Monthly Archives: January 2013

All sorts of stuff you probably should know about the current flu epidemic.

Another reminder that if Ronald Reagan ran today, Republicans would denounce him as a Dirty Liberal: He was for Gun Control.

52 minutes of Carl Reiner talking about writing…

Bruce Bartlett says that if they had minted that trillion-buck platinum coin, the principle in play wouldn't have been that much different from what Washington does every day with our money. That's disturbing to realize.

Matt Taibbi on Secrets and Lies of the Bailout. He says it wasn't what you think it was and didn't have the result you think it did. Hope he's wrong. Fear he's not.

This time, I suggest you go read Ken Levine's review of the Golden Globes.

I think the thing I've come to like about the Golden Globes is that no one thinks the voting is meaningful. They could be picking the winners by throwing darts for all we know. But it fulfills all the important requirements of any awards show: A lot of celebrities all dressed up, a big party, incoherent and self-indulgent speeches…and good lines to use in advertising. I keep waiting for someone who wins one to get up there and say, "I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me…" and then read a list of about six people.

The Magic Castle is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, having opened back in '63. I joined back in 1980 right after I went up to see my then-current lady friend get sawed in half and levitated by a fine magician named Chuck Jones, no relation to the famed cartoon director. (But this Chuck Jones did have a cartoon connection: For a time in the sixties, he had a daily kids' show on KCOP Channel 13 where he did tricks and hosted cartoons. He is still touring with a sensational magic show and occasionally playing the Castle.)

I would never have thought I'd fit in with or like a place where you had to wear a jacket and tie — at least in the evenings. But I was at the Magic Castle for about three minutes before I said to myself, "Self, you've gotta join this place." I signed up as an Associate Member and was later upgraded to Full Magician status. I was there for the years when the food was pretty mediocre and am now there for the years when the food is pretty good.

You can dine at the Magic Castle. You can drink, too though I don't. Mostly, you see magic. There are several showrooms around the place and there are also areas where impromptu performances are likely to materialize at any moment. I often go to see some "name" magician perform and on the same visit, find myself impressed and/or dazzled by someone I never heard of before.

One of the most amazing things about the Castle is that it's still there, as wonderful as ever. In the years since I've joined, we've seen it through one crisis after another — most of them financial though Halloween before last, they had the place decked out to appear via lighting effects as if it was on fire…and before they could launch those effects, it actually did catch fire. There have been hostile takeover attempts and lawsuits and squabbles but all seems to be copacetic these days. The current administration with Neil Patrick Harris as our president, is doing a first-rate job and the place has never looked better.

The one thing I miss? There's a little sofa in the front parlor and for about the first decade of my membership, you could usually find a gentleman named Dai Vernon seated on it, ready to chat with all who came by. Dai, who was born in 1894, was called The Professor by those who didn't know him well enough to call him Dai. He knew everything about magic and had in fact invented (or at least perfected) all those tricks that every magician learns and struggles to perform in a new and different way. With little prompting, he would tell you of the time he did a trick that stumped Houdini or any of a hundred other anecdotes…and if you showed him a trick (something I never dared do) he would show you how to do it better.

Dai passed away in '92 but apart from not having him around, the Castle has everything a lover of magic could want. Here's a quickie tour from The Today Show on Friday morning…

Bill Levin writes to ask me…

I was fascinated to learn that you learned about TV script forms from those Dr. Kildare scripts your neighbor had. If I wanted to become a screenwriter (a fantasy I've harbored), do you think it would be a good idea to get copies of every great screenplay I could and read and study them? How far would that get me?

Probably closer than you are but not far enough. Actually, reading anything is valuable to a writer. I've even learned from bad examples. The value of reading scripts is to learn the form and how to describe action in a crisp, efficient manner. It also helps you to get a sense of weight to your dialogue. Somewhere here, I have a book that reprints the screenplays by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond for The Apartment and The Fortune Cookie. I was beginning to write in script (screenplay, teleplay) form at the time I got it and it made me realize that most of my speeches were too long…and also too self-contained; that I needed more verbal interaction between characters, as opposed to them delivering dueling monologues.

Here's something you shouldn't learn from reading scripts. A few years ago, that most dangerous of creatures — a friend of a friend — got me to agree to read and advise him on a screenplay he'd written. This was this man's first attempt at writing a script and, I suspect, darn near his first attempt at writing anything in a professional arena. He sent the script over with one of those amateurish, paranoid attitudes: The script was registered with every agency in the world, I was expected to sign a confidentiality form with the assurance that he could sue and take my house away from me if I plagiarized him, etc. Don't you just love it when you agree to do someone a favor and they respond with threats?

