Monthly Archives: January 2013

Gene Whyte writes to ask about something I don't think I've ever mentioned here or in anything I've written…

I was interested to note that when you mentioned the DVD set of the Superboy TV series, you didn't mention that you were one of the writers for that show. Would you care to write about your experiences? I always assumed you got the job because you were then one of the few writers around with credits in both comic books and TV shows. Did you enjoy the experience? Why did you only do one episode?

Ah. Well, there isn't a lot to tell so I might as well put it down here and be done with it. In 1988, the Writers Guild of America found itself in a very long, ugly strike that ran 155 days. It didn't affect me that much because I was then in heated production on the Garfield and Friends Saturday morning show. Animation was not affected by the strike and my agent took to referring to me as "The sole support of the agency." But he was also scrambling to get his clients whatever work was available.

The producers of the then-forthcoming Superboy TV series had signed what is called an Interim Agreement, meaning that they agreed to the terms that the WGA was then demanding so the strike on their particular project was lifted. Such deals always include a clause that says the contract will be modified later to match whatever bargain the guild makes with the rest of the industry. I did not attempt to get work on the series because I had plenty to do and because every other WGA member was trying to get on it.

So I was surprised when my agent called and told me he'd set up an appointment for me to meet with someone there about writing for it. I assumed he'd submitted me and they'd agreed to see me because of my comic book background…but when I went in, the person I met with was surprised by that. I'm pretty sure I was the first writer he'd met with who'd ever had anything to do with comic books and when he found out I had, he spent half the meeting asking me questions about DC and the people there with whom he was just beginning to deal.

He was Fred Freiberger, a very nice man whose name I'd seen in an awful lot of credits. I'm a little fuzzy on whether he was the producer or the story editor, or how long or in what capacity he remained with the show but at that moment, he seemed to be running things. I liked Fred and he told me about the project and asked me to go off and come back another day with ideas for episodes. At this point, he was some months from the commencement of filming and I'm not sure they'd even cast any actors yet. If any sort of pilot had been shot, I sure didn't see it.

I went off and soon returned with three or four plots. Fred liked two and assigned me to go off and write one of them. He impressed upon me that the show would have a great special effects budget and that I should let my imagination soar. Whatever I wrote, they'd find a way to shoot.

I went off and proceeded to not do this, at least to the extent he wanted. This was a syndicated series for what they then called "prime-time access." In other words, a pretty cheap show. I guess I got it in my head that it would have the look and feel of the old George Reeves Superman series and wrote accordingly. I flew Superboy a few times and had him crash through a wall and lift up something impossible…but that was about it. Fred told me he liked the script but it needed a lot more action and effects. He was amused that of all the people he had writing it, the one who'd (so far) handed in the script with the least of those things was me, the guy with experience in comic books and animation.

He told me to go off, "forget for now about what things cost to shoot," and just write what I'd want to see on the screen. We could always cut things later. I did as told this time, handed it in and he said he liked it a lot and wanted me to do that other idea of mine he'd liked…but not right away. He was working on scripts for the first half of the season and not yet authorized to start on the second half, so he'd call me when he could start me on the next one. A few days later, he contacted my agent to inquire if I'd be interested in coming on as a story editor. The money would be low and the job would involve frequent commutes (and perhaps several months of relocation) to Florida, which is where the series would be shooting. Since I was already contracted to write and voice-direct Garfield and Friends here, I was not available…and that was the end of my involvement with the Superboy TV series.

A month or two later, I ran into Mr. Freiberger while doing volunteer work at WGA Strike Headquarters. He informed me that now that they were about to start filming — or maybe they'd already started by then — they had a better sense of budget limitations. Very little that he'd thought would be possible had turned out to be possible. All the scripts he'd developed to that point were being extensively rewritten to "take out the money" and also to trim them significantly in length. I said, "What you're telling me is that when I see the finished show, I'll be lucky if I recognize a semi-colon on page eleven." He chuckled and told me to expect a little more of what I'd written to survive than that…but not a lot more. He added that he was neither doing nor supervising these rewrites and was not as "in charge" of the show as he'd expected to be. I am not sure how much involvement he had in the show after that.

