Monthly Archives: April 2014

Peter Hartlaub is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle…and a guy who's pissed that WonderCon is no longer in that city by the bay. I don't live there but I'd like it back there too, though not necessarily at the expense of the one in Anaheim.

My understanding is that the folks who decide who and what gets to convene in the Moscone Center in S.F. simply do not value the convention highly enough to take it on other than a "Well, if we can squeeze them in" basis. The first year WonderCon was not in S.F., there was major renovation going on and the number of conventions that could be accommodated was low. Now it isn't but WonderCon still has trouble getting good dates. They have been offered space in the Moscone but, for example, they were offered it once for a weekend when another convention already had most of the Moscone booked and had filled local hotels and driven the price of lodging to extremes.

In the meantime, Anaheim — to which WonderCon fled when the Moscone slammed the door during their renovations — has worked out better than anyone expected. I don't see the organizers giving that up. What they might be open to is an additional WonderCon per year back in San Francisco. That is, if they could secure good dates late in the year. How about it, Moscone? I loved going to a big comic convention in the heart of that city up there.

Thank you, Tom Galloway, for telling me about this article.

Al Feldstein, who helmed most of the E.C. Comics and turned MAD Magazine into the most-read humor publication in the history of the world, has died at the age of 88. He passed at his home in Livingston, Montana where he retired in 1984 to spend his days painting. No cause of death has been announced.

I took the above photo of Al in the MAD offices in the mid-seventies. I made it clickable so you can enlarge it and see just what his workspace looked like — the typewriter on which he'd "spec" the type of every article in the magazine, the rubber cement jar, the proofs, the version of the potted plant "Arthur" on his window, the vintage MAD cover painting on the wall, etc. It is said that when Al edited MAD, he worked with a ruthless ethic, locking his door and rarely joining in on the general office merriment. He was obsessed with getting the magazine out on time and with utter clarity.

Some of those who worked for him (and me, when I visited and took this photo) thought he was cold and too business-like and that he showed surprisingly little sense of humor to be the editor of that publication. And it's true that a lot of its spirit and funny came from its superb roster of freelancers and from others in the office. A lot of what I laughed at, I now know, came from Assistant Editor Nick Meglin, for instance. But Feldstein was the guy who drove the bus…who got MAD on time after its founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman, proved unable to meet deadlines. And even if others discovered some of the great artists and writers who made that magazine so wonderful, Feldstein was the guy who recognized and hired the talent.

Before that, he was the editor-writer of Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Weird Science, Crime SuspenStories and other legendary E.C. Comics. There were tons of imitations but the E.C. books stood out (and sold better), in large part because of Feldstein. We'd be hailing him as a giant of comics even if he'd retired after pressure groups forced E.C.'s comics off the stands. He didn't retire. He just left…and then one day, he returned.

Kurtzman, of course, was unable to keep the company's remaining title, MAD, on the newsstands with any regularity. He was also fighting with publisher William Gaines over the "package" (the cheap printing) and his deal. Finally, it came to a head: Kurtzman either had an offer from Hugh Hefner to create a similar magazine or he had reason to believe such an offer was looming. Either way, he went to Gaines and demanded 51% of the business or he'd walk. Gaines told him to run, not walk, and hired Feldstein back to run MAD. Since Kurtzman had been creating so much of the magazine himself and since most of his staff went with him to do the new magazine for Hef, Feldstein faced this absurd challenge: He not only had to get the publication on-time, he had to almost completely build a new talent pool of contributors. In short order, he had Frank Jacobs and Mort Drucker and Dave Berg and Don Martin and so many others who made the magazine successful. A bit later, he even hired a man named Sergio Aragonés.

I had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with Al at conventions. In retirement, he was a much nicer person than he was as an editor. He was also a little perturbed that so many people seemed to think Harvey Kurtzman did everything on MAD and that all those great E.C. Comics wrote themselves. He went to cons to remind people of his contributions and also to sell the very fine paintings he did. Some were western scenes. Others recalled his days with E.C. and MAD. You can still see some of them on his website.

Here's an obit on him. I will have more to say about what he did and why I liked him so much when I finish my current workload. This is a kind of tribute to the way he worked: I'm going to meet my deadlines and then write about him. That was how Al operated.

