Monthly Archives: November 2014

A new revival of Fiddler on the Roof is heading for Broadway next year and it's about time. We haven't seen Fiddler on the Roof revived for at least a month now.

Okay, so I'm exaggerating but not by much. The last one — with Tevye played by Alfred Molina and later Harvey Fierstein — closed in 2006. The new one is to topline Danny Burstein, who was so splendid in the Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific. I have no doubt it he and it will be fine and I'm not saying this new production of Fiddler won't pack 'em in.

It's a great play but any theatergoer could name you fifty great plays that have not been seen very much, and certainly not on Broadway, in the last nine years. Fiddler is everywhere there's a musical comedy stage.

It's the show that every theater group puts on, even in parts of the countries where there are no Jews. It's not expensive to stage. It's easy to cast. Everyone knows some of the songs. And just about everyone who has any experience directing musicals has done nine productions of it and can stage it in his or her sleep.

Oh, yeah…and it defies rethinking. You can do minor tweaks and tugs here and there, mostly with the art direction and the choreography. But no one is disappointed when they buy a ticket to Fiddler and it looks just like every other production of it. You don't need and probably don't want a visionary director with a new concept for it. You want a guy who can make it look like it always does and a leading man who'll sound (and if possible, look) like Zero Mostel.

I'm not saying they shouldn't revive Fiddler again. I'm saying the folks who bankroll musicals on Broadway oughta check and see if there are any other musicals worth reviving…shows that are perhaps as wonderful and a bit scarcer. Better still, they might look and see what the recent musical successes are on Broadway, particularly the ones that are not clearly star-driven. Lately, it's The Book of Mormon, Jersey Boys and Wicked.

These three shows have two things in common: (1) They're not revivals and (2) Twenty minutes after they close, they will be.

I finally got that mess straightened out with the mail order prescription service. (Which mess is he talking about? Why, this one, of course!) I received my medication in the proper amounts and I received a lot of apologies from various folks at the company. What I couldn't quite get out of them was a convincing "This will never happen again."

What essentially happened was this: To get the pills from them under my insurance, I needed to have my doctor not only make out a prescription for them but two of what they call "prior authorizations" — one that said I needed the drug and one that said I needed it in the specific dosage and therefore quantity.

I do not understand why the additional two forms were necessary since they just repeated what he said on the first one but pharmacies, like the Lord, works in strange and mysterious ways. Hey, Someone! Want a way to lower the cost of medical care in this country? There's got to be at least fifty dollars in savings by fixing that!

Anyway, my doctor — good sport that he is — gave them the necessary prior authorizations. In fact, he gave them the dosage one three times but somehow, each one only got into parts of the pharmacy company's computer. They were all in there but some departments that looked me up saw that I had one prior authorization and not the other. That's when they told me I was wrong and one even accused me of lying.

So what I had to do in my many, many phone calls was argue and demand to be switched to supervisors or supervisors of supervisors until I found someone whose computer showed that I had all of them. That person would assure me that the pills would be sent out, toot sweet…

…and then the computer in the shipping division which actually sent out the stuff would say to itself, "Nope, this customer doesn't have the proper prior authorizations" and it would cancel the shipment.

And that was all that computer did. It didn't tell anyone. It didn't send me an e-mail or one of those old-fashioned letters on paper (do they even still make those?) that said, "Your shipment is not coming." It didn't even tell the person in the company who had authorized the shipment that it wasn't sending it out. It just didn't send it, end of story.

Eventually, I'd figure out my pills weren't coming and I'd call up and start the process anew. On my seventh (I think) attempt, I reached someone who figured out the whole problem but apparently not how to solve it. He said, with the confidence of someone who'd never seen the movie 2001, that he could override the computer in the Shipping Department and force them to (a) send it out and (b) notify him if there was any problem. It did neither. Once again, it just canceled the order and kept that information to itself.

I believe it was Try #8 when I found a nice lady who knew how to beat her company's own system…and it wouldn't surprise me if what she did was to leave her desk, march down to the Shipping Department, stuff an envelope and send me the pills herself. And if that didn't work, she was prepared to meet me in a schoolyard somewhere and sell me the damned drugs.

By my reckoning, it took 40 days for them to get me a 60 day supply. I'm going to start renewing now and let's see if I get this one before I have to pack for Comic-Con…

I'm going Mushroom Soup on you today because I have much to do. Mushroom Soup days here are when I blog longer than most bloggers do to tell you I won't be blogging much today. I'll be back when I get it done or if there's a late-breaking news flash.

