Monthly Archives: April 2014

I can't stand "prank" and practical joke and hidden camera TV shows…usually. Every so often, a segment shows up that isn't about laughing at unsuspecting people…

This is what the Tea Party movement is all about: The leaders tap into (and stoke) anger and fear out there, get donations from those angry and fearful people…and then put most of the money in their own pockets. It's very much like what Max Bialystock did, including the part where a lot of elderly people get screwed.

This is, of course, how a lot of politics works in this country. One of my e-mail addresses has been getting a weekly message for something like fifteen years now. The sender recounts some new horrible, evil thing Hillary Clinton has done. If she's done anything in the preceding week, he exaggerates and spins it wildly into horror and evil. If she hasn't, he just makes something up. Then he says something like, "I have access to evidence that will destroy this person and put her in prison where she belongs and if you love your country and loathe this person like any good American does, you will send me money to help me develop my case against her."

And I guess people send him money…at least enough to make it worth his time to write and send out one of these messages every week.

If you are a decent, God-loving/fearing (take your pick) person and you care about America and don't want to see it destroyed and your children enslaved and your pets euthanized, you will help me stop this insidious, deceptive practice. You will send me large cash donations and I will use that money to save this country…and don't think for a minute this is the same kind of thing because I will spend every cent you send me. After I pay myself a fitting salary.

Okay, I went back and checked and I was wrong. The first installment of John Oliver's new series was not longer than 30 minutes. It was exactly 30 minutes, almost to the second. The problem was that the first time it aired — when I first TiVoed it — it started thirty seconds late due to promos so it therefore finished 30 seconds late.

It apparently did run long…long enough that they omitted the end credits, which must have delighted the staff no end. My guess is it was supposed to start 30 seconds or so after the announced start time and finish 30-60 seconds before the announced start time of the following program. By omitting promos, subsequent airings just fit into the half-hour. I'm still going to pad my recordings of future episodes.

Oh, good. We needed a one-man imitation of The Daily Show on Sunday nights. That is not meant with sarcasm. If Jon Stewart's fine with that, I'm fine with it. I guess I was just expecting something a bit different of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver beyond the absence of bleeps and voices other than the host's.

Then again, the host is very funny. I hope the program evolves away from being a Daily Show clone and I hope Mr. Oliver slows down and doesn't slavishly read the TelePrompter at a brisk clip every week. There were moments there on his first outing where I wanted to yell at the screen, "What's your hurry? You've got the job!" Then I realized his hurry was that they had more material than minutes. The show, which I TiVoed and watched soon after, ran over 30 minutes so I didn't catch the end. Fortunately, the various HBO channels are rerunning the show about eighty thousand times over the next week so I set up to record it again any minute now, just to see the goodnights and credits.

But that's my big complaint. The material was sharp and none of it felt like he was picking through what Stewart and Colbert threw away. So I've already set my TiVo for next week's episode…for 35 minutes.

Stop me if I've told this one here before. I don't think I have.

My first few years as a television writer, I was teamed with a bright gentleman named Dennis Palumbo…and he used to sometimes remark that we complemented each other well. I'm not sure what I did that he couldn't do but he was a whole lot better than I was at the salesmanship and "pitching" part of our jobs. After we completed our stint writing on Welcome Back, Kotter, we decided to go in different directions and we remain friends to this day. And by the way: Dennis, if you're reading this, aren't we about due for a lunch?

The morning after we finished Kotter, I was offered a heap of comic book writing work so I had that to do. A few days later, I met with our agent, who now had the unenviable task of selling us separately. He and others had warned us that when a team splits up, producers are hesitant to hire one member for fear they'll get the one who just typed up what the other guy thought of. That wasn't how Evanier and Palumbo functioned — for good or ill, we each wrote approximately half — but there have been teams like that.

Stu the Agent was really good at selling his clients, even clients who had a handful of credits and no sample of their solo work. In a matter of days, I found myself going in for a meeting with the producers of What's Happening?, which was a pretty popular show that followed Kotter on ABC on Thursday nights. Around the Kotter offices, most folks seemed to think What's Happening? was a pretty mediocre show that only got good ratings because it had us as its lead-in. As I quickly discovered, around the What's Happening? offices, they thought Kotter was a pretty mediocre show that only got good ratings because folks would sit through it as they waited for What's Happening? to start.

