Monthly Archives: January 2014

Stu Shostak's got a real good interviewee for today's (Wednesday's) edition of Stu's Show. It's Tony Benedict, who was one of the best writers at Hanna-Barbera in the sixties and he also worked for Disney, U.P.A. and other studios. He worked on a lot of shows but I'm most impressed that he not only wrote The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Top Cat but many of the best episodes of those series — a real smart guy and real funny guy. As a co-host, Stu has Jerry Eisenberg, who worked on all those shows and others, and who was one of H-B's best artists.

This is not a show you should miss if you're interested in the history of that studio and others that did animation in the fifties and sixties. Tony is a vital link and we're hoping he'll soon finish a documentary he's been working on about those days. I'm sure Stu will be asking him about that. He'll probably also be asking about a feature that Tony wrote, directed and produced. I'll tell you a little bit about that and give you a chance to see it in a moment but first, let me tell you how to listen to Stu's Show.

It's as close as the computer you're reading this on right now. If you can hear audio on the videos I embed, you can listen to Stu's Show. In fact, there are two ways you can listen to Stu's Show…

You can listen to it live. This is the best way because it has that feeling of immediacy and you can submit questions during the broadcast…and best of all, it's free. Just go to the Stu's Show website at the appropriate time and click where you're told to click…and the show will stream through your speakers. Simple. It starts at 4 PM Pacific Time, which is 7 PM Eastern Time and other times in other climes. It runs a minimum of two hours and sometimes goes way, way over. I have a feeling today's will run way, way over.

Or for a small fee, you can download the episode and listen to it at your leisure. In fact, there are hundreds of Stu's Shows you can do that with and you save money if you get four at a time. One is 99 cents but buy three and get a fourth one free. Today's episode will available not long after the show concludes. Just go to the same website and visit the Stu's Show Archives.

Now then. In 1970, Tony set out on his own and made this animated feature, Santa and the Three Bears. If some of it looks rather Hanna-Barbera-like, it's because he employed a number of folks he knew from the studio and some were even moonlighting. It's a charming film that never got the attention it deserved. This is not a very good copy of it and it's missing a live-action opening with some of the credits that are in some prints and not others. You may have seen this long ago so here it is to jog your memory. Tony will be talking about it on Stu's Show tomorrow, along with all these other topics. Stu, you've got a lot of history to cover…

I've been getting a lot of messages about what I wrote about Saving Mr. Banks. Here's one from Bob Kircher…

I thought you might find this interesting. I read with interest your review of Saving Mr. Banks, and I was quite satisfied that your opinion echoed mine. As a corporate video producer, I was really looking forward to a good drama that demonstrated the creative process with Walt Disney, especially since I have no idea what the man was like. I actually walked out of the movie (a first for me), mainly because the portrayal of P.L. Travers just reminded me of every idiotic client I've ever had.

However, my wife, who has no background in anything creative, had a much different take — she really enjoyed it. I was stunned, since apparently we're one of the few married coupled that agrees with each other much more often than not. She thought it was a fascinating behind-the-scenes look. Me? I just wanted somebody to punch ol' P.L. right in the mouth.

I'm ganging up a number of responses into one big message I'll post here a day or three. One of the things I find fascinating is that some people love the film for precisely the same reasons others don't. (Please don't send me any more views, dear readers. I have more than I can handle here right now…)

• Today's potatoes are from Easterday Farms in Pasco, WA

This will probably be of interest only to those of you who grew up in Los Angeles…

The Pasadena location of Hamburger Hamlet closed a few days ago. The leaves only one Hamburger Hamlet — the one out in Sherman Oaks. This was a once-mighty chain of terrific restaurants and I have vivid memories of them. As a kid, I often accompanied by my parents to either of the two Hamburger Hamlets in Beverly Hills. (Some said then those were the only restaurants in B.H. with an all-black staff. My parents liked the liberalism but we went mainly for the good burgers. Great lobster bisque, too.)

