Monthly Archives: May 2018

A homeless guy gets arrested for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $10 bill. Three months later, authorities conclude the bill is real so they let him go. What is wrong here? I'm wondering the same thing that Kevin Drum is wondering.

We're back talking about school shootings again…or in some cases, not talking about them because "this is not the time for that." I continue to take my usual cynical attitude that nothing will change and it's been a long time since that was wrong.

Something like 80% of this country is open to or even very much in favor of changing gun laws to make background checks more effective and the bigger guns harder to get. Around 20% sees any moves in that direction as threats to their right/need to own the guns they feel they must have. The 20% is willing to mobilize against a politician who votes with the 80%. The 80% is not as determined to vote out anyone who votes with the 20%. And there we shall stay until the shootings get a whole lot worse in frequency and/or body count.

This is a series of articles I've written about writing, specifically about the problems faced by (a) the new writer who isn't selling enough work yet to make a living or (b) the older writer who isn't selling as much as they used to. To read other installments, click here.

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Portions of this column are cribbed from earlier articles I've posted here. So if you feel some déjà vu, that's the reason.

As I've probably mentioned more than once in past installments of this series, I'm not a big fan of a piece of advice that is often dispensed to wanna-be writers and actors and musicians and all sorts of folks who aspire to the careers that many covet. It's the old "Never give up, keep at it, don't let anyone discourage you and you'll eventually get your dream" advice. I don't think that's true.

When you hear that, you're almost certainly hearing it from someone who did achieve their dream. If people don't, they don't tell you that. So in a way, it's like someone who won the lottery telling you, "Hey, if I won, so can you! Spend every cent you can on lottery tickets." That may be good advice for two or three people per lottery but not for most. The odds of winning one recent PowerBall were one in 292 million and they rarely get much better than that.

The odds of you or anyone attaining a dream in the creative arts will, of course, depend a lot on what that dream is, how suited you are for the position and what kind of access you may be able to get to those who hire. Included in the "what that dream is" factor is the question of specificity. If you say "I want to be a working actor," you stand a better shot than if you say "I want to be a working actor who takes over playing James Bond, wins many Academy Awards and earns $20 million per movie."

And sometimes, the dream can be so narrow that nobody can see it happen. At the Baltimore Comic-Con last year, I had a brief conversation with a reader of this series who wants to write Marvel Comics…but not just any Marvel Comics. He wants to write all the Marvel Comics. This is approximately what he told me — and remember, this is a person who has never written even one comic book of any note. Nothing for Marvel, nothing for DC, nothing for Dark Horse or IDW or Boom or any of those…

"I want to do a run on Fantastic Four. I've read it for years and I have great ideas about how it should be done. This will be the definitive series, the one everyone will point to and say, 'That's how F.F. should be handled!' And then I'll do a run on Spider-Man and show everyone how that book should be done, a run on Thor, a run on The Avengers and so on…"

This is not going to happen. And even if it could happen, it's a pretty unhealthy way to approach a new career. This guy's goal should be to get to write one issue of one comic for anyone. If he can achieve that, he can aspire to writing a second something somewhere.

All writers, even the lousy ones, are real good at fantasizing. Often, we're too good at it. Dreams are great but making a dream into a reality requires dealing with that reality.

You can have an idea for the greatest movie ever and, hey, maybe it really is that. But it still has to be written and marketed and even if some big, legitimate producer says he wants to make it, you're still only about 15% of the way to the start of principal photography and light years from opening at the IMAX. I've known writers who didn't have their breakthrough screenplay finished but they'd done eight drafts of the Oscar acceptance speech to go with it.

There's nothing wrong with aiming high as long as you remember that high targets are harder to hit…and when you aim for them and miss, you're not aiming for the ones you might be able to hit.

A story. I've been fortunate to meet and work with a number of my Show Biz heroes — folks whose work I loved when I was a kid. It's great when you can become pals with someone like that but it had its downsides. There have been a few — just a few — I wish I'd gotten to know a little less. For one thing, it's hard to say no to those people.

One called me one day and said he has a friend who'd written a screenplay and would I please read it and give its author some advice? Pretty please? As I've probably mentioned here, I don't like doing this. The writers who ask you to do this aren't really asking for your advice. I mean, they'll be okay if you say, "I think the scene in the bar could stand to lose a page or so" but that's only if you say everything else is perfect and (big "and" here) you know someone they can send it to who'll quickly arrange a six-figure contract for it.

But I was stuck so the writer sent his script over. This was the guy's first attempt at writing a script and, I suspect, darn near his first attempt at writing anything in a professional arena. It arrived with one of those amateurish, paranoid attitudes: The script was registered with every agency in the world, I was expected to sign a confidentiality form with the assurance that he could sue and take my house away from me if I plagiarized him, etc. Don't you just love it when you agree to do someone a favor and they respond with threats?

