Monthly Archives: February 2017

Mark Zimmer wrote…

In defense of Warren Beatty, my read (both at the time and on repeated viewing) of what he was trying to do was show Dunaway that there was a problem with the card, and she was so into the idea he was being a prankster that she didn't get that and just blurted out La-La Land, without registering that Emma Stone had apparently just won Best Picture.

I primarily blame the PWC dude tweeting pictures of Emma Stone instead of taking care of business, though. What a goober. You had one job, as they say.

I think what happened was that Beatty knew something was wrong and wasn't sharp enough at that moment to say, "Hey, I think someone gave me the wrong envelope." It's tough to say why that was. Certainly, that's a confusing place to be — onstage in front of Hollywood and the world with all the lights and music and a TelePrompter which is giving you what now may be the wrong command, which is to read what's on the card.

I would guess he was just plain afraid to do the wrong thing and momentarily wasn't sure what the right thing would be…so he showed the card to Ms. Dunaway. Maybe he was thinking she'd see what the problem was or maybe she'd have an idea what he should do. But she thought he was showing her the card so she could read the winning name and there before her eyes, it said "La-La Land." She didn't notice that it also said "Best Actress" and "Emma Stone." Her eyes were looking for the name of the movie and she spotted the name of the movie everyone expected to win…so she read that name.

I don't think she was at fault. Beatty arguably should have known what to do. It may well be that there was no one near him he could turn to…no host or stage manager nearby. (Jimmy Kimmel was seated out in the audience because he was going to do his closing lines sitting with Matt Damon.) But I don't think I would blame Beatty because he was probably just told to come out, read the Prompter, open the envelope, read what's in the envelope and get the hell outta the way. I doubt he was briefed on what to do in case of an emergency…and apparently, no one else was, either.

It does look bad for that gent from PriceWaterhouseCoopers…which seems to have embezzled the spaces between those names. Still, I think I'd like to hear his side of all this before we condemn him to a lifetime of scrubbing the floors at H&R Block…or wherever disgraced accountants wind up if there's no opening as Trump's Treasury Secretary.

And yes, I know we're devoting a lot more attention to this matter than it deserves…but isn't it a lot more fun than watching Donald dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency and remove all constraints on duplicitous business dealings?

Some of this will be quickly forgotten after the man makes his speech tonight and unleashes a whole new wave of factually-challenged and contradictory statements…

• Trump wants an increase in the defense budget of $54 billion. Fred Kaplan explains why this is unnecessary, ridiculous and dangerous. I've never understood why people who fault Liberals for "throwing money at a problem" have this concept of Defense where the more you spend, the safer you are…and it really doesn't matter what you spend it on. Spending more is just a macho thing to do.
• Kevin Drum itemizes what Republicans have accomplished so far this year. It isn't a very impressive list.
• Ed Kilgore says that as much as Republicans want to do away with Obamacare, they want even more to snuff out Planned Parenthood. I wonder if any of them have ever thought, "Hey, I know how to get rid of Planned Parenthood! Let's set up and properly fund a big organization that does everything Planned Parenthood does for women except abortion!"
• Steve Benen writes about how Trump is running his administration more like a TV show than a division of government. He's especially concerned with "casting," making sure his people at least look like the right people. This may be so but how do you explain Stephen Miller?

I assume you all saw Jon Stewart on with Stephen Colbert last night. He was scolding the press for not doing its job and I couldn't help but think, "Some of them might be doing a better job if you were on TV more regularly."

Some optical illusions to make you doubt your own eyes…

Every year on his must-read blog, my pal Ken Levine does a snarky Oscar commentary. This year, he did it as an episode of his new, must-hear podcast. I highly recommend listening to his podcast each week but especially this one. You can find a link for the podcast on the blog.