Yes, I saw the special last night, Marvel: Pulp to Pop, which in the grand Disney tradition was a promotion for upcoming product disguised as entertainment. That's almost not a criticism since a lot of those are more entertaining than material with no embedded sales message. It was nice to see as much mention of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko as there was. Folks today are complaining that as history, there were a lot of omissions — John Romita and Roy Thomas, for example. True. I don't think you could cover Marvel history in under two hours without a lot of omissions, especially when that was not your primary purpose.

I think fans of my generation have to get used to the concept that Marvel is no longer about Stan and Jack and Steve (and Gene and John and Artie Simek and Irving Forbush…) and is not even that much about comic books. That is also not a criticism; it's just what is. Given how much more money the Avengers movie made over what the Avengers comics could ever possibly make, I can't fault the evolution one bit.

In other news: Jay Leno returns to The Tonight Show this Friday night. I think history will show that even though he didn't pick when to leave, Jay got out at the right time. I'm wondering if one of the reasons he's doing the show this week is that he wants to appear with Dave before Mr. Letterman leaves the timeslot. It would be a way to put a lot of nonsense and hurt feelings in their proper, mostly-forgotten place. But since that appearance stands to be a huge, Fallon-crushing ratings draw, Jay kind of has to give NBC and his successor the first shot at him reappearing on talk shows. Also, of course, there could be payback for the nice things Jimmy Fallon has said about him in the press and at the Mark Twain Award ceremony.

Bye now. Back soon.

Here's another batch of those Monty Python sketches as selected by notable names in the world of funny — in this case, Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard, Mike Myers, Jessica Hynes and Ben Miller. One assumes that in some cases, these are the selector's second or third choices because someone else had already chosen the Argument Clinic or the Dead Parrot or some other masterpiece. Again, this video will be taken off the web in nine or ten days so watch it before then if you want to watch it at all. This is only one of about 75,000 places you can see this material…

I don't feel particularly bad or good about the elections. I live in a country that twice elected George W. Bush and where a lot of people in Louisiana blame Barack Obama for the slow response to Hurricane Katrina. Things just are not going to go my way all the time. I am happy that they sometimes do and guardedly optimistic that the rest will follow shortly.

I never buy these essays that say, "This is the best thing that could happen to the losing party." That's because if the election had gone the other way, the authors of those pieces would never have written, "This is the worst thing that could happen to the winning party."

One thing that has bothered me about politics the last decade or so is that I don't sense that anyone particularly likes the people for whom they're voting. They're largely voting party, not person. And what's changing is that you can be a bigger jerk than before…you can even have multiple indictments and scandals…and you'll still get most of your party's votes.

I'd be curious to know, if such a thing can ever be calculated, how many "Independents" really are and how many of them register as that but vote straight Democratic or straight Republican tickets. I have a friend who's officially an Independent but votes like a Democrat. He favors that agenda but is embarrassed by the way the leaders of that party talk and act. Lately, with so many Dems running from Obama's pretty good economic record and other achievements, there is much to be embarrassed by. Being able to say, "I'm an Independent" allows him to vote with the party but distance himself from its spear-carriers.

There are times I almost envy him. Tonight, for instance.

The folks in and around Monty Python keep finding new ways to repackage the old (wonderful) material for sale. The latest is a series of releases where famous funny people select their favorite Python sketches. Here are five classic M.P. skits as chosen by Tracey Ullman, Noel Fielding, Richard Curtis, Jim Carrey and Robert Lindsay. This video will be taken offline in ten days so watch now. I didn't expect the one Robert Lindsay chose…

• This just in: Scott Brown to next run to be the Senator of the great state of Desperation.

This Saturday, November 8, preregistration will open for Comic-Con International 2015. I am kind of a dolt on how this stuff works and I don't want to give out faulty info so I'll just say what I'm sure of: That this Saturday, November 8, preregistration will open for Comic-Con International 2015. If you want to know if you qualify or if so, what it means, go read this page and any others it suggests.

Then do the most important part, which is to not (repeat: not) write me and tell me something went wrong or you didn't get in or some computer malfunctioned or any of that stuff I don't understand and can't do anything about.

As you may know, I get incessant, unsolicited calls from contractors seeing if they can sell me any of their handiwork.

Actually, a lot of the calls are not from contractors but from people who are working on commission (I assume) to find prospects for contractors. They say they're with a contracting company but I think they're just people who answered an ad on Craig's List and got a list of prospects and the promise that if their calls lead to any business, they'll get their cut.

Today, I got a call with a new sales pitch. The caller was young and female…

HER: Hello, my name is Abby and I'm calling on behalf of my father, Harold Black. He's a licensed contractor working in your area and he's very experienced in building, painting, roofing, tile work, plumbing, electrical work of all kinds and anything else you might be in need of. My father is a very good man and he would be glad to come by and give you a free estimate…

ME: You're reading a script.

