Why is it that most film and TV producers will not read scripts that are not submitted to them by reputable agents? Well, this exchange between a producer and a wanna-be screenwriter might give you a good idea.
Monthly Archives: April 2014
Recommended Reading
Brian Beutler on the problem of "repeal and replace" for Obamacare. The problem is that any working alternative plan is going to look a lot like Obamacare.
Movin' On Up
To the surprise of — well, a lot of people who shouldn't be surprised — CBS has announced a five-year deal with Stephen Colbert to take over as the host of Late Show when David Letterman ambles aside. I suspect this has been in the works for some time and that the network waited 'til now to announce it so they could pretend Dave's decision was unexpected. If Mr. Letterman truly has the gratitude to CBS that he says, he would not have called Les Moonves and said, "Hey, Les! I'm going to go out in a few minutes and announce on my show I'm quitting!" The two of them would have talked about it for a while and figured out the timing that worked best for both sides.
Mr. Carson famously did not give NBC execs any warning that he would retire in one year from The Tonight Show. He went out and announced it at an affiliates meeting, which was his way of saying, "I'm doing this my way and I don't give a damn how it affects anyone else." He was admired in some quarters for this — that Late Shift movie depicted, perhaps not inaccurately, Dave being impressed — but I always thought it was kind of a dickish move. And it had a lot to do with Leno getting that job. If Johnny had told NBC six months earlier a timetable for his retirement, the network could have positioned Letterman as Johnny's successor. I'm not saying they would have — there were other reasons Leno got it — but Johnny's refusal to work with them to jointly plan the handoff made Jay more inevitable.
I think Colbert's a great choice. I assume he'll do the show from New York, probably even from the same theater and with a lot of staffers from The Colbert Report intermingling with some of Dave's, plus new people. This is assuming Colbert doesn't have a burning desire to live in Los Angeles. Yeah, there are more Big Guests to be had out here but the Big Guests only appear when they have something to plug…and when they have something to plug, they make a trip to Manhattan.
I also assume Colbert will abandon his right-wing character or at least limit that guy to occasional appearances. It will be interesting to see if he devotes the remainder of his Colbert Report shows to, in effect, killing off that character or transforming him into the guy we'll see on CBS. I'm also intrigued on the crossover possibilities, between now and then: Stephen visiting Dave's stage to measure for new furniture, Stephen visiting The Daily Show to break it to Jon Stewart that he's leaving, Stephen visiting Jimmy Fallon's show to stir up a rivalry, etc. Colbert's just the kind of guy who could make The Late Night Wars fun.
So let's see what Jon Stewart has to say tonight…and what Colbert says on his own program. And I'm kinda wondering what will be going into that half-hour after The Daily Show when Colbert departs, presumably some months before he takes over Dave's time slot. I suppose John Oliver's new HBO show takes him out of the running. Jason Jones has been doing some real sharp spots on Stewart's show lately and so has his wife, Samantha Bee. Wonder if they're thinking of giving that half-hour to the two of them.
My Latest Tweet
- That CancelColbert campaign seems to have succeeded. He'll no longer be doing his show on Comedy Central.
General Hospital Comments
I've received a lot of messages about my post concerning how to be useful when you have a loved one in a hospital. One point I didn't make explicitly because I thought it was kinda obvious is this: Your main value to them is to try and take concern and worry off their heads.
It can be very scary to be in a hospital, especially if you're in for something that could be life-threatening. You're surrounded by and dependent on a constantly-shifting cast of strangers who do not always impress you with their confidence and rarely with their responsiveness. Lying there, you can't help but wonder if they're doing the right things for you. It can be very helpful — even healing — for them to feel that someone who loves them is keeping an eye on all that.
My mother was a longtime member of the Kaiser Health Plan and one of their most frequent customers. At one point when Kaiser transferred their paper records to computer, an administrator there told my mother she had the largest file in the history of the Kaiser's Southern California operation. Judging from the size of it when it was on paper, that seemed quite possible. It made the Encyclopedia Americana look like a pamphlet. Kaiser operates its own hospitals — pretty good ones, based on my observation — and my mother was a frequent resident at the one they run down on Cadillac near La Cienega.