Nevertheless, I came up with an idea they said they liked and we had some meetings about it and I'm still not sure why I didn't end up writing at least that one episode. In the meantime, Stu sent me in to meet the producer of a new variety show that Richard Pryor would be starring in for NBC. (For some reason, he sent me out for almost every show that needed writers and starred black people. I also co-wrote an episode of a sitcom called Baby, I'm Back, which starred Demond Wilson back before he was the superstar he is today.)

There were a couple of problems with me writing on The Richard Pryor Show, not the least of which was that I wasn't a big fan of Mr. Pryor. Everyone told me he was the funniest man on the continent but if he was, I hadn't seen it. I'd seen him perform live once — a surprise set at the Comedy Store — and it wasn't very good. In fact, it was so not good, he gave up and walked off stage well before the next guy was ready to go on. I'm sure he was great on other nights but I wasn't there when that happened.

Not that I admired everyone I ever wrote for but that suggested I just might not be quite in sync with the Pryor style. Another problem was that much of what I had heard was about using drugs and/or being black and I had no experience doing either. So I felt I was the wrong guy for the gig but I also felt that since Stu had set up the meeting, I oughta go. It was in a big building up on Sunset a few blocks from Tower Records so I decided, "I'll park for the meeting, go in and have it and then, after I don't get the job, I'll walk down to Tower and buy some albums."

That was pretty much how it went. The producer was a smart, nice man named Rocco Urbisci, who has since been responsible for a lot of fine specials with stand-up comedians. He was smart enough to instantly know I should not be hired and nice enough to spend fifteen minutes talking with me and pretending I would be properly considered. For the last five or so, we were joined by Mr. Pryor, who was working on something elsewhere in the office. He poked his head in to say goodbye to Rocco and on a whim, sat in on the end of my interview, saying absolutely nothing to me.

Ah, but I did hear him whisper something to Rocco that sounded like, "I thought you were going to interview more black writers instead of this parade of white guys." If that's what he said, I had no problem with it. As it turned out, The Richard Pryor Show was written mostly by a parade of white guys and I was glad I wasn't among them. (I later got to know several of them and it was not, they all said, a happy experience. Shows that get canceled after four episodes usually aren't.)

As I left the office that day, Richard Pryor and I shared an elevator down and managed some polite conversation. Then we exited the lobby together and both walked east on Sunset. As it turned out, we were both heading for Tower Records.

Pryor talked a little about how nervous he was about this new series and how he knew the kind of show he wanted to do couldn't fit in with network prime-time television. Feeling as I did that I couldn't fit in with the kind of show he wanted to do, I could relate but I didn't say that. I was trying to think of something pleasant and polite I could say to the guy that wasn't "Well, I think you're very funny." Because at that moment, I didn't particularly think that. I respected his success but like I said, he'd never really made me laugh.

Then, suddenly, he did. As we walked down Sunset, we passed a small strip club named 77 Sunset Strip. It's no longer where it was…and where it was was not at that famous address.

On the front of it was a big sign that promised Live Nude Girls and under that was a smaller one. It advertised some man's name and billed him as "The World's Foremost Erotic Magician." By this point, I was grasping for something to say to Pryor so I asked aloud, "What does an erotic magician do?"

Without missing a beat, Richard Pryor shrugged and said, like it should have been obvious, "Saws the woman in half…fucks one half. Then he fucks the other half." I practically fell over laughing, as much from the instantaneous delivery as the line itself. I guess I don't have to tell anyone that with Pryor, it wasn't so much what he said as how he said it.

It was three more blocks to Tower Records and those were the three funniest blocks of my life. Pryor was ticking off one idea after another of things an erotic magician might do — increasingly-filthy concepts involving sex toys and pulling silks and rabbits out of different orifices. I was laughing so hard, I literally had trouble walking. I remember thinking (a) I'd give my entire Kotter paycheck for a tape of this, (b) he could do this verbatim on a stage and kill, and (c) I have got to see more of this man performing.

