Mark Joseph Stern has a very silly article that asks the question, "Are Rumors About Lindsey Graham's Sexuality Hurting His Presidential Chances?" What's silly about it is that Lindsay Graham has never had any presidential chances to have hurt. If he were married with twelve kids, he might be polling at 2% instead of 1% — actually, he's polling at 1% in a poll with a 2-point of margin of error so his real number is somewhere between 3% and -1%. This man could easily hold his largest campaign rally in a Nissan Sentra…and have room in the glove compartment for all the Bobby Jindal supporters. Graham's problem has nothing to do with people thinking he's gay. He has the same problem as Jindal: Nobody wants him.
Yearly Archives: 2015
Say No More
John Cleese and Eric Idle will soon begin touring with a two-person show. According to the press release, "The British icons will perform unforgettable sit-down comedy, blending scripted and improvised bits with storytelling, musical numbers, exclusive footage, aquatic juggling and an extended audience Q&A to craft a unique comedic experience with every performance." This sounds not all that different from the one-on-one conversation I witnessed last November but that was a great evening so if they come my way, I'll probably go.
So far though, the tour seems to involve Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Maryland. Here we have the dates and info. We shall see in which ways this tour wanders after that.
Today's Video Link
The other day we had a clip here of Yuan Zai, a baby panda born in the Taipei Zoo, and her mother, Yuan Yuan. Here, in Chinese, is a longer video about them. There's an option on the player to turn on English subtitles…
My Latest Tweet
- Tomorrow morning, the Supreme Court will do something that a lot of people won't like. I just know it.
Broadway Bound
So what's ahead for Broadway? 27 shows have been announced for the coming season with what seem to be firm opening dates…which is a lot when you consider that in the season that just ended, there were 37 openings in total.
How many more than 27 there will be will depend to some extent, of course, on how well those 27 shows and the holdovers fare. Shows can't open unless they have a theater and you don't get a theater until something else closes. You may recall when Jerry Lewis was making those announcements of his Nutty Professor musical opening on Broadway, no one took them seriously because it never had a theater booked and when he gave dates, they never seemed to coincide with when some theater might be available. Almost needless to say, The Nutty Professor musical is not among the 27 that look firm for this season. (Even Jerry seems to have given up on that ever happening.)
The list of 27 includes a number of revivals including She Loves Me, Noises Off, The Color Purple, Falsettos, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and, of course, the biennial revival of Fiddler on the Roof. I'm confused because I thought revivals of Fiddler were supposed to alternate with revivals of Gypsy. There are also a lot of other revivals and some new shows that sound…well, interesting. Here's an article that gives the whole list.
Con Job
I really liked the Jeff Ross special last night on Comedy Central. If you missed it, Ross — who bills himself as the Roastmaster General — went to Brazos County Jail, a maximum security facility in Texas, and did three shows for the convicts, two for men and one for women. Most of it involved "roasting" (i.e., insulting) them though there was clearly enough understanding and even a bit of affection coming from the guy that the convicts, at least in the show as edited, seemed to really like him. Before that, he mingled with some of them, ate as they did and talked with a number of them. He wrote up some of his observations here.
This may have been the first time some viewers got a glimpse of men and women in prison…at least, viewers who don't have MSNBC, which goes through periods of airing more about bad people in prison than they do about bad people in the Republican Party. I'm personally waiting for the moment that some Congressman whose improprieties are discussed on The Rachel Maddow Show winds up in one of the channel's "behind bars" documentaries.
I suspect a lot of people look at most prisoners and do not think, "There are human lives who could be rehabilitated and perhaps are even being over-punished by the inhuman living conditions." I suspect a lot think, "Good! Keep that walking trash in there where it can't hurt anybody." A condition of attending Ross's show was that an inmate had to have spotless behavior for the month before. I wonder how many prisoners were therefore excluded and if they were seen anywhere during the program.
Like you probably, I don't know a lot about prison conditions. Given how many convicts have been sprung from Death Row thanks to DNA evidence, I wonder how many people who were convicted of crimes other than murder by the same judicial system are also innocent. There must be some but no one cares. I have seen people who don't care how many bodies are tossed in the slammer, or how awful they have it in there, as long as the bodies we're talking about are poor and/or not white. And if you told them those guys might be innocent, the rationale would be, "Even if they're technically innocent of what they got busted for, they're surely guilty of something."
