Monthly Archives: April 2013

David Frum points out a big problem Rand Paul is going to have if he seeks the presidency next time out. He's going to have to denounce a lot of his father's supporters and maybe even some of what the Old Man himself says.

Actually, I think it's way too early to be talking about presidential contenders now. I have a hunch that the Republican nominee, and maybe even the runners-up, aren't even on anyone's radar at the moment. Same with the Democratic nominee if Hillary doesn't run.

I have no opinion on this issue of Peter Cook maybe being the interviewer in the Woody Allen video but…

• Someone named "Mike" wrote me and stated with seeming certainty that it was Russell Harty.
• Someone named "Geoff" wrote to say they'd bet their sister's life it's Peter Cook. For the sake of Geoff's sister, I certainly hope it is.
• And Stephen Saunders writes to say his best guess is Brian Trueman, who took over the show from Michael Parkinson, or maybe Clive James. Then he notes that the imdb page for the show Cinema for September the 9th 1971 lists Woody Allen as a guest and says the "presenter" (i.e., host) was Derek Granger.

Who's right? I dunno. We report, you decide.

Watched Conan O'Brien's speech last night at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Some real sharp material read by a guy who sounds like he didn't read it in advance.

You know, I liked Conan from his first day hosting Late Night and I watched as he got better and better. At some point — around the time Andy Richter left and Conan decided he didn't need a sidekick — I began to sense a little too much polish. His routine last evening reminded me of why, late in his run on that 12:35 show, I shifted my TiVo Season Pass over to Craig Ferguson…and don't have one for Conan's current program. He's a very funny man at times and everyone who knows him tells me he's one of the nicest people in the business. Most of them also tell me though that I'd like him better when he's off-stage and not trying a bit too hard to come off as a slick professional comedian. I can believe that.

The guy they need these days at those dinners — though they won't hire him since he'd genuinely wound some of the attendees — is Bill Maher. Maher's kind of the opposite of O'Brien in that everyone thinks he's a much less appealing person off-camera…and my brief encounters with him would bear that out. But he does "own" his material in a way few current topical comics do. You sense that even if Maher didn't write that joke about Mitch McConnell, he knows who Mitch McConnell is and actually shares the point-of-view expressed in the joke. When Conan did his Mitch McConnell joke last night — eyes rarely straying from a typed script — I got the feeling that if you tried to engage him in conversation about it afterwards, it would have been, "Mitch Who? Oh, yeah…he's one of those Senate guys, right?" Maybe he wouldn't say that but that's how Conan comes off to me. So do the two late night Jimmies and a lot of other comics these days.

The late Lorenzo Music and I were once talking about one of his many gigs, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He believed the presentation of Ted Baxter on that series had actually changed the standard for news readers in this country; that they'd successfully made a laughingstock of the anchorman who loves the sound of his own voice and the image of himself on the monitor…but doesn't really know or care what he's reading. Lorenzo believed that depiction had sent TV news producers scrambling to find anchors who seemed to have a more genuine connection with the copy they were reading off the TelePrompter. Like most of the comics we've seen at the Correspondents Dinner, O'Brien could have used a little more connection with the lines he was delivering. Some of them were very, very clever. And most of those performers at the dinner could have used (should have used) a TelePrompter. When you're insulting people in the audience, you ought to at least pretend to be looking at them.

In case you missed it, here's his entire speech…

Jim Haberman writes…

About two minutes into this piece, I starting thinking the interviewer just might be the great comedian Peter Cook, and by the eight-minute mark, I was convinced of it and firmly remain so. As an admitted Anglophile comedy junkie who's long put Cook's earlier work at the very top of the gods' pantheon and listened intently to pretty much every known recorded word of his, I'd be willing to wager not only the farm on this, but whole townships and counties in the bargain.

Aside from clearly recognizing the voice, my thoughts are these. Peter Cook had earlier in 1971 hosted a legendary flop, the brief, disastrous run of a live interview TV series on BBC2 somewhat saucily titled "Where Do I Sit?" which probably left him with the germ of some basic interviewing skills. Woody Allen is and was known to have been a longtime admirer of Cook, and it's quite conceivable that for this straightforward long-running Granada TV interview series "Cinema", they devised a prank that went something like this: Allen, America's latest red-hot young comedy director/star, agreed to appear on the series only if Cook was allowed to interview him. Their clever private conceit for the show of course was that Allen would speak only in falsehoods the entire time, and to make the resulting gag appearance seem genuine, Cook's involvement remained a secret.

This "Cinema" episode from Sept. 9 of that year may not even have aired, though since it's listed for that date in IMDB, one suspects it was shown, undoubtedly to much public bafflement. Further enforcing that this is likely Cook's handiwork are: a) it doesn't sound like Parkinson who did most of the show's interviews of that period, b) the program did allow occasional one-off celebrity interviewers, and especially c) there's the inescapable fact that this interviewer blandly, unquestioningly forges on in the face of such blatant lies from Allen that anyone with a brain and not in on the joke would have stormed off set in the first five minutes or less. Or begun cracking up, which Cook famously seldom did, unlike his frequent comedy partner, Dudley Moore, who famously quite often did. Topping it all off, this interviewer is a brilliant example of one of Cook's most celebrated signature characters: the fatuous, clueless, monotone upper-class twit.

