Yearly Archives: 2015

I'm finally getting around to reading Richard Zoglin's book about Bob Hope. Here's Mr. Zoglin and Dick Cavett as guests on Theater Talk, the Broadway chat show, and the subject of course is Hope. But I wanna tell ya…

Comedy Central is moving @Midnight with Chris Hardwick up to 11 PM for a while to fill the void before the Daily Show returns with new episodes with its new host. It moves up on September 8 and returns to its usual berth on September 21. The first Daily Show with Trevor Noah is September 28. I think that's a smart move. @Midnight is a pretty good show that could stand to have more viewers sample it and maybe decide to follow it @ midnight. No reports on what Larry Wilmore thinks of this but he may be able to play the situation for some comedic value.

• Donald Trump wants to end Birthright Citizenship because those kids didn't earn it. This is coming from a Birthright Billionaire.

Scott Walker and Marco Rubio have both issued "plans" to replace Obamacare with something that will make their base happy because it isn't Obamacare. I actually read them both and as Jonathan Chait notes, these aren't really plans so much as "skeletal descriptions of planlike concepts." In other words: "Actual Proposal To Come After I'm President."

But actually, I don't think either man will ever be President and they won't offer any further details before their candidacies end. To do that would hasten those endings because further details would reveal that they'd leave millions of people who now have decent, affordable health care with worse coverage, more expensive coverage or no coverage. Either that or their plans would repeat all sorts of things about Obamacare that their base considers evil…and they sure won't announce that.

How To Know When You're Getting Old: When you read obits for women on whom you once had crushes.

The fact that Yvonne Craig was 78 didn't make me feel old. To me, no matter how old she was, she was and always will be the age when I first saw her on TV. Oddly enough, it was not seeing her play Batgirl that aroused my interest. It was seeing her not play Batgirl. She couldn't be that beautiful to me in the costume because you couldn't see her face. Call me perverted if you like but I think the most attractive part of any attractive person is their face, especially around the eyes and smile.

Yvonne Craig had a great face. The rest of her was nice too but I sure liked that face.

The crush did not last long. Back then — back when she was on the Batman show and I was fifteen — my crushes ran hot for an average of about three weeks…and hey, why not? I mean, it's all fantasy, right? If you're going to fall in love with women you'll never meet, why not play the field? Yvonne was actually one of my longer crushes. I think she held the title for a little over ninety days, finishing ahead of Abby Dalton though falling several months shy of Mary Tyler Moore in her Laura Petrie days.

During my Yvonne crush, I didn't think I'd ever get closer to her than the publicity photo at below right. That's her pretending to be reading a copy of Detective Comics #359, the issue containing the debut of Batgirl and — and this of course is why this issue is so valuable now to collectors — a letter in the letters page from me. Based on the expression on Yvonne's face, it seemed obvious to me that she was reading my letter when this photo was taken.

But I did meet her. Around the turn of the century, the Hollywood Collectors Show hosted one of the 87,000 cast reunions for the Batman show. Those people saw more of each other at reunions and conventions than they ever did on the set. It was at the Beverly Garland Hotel and they had Adam and Burt and Julie and Frank and a few others…and Yvonne. An agent I knew named Fred Wostbrock had booked most of them in and he was there, protecting his clients from…well, just about everybody.

We chatted for a while and then Fred took me around to introduce me. Somehow, I found myself seated between Yvonne Craig and Julie Newmar — a place I once would have foregone my inheritance to sit in. We talked while they both signed autographs for a long line and I was impressed with how nice and tolerant they both were with their fans. Most were no trouble but one out of about every twenty-five seemed to have been green-screened into our world. The ladies were even nice to them.

They both struck me as being very smart and very aware.  You meet a lot of show business performers who are clueless about who they really are and what people like about them and what, if anything, they represent to their fans.  Not these two ladies.  They knew.

One of the photos Yvonne was selling and signing was the above pic of her with the comic book and I couldn't resist. I told her I had a letter published in that issue. She was way more impressed than she should have been.

A few fans later, a guy about my age had a copy of Detective Comics #359 that he wanted her to sign. Her handler collected the fee, Yvonne signed it and as she was about to hand it back to the gentleman, she asked me, "Is this the issue with your letter in it?" I told her it was and she began paging through it to find the letter page.

I looked at the owner of the comic. He had an uneasy look about her handling it so much. I knew that look. From a near-lifetime of being around collectors, I knew he was very, very interested in preserving its resale price and therefore feared her creasing or marring the pages. Actually, I knew that before she went searching through it because he'd declined to have her personalize the autograph.

