Monthly Archives: July 2022

My linking to two of his videos (this one and especially this one) seems to have made some of you fans of the eminent British journalist Jonathan Pie. In real life, as most of you know, he's a comedian named Tom Walker…and he's apparently one of those comedians, like Lily Tomlin and Flip Wilson, who speak of their characters in the third person as if they had lives and thoughts of their own.

This is a 21-minute interview with Mr. Walker and it was recorded in November of 2019 so some of the political talk is outta date but I find him quite interesting. And for reasons which you will see, this should have been edited for broadcast but I'm not sure it was…

I'm doing several panels at Comic-Con about folks who supply voices for animated cartoons and other media. Saturday at 1 PM in Room 6BCF, we'll be talking with Alicyn Packard, Gregg Berger, Phil LaMarr, Shelby Young, Brian Hull and Townsend Coleman. Later that afternoon at 4 PM in Room 23ABC, I'll be doing an in-depth one-on-one interview of Phil LaMarr. I will interrogate him so ruthlessly, he may confess to felonies and misdemeanors.

On Sunday at 11:45 AM in Room 6A, I'll do another Cartoon Voices Panel — this one with Jim Meskimen, Rosemary Watson, Zeno Robinson, Kaitlyn Robrock and Fred Tatasciore. Later, at 3 PM in Room 25ABC, I'll be hosting The Business of Cartoon Voices, which is the panel about how to get into the voiceover business. We do this panel each year because there are some unscrupulous teachers and voice coaches out there who charge a fortune for semi-worthless advice on how to have a career in voiceover. We'll give you a lot of advice for absolutely nothing.

On that panel, I will be joined by Alicyn Packard, Gregg Berger and agent Sam Frishman, who's with C.E.S.D., one of the best agencies in the field. As usual, a lot of working voice actors will be there in the audience also because you can never learn too much about your profession.

I forget who but someone a few months ago in e-mail asked me if I had a list of everyone who'd ever been on one of my voice panels. I don't but someone compiled this list. It's not complete — Howard Morris and June Foray are among those missing from it — but it's pretty good. And here's another list this person made, just of the folks on this year's panels along with links to their credits.

Well, here's what Billy Crystal had to say on Stephen Colbert's show about the closing of Mr. Saturday Night: Nothing. Colbert at the end said it's playing through September 4 but there was no conversation about why it's closing when it's closing. Odd.

Billy Crystal's Broadway show Mr. Saturday Night will close September 4 after playing 28 previews and 116 performances. That sounds to me like a lot less than its makers and backers were expecting. Mr. Crystal is in Stephen Colbert's guest chair tonight so it will be interesting to hear what he has to say about it. The New York Times reports…

The show has generally been staged just seven times a week — one fewer than the industry standard of eight — and its box office grosses have been middling, and dropping this summer. During the week that ended July 10 — the most recent for which data is available — the show grossed $542,696 for a six-performance week, playing to houses that were 61 percent full, according to the Broadway League.

And they add that the show was capitalized for $10 million and has not broken even.

I would guess that Billy Crystal is enough of a star name that if he was willing to tour with the show and do a week here and a week there, he would pack theaters in many cities. Then again, he might be able to do that more profitably with a one-man show. So let's hear what the man says tonight. I wish I'd been able to see the play. A lot of my friends did and loved it.

It's happening, it's happening. Preview Night is this Wednesday…and no, I don't know why people say Comic-Con International starts on Thursday just because Wednesday is called "Preview Night." It's pretty much open and at full force then. I also don't understand why most people still abbreviate its name as S.D.C.C. instead of C.C.I. It hasn't been the San Diego Comic-Con since it changed its name in 1995…but Wikipedia still calls it by its old name.

If you're going, make sure you download the Comic-Con App, which you can do at the App Store for iOS or on Google Play. And if you downloaded it in the past, update it for 2022.

It's a very handy thing to have…the whole schedule and where any speaker or guest will be, right on your phone. You can find where I am by going to the Programs list and searching for my last name.

I look forward to seeing the partial faces of many of you down there later this week. Please read and abide by the masking/vaxx requirements.

Richard Gagnon asks me…

Back when Robert Redford announced he was retiring, I wondered why he did that. Most workers retire from an employment status. Entertainers and freelancers don't have a normal work relationship. They're constantly going from job to job where they're lining up future jobs while being temporarily employed. When they decide to retire, they simply stop seeking new work. Why do some make the effort to say they're retired? I've met retired coworkers that regretted retiring because they didn't know what to do with all their free time.

I can understand why you're not seeking retirement. You like to write. You get to set your own hours. You don't have to be someplace five days a week at set times. You've chosen a career as a writer which you would do even if you weren't being paid. Very few people have a job they enjoy enough that they'd do it without pay. Having spent most of your COVID time working at home, would you ever take a writing job in the future that required you doing it in an office setting away from home?

Would Jack Kirby ever have retired for anything other than health?

Taking the last question first: No, I don't think so. But if he'd had the kind of financial cushion he deserved, he might have worked fewer hours and indulged some longings to travel or experiment with other kinds of art or writing. Maybe.

