Monthly Archives: February 2019

Here's something that struck me as…well, not so much odd as puzzling. In 1974, Walter Matthau and Jack Benny were cast in The Sunshine Boys, the movie version of Neil Simon's play of the same name.

Benny died before the film began shooting and he was replaced by his lifelong friend, George Burns. MGM should probably have put Burns up for an Oscar in the Best Actor category but they figured he and Matthau would split the votes of those who liked the movie and neither would win or even get nominated. So they put Matthau up for Best Actor and Burns (and Richard Benjamin) up for Best Supporting Actor.

This may have been unfair to Mr. Benjamin who did not get nominated. Matthau though was indeed nominated for Best Actor but he was beaten by Jack Nicholson for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest…and how could he not be? I'll bet he also finished behind Al Pacino for Dog Day Afternoon, as well. But Mr. Burns was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and as you'll see in the clip below, he won.

We never know why the Academy voters vote as they do and it would be silly to suggest they all have the same thinking process or reasons. It did however seem like people liked the idea of an old guy finally getting recognized this way and they thought George would give a great, memorable acceptance speech.

He was indeed a favorite. The folks who seat the nominees at the telecast have no actual information on who's going to win but you'll notice they gave Burns the seat that provided the quickest access to the stage. Maybe that was because he was the oldest nominee that evening but maybe they also suspected he'd need to get up there. I remember noticing the seating at the time.

I also remember hearing Burns start his speech and I was pretty sure I knew how he was going to end it. I was certain his last line would be something like, "The only thing that would make me happier tonight would be if I was sitting home right now watching my dear friend Jack Benny win this." But as you can see, he didn't mention his best friend at all and I still don't know why…

I just watched an hour or so of Michael Cohen testimony and the reactions to it. Cohen seems like one of those guys who always sounds like he's lying. If he told you his mother was dead, you'd think, "That guy's lying." And then if ten minutes later, he told you she was alive, you'd think, "That guy's lying again." In some ways, the most damning thing evident today about Donald Trump was that he employed a guy like that to represent him for so long.

Hello from The Middle of the Night. Yesterday's episode of Stu's Show — with guests Bob Bergen and m.e. — ran an Internet-busting four (4!) hours. Three hours and fifty-two minutes of it were spent with Bob and/or me telling our host Stu Shostak why he was wrong about one thing or another. It got a bit heated at times and my e-mail suggests that a lot of folks thought it ended with someone unwilling to speak to someone else ever again. Nonsense. Everyone was buddy-buddy in the off-air post-show chatter.

One of the louder topics was the "death reels" (aka "In Memoriam" presentations) on show biz award shows which have some folks quite incensed. Stu was and remains quite ballistic about the exclusions. Bob, who sits on the Board of Governors at the TV Academy, explained some of the constraints on these segments.

My own opinion has evolved a bit on this. I think yeah, it would be great if they included everyone who has made a significant contribution to movies or TV shows or Broadway shows or whatever the medium is for the awards show in question. But I recognize that's impossible and I've decided not to get upset when 5% of the well-known performers are omitted from a montage which excludes 60% of the directors who might have been in it, 75% of the writers, 63% of the cinematographers and art directors, 99% of the animators, etc.

I made up those percentages but I'll bet they're not far off. It's everyone but the actors who get "snubbed." At least when a Carol Channing or a Sondra Locke gets omitted, people notice. Few if any of the complainers noticed they didn't include Don Lusk (who animated on most of the great Disney features) or Gary Kurtz (who produced Star Wars and American Graffiti, among others).

And I suspect Dick Miller got more attention for not being in the Oscars reel than he would have received had he been included.

Anyway, I was so exhausted from Stu's Show that I climbed into bed shortly after it. Which explains why I'm up here in The Middle of the Night. It's not a bad time to be here. As far as I can tell, I have the whole Internet to myself…

I gave up on the Michael Cohen hearing after about an hour, then checked back a few times and it was more of the same. Republicans interrogating him kept saying over and over, "You're a convicted liar, you're a convicted liar" and didn't allow Cohen much opportunity to say much more than to confirm that yep, they're right — he's a convicted liar. A few Democrats (and Chris Christie, in a brief comment I caught) noted that an awful lot of people have gone to prison in this country based on the testimony of some liar who flipped. It's the main way that folks involved in organized crime get convicted.