I'm glad Jeff Ross went on this adventure. I've always liked the guy. He's a gutsy comic who does insults with style and wit, and who makes bad taste work by making it really, really funny. His special is not currently scheduled for rerunning in the next few weeks and I'm wondering if there's a longer, unbleeped DVD on the way. If so, I'll let you know so you can order it…after I do.
Big Bad Network
CBS has pulled all clips of Late Show with David Letterman from its own website and from YouTube. This has prompted several furious postings on the Internet as well as a couple of complaints to me about how those ungrateful assholes at CBS have no respect for Dave's contribution or the devotion of his fans or something. One person wrote, "The second he's not making money for them, they couldn't care less about his work, those bastards."
Well, guess what. Everyone who thinks that way owes CBS an apology. CBS took the work down because they no longer control it. Their deal is over and Letterman's company Worldwide Pants now controls the digital rights to that material.
About once a year with some friend or acquaintance, I find myself in the awkward position of defending a big TV network that has been falsely accused. I have no love for those folks but I do not find them consistently evil or greedy or insensitive. Sometimes, sure. But sometimes when you think they've done something crappy to your favorite star or show, all they've done is abide by the contract with the star or show.
Sometimes too, they play Bad Cop for powerful stars or producers. A friend of mine was working on a show when suddenly, they were told, the network was demanding a major staff overhaul. A dozen or more people including my friend were suddenly terminated and told they had an hour or so to pack their belongings, pick up their final checks and leave the premises. It was very painful and, they felt, quite unfair. The Exec Producer — who was not among the ousted — agreed. He screamed about those slimeballs upstairs at the network, vowed to fight the decision…but ultimately, sadly, had to admit defeat.
Later, of course, my friend found out it was the Exec Producer who'd ordered the firings and gotten the network to take the blame for them. That kind of thing happens more often than you might think…though of course, networks folks are quite capable of being slimeballs on their own initiative.
Mushroom Soup Saturday
I'm taking today off to tend to the few things in life more important than blogging. I do have lots more to say about the Jerry Seinfeld matter but that'll have to wait. (I want to talk about — among other aspects of this tepid controversy — how a lot of this is not an argument about taste or Free Speech but economics.) I also have a bunch of questions from folks about how residuals are figured and tracked and such.
We continue to prep for Comic-Con. Also, there seems to be a new flurry of articles from folks who are convinced Comic-Con will, should or must move from San Diego to some other city. I stand by my prediction that it won't unless someone on the business side of the Convention Center down there does something really, really stupid. Yes, there are convention centers that hold more people but except maybe for Vegas, none of them come with as much hotel room availability. Las Vegas has its own set of problems starting with the July weather and the fact that we could never be one-one-hundredth as important to that city as we are to San Diego.
Of possible interest to late night followers is this article which says that the folks who used to watch Mr. Letterman have not migrated to a Jimmy. They seem to have stopped watching late night talk shows. Assuming they don't all scurry back to watch Colbert, it wouldn't surprise me to see some channel other than CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox start thinking about a late night show for that audience. There are channels like MeTV that cultivate an older audience. The folks who sell Rascal scooters and "I've fallen and I can't get up" buttons need somewhere to advertise. It would be a lower-budget situation than what the big boys have but I'll betcha someone could make the math work on it.
Back tomorrow. Or sooner if I have to post a damned obit for someone.
Today's Video Link
One of the best shows I ever saw on Broadway was the 1997 revival of the musical, 1776. In fact, I saw it twice. The first time, it was not long after it opened and if memory serves me, I believe I took Catherine Gruenwald, the widow of my old pal, Marvel editor Mark Gruenwald. The theater was mobbed outside that night because some sort of celebration was being held with a marching band in colonial garb, and then the start of the show was delayed ten minutes so then-mayor Rudy Giuliani could give a speech. I have no idea what he was talking about and I didn't that evening, either.
Still, the show was quite excellent. Brent Spiner was John Adams, Pat Hingle was Benjamin Franklin, Merwin Foard was Richard Henry Lee, Dashiell Eaves was the courier who sings "Mama Look Sharp," Michael Cumpsty was John Dickinson and Gregg Edelman was Rutledge. They were all terrific and I was especially impressed at how Mr. Foard stopped the show with the "Lees of Old Virginia" number. On a later trip, I saw him do the male lead in a revival of Kiss Me, Kate, wrote on some Internet forum that he was terrific in that too, and got a nice e-mailed note of thanks from him.
