Monthly Archives: December 2015

NBC's live presentation of The Wiz seems to be getting mostly rave reviews this morning. I tried to love it. Oh, how I tried. The performers were well-selected — especially David Alan Grier, who was outstanding — and you have to respect the effort and planning and rehearsal time that went into doing this live with no big mistakes. But I think I just don't like this show that much. It's a cute twist on The Wizard of Oz…but then I don't like The Wizard of Oz that much and yes, I know that's heresy to some.

I think part of the problem I had with last night's presentation is the same problem I had with the live productions of Peter Pan and The Sound of Music. They're not television shows and they're not live theater. The "live" part is mitigated by the feeling that they're shot in a warehouse somewhere. Material that was designed to be performed before a live audience is performed to silence: No laughter, no applause.

Live theater — and this is especially true with musical comedy — is meant to be an interactive experience. The presence of the live audience contributes to the performance because the actors are playing to someone. The sense they get of the audience — whether communicated by laughing, clapping, silence, coughing or the unwrapping of candies — informs and alters the performances.

Not in these shows. The actors are playing to cameras that make no response.

Plays are, of course, done on TV all the time in front of live audiences. Almost all the ones on PBS on shows like Live at Lincoln Center are a matter of taking cameras into theaters and recording both the show and the audience. That's one difference. Another is that when you watched Act One or Driving Miss Daisy or any of those on PBS, you were watching performances that had been done and honed in front of live audiences, dozens if not hundreds of times before they were shot for television. The performers in The Wiz never did that material in front of anyone but stage crews. One can only wonder how much better they would have been if they'd had that.

So these shows just plain have an empty feeling to me. When they did the "Brand New Day" number last night, it just cried out for an audience to be clapping along and stomping their feet and at the end, the dancers and actors struck poses to cue and receive wild applause. But there was no wild applause. TV cameras and stagehands don't applaud.

I'm glad they're doing these shows if only because maybe they'll prompt more people to go see theater in its natural habitat. If they do, they're going to discover it's a lot like sex. It can be fine when you're all alone but it's even better with someone next to you. Or under you. Or at least in the same room.

Josh Groban sings a very serious song. You can tell it's serious because of all the ground fog…

John Kasich says he has a plan to balance the federal budget. Jonathan Chait says that John Kasich does not have a plan to balance the federal budget. He has, like all Republican candidates, a plan to explode the budget, cut services to the poor and middle class, and give wealthy Americans the biggest tax cut they've ever had.

Sunday, Turner Classic Movies has an interesting double feature. At 5 PM (at least on my TV), they're running The Twelve Chairs, the 1970 Mel Brooks movie about some guys running around Russia in 1920, searching for twelve matching dining room chairs, one of which is stuffed with money. Then at 7 PM, they're running It's in the Bag, the 1945 Fred Allen-Jack Benny movie about a guy running around, searching for twelve matching dining room chairs, one of which is stuffed with money. The former was a very loose remake of the latter. Neither is a great film but both are worth seeing once.

On Monday at 5 PM, they're running The World of Henry Orient, a low-key but charming comedy made in 1964. Peter Sellers and Paula Prentiss are in it but the film is stolen by two young ladies playing teen-agers — Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth — and also by some wonderful cinematography of 1964 Manhattan. Again, if you've never seen it, see it.

Then on Tuesday, they're saluting writer-producer Ernest Lehman on what would have been his 100th birthday by running Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sweet Smell of Success, North by Northwest, Somebody Up There Likes Me and Executive Suite. They're all great films, especially Sweet Smell of Success and North by Northwest. One of the more memorable days of my life was when I took my friend, the great cartoonist Mike Peters, up to spend an afternoon with Ernie Lehman. Mike couldn't believe he was meeting the man who'd written some of his favorite movies. Ernie couldn't believe he was meeting the man who drew his favorite comic strip, Mother Goose and Grimm.

We sat there for hours as Ernie told stories about his films. At one point, he had to leave us for a half-hour to take an important phone call so he handed us a book and said, "You can look through this until I get back." It was a bound volume of his original screenplay for North by Northwest with studio memos and notes from Alfred Hitchcock interspersed between the relevant pages. You could read Ernie's original scene, then read how "Hitch" (as he called him) had asked him to change and then read the revised scene.

Lehman told us he was planning to publish the entire book as soon as he cleared up some rights issues and wrote a proper foreword. I don't think he did and since he died in 2005, I've occasionally wondered what became of that book.

