Monthly Archives: May 2017

As I've mentioned here a few times, there are a lot of phony sketches being sold these days in the original art market. I see dozens of them at any given time on eBay, often from sellers who have sold many fakes but still seem to have 100% positive comments about their many past sales. As noted, the greatest volume seem to be forgeries of Charles Schulz and Jack Kirby…and I probably should have mentioned Robert Crumb and Bill Watterson.

The fakers usually stick to deceased artists or to guys like Crumb and Watterson who maintain low profiles and don't seem likely to rise up and denounce the impersonations. A few impostors do get bold though and cobble up bogus sketches by folks who are around and visible. Neal Adams, I'm told, has gone after the sellers of Neal Adams sketches that he didn't do. Good for him.

How can you tell phony drawings from real ones? There's no easy way but here are some things to keep in mind…

• Forgers almost never forge published covers or pages. They forge the kind of sketch that a cartoonist might do of one of his characters as a gift to some fan. If someone did go to the trouble to forge, say, a whole, published page from a Kirby issue of Fantastic Four, that would be a lot of work, what with all the drawing and lettering, and they'd have to fake the company's rubber stamps and editorial notes and such. And also you could put that piece of art against the printed book and see the differences. This kind of thing is done but not very often.
• When artists do the kind of "fan" sketch we're talking about, they almost always sign them to someone. They write in the name of the recipient. A forger doesn't do that because he knows you'll be less likely to pay top dollar for a sketch signed "To my good friend Gustavo" if by some chance, your name is not Gustavo. So if you see an alleged Schulz drawing of Snoopy and it isn't signed to anyone, be very suspicious.
• Also, Schulz seems to have signed most of his fan-type sketches with his full, cursive signature of "Charles M. Schulz," not with the easier-to-forge "Schulz" with which he signed the newspaper strips. And I'd be really suspicious of the Schulz sketches signed — and this occurs more often than you'd imagine — "Schultz."
• That the drawing seems to be on old, aged drawing paper is not an indicator of authenticity. Old blank paper is not that hard to come by. Recently when I cleaned out my friend Carolyn's apartment, I found over 500 sheets of old blank drawing paper of a brand no longer made on which Walt Kelly never got around to drawing Pogo strips.
• Forgers usually trace existing sketches. Last time I looked, there was a fake Captain America drawing up for eBay auction that was just a tracing of a real drawing Kirby did…and a bit of Google searching would show you the original one. If you compared the two, the forgery becomes pretty obvious. And what if the facsimile is real close? Well, that should not make you think the one you can purchase is authentic and that Jack obviously did the same exact sketch twice. He didn't do that.
• A forger will sometimes copy a published drawing — say, a Captain America pose that Kirby drew for the cover of some published comic. Then the claim will be that this was a preliminary sketch that Jack did for the comic, thereby accounting for the similarity. Kirby almost never did preliminary sketches and he certainly never did one in ink.
• Most eBay sellers who sell fake drawings seem to have a lot of them and they all appear to be the work of the same forger. They have one or two fake Kirbys, a fake Dr. Seuss, a fake Walt Disney, a fake Schulz or three, a phony Watterson, a bogus Joe Kubert, etc. If someone has a lot of sketches by dead guys and none of them are signed "to" anyone, there's about a 90% chance all of them are frauds.
• And lastly, use your head. If a never-published original Superman drawing by Joe Shuster has a minimum opening bid of twenty dollars, the ink is probably still wet on it.

Please don't write to me to ask if a particular sketch is real. I long ago made a policy of not doing that because it makes some people real mad to hear that they paid good money for a Wally Wood sketch done four years after Wally died. And though once in a while I make an exception for a "Jack Kirby" drawing that looks like Jack must have held the pencil in his teeth when he did it, I don't authenticate artwork unless I can hold it in my hands and inspect it in person…and I often don't do it at all.

But be suspicious. Be really suspicious.

