Monthly Archives: August 2019

John Neumann from Minneapolis writes…

Hey, Mark. I love your site, of course. I wonder if you have opinions about the various game shows ABC has brought back, particularly Match Game with Alec Baldwin. I love game shows so I'm tickled to see them. They also stick pretty closely to the original rules and stagings, freshening only enough to not look campy.

Still, they remove much of the life of it with heavy-handed editing and obviously scripted jokes. On the new Match Game, they love reaction shots of chuckling celebrities, yet won't trim the stars' writing time.

Alec always has a little crack after he's introduced, when visiting the panel before each game, and when meeting the civilians. It's all robotic. While the loser is being "spun off," he reads the insult into camera. Thing is, they don't need all this. He's funny when he ad-libs.

I guess this is my opinion, not yours, but I'd love to hear what you think.

I think I'm not watching them regularly but I have sampled the new prime-time versions of Pyramid, Press Your Luck, Card Sharks and Match Game. I think they all suffer from sets that are too big and too elaborate. Card Sharks especially is in itself a small, simple game we could play on a card table and it feels overwhelmed on a stage that looks like it should be holding a Boat Show. It's like having a symphony orchestra play "Chopsticks." I also preferred the game played at a faster pace for a half-hour at a time before a studio audience that had less over-hyped reactions.

But apart from one other thing which I'll mention below, it's okay. The host, Joel McHale, adds almost nothing but then the hosts of the old Card Sharks were pretty peripheral to that game, too. On Pyramid, Michael Strahan is more or less interchangeable with anyone else they could have hired…or did since Dick Clark was the M.C. Pyramid suffers from length, a too-high-tech set and its iconic bonus round now seems a bit too easy to win. But there's nothing really wrong with either of these revivals.

Match Game also seems okay to me. I liked Gene Rayburn on the old show. I like Alec Baldwin on this one. I can only take so much of a game where the object is to guess which sorta-dirty word someone will write to answer a question designed to elicit a sorta-dirty response. An hour at a time is too much and the celebrity panel doesn't have quite the same camaraderie of the old Charles Nelson Reilly/Brett Somers/Richard Dawson lineup…but this is pretty much what any decent revival of that game show is going to be, especially if it has to be an hour long.

Actually — and speaking of Richard Dawson — I think the most successful game show revival around today is because of whoever thought to install Steve Harvey as host of Family Feud. There's a little too much Steve Harvey on my TV these days but I like him on the Feud. Apart maybe from Chris Hardwick on The Wall, he's the only host these days who gets called on to ad-lib when the game takes unforeseen turns and he and Hardwick are more than able to do so.

Which brings me to the new Press Your Luck, which I really don't like. I thought the original was just about perfect and they've made it bigger and less organic and whoever's editing it isn't as skillful as the old producer-director Bill Carruthers was in (usually) editing without giving the show an edited feel. I love the idea of a female host but Elizabeth Banks, though wonderful when she has a character to play, doesn't project enough authority as herself.

The first half hour, which more or less follows the format of the old show, is fine but too many of the contestants I've seen seem unaware that there's a genuine strategy involved in knowing when to press and when to pass. All the winners I've seen won mainly by luck and I have limited interest in a game where all you have to do to win is hit a buzzer at the right moment. And then it all falls apart in the new bonus round which has nothing to do with the game show that was memorable enough that they brought it back. It's kind of like Deal or No Deal but — again — with less need to strategize.

My problem with that last half hour is one I also had with the one episode of the new Card Sharks I made it through. Some folks in the game show business are now saying, "It isn't enough to watch some player win big. We need to care deeply about that person and hear what a good human being he or she is and how much love there is in their family and we have to see them hug their family members and cry and talk about how they sacrifice for one another." If you make the bonus round in Press Your Luck, you have to also trot out some friends and/or family members and put some of your emotions on display.

This kinda works with The Wall, possibly because the love between the players is woven into the show from the start…and possibly because Chris Hardwick is really good at saying the right things and not milking it. On the 2019 Press Your Luck, it comes outta nowhere for the winner beginning after he or she wins the first half-hour. Also, you can kind of figure out what's going to happen before it happens just by keeping an eye on how much time is left in the show.

While I don't dislike any of these shows (except the last part of Press Your Luck), I also am not motivated to set my DVR or watch any of them regularly. I'm kind of sad about that because I used to like game shows and now, like so many "reality" shows, they just don't seem real to me.