I remember sitting with my mother in the Hamburger Hamlet in Westwood Village before she took me to see Bambi at a theater down the street. I must have been five or so and she was preparing me for the sad parts of the movie we were about to see. I didn't care about them. I just wanted more ketchup to put on my burger.

I took my first date to that same Hamburger Hamlet. It's no longer there but a few years ago when I wrote about it, a reader of this site mailed me an actual menu from around that period. For all I know, that may have been the actual menu that my date was looking at when she thought, "If he thinks I'm putting out for him tonight, he's crazy."

The one in Pasadena? Four of us went there for a bite after seeing Smokey Joe's Cafe out that way last October. The staff was awfully friendly. The decor was quite nice. The food? I'm afraid that after the original owners, Marilyn and Harry Lewis sold to a corporation, the cuisine began a downward descent from which it never recovered. Based on what I had that night, I'm not surprised we're saying bye-bye to them…but I still don't understand why if you own a once-great restaurant, you let it get that way.  Here's an article about it.

Two different people wrote me with a confusion based on what I posted here yesterday. Here's one of them…

I don't see how a script written for Richie Rich could be retargetted for Scooby Doo. Aren't they totally different casts of characters and settings? This seems like taking a script for Popeye the Sailor and using it for Daffy Duck.

What I thought would be clear was that in this instance, Bill Hanna would be having the Scooby Doo unit do the layout and animation for an episode of Richie Rich. That situation, by the way, might have meant that the Richie Rich unit would finish its episodes for the season earlier than planned and the artists in its unit might be laid off sooner than they'd expected.

By the way: Another result of the substitution would be that the episode of Richie Rich would be animated by folks not as familiar with the models and designs — and not hired because they'd shown they could draw in the Richie Rich style — and it would not look as good. This happened a lot at Hanna-Barbera. It probably happens at most large studios, and it's one of the reasons why the quality of animation and drawing on a show might vary from week to week. (Another, more serious problem at H-B is that Bill Hanna would send one episode of a show to a sub-contractor in Taiwan, another to Korea, another to the Philippines…)

R.C. Harvey makes a Superman-worthy effort to reconcile conflicting stories about how Superman went from being an unsold newspaper strip by two kids from Ohio to the cover of Action Comics #1 and Americana. I'm not sure yet I buy all his deductions and such. I'll have to read it a few more times. But maybe you'd like to read it with me.

(Oh — and the illustration of Superman, Batman and Robin which Bob says is "Maybe Al Plastino's" is not Al Plastino.)

Look at this. Just look at this…

Okay, so Joe Melchione's question deserves a longer answer than I gave it. Here it is again…

Having read your columns and blog for the last two decades, there appears to be a frequent pattern of employers (both comic book and TV related) asking you to produce a script virtually/literally overnight. I have trouble understanding why this happens so often. I realize you work in a industry made up of highly creative people where ideas may trump proper scheduling and that it often takes a long to make it through the corporate red tape to get a project green lit. Even so, why such unrealistic deadlines? Wouldn't the whole creative team benefit from a balanced schedule?

Yes but some of this, honestly, I bring on myself by juggling different projects for different publishers or producers. Life would be easier in some ways if I just worked for one entity but then (a) I wouldn't have as great a diversity of things to work on and people to work with and (b) I'd feel somewhat trapped at that one source of income. Even while working in the most benevolent of situations — and most of mine have been that — it's nice to know that if things go sour on one project, I can quit…or they can fire me and I still have work. Also, even companies you think are stable sometimes suddenly go under or bring in new management.

But obviously, there's a downside to that and sometimes, it's that everyone I'm working for suddenly needs an urgent rewrite on something by Monday morning. Individually, they all gave me reasonable deadlines but doing them all at the same time can get…well, unreasonable.

That said, I am often expected to produce things overnight or close to it. In fact, I am sometimes called because, well, that's the deadline, they need someone fast 'n' dependable…and they think that's me. In the eighties, I did a lot of scripts, including several animation pilots that sold, in 48 hours or less. One time, ABC called on a Tuesday and asked if I could write a pilot for a half-hour series. I asked them if I could have until Monday morning on it. They said, "Mark, if we had until Monday, we could have called you on Friday."

