A bearded David Letterman was a surprise guest the other night at an event hosted by Steve Martin and Martin Short. Dave took the opportunity to deliver one of his signature Top Ten lists. Thanks to about 78% of all the people at Comic-Con for telling me about this..
On 4/22/10, I posted this. I think it's time to see it again…
In his latest column, my friend and former partner Dennis Palumbo discusses the tendency for a writer to hold onto a line and to keep trying to find a place for it. This is absolutely true with most of us who write for a living.
And Dennis's piece reminded me of a joke that Evanier and Palumbo once wrote, managed to get into a script…and then we couldn't get rid of it fast enough. Every writer has a couple of these, too.
It was while we were working on Welcome Back, Kotter. There was an episode in which Vinnie Barbarino (the Travolta character) was making his acting debut. Around 3 AM one morning, a day or two before we taped, Dennis and I found ourselves punchy from lack of sleep and desperate from lack of a funny line for Mr. Woodman, the surly vice-principal. We needed to have him say something, get a laugh and then get out of the scene. We had to come up with it before we could get out of the office and go home.
One of us said, "Let's have Woodman say something about how he used to be a great actor."
The other one of us said, "Yeah…He could say, 'Y'know, Kotter, I used to be a pretty good actor. In college, we did Of Mice and Men.'"
And then in unison, we finished the line: "I played Mice."
We laughed for about six minutes. If you'd been that tired, you would have laughed, too. Then I typed it into the script, we laughed for three more minutes and we finally got the hell out of there. We thought it was the funniest line in the world…and at 3 AM, it was. In fairness to us, the next day the cast and the rest of the staff liked it a lot — enough that it stayed in, all the way through Tuesday afternoon. That was when we did the "dress rehearsal" — the first of two tapings that day — in front of very live audiences.
Mr. Woodman was played by a lovely little man named John Sylvester White. John was very funny on the show but he suffered through moments of pure stage fright. About ten minutes before he had to go before the cameras, he would become convinced that none of his lines would work, that the audience would hate him and that his career was but seconds from total ruination. This never came close to happening but it was often necessary to reassure him that he'd get laughs, that the audience would love him, etc. That afternoon, just before the show was to be performed the first time, Dennis and I wandered onto the set and John, in a state of panic, grabbed us.
He was in full make-up but he still looked pale. "That Mice and Men joke," he said. "Is that really funny?" We promised him the viewers would howl and he took us at our word and went out to do the show. Things went pretty well up until that moment, the moment when Mr. Woodman turned to Gabe Kaplan and said, "Y'know, Kotter. I used to be a pretty good actor. In college, we did Of Mice and Men. I played Mice!"
And then there was silence.
Absolute, dead silence. Not a laugh, not a chuckle, not a snicker. You would hear more noise if you were floating in the orbital path of Mars…and wearing earplugs.
And then because, I guess, he felt he had to say something before his exit and didn't particularly want to take the rap for the Mice joke, Mr. Woodman announced to Mr. Kotter, "Evanier and Palumbo told me that would get a laugh." The audience exploded in hysterics. Maybe the biggest laugh I ever heard on that stage. They didn't know who the hell Evanier and Palumbo were but they knew exactly what had happened.
Needless to say, the line was changed before the final taping…changed to something that the second audience actually laughed at. In-between the two tapings, there was a dinner break and everyone on the crew looked at Dennis and me and shook their heads, though a few were kind enough to say, "Well, I thought it was funny." When we worked on the following week's script, Dennis talked me out of a line I wanted to put in. I wanted Woodman to say, "Y'know, Kotter. I used to be a pretty good actor. In college, we did Of Mice and Men. I played Men!"
Like Dennis said in his article, some of us just don't know when to give up. I still think the Mice line would have killed if we'd aired the show at 3 AM.
A short/sweet bit of advice to writers from Neil Simon…
I'm only hosting eight panels at Comic-Con this year — a news flash that has folks accusing me of goofing-off. They won't this weekend. Somehow, the eight wound up distributed as follows: One on Thursday, none today, three tomorrow and four on Sunday.