Ms. Craig finally located the letter page and instantly had the exact same expression as in the photo. I guess her memory wasn't the greatest because she didn't seem to remember reading my letter when the photo was taken in 1967. Here — I'll let you see that letter. It's one of the better things I ever wrote…

That's it. Wish I could write like that now.

Yvonne read it aloud and I had to explain to her who the Elongated Man was. She then passed the issue over to Julie to read and be impressed. Ms. Newmar handled it with even less care and I could see its owner wondering if he should or could snatch it from the claws of Catwoman in order to preserve its near-mint condition. But then he really freaked out when he heard Yvonne say, "Hey, Mark. You should sign it too."

There was no way in the friggin' world that guy wanted me scrawling anything on his precious copy of Detective Comics #359. He yelled "No thanks" with much more urgency than was necessary. Yvonne said, "Oh, don't worry. He won't charge you for it." Then she handed me her signing pen and urged me to write my name in it.

I saw the guy cringe. Then when I handed the pen back to her and said, "I think he just wanted your signature on it," I saw him uncringe. He thanked me most sincerely and got away from there with his comic before anyone could do anything else to it.

And then I looked at Yvonne and saw her snicker. She knew exactly what she was putting him through.  Like I said: Very smart and very aware.

I should probably end this here but there's one other incident that happened a few minutes later that I will never forget. You have to trust me here, dear readers. The first part of this, you'll have no trouble believing. In fact, you'll easily believe the whole thing up until the last line but I swear it's true.

A rather nervous man also around my age approached the table and purchased several photos of Ms. Craig and Ms. Newmar in the skimpiest of apparel. They had many pics from which one could choose. He picked all the ones of Yvonne in a bikini and all the ones of Julie in lingerie. He paid a hefty fee for the photos and he asked that Yvonne and Julie personalize their signatures, which they were glad to do. He had prepared little 3×5 cards for each with his difficult-to-spell first name and both ladies complimented him on being so thoughtful.

Before he moved on, he addressed the two of them as if he'd written and rehearsed a little speech. He said, "I'd like to thank both of you for helping me through a difficult age of my life. I used to tune in the Batman show every time it was on to see you two. I was very disappointed, Miss Newmar, when there were episodes you were not in and very outraged when they had other women playing Catwoman. Nothing against Miss Eartha Kitt, of course, but for me there was only one Catwoman."

"That's very sweet of you," Julie said.

"I also maintained two scrapbooks, one for each of you, and every time I came across a photo of either of you, it would go into the appropriate scrapbook. Sad to say, I lost them in a flood but while I had them, they were very special to me. The photos of you two were very special to me as these will be."

"That's so nice of you," Yvonne said. Her tone of voice contained a subtle hint that that he should move on and let the next person in line make their purchases but he went on. He wasn't going to move on until he was certain he'd conveyed his message.

"I hope you understand. Looking at those photos of you made me feel so good. They just lightened up my life because you were both so lovely and wonderful and I wanted to make sure you understood."

"We understand," Yvonne said. "Thank you so much and now, if you'd let the others who've been waiting in line have their turns." He thanked them both five more times then finally slithered away with his purchases.

Once he was gone, Yvonne Craig turned to me and said, so no one else could hear: "Another guy who wants to make sure we understand that he masturbated to our photos."

Larry Wilmore is interviewed about his first hundred episodes of The Nightly Show. I like but do not love the program. The best parts for me have just been Larry sitting at the desk talking to us. The weakest parts for me have been…well, the group discussions on almost any subject except Bill Cosby or black people being shot by cops. When other topics are on the table, it often doesn't feel to me like the panel has a whole lot of interest and is just saying something because they're supposed to. But I'll keep watching.

This is going to cost you an hour but it's worth it. In 1961, KPFK radio in Los Angeles arranged a panel on comedy with Groucho Marx, Steve Allen and Carl Reiner. The moderator is George Fenneman, who was Groucho's sidekick on You Bet Your Life and also participating in the conversation were Cecil Smith, who was an entertainment reporter for the L.A. Times, and Robert Young, who was the star of the series, Father Knows Best. I'm not sure why Mr. Young was on the panel and it sounds like he wasn't sure, either.

It's a pretty good discussion, especially during those rare moments when someone asks a question and someone else actually answers it. Give a listen…

More questions about spec work. This one's from Ed Smith and here's what Ed has to say…

One thing I think makes the prospect of spec work harder to evaluate for a beginner artist versus a writer is that for the most part they don't know the value of the work they are being asked to do. The Writers Guild does a great job of giving pricing guidelines for various types of writing work, but I've never seen anything similar for artists. Obviously the time spent on the work doesn't necessarily correlate to the value, i.e., a comic book cover and a character design for a cartoon might take roughly the same time to draw, but they have nowhere near the same use or value to the company. Do you know of anyplace that does give any sort of guidance along those lines?

