Monthly Archives: October 2022

"Hey, Evanier," no one has said to me lately, "What's your friend Frank Ferrante doing these days?" Well, he's as busy as ever, of course. I refer you to the photo at above left…and no, he's not a bellhop now. He's in character as Forte, a bellhop who serves as the host of "Luminaire," the popular dinner show from Cafe Zazou. Cafe Zazou is not unlike Teatro Zinzanni, the long-running producer of similar dinner shows, many of which have featured Frank in the past.

"Luminaire" is performed in Chicago in an exquisite setting and what you do is you buy tickets for it here, then on the night of your tickets, you and your companion(s) get a little dressed-up and you go for an evening of fine food and fine entertainment with Frank Forte as your Master of Ceremonies. There are jugglers and acrobats and music and comedy and audience participation…and I haven't seen this production but I saw Frank do this in San Francisco and the reviews here are even better.

He's there through the end of April and if I can overcome my reticence to get on a plane before then, I'm going to go back and have what I'm sure will be a wonderful time.

And before you ask: No, he is not forsaking his role Groucho Marx in his one-man-and-a-piano-player show, An Evening With Groucho. Yes, it's the one I've been touting on this blog for decades now. If you saw the show broadcast recently on PBS, you're probably dying to see it in person now…and you can if you're near Chicago on the evening of November 22. Frank's using his night off from "Luminaire" to do his Groucho show in the same room and tickets are available from the same place. If I were back there then, I'd go see him one night in one show and the next night in the other…kind of a Ferrante double-header.

• Effective today, I'm charging all my friends $20 a month for acknowledging that they are who they say they are.

This is my almost-annual post about why I don't like Halloween. Each year when I do run it, I make a few updates and changes but if you've read it in the past, you already know…

At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I've never liked Halloween. For one thing, I'm not a big fan of horror movies or of people making themselves up to look disfigured or like rotting corpses. One time when I was in the company of Ray Bradbury at a convention, someone shambled past us looking like they just rose up from a grave and Ray said something about how people parade about like that to celebrate life by mocking death. Maybe to some folks it's a celebration of life but to me, it's just ugly.

I've also never been comfy with the idea of kids going door-to-door to take candy from strangers. Hey, what could possibly go wrong with that? I did it a few years when I was but a child, not so much because I wanted to but because it seemed to be expected of me. I felt silly in the costume and when we went to neighbors' homes and they remarked how cute we were…well, I never liked to be cute in that way. People talk to you like you're a puppy dog. The man two houses down…before he gave me my treat, I thought he was going to tell me to roll over and beg for it.

When I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked even before I found out I was allergic to them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve went right into the trash can and I felt bad about that. Some nice neighbor had paid good money for it, after all.

And some of it, of course, was candy corn — the cole slaw of sugary treats. Absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?

I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against trick-or-treating. In earlier versions of this essay, I used to say, "Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple big sacks of leftover candy myself every year." But I haven't had anyone at my door for three or four years now so I don't bother.

So I didn't like the dress-up part and I didn't like the trick-or-treating part. There were guys in my class at school who invited me to go along on Halloween when they threw eggs at people and overturned folks' trash cans and redecorated homes with toilet paper…and I never much liked pranks. One year the day after Thanksgiving, two friends of mine were laughing and bragging how they'd trashed some old lady's yard and I thought, "That's not funny. It's just being an a-hole."

Over the years, as I've told friends how I feel, I've been amazed how many agree with me. In a world where people now feel more free to say that which does not seem "politically correct," I feel less afraid to own up to my dislike of Halloween. About the only thing I ever liked about it was the second-best Charlie Brown special.

So that's why I'll be home for Halloween and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Ted Cruz costume. I'm fine with every other holiday. Just not this one. I do not believe there is a War on Christmas in this country. That's just something the Fox News folks dreamed up because they believe their audience needs to be kept in a perpetual state of outrage about something. But if there's ever a War on Halloween, I'm enlisting. And bringing the eggs.

From a vintage episode of The Carol Burnett Show, here's the famous dentist sketch with Harvey Korman and Tim Conway. I'm trying to think of another performer who had their name in the title of an hour-long variety show who would have allowed a 9+ minute sketch that they weren't in on their show. I imagine Dean Martin would have said, "Great! That's nine minutes I don't have to work!" But I can't think of anyone else who wouldn't have fired a producer who suggested such a thing…

Oh, wait. I just thought of someone. The two women who were billed as Pink Lady would have said — in broken English — "Fine. Can you leave us out of the other fifty-one minutes too and let us go back to Japan?"

My pal Sergio and I have an almost-every-night phone conversation around Midnight. That's when we both like to work and things are quiet at our respective homes. I moved us up to 10 PM last night because I'm battling a mid-level cold and what works for me is lotsa water and lotsa sleep — preferably not at the same time. So I went to bed around 10:30 and was awakened an hour later by a call from my credit card company. It seems one of my credit cards decided to go on an all-out spending spree without me.

This has happened before and when one does, that card becomes a victim of Cancel Culture. A new card with a new number will be dispatched to me tout de suite.