He ran out of ideas for erotic magic about the time we reached Tower Records. I mentioned something about thinking I should pay a cover and a minimum for the walk, thanked him for the entertainment and we went our separate ways within that vast business. Like most record stores, it's gone now but once upon a time, it carried everything. Everything. Some customers found so much to purchase there that the place actually had a few supermarket-style shopping carts available.

As I browsed, I noticed a gentleman a few years older than me and wearing nicer clothes loading albums into one of those carts, practically filling it. At first, I thought he was a well-dressed store employee but closer inspection revealed it was Elton John. He appeared to be purchasing one copy of every record they had that he wasn't on.

A few minutes later, I passed Pryor who was flipping through albums in the jazz section and I pointed out to him the man I thought was Elton John. He looked, said it wasn't, then he looked again and said, "Hey, that is him. Come on." He motioned for me to go with him and I did, having no idea why he was asking me along. I guess he thought it would be rude not to.

As we approached him, Pryor had the same thought I'd had. He said, "He looks like he works here." I whispered back, "Ask him where the Jerry Vale albums are." Which he did. He walked up to Elton John and said, "Excuse me…can you tell me where the Jerry Vale albums are?" Without even looking at his questioner, Elton said, "Aisle three…easy listening" and then returned to his browsing.

Pryor said, "Elton? It's me, Richie. Richie Pryor." Elton John turned around, greeted him with a handshake and about half a hug and they began talking…and I found myself in an awkward if amusing position. Elton John nodded to me since I was obviously "with" Pryor…but Richard didn't introduce me. (I would have been shocked if he'd remembered my name.)

So I just stood there for ten or fifteen minutes like I was a part of the conversation. When either man laughed, I laughed. When one made an interesting point, I shook my head as if to say, "Hey, that's an interesting point." I probably should have just butted in and said to Richard, "Hey, it's been great hanging out with you but I have to run" then split…but I was just kinda curious to see how long it would be before either one acknowledged my existence.

Glancing around, I noticed a cluster of people at the front of the store all looking and pointing at us. It was easy to read their minds. They were all thinking, "That's Elton John…and that's Richard Pryor…but who's the tall clown in the bad jacket?" And in my mind's ear, I could hear strains of the Sesame Street tune, "One of these things is not like the others…" What you had there were three men: One of the world's top musical artists…one of the world's greatest comedians…and the guy who was writing the Scooby Doo comic books. Yeah, there's three of a kind.

Further glancing caused me to recognize one person in the cluster of folks trying to identify me — someone I actually knew. It was a guy also named Mark from our old Comic Book Club. I gave him a little wave, then returned to the discussion of which I was not a part. I nodded a bit more, laughed a bit more and then — when the two men began to promise to get together soon — I shook hands with Elton John, said goodbye to Richard Pryor and left. I'd bet good money that before they parted, one of them said to the other, "Who the hell was that?" And the other just shrugged.

That evening, Mark called me at home. With great hesitation and skepticism, he asked, "Uh, were you in Tower Records today?"

I said, "Tower Records? Let's see…Tower Records, Tower Records…Oh, sure. Richie and I stopped in and ran into Elton John there." Well, that was true.

Mark demanded, "How do you know Richard Pryor and Elton John?" I told him I was in talks about writing on Pryor's new TV show. That was true, too. I didn't lie but I said nothing to disabuse him of the impression that I was always breathing the same air as guys like that, people with that kind of fame and income. (Today, Elton John has so much money, he has Annie Leibovitz on staff just to take his selfies for him.)

When people tell me they know someone a lot more famous than they are, I sometimes wonder: Do they know this person the way I knew Richard Pryor? Which is to say, "Barely." Years later, I worked with the man on a couple of other shows…but I never got to know him that well. I got the impression few people did.

On those shows and just watching him on the screen, my estimation of him as a comedian improved considerably, though I can't say I ever agreed with those who hailed him as the best of his generation. I also became less inclined to write off any comedian as unfunny based on a small sampling of them. I'm more likely now to think, "Well, maybe I haven't seen this person at their best."