Also this week, he has a sponsor…Blue Apron, the company that delivers supposedly easy-to-prepare meals to you. A number of my friends have tried this service and love it but I will never sign up. As I've mentioned here, I have a myriad of food allergies. I checked Blue Apron's March menu and — and I am not kidding — every single meal they have contains at least one ingredient that would kill me. So to you, it's an easy way to prepare a meal but to me, it's assisted suicide. Ken's a fine salesman but even he couldn't talk me into that.

As is usual after an Oscar or Emmy ceremony, people are compiling lists of folks who should have been in the "In Memoriam" reel and weren't. So far, I've seen Gloria DeHaven, Alan Young, Robert Vaughn, John McMartin, Anne Jackson, Steven Hill, Brian Bedford, Tammy Grimes, Rita Gam, Dick Davalos, Patricia Barry, Marvin Kaplan, Ruth Terry, Madeleine Lebeau, Francine York, Van Williams, Douglas Wilmer, Peter Vaughn, Fritz Weaver, Madeleine Sherwood, William Schallert, Charmian Carr, Maggie Blye, James Stacy, Alec McCowen, Burt Kwouk, Barbara Hale, Robert Horton, Jon Polito, Garry Shandling, Larry Drake, Miguel Ferrer, Bill Henderson, Teresa Saldana, Kevin Meaney, Jinpachi Nezu, Joseph Mascolo, Frank Pellegrini, Gil Hill, Peter Brown, Nicole Courcel, Joe Santos, Florence Henderson, Doris Roberts and David Huddleston.

Some of those are arguable, not because the people weren't important but because they weren't important in movies. And I'll bet you a couple of those names were from last year. Still, that's an awfully long list. I don't know why, given all the time the ceremony spends on silly things, they can't spare two minutes more for that segment.

I also wonder if anyone has ever thought to change "In Memoriam" to "In Celebration" and make the segment a bit more upbeat and not so maudlin. Get a presenter with a little energy and charm to come out and say, "Let's pause to remember some of the wonderful, talented men and women we lost this past year…and let's give thanks that we got to know them and their contributions." Having been to many a funeral that was conducted in that frame of mind, I think a lot of people would prefer that.

Guess they're afraid that someone's loved ones would complain a death had been trivialized or not given the seriousness it required. There was though this complaint…

Australian producer Jan Chapman says she was "devastated" when she saw her image used in the Oscars' 2017 In Memoriam segment in place of a picture of her "friend and long-time collaborator" Janet Patterson, who died in October 2015.

But no one's going to pay much attention to that gaffe because they're still talking about the biggie. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that handles the envelopes, released this statement this morning…

We sincerely apologize to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for best picture. The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred.

There's not much to investigate here. They have two representatives backstage who each have a full set of all the envelopes. One of them accidentally handed a duplicate of the Best Actress envelope to Warren Beatty — or to someone who handed it to Warren Beatty — instead of the proper Best Picture envelope. You could prevent this particular mistake by only having one set backstage but it would still be possible to hand out the wrong envelope earlier in the show by getting them out of sequence. And we can all make up scenarios where one envelope is lost and they need a backup.

Folks are debating today how much responsibility Warren Beatty and/or Faye Dunaway had for reading the wrong name. It would have been nice if Mr. Beatty, who obviously noticed something wasn't right, had done something other than show the card to Ms. Dunaway, who read the name. Her confusion is understandable…his, a bit less so. But really, the blame should go to whoever dispensed the wrong envelope and especially to the folks backstage who didn't stop the acceptance speeches immediately.

As I noted, there was at one point a procedure to handle this kind of thing. Did they not still have it in place? Or did someone simply fail to invoke it? Blaming the folks on stage is easy and probably wrong. They're just told where to go and what to say and they don't have a whole lot of command over what's going on.