We knew everyone there and that's where her records were…so when I had to take her into an Emergency Room, that's where I took her. When she had to go in and I couldn't get there fast enough — or if she was too sick to walk — 911 would be called and an ambulance would take her. In the last ten years of her life, she averaged one such trip a year.
I suppose it works this way everywhere. Someone in the ambulance crew calls some sort of central dispatcher who tells them which is the closest hospital that is "open," meaning it has the resources available at that moment to accept patients. If I was there when the decision was being made as to where to take her, I'd try to persuade the paramedics to take her to Kaiser. "She's going to wind up there eventually, anyway," I'd argue. It's cheaper for Kaiser to treat her in its own hospital than to pay for another hospital to tend to her. So when she was taken somewhere else, Kaiser would immediately start asking, "How soon can she be transported here?"
If Kaiser was closed to new admissions at that moment, I'd quickly phone a doctor I knew there and if I could reach him, he'd agree to squeeze her in. If I couldn't reach him or if the decision of where to take her was made before I arrived, she'd usually go to either U.C.L.A. or Cedars-Sinai. One time though, I arrived at her house at 4:45 AM and the firemen who were transporting her said, "The only place we can take her right now is Century City Doctors Hospital."
"I've never heard of Century City Doctors Hospital," I said, because I hadn't. One paramedic told me, "Oh, she's going to like it there" and another said, "It's where really rich and famous people go." It turned out they were right. It was a small, boutique hospital occupying one or two floors of a big medical building in Century City. It was very clean and very attractive and very secretive. My mother had a lovely room and from little things the nurses said, we both figured out that Someone Very Famous was in the next room over. Who? That, I was never able to find out…but boy, I tried. I was curious and my mother was more interested in that than she was in her own condition.
At other hospitals when I walked in to see her, the first thing she'd say was, "Go find my nurse and see what you can find out about how I am." At Century City Doctors Hospital, the first thing she said to me was, "Go find my nurse and see what you can find out about who's in the next room." To that end, I quizzed a very friendly nurse…
"Male or female?"
"I'm not allowed to say."
"Someone who'd be on the front page of the Enquirer if they found out he or she was here?"
"I think it's safe to say yes."
"Someone who's won an Academy Award?"
"Yes. Maybe more than one. And that's all I'm going to say."
And I still don't know. The closest thing I got to a clue was that I shared an elevator once with Steve Martin and I think he went in to see whoever it was. But maybe not.
My mother liked it there because of the intrigue and also because of the cuisine. Century City Doctors Hospital had a Wolfgang Puck Kitchen. I don't know quite what that means but patients received a nice-looking menu with tasty-sounding items. Then again, compared to the food at Kaiser, a Burger King Kitchen would have seemed like a step up. My mother took a copy of the Puck menu with her and when she next saw her Kaiser doctor, who was a high-ranking executive with that hospital, she gave it to him and said, "Take the hint."
He looked at it and said, "Hmm…I'll have to try this place for lunch some time."
So that's why she liked the Century City Doctors Hospital. I liked things about it, too. Here's what I posted here at the time, omitting mention of which hospital it was or who was in it…
No, I'm not back in the hospital. I'm visiting somebody who is…and in a hospital so fancy that every room has a high-speed Internet connection and the meals are prepared by a Wolfgang Puck kitchen. That is not a joke. It's a private hospital and one that, like the most exclusive of restaurants, you can't get into unless you know somebody…or unless an ambulance brings you here because it's the closest emergency room when you're in trouble. Which is how the person I'm visiting wound up here…in a room so nice, it almost makes you want to be sick. Notice the "almost."
I've stayed in Courtyards by Marriott that weren't as plush as this place. I have some time to kill while tests are being conducted so I couldn't resist trying to blog from the in-room Internet hook-up. (It's a clever little device — an LCD screen and keyboard on a swivel arm so it can be moved into position for someone in the bed or swung over to a nearby chair for a visitor. The screen toggles back and forth between the World Wide Web and a full line-up of cable TV stations, plus you can listen to XM satellite radio, plus it's also a telephone. Wish I had one of these for my house…though I'm not sure the web is ready for me blogging from bed.)
And, oh yeah — they seem to have doctors and nurses who know what they're doing and who aren't overburdened with too many patients. I guess that's impressive, too.