Why does it happen so often that they need it day before yesterday? Often because someone else screwed up. Someone else wrote a script within the time the schedule allowed. Another someone else didn't like it. Another writer is called in and now there's no time left.

Or the producers or editors squander time deciding what they want and by the time the writer gets called, he has to be pressed to make up the difference. That's a very frequent situation.

Also, most of the time, what we write is part of an assembly line. At Hanna-Barbera, when I was story-editing Richie Rich, the following situation happened a number of times. I had a script ready a few days before the artists would need to start working on it…but then there'd be a crisis over in the Scooby Doo unit. The artists there were almost done with Episode #101 and the script for #102 wasn't going to be finished in time.

Bill Hanna lived in dread fear of employees sitting around on the payroll with nothing to do…so he'd run through the building, looking for some script he could give them to work on. He'd find I had a Richie Rich that wasn't yet needed in production so he'd put the Scooby unit to work on that script…and suddenly, I'd have three days to get another Richie Rich script written and approved by the network so the Richie Rich unit would have something to do.

That happened a lot at Hanna-Barbera and it's happened in some ways at every animation studio and in comics. One time at DC, Julius Schwartz turned to me and said, "I need a script to give Irv Novick three days from now. Can you write a script in two days for me?" Irv had a contract that guaranteed him a new assignment the minute he finished one. And even if he hadn't had that contract, it's not usually a good idea to not keep a steady flow of work going to your freelancers.

I could write a lot more on this topic and maybe I will…but right now, believe it or not, I have a deadline to meet. So I'll just mention that sometimes, doing it at the last minute has its advantages. I've written TV scripts that were produced almost exactly the way I wrote them simply because there was absolutely no time for rewrites…by me or anyone else. There are times when that's a good thing. It's also sometimes creatively exhilarating to be in that position, the same way doing television live can add a certain special energy to a show. When you only have one chance to get it right, that sometimes helps you get it right. Or maybe at least righter.

I really liked Henny Youngman. Performing on TV, he was never dull. The material was sometimes dated and too familiar but he was always fast and funny. I got to meet Henny a few times, including a lunch at the Friars Club in New York that I somehow forgot to mention in this article about our other encounters. Whatever he was, he was one of a kind…a kind that we don't have anymore.

You know, there ought to be a documentary about that man…a film about his amazing career. He started as a printer, you know. Well actually, he was born a comedian and sometimes a musician, but before he could make any money at that, he was a printer. He had a little stand with a press in a penny arcade in New York and if you needed business cards or stationery or invitations, you went to him and he'd take your business…and tell you some ghastly jokes while you waited. When he was able to book a performing job, he'd hang a CLOSED sign on the booth and go tell jokes and/or play his violin. The jokes were better than the violin-playing.

Yes, there should be a documentary about him…with interviews with his contemporaries, most of whom are sadly now gone, as well. And there could be rare footage and maybe home movies and personal photos maybe if the filmmaker could get the cooperation of Youngman's family.

Oh, wait! Someone is making such a documentary! And they do have the cooperation of Youngman's family because they are Youngman's family! I'm backing this Kickstarter and helping in any way I can. Here's the windup — and the pitch…

Joe Melchione writes to ask…

Having read your columns and blog for the last two decades, there appears to be a frequent pattern of employers (both comic book and TV related) asking you to produce a script virtually/literally overnight. I have trouble understanding why this happens so often. I realize you work in a industry made up of highly creative people where ideas may trump proper scheduling and that it often takes a long to make it through the corporate red tape to get a project green lit. Even so, why such unrealistic deadlines? Wouldn't the whole creative team benefit from a balanced schedule?

Yes.

And I wanted to. I really did.