HER: No, I'm not.

ME: Yes, you're reading a script. If you want my business, tell me again about your father but don't use the exact same words.

[CLICK!]

So she was gone. Less than one minute later, the phone rang again. I answered and heard a different young female voice…

HER: Hello, my name is Lauren and I'm calling on behalf of my father, Harold Black. He's a licensed contractor working in your area and he's very experienced in building, painting, roofing, tile work, plumbing, electrical work of all kinds…

ME: Hold it, Lauren! Less than sixty seconds ago, I got a call from a young woman who read me the exact same script about this contractor.

HER: Uh, well, sometimes my sister makes these calls…

Wise words about today from Groucho Marx — except that today is Election Day, not November 6th…

You might want to check out…

• An interview with Stephen King.
• An interview with Jon Stewart or…
• An interview with John Cleese.

Take your pick!

I will be glad when tomorrow's election is over. I don't expect to like most of the results because I think we're going to be making the transition from almost nothing getting fixed to nothing getting fixed. Still, I'll be happy to just not get those hourly robocalls from former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa telling me how to vote. I haven't heard what he's doing now but based on the persistence of those calls, he's got to be either a building contractor or someone who installs solar panels on your house.

So what did you do last night? I co-produced a tribute to one of my heroes and I don't mind telling you: Jeez, was that a lot of work! I did not do all of it. I was one of three producers — the others were Howard Green and Arthur Greenwald — and I'm not sure I even did a third but I was still exhausted.

Arthur, along with his creative duties, was in charge of a lot of the physical requirements — making sure additional lighting was brought into the theater, making sure a stage was constructed and made properly safe, etc. As I have learned in television, you need someone who anticipates everything that could possibly go wrong and who has the devotion to make certain it doesn't. Howard did a lot of that throughout the project. Arthur did an insane amount of that the last few days.

If I'd known how much of my life it would consume for several weeks…well, I probably still would have done it. Stan Freberg has been that important to me. And I will say this: The job would have been even more difficult if Stan hadn't been so important to so many other people. Everyone, when they heard we were doing a Stan Freberg Tribute, was eager to help. There was total cooperation everywhere we turned.

One of the great things about the evening was that the audience was filled with bright, successful people, mostly engaged in creative enterprises. There were actors, writers, producers…a lot of Stan's peers and co-workers. I probably need to apologize to many friends to whom I did not say the right things because I was pretty busy at times.

We brought the show in at about 2 hours and 14 minutes. Approximately 1:15 of that was clips of Stan's past work. We had a lot of things you'd expect like the Lone Ranger commercial, the Ann Miller commercial, excerpts from his major records, etc. I was pleased that we also had some things no one in the house (Stan included) had seen — like Stan, Daws Butler and June Foray performing the entirety of "St. George and the Dragonet" live on Ed Sullivan's TV show in 1953.

Jerry Beck and Eric Goldberg put together a great 12-minute reel of Stan's voicework in animation that caused a lot of folks in the house to exclaim, "I didn't know he did that!" We also had taped "wish I could be there" videos from Matthew Weiner, Dr. Demento, Penn Jillette, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.

About 45 minutes of the evening was our guest speakers and hosts. Harry Shearer was a terrific Master of Ceremonies…and he turned out to be the biggest Freberg fan in the place. I was seated next to him for purposes of last-minute briefing and he was laughing, quoting from memory and singing along with most of the video we showed. "Weird Al" Yankovic, Micky Dolenz, Jerry and Eric, Leonard Maltin and animation producer Bob Kurtz introduced segments and I was delighted with what everyone did.

Finally, we had some moments with Stan and his wife/partner Hunter talking a little about his work, followed by the third or fourth standing ovation of the evening (I lost count) and a lot of happy milling after the show.

I should have some photos of the evening soon but you can see a gallery over at Wireimage.

Animator and artist Larry Latham has died from the cancer he'd been fighting for some time. Larry worked for 30-some-odd years in the Hollywood animation industry, including stints at Disney, Universal, Hanna-Barbera, Marvel and Filmation. It was at H-B where I met him and hired him to do a few of the comic books we were doing then for Europe. He was very good and very professional and I was sorry to lose his services when he got other, better-paying work.

Larry did just about everything. He animated. He designed. He directed. He produced. He was very much involved with the Tail Spin series for Disney. Before any of that, he did some work in underground comix (most notably, Betty Boop Funnies) and after his time in L.A., he returned to his native Oklahoma and taught his craft at the Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology. He also did a popular webcomic called Lovecraft is Missing.

I liked the guy and his work. Near as I can tell, everyone did.

You got ten minutes? Spend it watching my friend Christine Pedi perform a Beatles medley as 22 of the great ladies of show business…