Monthly Archives: January 2016

Several folks have sent me this. It's a guide to the actors who did voiceovers in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Those of you who've been to my Cartoon Voices panels at Comic-Con will recognize a number of these people.

You might have noticed this site crashing a lot lately. We have had an increase in traffic that has created some tech problems and we're in the process of rectifying them. There's a possibility the site may be down for some brief periods until we get it all rearranged and repaired so forgive us our outages. This should (note the emphasis) solve the problems. Thank you.

Here's an entire movie you probably won't want to watch in full, not that it's a bad one. It's The Fighting Kentuckian, made in 1949 and starring John Wayne, Vera Ralston and — and this is what interests me about it — Oliver Hardy.

Once he'd formally teamed with Laurel, Hardy only appeared on-screen and sans Stan in four films: A 1928 Our Gang comedy called Barnum and Ringling, Inc, Zenobia (which we wrote about here), then this one followed by a brief cameo in Frank Capra's Riding High (1950). He also did a brief off-camera voiceover in one other Our Gang film.

And after this, Hardy would only appear in one more film with Laurel — Utopia, also known as Atoll K — a pretty sad last effort for the greatest comedy team of all. Laurel appeared in no films without Hardy after they teamed.

Ollie's pretty good in this film. One forgets that he was an actor, not the lovable dunce he usually played on the screen. If you want to fast forward and see a little of him, he makes his entrance around 4 minutes and 50 seconds into the proceedings. And here's a chance to see John Wayne in his best period, before he started sounding like a guy doing an impression of John Wayne…

My wise friend Paul Harris reminds us how silly the whole idea of the Iowa Caucuses are…and how they probably don't even reflect who the people of Iowa want to see be elected president.

Still though, everyone is so eager for the election — especially the Republican side — to progress towards a decision that great importance will be attached to the outcome there. The fact that the past winners there have generally not gone on to the White House will be forgotten by folks who oughta know better and they'll be discussing how the outcome helps or hurts the Cruz campaign, how inevitable it makes Trump, who should or will drop out, etc. So it doesn't mean anything but it may still have a lot of impact. Politics is full of things that don't mean anything except that since people think they do, they do.

The current issue of Written By, the Writers Guild magazine, is filled with goodies. I already linked you to this interview with Woody Allen and now I call your attention to a chat with Mel Brooks, in which he talks a lot about his own genius and reveals some things I don't think I've ever heard before about The Producers.

I'm a little puzzled about the timeline Mr. Brooks presents. He talks about being broke after making The Twelve Chairs and his life being saved by getting the job to do the film that was ultimately called Blazing Saddles. Then he places his work on Get Smart during the period that he and a team were writing Blazing Saddles. Uh, Get Smart was created in early 1965, The Producers was made in 1966, The Twelve Chairs was made in 1969 and Blazing Saddles was made in 1973, several years after Get Smart had completed its five season run and left the air. He also doesn't mention that Buck Henry co-created Get Smart.

But maybe I shouldn't quibble. Any Mel Brooks interview is worth reading.

John Oliver's show returns to the air in a few weeks. In the meantime…

Kevin Drum writes why he's for Hillary over Bernie and in so doing, writes a good summary of why I can't generate much of a preference there. Basically, he notes that what each of them wants to do doesn't matter as much as what each of them would be able to do as Chief Exec. That doesn't seem like a huge difference to me. A huge difference would be like the gap between either of them and whoever gets the G.O.P. nod.

As Drum notes, Sanders and Clinton are now reduced to fighting over who's more anti-gun. Really? When the N.R.A. gives Hillary an F and they give Bernie a D-minus? Is there any voter whose view on guns is so nuanced that they would support one but not the other because of that variable?

I am well aware that my vote doesn't matter much. One vote never does but it means even less when you live in a state that went 59% to 38% for Barack Obama. The Democratic nominee is going to carry California regardless of how I vote or whether I vote at all. If that person doesn't carry California by a decent margin, the Republican will have won the presidency long before the polls close here.

I suspect that right this minute, Clinton is more "electable" than Sanders. By Election Day, who knows? Much will happen before then.

Assuming Martin O'Malley doesn't suddenly gain 48 points and grab the nomination, I will vote for one of them without holding my nose or even thinking we could do a lot better. But I will not delude myself or anyone else, the way some people like to, into thinking I'm voting for a perfect, flawless candidate. I'm uncomfy with a lot of Hillary's foreign policy stances and decisions. I'm uncomfy with Bernie's tendency to frame everything in life as a battle of the rich versus the poor. (Jonathan Chait has a good piece up about that.)

In this election, I don't think a lot of voters are going to cast their ballots for the person so much as for the party. If you hate everything (or almost everything) Obama has done, you're almost certainly going to vote for the Republican, whoever it is. If you don't want all or most of that undone, you're almost certainly going to vote for the Democrat. That maybe all this election is about: Build on it or tear it down and start over. I'm for building, though I draw the line at a wall along the Mexican border.