There are a lot of artist organizations like the Graphic Artists Guild that can help, though I suspect your best source would be to get acquainted with artists who are established in the specific arena where you yearn to work. Just out of sheer camaraderie, most artists are not reticent to share that info with new folks. Also of course, most of 'em recognize that it is not in their own interests to have good new kids roaming about their business naively undercharging for their services.

I also think you can figure out a certain amount of this yourself if you just dump the "dream" part and fixate on the practical aspect of a job. The amount of time you spend on something is a factor in the price but generally only as a bottom line.

Most commercial artists I know have a certain, secret hourly figure below which they will not go except in extreme financial emergency. They might share that figure with a colleague but they'd never share it with an employer. A few years ago, a comic book artist I knew told me his was $60 an hour. It's probably more now but let's say it's still $60. When he's offered a job, he does a quick mental calculation.

He estimates how long the job will probably take him. Learning how to gauge that only comes with experience but even an amateur can learn how long it takes him to finish a given drawing. If this artist friend of mine decides it's ten hours, then $600 becomes in his mind the least he'll accept for it. He never quotes that number to the buyer. He asks for as much as he thinks he can get but $600 is as low as he'll go.

How much above $600 he'll feel is proper can depend on many factors, the main one being the value of his work to the buyer. If his contribution will be an important element of a multi-million dollar project, the price for it shoots a lot higher than if he's an expendable, interchangeable component of an endeavor that might only gross $15,000. Also, is this a drawing they're going to use once or many, many times? As you note, a character design might have a long usefulness to them.

Beyond that, there are dozens of factors to consider — the prestige of the job, the odds of it leading to other jobs, the promotional or educational value to him, how wealthy or cash-poor the buyer seems to be, etc. The likelihood and richness of other offers he might otherwise do in the same time period is also a big concern. But the main one is the value of his work to the buyer. That's the main consideration as to how much above that bottom line price of (in this example) $600 he'll quote as his price.

The trick, he told me, is to get out of that mindset whereby you say, "Well, since they'll only pay $400, I'll take it. $400 is still higher than zero." Unless it's a matter of his electricity being turned off or him not being able to afford the $350 to fix that toothache he has, he'd prefer to not take the $600. He'd rather spend that time practicing or studying or even doing drawings he might sell somewhere at a later date — say, at a comic convention.

And of course, the secret to being able to turn down the $400 offer is to not be financially desperate. You know the old saying that wealth leads to more wealth? Well, an artist or writer with money in the bank usually makes even more money because they can afford to turn down the lousy offers without the slightest hesitation. They even get fewer lousy offers in the first place because it's known they aren't desperate and can say no.

If I were an artist now who felt clueless about what to charge for my work, I'd talk to other artists and I'd investigate entities like the Graphic Artists Guild and I'd do whatever I could to get more information. But when I got into a haggling situation, I'd also do my best not to appear clueless. In this world, acting like you're well-informed can often be just as good as actually being well-informed.

I'd keep this in mind: The person offering me the deal has as few resources as I do to know that the going rates are for our kind of work. He may even have less. It is quite possible that he's looking for me to give him a "tell" (the poker term) for what the price should be.

So to the extent it's possible, I'd try to act like one of those guys who's done a lot of this and knows exactly how the prices run. And even if I wasn't one, I'd try to behave like someone with enough cash in my checking account — and other offers — that you wouldn't dare offer me bad money. Don't announce you are what you aren't because that usually sounds bogus and obnoxious. Sounding like you're bluffing is worse than sounding like you're desperate.

I hate talking money. Whenever possible, I leave that to agents and lawyers because it always makes me uncomfortable. When I have to do it myself though, I remember that in any negotiation, the one who gets the better of it is usually the one who seems more likely to be ready, willing and/or able to walk away from the whole deal. If you can keep that in the back of your mind, you can usually — not always — get the best possible terms. Even when you don't know what they should be.

This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.

Most Famous Role: Winnie the Pooh

Other Notable Roles: Mr. Stork in Dumbo, The Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, Kaa in The Jungle Book and countless commercials, plus he was the original voice of Woodsy Owl.

What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: He was a great character actor appearing on-camera in hundreds of movies and TV shows. You can catch him in several episodes of the Superman TV series George Reeves, playing — as he did in many appearances — an eccentric scientist and on The Life of Riley.