Also for some reason, TCM is running both The Man Who Came to Dinner with Monty Woolley and the 1938 A Christmas Carol with Reginald Owen twice this month. They both air on the 6th and again on the 11th. Then later in December, they're airing every movie they can find in the vaults with the word "summer" in the title. That should make America feel warm all over.

Hey, do you have any idea how orange juice is made? I think it has something to do with squeezing oranges…

Fred Kaplan says that dropping bombs on ISIS won't destroy them — and could even make them stronger — without boots on the ground and, presumably, soldiers' feet inside them. I dunno much about military strategies but Fred does and what he says sounds true to me. And discouraging.

This evening, NBC is doing a live broadcast of a new version of The Wiz, which was a hit on Broadway in 1975 and a not-so-successful motion picture in 1978. I never saw it on a stage but I saw too much of the movie when I was hired to adapt it into comic book form just prior to the film's release.

That statement will startle comic book historians who have never seen what I did. That's because it was never published. I thought this might be a good time to tell that story.

Not far enough before the film's scheduled premiere, someone at or around DC Comics got the idea to publish a slick magazine which would be part comic book, part souvenir book for lovers of the movie. This was some time before anyone knew there wouldn't be a lot of lovers of that movie. DC had never published anything like this before and as far as I can tell, they still haven't. But one of their editors, Joe Orlando, was assigned the task of assembling this publication on very short notice.

Joe had an interesting idea. Usually when a movie is adapted into comic book form, the task is to faithfully replicate it on paper with an artist who will draw likenesses of the stars and try to capture the look of the film. That's what Dell and Gold Key Comics had done in all those movie adaptations drawn by Dan Spiegle and others.

Joe didn't want to do that. He wanted the script to be faithfully adapted but to draw it, he wanted to bring in an artist who would do his own stylized interpretation, not drawing the actual performers. He wanted Sergio Aragonés…and happily for all, Sergio agreed to draw it.

I was not the first choice to be the writer. I rarely am. First choice was a longtime DC scribe who proved unable to fit the project and its tight deadline into his schedule. The writer and Joe mutually decided Joe would have to find someone else. Joe mentioned to Sergio that he was going to find another writer. Sergio suggested me.

This was late '77 or maybe early '78. Whenever it was, it was well before Sergio began doing comics of Groo the Wanderer and I began working with him. But we were good friends and we'd been eager to collaborate on something. Joe liked Sergio's suggestion and also the fact that I, like Sergio, was based in Los Angeles. That would make it easier for us to work together.

So I was geographically desirable for that reason and also because there had to be a lot of coordination with Universal Studios, which was producing the movie. My office at Hanna-Barbera Studios was about a quarter-mile from Universal. In fact, DC could even stick me with writing some or all of the text/photo features that would make up the second section of the magazine, telling how the movie was made, who was in it, etc.

Joe called and asked me to do it. I said yes. I was immediately dispatched to Universal where I met with various folks involved in the promotion of the film. They gave me a script and hundreds of photos — some to be used in the magazine's photo features; others to be used by Sergio for visual reference. They also arranged for me to view the movie in its current condition, which was a rough cut with a number of missing scenes, a larger number of missing special effects and most of its musical score yet to be placed.

I had to sign all sorts of non-disclosure agreements that I would not divulge what I saw to anyone and as I recall, they didn't specify any time limit. I mean, I was supposed to write all these authorized articles about what was in the movie and here I was signing vows that I would never in a million years divulge to anyone what was in the movie. So I may be violating those agreements right now.

Everyone I dealt with was hypertense about secrecy. At one point, I asked if for the text section, I could interview the film's director, Sidney Lumet, and/or its screenwriter, Joel Schumacher. A Universal staffer turned pale and said, "Uh, we may be able to arrange it but you may have to fib and not let them know you've seen the film."

I thought the rough cut of the movie I was shown was pretty awful…but you can't judge a movie that's only about two-thirds finished. I went home and began figuring out how to boil a 150-page movie screenplay full of music down to a 42-page comic book script with no audio. The whole package — remember, this was to be a slick magazine, not a conventional comic book — was to be 64 pages with a pull-out poster. I forget what they were going to charge for it but it struck me as a bit too pricey. It also struck me as not my problem.

My problem was that I had about three weeks to accomplish this before Sergio would be ready to start drawing. By far, most of my time went into going up to Universal to see a more-complete version of the movie and then to see an even-more-complete version. I saw it three times but I never saw the final release cut.

I felt that the film got better as the holes were filled in…which is not to say I thought it ever got to be really good. The merits it did have were (a) a few of the actors' performances and (b) some truly dazzling dance numbers. And of course, it did dawn on me that our adaptation would contain neither. We were just telling the story and the story itself was nothing to get excited about. That, I was afraid, was the nature of the beast.