I can only guess about Mr. Redford's motives for announcing his retirement. My guess would be that he wanted to stop making movies but didn't want people saying, "Looks like Redford's career has tanked. Nobody's hiring him anymore." In other words, he wanted everyone to know his exit from the screen was his choice and was not dictated by a lack of demand for his services.

And then, if and when he does decide to make some movie at some point in the future, people will say, "Robert Redford came out of retirement to do this picture" and not, "Hey, look! Someone finally decided to hire Robert Redford!"

As for me, I dunno. I'm very comfortable working at home but there are some things you don't want to say "never" about. I can't say that if the right offer for the right project came in, I wouldn't grab it even if it meant going into an office every day. I guess it's in that category of "I'll decide if and when it becomes a real option." I've wasted a lot of time in my life thinking about what I'd do in given situations that never happened…or where the circumstances were way different than I would have expected.

There are a number of situation comedy episodes that people cite as the funniest ever. I can't pick one but a worthy contender might be this episode of You'll Never Get Rich, aka The Phil Silvers Show, aka Sgt. Bilko. It was late in their first season that they gave us "The Court-Martial," sometimes referred to as "The Court-Martial of Harry Speakup."

I posted a scene from this back in 2006 but the entire episode is now online. Here's some of what I wrote back then…

It first aired on March 6, 1956 and the writing was credited to Nat Hiken (creator of the series and its main director and head writer), Arnie Rosen and Coleman Jacoby. I actually worked with Arnie Rosen on one of my first TV writing jobs and was somehow then unaware that he'd worked on Sgt. Bilko. Wish I'd known because I'd have asked him about it. Then again, he was more interested in pressing matters like writing the show we were doing and having me fired.

One of the many interesting things about the Bilko program was that even though it was done on film, they tried to treat it as much as possible like a live performance. They barely stopped filming between scenes and often, if someone bobbled a line or things went wrong, they left it in. There are a number of instances when actors — most notably Paul Ford, who was otherwise so good as Colonel Hall — forgot important lines and someone else — usually Silvers, who had a fast mind and a great memory — would ad-lib around the problem.

Silvers often improvised during the show and he had to ad-lib a lot in this because a trained chimp didn't always do what he was supposed to. At one point, the chimp ran over to grab a prop telephone and Phil came up with a terrific explanation right on the spot. His quick wit caused a few of the actors to almost break up. At several points in the trial scene, you can see some of them trying to stifle or hide laughter. Especially watch the kid at left playing a guard.

You probably won't be able to keep from laughing either…

I'm real busy at the moment but I spoke to the folks running Comic-Con and asked if they wouldn't mind postponing it for a few weeks and they said, "No problem! We'd be glad to do it for you, Mark."

That's not true. I didn't ask and they didn't agree…though given how frantic they must be, some of them would probably have loved the idea. As long as those conventions have been held — and remember: I've been to all of them — it has been impossible to start planning so far ahead that the last week is not hectic with Too Much To Do. It's hectic for those of us who attend and those people who stage the convention. But Preview night is still Wednesday and the con still starts officially on Thursday.

Mixed emotions are already flowing freely. How do we feel about returning there after two years of not going there? How do we feel about being in a convention center where folks are masked and checked for vaccination status? And some are a bit uneasy about being there? I'd be fibbing if I said the COVID thing doesn't concern me. I'm also concerned that for the last 27 or so months, I haven't been around many people and I haven't walked the great distances you have to walk at Comic-Con. But I'm still going.

Please do not call, write or otherwise ask me if I can help you get a badge, hotel room or parking space. And don't ask me just days before the con starts, as someone always does and one person already has this year, if I can help you get a panel added to the schedule. The schedule is already printed.

I will see some of you down there.

The production of The Music Man now playing on Broadway with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster is not the only interesting production of that show around. There's this one staged by and for deaf and mute folks as well as others. I'd love to see it if only to learn the American Sign Language signal for "Shipoopi"…

B. Monte wrote to ask…

When you are auditioning an underemployed performer who gives a great audition, but is not right for the part, how do you give encouragement that doesn't come across as a "great try kid…don't call us, we'll call you" brush-off?

With rare exceptions, you don't tell them on the spot that they're not getting the part. You say, "Thank you for coming in" and if they're at all professional, they say, "Thank you for having me in" and they leave. Keep in mind that they usually have no idea if I have the final say as to who gets hired. For all they know, I have to play the auditions I recorded for others who will make the final decision. So they don't come in assuming that their mission is to please me and only me. If they were auditioning for a famous, award-winning director they might assume that but I don't have that problem. I'm just the guy running the audition.

So I try to remain positive and to give them whatever compliments I feel are warranted. And I do make notes about what they did well in case they can be of use to me later in casting something else.

I should also add that the voiceover business has changed a lot and that it's becoming very rare for someone to come in to audition. This was changing before The Pandemic and has now become pretty much the norm. Actors are sent the audition script and some sort of guidance as to what is needed, and they record their own auditions in their own studios and submit them.

Occasionally, a director or producer may be live online with them to direct their tryout performances but when that happens, it's usually in the second round of auditioning and beyond. They submit as above and then the submissions are whittled down to a handful for the one-on-one auditions. So that pretty much eliminates the situation where a director or producer has to interact with someone who's totally wrong for the part. Those folks got eliminated in the first round.