I'm also not sure I even got that semi-colon on page eleven. The week that episode aired, it was preempted in Los Angeles for a news report and I managed to miss any reruns. I didn't actually see it until a few years later, by which time I'd somehow managed to lose my only copy of my final draft…and they never sent me their final draft, which they're supposed to do under WGA rules. As I recall, I didn't recall. The basic plot was more or less what I'd written but I didn't remember writing much of that dialogue…and of course, all those elaborate action scenes I'd been told to write were absent. A few years later, I found a copy of the shooting script at a convention and it was around half the length of my first draft, which was the page count I'd been told to write in the first place.

I'm trying to think if there are any other details of the experience that I can recall…

Nope. I think that's it. Never met the cast. Never went to the set. The great actor-director Jackie Cooper directed my episode but years later when I met him, he didn't remember the episode and barely remembered Superboy. Other friends of mine wrote on the series later and I gather they had much to do with developing it into a rather successful program. That's the story.

Radley Balko writes about an issue that has always troubled me about the American judicial system. If you're accused of a crime, the way to get a lower sentence is to plea bargain…but to plea bargain, you have to admit guilt and what if you're not guilty? Answer: You may well do more time than if you just lied and said, "I did it!" Which among other wrenches of sanity means that the guy who did do it gets off scot-free.

My friend and occasional (too occasional, these days) collaborator Will Meugniot tells what it was in 1961 that caused him to stop buying DC Comics exclusively and to give a try to that new Fantastic Four thing…

Here is the story of that world-famous guitar player, Groucho Marx.

Hey, since we're talking about old TV shows being released on DVD, I oughta mention that Shout Factory has just announced they'll be bringing us The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in a complete set later this year — and they seem to have all 147 episodes.

I was a big fan of this series when it first aired from 1959 to 1963 — or at least, I was of its first few seasons. I seem to recall it taking a horrible turn for the worse near the end of its run…but recently, I've been TiVoing and watching Season One on MeTV and they hold up pretty well. A lot of the attention the show gets these days is because of the stellar array of supporting cast members who later became more prominent, including Warren Beatty, Tuesday Weld and Sally Kellerman…but the regular cast was quite wonderful. The show had crisp, fast-paced dialogue and a wonderful style about it.

As explained here in my Bob Denver obit, I happened to be on the premises for the first of the two attempts to later revive the series. It was a train wreck of epic proportions and I felt quite sorry for Dwayne Hickman, Frank Faylen, Sheila James and Mr. Denver. They were rightfully proud of the original program and insulted that one man thought every single thing about the show had to be changed for it to have a shot at reaching a modern audience. That might have been true had the series not been so far ahead of its time.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this set. I hear Shout Factory is planning a good array of special features, including interviews with surviving cast members. It's too bad they didn't do this last year when Steve Franken, who was so perfect in the role of Chatsworth Osborne Jr, was still with us and could have participated.

It has been pointed out to me by many that there's a good reason they've only put out the first 11 episodes of My Living Doll on DVD. No one seems to have decent copies of the other fifteen. This, of course, raises the good question as to why you'd put out Volume One of "The Official Collection" if you couldn't follow it up with Volume Two. I'm guessing they hoped the release of this DVD might smoke out some prints of the others.

Stephen Robinson was griping that Time-Warner hadn't released the second season of the Superboy TV show. Well, they have. It's available in a print-to-order release from the Warner Archive. That means no special features and maybe not the best image quality…but the shows are available.

If you're a writer — or better still, if you want to be a writer — take an hour and a half of your life and watch this conversation with William Goldman. I think he's a terrific novelist and a screenwriter of wildly-varying quality…but the way he approaches his work is fascinating.