When I opened the package, I glanced at the accompanying warnings and then noticed something about the script itself. It was sealed in plastic with a warning label that said something like, "By breaking this seal, you agree to abide by the terms of the enclosed form," etc. And the script itself was huge. It had to be over 300 pages. In which case, I would not be reading it so there was no point in breaking that seal.

I called the guy and asked him how long it was. I don't remember the precise number but let's say it was 325. It was around that.

I told him I had my first comment: Cut it by two-thirds. "There are very few people in this business who will read a script that's over around 120 pages," I said and I added, "I am not one of them."

He said, "I'm not cutting a word of it. Not now, not ever. I have a copy here of the screenplay to Apocalypse Now and it's 325 pages." (I'm not sure it is but that's what the man said.)

I said, "Maybe it is but this is not Apocalypse Now and you are not Francis Ford Coppola and John Milius."

He said, "What difference does that make? This script is just as important."

I said, "I doubt that…but the script you have of theirs is not a script they wrote to try and impress a producer into taking on the project. Everything was probably committed well before they wrote that draft, maybe before they wrote any draft. What you have there is a shooting script. You need to produce a selling script. Do you understand the difference?"

He said, "Sure…but a perfect shooting script can be a selling script. All a producer has to do is read this and he'll see it's perfect and ready to go. All my friends who've read it agree."

That was pretty much the end of that conversation. Oh, sure…I went on and told him that had never happened in the history of Hollywood and he told me he'd be the first and I told him his fantasy was predicated on producers reading the script at all and they wouldn't and he told me he'd be the first and you can see why this script was never made. It was probably also never read by anyone besides his closest friends. It certainly wasn't by me.

Could this guy have succeeded if he'd aimed lower? I dunno. I never read a word he wrote…but I'm also guessing that his main problem was attitude. It's hard enough finding a way to fit into Show Business the way it is. If you're going to expect them to remodel the industry so it works the way you want it to work, you're going to wait a long time.

A few nights ago at The Comedy Store in Hollywood, there was a memorial service for its owner and operator, Mitzi Shore. Her son Pauly — one of countless comedians who advanced his or her career in that building — prepared this memorial video about his mother…

• I don't think of mimes as performance artists. I think of them as guys who are just taking the Fifth Amendment a little too seriously.

Here's an oral history of the 2007 Writers Guild Strike. Well, actually, it's more like an oral summary of some aspects of it. A 100-day strike would require a very thick book to encompass all that happened and all that it meant.

People have a tendency to look at something like this and ask, "Was it worth it?" and then they weigh what was won versus what was lost…but then they don't include the ancillary losses and gains such as what the next deal would have been like if not for the strike? It's like when people ask me if my new knee is better than my old knee. To decide whether the replacement was a good idea, you have to take into account what my old knee would have been like if I was still reliant on it. I do not really view that as elective surgery.

In show business — hell, probably in all businesses — if you take a bad deal now, it leads to worse deals later. The 1988 Writers Guild strike, which was a lot longer and more painful than the 2007 one — occurred largely because we took a terrible deal in 1985 and the producers thought we'd take an even lousier offer in '88.

I have a New Concept for the Target Stores: Having salespeople who can actually sell you stuff…and this goes for Home Depot, as well. In the last month, I've had two instances, one at each chain, where I wanted to buy something, the store's computer system seemed to be doing everything possible to prevent that transaction from transacting and human beings were of little use to override it. I'll start with the Home Depot story…

I needed to buy something for my house. Never mind what it was. Call it Item A. Item A sells everywhere for $99.00 but a lot of stores were out of it and I needed one A.S.A.P. The Home Depot website told me that my nearest Home Depot had about a dozen available so I went there and was unable to find even one on their shelves. I asked a helpful store employee who told me they were out of stock. I told her their website said they had about a dozen. She looked it up online and, sure enough, that was what it said: 11 of them in stock.

She asked a senior member of the staff who looked it up and after intensive study told her and me, "Oh, yes. We have them but they're for online sales."

I asked if they could sell me one of those. She fiddled with the computer terminal for a while and told me, "We can. The in-store price is $149.00." I pointed to the first computer screen where it still said they were $99. She said, "That's the price if you order it on the web and then come in and pick it up here" and I think I'll switch to script format here and make this more readable…

ME: Do I have to pay online?

SHE: No. You can pay here. You just have to place the order on the web.

ME (waving my iPhone:) So if I go to your website and order one, you can sell it to me for fifty dollars less?

SHE: That's right. The only thing is you'll have to wait until your order drops.

ME: "Drops?"

