Monthly Archives: January 2020

We probably should have known Mitch McConnell had the votes to block witnesses in the impeachment trial a few days ago when he said he didn't have the votes to block witnesses in the impeachment trial. Mitch likes to do that…lull the opposition into a false note of hope and then win at the last minute, thereby making himself look like the guy who wins the tough ones. But I don't think anyone's too surprised.

I agree though with David A. Graham when he writes, "But if Democrats didn't get what they'd hoped for, [Republican Senator Lamar] Alexander gave them the best outcome they could have expected."

And I say that as someone who's always suspicious of phony silver linings…like when the party that loses a big vote says, "This is the best thing that could have happened to us." I hear that and I always think, "You would have said that if you'd won." But this time, when there was zero chance of the Republican Senate ousting D.J.T. no matter what he did, the best Democrats could do was peel off a few consolation prizes. And with several G.O.P. Senators saying the Dems proved what they set out to prove but that it didn't justify removal…well, that's something. Guess that "perfect phone call" wasn't completely perfect.

Alexander's statement is not a great act of courage. He'll still vote to keep Trump in office and he really chickens out when he writes, "There is no need to consider further the frivolous second article of impeachment that would remove the president for asserting his constitutional prerogative to protect confidential conversations with his close advisers." In other words, it's perfectly fine to stonewall a Congressional investigation if it might reveal more wrongdoing.

And Trump will still say this vote and the one to acquit him prove he was utterly innocent, the whole thing was a hoax, Schiff is corrupt, the phone call was perfect, etc. I'm just glad to see a couple of Republicans — not just Alexander — take some cautious baby steps off the "Trump never does anything wrong" bandwagon.

Allow me to introduce you to one of the greatest optical illusions ever…the Ames Window!

Go read Jack Holmes. The article is entitled, "The Republican Senate Just Wrote Donald Trump a Blank Check to Ratf*ck the 2020 Election." Opening paragraph:

Who will stop him now? Donald Trump knows the answer after Lamar Alexander announced Thursday evening that, yeah, the president used taxpayer dollars to extort a foreign government into ratfucking the 2020 election for his personal gain — so what? A couple of Republican senators will vote to hear from eye witnesses to the American president's attack on American democracy, but not enough to actually hear from the witnesses. Mitch McConnell has surely arranged for that. Soon enough, they will vote to acquit him having acknowledged that he did it. And so the Republican Senate will rubber-stamp the president's activities with respect to Ukraine, and offer him a blank check to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, between now and an election in November that we cannot in any way expect to be free and fair.

Okay. This impeachment didn't work. Let's see if the next one does.

That's a very old photo of Fred Silverman, the superstar network programming exec who passed away today at the age of 82. It's a pic from when he was programming Saturday morning cartoons for CBS and I picked it for the following reason. Years later, when Fred was programming every single daypart for NBC, he told me that the Saturday morn position was the only time in his career he was truly happy.

I don't know how true that was but I do know that he was heavily involved in the creative end of the kids' shows he supervised back then…so much so that a lot of people credit him with creating characters like Space Ghost and Scooby Doo. That I know is not true. He put them on the air but didn't create them.

Fred's career included executive positions not only at CBS and NBC but at ABC, as well. He was probably the most famous programmer ever but as an associate of his once told me, "Fred probably gets way too much credit for the shows that were hits and way too much blame for the ones that were flops." I worked on some of those hits and flops but didn't have too much contact with Fred himself. Most of it was done through his underlings — nervous folks, all.

One time, a script I'd worked on had been handed in to one of Fred's Vice-President who had read it but also passed it on to The Man Himself. I asked the Veep what he thought of it and I am not joking and he was only half-joking when he gave me this reply: "I'll know what I think of it when Fred tells me what I think of it."

Fred liked that particular script which was a relief. I saw what happened when he didn't like a script. You might just as well forget about working for — or even watching — that network again. Still, I liked the guy.

Not that it will do you any good now but I'll tell you what I learned about the way to please Fred with a pilot script for Saturday morning. First off, at least the germ cell had to come from him. Either that, or he'd take your idea and turn it inside out so it became his idea. Secondly, put in everything. The more characters, the more dogs, the more gimmicks, the more villains, the better.