One lesson not to be learned from his story is that if you have an endless series of rejections and no one thinks you have any talent, you should keep on pluggin' away at it and eventually you'll be a best-selling novelist and/or an Academy Award winning screenwriter. It went like that for Mr. Goldman but 98% of the time, it doesn't — which is, of course, one of the things that's so much fun about show business. Occasionally, you can do everything wrong and succeed, just as you can do everything right and fail. The outliers are fascinating but you shouldn't bet your life that you'll be one of them.

But he approaches his writing with a professional intensity. It's not just a matter of hard work but of the right hard work and the right attitude towards the work, including a healthy sense of one's own fallibility. I think he's way too humble (verging on self-loathing) about his output but that may be necessary for him to create it. Anyway, spend an hour and a half and listen to the guy…

If you were intrigued by yesterday's video link, you might like to see these photos of artist Liu Bolin.

Hey, let's see 14 wonderful [non-English] words with no English equivalent! Here they are.

Stephen Robinson writes…

Your post about My Living Doll on DVD reminds me of many other series that started a release on DVD and then ended halfway through.

I understand that it doesn't make economic sense to release further DVD sets if the originals didn't sell in sufficient numbers, but what I'm curious about is whether these numbers are actually a surprise to anyone. Does someone expect — for example — that the Alf cartoon from the 1980s will burn up the charts? I was a big fan (I often have to explain to people that I loathed the sitcom but loved the cartoon) and bought the first sets… and would have bought the rest if they'd been released (now, fortunately, they're all on Hulu). So, did people like me not buy the first sets or did the company hope that a larger audience would purchase them? Does the latter ever happen? Aren't DVD releases of decades-old shows primarily of interest to people who were fans from the start?

A final frustrating example: After much online petitioning, the Superboy TV series from the late '80s/early '90s was released on DVD…but starting with the first season. The first season that most fans don't like. The first season that didn't feature Gerard Christopher as the title character or Sherman Howard as Lex Luthor. I know some fans went ahead and bought the first season to ensure that sales would be enough for the seasons they actually wanted, but it never panned out.

(The Avengers TV series was released in order of fan interest — starting with the Emma Peel seasons — which made a lot of sense.)

At least in one case that I observed close-at-hand, the following situation transpired when Volume 1 of a planned-multiple-volume DVD series was the only release. There was this show. The company in question had reason to believe it would sell not blockbuster numbers but enough to show a tidy profit. They put it out in the Christmas rush and it was lost amidst dozens of other releases and it didn't sell. Everyone at the company blamed the timing of the release and also an almost total lack of promotion. But the head of the company — the man who'd decided on the release date and on the promotional budget — found it easier to blame the show insisting, "There's no market for that series." Others there thought there probably was but to try Volume 2 at this time would have required his admission that Volume 1 had been botched.

The market is not wholly predictable. Some odd things — shows I wouldn't have imagined would sell on DVD — have sold surprisingly well. Some that you'd expect would do great haven't. I believe the company that put out The Mary Tyler Moore Show was quite startled at the low numbers they got.

Often, the decision on what to put out has a lot to do with what kind of source material is available. Do they actually have all the episodes? Do they need extensive and expensive restoration work? In a lot of cases, there are problems with the music clearances and the fees that would have to be paid for certain shows to come out on DVD. That's what's keeping many old variety and talk shows from the shelves…what they'd have to pay for the songs.

I have occasionally railed here about a practice that rankles me and others. They bring out Volume 1 of Your Favorite Show on DVD, followed by Volume 2 and Volume 3 and so on. Since Your Favorite Show is your favorite show, you buy each one. Then at the end of the process, they bring out the super-deluxe Complete Set in a fancy slipcase at a bargain price and with materials available nowhere else. Maybe you can't even get the last year unless you buy the Complete Set, which will mean paying again for Volume 1, Volume 2, etc.

Not only is this unfair to the fans who supported the series on DVD, I think it's bad business. A fellow who works for one of the big companies that puts out old TV shows on DVD wrote me not long ago…

It's a Catch-22 for the fans who want the series. They really ought to wait until the entire series is released and then only buy the set. But if no one buys the early volumes, the company may stop putting them out and there will never be a set. That's especially the case if the episodes need to be digitally restored and remastered.