Well, that's my plea, your honor. Apologies to you if this went on too long, as I've been known to do sometimes, or as many might say, always. Let me also take this moment to let you know how very much I've been enjoying your blog since I learned of it six months back or so. You certainly dig up and put out a lot of terrific, often seldom-seen gems (like this interview), for much of which I share great fondness, especially so many comedy greats — the Marxes, L & H, Benny, etc. (And to boot, I find your editorializing pretty spot-on nearly every time.) So please keep it up! And thanks for hearing me out on my favorite topic.

I have no opinion on this. Might be Cook, might not be Cook. The main thing that would lead me to the latter conclusion is that I would have thought the interviewer would have been funnier. But Jim may be right. Anyone out there know for certain?

I'm preempting Stooge Sunday to bring you something that's time-sensitive and almost as classy. It's Live From Lincoln Center with its presentation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel starring Kelli O'Hara and Nathan Gunn. This ran the other night and apparently is not going to run again…but it's on the PBS website for the next week or so. Until then, the window below will show you all two and a half hours of it. This is not my favorite show but it is an American classic and this is a stunning production of it. So if you want to see it, don't delay. Once this link goes dead on May 3rd, it'll be very hard to come by…

Here are 50 Great Jon Stewart quotes. Actually, I think a couple of them were uttered by correspondents on The Daily Show and a lot of them were probably invented by writers on that program…but you get the idea.

Dick Cavett remembers Jonathan Winters. (And Mark forgets to go to bed at a decent hour…)

Here's a weird story. Last night, there was a taping of America's Got Talent at the Pantages Theater here in Los Angeles. A comedian comes out and does a bit that goes over quite well. When it's time for Howie Mandel (one of the judges) to give his critique, he says that he recognizes the routine as very similar to one performed by another comedian, Frank Nicotero. And here's the really weird part: Frank Nicotero is in the theater. He's the warm-up comedian for America's Got Talent.

I always wonder about this kind of thing. It's one thing to steal another comic's material and do it in some comedy club that he'll never visit. It's another thing to do it on national TV where either he'll see it or someone who knows the material will call and tell him. You'd think no one would do this simply because they'll never get away with it…and yet every so often, someone attempts it. Back when he was in the cast of Saturday Night Live, Jay Mohr "wrote" and performed an entire sketch that even he had to later admit was plagiarized from a comedian named Rick Shapiro. This is like robbing a bank and leaving your driver's license with the teller.

Here's a report on what happened at the America's Got Talent taping last night.

In 1971 when Woody Allen made Bananas, he went to England and sat for a very long interview. In it, he lied his ass off and didn't give one truthful answer — and it turns out, the man's pretty good at that. Amazing that he didn't run for public office…

The convention center in which Comic-Con International convenes in San Diego is getting a much-needed expansion but not fast enough. I'm a bit fuzzy on when it was to be completed but it ain't gonna be done by then, whenever then was.

Comic-Con is committed to San Diego through 2016. I have long predicted that it will remain there long after that and I hold to that prediction. Yes, we've had two splendid WonderCons run by the same crew in Anaheim and to some, the notion that Comic-Con might someday relocate there doesn't sound quite as impossible (or undesirable) as it once did. On the other hand, can you imagine the price of a hotel room and the density of traffic on the freeway if they held Comic-Con adjacent to Disneyland in the middle of July? Forget my running joke about how if you want a parking space for Comic-Con, leave six months early. If Comic-Con 2017 is in Anaheim in July, leave now.

I try not to use this blog for self-promotion so I think it's been one full year to the day since I mentioned here that I write the Garfield comic book published by the fine folks at Boom! Studios. That is to say I write most of it. Last year when I was in the midst of losing my mother, I got behind and a clever gent named Scott Nickel graciously filled in on a few stories. He did such a fine job that I hurried back to my post lest anyone wonder why they needed me. The comic is drawn expertly by Gary Barker, Andy Hirsch and an array of fine guest artists.

In other comic book news involving me: Sergio Aragonés is over his medical problems and drawing pages again for the long-delayed Groo Vs. Conan mini-series from Dark Horse. I expect to be able to announce a release date here shortly. I've also just agreed to write a new, unrelated-to-Groo-or-Garfield comic for another publisher and I think they plan on announcing this at San Diego. I'll try to update you on all this stuff more often than once a year.

I always find the annual White House Correspondents Dinner to be a fascinating event, especially in terms of how each year's guest comedian will work what is surely a very tough room. But that doesn't mean I don't agree with Tom Brokaw that there are many things wrong with politicians and journalists setting both callings aside for an evening and shmoozing over celebrities and each other.

John Cassidy has an interesting thought about Terrorism and Gun Control. And he's right: The way people reacted to the Boston Marathon tragedy would have been entirely different if the brothers' weapons of choice had been AR-15s instead of homemade bombs.

Here's a list called 50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush's Presidency. I'm never comfy with words like "hate" and "despise" being used in politics but I agree that the man was a terrible Chief Executive. What's especially appalling is that some of the "accomplishments" on this list are probably things that he would call great achievements.