Animation writer and playwright Gordon Bressack died today. This news…well, I was going to say it came as no shock to anyone aware of his massive health problems in recent years but it's still a shock. Gordon was 68 and had endured a long series of problems which I believe included a liver transplant. The last time I saw him was about three months ago. He was in a nursing facility and when I walked in to visit, I made the mistake of asking, "How are you doing?" I should have tried to take his mind off his problems instead of triggering what turned out to be a long list of procedures and problems and it was very sad.

It was especially sad in contrast to Gordon as I knew him when he was well. He was energetic, sharp, enterprising and always busy writing these three things, directing those two things and producing a bunch of others. We never worked together on a show but we worked together on a lot of legal/labor efforts to better the lot of animation writers and to elevate a profession when it was in dire need of elevation.

And I suppose I should say this but say it delicately: We didn't always get along. We had some differences and arguments but they were the kind where I could differ with someone while still respecting his positions and also his work. We eventually patched up our differences and got along fine thereafter.

Gordon wrote a lot of cartoons, winning three Emmys total for Pinky and the Brain and one of its spin-offs, and maybe deserving a few for other projects. Other credits included Animaniacs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Jimmy Neutron, The Smurfs, The Real Ghostbusters and Captain Simian & the Space Monkeys. He did his profession proud.

Randy Rainbow is back with one of his best ones…

• The kind of things most of the Internet said about Jack Kirby yesterday…we should be saying those every day.

• I'm guessing that if you polled Democrats on if they'd like to see Al Franken be a candidate for President, he'd get a lot more support than Kirsten Gillibrand did.

I may have linked to this before but it's Jack Kirby Day so here it is again. This is slightly over an hour of people in the comic book field (starting with me) talking about Jack. There have been very few people in comics who did not talk this way about Jack…

The Quinnipiac poll, which is usually one of the better ones, gives Trump his worst numbers ever with even Pete Buttigieg beating him 49% to 40%. "Pete Buttigieg!!??" I'm thinking I could beat Pete Buttigieg…me, who'd have to live down 37 years of working on Groo the Wanderer comic books which any opponent could use against me.

Actually, I think Buttigieg would be a decent Chief Exec but I find it hard to imagine America lining up for him except in an "Anyone but Trump" sense.

So I'm thinking Trump's trapped in a vicious circle of his own making. Whenever he feels his stature as President/God slipping away from him, he gets nastier and more insulting and more disconnected from reality…but the reason his numbers are slipping is because people are seeing him as nastier and more insulting and more disconnected from reality. The skill at which he's most deficient is changing his act. In Trumpworld when you're losing, you double-down on everything…which is the reason he no longer has those casinos. It's the mistake every losing gambler makes.

Had he not left us when he did, Jack Kirby would be celebrating his 102nd birthday today. He also would be celebrating that he is increasingly getting the kind of recognition that was frustratingly denied him during his lifetime. Oh, a lot of people — darn near everyone in the comic book industry, near as I can tell — knew that he was more than a great artist; that he was also a writer and a creator and that so many brilliant ideas during the years he worked in comics sprang from his brilliant mind.

They all knew that but it was rarely said aloud by certain parties when it might have led to better contacts and compensation for Jack…and seeing his authorship and co-authorship properly acknowledged while he and his life-partner Roz were around to see it. I would also like it if Jack had lived to see his work — especially his "Fourth World" books for DC (New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle, some of Jimmy Olsen) — reprinted and reprinted and reprinted and reprinted constantly, often in high-ticket hardcovers, to fill a demand for work which, at the time it first came out, was dismissed by some as a failure.

Make no mistake about this: Jack knew it would happen. He didn't know when but he knew it would happen. With each passing year, I more appreciate his brilliance, his prescience and his basic decency as human being. I also more appreciate his work but I think that's true of most of us who read it. I don't need to tell anyone how good the stories and drawings he put on paper were. That, you can see for yourself. Just trust me on this: If you liked the work, you would have loved the man who did it. Perhaps you already do.

As I write this, Disney theme parks are festooned with the name of Kirby. Yes, of course, they're promoting a product — the upcoming film of The Eternals, based on a Kirby creation. Like it or not, that's how you get hailed in the world today…by association with something that is very, very popular and therefore very, very lucrative. Disney is also hailing him as a creator or co-creator of most of the Marvel Super-Heroes.

I understand there are those who think it is not enough. I also understand that there are those who think Disney is blurring the history a bit to make it seem like these were Disney creations, not Disney purchases. All I can say is that I believe Jack was severely wronged by folks who owned these characters in the past. They denied him the two things that mattered to him: Proper credit and meaningful compensation for the Kirby family. He has them now. I'm happy and I don't know anyone who actually knew Jack who is not delighted with how things have turned out.