When I opened the package, I glanced at the accompanying warnings and then noticed something about the script itself. It was sealed in plastic with a warning label that said something like, "By breaking this seal, you agree to abide by the terms of the enclosed form," etc. And the script itself was huge. It had to be over 300 pages. In which case, I would not be reading it so there was no point in breaking that seal.

I called the guy and asked him how long it was. I don't remember the precise number but let's say it was 325. It was around that.

I told him I had my first comment: Cut it by two-thirds. "There are very few people in this business who will read a script that's over around 120 pages," I said and I added, "I am not one of them."

He said, "I'm not cutting a word of it. Not now, not ever. I have a copy here of the screenplay to Apocalypse Now and it's 325 pages."  (I'm not sure it is but that's what the man said.)

I said, "Maybe it is but this is not Apocalypse Now and you are not Francis Ford Coppola and John Milius."

He said, "What difference does that make? This script is just as important."

I said, "I doubt that…but the script you have is not a script they wrote to try and impress a producer into taking on the project. Everything was probably committed well before they wrote that draft, maybe before they wrote any draft. What you have there is a shooting script. You need to produce a selling script. Do you understand the difference?"

He said, "Sure…but a perfect shooting script can be a selling script. All a producer has to do is read this and he'll see it's perfect and ready to go. All my friends who've read it agree."

That was pretty much the end of that conversation. Oh, sure…I went on and told him that had never happened in the history of Hollywood and he told me he'd be the first and I told him his fantasy was predicated on producers reading the script at all and they wouldn't and he told me he'd be the first and you can see why this script was never made. It was probably also never read by anyone besides his closest friends. It certainly wasn't by me.

But the point is not to confuse a script that's going to be made — which may also be full of unnecessary-in-a-selling script production details — with a script that's intended to get someone to say, "Hey, the guy's got something here!" There may also be things missing. When I write a cartoon script and I know I'm going to direct the voices, I leave out a lot of instructions to the actors because I'm going to be there to tell them verbally what I have in mind.

And that's not laziness on my part. It's me wanting to see what they'll come up with on their own without me telling them that a certain speech is to be delivered deadpan or with a sneer or whatever. If I'm not directing — if it's like the old Hanna-Barbera days where I'd hand in the script, not be at the recording session and not see or hear the thing until it was on the air — I put all that in the script. It's the only chance I have to convey what I have on my mind to the actors. But if I'm the director, I can tell them later, after they've had a shot at it without my influencing their first readings.

When you read sitcom scripts that float about, you're often reading drafts that were done after days of rehearsal. Let's say the show tapes on Friday. A new scene was written and/or improvised during the Thursday rehearsal. They commit its words to paper for the draft that's done Thursday night but they don't have to put in stage directions and actor notes because the actors and director already know all that from the Thursday rehearsal.

So you have to differentiate between a shooting script and a selling script. The latter is meant to be a reading experience for anyone who sits down with it and it's successful if it leads to a shooting script. A shooting script is just for the folks involved in the shooting.  It may have things in it you don't need — descriptions of things intended for specific people in the production process or to give security to the studio that proper direction is being given to the crew — or it may omit information that isn't needed. If a role is already cast, the shooting script doesn't have to describe what the actor looks like. If the art director already knows from meetings what the sets are supposed to look like and is designing them, a shooting script may not dwell on those descriptions. I have a script here somewhere for an episode of Banacek where they obviously decided to change the gender of a character who'd been written as a male. All the dialogue reflects the change, including scenes where Banacek is hitting on the character, trying to seduce her. But nobody bothered to change the stage directions and the description of the character which remained male.

Read all the scripts you can get your mitts on. But try to be conscious of what kind of script you're reading and whether it was intended to make a movie happen or a deal. Those aren't the same thing.

I came across about fifty sheets of these while cleaning out drawers at my mother's house. They're not postage stamps. They're campaign stamps from the 1960 presidential election. I guess the idea was that you'd put them on all your mail like Christmas seals.

In 1960, my mother ran a small Democratic Headquarters building up on Pico Boulevard and I helped out in the ways that only an eight-year-old kid can do. I was rooting for J.F.K. though at that age, I really didn't have any idea why. In that sense, I wasn't all that different from your average voter.