One time on this blog when I mentioned that I didn't think Richard Pryor was the greatest comic ever, a friend who thought that called to talk some sense into me. We had one of those discussions that goes nowhere because there's no right or wrong about things like that. What you find funny might leave me cold and vice-versa. Finally, he asked me what I thought was the single funniest Richard Pryor routine. I told him it was the one about the erotic magician. He said, "Huh?" He actually said that word: "Huh?" Then he added, "I've never heard his erotic magician bit."

I told him, "Well, I guess you don't know Richard Pryor as well as I do."

Garry Wills believes that no matter what happens with Obamacare, no matter how effective it is at getting more Americans covered and at slowing the skyrocketing costs of health care, there will be some folks in this country who will go to their graves trying to repeal it. I think he's right.

It's the mid-thirties and Jimmy Durante is out there selling the N.R.A. No, not the National Rifle Association. This was the National Recovery Administration, a 1933 program introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to put the country back to work. It ended in 1935 when the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional but for a while, it was very popular with some in this country…and advertising like this short with Mr. Durante made it more popular. You may note that one of the actors in this film looks and sounds a lot like Moe Howard. That's probably because it was Moe Howard…

Errol Morris has written a long piece on Donald Rumsfeld and why we got into Iraq that amazes one with its reportage of utter incompetence and the willingness of men in power to send human beings to war on hunches…without the slightest remorse or guilt when those hunches turned out to be wrong. When I see the screaming and charges of criminal negligence associated with Benghazi, I can only imagine what Republicans would have done if it had been Democrats who had the White House when all those mistakes and cover-ups occurred.

A group called Cinefamily operates the Silent Movie Theater up on Fairfax in Los Angeles. I spent many years of my life in that building back when it offered naught but silents. Nowadays, Cinefamily offers all kinds of cinematic delights, usually for one or two nights at a time and they've started a new thing called TV Tuesdays. Every now and then on a Tuesday, they're going to run obscure television programs and when possible, have in folks who worked on them for accompanying interviews.

My friend Kliph Nesteroff, who does such wonderful conversations with old comedians on his blog, is involved in the programming. Last Tuesday night, he hosted a Tribute to George Schlatter, the prolific TV producer who gave us, among many other programs, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, The Judy Garland Show and Real People. (For some reason, there was no mention of Real People all evening…) I took as my date Sergio Aragonés, who appeared on several Schlatter programs including the 1977 revival of Laugh-In.

George and Sergio spent a lot of time hugging and promising to get together again soon, and George kept telling everyone within earshot that he'd introduced Sergio to the woman he [Sergio] had married. (That's true. Sergio and Charlene met when she was a dancer on an unsold Schlatter pilot and Sergio was its Art Director.) The event was packed with so many people who'd worked with George that I told him, "I think I'm the only person here tonight you never hired."

George is still sharp and still funny…though Kliph, who did a great job with the on-stage discussion, had to steer him through a couple of his better anecdotes. We all especially enjoyed the one about how George was producing a special on location in New York and a man dropped dead on the spot where they had to shoot. They weren't allowed to move the body until the coroner arrived so trumpeter Al Hirt had to stand over it and play his number while George made sure the corpse wasn't in any of the camera shots. Thereafter whenever Hirt worked for Schlatter, his contract specified he would not have to perform around dead bodies.

Schlatter talked about getting fired from The Judy Garland Show. He talked about battling network censors on Laugh-In. He talked about producing a TV show called Turn-On that still holds the distinction of being the fastest network cancellation of all time. It was a long conversation but it barely scratched the surface of all the man has done. They ran brief clips from a couple of shows and longer, slightly abridged versions of two specials he did. One was Soul with Redd Foxx, Slappy White, Nipsey Russell, George Kirby and others engaged in a black version of Laugh-In. The other was TCB, the first TV special featuring Diana Ross and the Supremes, along with other Motown artists.

The event then spilled out to the sidewalk outside and George stayed around for a time signing things and talking to everyone. What a great evening. Good work, Kliph.

