Monthly Archives: May 2014

It's the big five-oh — fifty years! — since the release of the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Peter Sellers and Peter Sellers. A masterpiece of black comedy, it was not hailed as such by everyone back in 1964 because, I suppose, some of its premises and speculations were quite close and uncomfy.

As Eric Schlosser pointed out in this article earlier this year, an amazing amount of it was prescient at least about possibilities if not outcomes. I wonder if anyone could or would make a movie like that today…a film that toyed in that way with the concept of nuclear war or something similarly dire. Global warming is starting to look like a pretty formidable threat. I don't see anyone joking about that.

And in this new article, David Denby reminds us what the world was like when Dr. Strangelove (etc.) first debuted. The film also has a value in reminding us of that era and our fears of the time. I was twelve years old in '64 and a bit too young to be worried about what it was worried about. But I sure recall adults who saw it and thought they were watching next month's newscasts. Thanks to Greg Kelly for pointing me to Mr. Denby's piece.

Today, your amiable host Stu Shostak welcomes our mutual pal Vince Waldron to his audio extravaganza. Vince is the author of The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book and…what's that? You say you love The Dick Van Dyke Show and you already own Vince's exhaustive history of that program? Well, not like this. Vince has released a new e-book version which adds buckets full of new information and photos. Ordinarily, I'd think, "Oh, he added some extra stuff to get me to buy it again" but in this case, the version I purchased and downloaded to my Kindle is absolutely worth the modest price. Vince will spend most of Stu's Show today sharing new information he's uncovered about our favorite sitcom. He thought he'd found everything but it just goes to show you: There's no telling what you'll find when Carl Reiner lets you rummage through his garage. If you're a fan of the series, listen today when Vince appears with Stu and order the new version. You'll be more than happy you did.

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.  The ones where I guest should be cheaper but they aren't.

Hey, let's all watch a dog carry a cat into the house…

Several folks have written to ask me if I can tell them anything about Casey Kasem, the popular disc jockey and voice actor who has now been reported "missing" in a family dispute. I don't know anything about this family dispute other than, like all family disputes, it is probably not made any simpler or easier to solve by becoming a public issue.

Despite the existence of a few audio tapes on which Mr. Kasem got furious over something, I always found him to be a pleasant, nice guy who was really good at what he did. The worst thing I can say about him is that he seemed to be one of those people who you couldn't dine with without being told that whatever you were putting in your mouth was going to kill you.

He has not been well for some time and it would appear that family members are fighting over who'll take care of him and what should be done for him. I hope they settle it. I hope he receives proper attention and comfort for his remaining days and that a lot remain. And I wish this stuff didn't get into the news because it probably doesn't help.

Tom Galloway sent me this link to a great interview with Mel Brooks, who's promoting the release of Blazing Saddles on Blu-ray. A couple of points of interest…

Brooks tells about how he wanted to quit the picture because Warner Brothers wouldn't let him cast Richard Pryor in the lead. I always thought he was lucky he didn't get what he wanted there. Pryor was, of course, a much funnier actor than Cleavon Little, who did get the part. But the central point of Blazing Saddles was that the town hated the sheriff strictly because he was black. He was heroic. He was handsome. He was a great guy. But he was black.

Now, Pryor was not as handsome, not as heroic-looking, not as ideal a sheriff, skin color aside. Also, he was at his funniest when he played weak, nervous, dark, troubled, hostile, etc. I think the film works because Sheriff Bart is none of those things. I can see reasons other than his race why the people of Rock Ridge wouldn't have liked Pryor as their sheriff. I can't see any why they wouldn't have embraced Cleavon Little…and that's kind of what the movie is about.

Also in the conversation, Brooks says something interesting about the original movie version of The Producers. Talking about a night spot in New York, he says, "That's where I met Alfa-Betty Olsen…who wrote The Producers with me and who helped me cast it." Interesting way to put that. Alfa-Betty Olsen was a screenwriter and author whose involvement in that film has been debated by film historians. She received no credit for writing on it, nor to my knowledge has she ever claimed she deserved any, describing her role more as secretary than co-writer. But now here's Mel talking about her like she was a co-author…

Anyway, check out the interview. Thanks, Tom.