So today, I just had meetings and interviews 'n' such and had a little time to actually stroll the convention…as much as I could with an imperfect knee. The con didn't seem horrendously crowded either day so far and I noticed far fewer cosplayers (i.e., folks in costume) than the norm. Someone — I think it was me — suggested that maybe they're milling more outside at the unofficial street fair that had grown up around the con. Whatever the reason, you could go a whole three minutes in there today without seeing anyone dressed as Harley Quinn or Wolverine.
Not a whole lot to report. The convention center is surrounded by a small but loud band of folks with signs and, more annoyingly, electronic megaphones beseeching us to accept Jesus, repent and otherwise save our wretched lives. I wanted to look one guy in the face and say to him, "You do know that you've never converted anyone this way and you never will." But I don't think those people are out there for anyone's benefit but their own.
Okay, well now the old clock on the app is telling me it's time to be off to the awards ceremony. More later…maybe.
Some of us here at Comic-Con tell the Washington Post how to ready one's self for the experience.
I wrote here recently about how fake sketches allegedly by comic book and comic strip artists turn up a lot on eBay. Something else that gets forged is animation cels. They're frightfully easy to forge if you know just a little bit about the business.
Between about the mid-sixties and the time when everything went digital, the way animation art was created in American studios was as follows: The artist would do a pencil drawing. A technician would use a Xerox machine to transfer it to a piece of celluloid known as a "cel." An ink-and-paint person would flip the cel over and paint in the colors on the back. Once it dried, the cel could be laid over a background and photographed to create a frame or three of animation.
Once you have the basic pencil drawing, there's nothing difficult in the process if you have a Xerox machine, a supply of blank cels that can be run through it, a set of cel paints and a brush. You can buy all these things very easily.
Years ago, there was an artist who worked in both comic books and animation who was not well-liked. His ethics in those fields were about the same as when, to supplement his income — or to be his income when no one in those industries would hire him — he would manufacture fake cels and hawk them on eBay. In most cases, they were model sheets like the one above which he would paint and advertise as "production cels, used in the making of the cartoon series."
He started, of course, with model sheets. They aren't hard to come by. If you work in a cartoon studio, they're all over the place and animators who work for different companies have been known to swap Xeroxes. You can also find a lot of good ones online with a Google search.
He would transfer the model sheet image to a cel and then he (or his wife or someone) would paint the back. The cel, even though it was made in his garage, would be represented as having come from Hanna-Barbera or Disney or Warner Brothers or wherever.
He sold a lot of them online and at conventions and through other venues. When people bought directly from him, they didn't question the authenticity of his goods. After all, the fellow had worked in animation even if he hadn't necessarily worked at the studio that produced the show for which he was selling cels.
He was also selling legit comic book art and cels at the same time so that added to the credibility of all his goods. Some of the "real" stuff he sold had been obtained by swapping his cels to an art dealer for other goods. A lot of art dealers who should have known better wound up selling his bogus cels, as well. It's hard to tell the difference.
That's about all I have to say about this. The guy's not still around but a lot of his homemade Hanna-Barbera cels are. An animation art authority told me once that he guessed each cel cost the guy about fifty cents in material and about 3-5 minutes of labor. He sold them for anywhere from $20 to $100, depending on the complexity of the image and the gullibility of the buyer. Once in a while, a cel would miraculously be signed by Bill Hanna and/or Joe Barbera. Yeah, sure.
Be careful. It's a jungle out there.
I woke up this morning thinking, "I've got to get ready to go to San Diego." Took a minute or so to realize I was already in San Diego and that I spent several hours last night at the convention.
As Comic-Cons go, this has so far definitely been one of them. It always amazes me each year the first time I enter the exhibit hall that everything is exactly where it was when I left here a year ago. It's like going to Disneyland: The Matterhorn is over there and there's Sleeping Beauty's Castle and there's that overpriced souvenir shop…all right where we left 'em. Brigadoon has reappeared and it's just as you imagined.
Sergio and I drove down together yesterday — which is to say he drove while I navigated using the Waze app on my smartphone. If you haven't tried that in lieu of a plain vanilla G.P.S., you might wanna check it out. Takes a little getting used-to but once you know it, it can be quite helpful.
We stopped for lunch at a terrific seafood restaurant in Dana Point called The Harbor Grill. I mention that as a recommendation to anyone in the area but more so in case the next time I'm back that way, if I forget the name, I can search my blog for "terrific seafood Dana Point" and find it.
