Monthly Archives: February 2020

Our pal Matt Hurwitz wrote a nice piece on Sid and Marty Krofft for Variety. You have no idea what an experience it was to work for that company.

My favorite one-man singing group, Julien Neel, favors us with a very old song written a few years ago by Randy Newman. Notice that when you're the one with the red tie, you get to sing lead…

• If I were Pete Rose, I'd hurry and get a bet down on whether or not I'm going to finally get into the Hall of Fame.

• Apparently, not only could Trump shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes but anyone who shows loyalty to him could do it and not spend a day in prison.

So today, everyone's saying Biden is through and they were saying that about Elizabeth Warren a week or two ago. Yeah, it looks that way but we forget that in primaries, lots of folks have their moment of inevitability either way. There was a moment not that long ago when Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann all looked like the presumptive Republican nominee. Someone should dig up that clip of Newt on Fox News explaining why, mathematically, no one could possibly beat him…and then he didn't even come in second or third.

Yeah, it looks bad for Biden but I think two primaries in small states is too soon to count anyone out. I'm not saying he'll get the nomination or he won't; just that it looks less likely than it did a few weeks ago. I'm sensing that we will soon have a moment when Mike Bloomberg looks like he has a lock on it…and it may turn out to be like Newt's unstoppability.

I still haven't decided who I'm going to vote for in the California primary. I'm leaning Bernie but I can't help but think that the label "Socialist" — and to a lesser extent, his recent heart problems — gives the Trump Slander Machine way too much to work with.

In the meantime, if you're panicked that Trump can't be beat, read this piece by Josh Marshall and note that it was posted before the results from New Hampshire. It references the Quinnipiac Poll, which is one of the ones I tend to trust. (The rule is that if you trust the poll when it tells you things you want to believe, you also have to trust it when it tells you things you don't want to believe. I think Quinnipiac is a good indicator either way.) Here's an excerpt from Marshall's piece for those of you too lazy to click over and read the whole thing…

Quinnipiac has head to head match ups with Democrats. All the top candidates beat Trump by significant margins. Bloomberg 51-42, Sanders 51-43, Biden 50-43. There's a lot of information that tells us that President Trump can definitely win reelection. But these numbers all point to an incumbent who has an uphill climb at best. And at least for now there's little evidence suggesting a really different situation than we've had to date.

They also certainly suggest that if you think Sanders is a weak general election candidate that must be based on the predicted effects of attacks that have yet to happen. Because 51-43 is pretty solid.

It is but I think Sanders is the perfect guy for a Trump rallying cry of "He will bring us Communism and destroy the America we love" which will motivate Trump's base and the squishy folks who aren't quite solidly within it. And yes, I agree that winning this year is less about peeling people off from your opponent's base than it us about attracting Undecideds.

Still, "defining your opponent" (i.e., lying about him or her) would be much harder to do that with Mayor Pete (as those who don't know how to pronounce "Buttigieg" call him) or Bloomberg. Both have their weak points but even Trump can't convince his followers that the ninth-richest person in the nation is a Commie.

And I really need to see and hear more about Amy Klobuchar. Maybe we all do.

An old e-mail pal of mine, Mark Bernstein, sent me this…

Here's my theory, based on my own experience. Watching the Oscar telecast used to be a must-do for me, but I didn't watch this year. Part of the appeal was being among the first to know who won. I don't need to watch the show for that any more – I can just look it up online, even checking in a couple of times during the evening to see winners lists updated in real time.

For hosts, Jon Stewart was a draw for me, as were Johnny Carson and Bob Hope in years past. Neil Patrick Harris was also appealing, but a much bigger draw for the Tonys (which, admittedly, I watch every year no matter what). But you're right, the host alone doesn't matter much.

I'm also less invested because I go out to movies less often these days, and so haven't seen, well, just about anything. The closest I came to seeing any major nominee was screenplay nominee Knives Out. This year, even the categories I normally have covered were more obscure to me, as I'd only seen three of the Animated Feature nominees and two of the Visual Effects nominees. I find I can be perfectly content waiting a few months to a year and watching most movies at home on my 65" screen.

For those reasons, I'm guessing the ratings will continue to decline.

I think you're right, Mark, but I'll add on that I think one of the reasons we used to watch the Oscars was that it was a live show and there was the very real chance that something unplanned would happen.

Someone would streak, someone would cuss, someone would fall on their ass, someone would have an emotional breakdown, someone would stage a political protest…something unexpected and you didn't want to miss it. I also think that when Saturday Night Live started up, it had a real sense of danger about it and you didn't want to not be watching the night someone said the F-word or flashed some naked body part or the set fell over.