And Jimmy Kimmel is probably kicking himself that he didn't think to come out and say, "Apparently, Price-Waterhouse was sabotaged by Russian hackers that wanted La La Land to win…"

If you missed John Oliver because you were watching the Academy Awards, you missed a real good segment about Obamacare…

I only caught a bit of the Oscars and may or may not watch more of the ceremony in the days to come. Jimmy Kimmel's material (at least what little I heard) sounded generally funny…but then the times I've caught his show, I always thought his material was better than the guy delivering it. If he came up with the Steve Harvey line at the end, maybe he's sharper than I thought.

That joke was, of course, because the wrong Best Picture was named and after some chaos ensued, La La Land handed the trophy over to Moonlight. I dunno how that happened.

I mean, I know that someone apparently handed the presenters another Best Actress envelope instead of Best Picture. I just don't know how they allowed the folks behind La La Land to make their way to the stage and deliver several speeches before the error was corrected.

You may recall I once wrote about the near miss back in 1985 when Sir Laurence Olivier presented the Best Picture Oscar to the right film by sheer accident. He didn't open the envelope but instead announced the first film on the nominee list was the winner…and it happened that the right film, Amadeus, was first in alphabetical order.

I was told that after that, a fail-safe system was put in place. The company that tallies the votes has people backstage who know what's supposed to be in each envelope and if the wrong "winner" is announced, there's a code or an alert they can issue to stop the proceedings immediately. I dunno if they still have that or if so, why it wasn't operational…but I'll betcha there's more investigations about that then there will be of Donald Trump's Russian connections.

I have an odd fascination with televised police pursuits — not so much with the chases themselves as with the way they're covered. It connects up with my constant nag that late night TV shows should be less rehearsed, planned and edited, and instead be more spontaneous. I like TV where the folks on the broadcast or supervising it have no clue what's going to happen next…which almost never happens on so-called "reality" shows.

As I've mentioned before, my favorite local reporter for this kind of thing here in Los Angeles is a gent named Stu Mundel. This man I call "the Vin Scully of televised car chases" must live in a helicopter, hovering over the basin, always at the ready to zoom to wherever cops are following anyone. He gets a bit excitable at times but that's okay because it's honest and he's a welcome change from the anchor-types who seem to do nothing but recite a lot of clichés like "He's driving with no regard for the safety of others" or "This is a very dangerous situation."

News flash, newspeople: Police chasing a fleeing car is always a dangerous situation.

And I swear, I once heard another reporter who was desperate for something to say actually tell us, "We have been able to confirm that there is at least one person in the vehicle." That was a relief because I was so concerned that the police were chasing one of those driverless cars that had knocked over a Wells Fargo.

Anyway, here's a too-brief (4 minutes) segment that Mundel did last night for the local news about police pursuits…

My TiVo's set to grab the Academy Awards tonight but I won't be watching in real time. We all have performers who usually fail to amuse us and near the top of my list is Jimmy Kimmel, plus it's always felt wrong to me to have the host be someone who's not a major motion picture star or Johnny Carson.

Actually, I don't think even a favorite film actor could get me to sit through all the self-congratulations and thanking of agents…but the show is sometimes fun when you have it all on a digital recorder and you race through it in twenty minutes via fast-forwarding.

My pal Ken Levine will be reviewing it on his fine podcast, and he has this article up about what it must be like to write that telecast. Like him, I came close to getting that gig once. A gent who produced the Oscars one year told me, "If I do it next year, you'll be one of the writers" and then he chose not to do it the following year.

I did work on one award show and it was chaotic but a lot of fun except when Lorne Greene decided he didn't like the speech someone had written for him. He'd had it for days and had rehearsed it on camera earlier but he waited until fifteen minutes before he was to read it on live television to demand new copy. I hadn't written the piece he suddenly wanted changed but it fell to me to placate him and I had to write the new lines with a big marker, right on the cue cards. Then I ran into the booth and told the director he'd be hearing a new speech there and I had no copy of it to give him.