The hotel didn't have my room ready so I killed much of the time by running into Scott McCloud in the lobby. A few weeks ago I was at a meeting and the receptionist told me she was looking forward to Comic-Con where she would be wearing her Princess Leia costume and hoped to meet (a) the new guy playing Doctor Who and (b) Scott McCloud. I told him that and we tried to figure out what these two people have in common. Frankly, I think Scott would make a fine Doctor Who and if he took over, he could save this lady a lot of waiting in line.
Eventually, the convention happened. A major topic, at least around me, was that our friend Scott Shaw! won't be present for it this year. His table is open, manned by his fine son Kirby, but Scott is home tending to a shattered ankle that must be bad if it's keeping him away from the beloved convention he helped establish. If it were up to me, we'd just postpone the whole con 'til Scott's ankle heals…which I guess explains why it's not up to me. His usual seat on the Quick Draw! game Saturday will be filled by the fine cartoonist, Mike Kazaleh.
And since I have to scurry to a breakfast meeting, that's all you're going to get right now. Off we go…
To anyone who wondered if Stephen Colbert could still be entertaining once he'd abandoned his old screen character: I think the videos he's posting should prove the answer is yes…
I agree with my pal Paul Harris about the use of unpaid interns in business. One of my larger peeves is when employers could easily pay workers but find hokey reasons to not do so. And I haven't heard too many unhokey ones.
March 30, 2009 on this site, I told you this story that you won't believe. It was not long after my amazing friend Kristine passed away…and one of the amazing things about Kristine was that when you were around her, amazing things happened — things like this…
Okay, I'm going to tell you a story here that will cause some of you to think my brain has gone condo and I'm suffering from severe delusions. The following, however, actually occurred. If you're skeptical, drop an e-mail to anyone who knows me well. They'll tell you these kinds of things always happen to me. I don't know why but they do. This involves my friend Kristine Greco, a lovely lady who passed away last week at a way-too-early age.
I have a mammoth collection of comedy records. Always have. Some time in the sixties, I began actively collecting the work of the great bandleader, Spike Jones. I've amassed just about everything he ever recorded — that's a lot of 78s and 45s and LPs — and the stuff I don't have on original discs, I have on tapes or (more recently) MP3s. If you're familiar with his wonderful, wacky work, no explanation is necessary as to why I was drawn to it.I never met Mr. Jones (he died in 1965) but in the seventies, I found myself working with a number of his former associates. Lennie Weinrib and Billy Barty were on several of the shows I wrote for Sid and Marty Krofft. A couple of his former musicians had become film editors and were working down in the basement at Hanna-Barbera. One of his former writers, Eddie Brandt, had worked at H-B before I got there but left to open a nostalgia store, selling old books and old records, and I sometimes shopped there and chatted with him. There were a few others. At the time, no one had done a book about Spike Jones and I started to think I might be in a good position to write one. I put the notion to a friend who was an editor at the kind of publishing house that might handle such a thing.
He promptly threw chilly water on the idea. Said he, "A couple of people have thought of writing a book on Spike Jones but they all gave it up. They couldn't find enough material. Now, if you could approach his family and they'd agree to cooperate, maybe…"
That kind of discouraged me. I didn't know any relatives of Spike Jones. Or so I thought.
As I mentioned here a few days ago when I was saying goodbye to her, I met this wonderful lady named Kristine Greco when we were both working on Welcome Back, Kotter — she as an actress, me as a story editor. A year or two after that, we were going back to her place after a movie…and for some reason, I still remember what it was. It was Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. We were walking into her apartment and I was somehow talking about things I was working on. I said, "I've been thinking of doing a book about a man named Spike Jones. He was a great bandleader back in the —"Kristine interrupted me and asked, "You mean, Uncle Spike?"
That's what she said. That's what the lady said: Uncle Spike. I gasped, "What do you mean, 'Uncle Spike?'"
She said, "Spike Jones was my uncle. I thought you knew that."