Remember Gene Rayburn? If you do, you probably recall him as the host of the quiz show, The Match Game, but he did a lot more than that. He was Steve Allen's announcer on the original Tonight (later known as The Tonight Show) and he was an actor. Neil Simon's first play was Come Blow Your Horn and you know who the first actor was who starred in that play? Gene Rayburn. His career has now been chronicled in a book called The Matchless Gene Rayburn (that's an Amazon link, hint hint) by Adam Nedeff. And Adam Nedeff is Stu's Shostak's guest on today's Stu's Show. You'll hear all about Mr. Rayburn and you'll be surprised at all the other things he did besides ask questions to which Charles Nelson Reilly could answer, "Buns."

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.  By the way: Dumb Dora is so dumb (How dumb is she?) that she thinks Stu's Show is a program where you learn all about ______.

Abe Vigoda, best known for his roles in The Godfather and on Barney Miller, has died at the age of 94. We haven't done it lately but we'd been monitoring his alive/dead status at this website which now has the sad news.

I don't have a lot to say about Mr. Vigoda. When I was working on Welcome Back, Kotter back in the seventies, we shared studio space for a time with Fish, the spin-off series from Barney Miller, so I saw him a lot. The first time we were introduced, I thought he'd be impressed or interested that I knew he had a brother, Bill Vigoda, who'd drawn Archie comic books. I was wrong. Abe didn't care. I'm not sure if he didn't care about his brother or he didn't care that I knew that but he didn't care.

I didn't talk to him much after that.

Not long before that, I sat next to him at an industry screening of the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This was before it was released to the general public and many folks involved in the making of the film were present including Mr. Spielberg. Mr. Vigoda did not like or understand the movie and throughout, he kept muttering aloud — in that crotchety, expressive voice of his — little things like, "What the hell is that?" and "Why is he doing that?" It was very much like the Mel Brooks short, The Critic, and it had me and everyone around us laughing out loud. I wondered how Spielberg reacted to this little pocket of the audience that was guffawing during non-humorous scenes.

I think the last time I spoke with Abe was because of my friend, Howard Morris. Abe and Howie occasionally toured in The Sunshine Boys, with Abe playing the Jack Albertson/Walter Matthau role and Howie as the other guy, plus Howie directed. They were booked for another tour and then Abe changed his mind and bowed out. Howie took me along to a lunch with Abe (and other actors in the same age group) and while the lunch was purely social, he did hope to persuade Vigoda to change his mind. Howie needed the work and if Abe didn't reconsider, Howie would either lose the job or have to do it with an actor he utterly despised but who was liked by the tour organizers.

He was unable to persuade Abe to rescind his decision. Howie made his case and then Abe folded his arms and said with great finality, "I'm too old to do something I don't want to do." And that, by God, was that. This occurred at least twenty years ago so I'm guessing that thereafter, Abe did absolutely nothing he didn't want to do, except maybe leave us.

Funny man. Good actor.

Stephen Colbert had Donald Rumsfeld — of all people — on as his lead guest. This was counter to every notion of what kind of guest attracts viewers but I suppose Colbert and his producers don't care on some level about that. Rumsfeld came on to promote a new app he's marketing. Colbert had him on to grill him a tiny bit (there wasn't enough time for more than a tiny bit) about the justification for the Iraq War. He got Rumsfeld to go farther than he ever has in admitting that the decision to go to war was based on faulty intelligence.

I am of two minds about this. I think the Iraq War was one of the greatest mistakes ever made in this country — greatest in terms of human destruction, financial waste and making the world a more dangerous place. I don't think Donald Rumsfeld should be treated like an okay guy who just has a few different ideas about things. On the other hand, Colbert did chip away a bit at a false version of What Really Happened and that has some value. And going back to the first hand, doesn't that kind of civility and joking about with Rumsfeld contribute to a false narrative itself? It suggests that causing all that death and devastation is something we can set aside and trivialize as if it was all an innocent error.

Not long ago, I spent some time with an Iraq War veteran who lost most of the use of his left arm while he was Over There. He considered himself fortunate because he hadn't suffered the same fate as several buddies who didn't come back at all. He expressed an even harsher condemnation of that war than I have — and of course, he has every right to and lot more street cred on that topic. I wonder what he thought if he saw Colbert having Rumsfeld on and treating him as he did.

The new Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is up. In it, Jerry Seinfeld drives around with Garry Shandling and they go to the Comedy Store and to the lot where they used to shoot their respective sitcoms and to Dupar's Restaurant at Laurel Canyon and Ventura. It's well worth the 22 minutes you'll spend watching it.

A minor point about these shows — and about those Carpool Karaoke segments that James Corden does. These videos are done by mounting small video cameras on suction cups to the windshield and windows of the vehicle in use, plus there are camera crews in cars that follow, precede or parallel the car with the stars in it. They also shoot some footage of the outside of the cars without the cameras in place, then edit it all together.