I don't have much more to say about the Cliven Bundy matter. It was pretty obvious that Sean Hannity would have to distance himself from the man…and he has.

What's amazing to me is that so many who rallied to this man's cause didn't see that they were, quite simply, on the wrong side of almost everything for which they, themselves, stood. Even before Bundy began cluelessly peddling his racist views, it was obvious that the guy was no hero; that he was — and I quote — "…a rancher gaming the system to his own financial advantage, and disguising his scheme in populist rhetoric."

Who said that? Not some Pointy-Headed Liberal. That was the Weekly Standard, arguably the most important Conservative voice on the web. Even before Bundy began rabbiting on about "The Negro" and how black people were better off being owned, the Standard warned against treating him as anything more than a guy trying to avoid paying fees that everyone else has to pay. Good for them. Lesser/stupider minds seemed to believe that because The Left was against this guy, The Right had to treat him like Gandhi.

Years ago, I had a brief over-the-phone friendship with Elliott Caplin, who was invariably identified as Al Capp's younger brother. He was actually a man of great accomplishment on his own. In addition to working on his brother's little empire in both creative and managerial capacities, Elliott was a successful writer of plays, novels, short stories and an awful lot of newspaper comic strips. He is said to have created and/or agented and/or written about two dozen different ones, some anonymously. The Heart of Juliet Jones was probably the most successful.

TV host Russel Harvey interviewed Elliott in 1988. Here is that conversation…

My pal Bob Elisberg laments that when they made the movie of The Producers — that is to say, the movie version of the Broadway musical based on the original movie — they filmed but decided to cut the opening number, "The King of Broadway." Bob doesn't understand why and thinks that ruined the picture. I think a lot of things combined to make that movie a lot less than wonderful, starting with the fact that we'd already seen a much better, unbeatable telling of that particular story on film. But I can give him a partial answer…

When the movie version of the play came out, I attended a screening — one of those events designed hopelessly to promote Academy Award nominations — at which co-author Thomas Meehan spoke and took questions from the audience. I asked him to talk about the decision to remove this number, which was kind of obvious. (If you look carefully in the film, you can see Nathan Lane for a split-second, entering to perform it before they cut to the next scene.) Mr. Meehan said he regretted the decision but the film did not "test" well with audiences and when they excised that number, it tested better…and there was no arguing with the difference. He said the only real debate was over who would get stuck with the unenviable task of telling Nathan. I believe the omitted number is on the DVD, as so many omitted scenes are these days.

Rebecca Onion — love that name — on what Rube Goldberg was really doing with all those silly inventions of his.

The fellow second from the left in the above photo is Clyde Bruckman, one of the most important names in the first forty years of movie comedy. The guy in the center — Buster Keaton — is only one of the great comedians Bruckman wrote for and sometimes directed. The list includes Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, Harold Lloyd and The Three Stooges. One of the films he did with Keaton was The General, which I linked to here not long ago, citing it as one of my favorite movies of all time. For that alone, Bruckman deserves attention.

As many of you have written me, there's a good article about his life and times online by Matthew Dessem. Take a look at you when you get a moment. Bruckman's story is a sad one and it's also one that has been clouded by Hollywood Legends and it's nice to see Mr. Dessem do actual research instead of reporting common, and probably inaccurate wisdom. Bruckman was accused late in his career of stealing liberally from…Clyde Bruckman. The truth is that if stealing from Clyde Bruckman was a crime, an awful lot of comedy writers and directors would have wound up behind bars.

This is the time of year when TV shows do a lot of mailers and advertisers to folks in the TV Academy (such as moi) urging us to vote them Emmy Awards. I get dozens and dozens of DVDs, a few even from shows for which I'd consider voting.

A bit of a controversy is buzzing about due to a mention of Jews in one ad for Family Guy, which you can see above left. You can kinda guess what people are saying and why some are upset and I don't think it's going to amount to much of anything so I won't waste time seeing if I have an opinion on it. I probably don't.  I will say though that I laughed today when I unwrapped a DVD that the producers of that show sent out. I scanned the cover of it and it's above on the right. I've never seen the show but if it's as funny as that, I might watch it…someday.