"I didn't know that," I replied. His name had never come up in our conversations and I wasn't in the habit of asking women if they were Spike Jones's niece. (I should have started. I later found out that another actress I worked with, Judy Strangis, was also a niece of Spike's. In fact, Judy's the one who called me the other day to tell me about Kristine.)
It turned out Kristine not only was a niece of Spike Jones but when she was around six, she'd even sung on one of his records. Spike was married to a singer named Helen Grayco. Helen Grayco was born Helen Greco and she "Americanized" her surname early in her career.
Standing there in Kristine Greco's apartment that night, I felt like I'd made a wrong turn at the Twilight Zone and wandered into a Hitchcock flick…but it got weirder. I asked her, "Where are all of Spike Jones's personal papers and such?"
She said, "Well, a lot of them are in my garage. Remember those boxes you just parked your car next to?"
I'd been parking next to those boxes for a year or so when I visited her. We went out to the garage, opened up the top box and right there we found a bunch of animation-style storyboard drawings. Back when he was doing one of his TV shows in the fifties, Jones sometimes employed cartoonists to create visual gags which he and his band used. There were about two dozen of these drawings and many were by the great cartoon director, Tex Avery, some of them even signed. Here's one from a series of gags which had Spike sitting on a piano playing the trombone while his "feet" (actually someone else's hands) played the piano…
The others weren't signed but appeared to be by two other artists. Both had familiar styles and one looked like it just might be the legendary magazine cartoonist, Virgil "VIP" Partch.
"You can have them if you like," she said…and she also loaded me down with old sheet music and programs and Spike souvenirs. One treasure I keep on my desk here looks like a gold-plated railroad spike but it's also a can opener…and it says "Spike Jones" on the side of it.
At the time, I was working at Hanna-Barbera. The following Monday, I took the storyboard drawings in and showed them to my office roommate. My office roommate at the time was Tex Avery.
He was sitting there with an older gent…a visitor I didn't recognize. When I showed Tex the drawings, he did one of those "takes" that the Wolf in his cartoons did when he found Droopy where he didn't expect him. "My God," he gasped. "We were just talking about Spike. I loved writing gags for him."
I asked him if he could identify the drawings done by others. He said most of them were by Roy Williams. Roy was the Disney storyman who appeared on The Mickey Mouse Club as the Big Mooseketeer. "What about this one?" I asked, showing him the one I thought might be by Virgil Partch.
"Oh, that's one of his," Tex said, pointing to the gentleman in his guest chair. "This is Virgil Partch."
That, fortunately, is about where the incredible coincidences end. I wound up going to lunch that day with Tex and Vip — they drank and talked, I ate and listened — and we had a very nice time. Kristine soon introduced me to Spike's son, Spike Jr., who was (and still is) a very successful producer. We lunched and talked about me writing a book and also about other projects, but nothing ever came of any of it. I was too busy to tackle the book or anything else just then. A few years later, I heard that a fine historian-author named Jordan Young was doing a Spike Jones bio so I gave him all the material I'd amassed and he produced a much better book than I would have. You can order a copy of it here.
That's the story. I told you you wouldn't believe it.
I always tell people who ask that my favorite restaurant, at least for meat-eating, is Peter Luger's Steak House in Brooklyn. I should probably stop doing that because I haven't eaten there in about fifteen years. The few times I've been to New York in that time, I was too booked with other engagements to get out to Brooklyn but I still have fond memories of meals there. (And I frequently dine at Wolfgang's Steakhouse in Beverly Hills, which serves very similiar Porterhouses.)
What makes the steak at Peter Luger's so great? I suspect a lot of it is the quality of the steak they start out with. No matter how you cook at home, you probably don't start out with meat as good as what they buy and you probably don't age it the way they do. In this video, we see the buyer for Peter Luger's going shopping for beef…
Baby panda footage. How can you resist?
At age 20, my buddy Steve Stoliar worked as Groucho Marx's personal assistant during the closing days of the great man's life. He wrote about it in a book I've recommended to you before and will recommend to you again: Raised Eyebrows.
It's soon to be, as they say, a major motion picture…one that will be directed by horror specialist Rob Zombie. How is it that the guy who helmed House of 1000 Corpses is bringing us the tale of Groucho and Erin Fleming and that kid who worked in the Marx house? That's what Steve explains in today's Hollywood Reporter.