Monthly Archives: February 2018

Last September, I told you about attending a rare live performance by Dick Van Dyke and a great jazz band out in the valley. Well, they're doing it again. Dick and the same fine musicians will be performing one show only on Tuesday, February 27 at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood. Tickets will sell out and they'll sell out soon. I already bought mine so you can buy yours at this link. He's a great entertainer and he even dances darn well for a man of 92…better than I have at any age. Then again, there are hippos that can clear that low bar.

• Trump wants a military parade, I guess so he can feel more like Kim Jong-un. He'll probably want them all carrying flaming tiki torches, too.

Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca do the "Slowly I Turned…" Niagara Falls sketch without making any slow turns or mentions of Niagara Falls…

Jeff Edsell writes to ask…

I had a question about writing and revision. If I look over something I've written and I'm not happy with it, I have a lot of trouble deciding whether I should dig in and try to revise it and make it better, or to virtually crumple up the page and start over from scratch. Are there any rules of thumb you use to determine the best route?

Well, it depends on if I know why I'm not happy with it. There are an infinite number of reasons possible but there are two that stand out above all others.

One is that I've tried to wedge a good story into a bad place. That's a mistake that I believe has led to some of the poorest writing I've done. I had what I thought was a real good idea..and let's say it was for a comic book story. Suddenly, I was asked to write an eight-page story for something and I decided to use that real good idea for it. As I wrote, I slowly realized eight pages wouldn't do justice to the idea but I stubbornly pressed on, leaving out every part of it I could possibly leave out and rushing every speech and action.

The end result? I wrote a pretty poor story…and worse, I wasted that good idea. After that, I couldn't go back the next month and redo it at the proper length. Those instances hurt a lot.

So when I'm not happy with how a script or article is going, I ask myself if what I have is a good story in a bad place and if so, I save that idea for another time and try to come up with something else and start anew. That can be tough when you have six days to write a story and you've wasted three or four of them writing the wrong story. Just remember it's easier to recover from staying up all night writing than it is to recover from publishing a stinker.

This problem also happens when your story is too short to fill the allotted space. And sometimes in the middle of writing something, I start feeling, "You know, this wasn't such a great idea after all." I have a folder on my hard disk called "Unfinished Posts." It's full of things I started writing for this blog and a few paragraphs into them, I started thinking, "No one's going to care about this…even I'm losing interest in it."

Into that folder it goes. I sometimes go back through them later and find some way to make one interesting. That's usually done by lopping off a few paragraphs at the end and plotting another course from a wrong turn. But a lot of what goes into that folder never comes out because it wasn't worth finishing. I do not concur with writing teachers who teach that you must finish what you start. It's better to admit when you've had a lousy idea and see if you can come up with a good one instead.

If that's not the problem…if the piece does seem worthy, look back for the wrong turn you made. You introduced a new plot point that knocks the story off-balance — or worse, isn't necessary at all. Playwrights who have to keep the cast size down for budgetary reasons usually go over their later drafts and ask of each character, "Is there a way to cut this role?" If there is, you usually should.

Also, if something I'm writing isn't working and time permits, I like to put it aside, write something else for a bit and then go back to the story that isn't working. Sometimes, the solution is so obvious, you'll actually slap your forehead with the palm of your hand.

But try anything. Write anything. Sometimes, exploring further in the wrong direction can make it more obvious as to why it's the wrong direction. Go back to the last time a major character had to make a major choice…and then have him or her make the other choice and see where that takes you. The point is to keep writing and, one hopes, keep thinking. And don't panic. Just remember that if it's unfixable and has to be junked, you're still ahead of writers who refused to do that and instead, put out something awful.

Our pal Frank Ferrante usually wanders the land doing one-nighters or occasionally two-nighters with his wonderful show, An Evening With Groucho.  Starting Valentine's Day next week, he'll be doing fourteen shows in the same place — and the same place is a venue with special significance to Marx Brothers fans. It's the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

You can't read a book about the great plays of the Twentieth Century without learning about the ones that tried-out and were shaped at that theater…or about legendary productions that played there and nowhere else. Few are the superstars of Broadway who have not graced the stage of the Bucks County Playhouse. George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart were frequent patrons and several of their shows were birthed there. They even once did a production there of their The Man Who Came to Dinner with Kaufman in the role based on Alexander Woollcott and Harpo Marx in the role based on Harpo Marx.