Award shows can be crazy that way. One year, a lady I know worked as a Production Assistant on the Oscars and just before the ceremony started, the producer handed her a new presenter speech. It was hand-written on yellow legal paper and he said, "Here — get this typed-up and distributed!" She had about fifteen minutes to type it, copy it and get it to all the parties who'd need it: The director, the stage manager, the TelePrompter operator, etc.

Panicked, she raced to a trailer that was being used as a production office. This was back when the ceremony was at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and also before computers. She burst into her office and found Steve Martin, sitting at her desk in his tuxedo, rewriting the speech he was to give in about a half an hour. She yelled at him, "I need to type this up NOW!" and he apologized, grabbed his paper out of her IBM Selectric and immediately vacated her chair.

It wasn't even a self-correcting Selectric. When she sat down and made a bad typo, she grabbed for the Liquid Paper and screamed, "You used up all my white-out!" Martin apologized again and began running around through the other trailers, trying to find her more Liquid Paper. He found some, the page got typed and disseminated and later, she and Steve Martin both made amends. I just love the idea of the number one box office star in America scurrying through trailers, dressed in a tux, trying to locate office supplies in a panic.

Enjoy the show. And if you're at a party where everyone's going to do a shot whenever Trump gets slammed, make sure you have a Designated Driver for the rest of the month and all of March.

So…I guess Donald read my post this morning. Maybe Colbert does have a shot at it…

The Academy of Magical Arts — that's the organization I belong to which operates the Magic Castle as its clubhouse — has released the following statement. It's quite good, though someone got the name of the organization wrong…

The Academy of Magic Arts Mourns the Passing of Daryl

HOLLYWOOD — Feb. 25, 2107 — For Immediate Release — The Academy of Magic Arts (AMA) and the Magic Castle mourn the passing of celebrated magician and AMA family member, Daryl.

Daryl, who was performing at the Magic Castle this week, was found dead on the club's premises on the evening of Friday, Feb. 24, and his death has been ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles Police Department.

The magic community mourns the loss of one of our most beloved and talented performers and the AMA's deepest regrets and heart-felt sympathy go out to Daryl's family.

Daryl was a World Champion, first-place FISM Gold medal winning, close-up magician with over 40 years of experience in both performing and selling the finest magic in the world. Daryl performed as a headline act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for seven years fine tuning his already encyclopedic knowledge of magic. Daryl has performed literally thousands of shows for audiences as diverse as the Witch Doctors on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu to the movers and shakers of the political world at the Presidential Ball in Washington, D.C.

Also: Many news sources reported — and this seems to have come from the always-accurate folks at TMZ — that he was found hanging in a closet dressed only in his underwear. Officials at the Castle are saying he was fully dressed.

The Castle has reopened for business-as-almost-usual today and is serving brunch about now. From all reports, the staff there handled the matter with dignity and efficiency, though of course a lot of visitors last night had their visits truncated and were inconvenienced. I am in awe of how well everyone there dealt with the situation.

As I wrote early this morning, I did not know Daryl. I think I saw him perform there a few times and if I'm remembering correctly, he was very good. Beyond that, I feel that one way you show respect for someone like this is to not speculate baselessly on why they did it, what brought them to that decision, etc. I do (sort of) understand why certain people I knew thought that was the proper course of action for them but you never know for sure and certainly not with strangers.

If any good has come out of this incident, it's that on the Magic Castle member forums, members are exchanging phone numbers and saying, "If you ever feel you need someone to talk to…" Not that I'm suggesting it would have prevented what happened last night — maybe it would have, maybe not — but it's good to have someone to talk to, someone who can perhaps offer a clear head when you don't have one.

My good friend, the late Lorenzo Music, used to volunteer one night a week to answer phones at what he called a suicide prevention hotline, always adding that most of the time, the people who called weren't seriously considering that. They just needed someone to talk to who was willing to listen and not judge.

