Randall B. wrote to ask…
You have been fortunate to meet and even work with a lot of people whose work you enjoyed when you were younger. I heard you say one time that only a few of them had disappointed you as people. I can understand why you might not want to name them (tho I wouldn't mind) but could you tell how some of them disappointed you? Also, could you name five people who didn't disappoint you in any way?
I could probably name more than fifty who in no way disappointed me but since you asked for five, you get five: Daws Butler, Jack Kirby, Charles Schulz, Dick Van Dyke and Sergio Aragonés.
And you're right that I don't want to name folks who disappointed me but I'll say this: It has usually been a matter of seeing a side of them that I never got to see watching them on TV or reading their comic books or whatever. Some of them might have been on the Non-Disappointment List if I'd spent less time with them. The more contact you have with someone, the more you learn about them and the more you learn about them, the greater the chance of seeing or hearing something you can't unsee or unhear.
Thinking back over some disappointments — there were a few comedians and at least one writer-producer who I'd thought were marvelously funny and inventive. I came to feel that their main skills were in getting credit for the work of others and/or knifing those who stood in the way of their success. A couple of men turned out to be of the "Dirty old…" variety, maybe not quite at Cosby levels but enough to lower my opinions of them. A few just plain did not treat others well, especially others who couldn't fight back.
The list might be even longer than it is but I'd like to think that at some point in my life, I learned to recognize Early Warning Signs. That's when I felt it was time to leave some distance between myself and a person I had reason to admire before it became impossible to overlook the reasons not to. It took a while to develop my personal radar in that area and it still doesn't work all the time.