And now Frank's going to be there impersonating the Great Groucho through February 25…ten performances of An Evening With Groucho, many of them in the afternoon. If you're anywhere near the place, click there to obtain tickets. After you see it, it is not necessary to write me and thank me for the recommendation but many people do.

Several times on this site, I've mentioned a funny comedian and voice actor named Dave Barry. Don't get him confused with the funny columnist Dave Barry, who writes books. The Dave Barry I'm talking about was an actor (best credit: Some Like It Hot), a frequent stand-up comic on Ed Sullivan's show and opening for big stars in Vegas, and you heard him in a lot of classic cartoons, often imitating Humphrey Bogart or other celebrities. I ran this obit when he passed away in 2001, ending a career that basically consisted of 66 years of making audiences laugh.

I've written other things about him which you can easily find with this site's search engine. I think he's one of those comedians who never got the recognition he deserved. I was delighted recently to hear from his grandson Brett, who sent me a link to a video of his father performing in 1992. Some of it's material that was honed and perfected over many years but a lot of it's fresh and topical. He even starts with a joke about Woody Allen…

The first response to my long post about Woody Allen came from Tom Schmidt. Here it is in its entirety…

You think Shemp was a better Stooge than Curly? Seriously?

Yeah. This is not something I feel strongly about but I have a lower opinion of Curly than most other folks who love the Stooges. Or maybe a better way to put that would be that in the Moe/Larry/Curly films, I value Moe and Larry more than most folks do. I think the films with Curly are generally better but that's mainly because of bigger budgets and better writing.

I certainly don't dislike Curly. I don't even dislike Joe Besser or Joe DeRita and when people say they weren't as funny in their films as Curly was in his, I point out that Moe and Larry weren't as funny in the Besser/DeRita films as they were in the ones with Curly, either.

The story of the Stooges' career is, for me, the story of a varying set of funny men who managed to still be entertaining even as the budgets and writing declined year after year after year and their films turned into cheap rearrangements of stock gags and stock footage. They were the guys who rode the two-reeler format all the way down to its demise. Shemp, to me, was the one who usually managed to be better than the material he was given.

But like I said, I don't feel that strongly about this. If you prefer Curly, we can still be friends.

It's been a while since I wrote anything here about the Woody Allen matter. I think the last time, my view was that he didn't do it but I probably didn't sound as adamant as some of the people we now see insisting that he's — as they used to say in Doonesbury — GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY. The more I read about this case though, the more I move towards NOT GUILTY, NOT GUILTY, NOT GUILTY.

Seems to me that a lot of people have made up their minds about this matter based on hearing about 50% of the story. In today's online world, that's a lot. It seems to happen with every controversy, as does the tendency to stake out a position and refuse to ever budge from it no matter what additional info comes to light.

Stubbornness, of course, way predates the Internet but nowadays, just as you are never more than two clicks away from porn, you are never more than two clicks away from disinformation or from someone who concurs with and reinforces the stupidest thing you may have chosen to believe. I can easily find people who agree with me that Shemp was a better Stooge than Curly, that Batman was better when he wasn't psychotic and that cole slaw should never be taken internally.

What I'll get from them is a lot of "You're so right" and many bogus corroborating "facts"…but I could still be wrong except, of course, about the cole slaw.

I was a little reticent to get into the Allen/Farrow brouhaha again here for several reasons, chief among them that I absolutely support the #MeToo movement and think it's waaaaaay (with at least six a's) overdue to call out and expose human beings who don't act like human beings — i.e., Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, et al.

I know and have known women who have been abused doubly — first by men who abused power in order to abuse women; secondly by a system that made the women afraid to say or do anything about it. I'd hate to be accused of not supporting a crusade that empowers the powerless simply because I have some doubts about one specific allegation…or even a few of 'em.