The wondrous Laraine Newman misses Tim Russert.

In the eighties, I worked with a gentleman named Will Vinton on a TV special that never got produced. If that name doesn't ring an immediate bell, try putting the word "claymation" next to it and then remember the dancing California Raisins — just some of the amazing, imaginative creations that came out of his studio. Will was a good guy and very sincere about making good films and I was sorry that our project fell short.

Not long ago, I got to wondering what had happened to him and that great studio I toured up in Portland. By sheer chance last evening, I came across this article about how the studio expanded to the point where its founder Will got squeezed out of his own company. Not a pretty story.

I assume you're all watching Last Week Tonight with John Oliver but I couldn't resist linking to this. I thought it was just so damn perfect…

A lot of folks have written to ask me what's up with my Time-Warner e-mail problems, the ones I wrote about back here. Here's a quick summary of what's not working right…

Any e-mail that anyone sends to me @ one of my domains goes to a server on my domain which instantly forwards it on to a GMail account I have and to my Time-Warner e-mail account. I've already been using a great program called MailWasherPRO to go online and give me a preview of my e-mail before I download it so I can mark and delete Spam or obviously infected messages. I have it now set to go online and simultaneously download the headers and a sample of each message in both the GMail mailbox and the Time-Warner mailbox.

If both were working perfectly, I would be getting two copies of every message. That's apart from the fact that the list of messages GMail thinks are Spam and moves to my Spam folder there varies slightly from the list of messages Time-Warner thinks are Spam and relocates in my Spam folder over there. But just looking at the messages I want to download, those should be the same.

They aren't. Sometimes, my mailboxes on Time-Warner and GMail receive the same messages within moments of each other. Sometimes, the Time-Warner version doesn't show up until hours later. And sometimes, the Time-Warner version doesn't show up at all. (And yes, I've checked. That's not because it goes into the Spam folder and I do not have any filter turned on that is causing this.)

In the week I've been monitoring this, I have yet to see the opposite happen. GMail is getting everything Time-Warner gets but Time-Warner is not getting everything GMail gets. And when they do both receive the same message, GMail gets it at the same time or before — often way before.

Allegedly, Time-Warner Tech Support is looking into this but I've decided that even if they say it's fixed or it seems to be fixed, I ain't taking any chances. I'm going to keep getting my messages from both sources. It's a simple matter to use MailWasher to delete the dupes and then download one of each into my e-mail program, which is Mozilla Thunderbird. Thunderbird has an add-on that will scan for duplicates in case I miss any.

And that's the latest. I'll let you know if anything changes but I'd be very surprised if anything changes.

In the eighties, there was a war of competing hamburger chains: Fuddrucker's versus Flakey Jake's. I liked them both but slightly preferred the latter, particularly the Flakey Jake's on the northwest corner of the intersection of Pico and Sepulveda in West Los Angeles.

The premise of both chains was simple. They sold pretty good hamburgers, a notch above McDonald's and Burger King at a correspondingly (but not exorbitant) price. They both had other menu items but you went there for the burgers, which were served on a bun cooked on the premises in their own bakery. The bakery also made cinnamon buns and other goodies which you could purchase to take home.

One thing I liked about them was the "dress-it-yourself" bar that I first encountered at Woody's Smorgasburger, which has become the major topic of this site. You got your burger nude and you carried it over to an area where they had ketchup and mustard and onions and lettuce and tomato and cheese sauces and other toppings. The hamburgers at Flakey Jake's were pretty darned good and I ate at the Pico-Sepulveda one often.

The two chains were in fierce competition to open up new locations across the country — some company-owned, some franchised. In a few cases, they competed head-to-head: There'd be a Flakey Jake's literally across the street from a Fuddrucker's. Fuddrucker's also sued Flakey Jake's charging "infringement of trade dress" (copying its format) and then Flakey Jake's counter-sued Fuddrucker's charging "restraint of trade" and in '82, they settled out of court on undisclosed terms.

