Monthly Archives: April 2011

And I'm linking now to an interview with Rowdy Roddy Piper, the famed villain of pro wrestling. I once produced a TV show with Roddy and a couple of other wrestlers and I found him to be pretty darned smart and a very good showman. The measure of the latter is that he became a superstar in that profession without being seven feet tall and pumped up on steroids. He did it through personality and a good sense of improvisation and knowing how to work the audience.

We had one great sitcom moment together. We were having lunch at the old Hamptons Restaurant on Highland — the one I was later a partner in but this was before that. The guy at the table behind Roddy kept moving his chair around and bumping into Roddy's chair. Roddy asked him politely to stop doing that. The guy kept doing it so Roddy asked him again…still polite but a bit less so. Finally, Roddy asked the waiter to tell the man to either stop bumping into him or move to another table.

The other diner got angry at Roddy (not yet realizing who it was) and turned to him and barked, "What's your problem, fella?" Roddy turned and got up and said in a Clint Eastwood reading, "My problem is that you keep bumping my chair." The other diner for some reason was itching to make this Roddy's fault and to demand an apology. He got up too…and from the body language, it looked for about two seconds like someone was going to take a swing at someone.

But then, and I wish I had a photo of it, the other guy suddenly realized he was messing with Rowdy Roddy Piper, the guy who liked to take a folded-up metal folding chair and bash his ring opponents into unconsciousness with it. The change in facial expression was acute and hilarious. He promptly apologized to "Mr. Piper" (addressing him like that) and moved his chair around to the other side of the table so he was nowhere near Roddy.

And Roddy whispered to me, "See? The reputation does me some good."

I was never a huge fan of wrestling but I was enough of one to do that show…and I had and have enough interest in pure show business to appreciate that part of it. I have this theory that it works because deep down, people know it's rigged. That frees them up to enjoy the violent aspect because they can tell themselves that no one's really getting hurt. (Not always true, by the way.) More important is that there's almost always a payoff. In sports or politics, your side can lose. You can invest an awful lot of emotion in cheering for your team or candidate and suffer a crushing disappointment. But with wrestling, if you root for the Good Guy and hiss the Bad Guy (the role Roddy used to play), you know that eventually, you'll get satisfaction. It may not come this Wrestlemania or the next but eventually, the Bad Guy will get his ass kicked. There aren't many other places in life where that happens quite so reliably.

Roddy had many stories about physical abuse and the scars to prove them. I came to believe that anyone who can do that for a living probably deserves about ten times what he's paid. And if they do it well, they probably ought to be, like Roddy became, a movie star.

The wonderful Gail Simone offers brutal tips for breaking into the comic book industry. Everything she says is true, especially the parts about having to be more self-critical of your work and to be able to bring something new to the table.

One of the mistakes some folks make is to read a bad comic — and there are many out there to choose from — and to say, "I can do better than this." That's probably so but it doesn't make you qualified. As my pal Len Wein often notes, an editor is not looking for someone who's better than his worst guy. He's looking for someone who's better than (or maybe just as good) as his best guy.

And to all of that, I would append what I say these days, which is that it's foolish and not worth the effort to become a comic book writer or artist. What's not, assuming you have the ability, is to become a writer or artist who works in comics among other things. The construct of the current business is not all that friendly to the creative person who only aspires to do comic books. In fact, there are some powerful people who almost count that against you because they want to think of their company as bleeding seamlessly into film and television and videogames and other media.

But read what Gail has to say. It also helps to be as good at what you do as Gail Simone is at what she does.

Charles Isherwood thinks the Broadway musical is suffering because producers are hiring TV stars who have names but not spectacular singing voices.

This seems like an odd point of view to me. Broadway has always loved stars, whether they were from movies or TV…and some pretty wonderful musicals have not featured great singers. Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady comes to mind immediately…and the current stars Isherwood's complaining about probably sing about as well as Richard Burton in Camelot, Robert Preston in The Music Man, Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof or Mary Martin in anything she did. (They probably sing better than Sam Levene in the original Guys and Dolls but so does everyone.) And what about Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner in the original The King and I?

I suppose Isherwood wrote this because of Mr. Radcliffe in How to Succeed…but judging from the clips at least, what might be wrong with that production is not Radcliffe's singing voice. Robert Morse wasn't a great singer either, we might note.

This may not pertain to Isherwood's article but I often seem to encounter an incredible snobbishness in the Broadway community towards performers and actually any kind of talent that has had the temerity to become successful and famous in another medium and then come to Broadway in a primo position. Years ago on the Musicals newsgroup, I got into a fiery debate with some fellow who was outraged that a lady who was on a popular sitcom thought she could segue to Broadway and star in a then-imminent musical there without starting at the bottom, auditioning for the chorus. On and on he went about how those performers invariably stink, plus it's unfair to those who approach Broadway out of love and a willingness to start in the spear-carrier jobs for rotten money.

In this case, the fellow (and those who chimed in with support for his viewpoint) were wrong two ways. I'm all for people paying dues and not getting breaks they don't deserve but ultimately, it's about doing the job. If someone gives a lousy performance, it's a lousy performance regardless of whether they started at the bottom or not…and the lousiness is what's wrong with it. The audience doesn't give two figs about how someone got the gig or whether they "deserve" it by some contrived judgment call.

And he was wrong about the person in question, who was — I think he called her — "that boring lady from Cheers," Bebe Neuwirth. She was then about to star in the revival of Damn Yankees and this guy on the newsgroup was unaware she'd been on Broadway pre-Lilith and had a pretty impressive set of stage credentials. But you know, since she was on a situation comedy, she couldn't possibly be good enough to star in a musical…

A lot of iPad users are telling me of manuals I can download or about the user guide you can apparently find if you go into the Help screen in Safari. Okay, great. I wasn't doubting there were manuals for the iPad. I just kinda thought it oughta come with one instead of me having to go on a scavenger hunt.

The great comic book artist Gene Colan is not well. He's currently hospitalized and awaiting some sort of surgical procedure…and his friend Clifford Meth, who has been handling business matters for him, does not sound encouraged.

Cliff is running a Garage Sale, selling off some of Gene's books 'n' things for him. Go take a look and see if there's something in there you want. It's a good opportunity to get a bargain and to help one of the fine talents and gentlemen of our industry.

Several iPad users have written me in the last hour or so about my complaint that the Mute button didn't seem to work on my new toy. They all said to check Settings to see if that button is set to Mute or if it's set to be a Rotation Lock. Well, mine is set to be a Mute and when I'm playing a tune and I slide it to the "off" position, it shows a mute sign on my screen — a speaker with a slash through it — but it doesn't mute the music.

I did an Internet search though and based on what I'm reading on some forums, apparently this is how the Mute button is supposed to work. It doesn't mute music you're playing or certain other sounds that come from an app. It mutes certain tones and notification signals only. So I guess mine isn't busted…but it seems like a silly way to run a mute switch. And it's a good example of something I might have learned quicker if they gave you a little manual with your iPad.