And it's not just about women. Isn't it still the #MeToo movement when it empowers men who are abused by men or women who are more powerful? If it isn't, it should be.

Secondly, I like and respect Woody Allen the comedian and filmmaker. Like a lot of folks who do, I'm not particularly enamored of most of his recent films but that's irrelevant to the question of whether he did the foul deed that so many have decided he did. In any case, I don't want to make the easy-to-make mistake of siding with him just because I liked Annie Hall or Midnight in Paris or his old monologues. I didn't make that mistake with Bill Cosby or a few others and I don't want to make it here.

And thirdly and lastly for now: I see a lot of people whose belief that Allen is a pervert and a molester starts with the fact that he dated and wed a woman 35 years younger. That seems to be all some need to hear to believe any allegation about him, especially of a sexual nature.

I would not argue with someone who said that the break-up with Mia and leaving the nekkid photos where they could be found was foolish and/or cruel.  If you care at all about this nastiness, you know what I'm talking about. I might though wonder if we know as much about that whole story as we think we know. I wonder that about a lot of stories in the news about the private lives of public figures, including the Trumps, the Obamas, the Clintons and anyone named Kardashian, Baldwin or Jenner.

I would argue with someone who insisted, as so many do, that Woody wooed and married his own daughter. Soon-Yi was the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and André Previn. And having decided Allen did one terrible thing, others who dislike him figure that proves he did or probably did any terrible thing that is charged.  That leap, I don't buy.  I keep thinking of something one of my college professors said once: "A faulty argument is a faulty argument even if it points to the truth."  Even in the Court of Public Opinion with its general lack of rules, a person should not be convicted of a serious crime via a faulty argument.

So that's one thing that bothers me about the case against Woody Allen.  Another is the push to ignore the older brother of that seven-year-old girl who of course is also the younger brother of Soon-Yi.

Moses Farrow is now a fully-grown professional family therapist, which suggests he might have some understanding of families and how dysfunctional some can be. He doesn't think Woody did anything wrong in marrying Soon-Yi and does not believe Woody molested Dylan. Those who are pressing the portrait of Woody Allen as child molester have dealt with Moses's contrary accounts by simply pretending he does not exist.

Yesterday's New York Times had another article by Nicholas Kristof, the columnist who more than anyone else perhaps has been driving this story that Allen molested Dylan. A self-described close friend of the Farrow family, he repeats a lot of the damning things he's said over and over about Woody but as in so many of these pieces, there is no mention of Moses.

I'm going to quote here from one of the few columnists who has acknowledged his existence, Hadley Freeman…

…in the past 26 years the only new development has been the emergence of Moses Farrow, Dylan's older brother, who has become increasingly vocal about the abuse he claims he suffered at the hands of his mother; he claims Farrow brainwashed her children about Allen. Dylan has dismissed her brother's allegations as "irrelevant". But why is one child's claim of abuse irrelevant and another's urgent?

Good question.  So many of those who say we must "listen to the victims" seem to not want to listen to Moses — or for that matter, to Soon-Yi, who has similar tales of abuse.  That's a large part of what I was referring to earlier about passing judgment on this matter based on 50% of the evidence.

I mentioned earlier that I was hesitant to write about this controversy for several reasons and I've named two.  A third has to do with what I see as another of those faulty arguments.  There are those who, leaving aside the question of whether Woody had any sort of actual parental role in Soon-Yi's upbringing, insist that someone's desire to have consensual sex with a much-younger woman of 20 proves he must have wanted the non-consensual kind with a seven-year-old child. I can't see how it follows for anyone that the gap of years 'twixt Woody and Soon-Yi suggests any predilection for pedophilia. I have a self-interest here which will be addressed beginning in the next paragraph.

Yes, there are those who find the age difference in the Woody/Soon-Yi relationship creepy, just as some think it's wrong when two consenting adults of the same gender get together….or two consenting adults of different races. Me, I've long believed that if two people are consenting adults, their sex lives are none of my business and if the relationship works for them, great. There are 876,000 divorces in this country per year so obviously, Mr. Allen and his mate of 2.6 decades are happier together than millions of pair-ups where both parties were of approximately the same age. Over a much shorter span, I have been quite happy in my current relationship with a lady who is 42 years younger than I am.