About the time I was finishing the script out here, Sergio was back in New York. He would start drawing as soon as he returned to Los Angeles. He would have…but at the time, there was a bit of a ruckus in the comic book business and Sergio was ruckused right off the project.

The industry was attempting to readjust itself to deal with the Copyright Act of 1976, which President Gerald Ford signed into law on October 19, 1976 and which would become effective as of January 1, 1978. It extended copyrights (which companies like Time-Warner and Disney wished) but it also granted new rights to creators and authors, as opposed to publishers and producers (which they didn't). All the comic book companies began revising their contracts and the forms that one had to sign when one worked for them. The idea, of course, was to insert wording that would neutralize some or all of those new rights.

At both DC and Marvel, some writers and artists had problems with the first versions of these new contracts. The lawyers had gone, as lawyers sometimes do, into overkill mode…and some freelancers found some of the language insulting and excessive. A number of creators balked at signing what was put before them and Sergio became one of them.

He was drawing gag pages for DC — gag pages that ran in comics like House of Mystery and The Witching Hour. Just before he was to return to California, he waltzed into the DC offices in New York to deliver a batch of them. He was handed the new contract to sign. He gave it a quick read and objected to some of its wording and the fact that he wasn't being given a lot of time to study it and maybe run it past a lawyer.

Words were exchanged…and not the most pleasant ones. Some months later, all of this would be worked out with different contracts and a lot of soothing apologies all around. In fact, DC Comics became a lot more mature and sane about how they dealt with talent. But for the moment, Sergio was no longer willing to work for them.

This was not a problem for me. I'd already signed the old contract to do The Wiz and was just about done with the script. Suddenly though, Joe Orlando had no one to draw what I was about to hand in. He called and asked me who I'd like. I said, "How about Sergio signing the contract someone could have given him four weeks ago?" He said that was no longer possible and asked me to think about artists and we'd talk the next day. Okay…

I called Sergio and suggested I would withdraw from the magazine in solidarity. He said don't be silly…"They didn't ask you to sign a contract you wouldn't sign." Besides, he said, the perfect artist for the job — righter for it than him, he said — was our friend, Dan Spiegle. "Ever since they asked me to do it, I keep thinking he would be so much better at it than I would."

He was right. In fact, I realized that as I'd written the script, I'd been seeing a faithful Dell/Gold Key adaptation in my head…the kind Dan did so well. Dan and I had become good buddies and close collaborators doing Scooby Doo comics and a few other such books together. Those books were no longer being published and he was drawing foreign Hanna-Barbera comics that I was editing — comics that were not seen in America. I'd been kinda hoping (as had he) that DC Comics would start giving him steady work. Everyone at the company admired his drawing but he hadn't really "broken in" there yet. They didn't think of him as a regular.

The more I thought about it, the more I was sure Sergio was right. Joe should forget his idea of doing a "stylistic" interpretation of the movie and get Dan to draw a faithful one. It would better serve the needs of the material, it would get a terrific artist working for DC on a high-profile project…and then there was what might turn out to be my most convincing argument: Dan was available, eager for the assignment and utterly reliable. The deadline was looming and a lot of artists couldn't get the thing done on time. Dan Spiegle never missed a deadline in his life.

So the next morning, I phoned Dan and made sure he was ready to jump on the project immediately if I could convince Orlando to use him. He said he was, yes, absolutely. Then I diligently rehearsed all my selling points, steeled myself for an argument and phoned Joe.

I launched into my speech about how we should do an adaptation more like what Gold Key would do, planning to close with "Even Sergio agrees." Before I got ten words in, Mr. Orlando interrupted and said, "I was thinking last night…maybe I had the wrong idea and we need something more like what Gold Key would do. Do you think we could get Dan Spiegle?"

I said, "I can call him if you like. If you're willing to pay him DC's top rate, there's a good chance I can talk him into it."

So a day or two later, Dan and I met for lunch. He lives two hours from me so we often met at a restaurant halfway between us. There, I gave him a ton of photo reference and my script, which Joe had okayed with, as I recall, no changes. Dan took it home and began drawing like crazy. I went back to my home and began writing the text features that would run in the magazine along with dozens of glossy stills from the movie. We were both scurrying to get it done when the whole thing was called off. I had finished the script and most of the articles…and no, they wouldn't let me interview the director or writer or anyone else involved with the film. Dan had drawn the entire story in pencil and had inked about the first third of it. The three illustrations on this item are cropped from pages he got to finish. The lettering was done in New York by Ben Oda, who was then lettering practically everything DC published.