Everyone in it was very good and I recall the mounting feeling throughout the play that we didn't really know the ending and that it would turn out that they failed to pass the Declaration of Independence and birth the United States of America. The storytelling was that good.
A few months later, I was back in New York with my friend Carolyn and I took her to see it because I knew she'd enjoy it and I'd enjoy it again. Spiner had been replaced by Michael McCormick and Hingle by David Huddleston. The show was still great and again at intermission, I had the ominous feeling that the Declaration of Independence would never get adopted and there'd never be an America. Whenever I watch the movie, which is often, I'm still surprised when they pull it off.
So here's a reel of brief clips from some of the musical numbers starring the first cast. The video quality isn't great but trust me: The show was.
About Residuals
I first posted this on November 5, 2007 when the Writers Guild was in the midst of a very long and nasty strike. It quickly became one of the five-or-so most-read and linked-to posts ever on this site. It's about residuals, a concept which often seems alien to folks who work in professions where there are none, nor are they appropriate.
In fact, I often find myself having to explain to people in other lines of work how my job is so very, very different from theirs. I do not mean better. I mean different. In recent years when certain comic book creators or their offspring have taken legal action to claim a share of Dad's work, there's always some guy on the 'net who sells aluminum siding for a living who tries to parse the lawsuit in terms of his own job and say, "Hey, they got paid for creating Superman! Why should anybody get a nickel more later? I don't when I sell aluminum siding!" Someone then has to patiently explain to this person that selling aluminum siding is not analogous to creating Superman. They don't reprint your aluminum siding over and over, they don't make movies about your aluminum siding, they don't sell model kits of your aluminum siding, etc.
I received the e-mail you're about to read and tried to explain why we get residuals. Based on how often this piece has been read and copied, I wish I'd gotten residuals on it…
Dave Bittner sends a question which others have asked in various forms and which piggybacks on my previous posting…
There's a fundamental aspect of this whole writers strike that puzzles me, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one. How did the whole residuals system start, and become the standard of what's considered "fair" in Hollywood? In most other industries, even creative ones, a person gets paid for doing a job, and that's it. There's no expectation of ongoing payments. If I sell my house, for example, I don't send a check to the original architect, even though his design work contributes to the ongoing value of the property.
No, but if a Harry Potter book goes into another printing, J.K. Rowling gets another check. I disagree with you that ongoing payments are not the norm in creative industries. I get payments if an issue of some comic book I wrote in the seventies is reprinted. I get payments if a song I wrote in the eighties gets played again. It is a generally-established principle that if you create something that has an ongoing value — particularly if its reuse competes with new product — additional compensation is appropriate. This is not to say it's always paid. Comic books, for a long time, didn't pay for reprints. A lot of animation work still doesn't pay for reruns. But that's because of the way the financial structure of those fields developed, with creative folks placed at an economic disadvantage and not having the clout to get reuse fees. I don't think it's because they don't deserve them.
Residuals exist for a couple of reasons. One is that they are deferred compensation. Let's say you want to hire me to write your TV special and there's no WGA and no residuals and we're negotiating out in the wild. I suggest $10,000 would be a rational price. You were thinking more like $5,000. I point out to you that this is likely to be a great show that will rerun for many years to come and that you'll be able to sell it again and again and again. If we could be certain it would be, ten grand to me wouldn't seem unfair but as you point out, we can't be sure that it will have all those resales. So how do we resolve this?
Simple. We invent residuals. We agree that I'll write the show for $5000 or maybe even a little less, and that I'll receive another $5000 if you can sell it for a second run and then maybe $2000 if there's a third run and $1000 for a fourth and so on. The reuse fees are not a gift to me. They're part of the deal…and by the way, this is not all that hypothetical a scenario. I've made deals with this kind of structure for animation projects where the WGA did not have jurisdiction. Even some pretty stingy cartoon producers were glad to make them because it lessened their initial investments to have me, in effect, share a little of the risk.
(A quick aside: The other day, I was talking to Lee Mendelson, who produced all the Peanuts specials. He's making a new deal for the early ones, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is probably the most often-rerun TV show ever produced. Every time he sells it again, he gets paid again, often at rates comparable to what a newly-produced cartoon special would cost. The thing has made millions and millions of dollars each decade since it was produced and it continues to earn. Would someone like to look me in the eye and tell me Charles Schulz never deserved a nickel after the first run? Lee sure wouldn't make that argument.)