I'm embarrassed to say I balked at speaking up because I didn't want anyone saying, "You're just defending him because you like younger women!"  I do like some younger women. I also like some older women. My last lady friend was older than me and I was with her for twenty years.

When the present one wises up and dumps me, I'll hope to find someone else I like and as long as she's an adult and wants to be with me, her age won't matter one bit. (For the record, the last time I so much as fantasized about a woman under the age of eighteen, I was under the age of seventeen. That's what happens when you skip grades and everyone in your classes at school is older than you are.)

I do not know Mr. Allen.  We've never met, though we do have some mutual friends including my cousin David, author of this book on the man.  David, who I consider a smart guy and a good reporter, believes Woody is innocent but his conclusions are his and mine are mine.

Also, a recurring topic on this blog, because it is a long-held concern in my life, is the wrongful conviction of innocent people. I posted something about that recently and many times before that. Since the dawn of man, innocent people have gone to prison or even been executed based on fallacious testimony. Does anyone doubt that's still possible?

And also, I see all these articles online where folks wrestle with the question of how to view the work of Woody Allen now that he is a proven child-molester.  Before I do that, I'd like to be convinced he's a proven child-molester…and so far, I'm not.

More dominoes…

That's what I'm doing. There's something oddly calming and pleasant about feeling, just for a few hours, that you're on a different planet.

Ignore this. Zz73

For silly tech reasons, I had to delete and restore the last few posts here and they are not quite in the same order. So scroll down and make sure you read them all. That is, assuming you want to read them all.

Somewhere below in this post, you'll find a photo of me with my friend, the late Lorenzo Music. I don't know why I have such an unhappy look on my face because I always had a good time when I was with Lorenzo. The last few times I saw him, it was in a hospital room and if you could somehow overlook the fact that he was dying, it was still kinda fun to be around him.

In his career, Lorenzo went from being a writer to being a writer-producer to being one of the top voiceover performers in the business. He began the unlikely segue into his final career while he was working on the TV sitcom Rhoda, which he developed with this then-partner, David Davis. For it, they created the role of a hapless, hopeless doorman named Carlton, who would be heard (usually over an intercom) but never seen. Carlton was not the swiftest exemplar of his profession or the soberest…and his voice was provided by Lorenzo.

The show became popular and so did its tipsy doorman. Lorenzo began looking for ways to expand the character's fame and his own fortune. At one point, he recorded a record which someone has made into a little music video.  Here it is if you care to stop for a brief musical interlude…

Rhoda went off the air in 1978. One day in 1979, the phone rang in my old apartment and the following exchange occurred. I swear to you, this is exactly how it went…

ME: Hello!

CALLER: Yes, I'd like to speak to Mark Evanier.

ME: Hello, Lorenzo Music.

CALLER: (after a long pause) Wow. That's the fastest anyone's ever recognized my voice.

That was my introduction to Lorenzo. He explained to me why he was calling. He was working on a pilot for an animated, prime-time TV show called Carlton, Your Doorman for the MTM company. In '79, way after The Flintstones and way before The Simpsons, that was a pretty daring/different thing to attempt.

He and his new partner Barton Dean were writing it and Lorenzo, of course, was voicing the lead role. He explained he was looking for a writer with prime-time credentials (which I had) and also some understanding of animation (ditto, I'd like to think) to write a back-up script for the show and to become part of its staff if and when the show went to series. He was then pretty confident that it would.

I should explain what a back-up script is. Often, when a network commissions a pilot for a series, they will also have scripts written for two or three more episodes. This is so that when they judge the worthiness of buying that pilot as a series, they will also have those scripts to consider…some idea of where the show will go after the first week. Also, if they suddenly want to rush the series into production, A.S.A.P., they have the first few episodes already written.

Lorenzo mentioned another producer he knew who had recommended he talk to me. I did not recognize the name of this other producer at the time and do not recall it now. What I do recall is that this person (a) had read and liked a sample Maude script I'd written when I was up for a job on that show and (b) knew that I was writing cartoon shows for Hanna-Barbera and other studios. Lorenzo asked if I would come in and meet with him and Barton — and, oh yes, bring him a copy of that Maude script to read.

