Monthly Archives: February 2011

If you want to donate money to help those in New Zealand — or anywhere on this planet where folks suffer from natural or even man-made disasters — you can't do better than to give to Operation USA. I looked at a lot of charities before I decided that they get whatever donations I can afford to donate. This is not to say that certain others don't do fine work but I'm satisfied that the money I give them does as much good as it could if given anywhere else.

When I posted that link to the Gahan Wilson collection, the price was $28.55. Some time in the last 76 minutes, it jumped to $76.09. That's what you get for not reading this blog every fifteen minutes, all day and all night.

A news item from Broadway this afternoon says on most sites, "'Spider-Man' musical asks famed director for help." That's misleading because it makes you think they're bringing someone in to retool the work of director Julie Taymor. Actually, the story says they're hired veteran musical director Paul Bogaev to "…improve the quality of music on the $65 million show." A musical director is not the same thing as a director of musicals.

So someone's rewriting or fixing songs…a new writer is reportedly trying to repair the book…do we think this show will still open March 15? They can't be fixing very much if they are.

Hey, remember that Don Martin book that I told you about and many of you bought at an incredible discount? My friend Tom Galloway (who could kick Watson's ass if they'd only let him on Jeopardy!) alerts me to another sensational buy. A year or three ago, our pals at Fantagraphics Books put out a magnificent, three-volume slipcased collection of a half-century of Gahan Wilson cartoons from Playboy. If you are familiar with Wilson's work from that magazine or National Lampoon or his own fine books, you know how splendid such a collection could be…and this one sure is. Magnificently designed, it's a joy to have on your shelf even if you don't give a fig about Gahan Wilson. That the work inside is so wonderful is a special bonus.

Here's where I really start to sound like a guy in an infomercial: This must-have collection originally listed for $125 and it was a deal at that price. But you! You're not going to pay that today! You're going to order your copy of Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons for a measly $28.55 plus shipping charges. That's if you act now…and act now because supplies are limited. Here's the link. Some of you may recall how pissed you were when the Don Martin book sold out before you could order your copy. Don't piss yourself off again. Order today.

A few years ago, BBC Radio did a three-part series called Groucho Was My Father. It was a look at you-know-who as seen through the eyes of his daughter, Miriam and through the words that Groucho wrote to her in his letters. The letters were read on the program by our pal Frank Ferrante…and it all really came together as a nice portrait of a great comedian and his rocky (at times) relationship with his family.

It's being rerun now and for the next five days, you can hear Part One by going to this link. Part Two airs this Saturday and Part Three the Saturday after. I'll try to put up links to listen to them online after the initial rebroadcasts. Someone remind me if I forget.

I finally watched the Jeopardy! episodes in which two human champs competed against Watson, a new computer that takes Artificial Intelligence to a new, impractical function. Competing on a game show? I dunno. All I can think of is that there's a power failure during the game and the computer winds up with lovely parting gifts and a case of Turtle Wax.

Yeah, I know. It was a stunt to show off the computer. What it wasn't was a test of knowledge since Jeopardy! is only partly about being able to ask questions. It's also about being able to push a button at precisely the right moment. So when Watson clobbered past champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, what we learned was that a computer can be set up to time the pushing of a button better than a human. That's not a surprise, nor is it very useful information. I'd be interested to find out if it knew more answers than either Ken or Brad but the contest wasn't about that.

Ken Jennings wrote about his experiences here. I'd be curious to hear how he thinks he would have fared if they'd built a slight delay into Watson's button-pushing mechanisms…just enough to allow someone with fingers to get in before him. If the Jeopardy! people ever offer Ken a rematch, he oughta insist on something like that.

Reader Lex Passaris notes a piece of irony in my comparison between a bookstore like Borders and the old Wallichs Music City in Hollywood. Wallichs Music City was on the northwest corner of the intersection of Sunset and Vine. You know what's now on the northwest corner of Sunset and Vine? A Borders.

First off, let me caption this photo. It's the cast and director at a recording session for The Garfield Show. Front row, left to right: June Foray, Stan Freberg, Jason Marsden, Gregg Berger. Back row, also left to right: Frank Welker, M.E., Laura Summer and then Wally Wingert. Why did I post this? Because Jack Lechner asked the following…

As a devoted reader of your blog, I find myself curious about something you often mention, which is your work as a director of voice actors. Could you please write about how an animation recording session works? (For instance, how long does it take; do you record more than one actor at a time; do you get wildly different versions of the lines, or do you know what you want ahead of time; etc.) I think a lot of your readers would be interested.

It's not all that complicated. First, I cast the show. On The Garfield Show, we have a group of regulars (the folks who do the characters who are in every episode) and the semi-regulars (who voice recurring characters). Since each of these folks can do multiple roles, I can often do an entire episode with just them. We very rarely need anyone new…and actually, one of the toughest parts of my job is dealing with all the actors who are submitted by agents, all the actors I know who call up to see if I have any work, etc. Many of these folks are brilliantly talented and loved but they outnumber the vacancies by at least a hundred-to-one.