I love to share coincidences with you and I just had a good one in my life. As I will explain in more detail here shortly, I'm helping assemble a book for Harry N. Abrams Publishing, the fine folks who issued my book on Jack Kirby. This new one is called The Art of the Simon and Kirby Studio. It's a big book of covers and pages produced by Joe Simon, Jack Kirby and the artists who worked with them in the forties and fifties, and everything is printed from the original art so you'll see the erasures and white-outs and pasteovers and such. Much of the artwork came from the personal collection of Joe Simon. (The book, by the way, is produced in cooperation with the Joe Simon Estate and the Jack Kirby Estate and it'll be out around the end of summer. You can advance-order a copy here if you're in a hurry.)

So today, I'm writing little notes on all the pieces in it, explaining where each one came from and who drew it and such…and less than an hour ago, I come to this story called "Credit and Loss," which was drawn by the great Mort Meskin and which ran in Chamber of Chills #24, published by Harvey Comics in 1954. It's a wonderful story but I start to wonder if it should be included in the book. The original art was in Simon's archives and Meskin was an important contributor to the Simon-Kirby operation…but Joe and Jack did not edit or package Chamber of Chills and this book is all about material that Joe and Jack created or at least supervised.

We have more than enough material for the book if I omit it. Then again, it's a great example of Meskin at his best. Then again, it's not a Simon-Kirby product. But wait: If it's not a Simon-Kirby product, doesn't the fact that Joe wound up with the original art suggest it might have been in some way? Ah, but is "might have been in some way" reason enough to include it with all this other fine comic art that definitely was in every way?

So I start writing out the end note, trying to word it accurately and I figure I'll read what I wrote and decide if the story stays or if it goes. And just as I finish writing an evasive, equivocating paragraph that convinces me it should go, my phone rings and it's Sid Jacobson calling. You know who Sid Jacobson is? He was an editor for Harvey Comics. In fact, he was the editor of Chamber of Chills in 1954!

I hear from this man every five or six years but he somehow picked that moment — the moment I was writing about this comic he edited — to phone me with a question about Comic-Con. I answer him and then I tell him what I'm writing at that very moment and what I'm pondering. Sid says, "Let me look up that story and call you back." Three minutes later, he calls back to say, "That story must have been sold to us by Simon and Kirby because I never met Mort Meskin. The only place it could have come from was Joe Simon."

So it's in the book. And I feel like I'm in some Chamber of Chills. Do these things happen to other people or is it just me?

Y'know, the more I watch everyone in America dumping on Donald Sterling, the more my feelings about it all match those of Mike Pesca, who feels the punishment is not fitting the crime.

I guess when I or anyone says that, they have to make it perfectly clear with emphasis that they believe racism is evil and that Sterling, from what little we know about him, seems like a pretty awful excuse for a human being…so I'll say all that. But something just feels wrong to me about making this guy into The Worst Criminal in the World when he has committed no crime and had no trial, all based on a private conversation. I don't believe he was "set up" and made to seem like something he's not by the person(s) who leaked the possibly-illegal recording of him. But…well, read what Mr. Pesca wrote. Mark Cuban is right. In America, people are allowed to be morons.  We don't have the right to hang them in the town square just to prove how much we loathe racism.

Steven Zeitchik notes some notable omissions from the Tony Award nominations.

This is why I often argue that producers of awards shows are unfairly criticized when folks say their telecasts are boring or low-rated. The Tony Awards is, after all, a contest. People tune in to watch contests involving people they know and care about. It might have made for a more exciting show this year if the nominations had included Denzel Washington, Daniel Radcliffe, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and several others — or if, say, Woody Allen's show had gathered more nominations, leading to the possibility that Woody might show up. (Not likely, I know, but some people might still have tuned in so as not to miss the exciting moment if he did.)

I'm not saying that these people should have gotten nominations…merely that it's not the fault of the telecast's producers that they didn't and that the Tony Awards will be, as it usually is, largely a contest between shows and performers that most of America has never heard of. I am more interested in the theater than the average American and I don't even know who some of these people and shows are.