We all have a great deal of trouble talking about what's come to pass without using phrases like "Oh, if only he were here to see it." But like I said, he knew. I don't know how he know but he knew. Happy birthday, Jack. I will never stop thanking you…for all you did for me and for all you did for everyone.

Here's Jack Lemmon on a 1975 episode of The Dick Cavett Show explaining how he got the role of Ensign Pulver in the movie of Mister Roberts…

A professional writer-person sent me this question and also said, "I think it'd be better if you didn't use my name if you choose to use this question on your site. There's a decent chance that one or more of my editors will read it." So here we go…

I was wondering if you could talk a bit about how you handle multitasking and time management in your career. Even after several years of freelancing, I still have trouble with these areas. I try to be realistic with myself about how much time a particular project will take, but I still often run into trouble. Things either take more time than I originally anticipated, or worse, I get overly-ambitious with a project but I don't fully realize how overly-ambitious I got until I'm in the middle of it.

You always seem to have a lot of different things going on: Writing for comics, writing for TV, voice directing. How do you manage it all, particularly when your various deadlines are converging? Do you have set hours for each project? Do you only work on certain things on certain days, or what? Any tips you could provide would be helpful.

My answer — and I know this won't help you a lot — is that you just do it. You stay up later, you cancel social engagements you wish you didn't have to cancel, you work harder, you get someone else to run errands for you so you can stay at the keyboard, you do what you have to do but you do it. I have rarely found it to be that difficult but when it is, it helps to not agonize over how difficult it is. Agonizing won't get the pages written. Writing will.

It has helped that I have worked in a number of situations where I absolutely had to finish something by a certain, no-getting-out-of-it deadline. On TV shows, we would sometimes need to rewrite a scene while the actors were waiting for it…or it had to be done by 5 AM so it could be retyped and copied and waiting for the cast when they arrived at 9 AM.

Once on a live TV telecast, I had twenty minutes to rewrite a speech before Lorne Greene would be delivering it before all of America…so I really had about ten minutes because I had to write it and then go over it with Mr. Greene. I would have had even less time but I decided to write it on the cue cards. This was probably a violation of some union regulation but no one was looking so I sat down at the cue card guy's work table, grabbed his big black marker and a stack of blank cards and wrote the speech out on the cards. Fortunately, I have really good lettering skills and I got it done in time.

If you have a few experiences like that, it makes you less panicky when you promised the script to your editor in New York five days from now. The trick then is to approach the work with the same single-minded devotion to getting it written even when Lorne Greene isn't waiting to go over it with you before going on live television. Once in a while on a project when I feel like knocking off for a while, I'll imagine Lorne glaring at me, waiting for it.

So that's kind of my answer — shut up and write! — but I have a few tips to add. By the numbers…

1. Assume everything will take much longer (at least double) what you expect. Leaving things to the last minute is just asking to get into a bind. I know guys who'll get an assignment and figure, perhaps correctly, "That'll just take me a day." So they wait until the day before it's due to tackle it and…well, that's just brain-dead stupid. You deserve to be fired or unhired if you do that…because you might be sick that day or have to drive a loved one to the hospital or your computer could break or your power could go out…or it could even take way longer than your estimate.
2. If you keep finding yourself in deadline dilemmas, maybe you need to take on less work. Yes, yes…I know how it is when you're booked solid and then someone offers you a dream project and/or a dream paycheck. But sometimes, you have to remember you're a finite resource and say no…and there's a great argument for not waiting until the last second.  Maybe you could have done that dream job if you hadn't.
3. If you're juggling a number of projects, compartmentalize.  When you're working on Job A, give it your all.  Don't let your mind keep wandering to Job B or Job C.  The best way to get to Job C is to get Jobs A and B out of the way first.  Usually.
4. Staying up late may feel heroic and there are times when you just have to do it. But when you reach the point of writing ten words an hour, maybe you'd be better off going to bed and waking up to resume writing at a brisker pace in the morning. This is assuming the script isn't due first thing in the morning.
5. Here's one I learned the hard way in the comic book business.  An editor offers you a job but says, "I absolutely have to have it by next Monday."  You say fine, yes, sure, you can get it done by Monday…but it's an assignment you can't finish or maybe even start on until that editor sends you certain materials you need.  When you will receive them is out of your control so don't commit to a deadline that isn't on a sliding scale.  In this case, I would say, "I will finish it X days after I receive the materials from you."  Otherwise, they'll get them to you late but still expect you to meet that Monday deadline.