That's a very mature, honest way of doing business. What wouldn't be honest is if we made our deal as per the above and then you did the following. You say, "Wait a minute! I don't pay my plumber every time I flush my toilet," (a famous quote from a studio exec fighting the concept of residuals) and you try to lop off the back-end payments and just pay me the initial $5000 or so. No. The $5000 wasn't my fee for writing the show. It was more like a down payment. I wouldn't have done it for $5000 without the other part of the contract. But every so often in Hollywood, some exec gets the idea that they can maximize profits by reneging on the back end of their deals, and we have these silly, periodic battles over residuals.
Anyway, all of the above is one rationale for reuse payments. Another is a tradition — not in every circle but some — that creative folks share when their work has ongoing value. The reason we have a Patent Office in this country is that we wanted to encourage people to invent new ideas and that means giving them a structure through which they can cash in on their brainstorms and not be excluded from the ongoing exploitation of them. Residuals are one way that writers and artists avoid being excluded.
Yet another is that they are compensated when the lasting value of their work preempts new production. A situation which has occurred quite often in the cartoon business is this: You're hired to do a show and you really do a fine job on it. Everyone does. You get 40 or 65 episodes done and they're so good that when they rerun, kids are eager to see them again and again and so the ratings don't go down much. At some point, the studio says, "Hey! These shows are so strong, we don't have to spring for the cost of any more. We can just run these over and over forever!"
And they lay everyone off.
You're out of a job because you did it so well. This has happened many times and it continues to happen. Reruns narrow our opportunities to work on new product.
So if I'm writing a new show…well, I don't want to sit there and think, "Hmm, I don't want to put myself out of work. I'd better not do too good a job on this." That's not healthy for my soul and it sure isn't the ideal situation for my employer. It's far better for all of us if I have that incentive to make the show as big a hit as possible. That means I have to have an ongoing financial interest if the show turns out to have an ongoing financial value. I won't mind getting laid off if I'm sharing. I will mind if all I've done by contributing to a success is put myself out of business.
There's a lot more I could write about this but I have to get a comic book written this morning and then go picket this afternoon so this will have to do for now. The last thing I'll add is that I've been a professional writer since 1969. I've written comics and cartoons and live-action shows and screenplays and songs and stand-up comedy and commercials and books and magazine articles and…well, you name it. Sometimes, I've been excluded from the ongoing value, if any, of my work. Sometimes, I haven't. The healthiest business relationships I've had have been those where I had residuals or royalties or some other financial participation beyond my up-front paycheck — and I mean healthy for me and for the entity that was issuing those checks. Inclusion is a very wise thing for All Concerned. It puts you all on the same team, working for the same goal.
In all those creative fields, I've never encountered any employer or producer or publisher who thought I, or others doing my job, didn't deserve that continuing share. I've met a number who thought they could get by without paying it and sometimes, they can. But since they get paid for the rerun of the TV show or the resale of the movie or whatever, they certainly understand and embrace the concept of getting paid when a piece of work has enduring value. It's just that some of them want to keep it all for themselves.
Carl & Dick
A few years ago, Dick Van Dyke wrote a great autobiography called My Lucky Life In And Out Of Show Business. It's worth having just to read…but for a limited time (probably very limited), you can get an autographed copy of it for forty bucks. These are legit and boy, is that a bargain. When Dick did the Hollywood Show recently, his autograph alone was going for $75.00. If you want one, go here right away.
While you're over there: If you want Dick's autograph, you probably want Carl Reiner's, too. Carl has two recent books he's signing: What I Forgot To Remember and I Just Remembered. They're twenty-five bucks each, which is less than the going price for his signature. Plus, you get it in a real good book. If you order both, ask him to sign one "Alan Brady." He'll probably write that you should shut up.
I don't think the Reiner books are as limited as the Van Dyke book but if you're interested in any of 'em, act now. They're sure not going to get any cheaper.
Indiana Dave
Craig (no last name given) sent me a link to this interview with David Letterman. It's in an Indiana newspaper and it's mostly about Indiana.