A few days later, I went in, gave them the script and they put me in a little room to watch a very rough cut of the Carlton pilot. It was missing music (not to be confused with Music), sound effects and some video but I thought it was pretty good.  There was a sense in which the character was diminished by being seen.  Before this, one of the most interesting things about him was that we, like Rhoda Morgenstern and other characters in the Rhoda show, had to guess what he looked like.

Now, we no longer had the intrigue of guessing.  He looked like Zonker in the Doonesbury strip, which is not what I imagined.  Still, if that's what his creator and voice said he looked like, who was I to argue?  After the viewing, I joined them and we discussed the show for a while.  Then I went home. and a few days later, this phone exchange occurred.  Again, this is exactly how it went…

ME: Hello!

CALLER WHO SOUNDED NOTHING LIKE LORENZO MUSIC: Is this Mark Evanier?

ME: Hello, Lorenzo Music trying to fool me with a phony voice.

SAME CALLER WHO NOW SOUNDED LIKE LORENZO MUSIC: Shit.

He told me my Maude script went over well with him and whoever else had read it there and they wanted me to write one of the two back-up scripts they were preparing. They also wanted me to help with some revisions on the pilot. I was fine with all that.  My agent made the appropriate deal and we went to work.

[IMPORTANT SIDEBAR: In 1979, all animation writing was either totally non-union or it was covered by the Animation Union, Local 839. Almost all cartoon writers felt that 839 did a miserable job of representing our interests and I was part of several legal attempts to get us out of that union and into the Writers Guild of America. Those attempts all failed but in later years, some progress was made. Many cartoon writing jobs (but not all) are now done under the aegis of the WGA. The Carlton, Your Doorman scripts were done under a WGA contract and no one noticed at the time.]

I worked a little with Lorenzo and Barton on funnying-up the pilot but I don't think any of my input ever made it into the finished product. I also wrote a script called "A Kiss is Just a Kiss." It revolved around a tenant in Carlton's building — an elderly Italian gent who talks and acts like a former Mafia Don. Carlton believes the man very much is one.  In his bumbling way, the doorman accidentally destroys much of the man's apartment and the man, weeping over the damages, grabs Carlton and gives him a kiss.

Carlton, horrified, believes he has been given a "kiss of death" — a signal that he has been marked for a mob hit and will soon be seen no longer. He grabs up his cat and flees for his life, hiding out for weeks in flophouses and wearing disguises, super-paranoid that everyone he sees is the assassin sent to wipe him out.

In the end, he finds out that he has not been marked to be killed; that the old Italian gent actually likes him and gave him the kiss because he thinks Carlton is cute and would like to date him. We had a discussion if in the end, Carlton could say something about how the old guy was a Fairy Godfather but since the script was never produced, we never got around to deciding if it was a good thing to say.  A very gay Production Assistant in the office thought it was hysterical and we had to keep it in.

We also, of course, never cast the role of the elderly Italian gent but Lorenzo knew just who he'd get to play the part. "Marlon Brando's a friend of mine," he remarked.  "I'll get him to come in and do it." I was ready to bet serious money that that would not happen but again, since the script was never produced, we never found out. In later years as I got to know Lorenzo better, I was not quite as willing to wager money on him being unable to bag Mr. Brando. If anyone could have, he could have.

The Carlton, Your Doorman pilot was finished and I was invited to a screening of it for the MTM brass. This led to the never-live-it-down moment when I stepped on the feet on Mary Tyler Moore. I wrote about that here.

Everyone at the screening loved the finished pilot or at least they laughed a lot and seemed fairly positive it would be picked up as a series in a matter of moments. It was not but it did air as a special the following year and it won the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour), beating out a Dr. Seuss special, a Pink Panther special and She's A Good Skate, Charlie Brown.

