Monthly Archives: November 2013

Got an hour to hear Michael Feinstein talk about the Gershwins and play some of their tunes? Good. Then click away…

• I know they don't mean it the wrong way but it still jars me when I post an obit on Facebook and hundreds hit the "like" button.

One other thing I forgot to mention a few items ago when I wrote about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World…

If you haven't seen this movie before or if you're going to show it to someone who hasn't, this is one of those films that I think can't be fully appreciated unless you see it with a good audience. And a big, big screen is almost as essential.

When I encounter someone who thinks it's an awful, unfunny movie, it's usually the case that they saw it all alone on a 22" Samsung or something. I can well understand not being amused on it then and there. I can also understand not loving it on a big screen in a packed theater if you don't have a great appreciation for the kind of comedian it celebrates…the Milton Berles, the Phil Silverses, etc. If you don't laugh at the mere appearance of Paul Ford on the screen, maybe this ain't the picture for you.

Part of my affection for the movie is because of what it meant to my childhood…like the way you might treasure a favored hamburger stand of your youth. And part is how rich it is with what some might call trivia — all those actors, all their history, all the challenges of making this movie — but which I think are important and interesting.

I always tell people it's my favorite movie. I don't tell them it's the best movie ever made or even the best comedy. I occasionally hear something like, "How can a great comedy begin with someone dying in a car crash?" Well, it can. Hey, Dr. Strangelove ends with nuclear holocaust and it's a great comedy. But when you try to argue the merits of a film like this from that vantage point, you're looking at it all wrong. It's like arguing Goldfinger stinks because of all those plot holes I mentioned here last night.

Anyway, I'm recommending the DVD/Blu-ray set of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World as the best-possible version ever issued on home video. But I'm also recommending that if you haven't seen this movie, you try to experience it for the first time in a big theater with a warm, appreciative audience. I went to see it again a few weeks ago at the Cinerama Dome even though I'd just gotten through seeing it over and over and over and over (etc.) to record the commentary track. It was quite a different experience at the Dome. Quite different…and for me, quite wonderful.

• Well, Toronto mayor Rob Ford didn't do anything humiliating today so we'll put another hundred dollars in the jackpot!

As some of you may have heard, veteran comic book artist Al Plastino has been locked in a messy squabble lately regarding the ownership of the original art he drew in 1964 for a Superman story about President John F. Kennedy. The battle has come to a sad ending for Mr. Plastino, who died this afternoon. He was 91.

Plastino was, I believe, the only person alive who drew Superman comics professionally before about 1967. He started in 1948. His earliest known comic book work was in 1941 for a little-known company called Dynamic Comics. After serving in World War II, he freelanced in and out of comics until connecting in '48 with DC, where he worked until the early seventies. For most of that time, he was the second-string Superman artist. Wayne Boring was the main guy through the fifties, then it was Curt Swan. The stories they didn't have time to do were done by Plastino. He drew some memorable stories for the Superman line of comics, including the first stories of Supergirl and also of The Legion of Super-Heroes.

In 1966, he worked on the syndicated Batman newspaper strip and drifted into that line of work. He was an excellent mimic of styles and took over the art on the Ferd'nand newspaper strip in 1970, drawing it until his retirement in '89. At one point, someone at the syndicate got the brilliant (!) idea to replace Charles Schulz on Peanuts and they had Plastino draw several weeks to show that he could ape that style…which he could. There are several accounts of what happened next but they all resulted in Schulz being furious (though not at Plastino), Schulz staying on his strip and getting lots of apologies from the syndicate, and Plastino's strips never being published. He also worked on the Nancy strip for a time and possibly others. Al was a very versatile artist.

I do not know how Mr. Plastino's passing will impact the battle over the Superman-Kennedy story. (You can read about it here. It sounds to me like someone at DC just fibbed about donating the artwork in the first place and it disappeared into someone's closet. I also suspect that they fibbed when they announced that an earlier version of the same story that was drawn by Curt Swan was donated to the Kennedy Library.)

I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Plastino but folks who did said he was a good man and a dedicated professional. It's always sad to lose someone like that.

How they painted Shirley Eaton gold for the movie, Goldfinger.

I never quite figured out why the villain had that done insofar as the storyline was concerned. I mean, her character, Jill Masterson, helped James Bond screw up Mr. Goldfinger's poker game…so Goldfinger sends Oddjob to perform an ugly deed. James and Jill are rolling around in bed in what appears to be his room. Oddjob somehow gets inside, knocks Bond out and then when our hero wakes up, there's Jill — dead and covered head-to-toe in gold paint.

Bond later says she died from "skin suffocation," from being painted. Isn't that like the hardest way imaginable to kill someone? I mean, it's not like she would hold still while Oddjob got out his tray and roller and gave her a couple of coats of semi-gloss. He did a neat job, too. There's no sign of any spills or drips of gold anywhere else in the room. And as you can see not in the movie but in some of the publicity stills, he was nice enough to leave her underwear on and paint it, too — and presumably under it. He did all this before Bond regained consciousness.