For a couple of weeks now, friends have been telling me they loved it or hated it. The latter group for the most part felt it was a Disney corporate whitewash. Walt and Mrs. Travers famously clashed over the making of the movie, Mary Poppins. He ultimately prevailed and made it his way…and the film makes him out to be folksy and benevolent and maybe not as interested in the Almighty Buck as most folks think Mr. Disney usually was. And it makes P.L. Travers out to be a pretty nasty, emotionally screwed-up person…which maybe she was but since the film wasn't made by the Travers Company, it kinda feels like the deck was stacked at least a bit against her.

I'm not saying it isn't an honest portrayal. A lot of observers are arguing that it isn't but all I'm saying is that even if it is, I didn't enjoy the film. Before I go any farther with this, I think I'd better put up one of these…

Okay then. Maybe some of my problems were in my expectations. I was expecting the story of an author fighting for the integrity of her work…or maybe for her version of her creation versus Mr. Disney's. It isn't either. The P.L. Travers of this movie is wrong about everything and Disney and his charges are always right. This is not a movie about the debate over how Ms. Travers' famous nanny was to be portrayed on the screen. It's more of a movie about how long will it be before this crazy, disturbed woman goes away and lets Disney make that wonderful movie we all love?

If the P.L. Travers of this film made one valid creative point, I missed it. She's just a horrible, horrible woman who is nasty to everyone for no good reason. She's rude to flight attendants, bellhops, people who bring her cakes, people who don't serve her tea the way she wants it. She doesn't even bother to learn the name of the ultra-friendly limo driver who's trying so hard to please her.

Does she have any legitimate concerns about what the Disney folks want to do to her property? Apparently, not. Her demands are irrational, the rantings of a crazy woman who has deep, personal inner-demons that are unleashed by the prospect of someone else touching her beloved Mary Poppins. So what if she has problems with Dick Van Dyke playing Bert? This is a person who has problems with Jello-molds and with green apples in her fruit basket and with the color red and with other people offering to carry her luggage.

I'm not qualified to say if the real P.L. Travers was like that. I am qualified to say that I didn't enjoy watching a movie about a woman who was like that.

My friend Floyd Norman worked on the film, believes it is an accurate representation, and likes it very much. So does Richard Sherman, who's depicted in it and consulted on it and who I ran into and discussed it with before I'd seen it. Friday evening at a party of animation folks, Floyd came up to me, jokingly waving his arms and gasping, "You didn't like the movie? You didn't like the movie?" I told him I didn't and I told him why. I had almost the exact same conversation soon after with Richard Sherman. He thought a moment and agreed my point was valid in its way. Or at least, he realized we had more in common than he'd thought: He didn't like spending two weeks around that woman and I didn't like spending two hours. (He still loves the film, of course.)

Both of them, by the way, think Tom Hanks was a good Walt. I didn't like Hanks in the trailer. He seemed too much like a performer — a guy at-ease in front of a camera — rather than the famously awkward-in-that-position Walt Disney. But since those guys who actually knew Walt bought Hanks in the role, I felt awkward in my position, dissenting…and there's a lesson to be learned here: Don't judge an actor by the trailer. Watching the whole film, I understood why they liked him.

But I still didn't like Travers and I wasn't even all that impressed with Emma Thompson. It's the kind of role that garners awards and she'll probably get many. At the risk of sounding like the cinematic P.L. Travers finding negatives in every conceivable place, I thought it was a shallow characterization…though maybe that wasn't Ms. Thompson's fault. Leaving aside all questions of whether the depiction of Travers was authentic, the character arc of that person on the screen didn't seem to me that it was.

The change didn't seem real to me. It was like she changed because we needed to get to a Happy Ending…and given what came before and the fact that the real Travers famously disliked the finished film, this was as close as they could get to one. So let me see if I understand this…

She arrived full of hate for everything Walt Disney did and stood for and everything he wanted to do to her treasured Mary Poppins. So I don't like this woman because of the way she treats people who are just doing their jobs and I don't know why she even considering signing the rights over to a company that so obviously, to her, doesn't have a clue how to do right by it. Does she think they can manufacture a movie that will precisely match her version of her character? Then she's stupid. Is she just trying because she needs the money? Then she's dishonest with herself and everyone.