A Saturday morning cartoon pilot script should run 35 pages, 40 max. Unless you did one for Fred, in which case it could wind up running 70 or 80. One friend of mine did a script that ran 110 because there were so many characters and super-vehicles and dogs and gizmos and every one had to get some attention in the teleplay. My friend said it was a real good script until it came time to produce it and it had to be hacked down to 38. He said, "It was so terrible after that, I wish I'd put your name on it."

That was one reason some Silverman-bought shows weren't that wonderful on the air. Another was that he liked to mix and match. Often, Hanna-Barbera would have a half-dozen projects in development with Fred and he'd finally say, "Take this character out of this show and this character out of this other show and put them both in that other show along with the dog from that show we developed last season…" He sometimes thought that way when he programmed live-action for prime-time, too.

I only have one real Fred Silverman story. A friend of mine was working on a cartoon show for Fred that was marginal in the ratings. This was when Fred was running NBC. They'd done Season 1 and were waiting to find out if he was going to order a Season 2. My friend had been offered a definite job on a show on another network and he was trying to decide if he should grab the sure thing or wait in the hope that Fred would pick up the NBC show. He preferred staying with the NBC show but was worried it would be canceled and he'd wind up unemployed.

My friend wanted to know what I thought the chances were of Fred green-lighting Season 2. I said I didn't know but I had a meeting with Fred the next day about a project. "Maybe I'll pick up a clue for you," I told him.

The next day, I was in the meeting with Fred and several other folks. One of the several other folks mentioned the show my friend was worrying would be axed. Fred said — and this is a quote — "I can't wait to cancel that piece of shit."

That's a pretty definite declaration so I felt safe calling my friend that evening and telling him what Fred had said. Based on that, my friend signed on for the show on the other network, told the NBC show that he was leaving and thanked me profusely for helping him make a wise and informed decision. And two days later, Fred picked up the NBC show for a second season. Network TV is often like that but it was more often like that around Fred Silverman.

The only late night show my TiVo grabs every night is Stephen Colbert's. I catch most of the segments I like from the other shows (mostly Seth Meyer's) on YouTube but Colbert is my only late night One Pass.  I like the show a lot but a few little things bug me and I'll mention one here…

I know there are a few folks who work on the show who follow this blog so…would one of you ask your producers or someone to move the guest chair forward about four inches?  Tell them their host spends an awful lot of his interviews turned mostly away from the camera.  I cannot think of any reason why this is a good thing.

Maybe even show them the above side-by-side comparisons of how Colbert often looks when he's talking to a guest and how David Letterman looked when working on that same stage.  Come to think of it, maybe there are plans around that would show you just where the guest seat was placed in relation to Dave's seat.  It worked fine for him for more than 21 years.

Mr. Colbert is a handsome guy with an expressive face.  Unless you're doing a "twin" thing like The Patty Duke Show or Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap, why make him look like a stand-in has taken his place and you can only shoot him from the back in a two-shot?

What I did last night was to attend a party celebrating the release of the new book, Betty Boop's Guide to a Bold and Balanced Life. It's subtitled "Fun, Fierce, Fabulous Advice Inspired by the Animated Icon" and it would appear to be an attempt to establish the lovely Ms. Boop as a woman of today, not of the thirties. If that's the authors' goal, I'd say they're doing a good job of it.

It's nice to see Betty doing well, especially since she quit that job she had working for Hooters. She's certainly remaining popular in merchandise and t-shirts and not long ago, I even met a lady in her twenties who had an honest-to-God, permanent Betty Boop tattoo on her thigh. (I tried to teach her the name of Grim Natwick, who designed Betty, but the young woman wasn't interested.) Betty's had a good career for a woman who doesn't really have a profile.

The book looks like a great thing to give someone who loves Betty…and that's an amazingly large group given that she did her most memorable work from 1932 to 1939 and it hasn't been that easy to see it for about the last three decades. Here's a link to order said book.