I used to like juggling lots of assignments, especially if they were very different from one another.  I was never happier as a writer than I was during a few periods when I was simultaneously writing animation scripts, live-action scripts and comic book scripts — and often, more than one in each category. At one point for instance, I recall working at the same time on Blackhawk for DC, DNAgents for Eclipse and Groo for whatever publisher we hadn't put out of business at that moment — three very different comics for three different publishers and drawn by three different artists who required different kinds and formats of input from me.

I got something out of each kind of writing — animation, live-action and comics — that I didn't get out of the other two.  I still do all three but rarely all at the same time and not in such multiples.  I'm not sure I have the energy these days to keep that many balls in the air concurrently.  So I guess there's a sixth one…

6. Learn how to pace yourself.  And that may require being brutally honest with yourself about your health, how much sleep you really need, family obligations and many other things that do not relate directly to writing. You may even have to steel your guts and admit you're not as young as you used to be.

It also might help not to start a blog but so far, I haven't found that to be as much of an impediment as one might think.

As I mentioned here, the Arclight Cinerama Dome here in Hollywood is showing It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — the movie that theater was built to show — on September 29. Tickets are still available here. I already bought a bunch of 'em.

One of the many things I love about this film is that it's kind of a "Who's Who" of comedy as it stood in 1963 with guys like Sid Caesar, Milton Berle and Jonathan Winters. At the time, the least-known of the major players was Dick Shawn, who was so wonderful in it. Shawn was then a new comedian and I'll bet a lot of you never saw him perform as a stand-up comic. We can change that now.

Shawn made what he considered his television debut on a Max Liebman Presents special called "Sunday in Town" that aired on October 10, 1954 and which was hosted by Steve Allen. Given that he was a newcomer, they gave him a surprising amount of time — more than ten minutes. This is that spot and I think you can already see the makings of a great comic performer. If you start watching, stick with it until the end…

Joe Walsh, a right-wing talk-radio host and former Tea Party congressman, has announced he's challenging Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. I gather he doesn't think he has a chance of winning but it's kinda nice to see someone who can't be dismissed as a "libtard" saying that Trump is a child, Trump is a disaster, Trump is destroying the economy, Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, etc. The problem is that Joe Walsh has long had all those qualities apart from the ones that require presidential power.

I've seen three or four interviews with him and he keeps saying he needs to look back on his old tweets and statements and "own" them. In the parlance of today, I take that to mean you have to admit you made them and to say you wish you hadn't…and that's about it. You don't have to, for example, retract them or apologize to those who may have been harmed. You certainly don't have to admit that you engaged in the kind of thing that you now call blatant lies when Donald Trump says them.

There has long been money to be made by bashing Trump. It's why people put out anti-Trump shirts, tell anti-Trump jokes on talk shows, publish anti-Trump books, etc. I'm not saying those efforts aren't also sincere and political and totally protected by any reasonable definition of Free Speech. It's just that when there's dough to be made off those t-shirts and such, they're more likely to be sold. In the past though, the market for them was people who never liked Trump, never voted for him, never had any respect for the guy.

While I may doubt Mr. Walsh's sincerity, what I think we're seeing now is people trying to get in on the expected bandwagon of former Trump-supporters who are looking likely to abandon him. It may not be most of his backers but it may be enough that there will be advantages to getting in on the ground floor. Anthony Scaramucci has now apparently figured out there's no place for him in the pro-Trump world, whereas he gets welcomed on talk shows and gets book deals by turning on Donald. Joe Walsh wouldn't be on all those interview shows if he was still solidly behind Trump.

His conversion may be genuine but it may also be because he's anticipating a growing trend in talk radio and punditry, which are really the only things he does these days. I hope for his sake and the country's, it will turn out to be a wise business decision. Because I suspect that's all it is.

This originally ran here on December 22, 2014…

I'm oddly fascinated about bizarre pricing practices in business. I often notice in supermarkets that they're selling Friskies canned cat food for 50 cents a can or a box of 20 cans for eleven dollars. This is presumably known in the trade as a Reverse Quantity Discount.

Last evening, I went out on some errands and on a whim — and because I had a coupon — I decided to pop into a Subway sandwich shop. On the way in, a homeless gent asked me for spare change and I made a mental note to give him any I had on my way out.

As I mentioned here, I occasionally like Subway and when I do, I get either a meatball marinara sandwich or a tuna sandwich. The coupon I had said, "Buy ANY 6-inch sub with a 30 oz. drink and get ANY 6-inch sub of equal or lesser price FREE!" So I went in, figuring I'd get one of each — one meatball, one tuna — for the price of one of them.