Clive Rowe played Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the 1996 revival of Guys and Dolls at London's National Theatre. Nicely-Nicely is kind of a thankless role until near the end when you get to stop the whole danged show with "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat"…

On his show last Monday night, Stephen Colbert did a joke about Donald Trump that went like this: "The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's cock holster." This upset some people and we quickly began seeing news items headlined, "FCC to Investigate Stephen Colbert Over Controversial Donald Trump Joke" or something similar.

Almost all the reports used the word "investigate" and that's probably the wrong word. I don't think the FCC ever uses the word "investigate" because, first of all, there's really nothing to investigate. What Colbert said is not in dispute. You can see the video of him saying it on YouTube, on the CBS website and hundreds of other places. What hitherto unknown fact or facts might an "investigation" unearth? What is unknown about what he said?

The verb the FCC uses is usually "review," as in "We shall review the matter." That means they might do nothing but might discuss whether it violates their ill-defined, often-puzzling definitions of obscenity…and if so, if there's a reason (probably a political one) to make an issue of it.

"Review" is a neutral word, whereas "investigate" suggests a crime may have been committed and someone could be heading for the slammer. Tomorrow, if you contact the FCC and complain that Jimmy Fallon giggles too much on his program, you will probably get no response at all from them but if you do, they will tell you, "We shall review the matter." Then they may or may not spend upwards of two seconds on it. That would depend on whether (a) they'd received a true avalanche of complaints about Jimmy Fallon giggling or (b) pressures were applied.

If they did their worst, they would not ban Colbert from television or bust CBS down to a public access channel. They would levy a fine which CBS would pay out of the increased profits from Colbert saying things like that about Donald Trump. I'm not sure how much the fine would be — maybe a few hundred thousand bucks. In the last few years, as I understand it, the FCC has raised the dollar amounts that they fine when they fine…but has fined only on very rare, arbitrary occasions.

There are always people who get outraged and hysterical about something they see or hear on TV or radio and they sometimes pick some pretty looney things to complain about. There probably has been at least one person who's demanded they do something about Fallon's giggling. But one of the secrets in whatever department at each network deals with such things is how unpredictable and variable complaints are.

Every Standards and Practices Person I ever dealt with in television has had stories about how they reviewed some show before broadcast and worried that they'd be deluged with complaints about the dick joke in the third act. Then not one person complained about the dick joke in the third act but several were furious about some innocuous mention of spatulas in the second act. I of course dash off a scathing letter every time anyone mentions cole slaw without reminding people of its close connection with the Antichrist.

That's one of the reasons the broadcast networks have cut way, way back on the kinds of employees we used to call Censors. Nowadays, most of the concern is about airing something that prompts a lawsuit for slander or otherwise creates legal problems. And of course, we know why being "dirty" is no longer a big concern.

With HBO and other cable channels, we're all getting used to hearing the "f" word and seeing nudity on our TV screens. Very few people are going to get that upset about seeing something on Channel 144 that routinely appears on Channel 206. If you get Basic Cable, which you have to because your kids don't want to miss Dora the Explorer, you probably get some channel where they show the occasional breast or don't bleep "bullshit." There are those who complain — often to the FCC about channels that are not under their jurisdiction. But the complaints even when properly directly are essentially toothless. No one is going to make Game of Thrones cover up the naked people. Jeff Sessions can try but it won't happen.

Which is not to say we won't see some petulant attempts to control public speech by the current administration. We should have a contest: Name something that would have enraged the kind of people who voted for Trump more than if Barack Obama's people had said that that president was considering changes in the First Amendment. Trump can make himself look even pettier than usual but he can't control speech in a world that has an Internet. He can't prevent people from calling him a terrible human being, a bad president or even a cock holster. (I'm not sure if "cock holster" is one word or two. Never heard the term before.)

As for the folks who complained that Colbert's joke was homophobic or anti-gay, I don't think that's going anywhere. Gay leaders do not seem to be too up in arms. Jim Parsons, who may well be the most popular TV star who is openly gay, was on with Colbert the next night and he was fine with it. It was, after all, from Stephen Colbert who has a pretty solid track record with that community. If Sean Hannity had said it about someone he didn't like…well, I think there would have been a few more complaints but not many.