What I was told was that someone high up in the publishing wing of the corporation heard from someone (I dunno who) that advance word on the movie of The Wiz was that it was a pretty likely flopperoo. Then they took a closer look at what this fancy magazine would cost them to produce and at how much they'd lose if it didn't sell well…and decided to bail.

Whoever said the film would not do well was right. Reviews were mostly awful and the movie — which cost $24 million to produce, making it the most expensive film musical ever made at the time — earned but $13.6 million at the box office. I didn't think it was a great film but I thought it deserved better.

DC Comics lost very little…just what they had to pay Dan and me for the work we'd completed. They said they liked it very much and I assume that was so because we were both immediately offered a lot of other work for the company. I didn't accept much just then because I was busy with TV assignments but Dan began juggling as much work for them as he could handle and a few years later, we collaborated on a new Blackhawk comic for the company. I wonder if that would have happened if we'd been the guys who did their biggest money-losing publication of the decade. Because that's what I think The Wiz would have been.

I told you Stu Mundel was a smart reporter!

Hey, here's another interview with my pal Kliph Nesteroff and here's another link to order his new book, The Comedians. It's an edition of the podcast, Deep Dish Radio with your host Tim Powers and it's well worth an hour of your time…

I suppose by now you've heard plenty about the mass shooting out in San Bernardino this morning. I got hooked watching the news coverage even though I was well aware it was one of those stories where every hour you watch, you get about thirty seconds of new info which may or may not be true an hour later. Even now, twelve hours after the initial gunfire, a reporter on-the-scene could probably summarize everything that is actually known in under three minutes.

They're now saying the main shooter was a Muslim — a legal U.S. citizen who used at least one automatic weapon that was purchased legally. So each side gets something: The folks on the Left can use it as an example of why gun laws need to be increased and those on the Right can use it as an example of why Muslims need to be decreased. I don't expect either of those goals to be achieved. Then again, not so long ago, I didn't think we'd see Gay Marriage become legal and more accepted or that anyone would ever discuss Donald Trump as a real candidate. So the world is full of surprises.

I assume we're all on the same page that these tragedies are horrible, that this should not be the norm in this country, that our hearts go out to the victims and their families, etc. I assume we're not on the same page as to how to prevent them so I'll just write a little more about the news coverage.

I flipped channels all day and wherever I turned, I was constantly reminded of Jack Germond's line about how the trouble with news reporters is that they aren't paid to say "I don't know," even when they don't know. Most of today, they knew very little and we heard a lot of empty reportage — often wildly speculative and based on vapors — repeated over and over. And over and over and over because they had nothing to say. It's like when they're covering car chases and they're reduced to recycling clichés like "He's driving with no regard for the safety of others" and "The police know they need to end this soon."

Two things impressed me today. One was how professional and in-charge of the situation the law enforcement folks were before the cameras. They were calm and very good at deflecting questions that tried to draw them into speculating or saying more than they should have at any given moment.

The other person who impressed me was a fellow named Stu Mundel who is an "Aerial Journalist" for KCBS Channel 2 here in Los Angeles, which means he's usually on KCAL Channel 9 simultaneously, as they share a newsroom and newsfeed. Whenever anything happens in L.A., Stu Mundel always seems to be overhead in a helicopter or a plane or a hang glider or something…and while he can get a bit excitable covering a police pursuit or a tragedy of some sort, he also seems to always have something real to say about what he's showing us.

At least in L.A., the best reporters seem to be in the air. There's a guy named (I believe) Bill Thomas in a chopper for KABC Channel 7 who's also pretty good…again, able to ad-lib from on-high and to give out actual information. That's got to be the toughest job in local TV news and I often wish the anchors in the studio would just stay out of it and let the fellow who's actually above the scene talk.

Last March, I watched Mr. Mundel covering a police chase that went on and on and on…until finally, he was low of gas and had to abandon coverage. It was a surprisingly intimate telecast that moved from one TV channel to another and then onto the web…and finally, for the last hour or so, Mundel was broadcasting all alone with no anchors in the studio, speaking to us from high in the sky on the station's website.

It all made for very interesting reporting of a not-very-interesting news story…or the opposite of what we usually get. Whenever my knee heals to the point when I can begin driving again, I'm thinking of going on some sort of high-speed crime spree — but only if Stu Mundel covers me and doesn't say, "He's driving with no regard for the safety of others."

There's a bulletin up right now saying there's been a mass shooting at a building in San Bernardino. That's all it says.