In the meantime, I have this question from Douglass Abramson…

If Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a Broadway premiere, according to the Tony website, how does it qualify for Best Revival of a Musical? I thought that all productions were considered original, for Tony nominations, if they were making their Broadway debut and that a production had to have been on Broadway before to qualify for the Best Revival awards. Did something change, or have I just not understood the qualifying process since the revival catagories were created?

The Tony Awards form a committee each year to decide what qualifies for what awards and to make judgment calls between new plays and revivals, lead roles and supporting roles, musical and plays, etc. They seem to favor past precedents over the actual written Tony rules but they made this determination, as I understand it, because Hedwig has had so many previous productions, including an off-Broadway one in 1998. The producers of the musical do not seem to be objecting.

More controversial is this one: Audra McDonald is currently starring in and getting raves for Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, a one-woman show (one woman plus a three-piece band and a dog). In it, she plays Billie Holiday and sings around twelve of that legendary performer's best songs. You'd figure a dozen tunes would qualify it as a musical, right? Nope. They decided it was a play. Maybe I'd understand this if I'd seen the show. Anyway, it's an award show. It's not supposed to make a whole lot of sense.

At WonderCon, we had a huge turn-out to hear three gents who were around Hanna-Barbera in its early days talk about that studio. Tomorrow, you get a chance to hear one of the folks we had on that panel, Jerry Eisenberg, and his co-worker, Willie Ito. They're guests on Stu Shostak's fine interview show and I'm sure it'll be interesting. Jerry and Willie are two of the best artists to ever work in animation and they designed a lot of key H-B characters and had a lot to do with the "look and feel" of what came out of that building. You'll want to tune in and hear these fine gents.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.  The ones where I guest should be cheaper but they aren't.

This is an astounding thing — the audio of a speech that Hal Roach, the great producer of early film comedies, gave at U.C.L.A. on November 30, 1970. Why is this so astounding? Because I was attending U.C.L.A. in November of 1970 and I never heard about this. I would have been the first one there had I known and I would have monopolized the microphone asking questions. I did get to meet Mr. Roach and ask him a lot of things some years later but it amazes me that he came to my school, gave a talk in front of what seems to have been a large audience and I'm only finding out about it now. Give a listen…

For some reason, my e-mail system lately decides to postpone delivery of some e-mails for 8-12 hours. Not all. Someone sent me two this morning, back to back, at 7 AM. I got the second one instantly. The first just arrived. I'm trying to figure out why this is and how to fix it but in the meantime, if you write to me, your message could get here by way of the Australian section of Antarctica.

Since I haven't been to New York in several years and have seen none of the shows involved, I don't have a lot to say about the Tony Award Nominations that were announced this morning. Mark Rylance is up for two and I hope he wins at least one. I have no idea how deserving he is compared to the others but the guy just gives the best damn acceptance speeches ever.

Over all, the list sounds like the Tony Awards telecast on June 8 will be less than enthralling. There are new nominations that will spur rooting interest outside the folks involved in the productions. Hugh Jackman is hosting this year because Neil Patrick Harris is busy starring in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (for which he is nominated) and Neil may have picked a very good year to skip. Broadway really hasn't had a blockbuster smash — the kind that generates interest outside Times Square — since The Book of Mormon, two years ago. I fear the greatest attention this time around will be paid to wondering whether Woody Allen will win for Best Book of a Musical for Bullets Over Broadway.

I suspect he won't. The show hasn't garnered the reviews and wasn't even nominated for Best Musical. Interestingly, the most nominations were for A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder, which isn't doing great business these days according to reported grosses.

I don't really care a lot about this whole thing with Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling getting fined and banned and humiliated by and for his racist comments. Okay, the guy's an asshole. I'm kind of amazed at the defenses being made of him by alleged friends, saying it's okay because he's always been like this…he may be suffering from dementia…he can be forgiven because his mistress was cheating on him…

Please, folks. If I'm ever in that much trouble over something I say, don't "defend" me like that.