Mainly, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being something that could cause people to die or have their lives destroyed, this is barely a 1.5. Personally — and I'll bet I'm not alone in this — these days, I'd like to save my concern for things that are a 6 or above…you know, like cancer patients not being able to get insurance or military action with North Korea. Trump may yet prove to be like Nigel Tufnel, the musician in This is Spinal Tap who has the power to make it go to 11.

In which case, we won't have time to even think about anything below an 8.

I have trouble not watching televised car chases…and there are a lot of them in Southern California. One thing that's often on my mind as I watch vehicles careen about at high speeds is that there must be an invention that could stop fleeing drivers. Well, maybe there is…

I had a brief telephone debate last night with a Trump-supporting friend. He is ecstatic…and not about what the G.O.P. health plan would change if it becomes law. He thinks it may not pass and even if it does, Republicans will undo a lot of the damage it will wreak because they won't want the political fallout. He agrees with me that the Democrats could score major electoral victories with commercials that said…

This is [Name of Deceased Person]. S/he died [date of death] from [cause of death]. S/he would probably be alive today but [Name of Republican congressperson] voted to take away her/his health insurance so that Donald Trump and the people who own WalMart could pay less in taxes.

He doesn't think Republicans will let that happen. He thinks Obamacare will survive under another name and might even be improved. What he's happy about is that what happened yesterday was a "win" for his side. That's really all he's happy about but it's enough. When he used to say, "I want my country back," that's what he meant. Regardless of the merits of what Obama or the Democrats did, he felt it was the wrong people in charge.

He'd be happier if the "right people" now in charge did not include Donald Trump because he doesn't think Trump knows how to get things done and doesn't really care about the non-financial matters of the so-called Culture War. He also thinks Trump has tons of ugly baggage that will drag down his popularity: More sexual revelations like the Access Hollywood tape and more ties to Putin, plus all that video of past speeches where he made promises he's not going to keep or said things that were demonstrable lies.

"It's already getting to be real tough to defend this guy," my friend says. No kidding. Here are some links…

• Read the first part at least of this column by Andrew Sullivan, who at least at one time was prominent as a Gay Conservative. He's still gay but the conservative part has grown arguable. For Sullivan, Obamacare has worked pretty well. That's true of a lot of people in this country and we haven't heard nearly enough about that. Now is the time for Democrats to speak up about it.
• Is the state of New York about to force Donald Trump to release his tax forms? That would be interesting, wouldn't it? I assume he'd stand in defiance of the law if they did.
• There are lots of editorials out denouncing what House Republicans did yesterday. This one in The New Yorker by John Cassidy says what most of them do.
• And in the meantime, Trump also signed an executive order (And who knows? He may even have read it!) that ostensibly promotes "religious freedom," which has lately become a call to allow discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender, sexual orientation…or pretty much anything you might say runs counter to your personal belief system. But Alissa Wilkinson and many others say it's smoke n' mirrors that won't do much of anything.

I'm gonna be busy the rest of the day so this and a video link may be all you get here 'til tomorrow. I will write about topics unrelated to Trump and health care once I manage to get them off my mind. It would be so nice to be able to do that.

• I wonder how many GOP Congressfolks voted for their new healthcare plan counting on the Senate to NOT pass it.

This will be quick and it will mostly be about Health Care…

• Matt Yglesias tells us what Trump promised to do about Health Care and what the current G.O.P. plan does. Not that long ago, when Obama or Clinton had said one thing and done another, even some of their supporters would have howled about broken promises and a total lack of integrity on the part of the man who broke them. But Trump can promise not to cut Medicaid, then cut Medicaid and his backers don't see what the problem is.
• Jonathan Chait, like Yglesias above, notes that the White House and the Republicans are trying to rush this thing through before anyone really knows the fine details, before the CBO and other experts have a chance to evaluate its true impact and before effective protests can be mounted against it. Gee, I wonder why.
• Sarah Kliff explains more about what the bill would do and what it would not do.
• Nate Silver, who was righter about the 2016 election than some admit, makes a pretty convincing case that the James Comey letter cost Hillary the presidency. And in yesterday's hearings, Comey made a pretty unconvincing case that he didn't do something very, very wrong.
• Chauncey DeVega argues that the underlying theme of the Republican Party is becoming that America would be a better place if poor and sick people just died. I don't agree that's how most Republicans feel but I do think the perception is trending.