I'll bet he was good at it, especially because desperate callers sometimes recognized his voice. "Hey, you sound like that cat in the cartoons," they'd say, and he'd tell them who he was and it made the calls become very friendly. Also, a couple of times, callers with severe drinking problems were talked into getting professional treatment by Carlton, Your Doorman. That's putting it to good use.

One of the good things Donald Trump may accomplish as president is to do away with the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, which has increasingly struck me as an awful ritual. It's still technically supposed to happen but I can't see Trump sitting there being a good sport as some comedian roasts him, nor can I imagine all the members of the press sitting there as Trump tells them how horrible he thinks they are.

I can imagine him wanting to go through with it if all the news outlets that report his failings and who do fact-checking are excluded and all the speakers get up and say he's the most awesome, fabulous president ever and he did indeed beat Hillary in a landslide. That could happen but I doubt the organization that traditionally throws the White House Correspondents Dinner will go along with that. Maybe Trump will announce he's going to throw his own dinner to honor himself and he'll force Mexico to pay for it.

We seem to be one step closer to the W.H.C.D. not happening at all. Various organizations are canceling their traditional after-parties. I assume this is because they have to plan and put down deposits now and doubt the event will go forward as planned.

Samantha Bee is hosting an alternative dinner for charity on the night that the W.H.C.D. will take place if it takes place. That's great but it doesn't go far enough. I'd like to see the dinner not be canceled this year. I'd like to see them go ahead with it, book Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers to speak…and if Trump won't show, just have Alec Baldwin take his place in character. And maybe when it's time for "the president" to speak, have Baldwin get up and read a speech comprised wholly of things Trump has actually said. At last, the White House Correspondents Dinner might serve a healthy purpose.

Is your Smart TV smart enough to snoop on you? Maybe…in which case, you might want to consult this article on how to turn off certain "spying" functions on your Visio, Samsung or LG television sets. I have an Insignia brand TV — a pretty good make, by the way. They sell them cheap at Best Buy. I found a place in Settings to "limit ad tracking" and turned it off on mine.

A magician committed suicide last night at the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood, the exclusive club for magicians. I've been a member for thirty-six years and I can't recall anything — not even the fire a few years ago — that triggered the emotion I see on members' websites and forums tonight. The deceased was a performer there, well-known to most though I'd never met him. I can't help but think about the poor staff member who found the body and who had to have wondered if he or she had walked into an elaborate, poor-taste practical joke.

I wasn't there last night. Around 9:40, I got a text message that the Castle was closing down for the night due to a "medical emergency." It didn't take a lot of web-surfing to read what had really happened, though the performer's name had not been released. It's standard practice to not make that public until the person's family has been notified, though I wonder if that's always wise. Sure, it would cause a lot of shock to the deceased's loved ones…but it did cause a lot of anxiety to those of us who heard, in effect, "Someone you probably know has killed themselves. We'll tell you in a few hours who it is."

As I said, I didn't know the gent but a lot of names did run through my skull before I found out who it was.

In my lifetime, I think I've known about eight people who killed themselves. At least two were in such advanced stages of incurable, debilitating diseases that I could well understand it. They certainly spared themselves a lot of pain and their loved ones, a lot of pain and trouble and expense. If I'm ever that bad off, I might well decide to take that route before they did. The others had either made such a mess of their lives that they felt they couldn't go on, or had suffered a personal tragedy, like the loss of a life-partner.

One did it in the messiest, public way he could think of — a way which caused great pain and shock to those who knew him but also to total strangers who had the bad fortune to be there when he did it. Years later, some of them were still under psychiatric care because of it. In that case, my initial feelings of sorry and sadness for my friend turned to a fair amount of anger for doing it the way he did. Some of us may soon feel that way about the fellow who took his own life, not at home but in our clubhouse, disrupting business and ruining many evenings.

I don't think it's a bad thing to be angry at a dead person. You just have to remember that your anger can't do a lot.

Another bit of Rowan Atkinson. Should I mention that this is "unsafe for workplace?" Guess so…