Much of this process was arranged with me "talking" to robo-people but one matter came up which required them to connect me with an Actual Human Being. These days, I'm sometimes surprised that some companies employ any. The person or persons using my credit card info made about six charges on it in about fifteen minutes.

I asked the Actual Human Being who was on the line with me, "Just out of curiosity, how much of the merchandise they charged did they get away with? The A.H.B. said, "None of it. They were all mail orders. Those things never ship immediately and certainly not at this hour on a Saturday night. There was plenty of time to freeze the orders and check with the cardholder and then cancel the orders. The merchandise never left whatever shelf it was on."

She went on: "People who use stolen credit cards or stolen credit card numbers in retail stores often get away with their fake purchases. By the time our computers get suspicious and check with the cardholder, the customers are out the door and on their way with the loot. But we're getting better and better at stopping online credit card fraud of this kind."

I asked her why people still attempt it with online orders when the majority of the time, they don't get away with it. She replied, "I guess because a lot of people are stupid."

I'm going to remember that. I think it's the answer to more questions in my life than I've realized.

Still not finished with what I was hoping to finish yesterday. I will make it up to you once I am.

The musical Man of La Mancha starring Richard Kiley and Irving Jacobson ran on Broadway from November 22, 1965 to June 26, 1971 — a healthy run of 2,328 performances. On February 20 of 1966, the cast appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show where they performed a truncated version of the title song…

Lotsa stuff I gotta do today and not enough day to do it in. There will be posts here (I hope) but not many. I'm getting a lot of e-mails regarding this post in which I talked about the importance of not being tardy not just in your work but in your life. Many of you want to hear whatever thoughts 'n' tips I have for how to achieve that and when I have time, I will write that post. I won't promise it for a specific time because that would be a very embarrassing thing to be late with.

Also got a few messages inquiring why on Earth the Max Fleischer would make a wholesome Buzzy Boop cartoon (like this one to which we linked you) when they could have had her aunt, Sexy Betty, boop-boop-a-dooping and arousing males who have a thing for sexy ladies who can't be viewed in profile. I think that was the whole point. There came a day when various groups were protesting Betty's flirtatious ways and the cartoons began featuring Grampy and other more wholesome characters in response.

A number of you have written to tell me that you're doing as I advised: Watching the reruns of Harry O on MeTV-Plus. Whether you have or you haven't, you might be interested to know that that channel has now aired all 44 one-hour episodes and is now starting to cycle through them again. We're back to the first season episodes shot in San Diego.

I'll be back later with something even if it's only a video link.

It's been a while since we had a number here from the Masters of Harmony but here they are — with their rendition of a song from the musical Wicked….

• Elon Musk hasn't had control of Twitter for 24 hours and I already feel myself being turned into a bot.

The fine folks who run Comic-Con International in San Diego have put up a page explaining all about Open Registration for next year's con. Open Registration takes place the morning of Saturday, November 5 and the convention itself is July 20-23 of 2023 with a Preview Night on July 19th. If you wish to attend, make sure you have a Member I.D. and make sure you read the page in advance.

No, not everyone will get the memberships they seek. There's a limit to how many people can fit into that convention center and there are a lot more people who would like to be in there for the con. This is one of those sad facts of life.

If you can't get into the con or can't wait for it, remember there is WonderCon Anaheim, which runs from March 24 to March 26 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Some call this "Comic-Con Lite," as it is run by the same skilled organization…and it isn't that "Lite." There's plenty to see, plenty to do. One friend of mine once said, "When I go to Comic-Con in San Diego, I only get to experience a very small fraction of what's there. WonderCon is way bigger than that fraction."

WonderCon is also a lot easier to get into. You'll be able to purchase badges for it very soon. [NOTE: When I first posted this message a few hours ago, I said they were already on sale. They aren't. I got confused between part of the website that's been updated for 2023 and part that is still about the WonderCon earlier this year. Sorry.]

I'm in one of my intermittent "don't pay much attention to politics" moods. I've long since cast my mid-term ballot so I feel justified in tossing away the zillion-and-six ads I get in the mail telling me I need to save mankind by voting certain ways in certain categories. And I'm really tired of all the Internet Clickbait that tells me my side will win, my side will lose, America as we know it is doomed, etc.

When I was much younger, I stopped following sports because I really didn't want to care that much whether the Dodgers won. It seemed to me that my friends who did got really, really depressed when the Dodgers lost…and the joy when they won was too hollow to make up for the periods of depression when they didn't. Obviously, who wins what elected offices and which propositions pass stand to affect real life more than any sporting event ever could but I feel just as ineffectual to change the outcome. I cast my ballot. I donated to a few causes. I've done all I can.

So what else do I have to talk about this morning? I got my flu shot the other day. That's a major event in this exciting life of mine.