Stephen Colbert issued a slight apology for his language but no regrets for insulting Donald Trump. I don't think anyone should apologize for insulting Donald Trump until he changes his policy of never apologizing to anyone for anything. And I just got a text that the House has passed the measure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Amazing that this is probably being cheered by a lot of people who are about to lose their affordable care.

This was on James Corden's show last night. I thought it was pretty funny though I don't know why, if you go to so much trouble and expense for a musical number, you don't get a lyricist who owns a rhyming dictionary…

I've known for some time that no matter what the topic, there are folks somewhere on the Internet who'll be real a-holes about it. Still, I was amazed at some of the posted responses to Jimmy Kimmel's monologue about how infants shouldn't die due to birth defects.

There is a legit, non-dickish argument against the propriety of tax money going to certain expenditures which maybe the government shouldn't cover. I don't happen to agree with it in this case but I've had such discussions with people I thought were good, decent people. What surprised me in this case was the number of putative human beings who were furious at the assumption that they might give a shit if someone else's baby died.

Meanwhile, the Republicans look like they're close to ramming through this bill about which it can be said…

• There have been no public hearings.
• There's no final text.
• There's no updated CBO score.
• It is opposed by virtually every patient advocacy group and everyone in the health care industry.
• Congress is still exempted from the new rules that allow states to waive essential benefits.
• It raises premiums dramatically for older people.
• It removes Obamacare's protection against being turned down for a pre-existing condition.
• It would steadily gut Medicaid spending for the very poorest.
• It removes coverage from at least 24 million people, probably more.
• It slashes taxes on the rich by about a trillion dollars over ten years.

I stole that laundry list from Kevin Drum because it's so stunning that there is a constituency for all this.  Conservative Congressfolks seem terrified that they'll pay a price with their base if it can be said that they didn't do everything possible to destroy Obamacare.  I'm thinking a lot of them want to be on record as at least trying to achieve that…and then want the bill to fail in the Senate so they don't have to listen to a lot of "My wife died because people like you took away her health care!"

Donald Trump and his supporters talk a lot about Fake News.  I think we need more discussion about Fake Solutions.  You can't solve a Real Problem until you debunk and strip away the Fake Solutions.  The staggering cost of medical care in this country is a Real Problem.  It may not be a Real Problem for you at this particular moment but it will be.

(At first, I wrote, "…unless you're rolling in cash, it will be" but the truth is that if you are rolling in cash, you have or will have friends and/or relatives coming to you who are desperate for funds to save their lives.  And unless you're the kind of person who can say "I don't care" when others suffer or die, you have a Real Problem there.)

From all I've read, it's apparent that "We'll set up high-risk insurance pools for the sickest people" is a Fake Solution.  It's just segregating people who need a ton of money…and then not giving them that ton of money.  It sounds like doing something for them but it isn't.

"We want to sell insurance across state lines" is  a Fake Solution.  So is "We should turn this over to the states."  So are various ways to give people a tiny amount of money which you try to make sound like a lot.  So is "Well, if people without insurance get sick, they can just go to an Emergency Room.  That way, they get treated and no one has to pay!"

The Republican Health Care Bill is a Fake Solution.  Even if you're in favor of it, you don't really think it's going to make the Real Problem go away, do you?  Millions of people cannot afford Health Care.  They need Health Care.  We do nothing to lower the cost of Health Care and we take away financial assistance to these people and give huge tax cuts to zillionaires.  You can't really think that's going to make this Real Problem go Really Away.

