The David Letterman Show with occasional interruptions to present some silly awards. The man only knows one way to do a TV show and he kept expecting everything to be done that way." My feeling was that it was a slightly-unfair criticism. You ask Dave Letterman to host your show, you shouldn't moan when he comes in and acts like Dave Letterman. I thought he was the wrong guy for the job but he did just what they should have expected and he was more entertaining than some Oscar hosts…like, say, most of them.

For the benefit of those who've asked — and to get this list up on Wikipedia where it belongs — here's a list of the segments in each of the 26 half-hour episodes of the second season of The Garfield Show. These are already airing in many countries and start next week in the U.S. on Cartoon Network. I have no idea if they'll run them all in order (Show 33 ran back in December and may not be back for a while) or how long it'll take before every show on this list gets its first airing…but here are the titles. I am currently working on Show 54 for Season 3 and it'll be quite some time before you see that.

And I apparently really did have to post this here before it could go up on Wikipedia. I sent it to someone in an e-mail but the rules of Wikipedia do not consider an e-mail a credible source, regardless of who it came from. This site, however, is credible…to them, anyway. So here's the rundown…

• Show 27: Ticket To Riches / Gravity of the Situation
• Show 28: The Art of Being Un-Cute / Night of the Bunny Slippers
• Show 29: Blasteroid / The Big Sneeze
• Show 30: The Spy Who Fed Me / Meet Max Mouse
• Show 31: The Haunted House / Which Witch
• Show 32: Cyber Mailman / Odie For Sale
• Show 33: Home for the Holidays / A Christmas Story (2-Part Episode)
• Show 34: Planet of Poultry / Honey, I Shrunk the Pets
• Show 35: Night of the Apparatuses / The Land of Hold
• Show 36: Farm Fresh Feline / Inside Eddie Gourmand
• Show 37: With Four You Get Pizza / The Guest From Beyond
• Show 38: History of Cats / Dog Days
• Show 39: Garfield Astray / Master Chef
• Show 40: Black Cat Blues / The Bluebird of Happiness
• Show 41: Penny Henny / Pirate Gold
• Show 42: The Great Pizza Race / Love and Lasagna
• Show 43: Fido Food Feline / Mind Over Mouse
• Show 44: A Gripping Tale / Jumbo Shrimpy
• Show 45: Everything's Relative / Stealing Home
• Show 46: Cuter Than Cute / Pampered Pussycat
• Show 47: Depths of a Salesman / Detective Odie
• Show 48: Wicked Wishes / Full of Beans
• Show 49: Me, Myself, Garfield And I / The Big Sleep
• Show 50: True Colors / The Mole Express
• Show 51: Rain Or Shine / Parrot Blues
• Show 52: Unfair Weather (2-Part Episode)

This season, by the way, our voice cast consists of our four regulars (Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert and Jason Marsden) and guest players Julie Payne, Laura Summer, David L. Lander, Stan Freberg, June Foray, Grey DeLisle, Laraine Newman, April Winchell, Misty Lee, Jack Riley and Marvin Kaplan. Like I always say: Get the right cast members and a rhesus monkey could direct these things.

Nate Silver, who's pretty good at predicting elections, tries his hand at the Oscars…and I question some of his methodology. I do not believe the Academy Awards are predictable in some of the ways people think. There is a strong sense of "buzz" about them — you hear that The King's English is likely to sweep and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — and I think Silver's right that if the call is close, voters will favor a drama over a comedy. I also think there's a strong trend to vote for courage: The studio that risked making a film with a decidedly non-commercial premise…the actor who risked his image and success on an emotionally-raw and/or controversial part, etc. All that can matter.

But when Silver starts in with how they might give Best Director to David Fincher for The Social Network because otherwise that film's likely to get shut out of the major awards…well, I think that's a theory out of thin air. There's no data that voters ever think like that. In fact, there's zero data as to why they've ever voted the way they have. When Mr. Silver tells you who's going to win a Senate seat in Maryland, he has all these stats on past elections that tell him that 46.7% of all Republicans with 2.8 children won't vote for a candidate who supports gay marriage or just listens to Liza Minnelli CDs. But when it comes to predicting Best Director, Silver has almost nothing. He has no exit polls on past voting. He has no vote totals that tell him if last year's winner got 92% of the vote or 37%.

He knows who won in the past but that doesn't translate to who'll win Oscars on Sunday. In politics, you can say, "In this Congressional district, Democrats have won the last six elections" and that tells you something about how the Democrat might do in the next one. But if you know that Sandra Bullock won last year for Best Actress, what does that tell you about Nicole Kidman's chances this time? Nothing.

Silver does lean heavily on who's won the other film awards this year, especially those not bestowed by critics…and that is an indicator. But I think what happens too much is that people make up a narrative to explain the unexplainable. If Jeff Bridges wins for Best Actor, someone will decide, "This is Hollywood flexing its muscles to assert Americanism over the British invasion of The King's Speech." If Bridges loses, we'll hear, "Obviously, it's because Bridges won last year so voters feel he's had his due." But whatever theory is pushed after the fact is just someone making up a reason. No one interviews the voters. No one does exit polls. No one even stops to think that the voters don't speak or vote with one voice. Not everyone who voted for Barack Obama had the same, easy-to-summarize reason but folks like to distill the Academy voters down to a body that votes en masse with one thing on their collective minds.

My predictions? I predict I'm going to TiVo the ceremony, watch it later with my thumb on the little button with the >> on it…and have a much better time than those of you who watch the whole thing and start wondering, around half past Best Sound Mixing, exactly why it is you're watching. (Oh, and listen for our friend Tom Kane as this year's announcer. Tom was on one of our Cartoon Voice Panels at Comic-Con last year and people loved him. Being The Voice of Oscar is a comedown from that but not a big one.)

March is almost upon us and longtime readers of this blog know what that means: Mark goes on and on about how he likes the Classic Creamy Tomato Soup which is available all month at Souplanation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants. Well, this year I've decided I've exhausted the topic so I'm just going to go eat the stuff and (largely) shut up about it. All I'll say is that if you're near one of these establishments (here's a page to tell you if you are) you can have my favorite soup. I hope it's your favorite, as well.

There seems to be an argument brewing in your "talk" area about the veracity of various episode listings for the second season of The Garfield Show. I really appreciate you being so diligent about verifying info and weeding out that which is not credible.

I am the Supervising Producer and main writer of this program so I'm a real good source since, you know, I wrote the stuff you're talking about. I've supplied a trustworthy list to "codyrox" (I think that's this person's handle) and they'll post it shortly and I will verify it is correct. Thank you.

Today is the 90th birthday of character actor Abe Vigoda…so let's check and see if he's still alive.

I don't know if the news is saying this but I will: The storm we're going to have this weekend is shaping up to be a very interesting one. It should hit Los Angeles late on Friday, give us a 6-8 hour shot of moderate to heavy rain, then turn to scattered showers throughout the night and much of Saturday. The showers will be widely scattered and very, very cold…so cold, in fact, that some of areas of Southern California that don't usually see snow will receive a little dusting.

So, amateur meteorologist that I am, I'm predicting that. I'm also predicting that some yahoos who refuse to grasp that Global Warming is a theory that the climate is becoming more extreme in both directions will stupidly say, "Well, so much for that Global Warming nonsense."