The hatred directed by some at the mistress isn't much more noble than the sentiments Sterling expressed. And the excuse that she "set him up" and tricked him into saying those things is another example of damning Sterling while taking his side. People say things they don't mean all the time but someone oughta ask Donald Trump if anyone could trick him into saying, "Don't let blacks stay at my hotels."

This whole story sounds weird to me. Read this section of one news story…

"We can't have people like that representing the NBA," Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who once worked for Sterling and the Clippers, told CBS News. Abdul-Jabbar said the voice on the recording sounded like Sterling.

"It sounded like him to me, it really did," he said. "I wasn't surprised, because I just was aware of his track record, the discrimination suits against minority people trying to rent some of his properties." In 2009, Sterling paid a record $2.7 million to settle a housing lawsuit claiming he discriminated against African-American and Hispanic renters.

On Monday, the NAACP rescinded a lifetime achievement award it was planning to give to Sterling next month. "His organization gave more money to the minority community than others," Los Angeles chapter President Leon Jenkins said, explaining why Sterling was initially picked. Jenkins said Monday that the NAACP would return all donations from Sterling.

Aren't there a number of things wrong there? Just five years ago, the guy paid a record fine for discriminating against minorities…but he gave so much money to them — since then, I suppose — that the NAACP decided to give him a lifetime achievement award? Not a "most improved" award but a lifetime one…for the way he's lived his entire life. And a guy like Kareem who worked for the man wasn't the least bit surprised to hear racist garbage from him. What is with the NAACP on this?

Why are they giving that money back? Shouldn't he just give them more? He bought respectability once from them, after all. Sell him some more, get a lot more dough from the guy — he's going to have a lot of liquid assets if he's forced to sell the team — and put that cash to work helping more minorities.

I'm about half-kidding with this but really…if the guy was a racist and lots of people knew he was a racist, it's fine to take donations from him. That's how billionaires apologize — with money. But you shouldn't even think of giving him a "you are not a racist" award. Not until the day Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is surprised at what the guy is still saying.

We have here a 1977 interview with Neil Simon, who was out promoting his first autobiography, Rewrites. The interviewers take him through much of the book but don't ask him the question I would have asked: "Why, in telling your life story, did you pretty much skip over your days in television with the likes of Sid Caesar and Phil Silvers?" But he does say lots of interesting things — and looks a bit perturbed by one or two of the questions…

From Al Billingsley…

Like you, I am dismayed that Craig Ferguson is leaving late night. On his show last night, he emphasized the point that it was his own decision and basically said that anyone who said otherwise was a liar. Do you think this is so? Also, don't you think Neil Patrick Harris is too big a star for a 12:35 show?

I have no reason to believe Ferguson didn't decide of his own accord to exit the time slot. I also have no reason to believe that if he didn't, CBS would have kept him there indefinitely. Among the reasons one might decide to quit a job is that you believe your employer is losing interest in keeping you around.

Craig Ferguson is actually an enormous success story in late night. His show has always been hampered by a number of factors including its incredibly low budget compared to whoever was then on NBC and a weak lead-in from Letterman. The last fifteen minutes of Dave's show, viewership plunges. When you read that Letterman got a 2.2 rating, that doesn't mean that many viewers stuck around until the end of the program. (During the period when Letterman was clobbering Leno in the ratings, Jay sometimes won the first fifteen minutes, then lost so much of his audience that Dave won the hour. Jay's ascent over Dave was essentially a matter of reversing that so that more of those who tuned in to watch his monologue stayed around to watch what came after.)

It is also rumored that Ferguson had this problem, too: That he wasn't allowed to book as many Big Stars as he might have wanted to, lest he take away from the guy who preceded him and owned his show. Still with all that, he's managed some pretty good numbers. Given its low cost, his show may still be the most profitable in its time slot…but the days when it looked like he might dominate that time slot seem to have passed. If I were in his position, I'd start thinking about what I wanted to do next.

Unlike a lot of folks who do talk shows, he has many options. There haven't been a lot of people who've gone from having a successful talk show to doing anything else in show business. This is a topic that fans of Mr. Letterman have been discussing. Dave has never shown the slightest interest in doing anything besides that program. Ferguson, however, has options. The guy can act, he can write, he composes music, he's hosting a new game show, he's a published author, etc. I can sure imagine him starring in movies or a prime-time series of some sort. Until the right thing comes along, he can just tour with his stand-up act. Dave didn't even want to do his stand-up act back when he was doing his stand-up act.