In the meantime, Lorenzo's experiences dealing with the animation studio (Murakami-Wolf) on Carlton had led him to start drawing up plans a live-action situation comedy set in a place that made cartoons. This was also for the MTM company. He wanted me involved in that and we had several meetings about it, plus I took him on a tour of Hanna-Barbera and while there, introduced him to Gordon Hunt, who was then the voice director. This led to him auditioning for several of their shows and eventually being cast in a role on the Pac-Man series. He also briefly worked there as a writer helping develop a Saturday morning series called The Snorks. I don't think anything he did wound up in the eventual series.

I also don't think he did anything for The Duck Factory, an MTM sitcom set in a place that made cartoons, which debuted in 1984. That show was created by Allan Burns, a top comedy writer-producer who had once-upon-a-time written cartoons for Jay Ward. Lorenzo's take on the arena never went very far and I have no idea if or how one project led to the other, though I was asked to come in and write one. Before that could happen, the show was canceled as is often the case with shows where someone thinks of hiring Evanier.

By that point, Lorenzo's writing/producing career had been largely displaced by a busy voiceover career. He signed with a good agent, assembled a great "demo" tape and suddenly (and surprisingly) wound up doing hundreds, if not thousands of commercials as well as a number of other cartoons. The biggie, of course, was that in 1984 he was cast in the role of Garfield the Cat. His unique sound was heard in a dozen or so prime-time specials and beginning in 1988, in the Saturday morning Garfield and Friends show, which I wrote and voice-directed.

Contrary to what others have assumed, I had nothing to do with him getting his Garfield job and he had nothing to do with me getting mine. Just a coincidence.  It was great working with him again and getting to know him well. He really was a smart, talented and funny man…and if you think I know everyone in the world, I'm a veritable hermit compared to Lorenzo.

Okay, so that's the story and it's run so long that I think I'd better put up one of those warning signs that it's a long post. If you've got another 23 minutes to spend on this topic, someone has uploaded the entire Carlton, Your Doorman pilot to the 'net and here it is. I really liked it and I can say that because I don't think anything I suggested made it into the show.

I don't know why it didn't sell. I asked Lorenzo once and he said, "I think the network just plain wasn't interested in doing an animated series then. MTM had the clout to get them to fund the pilot but I don't think MTM had the clout to get them to make it a series." That's as good an explanation as any. In Hollywood, projects go forward or get killed for far stupider reasons than that. See what you think…

I've long thought that one of the many mistakes Richard Nixon made during the Watergate mess was this: He had supporters who for their own reasons, including but not limited to stubbornness and raw emotional response, wanted to continue to support him. But he failed to supply them with sufficient rebuttal information for when their friends said, "Well, it looks like your boy Nixon is guilty." The guy was guilty but he could have given his fans something — anything! — to say when they were put on the spot to defend their fealty to him. I had one Nixon-loving friend who could only mutter, "Well, I'm sure in the end he'll explain it all in a way that makes sense and vindicates him." He said that over and over for months until even he couldn't believe it any longer.

Want another example of much the same thing? One of the reasons so many people came to believe that O.J. Simpson was guilty-as-hell for that double murder was that his fans had no answer for the question, "Well, if he didn't do it, who did?" It's possible of course that an accused party could be innocent but we simply don't have an alternative scenario…but that doesn't fly so well in The Court of Public Opinion. Simpson loyalists could only fumble out an incomplete theory that the murders had been committed by Colombian Drug Lords even though there was zero evidence any Colombian Drug Lords had been within a thousand miles of the murder scene.

This memo that's been released — the one Trump says "completely vindicates" him even though it does no such thing is an attempt to give his supporters something to say. Last night on Bill Maher's show, David Frum said its main purpose was to give Sean Hannity a piece of paper to wave on camera saying there's proof of a conspiracy to railroad Trump. Those who want to believe will believe that. They now have something to say at parties. A secret memo said so, never mind who wrote it or what it says. It's a secret memo. Secret memos are never wrong except when we don't want to believe what they say.

To read a copy of the memo that's been annotated to explain everything, go here. To read an overview of the whole thing, go here.

• This just in: Ghost of Al Capone releases secret memo alleging that his prosecution was unfair because F.B.I. agents were biased against him. Some, it would seem, thought he was a criminal.