There are shows that work in "splits," which means they bring each actor in, one at a time, and record his or her lines. For some reason, most animated features work that way. Some TV shows do but not the ones I direct. We get all the actors into a studio at the same time. The second toughest part of my job is working out that schedule with the agents. The third most difficult is handling all the paperwork and such to get everyone paid promptly. I'm kind of obsessive on that point. When I've edited comic books and had the power to influence the accounting procedures, we always paid everyone within 24 hours of them handing in their work. On The Garfield Show, we pay 48 hours after a recording session and I sometimes have my assistant drive the checks over to the actors' homes or to their agents. I figure: We expect them to be prompt to the recordings so we oughta be prompt with the moola.

The actors convene at the session. I work off a script that contains all the dialogue and all the action. Each actor gets a script with just the dialogue (for everyone) and all the lines are numbered. I assign all the new roles and then explain the plot of the story and how I imagine certain lines being delivered…though I try not to give them too much input up front. It's always interesting to hear what the actors come up with when they aren't trying to read it the way Mark said. If what they invent on their own is good, we use it. If not, I can always give them additional input later. If the show has been properly cast, you have clever performers there and you really want to work this way. Ours often come up with readings and interpretations I would never have imagined.

They're all in a booth. Each actor is at a separate microphone with his or her script pages laid out on a music stand before them. The less they have to touch paper while we're recording, the better because paper makes noise. They all mark their lines and every actor has a unique, personal way of marking a script to indicate which voice goes with which line. Some have little codes to indicate inflections or emphasis on certain words or when to take pauses. Some sit but most prefer to work standing-up so they can put their whole bodies into the performance.

I'm outside the booth, sitting at a console next to the engineer. On my other side is my assistant who will mark the selected "takes." After we get the mikes all adjusted and we're ready to record, I'll say, "Okay, let's try lines 1 through 30" or whatever seems like a healthy run. There is no rehearsal because there's no reason not to record the first time they read the lines. We can always do it again and again.

The engineer records a slate. He'll identify the episode and the date of the session and say, "This is Take #1." Then an actor reads Line 1 and someone reads Line 2 and so on. I may have them do it two or three times or ten or I may use the first take. Between takes, I'll impart whatever comments or suggestions I think will improve things. Whenever I feel we have a good reading of that hunk of lines, I may go back and do pick-ups, meaning we'll redo just certain lines. Once I'm satisfied, I'll turn to my assistant and say, "Okay, let's use 1 through 12 from Take #3, then 13 through 30 from Take #2 but we'll insert the pick-up of line 9 from Take #5 and the pick-ups of lines 22 through 24 from Take #4." She will notate this and the engineer (who takes his own notes as we go along, also) will use his notes and hers to assemble the final version later.

Once we have 1 through 30 done, we'll move on to lines 31 through 55 or whatever…and on until we finish the cartoon. An 11-minute Garfield will have between 90 and 120 lines. That includes dog growls, sounds of snoring, people who go "Oof!" when they fall down, burps…any sort of sound we need an actor to make. Each of those is a line. We hire very good ones and once they get warmed-up, you'd be amazed how swiftly it goes and how often we wind up using first takes. I think I'm the fastest voice director in the business, an achievement that is wholly accomplished by having the right people in the booth. We've been known to record an 11-minute episode of Garfield in 30-45 minutes. Allowing for necessary breaks and occasional technical problems, it usually means we start at 10 AM and have four cartoons done by 2:00 or 2:30. If we try to do much more than that in a day, the energy suffers and the episodes begin to take longer and longer and not sound quite as good. Once in a while, we have to do more but we try to avoid it.

I have an advantage over most voice directors because I'm usually directing scripts I wrote or story-edited so I know the material and probably tailored it for the players. It takes me longer to direct something I didn't write because I have less of a sense for how lines should be delivered. It also takes longer if, as occasionally happens (though not on Garfield), I'm directing actors I didn't select. You develop a rapport with certain performers and a kind of shorthand…and above all, a sense of what you don't need to tell them. You also learn how to maintain a friendly, constructive atmosphere in the studio so no one feels competitive and no one feels embarrassed when they're corrected or asked to do multiple takes. I think the most important thing a director influences is the mood of the session.

And that's really all there is to it. I may or may not be involved later in editing the voice tracks. I don't have to do much of that because I usually work at a studio called Buzzy's Recording and they're phenomenal. The fellow who runs it, Andy Morris, is as sharp and skilled as any engineer in the business. When I've been forced to work at other studios on other shows, the recording takes longer and I have to keep a closer eye on the editing. It's one of the jobs that doesn't feel like work and at the end of every session, everyone's attitude is like, "Oh, playtime is over?"