I should have mentioned something I didn't like: The parking fees. It was eighteen bucks to go see my mother. I guess that's how they were able to buy those swivel-arm things over the bed. We weren't paying for my mother to be there but it makes you wonder what it would have cost if we were. I guess that's why Steve Martin's friends all have to get twenty million bucks per movie.
And I further guess that either they aren't working much or they aren't getting sick much because Century City Doctors Hospital closed down a few years ago.
Or maybe wealthier folks just wised up. My mother was only there two days before Kaiser snatched her back into its own system but it sure didn't strike me that she got any better medical care in the fancy place. The room was nicer, the attention seemed more personal, and of course Mr. Puck himself was down in the kitchen making the low-sodium chicken soup. But it was the same drugs, same equipment and same treatment. It was just packaged nicer.
Today on Stu's Show!
![levineisaacs01](https://www.newsfromme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/levineisaacs01.jpg)
Today (Wednesday), Stu Shostak has it easy because his guests are two very funny, bright men…Ken Levine and David Isaacs. They've written and/or produced and sometimes even directed some of the best situation comedies of the last few decades including M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, The Simpsons, Wings and many more. Stu has had them on before and will be focusing mainly on the "many more" this time, talking about shows including Big Wave Dave, Almost Perfect and other endeavors that deserved to be on a lot longer. If you're interested in how the TV business really works and why it sometimes doesn't, these are the guys who can tell you all about it.
Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. What the hell are you waiting for?
Today's Video Link
At the Academy Awards in 1961: Danny Kaye delivers a dreary, unfunny speech as he accepts an honorary Academy Award for Stan Laurel. Mr. Laurel was too ill to attend but he was quite happy to receive the statue…
Play Time
I haven't seen them yet but there's a theater troupe in Los Angeles (in Silverlake, actually) that takes their scripts from comic books. An intriguing idea.
Fred Kida, R.I.P.
Another worthy contender for the title of Oldest Comic Book Artist was Fred Kida, who drew the Airboy comic books beginning around 1940 and who worked in comics (books and strips) until around 1987. Mr. Kida was born December 12, 1920, making him only a few months younger than Ken Bald. Sad to say, Mr. Kida died last week on April 3. He remains a nominee for the Hall of Fame in this year's Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.
Airboy was published by Hillman and he also worked on their other titles, including romance and crime comics until around 1948. He spent a few years working for Lev Gleason Publications, mostly on crime and romance books, then around '52 began working for the company we now know as Marvel. He was a good, dependable artist who drew beautiful women, handsome heroes and some of the ugliest villains in comics. He also intermittently assisted Will Eisner on The Spirit.
Mr. Kida worked as an assistant/ghost on a number of syndicated newspaper strips, including Flash Gordon, for which he eventually got credit. He left Marvel around 1956 when the company downsized and ceased having work for most of their freelancers. In the seventies, Kida returned there and worked on any number of their best comics, including a stint drawing the newspaper strip of The Amazing Spider-Man. More information on his life is available in this newspaper obit notice. It's sad to lose a fine artist like that.
That Face!
Most folks who care about typefaces hate the font known as Comic Sans. Back in the early days of computers, that was someone's idea of what lettering in comic books looks like…but no professional comic book company would hire a letterer who lettered like that. Some of us cringe when we see it, especially in a context that's supposed to represent comics. Recently, a gent named Craig Rozynski designed a variant which he calls Comic Neue and which he has released into the public domain. You can download it here and install it on your computer. I wish I could say I like it more than I do.
It's especially lacking to me when it's used for ALL CAPS, which is how almost all comic book and strip lettering is done and it's the way Comic Sans has usually been used. The "C" and the "O" look rather anemic to me and, as with Comic Sans, we still have those ugly serifs on a capital "I." Professional comic book fonts always give you the option of a serifed "I" when you type the letter as a standalone and a non-serifed "I" when you're in the middle of a word. I also think the slanted crossbar on the "A" and "H" don't go with the non-slanted look of other letters.
I like it better for upper-and-lower case lettering because that eliminates much of the serif problem with the "I" but the interline spacing gets a bit dicey. I tried leaving more space between the lines but it seemed erratic. I appreciate Mr. Rozynski's generous efforts and he did improve on Comic Sans. But I think it still looks like lettering done by someone who isn't a professional cartoonist.