But as the flashbacks unfold, we see that she has real issues swirling around the death of her father — crippling issues that helped shape her books perhaps but left her bitter and angry at everyone. If nothing else, they go pretty deep…so deep that I can't accept that a mere two weeks of flashing back to her childhood could put any sort of meaningful dent in them.  Not even an impromptu picnic with Paul Giamatti, and the surprising discovery that other people have feelings and children, shouldn't alter a life built for so long on so much anger.

Then she flees back to London and Walt follows her for a heart-to-heart they somehow couldn't have back in Burbank. He had to show he cared not by dealing with her on his turf (his studio, his theme park) but hers and inconveniencing himself greatly to get there and unburden his heart. Somehow, this woman who so far has trusted no one about anything, trusts his words, views him as someone she can relate to. There's some kind of epiphany there which conflates Walt, Mr. Banks and her father into one figure and I'm not quite sure why but she finally signs a document that not only gives Disney the rights to the only thing (apparently) of value in her life but in the process waives all promises of script approval and no animated penguins.

Her whole experience with Disney — wherein she got nothing she wanted except the check, and he did everything to her beloved character she had nightmares about him doing — somehow left her for the better. In the beginning, she was on the verge of losing her home because she'd been unable to write another Mary Poppins book for a long time. She'd even had to let a servant go…and by the way, that's gotta be a sweet gig: Servant for a woman who won't let anyone do anything for her.

And then after her Disney Catharsis, there she is, happily writing a new Mary Poppins book. It's not for the money. Walt's check cleared. She has money. She's even hired a new servant and she sufficiently recovered from her horrible experience to take herself back to the States on her own dime to attend the premiere. During the film, she cries. Is she crying because she hates the film? Is she crying because it reminds her of Dad? I'm not sure but if forced to guess, I'd venture the real P.L. Travers would have cried for the first reason and the fictional one would have cried for the second.

If it all works for you, great. I'm not saying you're wrong and if you haven't seen the film — in which case, you probably shouldn't have read anything here after the Spoiler Alert — you might well love it. Lots of people have. I'm just saying it didn't work for me. And that's why I didn't like Saving Mr. Banks. And hey…I wonder if the DVD's going to have a featurette showing how the actor playing Walt Disney got rid of that mustache after filming was over. They could call it — and I apologize in advance for this — Shaving Mr. Hanks.

A Monty Python remix…

Here's a story that pretty well explains why we will never have effective gun control in this country…and maybe not even ineffective gun control. A lifelong gun expert and enthusiast was fired from Guns & Ammo magazine for writing, and the publication apologized for running, an article that suggested there might be some reasonable limits placed on firearms possession.

Paul Szoldra asks a question a lot of folks want to dodge or ignore: "Why did my friends die in Iraq?"

My friend Randy West is a great announcer, especially for game shows. A few years ago, he authored a book on another great announcer of game shows, the legendary Johnny Olson. Randy read what I wrote about Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel and sent me a note excerpting that book…

Frank Nelson recalled in 1980, "It was not until 1933 that any transcontinental shows emanated from Hollywood. The first of these was called Hollywood on the Air. I announced the show and also worked as an actor. Sometimes when a star scheduled to appear failed to show up, I did the star's part, too. The show ran 1933 and part of 1934."

Nelson remembered that NBC's first outpost in the film capitol was only a single office on the RKO movie back lot, and that radio work was performed in the immense motion picture sound stages before NBC built any broadcasting studios on the west coast. Nelson recalled, "The first sponsored transcontinental show out of here was an original Marx Brothers show." That program was Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, a madcap comedy set in a disreputable law firm…

Interesting to note…and there's lots more of interest in Randy's fine book, Johnny Olson: A Voice in Time. You can order a copy (and find out all about Randy) over on his website. [Warning: It makes noise when you go to it.]