My main memory of that office is of a woman who came in and asked to speak to someone who could put her mind at ease about something. She liked John F. Kennedy, wanted to vote for John F. Kennedy…but felt she couldn't vote for a Catholic. My mother patiently explained to her that she was a Catholic — admittedly, not an active or typical one since she'd married a Jewish guy — and had no problem voting for Kennedy. They talked for perhaps a half hour and when the woman left, she'd decided to vote for J.F.K. — but acted like it was a life-changing decision for her. I didn't understand the concern then and am not sure I do now.

Before the election, my mother presided over a plentiful supply of enthusiastic volunteers to work the office. Afterwards, no one showed up and it was up to us (her, one of her friends and me) to close up the place and get out. It took a few days to ship some things back to wherever they came from and to throw other things away. This was when I came across a few thousand sheets of the stamps in a crate and decided to grab a batch before taking the rest to the dumpster. I also took home a large box of campaign buttons which I haven't found yet in her house. But I'm still looking…

Woody Allen on hypochondria.

Oh! Here we have a commercial from back in the sixties for Post Crispy Critters. I always liked these spots which featured Sheldon Leonard as the voice of Linus the Lionhearted. Didn't like the cereal but I liked the commercials.

This one has been posted to YouTube a couple of times and every time, someone misidentifies the fellow doing the voice of the bird. It's Charles Smith, a character actor who because of his quirky voice had a lot of bit parts in movies of the forties and fifties, and TV shows of the sixties. Remember the scene in Yankee Doodle Dandy where George M. Cohan in retirement meets some teenagers who don't know who he is? Well, the tall, lanky teen in that group was Charles Smith. He also played the character Dizzy Stevens in all the Henry Aldrich movies.

In there is mention of Sugar Sparkled Flakes, which was an unsuccessful attempt by Post cereals to replicate Kellogg's popular Sugar Frosted Flakes.  I recall my mother getting a box of it once and it seemed identical to the stuff Tony the Tiger was selling.  I guess Tony was just too well-established and beloved in the marketplace for people to buy the same thing from someone else…

I'm almost to the end of my current interest in this topic but…

Friday night, Jay Leno led the three network late night shows by a handy margin in both total viewers and the coveted 18-49 bracket. When all the numbers are in, it'll probably show that Jay won the week and also won the total of the four days when Jimmy Kimmel's new show was directly opposite The Tonight Show and The Late Show. Kimmel will be in second place. Letterman will be in third.

Now, that's just the first week of this three-way contest but if Jay can keep doing it…well, the argument among those at NBC who advocate dumping him and bringing in a younger man is that the younger man will do better in 18-49. It will be hard for that argument to prevail if Jay continues to beat a younger man in that demo. Kimmel's career in TV (on his current program and also on The Man Show over on Comedy Central) was always about how well he delivered young male viewers in the 18-49 category. I'd be curious to know if the reason Jay's doing better with younger viewers is a gender-gap thing; i.e., Kimmel's snagging males and the females are going to Leno. I rarely hear anyone who doesn't care for Kimmel not use the term, "frat boy humor."

In the meantime, if you think Letterman's been ornery since he started finishing second to Leno, wait and see how he is if he trails Kimmel for a few more weeks.

Getting back to Jay: As you may recall, the rumor was around recently that NBC had decided to retire Jay and move Jimmy Fallon to 11:35. That rumor apparently was premature (at least) and a lot of folks think it'll never happen; that even if Jay got run over by one of his eighty thousand cars tomorrow, Fallon would not automatically ascend to the earlier slot. There seems to be a belief out there that there's this grand tradition and understanding that 12:35 is a training ground and that if you succeed there, they move you up.

In the history of late night talk shows, this has happened exactly once…twice if you count ABC flipping the times of Jimmy Kimmel Live and Nightline. Conan O'Brien was moved up because he was threatening to go elsewhere and compete, and NBC didn't want to lose him and thought Jay wouldn't be able to sustain the numbers he'd been doing. As we all know, that didn't work out as planned.

The problem with dropping Leno and moving Fallon up is that NBC creates two uncertainties for themselves at the same time: Will Fallon's act play as well in the earlier slot? And who do you get to replace him who'll do as well at 12:35? I am told by someone involved in the late night game that many of the NBC affiliates have told the parent network, in effect, "If you replace Leno, you'd damn well better have someone phenomenal to take over that time slot." That doesn't mean the programming guys might not come up with someone they think would be phenomenal…but I don't think they're in a rush to risk having both 11:35 and 12:35 collapse at the same time under new management. Not while both shows are winning their slots in both total viewers and younger ones.