Speaking of lovely women who never age, I ran into my friend Judy Strangis at the party. A whole bunch of guys roughly in my age bracket are reacting right now, remembering her from her Barbie commercials, her role on the fine TV show Room 222, her performances as Dyna-Girl on ElectraWoman and Dyna-Girl, her turning up on so many other TV shows, etc. I introduced her to my pal Jerry Beck, who was also there, and he — being a guy roughly in my age bracket — immediately rattled off much of her IMDB listing without consulting IMDB. Here's a pic of the three of us…

The party was full of interesting people who, like 90% of such parties, was in a room too small for the number of people in it so I couldn't get over to some of the folks there I wanted to talk to. But I did have a lovely conversation with George Chakiris, who has been in dozens of movies and stage productions, and who seems to be aging at about the same sluggish rate as Judy. He was quite surprised at what I wanted to talk to him about.

In 1956, an actor named George Kerris appeared in the film Meet Me in Las Vegas and did a wonderful dance scene with the film's ingenue, Betty Lynn. They rehearsed for many weeks and worked hard on it. This took a certain amount of patience on Kerris's part because he was an accomplished dancer (two years later, he was playing Riff in the British production of West Side Story and he later played Bernardo in the movie) and Ms Lynn was not.

But they got through all the rehearsing and filming, only to see the dance go unseen when it was cut from the movie. As we discussed here, it has been partially restored for the DVD release. They put in what leads up to the dance and what follows it but not the dance itself.

As you know, I'm close with Betty Lynn, who is now retired and living in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, delighting locals and tourists who want to meet Thelma Lou from The Andy Griffith Show. And as you've guessed, George Kerris became George Chakiris.

His face lit up when I mentioned Betty and he asked me to please give her a hug from him, which I'll do next time I get back to Mt. Airy. But I just called Betty and told her and she couldn't have been happier. She said, "He was so sweet and so nice and so patient putting up with me having to learn the dance." It's kind of fun to reignite a happy memory from 60+ years ago.

And speaking of James Corden, here from his show tonight he "comes clean" on the subject of whether he drives the car in his "Carpool Karoke" segments. We discussed this issue back here and back here and came to the conclusion that he does drive it all or most of the time. Since then, I have seen him with some star cruising my neighborhood and at least at that moment, Mr. Corden was driving…

Here's a long profile of James Corden. I really like James Corden everywhere except on his show where he fawns too much over too many people unworthy of such fawning. At the time he got the CBS late night job, he was prepping to star in a new revival of my favorite musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and I wish he'd done that for a year or two and then taken over The Late Late Show. I think he was an excellent (though wholly unpredictable) choice for the latter job but I would have loved to see him in the former.

The other day, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared what they called a "peace plan" for an enduring peace between Israel and Palestine. But it wasn't really a peace plan. It was more like surrender terms. A real peace plan might have had Palestine participating in its formulation.

Here we have another case where Fred Kaplan of the Liberal site Slate had almost the exact same reaction to a hunk of news as Daniel Larison from the American Conservative. At a time when so many partisan sites argue the exact opposite of one another, it's worth considering a little bit of agreement.

When I was working on the TV show That's Incredible! in the eighties, we did a lot of stories about people who did daring things, leaping off this or over that or otherwise risking their lives. At one point, someone at ABC became concerned — as some of us on the staff were — that the show was glorifying that kind of risk-taking.

Then along came a story — all filmed and edited and ready-to-air — that seemed a bit excessive in that direction. I was not involved in putting together the segment but I was the guy who would have to write the lines by which John Davidson would introduce it. Someone on our staff we'll call Mike was supervising and editing the piece and he told me, "The network's asking us to shoot and include a brief interview with a psychologist or someone like that to explain why people take such risks."

I asked Mike how he went about finding such a person and he reached for a little box of file cards on his desk, a box that others in his department often accessed.

"Easy," he said. "I just consult the master list of Quote Whores." And sure enough, a label on the front of the box actually said that. It said, "Quote Whores."

Quote Whores, he explained, were people who would say anything to get on television. A-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. There were about thirty 3-by-5 cards in the box and he riffled through them until he found the name of a well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist.

I will not tell you who it was but some of you would recognize the name. This person did a lot of TV and in so doing, promoted a lot of high-selling books and was hired for consulting jobs and media appearances. I have no idea how good a psychologist this person was but they never, Mike told me, said no to any chance to be on TV or radio even for free. They knew the value of being famous and being on television.