The lady behind the counter said I couldn't do that. She pointed to fine print on the coupon that said, "Not valid on $2 subs or Flatzilla." And then she pointed to the big menu board where I could see that the meatball marinara sandwich was on sale for $2.00. "You can't get a $2.00 sandwich in the special," she explained.

I said, "I don't think that's the intention of the offer. They don't want me to get two sandwiches for $2.00 but they're fine if I get any two for $4.50." $4.50 was the list price of the tuna sandwich and most of the other ones on the menu board.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't make the rules and the $2.00 sandwiches cannot be purchased on the coupon deal."

I explained to her that I wanted to buy a tuna sandwich for $4.50 and also pay for a 30 oz. drink (and they could keep the drink since I don't ingest soda) and then get a meatball marinara sandwich for free since it was, as the coupon said, an "equal or lesser price."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't make the rules and the $2.00 sandwiches cannot be purchased on the coupon deal."

"No, no," I tried to explain. "You're telling me that if I buy the tuna sandwich for $4.50 and pay for a 30 oz. drink, I can have a $4.50 sandwich for free but not one that usually costs $4.50 and is on sale at the moment for $2.00!"

"Exactly," she said.

"Okay, let's try it this way. Let's say I come in and ask for a tuna sandwich and a coke. You make them up and then I show you the coupon. You say, 'Oh, for the same price, you're entitled to pick another sandwich for free!' Are you with me so far?"

She said yes.

"Fine. So I say I'd like the meatball marinara. Do you then say, 'I'm sorry, sir. For your free sandwich, you have to pick a more expensive one'?"

"That's right," she said. "Would you like to talk to the manager?" Just then, the manager walked in, probably returning from taking his dinner break at a better, saner restaurant. I explained the whole thing to him, concluding with: "So if I want two of your most expensive sandwiches, they'll run me $4.50 but if I want one of your most expensive sandwiches and one of your least expensive sandwiches, that'll be $6.50."

The manager said, "Yes, sir. Those are the rules."

By this point, I realized that they weren't the stupid ones here. The stupid one was the guy spending all this time arguing over two dollars…actually fifty cents since to get the deal, I was also going to buy a $1.50 soda I didn't want.

So I went out and asked the homeless guy what kind of sandwich and drink he wanted. He said, "Black Forest Ham on 9-Grain Wheat with plenty of mustard, and a Diet Coke." Then I went back in and used my coupon to get a Black Forest Ham on 9-Grain Wheat with plenty of mustard and a Diet Coke and as my free sandwich, I got tuna, plus I bought a $2.00 meatball sandwich. Then on the way out, I gave the ham sandwich and the drink to the homeless gent and went home with my meatball sandwich and my tuna sandwich.

Yes, it cost me way more than it should have but I got to use my goddamn coupon. Don't tell me I don't know how to save money.

Johnny Achziger wrote to ASK me…

Every year when you bring up the Bill Finger awards I nominate Fred Toole and Al Wiseman from the 1950's-'60's Dennis the Menace comic. Maybe I'm the only one who does, but I think their body of work is every bit as good as Carl Barks, John Stanley or any other humor comic writers/artists ever. I can still read their stuff today and get many good laughs out of the experience. So, did you read Dennis? Did you like the comic? If so, could you do a post about them?

You are not the only person to nominate Fred Toole for the Bill Finger Award. We have a lot of folks who've received dozens of nominations for the posthumous award and I hope we keep this going long enough to get to all of them.

I was a big fan of the Dennis the Menace comic books but I'm afraid I know very little about them aside from what any reader could glean from reading them. Never met Mssrs. Toole or Wiseman. I did work with two men who did art for those comics — Owen Fitzgerald and Lee Holley — and all they had to say about them was that they were hired, they drew what they were assigned to draw and they got paid.

Hey, I'll tell you how much I liked the Dennis the Menace comic books: I collected and liked them even though I never liked anything else about Dennis the Menace. Didn't like the newspaper strip, didn't like the TV show, didn't like the way either depicted children. I even think that one of the reasons I never for a second in my life wanted to be a father is a deep-down fear that I'd have a son like that obnoxious brat. At one point, I let myself get talked into working on one of the many Dennis the Menace animated series and I didn't even like what I did on that show and got off it.

But the comic books? Great stuff. Dennis wasn't as stupidly destructive and I really thought his father was more the star of the stories even if Dennis got the most "camera time." I believe a lot of them have been reprinted lately and they're well worth seeking out.

Celebrating Season #659 (or whatever the number is) of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld sits down with Eddie Murphy and Joy Reid for a discussion about comedy…