But still, you usually don't tell them to their faces that they aren't getting the part. And any experienced actor is used to not hearing from you and understanding that someone else booked the job. Not getting it is, after all, the norm. Even the best actors feel fortunate to be hired for one out of ten-or-so auditions. And doing it from their home studios makes it more comfortable since they didn't have to leave their homes — shave, shower, get dressed-up, drive somewhere, park, drive home, etc. — to be considered. Yesterday, I was talking with an actor who'll be on one of my Cartoon Voices panels in San Diego. That morning, he got up and recorded twelve auditions in one hour — before breakfast and in his pajamas…and he'll be happy if one yields a one-time paying gig.

There have been a few times when I've told an actor at an in-person audition that they weren't going to get the job. One was Robert Guillaume and I told that story here. Another was the same day for the same show. It was the actor in this story who insisted on ignoring the script and improvising a different character. But telling someone on the spot "We ain't hiring you" is very rare.

I haven't linked to one of these in a while. It's a commercial for Kellogg's Corn Flakes featuring Huckleberry Hound and the characters on his original show. The great Daws Butler did all the voices except for Boo Boo, who was voiced by Don Messick. Pixie the Mouse didn't have a line but if he had, his voice would also have come from Messick. I suspect Pixie had a line but it was cut for time.

I loved these characters when I was seven years old and I'm still fond of them today, in part because they were such an element of my childhood. Another part would be that I got to know Daws Butler (and to a lesser extent, Don Messick) and loved them both. And it's nice to hear them and see these characters involved in something with better animation than they usually had even if it is being used to move a product…

Georgi Mihailov writes…

Hi, Mark. Could I ask you about a line in one of the Garfield cartoons? I can't find the episode because there doesn't appear to be one that has dinosaur in the title, so I am just going to describe it for you.

Basically, it was a Barney parody. The dinosaur wanted to use a kiddie show in order to force all the people and their kids to obey him. In the end, Garfield foiled his evil plan and ended up convincing him to try his luck in show business with Garfield as his agent. However, the dinosaur became so successful, he fired him as his agent. Garfield then exclaimed, "The nerve of him. I taft-hartlied him on his first acting gig. And he couldn't even read a script."

What does it mean to "taft-hartly?" For a Bulgarian man, I am pretty in tune with American pop culture over the years but I have no clue what that means.

Well, first of all it means that you stumbled onto one of those jokes I occasionally put in something I write, knowing full well that about ten people will understand it. Don't feel bad that you are not one of those ten.

It was an episode of Garfield and Friends called "The Beast From Beyond" and it was kind of a spoof on Barney the Dinosaur, who was then big on TV in this country. The character was named Sidney and it might interest someone to know that Sidney's voice was supplied by Stan Freberg doing pretty much the same voice he'd once supplied for Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent on Time for Beany. Another "inside" joke.

The Taft-Hartley Act was a packet of laws passed in this country in 1947. It changed some rules for labor unions, weakening them in many ways. But when we say we "Taft-Hartleyed" someone, that's shorthand for saying we invoked one particular provision of the Act. It means you gave them a job in some field even though they were not (yet) a member of the labor union to which one belongs to work in that field. It generally applies to their first job. If they continue to work in that field, they are expected to join the appropriate union. (There are ways around this but most people don't want to use them.)

So let's say you're a new voice actor and I give you your first job doing a voice on my cartoon show. Since there's a possibility this may be your only such job ever, you don't have to join the union and fill out all those forms and pay that hefty initiation fee. I gave several people their first voice jobs so they were "Taft-Hartleyed" and then, if and when they got a second job, they joined the union. Basically, it means to hire someone who is not (yet) in the union. When we did this cartoon, I think I had just done that with one of several folks who got their first professional job on the show and went on to long and very real careers.

Some months ago here, I linked you to a number of American musicals as performed in Korea — some in English, some in Korean. Here, suggested to me by Micki St. James, is "We Both Reached for the Gun" number from the show Chicago in Korean.

In the number, Roxie Hart sits on the knee of the gent playing scummy lawyer Billy Flynn and she makes like a ventriloquist dummy. I've seen this number staged with the lady playing Roxie doing her own voice but trying to make it sound like it's coming from Flynn. I've seen it done with the actor playing Flynn doing both parts. I've seen Roxie's voice provided by someone not on the stage. I'm not entirely sure which of the latter two options this is…

The weather forecast for San Diego throughout Comic-Con calls for it to be partly cloudy and 72° during the day and 65° at night. That is pretty much the forecast for San Diego about 85% of the time.

There are still people around who somehow think it would be a good idea for Comic-Con to move to Las Vegas. I have dozens of reasons why that would be a very bad thing, one of which is the weather. Next week in Las Vegas, it will be 110°. How would you like to cosplay as Iron Man in that climate?

Here's a short Q-amd-A that Jon Stewart did recently with the live audience at his TV show. I'm putting it here because at one point in it, Mr. Stewart reveals something that I believe is very true about how TV shows are staffed these days.