We don't worry these days about missing a live moment. If someone on the Oscars mooned the camera, there would be ninety clips of it on YouTube within twenty minutes. Matter of fact, a perfectly fine way to watch the Academy Awards — in many ways far better than sitting through a three-hours-and-twenty-minutes show — is just to watch highlights online.

That may be Reason Numero Uno that the ratings ain't what they used to be; that and the fact that so many nominations are for movies we didn't see. Somewhere out there, there are folks whose job it is to boost those ratings and it must be frustrating to them that they can't control what gets nominated and who wins.

But I think television really changed when most of us got VCRs and gained the ability to tape a show, watch it when we wanted to (or over and over) and to fast-forward through the dull parts. And it changed a lot more when enough of it became available the next day on the Internet.

Almost two years ago, a reader of this site sent me the link to the first video below.  It's from a production of Little Shop of Horrors and I thought the design and puppetry of Audrey II in this was the best I'd ever seen.  Take a look and see if you don't agree…

I posted it here and asked, "Who built this puppet? Who's working it? Who's doing the voice?" It's taken a while but thanks to some helpful readers of this site and a bit of online detective work, I think I have the answer.

The puppet was built by Dennis Lancaster of Intermission Productions in Tracy, California. And he did a great job on it. The puppeteer who did such an amazing job of operating seems to have been a performer named Kyle Richlin and it may have been an actor named Daniel Simpson as the voice of The Plant. Whoever it was, he was also terrific.

In the meantime, if you're planning on staging Little Shop of Horrors in your school or theater or den and you want to rent the best danged puppets I've ever seen for your presentation, here's a little commercial for Intermission Productions. I don't know what they charge but they probably won't demand your last drop of blood…

This Thursday, February 13, my occasional employers Sid and Marty Krofft receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The ceremony commences at 11:30 AM at 6201 Hollywood Boulevard, right in front of the Funko Store. Like all of these ceremonies, you can attend but you might not secure a good place to stand unless you get there early.

There will be celebrities including some cast members from The Brady Bunch Variety Hour and it wouldn't surprise me if H.R. Pufnstuf himself put in an appearance. I'm not sure if I can get there but there will be a live video simulcast on this page and usually, they leave it up to be replayed after the event. These two wonderful men have been responsible for countless memorable TV programs and for me being able to buy a house. Somehow, I think the star is for just the former.

Let's consider this for a moment…

Without a host or a great deal of pizzazz, ABC's telecast of the Academy Awards reached its smallest audience ever of 23.6 million viewers. The Nielsen company said Sunday night's audience was down 20 percent from a year ago. The previous low-water mark for the Oscars was the 26.5 million people who watched in 2018.

In years past when the ratings were down, we always heard a very simple explanation for this: Blame the host. The host wasn't a draw. People didn't want to tune in because they weren't thrilled by the the choice of host. The host failed somehow. I guess the reason this year is that viewers didn't like the fact that there was no host.

I would like to advance the theory that the host doesn't matter and has never really mattered much. Once upon a time, one of the top-rated shows of each year was the annual Miss America pageant. There are probably many reasons why it's no longer on a major network and it has about as many viewers as it has contestants…but clearly, we just don't care that much about it these days. I think people just aren't as interested in awards shows, especially ones that lack superstar performances. I don't think the Oscars will ever go away (or to Basic Cable) but maybe some of the pretentiousness could. Or should.

Two men sing "Seventy-Six Trombones" from The Music Man with zero trombones — or any other musical instruments…

I cut a joke about Bob Kane out of the previous post. I thought it was funny yesterday morning when I posted it but by nightfall, it seemed like something people could view as mean. I have a number of mixed feelings about Bob but none of them make me want to be mean to him or his memory.

As I wrote here and other places, I knew Bob — not a close association but I certainly spent a lot of hours talking with him. He didn't seem to care about others in the comic book field very much but he did like to talk about himself and that's more fun when you have an audience. I've always been a good audience for people in the comic book field, especially those responsible for the comics I read as a kid.

There's no question that Bob got too much credit for Batman but in the rush to give credit to folks like Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson, a few folks out there may be too eager to undercredit Bob. Last year, a lady called me from a very prestigious magazine and asked me if I'd be so good as to help her vet or "fact-check" an article on Batman written by a so-called expert. I'm fairly sure the article has never been published and that may be because I (and maybe others) told her that many assertions in it were wrong or at least not supported by any evidence.