Here's a link to a webpage that may make your life easier. I get my basic weather forecasts from Weather Underground, which offers up a nice presentation of the info and predictions issued by the National Weather Service…and that site is helpful but I wanted to link you to one page in particular over there.

It's this one. They call it the WunderMap® and it's an interactive radar map on which you can find your address and see storms in your area. It's been raining here in L.A. the last few days and I've been keeping an eye on it. I can actually look at that map and say with reasonable certainty things like, "We're going to have light rain here in about twenty minutes and it'll last about thirty minutes then clear out." The other day, I figured out the perfect time to get out of the house, walk up to a market and get back home before the showers resumed. The main part of the site can tell you the forecast for tonight or tomorrow or next Tuesday…but the WunderMap® enables you to get a pretty educated guess on any precipitation in a chosen area for the next hour or two.

You'll need to enter the address and to then use the little control that lets you animate the radar maps. This will show you recent radar pictures in sequence overlaid on a map of your area. Note the time stamps on them. It should be something like one picture every five minutes. By zooming in and out on the map, you can get a sense of where the storms are around you, which direction they're moving and how fast they're moving. It's not infallible, in part because you're not infallible…but if you study it a bit, you should understand how you can read it to get valuable information. This kind of map is available elsewhere on the 'net, including on some sites that charge hefty subscription fees. This is free…and for a very small amount, you can join and access an enhanced, adless version of the website that's even better. It's a handy thing to have available.

Edward McClelland writes about the decline (to the point of bankruptcy) of Borders and other bookstores like it. I think it's a much simpler story than he makes it out to be. In fact, I think it's a one sentence explanation: It's easier and cheaper to buy books on Amazon. End of explanation.

Frankly, though I used to love bookstores, one of the things that put me off from them was this expectation some shops have that I should not just shop there but live there. You know…sit around all day reading, drinking coffee (I don't drink coffee)…maybe bring in my laptop and write there. I'm surprised some of them don't put in little cots so we can nap between pages.

The Borders near me (now closed) had a wonderful selection of books but the store operated at the speed of a glacier on valium. I always felt like The Flash as I scurried around, finding the volumes I craved. All I was doing was operating at the usual pace at which I live my life but it was way too fast for that Borders. The employees were all nice and they accepted the concept that I wanted to find the books I wanted, pay for them, take them home and read them there…but they ran the place for the folks who spent hours on the premises. They also never seemed to know where anything was…and that was a big, two-story building. One time, I had to go up and down the stairs around six times, checking different sections to find where they'd shelved Jeffrey Sweet's history of the Second City comedy troupe. I think I wound up locating a copy under "Self Help."

I'm not knocking that way of doing business; just saying that Amazon fits in better with my life.

I wonder if anyone has ever thought of combining online ordering with a physical retail outlet. When I was a kid, I went to Wallichs Music City at the corner of Sunset and Vine, which was then an "old-style" record store. I think they billed themselves as the world's largest such business and claimed that in their aisles, you could find every single album currently in print. That may have been so but you could only find one copy of each and those weren't copies you could buy. They were copies you could listen to as samples.

One wall of the shop was lined with little listening booths. You'd select records that interested you, take them into the booths and "try them on." There was some sort of limit…like no more than four records at a time and only twenty minutes in a booth. Something like that. Once you emerged, you'd carry the records up to a counter and indicate which ones you wanted to take home. A clerk there would dispatch two kids who worked there — one to the back room to get you fresh, unopened copies of the records you'd be purchasing; the other to refile all the samples in the bins. (Of course, you had the option of not buying any and perhaps finding more to test-drive.) They'd then ring up your purchases…and that was how most big record stores operated, once upon a time. I'm guessing it went out of style because of too many listeners who weren't buyers.

So now I'm imagining a big bookstore that has an incredible selection of books — maybe not everything currently in print but an awful lot of them, more than I find in the big Barnes & Noble near me. But they only have one copy of most of them…perhaps two or three of current Best Sellers. On your way in, they hand you a little handheld scanner device. You browse the shelves at your leisure, read as much of each book as you like…and if you like one enough to want to own it, you scan its barcode. When you check out, they take your scanner and your shipping address and you pay for what you've ordered. Later that day or the next, it's shipped to your home from some warehouse, just like Amazon. It would especially work well for print-on-demand books, which is where a large part of the publishing industry is heading.

Obviously, this principle could be applied to more than books but it would cause me to buy more books. And more other stuff. When I do go into Barnes & Noble, I page through books I'd never have ordered online and sometimes I think, "Hey, I want this." Also, last time I was in one, I played with a NOOKcolor, which is their e-reader. I don't think I'm going to buy one but there was zero chance of me considering it if I hadn't physically gone into the store. I rarely get out of a Costco without a couple of items I didn't plan on buying when I went in…and I'd probably buy more if my purchases could be delivered and I didn't have to haul them home. There's got to be someone out there who's thinking along these lines.