SHE: Right. Because you're ordering it from the main company. You'll have to wait until they process your order and they forward it to us before we can fill it.

ME: And how long do we think that will take?

SHE: Two or three hours. If you'd like, we can phone or text you when the order comes in so you can come back and get it.

By now, a stockboy had brought one of Item A out from the stockroom and it was sitting on the counter not two feet from me. I pointed to it and said, "Because that's ever so much easier for everyone than you just selling this to me right now?"

SHE: I didn't arrange the system, sir. If you'd like to take it now, there may be a way I can sell it to you but the computer will say it's an in-store purchase and I'll have to charge you the in-store price of $149. If you order it online and come back to get it later, I'm sure I can let you have it for the online price of $99.

ME: You do know this is ridiculous. You have a customer here who wants to buy this item. You are in the business of selling items. I have the money to purchase this item…

A supervisor or manager or someone with more power was summoned and much discussion ensued. I think the whole thing took 45 minutes before the person with more power decided they probably wouldn't get in trouble if they sold me the online-only item in-store and they could give me a "courtesy discount" and let me have it for $99.

The argument at Target took about the same length of time. Amber and I had gone to buy supplies and we filled two shopping carts with one Item B, a couple of Item Cs, one each of Items D, E and F and so on. It was a lot of stuff and it took us quite a while to locate it all and fill our carts, but that's one of the appeals of a store like Target. You can stock up on everything you'll need for the next new months in one visit.

The checkout guy scanned it all, item by item, which took a fair amount of time since — I'll put this nicely — he wasn't the swiftest scanner in the retail business. And then about two-thirds of the way through the process, he noticed (as I had, only moments before he did) that the prices of each item were not appearing on his computer screen as he scanned them. Not until he punched in some sort of employee code did they began appearing.

I had inserted my credit card into their reader and once everything was packed into bags, it charged my card and he told me the price was $85 and change.

If I'd just kept my silly mouth shut and left, I would have saved hundreds of dollars and a lot of time but Dummy Me had to say, "Wait…that can't be right." He looked at the bags and the quantity of purchases therein and said, "Oh, of course not. The computer must be malfunctioning."

I said, "I think the problem is that you logged-in in the middle of scanning and it's only reporting the items you scanned after you logged-in." He said that couldn't possibly have been what happened but obviously it was and he knew it was. He started trying to figure out which items he'd scanned before the log-in so he could scan them anew. I insisted that if he was going to do that, he void the $85 charge to my card and start over. It took him a good five minutes to figure out how to do that but he did it. Then he started trying to figure out the most efficient way to unbag our items, scan them all again and rebag: Should he unbag everything at once or do one bag at a time?

By now, there was a long line of other shoppers, some with just one or two items, waiting behind us to pay. A Supervisor Lady came over to see what the problem was and I explained. Without a hint of apology — it was the computer's fault, not the clerk's and somehow not the store's — she told him to unbag everything and scan it all again.

Amber suggested this could be done by someone else. If the same guy had attempted it, we'd still be there. The Supervisor Lady agreed and called for two more employees to move the stuff we were trying to purchase to an adjoining, closed checkout line and take everything out of the bags. She herself would ring them up.

She made it as far as the fourth item, which was a package of paper towels.  I was watching the screen that said what the item was and how much it was. The paper towels came through as "Despicable Me" for what I think was probably the wrong price and I pointed this out.  The amount seemed to me more like the price for a Despicable Me DVD, which is not what we were buying.  The Supervisor Lady told me the computer was probably malfunctioning giving the wrong names for the items but the prices were surely correct.  That did not seem like a belief in which I could put a lot of faith.

The lady who was bagging for her said, "They did an offer on these paper towels that tied-in with the Despicable Me movie a few years ago.  That's why the name of the movie is listed for these paper towels."  Okay, that's possible but by now, I was untrusting of the store and its computer…and I wasn't buying the premise that the store and its employees were blameless if the computer was screwing up.  That seemed to be the prevailing attitude I was getting.

So a few screw-ups later, I told them to just forget the whole thing and Amber and I left and went to another store.  That meant more driving and filling our carts again but everything there was totaled correctly (I think) and it came to a bit over $400.

I called the main Target offices and got the person you're supposed to get when you have a complaint.  It was a gent who obviously had a bunch of prepared scripts in front of him and his job was to read me the generic apology that seemed most applicable to my problem and get rid of me.  It pretty much came down to "We deeply regret that this happened and we hope you'll consider shopping at Target again. Bye-bye!"

The next day, I phoned up and got the manager of the Target store where it all happened and she was very sincere and pained to hear it but it all came down to "We deeply regret that this happened and we hope you'll consider shopping at Target again. Bye-bye!"  Neither gave me any reason to believe that it wouldn't.   And of course, neither offered a discount or a gift card or reimbursement for my parking or anything to lure me back.