He placed a call to the well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist and explained what was needed. The well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist apparently said, "Send your crew over" and Mike and a two-person camera crew hopped in a car. Upon their return, the footage was edited into the segment and before the day was out, Mike showed me the finished (he thought) piece as it would air.

It now included about thirty seconds of the well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist explaining why certain people need to risk their lives occasionally and how it demonstrated a certain deep, personal need to prove one's courage to one's self and to reinforce a sense of identity and blah blah blah. It sounded like psychobabble to me, probably because it was.

The finished (Mike thought) piece was dispatched to the network to see if they liked it. They didn't like it.

The next morning, an ABC Standards and Practices person (or someone there) told Mike, "No, no…you misunderstood. We want the expert to say that people who risk their lives like this have some sort of clinical disregard for their own lives and feeling of worthlessness." Or at least they wanted something like that. Whatever it was, it was the opposite of what the well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist had said.

Mike apologized and promised to get what was requested. Then he went to the Quote Whores box…and did he now find a different "expert" who would say what was now needed? No, he called the same one.

The same well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist said, "Come on back here" and three hours later, the segment was finished with the same expert spewing psychobabble that precisely contradicted the previous day's psychobabble.

I was surprised that someone with a reputation to protect would do something like that…and then after I thought it over a little longer, I was surprised that I was surprised. My cynicism should have kicked in way earlier.

What separated the well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist from any other psychologist was that the well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist was a well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV psychologist. That person knew, as did all who inhabit Quote Whores boxes everywhere, the value of being well-known and seen-often-on-TV.

So that's the story I have for you today. You might be interested to know what reminded me of it. I was reading this article about Alan Dershowitz and also this article about Alan Dershowitz. Once upon a time, in a more innocent pre-O.J. time, I really respected the well-known, seen-often-on-your-TV legal authority, Alan Dershowitz.

Here's a strange article. David Letterman hosted the Academy Awards in 1995 to generally unfavorable reaction. Jason Bailey thinks Dave did a great job and interviewed him about it, apparently with the goal of convincing him it wasn't the disaster he [Dave] made it out to be.

Personally, I don't think a lot of people care very much about who hosts the Oscars and certainly not for very long after the ceremony. I don't really get why it's a discussion topic twenty-five years later. For what it's worth, I wrote about my feelings on this timely topic a few years ago here…

Within the Academy hierarchy though, they weren't fond of Letterman as host…The complaint was along the lines of, "Dave didn't understand or care that this wasn't supposed to be The David Letterman Show with occasional interruptions to present some silly awards. The man only knows one way to do a TV show and he kept expecting everything to be done that way." My feeling was that it was a slightly-unfair criticism. You ask Dave Letterman to host your show, you shouldn't moan when he comes in and acts like Dave Letterman. I thought he was the wrong guy for the job but he did just what they should have expected and he was more entertaining than some Oscar hosts…like, say, most of them.

This is a wild speculation but I'm thinking that Letterman's disappointment with the night was that proved, at least to him, that he wasn't Johnny Carson. I'm not saying his talk show was better or worse than Carson's…

No, come to think of it, I will. I think the first half of his late night talk show career was better than Johnny's and the last half wasn't. But the point is he wasn't the all-around entertainer Carson was, capable of letting most others shine.

Mr. Bailey's article says "Some of the most scathing reviews came from the West Coast, whose inhabitants may have resented this outsider, this New York wiseass, flying in to make light of their big night." I don't think it was that at all. West Coast inhabitants haven't changed that much in a quarter-of-a-century and the current crop doesn't seem to resent Ricky Gervais pissing all over the Golden Globe Awards and their recipients. I just think Letterman didn't seem to connect with the ceremony he was hosting just as in his later years on CBS, he didn't seem to be that interested in most of his guests or the show with his name in the title or even with his own monologues. But when he was good…

There's been a little back-and-forth on the Internet with reports of the passing of the fine comedy writer-performer Jack Burns. He had died, then maybe he had not died, then he'd died, then he was definitely still with us, then he'd died…this was all within about the last 18 hours. His manager has now confirmed that, sadly, the "he died" people were correct…but respect to those who were cautious and/or optimistic.