This oughta be self-explanatory…

Assuming the membership ratifies the Producers' offer — a pretty safe assumption — there will be no Writers Strike this year. But I have received some questions on the topic of WGA strikes. First though, you might want to read this article about what is known about the contents of the deal. Then, let's go to this first question from my pal Pat O'Neill…

In regard to your post about the settlement of the WGA contract…and the upcoming expiration of the SAG-AFTRA contract…have the major guilds and unions in Hollywood ever considered timing their contracts to all expire simultaneously, so that the studios would not be able to argue, say, "Well, the writers just accepted a 15% pay increase with a 5% increase in residuals…why should you actors do any better?"

Well, I should start by noting that your hypothetical numbers are really hypothetical. The Writers would be ecstatic if they ever got a 4% increase in those areas.

The expiration date of a contract is usually X number of years from the date of its commencement and X is usually three. When it isn't, that is the subject of negotiation and the Producers have been known to fight like all get-out if a union wants to move the next negotiation date to a more strategic time in terms of when it would be best to interrupt production. So it ain't that simple to move it and I doubt any union would go to war over that issue.

Even if all the dates were to expire at about the same time, the Producers would just take the position that they would bargain with one guild at a time…and you'd probably be giving them the power to decide the order. So they would tackle them in the sequence that was the best for the studios. I don't see the advantage that the guilds would have of going in quick succession. Management already insists that they can't give us more than they gave the last above-the-line guild.

Perhaps you're thinking that the three guilds could link arms and all threaten to really shut down production if they all don't get what they want. That was a fantasy some espoused back in the eighties when strikes were a bit more volatile than they are these days, but I think a lot of us came to the realization that that would never happen. For one thing, the interests of the unions are not all the same. Sometimes, what we want is exactly what the Directors Guild doesn't want us to get. That makes it real easy for the Producers to pit one guild against another.

More significantly, the unions just ain't gonna sacrifice for each other. If they offer the DGA a good deal, the DGA is gonna grab it, end of story. They're not going to risk losing it or being outta work for months because the actors want more moisturizer on the set or the writers want directors to have their names made smaller in all advertising.

This one is from Phil Rushton…

In light of the possibly-looming writers strike I can't help wondering why the various networks don't simply film unscripted editions of their talk shows: after all, it's my experience that there are plenty of natural raconteurs out there like Stephen Fry who are more than capable of being witty to order without having their words written out beforehand.

I know it's a hopelessly dumb question but I'd sure like to see what would happen – and who knows, maybe viewers would actually get to like it!

They've done that. Carson, Letterman, Leno, O'Brien…they all did shows without writing staffs during past strikes. I don't think anyone was too impressed with what resulted. If great (or even "just as good") shows had resulted, the networks would have figured they could save money and permanently do those shows without writers. That did not happen. And Stephen Fry, brilliant though he may be, is not a guest who causes viewers to tune in.

Last one's from someone who didn't want their name mentioned…

I'm a Screen Actors Guild member and I'd like to know what the Writers' settlement means for us. Does it make a strike more or less likely? I've heard members say this is not a good time for a strike.

Hard to say. I think it makes your initial offer from the AMPTP better and that may make a strike less likely. But a lot of it depends on what demands your union makes that do not flow naturally from the gains in the WGA and DGA deals. In the past, SAG has really gotten hosed in some monetary areas relating to "new media," especially in the area of residuals. They're ridiculously low and that becomes an increasing cause for resentment as production in those areas increases. If SAG opts to demand readjustments there, it could hit some serious brick walls, which is not to say they may not have to, sooner or later.

Also, actors have some issues that are not major concerns for directors and writers, most notably relating to the merchandising of your likenesses and the usage of your likenesses in contexts that may imply endorsement of a product or even a political crusade. I don't know if that kind of thing is going to be a deal-breaker for the forthcoming deal or even get mentioned.

SAG (I should probably say SAG-AFTRA) is an unusual union with its own internal dynamic. It is the union that can immediately shut down production. Management might be able to assume some directing jobs for a time. This is has never been tested because directors don't strike for more than an hour or so about once a century. It takes a while for our loss to be felt when writers walk out…but if the cast of a TV series walks out, it tends to bring things to a halt pretty fast.