I'm going to guess Bond was wrong; that she didn't die from being painted. I'm thinking Oddjob did it the easy way: He killed her, then painted her. That sure would have saved a lot of time and helped get him outta there before Bond woke up. And he could really have left before then if he hadn't bothered to paint her at all.

Why do that? All I can think of is that it was Goldfinger's little way of signing his work, making sure Bond knew who'd done it. But Bond would have figured that out. Earlier that day, she turned on her boss, one of the most powerful, ruthless men in the world. Later on, she's murdered. If 007 couldn't put that one together, Mr. Goldfinger had nothing to fear from him.

But of course, Goldfinger was afraid that Bond would interfere with his plans to make zillions…so while the guy's unconscious, why not just kill him? Goldfinger had several opportunities to kill 007 in that film and didn't. For a guy who wasn't shy about killing anyone who stood between himself and what he wanted, ol' Auric sure went out of his way to not kill the one guy who seemed likely to foil his plans.

I love that movie but it's filled with things like that that bother me. They did such elaborate special effects and stuntwork in the assault on Fort Knox…why not take the five minutes in editing to have that countdown clock run in real time? It's counting down the seconds until the kaboom! and — I actually timed this — we see it at 215 and after one full minute of screen time, it's at 146. Then we have another 40 seconds of screen time and it's at 127.

Then there are a lot of cutaways to the ticking clock that don't coincide much with the action happening between them…but here's the bottom line. From the time it says 127 on the clock to the moment where it's stopped at [SPOILER ALERT] 007, there's two minutes and 47 seconds. The last twenty seconds alone last about a minute. For me, it just lessens the reality in a movie that was built on firm logic, believable feats, and a completely possible premise.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a cockroach in the kitchen that I have to go kill. I'm thinking that instead of getting out the spray or stepping on it, I'll paint it gold. That will be so much easier.

I have this link up in the right margin of this page whereby you can pre-order the Criterion Blu-ray/DVD of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World from Amazon. The link was busted from Amazon's end for a few days but it's now working again.

The set contains two versions of the movie — the always-available General Release version and a special new, as-restored-as-humanly-possible version that puts back lots of cut footage. Unless they trimmed the line, I can be heard in the commentary track of the longer version advising you that if you're going to show this movie to someone who's never seen it before, show them the shorter version. In fact, if I were you and I had seen the film before, I'd suggest you watch the shorter version again…then in a few days or a week or three, watch the longer version with the commentary track. I'll mention this again before the film comes out in January.

It's always amused me that on most pages where Amazon is selling a book or movie, they offer you a special package deal in which you can get the item you want plus another, related item for either the exact same price as you'd pay to order them separately…or a few cents more. I'm not sure if it changes but at the moment, they have a film paired up with Mad World. They always entitle these deals "Frequently Bought Together" and they're two movies or two books on related themes or featuring the same stars or authors or something.

So what is the movie that they claim is "Frequently Bought Together" with Mad World? You'd figure it would either be a Spencer Tracy film, a Stanley Kramer movie or a big comedy like The Great Race or Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, right?

Well, at this very minute, it's Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. Hey, there's a film that has so much in common with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I mean, along with the fact that the Three Stooges make cameo appearances in both.

Purchased separately on Amazon, they'd cost you $62.91. But if you click the link to buy both at the same time, you can get them for $62.94. So don't miss this golden opportunity to spend three more cents when you join the throngs that buy these two films at the same time.

This is Audra McDonald with a very moving song called "I'll Be Here." It was written by Adam Gwon for an intimate musical called Ordinary Days. I would suggest you not watch this until you're in the mood to be a bit choked-up…

Stan Goldberg is one of our great veteran comic book artists. He drew hundreds — more likely, thousands of pages for the Archie comic books. He also was an artist for Marvel Comics in the fifties and sixties, drawing comics like Millie the Model, and he was their head colorist. This is the man who made the Hulk green. This is the man who made the work of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and others look so colorful and bright. He's also a helluva nice guy, widely loved throughout the field, and was recently awarded the prestigious Gold Key Award by the National Cartoonists Society.

We're thinking good thoughts tonight about Stan and his wonderful wife Pauline who were in a terrible auto accident last week. They're in nearby rooms in a hospital in New York and likely to be there a while. That kind of thing's bad at any age but Stan is 81 (I can only guess about Pauline) so they both have a lot of mending and rehab ahead of them. We all wish them well…and hope they know how many people are pulling for them.

• John Kerry worked out a deal to stop Iran from exercising its nuclear option. Mitch McConnell should have tried that with Democrats.

• Ted Cruz says changing filibuster rules will "poison the atmosphere of the Senate." Yes, they were all getting along so well before.