I didn't hear this but I suppose someone pointed out that if Cohen was lying in his testimony today, he was risking turning three years of prison into many, many more. They kept harping on whether he was going to get a lucrative book deal because, I guess, they couldn't come up with a better reason for him to lie now. (I did hear one exchange where he was asked to promise he would not run for public office. I'd have loved it if he'd said, "Well, you know, I wouldn't have thought a guy who was known as a serial liar could get elected in this country but Donald Trump's proved me wrong.")

Where all this is going, I dunno. He did deny some of the charges that have been made against Trump and I suppose the Republicans think we should believe this "pathological liar" on those statements but no others. All in all, I suspect Cohen's testimony will do damage to Trump's reputation with all those Americans who haven't made up their mind on whether Trump is a good man or a bad man. Unfortunately, there are only about eleven of those in the country…maybe twelve if you count Ivanka.

My pal Frank Ferrante goes from town to town across this great land of ours, replicating the master comedian, Groucho Marx. Every twenty minutes or so, I post a plug for this show because I think it's so wonderful and I love it when people go and then write me to say, "You were right about that guy."

I'm not a fan of impersonator shows. In most of them, I think the impersonator kinda reminds you of the person he's playing and only for five or ten minutes. That is not the case with Frank who actually manages to make you forget that you're not in the presence of the genuine article…and in his peak years, no less.

Due to other, non-Groucho commitments, Frank won't be doing the show as often in 2019 as he has in past years. He's doing it March 9 in Tucson, March 10 in Glendora (that's in California), March 22 and 23 in San Jose (also in California) and March 28 in Palm Desert (ditto). The whole schedule is here. If you go, you'll see a lot of this…

Today is going to be a very bad day for Donald Trump.

• I don't like seeing all these candidates for the Democratic nomination. I want to see the party nominate no one because if Trump ran unopposed, he'd lose in a landslide.

This is sad but probably inevitable. The Samuel French Theatre & Film Bookshop is closing at the end of March. The company's business has shifted largely online so they're shuttering the physical retail store on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

I am probably a microscopic but real part of the reason as I haven't set foot in there in twenty-some years. But it was an interesting place to browse, usually among young actors and actresses looking for something that might boost their emerging careers: A play to be in, a scene to use for auditions, a book on acting, etc. I have several shelves of books that came from Samuel French. It was a good place for writers, too.

This Wednesday on your favorite Internet talk program, Stu's Show, there will be many topics but two main ones. One is televised award shows like the Oscars and Emmys and why they seem increasingly irrelevant and unwatched. What, if anything, can or should be done to change that? The other topic is Second-Generation Cartoon Voices — the folks who've taken over speaking for Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, Fred Flintstone and other ongoing classic characters.

Stu's guests to discuss these topics and others will include Bob Bergen, who's now the voice of Porky Pig and who also sits on the Board of Governors of the Television Academy, and there's also one other guest whose name I forget. Oh, right: It's me. I will be on the show and since my friend (and the show's host) Stu Shostak and I disagree a lot on these topics, it might just turn into a wrestling match with body slams and hair-pulling. If you're squeamish, don't watch.

Or you can just listen to it tomorrow. Stu's Show is simulcast on Roku TV if you wanna watch it, or various radio-like sources if you just wanna listen. It starts live at 4 PM Pacific Time (7 PM Eastern) and will run at least two hours, maybe three. Go to this page to find out the various ways to tune in.

Also, let me remind you that this coming Sunday, March 3, our friend Shelly Goldstein is doing her extraordinary one-woman show at the Catalina Bar and Grill. Well actually, it's one woman plus a guest performer (Mark Arthur Miller) and a pianist but the one woman is so entertaining that it feels like she can do it all by herself.

The show is called "How Groovy Girls Saved the World" and it's about sixties stars like Petula Clark, Lesley Gore and Mama Cass. Ms. Goldstein will favor us with tunes made famous by those ladies as well as her own smart/funny song parodies.

It may well sell out so if you're thinking of getting tickets, get 'em now at this link. What ever happens happens at the Catalina Bar and Grill, located at 6725 Sunset Boulevard, a couple blocks east of Highland in Hollywood. I'll be there among the smart people. Hope they don't notice me and toss me out.