Today's Video Link
Our pal Kliph Nesteroff did a fine job interviewing Mel Brooks last Friday night at the Cinefamily event. I expect he'll do an equally-fine job on April 22 when Cinefamily salutes the prolific TV producer George Schlatter. George will be there and they'll show video of some of the odder things he's produced, some of which are previewed in this new video with narration by Gary Owens. Tickets are available here and I will be among those in the audience. Should be another great evening…
Long Runs
A number of folks have written to me to suggest one name which has Mickey Rooney beaten in terms of screen longevity. Carla Laemmle was born October 20, 1909 and is still with us. The niece of Universal Pictures studio founder Carl Laemmle, she played a bit part in the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera and she has recently, at age 104, made some small cameos in movies that have yet to come out. She doesn't have anywhere near the volume of credits as Mickey Rooney but you could count her if you wanted to.
Someone asked about Milton Berle. Berle was born in 1908 and claimed to have made his screen debut in shorts made in 1914 as well as the feature Tillie's Punctured Romance with Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. He said he played the newsboy in that film and I believe most historians have concluded he didn't…but no one is sure he didn't play another, smaller role in the movie or appear in other films that year. His last appearance in a movie is a little hard to peg. He died in 2002 amidst a flurry of cameos and appearances in documentaries…and it's hard to say which, if any, qualify as movies as opposed to television.
Assuming he was in some movie in 1914 and some movie in 2002, that would give him a screen career of 88 years. Assuming Mickey Rooney's first role was in 1926 and his last is this year in the Night at the Museum sequel, that would give him 88 years. If all of Ms. Laemmle's recently-filmed cameos come out this year and she never appears again on screen, she's still got Miltie and Mickey beat by a year.
While we're at it, I'm getting nominations of other folks who qualify as the Oldest Living Comic Book Artist. Morris Weiss, who drew the Joe Palooka comic strip and tons of comics for Stan Lee, was born August 11, 1915. That makes him older than Irwin Hasen or the man Guinness says is the oldest, Ken Bald. D.D. Degg, a longtime reader of this site, suggests that Bill Crooks, who used to draw the Captain Easy newspaper strip, may be older. I don't know Mr. Crooks' age but I don't think he ever worked in comic books.
Comic-Con/Late Night News
Conan O'Brien has decided to compete with me when it comes to interviewing people at Comic-Con. It's been announced that he will be bringing his TBS talk show to San Diego…in 2015. Not this year. 2015.
His show is renting out the Spreckles Theater in downtown San Diego and he'll be doing a week of shows there July 8-12, 2015. Those dates are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday so either he's going to adjust his broadcast week or pre-record them to run starting the following Monday. This would seem to suggest the dates for Comic-Con that year which have not, as far as I know, been officially announced.
In case anyone's wondering: Conan recently extended his contract with TBS through November of 2015. I don't think he's even remotely a contender for Letterman's job but if he was, that would probably take him out of consideration. CBS has to be looking to get Dave's successor in position a lot sooner than that.
A few of the news stories that have already announced this have said that 2015 is the last year of Comic-Con's current contract with the San Diego Convention Center. Not so. It was extended until 2016. In any case, we will soon have the usual flurry of stories about how maybe Comic-Con is moving to Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Oshkosh…and then they'll negotiate a deal to stay in San Diego through 2020.
Inn Suspense
If you need a hotel room for this year's Comic-Con International down in San Diego, Tuesday could be your day. That's the day the convention's reservations system opens and this page will tell you all about it. I am told there are more rooms available this year than ever before so it might be an entire hour before they're all filled.
As usual, do not complain to me if something goes wrong and/or you can't get what you want and wind up in a Tijuana Y.M.C.A., sharing a cot with a person who looks like Phil Spector. Good luck.
Today's Video Link
I have a whole bunch of things to plug the next few days, starting with this. It's a Kickstarter for a documentary about people who make comics. I was interviewed for this a few years ago and so were a lot of people of genuine interest.
The video below will tell you a lot more than I can. Unfortunately, their Kickstarter campaign hasn't received much notice yet and I'm kinda skeptical they're going to make their goal this time around. But remember that if they don't, your credit card doesn't get charged so there's no reason not to go over there and encourage some fine filmmakers to try it again and get this one finished. I'd sure like to see it. If you would, here's a link to their Kickstarter page and here's the video…