Still, of the three above-the-line guilds, it is the one with the highest percentage of members whose primary income comes from other professions. Most directors direct. Most writers write something even if they aren't writing the kinds of things covered by the WGA An awful lot of actors have other professions, in or out of the TV or movie industries. A few years ago, I had some work done on my house by a carpenter who does woodworking full-time…except maybe two or three days a year when someone he knows hires him for a union acting job.

For a time, I was a SAG member because I did a few warm-ups on TV shows for which I was a writer. The next time a SAG contract came up for a vote, I didn't vote because I'd stopped doing warm-ups, didn't want to do any more of them and even if I had, nothing in the deal apart from the cost-of-living increase was going to affect warm-up gigs in any way. And yet, I had the same vote as Alan Alda or Burt Reynolds or some actor working full-time and making millions.

And then you have the fact that that kind of in-demand actor — today, it would be like a Dwayne Johnson or Jennifer Lawrence — isn't particularly affected by the kind of issues that SAG negotiates. Raising minimum fees ain't gonna boost Vin Diesel's take-home pay…and yet the success of a SAG strike depends a lot on having the support of guys like that.

So this is a long "I dunno." I don't follow SAG politics. Lately, I don't follow WGA politics as closely as I once did and probably still should. I can tell you one thing though about those people who are saying "This is not a good time for a strike." Those people never think it's a good time for a strike. Ever. And they do a lot to make them occasionally unavoidable.

You may have already seen this but just in case: It's Jimmy Kimmel on his show last night, talking of how quick hospital-style attention saved the life of his infant son, segueing into a defense of the premise that people, especially children, should not die just because they can't afford medical care. It is amazing that this is a controversial matter but it is.

As Isaac Chotiner notes, Kimmel may have missed his target a bit by blaming "partisanship" instead of the one political party that is pushing for less to be done for people who can't afford or get health insurance without government underwriting.

In a way, it's the perfect rebuttal to Congressman Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) who said the other day that he's in favor of "reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they're healthy, they've done the things to keep their bodies healthy." Someone needs to ask him what Kimmel's newborn baby did to make himself unhealthy…or for that matter, why a guy who gets hit by a car somehow deserves to be bankrupted by hospital bills.

As you may have gleaned from this blog, I ordinarily do not care for Mr. Kimmel and have found his show to be generally unwatchable. I have a general distaste for "comedy" based on the premise that if you shove a camera in the face of someone on the street (or hide one when you prank them) it's great fun to laugh at how they come off as idiots. I don't like that when the others do it either, but Kimmel seems to do a lot of it. The actual writing on his show seems pretty sharp but his delivery always seemed lacking to me, and his interviews seemed snarky and way too smug.

That said, my opinion of him went up with his Oscar hosting and it's gone up a few more notches for this segment. Maybe, if I ever clear all the unwatched other shows off my TiVo, I'll give him another chance. This is about as real a moment as I've ever seen on a talk show…

Well, here's some nice news to wake up to…

Talks between the Writers Guild of America and AMPTP studio alliance went down to the wire Monday night but ultimately resulted in a three-year deal, averting a threatened walkout that could have cost jobs and homes, hit the California economy with a $200 million blow per week, accelerated cord-cutting and driven audiences off linear channels and onto digital platforms.

I have no inside info on this at all but I'm assuming, first of all, that it really is a good, sound deal. I know and trust enough folks on the Board of Directors and the Negotiating Committee to assume that. I also have to assume that that 96.3% Strike Authorization vote was a major turning point in the bargaining. As I wrote, these strikes tend to result when the Producers get it into their heads that the Guild is weak and divided and that a rotten deal can be forced on them.

In some past years, they've thrown such an offer on the table, ended the talks and, in effect, said, "There will be no bargaining. Take it or leave it." And once they do that, they have a lot of trouble coming back to the table and engaging in an actual give-and-take. They did that in 1985 and it worked for them…and worked very well. They did that in '88 and we had the longest strike in my guild's history…twenty-two weeks just to get them to drop demands for major rollbacks.

