Monthly Archives: September 2011

Carolyn and I went to a special, one-night-only 30th anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. A very enthusiastic audience packed the place for that and what followed. My pal Geoff Boucher of the L.A. Times interviewed Steven Spielberg and Unannounced Surprise Guest Harrison Ford about the film we'd all just seen. Clips, I'm sure, will abound so I'll just say that the biggest applause probably went to Spielberg's promises that that the forthcoming Blu-ray of Raiders will not involve any tampering or "improvements" on his part, and that the next DVD/Blu-ray release of E.T. will be the original version and not the later, slightly-sanitized version. Best part of the evening for some was probably the warm banter between Spielberg and Ford, and the latter's announcement that he's quite willing to do another Indiana Jones film. One does not however appear to be on any horizon.

It was largely a show-businessy crowd, it seemed. We were sitting next to Damon Lindelof of Lost and Cowboys and Aliens and glancing about the lobby, it seemed like a good place to use Gary Belkin's joke: "I'm the only one here I've never heard of." When I used the men's room, I found myself standing between two guys who were each dressed as Indiana Jones. They were talking across me, discussing where they'd purchased their hats and leather jackets. and which of them had the best ones…and for a minute I had a sense of what it must be like to be in a gay bar.

I kept interrupting work yesterday to read articles online about 9/11 — not the best thing to do when you're trying to finish what's supposed to be a funny script, I suppose. But I'd go look something up on the web and everywhere you looked, there were pieces about 9/11 so I read a few. Our pal James H. Burns even wrote a nice piece about what that day did to the Broadway community.

A particularly interesting one I found was this short piece by Josh Marshall. In it, he makes the point, which I never thought about in quite this way, that all of that tragedy was achieved by a pretty small band of people, almost all of whom perished in the effort. I suppose that is one of the reasons for all the conspiracy theories that seek to gin up a larger enterprise and blame it for the crimes of that day.

During the years I spent too much time studying and talking about the assassination of President Kennedy, I kept reading discussions of the need some felt for "balance." The murder of J.F.K. seemed so earth-shattering, so monumental that it was hard for many to accept that it could possibly have been done by one lone nut with a mail order rifle. Even Kennedy's widow quoted some authors who noted that the crime seemed out of balance; that you wanted to put something bigger on the side of the scale that represented the perpetrator(s) so Kennedy would have been killed by something bigger. It hadn't occurred to me that the same yearning for "balance" may go a long way to explain all the 9/11 "Truthers" and folks who insist it wasn't that small band of fanatics. It had to be a worldwide conspiracy involving much, much more.

I don't think it was anything more than what we've been told. I also, after spending years in Conspiracy Buff Land, came to the conclusion that the Oswald-acted-alone explanation made twenty times as much sense as any competing scenario — and unlike the others, actually had pretty solid evidence behind it. The alternate theories will never go away and neither will all that rock solid "proof" that the World Trade Center was a controlled demolition and that darn near everyone but you and I were in on it. And by the way, I'm still not so sure about you…

I just took time out to do a fast surf of my fave websites. I can't think of a thing I can say about the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that many, many other sites aren't saying. If I do, I'll write it…but I doubt I will. So don't take my silence here to indicate that I don't share everyone else's residual horror over that day and deep respect for the many acts of heroism. At times, and perhaps not as often as I should, I think the best way to deal with a tragedy is to go on with life and not let fear or grief slow you down.

And back to work…

Not done but I'm past the key part I hadn't figured out yet. So I think I'll post a picture of Laurel and/or Hardy and then go to bed. Good night.

Okay, I laid there not sleeping for a half-hour so now I'm back at the computer, trying to finish this script. I'm two-thirds of the way through it and oh, this would be so much easier if it had a plot.

I'll finish it tomorrow. I'm thinking a lot of things are funny that I'm not going to think are funny in the morning. Good night.

I'm not going to bed until I finish this script.

Lately, folks have reported to me occasionally that when they click to watch one of my YouTube embeds, the player plays the previous YouTube video that they watched on this site. This is not because I have set up the link wrong. It's something having to do with certain browsers and the way they handle the YouTube links. You may need to refresh your browser or even to flush out the cache. But it will work.

I'd also like to say how much I like the way this blog looks when I can look at it and see Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy. I should have started this series years ago.

Michael Moore has endorsed the placement of his award-winning documentary Fahrenheit 911 on YouTube — all two hours of it. I had mixed feelings about the film when I first saw it and spent a fair amount of time prowling websites that pointed up alleged inaccuracies. For the most part, I was unconvinced the film was any less accurate than the norm for media these days…just a bit more honest about its maker's mindset.

I especially did not buy the argument that because of one or two spots where his critics did seem to catch Moore tampering with the truth, one could not believe a single thing the film said about anything; that in fact, the opposite was therefore probably true. There is such a thing as a film or book that has so many errors or deceptions that you can write the whole thing off as worthless as a source of information. But I don't think Moore got anywhere near that level and even if he had…well, if I caught you coming up with phony proof the world was round, that would not prove the world was flat.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting you watch it; just letting you know it's there if you never wanted to give Michael Moore a nickel but wouldn't mind watching a little for free.