Quite often — usually, in fact — no one cares if the geography matches up. It's like on the old TV show Vega$ with Robert Urich. He'd be at the Sahara Hotel and someone would tell him, "Detective So-and-So wants to see you at the Tropicana!" So he'd get in his T-Bird and drive off — and then there'd be all this footage of him in the car and the backgrounds would be rear-screen projections shot on the Vegas strip but with no attempt to put landmarks in sequence. If you paid attention — and they assumed you wouldn't — you'd see him drive by the MGM Grand, then the Stardust, then the Sahara again. Then there's be a long shot of the car driving past the MGM Grand. Then they'd cut back to him and the rear-screen projections and he'd be passing the Boardwalk, then the Desert Inn — all hotels that are not actually placed in that order on the way to the Trop. I think one time he was heading for Caesars Palace and he drove by it three times before finally reaching Caesars Palace.

You'd think that when someone shoots on the actual streets, actually driving to someplace, the backgrounds would relate to reality…but these new videos are so edited that the scenery is almost random. Corden does a lot of his driving videos in my area and I'll see him start saying something as he's passing the bank at the corner of Fairfax and Beverly across from CBS. Then they cut to a different angle of him and he's finishing the sentence while passing a market two miles away. Then when the guest says something in reply, they're back at Fairfax and Beverly again. Seinfeld, when he drives his guests to get coffee, often passes the same building over and over, goes in circles and cruises streets that are nowhere near a direct route between the guest's home and the restaurant.

This doesn't bother me a lot. But I do find myself noticing it.

My friend Tom Galloway responded quickly to the previous post and told me that McDonald's has a new program called Create Your Taste in which selected locations will make you a hamburger exactly the way you want it — and they seem to have a pretty good array of options and toppings. This page tells you about the concept which is available in selected countries, as well as certain locations in the United States, none of them near me. Here's a blog post by someone who went to one of them. It sounds like a pretty good idea if you're going to dine-in. I doubt it works as well at the drive-thru. Thanks, Tom. Hadn't heard of it.

The McDonald's chain has been struggling with falling sales for some time and everyone seems to have a theory as to why. Mine is a combo of new and better places to get a burger plus the notion that the whole concept of a McDonald's makes a customer feel like they're going into a childish place to buy toy food — and not particularly healthy toy food.

Once upon a time, one of the appeals of the chain was that dining there was utterly predictable and dependable. No matter where you travelled, you could find a McDonald's and you knew what you were going to eat and that the quality would be consistent and the price would not be outrageous and the restrooms would be clean and they wouldn't waste your time, etc. Back in the seventies and eighties when I was in strange towns, I usually would go to Breakfast at a McDonald's. My stomach isn't wild about unfamiliar food…and since Lunch and Dinner were (usually) at unfamiliar places, it seemed to make the ol' tummy happy to start the day with a Sausage Biscuit with Egg.

But these days, wherever there's a McDonald's, there's probably a Burger King or an Arby's or some other fast food place that provides the same safety…if that's what you want. And more and more people don't want that because fast food is more and more becoming what you eat when you care about cheap but don't care about good. It's no longer Your Kind of Place.

According to this article though, there is some good news for Ronald McDonald: Sales are up significantly since McDonald's finally bowed to consumer requests and began offering All-Day Breakfast. (Hey, how about that? Listening to customers! Why didn't anybody think of that years ago?)

Apparently, this complicates the food preparation process at your local McDonald's but it's turning out to be worth the trouble. If you ask me — and of course, no one ever does — what they need to do is complicate it a little more: Make it possible to go in and get a substantial hamburger — say, a third of a pounder — made to order and dressed the way the customer wants it. As it is, to get what you want, you have to select from the pre-fab menu and tell them to leave off the cheese or add more onion or some other alteration that seems to throw the counterperson and the cash register into a frenzy of confusion. I usually ask for a quarter-pounder-with-cheese without the cheese and they seem to think that runs contrary to some law of physics.

Or at least they did. I've pretty much given up Mickey D's because I felt bad creating a problem for those underpaid employees…and then creating another one when they give me the burger and I have to tell them it's wrong.

From the 1998 Emmy Awards: Ignore the first few seconds of this clip. It will soon switch to Jay Leno introducing a salute to classic TV comedians and a "bow" by Milton Berle, Bob Hope and Sid Caesar. Whoever edited this clip also stuck in a few seconds of Johnny Carson at the end.

I remember seeing the Berle/Hope/Caesar spot when it aired and thinking we might be seeing Hope's last appearance — and indeed, within days the tabloids had him on death's door. But this aired 9/13/1998 and he lived until 7/27/03 — almost five years. He was rarely seen on TV though during those years and when he was, he barely spoke. So you can view this as a sad clip in that it sort of represents the end of Hope's career…or a happy clip in that he, Sid and Uncle Miltie got that wonderful ovation from their industry…

Jeffrey Martin, a reader of this site, informs me that It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is being run in Chicago a little more than a month from now at the Music Box Theater. There are three showings — February 26, February 27 and March 2. Sounds like another opportunity to view this film as nature intended it: On a big screen with a big audience. Tickets are on sale now here. I'd be there but I only go to Mad World screenings within two thousand miles of my home and this one is 2,032 miles.