Details of the new pact will emerge over the next few days and there will surely be some grumbling from the more militant members. Whatever we got, they'll say it should have been more. But we'll vote to accept it by an overwhelming majority…and the world will be spared from having to watch Jimmy Fallon ad-lib.

So all will be well for a while…unless someone at the AMPTP says, "Hey, I'll bet we can lowball the Screen Actors Guild and wring some major rollbacks out of them." The Actors' contract expires June 30.

Voice artist Dee Baker posted this on Facebook the other day…

The headline we always read: Artists' Unions Votes to Authorize a Strike, Bringing Show Business Closer to a Shutdown.

The headline we never read: Behemoth Entertainment Corporation Directs Its High Paid Lawyers to Resist Giving Artists Even a Fraction of What They Deserve, Bringing Show Business Closer to a Shutdown.

I dunno if there will be a Writers Guild strike but I can tell you these ten things that will occur if there is…

1. A lot of people will blame the Writers for rejecting a terrible offer and not the Producers for making a terrible offer.
2. A lot of wanna-be writers will think "This is my chance" and will hurry to submit scripts while their competition is out carrying picket signs.
3. Those wanna-be writers will have about the same success rate as they did when there was no strike…or worse.
4. Striking writers who've been working a lot will speak of how they're the Guild Members who are suffering because they walked out on actual jobs and are risking the actual destruction of actual projects.
5. Striking writers who haven't been working a lot will speak of how they're the Guild Members who are suffering because they're the ones who really needed that next job they thought was imminent — and besides, the writers who've been working a lot can live off savings and residuals.
6. Producers will spread the claim that the real successful writers are not behind the strike and that it's being driven by the guys who almost never get work. They will say this no matter how many of the top-earning, in-demand writers are highly vocal about their support for the strike.
7. At least one writer I know will call me in hysterics, insisting that if we don't settle the strike immediately, he will lose his home, his wife will leave him, his health insurance will go away and he will contract some fatal disease and die.
8. Most writers will not do that. They'll understand that these things are occasionally necessary and that if take a bad deal now, we're practically begging for future offers to be worse and worse.
9. A lot of non-writers will get annoyed at us because their late night talk shows will either be in reruns or not as good.
10. And everyone on strike will find that picketing is kinda fun…for the first day or so.

In each of four Writers Guild strikes I've lived through, I had some project looming that I really wanted to do for both creative and monetary reasons and it was killed by the strike. I have one pending now that might not survive a strike so that nudges me towards thinking a strike will happen.

But that's really the only thing that does because I do have a lot of confidence in our solidarity and in the wisdom of our leaders. Then again, the Producers have been known to do some really dumb, self-destructive things…so I don't know. We'll see.

The other day, we had some clips of Nathan Lane in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I am a huge fan of this person and have been since I saw him in the (mostly) non-singing role of Nathan Detroit in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls.

Hey, do you know why Nathan Detroit only really has one song in that show? I probably told this before on this blog but here it is again: When the show was originally written, the producers signed the actor Sam Levene to play Mr. Detroit, even before the show was written. Levene was a big star then on the Great White Way in (mostly) non-musicals…and he was available and they were so eager to lock him up for the role that nobody bothered to check to see if he could sing. It turned out that he couldn't but he was so funny that they kept him and dropped the character's songs or reassigned them to others.

So when Guys and Dolls is revived, as it so often is, Nathan Detroit is only heard in the easy-to-sing number, "Sue Me" and he sings with the chorus in a few others. Sam Levene was told to mouth the words in those group numbers but not to sing because even surrounded by others, his voice was pretty ruinous. For the movie, they cast Frank Sinatra, who sorta could sing so Frank Loesser wrote a new number for him and they added Nathan to the title song. Often when the show is staged now, they make those adjustments.

A few years ago, there was a one-night concert-style staging of the show at Carnegie Hall. Megan Mullally played Adelaide and I'll bet she was terrific, and Lane reprised his turn as Nathan Detroit (from whom he got the first half of his stage name). Here are some moments…