A fellow I know casually is mad at me because he sent me a text message and I didn't respond to it within an "acceptable period of time." That was his term and I think it means about fifteen minutes. I was napping when it arrived…a possibility that doesn't seem to have occurred to him. I also could have been someplace with no cell service, my phone could be broken or outta power or missing, I could have been in an important meeting, I could have been in the middle of a session with my Physical Therapist or some doctor, I could have been dealing with some crisis, I could have been speaking to a large audience or even a small one that deserved my undivided attention, I could have been out in the pool, I could have been in the shower, I could have been dealing with illness…

There are many, many reasons I didn't reply to his message as quickly as he expected but he leaped immediately to the assumption I was deliberately avoiding him. I wasn't…but I think I will in the future.

It's November 24, 1978 and a kid from Indiana named David Letterman — who I'd seen emceeing shows at the Comedy Store — makes his first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. It worked rather well for him…

From Aaron Currier came this…

So I'm sure with the end credits on shows (and movies as well), just about everyone is contractually obligated to have their names on the credits, rightfully so I think. But what about the speed? When they are designed to just flash by in an instant making someone need to pause to see their name, or even the older shows when they speed the credits up fast, am I right to assume that the producers are only legally/contractually obligated to have the names in the credits but don't have to legally make sure the credits are legible? You would imagine that they would have to make the credits actually readable since the whole point of credits is to, well, give people credit which hard to do when flashing by fast. Obviously they are in the clear as long as they have the credits, not mattering how fast they run them, fulfilling what little legal obligation they have.

No, not everyone has a contractual credit. Some credits are contractual but some are just customary…and on most shows, it's not "just about everyone" who gets credit at all. I've never worked on a show where everyone who could have received screen credit got screen credit. Often, you have the situation where, for example, four people are handling wardrobe or three are doing makeup and/or hair…and only the head of each department gets credited.

Those who are guaranteed credit either negotiate for it or their union does. Not everyone on any show is in a union and some unions don't demand credit…or credit for everyone. Also keep in mind that not everyone who works on a show works full-time. Let's say you have an episode of a show where there's a big party scene full of beautiful people. For that filming date, they might bring in a few extra makeup people just for the morning. Those people will not get credit.

Not even everyone seen on camera gets credit. Extras don't. Dancers rarely do. Most musicians don't. Some actors with two or three lines don't.

There may be writers who contributed to the script but didn't contribute enough to warrant credit under Writers Guild rules. The Guild has a whole manual full of rules to determine this kind of thing and if you're interested, you can download it from this page. There are movies where ten or twenty writers had input but only three or less received credit. My name has not been on some of the things I've done — sometimes by my choice, sometimes because my contribution wasn't large enough.

A contractual credit for anyone might include specifications of prominence. The director must have a single title card that displays his or her name and no one else's. The writing credit must be the same size and prominence as the director credit. The Directors Guild contract says, I believe, that if the credits are at the front of the show or movie, the director's must come last. If they're at the end of the movie, the director's must come first. If the director credit comes last, the writing credit must come just before that; vice-versa if it's at the end. There are also rules for when a voiceover can be heard during a writing or directing credit and when it cannot.

This is all very complicated but it is governed by rules. As far as I know though, there are no rules that anyone's credit must be onscreen for X seconds; only that it cannot be onscreen for less than everyone else's. And I'm talking here about contractual credits. The producers can do just about anything they like with credits that aren't contractual. Most credits for animation, by the way, are non-contractual.

As for why credits now run as swiftly as they do and are so small: I am reminded of a producer I met with maybe ten years ago. We were discussing a writing job that I wound up not doing. When we first met about it, he said to me, "I want my writers to imagine that every single person watching the show is sitting there with the remote control in their hands, ready to switch channels if they feel even momentarily bored." That is not an uncommon worry.

Networks came to the conclusion — and I have no idea how much evidence there was for this — that they were losing too many viewers to other channels during station breaks and credit rolls. So the policy is that if my show airs directly after yours, they want to not give the viewers time to even think about changing stations when your show is over. They began compressing the credits and doing tricks like popping up a little box showing a preview of my show while yours was still finishing. They want to get viewers watching my show a.s.a.p.

It has been suggested that all the networks get together and agree that they will all slow down credits so no one has an advantage. It might be very hard to get them all to agree to this…and frankly, they aren't just worried about viewers switching to another channel. They're worried viewers will go play videogames, or play some show they have recorded on their DVRs or watch something that's streaming or whatever. We live in a time when viewers have never had so many options.

Perhaps if the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild and a few others all demanded it, something might change…but I'm skeptical they'd even rally around the issue. I don't hear a lot of dissatisfaction with the way credits are compressed these days.

Hey, wanna see a Betty Boop cartoon you've probably never seen before? Buzzy Boop at the Concert — one of only two cartoons the Max Fleischer Studio made featuring Betty's niece Buzzy — has been a "lost" film for a very long time. But a print recently was found in Russia and the UCLA Film & Television Archive has done that voodoo that they do so well and restored it to something approximating (maybe even bettering) its original glory.

The film was released September 16, 1938. Margie Hines did the voices of Betty and Buzzy, and I think all the grunts and gasps of the pianist are from Jack Mercer. Just who did the voice of the big diva lady is a good question. If you'd like to read more about how this cartoon returned from the dead, our pal Jerry Beck has all the info here. Enjoy…