Today's Video Link
A very old commercial by Jim Henson. In it, you'll see a bunch of characters made out of cloth selling stretch and shrink control for cotton fabrics…
Recommended Reading
Jon Basil Utley lists "12 Reasons America Doesn't Win Its Wars." Most of them come down to someone making a load of money off us being at war and not wanting the windfall to end. So just how much did Dick Cheney and Halliburton make off that little military action with casualties in Iraq?
A Funny Controversy
I have a lot of messages in my inbox asking me what I think about Jerry Seinfeld's complaints about "a creepy P.C. thing" that makes him not want to perform at colleges. What I think is that this is a non-issue which, since it's an exploitable topic, will probably fill zillions of Internet bytes to no constructive outcome.
I also think Seinfeld's complaints are too vague, anecdotal and hypothetical to discuss with any seriousness, not that this will stop anyone, myself included.
On Seth Meyers' show, he told a joke that referred to a "gay French king" that had gotten not laughter but a weird, critical reaction from one audience. Seth's audience laughed at it but not some other audience somewhere. This seems to me like too isolated an incident on which to build any kind of discussion. It's like "Oh, my God! Jerry didn't like the way one audience reacted once to one of his jokes." He complained about how he'd heard (not experienced himself but heard) that on college campuses, audiences are too quick to judge comedy and say "That's racist!" or "That's sexist!" But he didn't say it had happened to him.
We have a controversy based on that?
I don't think there has ever been a time when stand-up comedians enjoyed more unrestricted speech. There might be a valid case that some motion picture studios are getting timid about humor that might be branded racist or sexist. I hear people say that Warner Brothers would never make Blazing Saddles today and that might be so…but I'm not sure someone wouldn't. The thing with movies though is that they cost zillions of dollars to make so there are extra worries about crossing some line with (only) certain kinds of humor. There are huge investments involved and huge investments always make people nervous.
This financial concern doesn't really apply to stand-ups…or doesn't apply any more than it ever did. Those who book comics always fret about booking guys who won't bring in the audiences or will send them out prematurely. Nothing's changed there except what always changes: What audiences will pay to see.
Jerry Seinfeld may be right to shy from college-age audiences, not because they'll think his routines aren't "politically correct" but because some might think he's of the wrong generation. And again, this is nothing new. When I was at U.C.L.A. in 1970, I don't think anyone would have brought in Norm Crosby or Buddy Hackett to entertain the students. Those are two guys who killed in Vegas, killed in Miami, killed anywhere they had an audience in "their" age bracket. They just didn't seem to speak to people under the age of thirty. I think the subtext of Seinfeld's problem — and this is sure not a big one for a guy who can still charge $125 a seat in Vegas and fill the hall — is that he's starting to become Alan King for audiences of a certain age.
They used to say that Seinfeld's sitcom was about nothing. I'm not sure what he's complaining about is about anything, either. But if it is, it's about that.
One other point I want to make…
Once upon a time in comedy, it was hard to not get a laugh by dropping your pants. Now, it's hard to not get one by mentioning anal sex or using those words that George Carlin said you could never use on television but now in some places, you can. Still, bad comedians have managed both.
The thing that bothers me about Seinfeld's complaints is that too many comics blame the audience when the act doesn't evoke hysterical laughter. This "creepy P.C. thing" Seinfeld mentions may be so on some campuses, especially at places like Bob Jones University or the diploma mill that Jerry Falwell set up. But it sounds to me more like an excuse comics give when either their routine isn't good enough or they've simply misjudged the house and done the wrong kind of material for the occasion. Some comics these days who learn how to work one kind of comedy club don't have the material or chops to play before more than one kind of audience.
But let's get back to "not good enough" because comics are like pizzerias. A lot of them aren't all that good. I was around stand-up comedians a lot in the seventies and eighties. I saw great ones and lousy ones and I heard a lot of the latter kind blame the audience when things didn't go as desired. One guy used to say when he bombed, "It's my job to be funny and their job to laugh and they aren't doing their job." He was not being funny, either when he said that or when he went on stage.
One night at the Comedy Store, my date dragged me to see a comic who her sister knew and the guy was just awful. I never saw him again anywhere but that night, I saw enough to last me a lifetime. He was living proof of an old adage I made up during his act that scatalogical humor is not always funny. The act was just terrible and the less people laughed (or stayed), the more he dragged out the poop jokes…to no avail. After, when we saw him outside, he was railing against the "square, uptight" audience.
Yeah, but they'd laughed their asses off at the guy before him, who was Sam Kinison. Maybe the audience wasn't the problem.