The first one went something like this: "Fans of Batman have been stunned to learn that Bob Kane, long hailed as the brilliant artist who created Batman, never drew a single panel of the Caped Crusader's comic book." That is not so…the part about him never drawing, I mean. Bob did not draw well and Bob did not draw for long…but he definitely drew until he had the clout and a contract that allowed him to live well while others slaved over their drawing boards.

The next assertion was that he really had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of Batman. Again, not so. One can argue that there would have been no such character without Bill Finger but that doesn't mean Bob contributed nothing. And when one is condemning the anonymity and other wrongs forced upon Finger, one should not make it seem like this only happened to people if they collaborated with Bob Kane. The industry and others in it did this to lots of people.

This is admittedly not a great defense of Robert "Bob" Kane but that industry should get some of the blame. Sometimes in comics, alone or with others, you come up with something that's extremely successful and extremely lucrative. There's something dangerous about a profession that makes you think that to achieve any sort of fame and fortune for it, you have to try and grab everyone else's fame and fortune.

I have still not seen the Joker movie. I have a DVD screener of it that I could pop in any time but this feels to me like a film that should be seen in a theater…and when one is in the mood for a certain intensity that I can only take on certain occasions. I'll get to it but I'm never in a hurry to see any movie these days. I can't recall the last picture I couldn't take my time getting around to.

Still, I was glad to see the film get a little love if only because the names of Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson got on the screen last night and they've also been mentioned in some of the press for the movie. Their roles in the creation of the greatest villain ever in comics have never been properly acknowledged, nor have many other contributions to the Batman mythos.

They deserve it…as Rob Salkowitz explains in this news story this morning.

Last night, Cynthia Erivo did not win an Oscar.  She was up for two — Best Lead Actress and Best Original Song — and won neither. If she had, she would have entered the rare category known as "EGOT" — a person who's won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. There are a number of people, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lily Tomlin and Hugh Jackman who are only one award away from that status.

Six people — Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, James Earl Jones, Alan Menken, Harry Belafonte and Quincy Jones — have achieved EGOT but at least one of their awards was of the honorary/special variety so some might say they don't count. Going just by competitive awards, fifteen people have won at least one of each. Wanna guess who they are? Jot down your answers and then you can check those answers in this article. You will not get them all.

Through the miracle that is a TiVo with a Fast Forward button, I got through the entirety of the Academy Awards telecast in about twenty-five minutes. Nothing I'm reading online today has me thinking maybe I missed something important.

I did put the brakes on and stop briefly for a few of the acceptance speeches in the categories that don't usually get much notice. I did think Brad Pitt was pretty darn good in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But what I always think about at these ceremonies is that when you see someone win for Best Editing or Best Sound Mixing, you're probably seeing the high point of that person's entire life…and a life-changing moment at that.

Brad Pitt's world probably didn't change that much last night. It's kind of like when they bring millionaire celebrities onto game shows and let them play for charity. Winning doesn't matter that much to them.

Actually, I'm not qualified to say whether Pitt's was the Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role because I didn't see all the others. I did watch A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and didn't think Tom Hanks quite disappeared into the role enough to be convincing as a man who wasn't a natural performer. I felt the same way about him playing Walt Disney. Pitt may well have been the best choice.

I'm also not qualified to say how good or bad the ceremony itself was, having opted out more than 75% of it. Not having a main host seems to cut down on the morning-after judgements that the show sucked because people don't have a specific host to beat up on.

Needless to say, a lot of folks are upset at omissions in the "In Memoriam" reel. The big "How could they possibly leave him/her out?" reactions seem to be about Tim Conway, Luke Perry, Cameron Boyce, Jan-Michael Vincent, Carol Lynley, Michael J. Pollard and Sid Haig. My position here is that while I would have liked to see some of those folks included, I think the overlooking of people who weren't actors is the greater injustice. Have you seen anyone today express shock at the non-inclusion of a cinematographer or a writer or a producer? I didn't think so.

Here's a link to a photo gallery of the 163 people who could have been in the montage. If you enjoy kvetching about this, I'm sure you can find others to be outraged about.

The Broadway community has been mourning the prolific writer of great showtunes, Jerry Herman, who passed away last December. We have here an hour with Mr. Herman. It was recorded in 2009 and it's part interview. The other part is some of Jerry's better songs sung by Ron Raines, Debbie Gravitte and my pal Jason Graae, none of whom sing "Hello, Dolly!." But they do sing some songs you know and love and you can hear Jerry talk about them…