Why He's On This List: He was a Walt Disney favorite for his ability to infuse a character with personality without ever sounding like someone "doing a voice." He really wasn't doing a voice. He just had the one and it had depth and texture and humanity and the moment you heard it come out of some character, you paid attention.

Fun Fact: Mr. Holloway had a brief career performing on Broadway where he introduced at least two songs by the team of Rodgers and Hart that quickly became standards: "Manhattan" and "Mountain Greenery."

GQ has a long interview/profile of Stephen Colbert as he readies his new late night show. I'm quite eager to see what it's going to be like and I hope everyone (including me) isn't expecting a finished product the first night.

Here's another one of those "I don't get it" things…

Last week, a judge in New Hampshire overturned a law that made it illegal to take a picture of your completed election ballot and show it to others or to post it on social media. As the New York Times explained, "The law was meant to combat vote buying and coercion, which were common before the adoption of the secret ballot." Three voters had challenged the law as a restriction of their First Amendment rights.

I don't get why this is ever illegal. I vote by absentee ballot, as do about 20% of all voters in every national election. The states of Oregon, Washington, and Colorado conduct their voting entirely by mail.

Now, let's say you either bribe me or threaten me to cast my vote a certain way. I'm not sure this is really a problem in this country but let's say it is. A law that prevents me from taking a photo of my completed ballot might prevent you from being able to verify that I voted as ordered or promised. But you could also threaten me or pay me to request an absentee ballot and to show it to you before I mail it in. Hell, I could just sign the ballot and hand it to you to mark and mail in and no one would ever catch us.

Come to think of it, I could screw you over by showing you the ballot marked as you like, then on Election Day, I take it into my polling place and say, "I mismarked my ballot. Please void it and let me vote here now." They do that in my state and I'll bet they do it in most others.

Also come to think of it, I could do the same workaround if I go in and vote in person. You come to me before the next presidential election and offer me $100 to vote for Donald Trump. It wouldn't take that much to buy my vote especially in California. Since no Republican can possibly carry this state, I'd sell out for ten bucks.

But let's say you're dumb enough to pay cash for my vote and you say, "Take a photo of your completed ballot in the voting booth before you deposit in the ballot box. Then e-mail it to me when you get home and I'll PayPal you the money!" That's what these laws are supposed to prevent, right?

So I go in the booth, vote for Trump and take a clear picture of my ballot. Then I tell the polling place workers, "Oops! I punched the wrong hole!" They destroy my ballot and give me a new one. I vote for someone else and cast that ballot, then when I get home, I send you the photo and you send me my money.

This whole idea of preventing voters from being intimidated or bribed sounds like a crime which almost never happens…and if it did, a pretty easy one to foil. So what is it I'm not getting here?

We love John Oliver. The piece he did last night on televangelists who prey (as opposed to pray) on the desperate and gullible was one of the best things I've seen on television this year…and it was probably just the beginning. If you didn't see it, see it here…

I'm getting a lot of questions and comments on my latest piece against working on spec. Here's a question from Roger Belkin…

I completely understand your point that many offers to work on spec lead to auditioning for a non-existent job. However, let's say you have a chance to submit to a solid company for a real opening. Let's say it's DC Comics. What's wrong with writing something and letting them add it to the slush pile?

Well, for one thing, it's called a slush pile. Would you see something wrong with it if they called it the garbage heap? When you get into that pile, you've probably already lost. Ideally, you'd like the folks at that company to think of you as someone whose work rises above the level of those who wind up in that stack.

Also, the pile of cold submissions does not get a lot of attention in any office. The folks with actual hiring/buying capability rarely wade through it, instead using that task as busy work for interns when there's absolutely nothing else for them to do. It could be months before they get to your submission. And I don't know who does it now at Marvel — or even if anyone does — but there was a point where the staffers there assigned to look at those scripts were folks who wanted the real writing jobs for themselves. They sure didn't want to find someone wonderful in that stack of competitors.

Yeah, once in a while, someone submits something that way and it leads to a real job. It happens so infrequently that I wouldn't count on it.

Jack Kirby's granddaughter Jillian never knew her famous relative but she seems to have inherited his tendency to care about others. At age 16, she launched Kirby4Heroes, a project that raises money for the Hero Initiative, a charity that assists comic book creators who are in need of financial aid. He would have been proud of her. You can read all about the effort in this article.

Filmmaker Ian Wood uses a drone camera to take us on an amazing tour of Los Angeles. The locations visited by the drone can be identified via this map…which was helpful because when I watched the video, I recognized so many places I couldn't quite identify. If you're from around these parts, see how well you do…