In the house I grew up in in West Los Angeles, we had a TV star next door. Her name was Betty Lynn and she is best known for playing Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show. A lovely woman…and practically family. When my mother died in November and I had to begin phoning her friends to let them know, Betty was the first person I called. She moved out of that house a few years ago and now lives in North Carolina where, because of the Griffith show, she is a local superstar.

We had two other "industry" people on our block. One, who I wrote about here years ago, was a film editor named Martin Bolger. The other, who I recently realized I'd never written about, was Dr. William H. Swanson. He and his family lived right across the street from us for several years.

Dr. Swanson was high, high up in the hierarchy of the U.C.L.A. Medical Center and Hospital. We used to always say he ran the whole place and that may not have been an exaggeration. In any event, he was a very prominent man in his field…and the Technical Advisor on the TV series, Dr. Kildare.

Dr. Kildare was a popular dramatic program that ran on NBC from 1961 to 1966. It starred Richard Chamberlain as a young, idealistic internist and Raymond Massey as his crusty, world-weary mentor. The show was not to be confused with Ben Casey over on ABC from 1961 to 1966, which starred Vince Edwards as a young, idealistic internist and Sam Jaffe as his crusty, world-weary mentor. Out of loyalty to our neighbor, the Evaniers only watched Dr. Kildare.

I'm a bit fuzzy on the particulars but I seem to recall that Dr. Swanson got the job because he had a long-standing friendship with Richard Chamberlain. He was not only the show's Technical Advisor but when it came time to allude to Dr. Kildare's past — where he'd studied, where he'd interned, etc. — they used Dr. Swanson's own past. Or at least, that's what an article in TV Guide said.

I got interested in TV writing as a possible career in early 1965 when as described here, my parents and I attended the filming of an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Prior to that, I'd known I wanted to be a writer but I wasn't certain what I wanted to be a writer of. I pretty much longed to write everything: Comic books, cartoons, novels, songs, stand-up comedy jokes, movies, magazine articles, fortunes for fortune cookies, tags you're not allowed to rip off your mattress….and, oh yes, TV shows. After that night — after being in the presence of Rob Petrie and, more important, Laura — TV writing vaulted to the top of the list.

A few weeks later, my mother was talking to Dr. Swanson's wife and happened to mention that. Mrs. Swanson said, "Would Mark like some old scripts? Because we have a garage full of them."

They sent Dr. Swanson every draft of every script for his corrections and suggestions, and he'd kept them all. There must have been 500 scripts in that garage and I was told I could help myself. I eventually helped myself to around fifty, including all I could find from the current season. When those episodes ran, I'd watch and follow along in my copy of the script. You couldn't learn everything about TV writing doing that but you could learn something.

I actually learned something one day when Richard Chamberlain was visiting them and I was invited to come over and meet him. He was very nice and very soft-spoken and very encouraging. But when he was told I'd been considering different kinds of writing and had settled on television, he said, "You don't have to pick one. I don't consider myself a television actor. I'm an actor who is currently on television. I don't neglect the other things I can do and you shouldn't, either. It'll make you a better writer of anything you do if you broaden your horizons. It also means there will be more places where you can work."

That's advice I've been giving to others for about the last thirty years but I only recently realized where I got it in the first place. I got it from Richard Chamberlain.

The Swansons moved away not long after Dr. Kildare ceased practicing on NBC. We missed them because they were nice folks and also because there was something comforting about having a great doctor living across the street. We never had to call on Dr. Swanson for an emergency but it was comforting to know he was there.

When they were moving out, I was again informed I could help myself to scripts. Whatever I didn't take would be going into the dumpster. I didn't need any more than I already had so a friend of mine and I loaded them all into boxes and took them to a nearby second-hand bookstore where the proprietor gave us store credit for them. The store had a good selection of recent old comic books and I filled in a lot of my Marvel collection with that credit. I learned a lot from reading those comics, too…so having Dr. Swanson across the street was very helpful to that end of my career, as well.

Years later, after I'd begun working in TV, my Aunt Dot told me how proud she was of me. We discussed my path to that profession and somehow, we got onto the subject of all those Dr. Kildare scripts. She had been over a few times when the whole family was watching the show and I was sprawled on the living room floor in front of the TV, following along in a copy of the script.

"You know," she said in her Aunt Dot way, "I'm glad you got into doing something you enjoy like that…but at one point, I was kind of hoping those scripts would inspire you to get into the field of Medicine."

Hey, let's hear another song by Idina Menzel. Here she is with her earth-shuddering number from Wicked, "Defying Gravity"…