So yeah, if I were him, I'd be thinking it was time to do something else. And I think he based that decision in part on hints, subtle or otherwise, that CBS was thinking it might be a good idea to try a different person at 12:35. It's always better to quit than to be fired.

As for Neil Patrick Harris…CBS has knocked down rumors that they were talking with Chelsea Handler about replacing Dave or Craig but there have been no denials about discussions or even offers to John Oliver or N.P.H. for 12:35. I don't know if Oliver's HBO show takes him out of the running for that. (I also find it a little hard to buy that they'd turn their whole late night schedule into a Daily Show alumni meeting with a Colbert/Oliver parlay but odder things have happened.) Harris is quite vocal on Twitter and hasn't tweeted (yet) that he isn't interested in the gig. If there was no chance of him going there, I would think he'd knock down that possibility now so as to not look like he lost out to someone else.

Hey, here's an interesting thought that occurred to me. Everyone's assuming Colbert, since he now lives and works in New York, will do his Late Show from there, probably from the Ed Sullivan Theater. What if he's looking at Hollywood? And what if they then put Neil Patrick Harris into that theater in the heart of Broadway? That sure feels like a natural fit. It would be tricky because apparently the new 12:35 host will be going on before Letterman vacates but they could find somewhere else to do The Late, Late Show with Neil Patrick Harris for a few months until Dave's ready to let him have that stage.

Oops, sorry. That's taking the speculation way too far. Harris may not be the one. CBS might have their sights set on someone cheaper — or female or non-white. 12:35 is traditionally the time to build a new star, not take on someone who's already about as famous as he's going to get…so I won't wager on anyone in particular. What I will bet on is that whoever it is, they won't have all the restrictions (budgetary, no band, few Big Guests) that Craig Ferguson had to work around. And it sure won't surprise me if the person who replaces him doesn't do any better in the ratings.

Soon, Jimmy Kimmel will be the longest-running late night host. That's because Craig Ferguson is announcing on tonight's show that he'll be leaving The Late, Late Show this December. As you can surmise from earlier messages here on this topic, that's not a surprise.

Well, the timing might be. Is Letterman still handing off to Colbert in 2015? If so, that means Ferguson's replacement will be in place before Dave leaves, perhaps many months before. Guess the theory is that Dave will get enhanced numbers for his farewell episodes and they want the new show to enjoy the bump from that lead-in.

So now we get to speculate wildly on another replacement host. Some of the reports say Neil Patrick Harris has expressed interest and I think he'd be great. CBS probably sees some value to breaking the "white guy" mold and might put a woman or a minority in there…but Mr. Harris, being gay, might qualify as enough of a minority.

If it's not N.P.H., it'll be someone whose name wasn't mentioned as a possible successor for Letterman…someone who was not well-enough established to be a candidate for 11:35. I don't think CBS wanted Chelsea Handler for either time slot and she knows it, which is why she's reportedly about to announce a new series for Netflix.

I'll be sorry to see Craig Ferguson exit because I think he's been doing the best of the late night shows for some time. Fortunately, he'll be around with a new syndicated game show and probably other projects, as well. And I sure hope they don't shoot the horse and that Geoff lands another gig somewhere.

HBO has put the entirely of the first Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on YouTube. It's here and it's exactly 29 minutes and 58 seconds long. Talk about filling the half-hour.

Okay, so last Christmas, NBC aired this live broadcast of The Sound of Music and got great ratings. They've announced that this year's follow-up will be Peter Pan.

Now, Fox has made a deal to air a live broadcast some time in 2015 of Grease. Not a bad idea. One assumes they'll cast some recognizable TV names, especially as faculty members, and that they'll include the songs written for the movie like "You're the One That I Want" and the title tune which seem to sneak into many of the stage productions done since the film. They might even stick in some actual fifties songs, too.

This is probably good for the theater in that it will introduce the idea of musical comedy to a new generation. I just hope they don't then go to the theater and think the idea is for the audience to sing along.