Around this time, Flakey Jake's, which had been founded by a Seattle-based seafood restaurant chain, sold out to Frank Carney (co-founder of Pizza Hut) and a group of investors. Apparently, they couldn't make a go of it. Before long, all the Flakey Jake's closed…or seem to have closed. Fuddrucker's, meanwhile, continues to thrive and currently has around 200 outlets across the U.S. — few of them, I'm afraid, in areas where I travel. I'm curious why one chain succeeded and the other didn't because they were, after all, pretty much the same thing

A number of folks have written to inform me that a complete DVD set of Welcome Back, Kotter, a show I once worked on, is coming out in August. One wrote they were going to buy it in order to put some money in my pocket. I appreciate the sentiment and if you want to own a complete DVD set of Welcome Back, Kotter, don't let me stop you. In fact, here's an Amazon link to pre-order. But sending bucks my way, though a laudable goal, is a very bad reason in this case.

Years ago when home video was just starting to segue from taping your favorite shows off the air to the purchasing of pre-recorded cassettes, the Hollywood unions made a series of very bad deals to cover our share of those revenues. Actually, the Writers Guild made a very good deal when most folks didn't guess where the market was headed and then in '85, the producers made it a strike issue that we had to give that deal back and take a much worse deal. A group of "visionary" members within our guild, some of whom I suspect were bribed to do so, led a movement to fold and accede to the producers' demands. They managed to somehow convince a lot of their fellow members that —

1. There was no money to be made in videocassettes (this was before DVDs), especially in releasing TV shows that way. No one would ever pay for episodes of M*A*S*H or Star Trek or any television series and there wasn't any cash there and not that much in tapes of motion pictures. Ergo, it was foolish for us to turn down the offer and go on a prolonged strike for, essentially, nothing.
2. There was so much money to be made in videocassettes that the studios wouldn't hesitate to crush us rather than cut us in. They'd keep us out on strike for years if they had to and we'd all lose our homes and our pets would starve and eventually we would too and the Guild would collapse and we'd better take their offer and save ourselves.

Now obviously, those two views are mutually exclusive. If one is true, the other is not. But somehow, the "no strike" faction of our guild managed to convince some members of one, others of the other, and a lot of writers of both. If this seems impossible to you, you're obviously not familiar with the Writers Guild of the eighties. It's a much saner organization these days.

So even if I'd worked on all 95 episodes — which I did not — and if this DVD set sold hundreds of thousand of copies — which it will not — I wouldn't see a lot of dough. And I'll let you in on a secret: If you buy the set and watch all 95 episodes, you'll see a lot more of them than I ever did.

I hope none of this sounds bitter. I think my guild did a very, very stupid thing…though they had a lot of assistance from other Hollywood labor organizations. But I only bring it up every now and then in the spirit of remembering the past so we don't make the same screw-ups in the future. I'm not mad about it…and though I couldn't wait for my job on Kotter to be over, I still look back on it fondly. It was an exciting, positive experience even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do with my life. Between now and the time the DVD set comes out, I'll try and write a few posts here about that chapter of my silly career.

Greg — I don't know his last name — is an Australian who has a series of cooking videos on YouTube. A lot of them are perfect for a guy like me who barely knows the basics…and you may enjoy how enthusiastic he is about his craft. Here, he teaches you how to replicate the cheese toast they serve at Sizzler restaurants…

Michael Kinsley on the state of newspapers in America.

Kinsley is one of my favorite columnists, though he seems to write two or three columns for some magazine or website, then disappear, then reappear somewhere else. Some of this probably has to do with his ongoing battle with Parkinson's Disease (written about here). He's written some excellent pieces about how insane it is to block stem-cell research — which could help millions of people, himself included — because the process vaguely reminds some people of abortion. He's hard to find but usually worth the hunt.

If you're not going to be concerned about Global Warming, you could at least show a little trepidation at the ever-growing size of Godzilla.

Joe Conason reminds us of a certain amount of heroism on the part of Monica Lewinsky. There was enormous pressure on this woman to lie and say her relationship with Bill Clinton was not consensual and/or that she'd been instructed to lie about it to authorities. They did everything short of waterboarding her to get her to endorse the narrative of those who were out to get Clinton…and she refused. A lot of folks would not have had that courage.