I knew Jack a little. He was a charming guy, even funnier off-stage than on…and he could be pretty darned funny on-stage. His career was pretty simple: He teamed with George Carlin for a two-man act that made a lot of noise. George later struck out on his own. Jack teamed with Avery Schreiber, who was probably a better contrast/complement. They were everywhere for a while but not exclusively. When Don Knotts left The Andy Griffith Show, Jack played Andy's new deputy for a while. It didn't work, mostly because Jack had committed the unforgivable sin of not being Don Knotts.

But he was still a fine comedy performer, prominent enough to host Saturday Night Live during its second season. And then he made the slow move to behind the camera as a producer and writer. On Fridays, ABC's knock-off of SNL, Jack was an off-camera producer-writer and an on-camera announcer. A lot of folks remembered his feigned on-camera fist fight with Andy Kaufman. He worked on Hee-Haw and The Muppet Show and even delved into voice work for cartoons now and then. He was on Wait Till Your Father Gets Home and on Animaniacs and I cast and directed him in the recurring role of Detective Fogarty on Mother Goose & Grimm…and that's only a partial list.

You can find out more about his career in this obit and I imagine there will be many more posted before the day is out.

I always liked the guy and from what I could see, everyone else did, as well. I remember one of his outstanding performances was as the M.C. at the memorial service for his late partner Avery Schreiber. He spoke with love and affection and also — and we all knew that Avery would have wanted it this way — got some enormous laughs. I hope someone does that for Jack.

As Jonathan Chait notes, "Many Republicans started the process believing 1) President Trump did not demand investigation in return for aid but that 2) doing so would be unacceptable. They now believe the opposite on both points." And that's what happened. When they thought he hadn't done it — or at least that that couldn't be proven — they said it would be a very bad, even criminal thing for Trump to do. But now that it's pretty obvious he did it, it's no big deal, just politics as usual and certainly not an impeachable offense.

Mr. Chait has also written this article about why he thinks Bernie Sanders is not the guy to defeat Donald Trump and Willam Saletan wrote this article arguing the same thing. My opinion doesn't mean a whole lot and it is very much subject to change…but right this minute, I think they're probably right. And neither article even mentions another problem, apart from the Socialist label that Sanders has as a candidate: His age and his recent heart attack. There's a lot of grueling campaigning ahead and any medical problems could become a big election issue. Remember how much traction Trump claimed when Hillary had a cold.

But do read Eric Levitz on why the Democratic party needs to embrace or at least accept support from those who may not be as ideologically pure as some of us might like. I think this is a very wise, important observation. It will be of special interest to those who believe (and I don't think I do) that Trump will cry "Foul!' and refuse to accept defeat, and that if we want to get him to actually vacate the Oval Office, he has to be beaten by a landslide. That's all for now.

The Washington Post has been doing excellent reporting lately. Must be because they added Cookie Monster to their staff a year or two ago…

Charles P. Pierce reminds us how Ken Starr is one of those people who long ago lost the moral right to scold anyone about anything. One quote…

Speaking in the condescending tones of a Baptist preacher who you know has bondage gear stashed in a steamer trunk somewhere, Starr presumed to lecture the Senate on the parameters of its constitutional duties. It was altogether remarkable to hear the author of a soft-core-porn-novella of an impeachment report wax sententiously, and in cathedral tones, about being in "democracy's ultimate court." It was altogether remarkable to hear a guy who lost his job at Baylor University after he oversaw a period where the school's athletics department was plagued by sexual-assault allegations lecture a chamber full of lawyers about how precious due process is. If a more sanctimonious toad than Kenneth Starr ever has crawled through American politics, I'm hard-pressed to know who it was.

A few years ago, a producer I know slightly asked me if I had any ideas for Reality Shows because that's what he's producing these days…or at least trying to sell. I told him I didn't because my mind, to the extent it works at all, doesn't work in that direction. He said, "Well, if it ever does work that way, remember the fundamental rule of Reality Shows." I know when to be the straight man in a discussion so I asked what that rule was.

He said, "There is nothing you can think of that someone won't do to get on television."

He was thinking of feats involving physical danger, eating insects, getting naked, humiliating themselves and/or their families…things like that. But it strikes me that it also extends to folks who once advocated a position on allegedly moral or legal grounds now advocating the exact opposite because they think that at this precise moment, doing so will yield fame and/or fortune. And in so doing, making you wonder if they ever stood for anything, then or now.