Jim Warren was a very colorful publisher of not-very-colorful magazines. He's the guy who brought us Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, Famous Monsters of Filmland and many others. Depending on your age and who was in charge of those magazines when you read them, they could have been very important to you. Even at their lowest points, they stood way above most of the imitations…and boy, did they have imitations.

A lot of very talented people passed through those pages and one could make the case that, of all the publishers trying to appeal to the tastes of a certain youthful audience back then, no one had a better "read" on what the customers wanted than did James Warren. At the very least, you could argue that no one did as much with such low budgets as James Warren.

His story has been captured well in a new book by our friend Bill Schelly. Bill is a superb researcher and chronicler, and I was startled by how much he discovered about his subject that I didn't know. Warren, like so many other publishers back in the late fifties, was trying to replicate the lifestyle and financial success of Hugh Hefner without the funding. He wound up making his mark with monsters, not bunnies.

That's the tale Bill tells, along with Warren's revolving door of editors and the challenge of being a little guy on a big newsstand. If any of that sounds of interest to you, order a copy of James Warren: Empire of Monsters. It sure was of interest to me.

Sorry about the short notice. Today on Steve — which is what they call Steve Harvey's talk show — one of the guests is our pal, Disney Legend Floyd Norman. It airs at 2 PM in Los Angeles and different times in different climes.

Hey, remember the great game show, Numberwang? I posted a number of episodes like this one a few years ago and in each one, contestant Julie suffered a humiliating defeat. You'll be happy to hear that Julie's gone on to bigger and better things. Sunday evening, she won the Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. She now calls herself Olivia Colman, presumably because she was so embarrassed by losing at Numberwang. Maybe they can bring her back now for Celebrity Numberwang…

The 'net is awash with criticisms of the Academy Awards telecast, the show so many people love to hate each year. The overall reaction was way better than expected and the ratings were up a tad from last year. I'd be curious to know if that was because more people tuned in or because more of those who did tune in stayed 'til the end.

Usually, the initial tune-in is indicative of how much people care about who wins and about how interested they are in what the host will do or say. This year, the latter was probably how interested they were in how the show would go without a host. But I do think interest in the actual awards is like 90% of it. (When this year's show started, by the way, my first thought which I almost Tweeted was that someone said, "Let's do it without a host and turn it into the Grammy Awards!" But before I could send that, Tina Fey and friends came out and it turned back into the Oscars.)

Anyway, the measure of how many people stay with it until the end is more a measure of how much they enjoyed the show. Whether the Academy and ABC try this format again may have something to do with that statistic.

Seems to me that even some of those who dumped on the ceremony had to dig deeper than usual to find things to bitch about. My friend Ken Levine took his annual snarky slam and halfway through it, I thought he was going to have to go after the uniforms on the valet car parkers to find things to insult.

As usual, a lot of people didn't like who won in some categories and they take it out on the telecast. Not having seen it, I have no idea if Green Book was deserving of Best Picture but I'll go out on a limb here and say it just might have gotten the most votes. A lot of those complaining about that seem to think the Academy should have done something to prevent such a travesty. I know how they feel. During the last presidential election, I thought CNN's coverage was atrocious, especially that part where they announced Donald Trump had won. They should have crowned Hillary instead. Since when do we let the actual votes get in the way of putting on a good show?

Segueing from the Oscars to Donald Trump — as all topics these days must — the guy in the Oval Office is interpreting Spike Lee's call to "make the moral choice between love versus hate" as a racist attack on Trump. Hey, why miss a chance to fire up your base to think you're fighting off those evil non-white people? As Jonathan Chait notes…

In theory, a president could listen to a call for making the moral choice of love against hate and doing "the right thing" and interpret it as an endorsement — or, at minimum, a nonpartisan statement. Trump processed it as a personal attack.

Chait also notes that bashing Lee from reading from notes was a callback to the claim that Obama was too dumb or ill-informed to not use a TelePrompter, even though of course he often spoke without one. Trump uses one too and he oughta use one more often…but then he doesn't care about getting things right.

But of course, the Stanley Donen clip they should have shown on the Oscars was not a scene from Movie Movie or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Two for the Road or even (arguably) the best movie musical ever made, Singin' in the Rain. They should have shown Mr. Donen accepting his honorary Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1997 Academy Award ceremony…