I agree with your implied point that we're slitting our own throats by setting up this kind of situation where the devout fans of the series have a reason to not buy them as they come out. They should feel that if they do buy each volume as it comes out, they will be rewarded in the end, not forced into buying things they already have. It's bad enough that after we release an entire series or even before it's all available, the first question asked is, "How long do we have to wait until we come out with a silver deluxe version of the same material with bonus features?"

I have this oft-quoted line about how the entire home video market is one giant conspiracy to see how many times they can get me to buy Goldfinger. Well, I didn't mention it but I now have yet another copy (my seventh or eighth, I think) in my collection. For Christmas, I was given that fancy new Blu-ray set of all the Bond films. That meant I had enough Blu-ray discs here that I finally broke down and bought a Blu-ray player…for, curiously, less money than it would have cost me to buy that 007 set to play on it.

And you know what it means that I now have a Blu-ray player. It means that any day now, we'll have the announcement of yet another new format that will be so super-peachy, we'll all have to upgrade to it and repurchase all our favorite movies and shows in that format.

Amidst all of these re-re-re-releases, they're going to need new product. They're going to have to put something out on home video that's never been out before, above and beyond current shows and movies. And that's when they'll go back and put out the old shows that have been previously unavailable. Eventually, I think everything that can be issued will be. But it may take a while…

This is a commercial for Axe, a line of men's grooming products. Watch it once, then watch it again…

Are you going to WonderCon, that great convention in Anaheim that's taking place March 29-31? If so, order your badge now.

I don't go to a lot of conventions anymore. I go to Comic-Con International in San Diego and I go to WonderCon, which is run by the same people. WonderCon is kind of like a smaller, more manageable version of Comic-Con…and at least the last few years, there was less emphasis on movies and TV shows and more on comics. I will be running a bunch of panels there including Quick Draw!, which (like last year) we'll have to play without Sergio Aragonés. There are other nifty guests at the con to (somewhat) make up for the lack of him. Anyway, if you wanna go, get your badge while you can.

Vince Waldron is the first of (so far) eight people to inform me that Julie Newmar's 1964 sitcom My Living Doll was released on DVD — or at least there was a Volume 1 with eleven episodes on it. There were 26 in all but so far there's been no sign of a Volume 2. Amazon is currently out of that first one but here's a link in case you want to order anyway. I intend to.

Oh, Stu's got a great guest this time. It's the lovely Julie Newmar. Like all males in my age range, give or take 20 years, I had a crush on her once upon a time. And it wasn't just men. Years ago, I worked with an actress who was quite openly gay and someone asked her once when she realized that. She said, "When I shared a dressing room with Julie Newmar. I decided no man could ever be that attractive without clothes on." Hey, she said it. I didn't.

To some, she will always be Catwoman. To others, Stupefyin' Jones. To still others — and expect Stu to ask her a lot about this — Rhoda the Robot from My Living Doll. Hope Stu gets into the story about how her co-star, Bob Cummings, got fired from the series. That was a good show which I hope still exists in complete enough form for DVDing or at least rerunning.

And she's done so many other things that Stu probably won't get through. Tune in and hear about as many of them as can be squeezed into two hours — with the now-customary Stu Shostak overage. Betcha he goes at least two-and-a-half hours on this one. There are two ways you can listen in…

The Free Way: Listen live when they do it tomorrow (Wednesday) starting at 4 PM Pacific time, which is of course 7 PM Eastern and other times in other zones. Just go to Stu's website and click where you're told to click. Or try…

The Pay Way: Shortly after a show is over, it becomes downloadable from the Stu's Show archives, which you can reach at the same web address. You can download that one for a measly 99 cents or for the real bargain, order four for the price of three. Stu's done some fine, fine shows with greats of show business. Check out the one with Shelley Berman or the one with Jonathan Winters or the one with Stan Freberg or any of them. Well worth the money.

But if I were you, I'd listen when he's live with Julie Newmar. I know guys who would have died happy to be live with Julie Newmar.