Sylvia Browne died the other day, leaving some of us with that awkward problem: How do you react to the death of someone you thought was a horrible, horrible person? I do not believe in any kind of psychic powers or abilities to communicate with the deceased. I will concede that it's possible that some who claim such facility are harmless but the ones like Browne, who charge hundreds of dollars for consultations are just bilking gullible, sometimes desperate people.

Ms. Browne amazed me because her act was so phony and so transparent that I couldn't imagine how anyone fell for it at all, let alone to the tune of $850 for a twenty-minute phone conversation. Yeah, that's what she charged. If you couldn't come up with that kind of loot, you could talk to one of her relatives or staff members, all of whom oddly had the same abilities, for a little less. There are some people who work these scams so well you can almost understand how otherwise-wise people might get taken in. But Sylvia Browne was practically wearing an "I'm a Fraud" sign around her neck and she still got on important TV shows and sold books and took in millions with her act.

For years, Sylvia confidently predicted she'd die at age 88. She was 77, thereby maintaining her usual batting average right to the end.

If you haven't seen this, you need to see this. It's the interactive music video for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone."

So…what's up with late night TV? Well, as he heads into his final months on the job, Mr. Leno is way out in front of Mr. Letterman or Mr. Kimmel in the ratings. Given that The Tonight Show will be packed with superstar guests from now 'til Jay's last show on February 6, everyone is more or less assuming that he'll bow out with monster audiences. Mr. Fallon is also doing great — his young adult numbers at 12:35 are topping David Letterman's young adult numbers at 11:35. That has to make the folks at NBC optimistic, though there's no way of telling how Fallon would be doing — and will be doing — without Jay as his lead-in.

I'm still fascinated by the situation Leno is in and eager to see what happens. He's under contract to NBC until some point in September of '14, at which point he's free to relocate. That is, unless he signs a new deal of some sort to keep him at NBC. I can't imagine what they could offer him that he'd want. Prime time specials? A weekly series? That doesn't sound like Leno to me. Neither does collecting a huge paycheck for months for, essentially, not being on television.

He might just decide to do nothing on TV on a regular basis…but they'll be after him. I can't think of anyone in TV history who's ever become a Free Agent with a track record of being #1 in his time slot for most of two decades. At some point, perhaps in March, he'll be contractually able to entertain offers.

Industry watchers I know were mud-wrestling over whether there's a chance one will be for a new late night show either in syndication or at Fox. Some are certain that isn't in the cards; that Jay is too old for anyone to want to invest in setting up a new franchise elsewhere. On the other hand, no one who wants to get into that arena will ever have a chance to sign a guy who's won that time slot as much as Jay has. Let's say you were the top guy at Fox and you dreamed of clearing the 11 PM-Midnight hour on all your stations for a late night show. What name besides Leno could you ever conceivably get who'd cause more of your stations to move their Seinfeld reruns and accept a network show on that choice piece of real estate?

And Arsenio ain't doing so well. How many stations that carry him would rather have a Jay Leno show there?

This may all be moot. Jay may just decide this is the time to complete his transformation into Bob Hope and spend the rest of his career not doing a regular series. And no, I don't think there's any chance of him coming back to The Tonight Show if Fallon crashes and burns. For good or ill, the next few years of NBC late night are in New York under the purview of Lorne Michaels. Friends I know who know Leno have no clue as to what he wants to do with his life. Maybe even he doesn't know 'til he hears some offers.

So, uh, what about Dave? As you may have heard, he and Jay have patched up their friendship to some unknown extent. The other night, Dave had Howard Stern in the guest chair, and Howard railed on about how he's keeping the Jay Leno Hate Campaign going on Dave's behalf and Dave is now undermining him by consorting with The Enemy. Letterman is hard to read, and he had to have expected that Stern was going to bring it up…but he sure didn't look thrilled by the topic. His face looked like he was thinking, "Oh, right! I forgot that when I have Howard on, he always raises some subject I'm uncomfortable talking about." Frankly, if I were Dave Letterman, I'd be embarrassed if America believed that with all my awards and honors and megabucks, I was still miserable about not getting Johnny's old job.

It makes sense that Dave and Jay are talking…and probably not just because Dave wants the ratings heat that will result when, as seems inevitable, Jay guests on his show. (And Dave'll probably never do it but if I were him, I'd go do Jay's show before 2/6/14. There's no way Dave wouldn't be hilarious — i.e., the old Dave — in that situation and a portion of Jay's audience may soon be in the market for something besides Fallon to watch at 11:35.) Dave and Jay shared a lot of history, starting at the Comedy Store at roughly the same time, advancing together, etc. Now, they share a certain amount of future challenges, namely how and when to exit late night TV when your network thinks you're too old. This could be the (re)start of a beautiful friendship.

Another "full" episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. I put in the quotes because some music cues have been edited out of this one — like Buddy Hackett's entrance music which I assume was "My Buddy." Still, there are many wonderful things here including Mr. Hackett's tales of touring Japan with Jack Paar. This is from November 24, 1977. It's interesting how much less hectic the pace was back then…