I'm eager to find out if the shooter is a racial minority, in which case this will be an act of terrorism and we'll have to start passing laws and restricting freedoms to protect us from this kind of thing. Of course, if it's a white guy, it will just be one of those crazy people who do this kind of thing from time to time and there's no reason to pass any laws or change any policies to prevent it.

Stay tuned.

He has Jerry Beck on today. Jerry is, as we all know, just about the world class expert on animation and cartoon history and — of special interest to Stu's Show listeners — what's coming out soon on DVD of a cartoony nature. He'll be talking about all that stuff with Stu and answering e-mails that you send in and it'll all be enlightening and entertaining and — dare I say? — animated.

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.  Plus, check out Stu's new V.I.P. Listener program for an even sweeter deal.

Liz Callaway is a terrific stage/cabaret performer who has been a fine interpreter of the works of Mr. S. Sondheim. So it both startled and delighted an audience recently when she bobbled the lyrics to one of his best tunes. Listen and hear what happens next…

Jonathan Chait writes about what it would be like if Donald Trump were to take the Republican nomination. Chait doesn't think that's likely but he thinks it's a bit more possible than it once seemed.

I think it's possible, not probable. I have a line I've used on this blog before and I think I even used it as dialogue in a comic book or two. Someone says to someone else, "Your problem is you think never admitting you're wrong is the same thing as always being right." I've encountered a lot of people in my lifetime who were emotionally and/or strategically incapable of saying, "I stand corrected." It usually gets them in more trouble…but once in a while, they get away with it so they keep trying.

Trump has apparently decided that the secret of his success so far is acting just like Donald Trump…and Donald Trump never apologizes about anything that matters, never says he erred. He just attacks anyone who says he did and there are people out there who admire that swagger and seeming invulnerability. Does anyone really believe he saw thousands and thousands of Muslims cheering the demise of the World Trade Center?

Of course not. Every frame of video shot on 9/11 was carefully preserved for history. I don't know if it's still up but a few years ago, there was a website that archived the complete broadcast footage for that day of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and several New York stations and I downloaded every video on it, just to have it all. I'd go through every one looking for the scene Trump claims he saw on his TV but I'm sure he's already had people doing that, trying to find something he could pass off as what he insists he saw.

It ain't there. It exists on a reel somewhere with the footage Carly Fiorina swears she — and apparently, she alone saw in those Planned Parenthood sting videos. You'd have a better shot at locating a video of The Day the Clown Cried.

Trump's fans don't care. They're conditioned to not believe anything they don't want to believe. They're starting to remind me of the Ross Perot voters who were running around in 1992 not only insisting he would win the presidency but that it would be a clean sweep: He'd win every single state and all 538 electoral votes. This was at a point when there wasn't one poll anywhere showing him within ten points of winning even one of them.

Perot eventually got 19.7 million votes…but just find me anyone today who'll admit they voted for him. You might find one or two who'll say, "I knew he wouldn't win but that was my way of casting a protest vote." But you could probably fit all the ones who'd say "I'm proud of that vote" in a Scion xB and still have room for all the current Lindsey Graham supporters.

And I'm thinking that's how this whole Trump thing will end. He won't get knocked out of the race by the Republican elite hammering him. He won't be beaten by big commercial buys or attack ads. He won't be forced to get out by scandalous revelations or anything of the sort. His supporters will, a group of them at a time, reach their level of embarrassment. Being a Trump voter will increasingly require denial of reality and double-talking when others point out to you that he's triple-talking around every question because he has only vague answers to some and no answers to others. Ask him something substantive and watch Donald Duck.

Even the folks who still deep down think he'd make a great Chief Exec won't want to say that too freely…and they'll start to think he can't win, which is really the only thing most of them liked about him in the first place.

Am I sure this is what's going to happen? No. Of course not because I can be wrong. (See? That's not so hard to say…) So much that's happening in this election is unprecedented. That makes it hard for anyone to look at how our elections have worked in the past and to apply the old rules to the new contest.

But Ben Carson's chances seem to be plummeting because it's becoming awkward to support a guy with so many weird, factually-challenged statements out there. Maybe he's just the first in a series.

Joan Walsh on "How the Phony Planned Parenthood Videos Degraded the Abortion Debate."

I agree with everything in this article except for one thing, which is the title. I don't see any Abortion Debate in this country and I haven't seen one for a long time. Everyone I see on TV or in the mainstream press who's discussing the topic has long since made their minds up and really isn't interested in whether any aspect of their position is wrong or any aspect of the opposition's is right. Matter of fact, I sometimes get the feeling that some of the folks arguing about the topic aren't all that interested in the welfare of women or children; only in how the issue can be manipulated and massaged to win elections.