But the thing is: I will be back.  These stores have good prices and they're convenient and I don't have a lot of better options.  Everywhere is like that these days.

I know they don't screw up most of the time and that I just got unlucky and I'm sure I'll get unlucky again someday. My problem is not so much with the people or the computers as it is with the power structure between them.  At the Home Depot, it took 45 minutes for what should have been a one-minute transaction.  The computer essentially said, "No, no!  You can't sell this item to the customer who is standing there eager to pay our advertised purchase price for it!" And it took the 45 minutes to work around that digital decree.

At Target, the computer was scanning items but not registering their prices and it may not have been totaling what it did total correctly.  In both cases, the human beings in those stories were helpless to do anything about the problems.

I have a GPS in my car that works great…most of the time.  If I'm driving to my home from the south, it tells me the wrong route.  When I'm approaching my garage and all I have to do is to continue in the same direction for four blocks and I'm there, it's telling me to hang a right and make four turns to travel an extra fifteen blocks to get to my garage.  Something similar happens when I'm heading east on Franklin approaching the Magic Castle.  I can see the entrance right ahead of me and the GPS wants me to make a left on Sycamore and head up into the Hollywood Hills.

I need to treat the GPS as a guide and to occasionally override its commands.  Retailer clerks need to be able to say "This isn't right" and to override the machines when they're wrong.  In both cases, the store employees knew something was wrong.  They just didn't know how to work around that something wrong. Look — I love computers. You may be amazed to learn that I'm using one right now and there's a good chance that you are, too. But they're built by humans so they're subject to human error, which can only be corrected by human effort.

Also, the Target stores need to field customer complaints with something more substantial than "We're sorry we screwed up. Give us another try and maybe we won't." Imagine if someday you heard that from a hospital that removed the wrong kidney.

Ray Bradbury called his classic book about censorship Fahrenheit 451 because that's the temperature of burning paper. This new department on this blog is called Fahrenheit 212 because that's the temp when human blood comes to a full, rolling boil.  It will be about items in the news that test that statistic.

Today, if you wanna get mad just read this. It's about how the overwhelming majority of teachers in this country find it necessary to dig into their own wallets to pay for things like pens and paper and bulletin boards for their classrooms. Then think about (a) how poorly we pay teachers in the first place and (b) how much our governments (national, state, local, etc.) pay for things that aren't necessary or which enrich the rich. Got you up to an internal temp of 212? It should.

I was a guest on this evening's podcast from The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog. It should replay in the space below…

We note the passing of the fine writer (and reporter) Thomas Wolfe. It's been a long time since I read any of his works but much in them has stayed with me. Jeffrey Toobin has some worthy thoughts about the man.

• Donald Trump now vowing to identify and fire all White House staffers who leak stories to the press, which by the way made up those leaking White House staffers who don't actually exist.

• Discourse in this country would be better if people would stop viewing any stupid Liberal who says something dumb as a spokesperson for all Liberals or any stupid Conservative who says something dumb as a spokesperson for all Conservatives.

Another high recommendation for those of you in the Los Angeles area! Every so often — but not often enough for me — my buddy Vince Waldron convenes a session of his funny, funny improv show, Totally Looped! Here's how Totally Looped works. Vince assembles a bunch of unusual video clips. Vince then assembles a bevy of funny people he knows — and believe me, Vince knows some very funny people. Takes one to know one, I guess…

Anyway, the funny people don't see the clips before the show or have any idea what they are. During the performance, they're called upon to dub in the voices, making it up on the spot. I've seen this a half-dozen times and always laughed that thing I call my head off…and that's about all you need to know except Where, When and Who.

"Where" is Dynasty Typewriter at The Hayworth Theater, which is located at 2511 Wilshire Boulevard in Westlake in downtown Los Angeles. "When" is Friday, May 25 at 8 PM. "Who" — the folks Vince will have looping the clips — amounts to Joe Liss (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Maribeth Monroe (Workaholics, The Good Place), Oscar Nunez (The Office), Rick Overton (I"m Dying Up Here), Angela V. Shelton (Frangela), Cole Stratton (Rifftrax) and Gary Anthony Williams (Boston Legal). Tickets and more info can be found here.

Sadly, I'll be outta town that night so go in my stead and encourage Vince to do more of these when I'm in town. Thank you.

A million people — give or take 999,993 — wrote to tell me about this article about a bar in New York with a wall that will interest any fan of quality cartooning. Note that the cartoon Sergio drew would make more sense if the photo hadn't cropped off the sword the guy on the left is holding.

I haven't posted a Seth Meyers "Closer Look" lately but they've all been pretty good. Here's tonight's…