The interview I did with Paul Harris on his peachy radio show is now on-line if anyone wants to hear it.  It's just us chatting about Chuck Jones for 15 or 20 minutes and here's a link to the page where you can hear it, assuming you have RealAudio installed.  To be honest with you, while I was over at www.HarrisOnline.com hooking up that link, I found a lot of interviews with other folks that were a lot more interesting, including one with Gabe Kaplan about how Groucho Marx almost appeared on Welcome Back, Kotter.  The stories he tells are basically true, although I don't think Groucho ever came to any of the dinner breaks on the show.  If he had, he'd have died a year earlier.  Gabe, however, forgets about the time Groucho did come to appear on a taping and wasn't up to a performance, as detailed in the second half of a two-part article posted here and here.  I also enjoyed the conversations I listened to with Mac King, Bob Newhart, Leonard Maltin and a few others.  Paul's a first-rate interviewer.

In acting lingo, a "cold reading" is when a performer is handed a script and is expected to give a performance with little (usually, no) prep time.  This is an invaluable skill and most actors would be well advised to brush up on it and keep in constant practice.  Alas, in too many cases, a "Cold Reading Workshop" is a rip-off enterprise designed to separate wanna-bes from their cash.  In theory, you pay for the workshop, not for the fact that a casting director will be there to hear you and critique your reading.  In actuality, what it amounts to is that aspiring thespians who have no legit means of getting seen by those who hire are, in essence, paying to audition.

A legit, respectable casting director would never participate in such exploitation.  For one thing, it's illegal to charge someone to audition and, even though they might say the fee is for the class, not the access, that's not how it works out.  For another thing, it's simply wrong.  The casting director is paid to be familiar with the talent pool and ought to be seeing those who come highly recommended, not those who fork over money.  Alas, not all casting directors are perfectly ethical so Cold Reading Workshops have wrung a lot of bucks out of the Stars of Tomorrow and/or the Daily Grill Waiters of Today.

But this stops and it stops now, thanks to a group called DoNotPay.org — a consortium of casting folks who don't like seeing their profession debased, plus actors who…well, the actors' motivation is obvious.  Headed up by casting director Billy DaMota, the group petitioned the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement for the state of California and has gotten them to declare Cold Reading Workshops illegal.  Here's a press release about the decision.

I think this is terrific news.  Such "classes" are not the only way in which up-'n'-coming actors are shaken-down but this one's a biggie.  If you are seeking a career as a performer, you should pay reasonable fees for photos and demos of your work (like tapes or CDs) and you should pay reasonable fees for actual acting classes and for books and tapes that help you hone your skills.  But you should never give Dime One to anyone who says that it'll help you get seen by "the right people."  In this case, "the right people" are "the wrong people."

The operator of this website will be showing his face (and perhaps other body parts) at this year's WonderCon in Oakland, California.  It transpires April 19-21 at the Oakland Marriott City Center and I'll be appearing on a panel with my buen amigo, Sergio Aragonés, celebrating the 20th anniversary of our wandering idiot, Groo.  I'll also be moderating a couple o' panels on comic book history — like I do, ad infinitum, in San Diego — and they'll probably feature Julius Schwartz, Irwin Hasen, John Romita, Creig Flessel and others who make my 30+ years in comics look like a temp job.

The Wondercon is now owned and operated by the group that brings you the Comic-Con International each year in San Diego, so a great con will probably get even better.  For more info, get thee to www.wondercon.com.

Boomerang — the offshoot of Cartoon Network — is running a Chuck Jones Marathon, commencing at 8 AM on Friday, March 1 and running 'til 8 AM the following morn — 24 hours of cartoons.  It's kind of amazing to realize that, even if they don't repeat any during that span, they still won't be airing all that he did for Warner Brothers and MGM.  Chuck directed 207 cartoons for WB and directed (or supervised, with others directing) 34 more for MGM.  So that's 241 cartoons.  During marathons, Cartoon Network seems to manage about seven shorts per hour, so that's 168 films…or about 70%.  Figure in the TV specials, features and other shorts for which Jones was responsible and it's obvious that a solid day of Chuck won't even cover half of the man's incredible lifetime output.

Speaking of animation legends who have left us:  George Singer, whose career in animation spanned nearly 50 years, passed away Feb. 10 at the Motion Picture Hospital in Calabasas, California.  He was 78 years old and may have held the record for working for the greatest number of major animation studios.  His résumé included lengthy stints at Famous Studios in New York, Halas-Bachelor in England and then, in Hollywood, tours of duty at (among others) Warner Brothers, Format Films, Hanna-Barbera, U.P.A., Marvel Productions, San Rio Films, Steve Krantz, DePatie-Freleng and Film Roman.

It was at the last of these that I worked with him.  He was the first producer of the Garfield and Friends series discussed elsewhere on this site and a fine job he did in that post, indeed.  George was an old-timer who never acted like one.  He'd directed, he'd animated, he'd designed, he'd cut film…and even just before his retirement, he still loved everything about the form.  We didn't always agree on everything but I never doubted for a second that he was a first-rate talent who knew more about making cartoons than anyone else I'll ever have the honor to work with.

Let's have a Happy Fizzies party! No, on second thought, let's save our DNA and stomachs and not have a Happy Fizzies Party!  I just came across these rather old pictures of a product I always felt should have, "Not to be taken internally" stamped on the outside.  Back when I was a kid, a Fizzies drink was fun to make.  You dropped a tablet into a glass of H2O and it bubbled like Alka-Seltzer, turning the water — and if you touched the tablet, your fingers, as well — orange or red or whatever the operative, alleged flavor was.  The fun, however, stopped when the tablet finishing dissolving and you sorta, kinda had to drink the stuff.  That was the part I didn't like.  I'm not sure I ever finished an entire tumbler, even of the "Imitation Orange Flavor" variety…and that was my favorite.  As it turned out, this was a good thing.  Later in life, I was diagnosed as having a very bad reaction to any kind of artificial sweetener.  Had Fizzies been more tasty, I might have ingested more of them and done God-knows-what to my body.  A "Happy Fizzies Party" — as the commercials kept urging us to have — could have been like some sort of 5th grade mutual suicide pact.

That was back when the product contained — as per the package depicted here — sucaryl and saccharin, and we thought those were oh-so-much better for you than nasty ol' sugar or corn syrup sweetener.  Today, they still make Fizzies and the key ingredient is Nutrasweet, which has about the same effect on me as hemlock did on Socrates, only it probably doesn't taste as good.

It's odd that I have such fond memories of something that tasted so awful.  I especially enjoyed the time I took about 20 Fizzies tablets and hid them in the pockets of my friend Sidney Passey's swimming trunks.  Sidney put on the trunks, jumped in the pool and his shorts suddenly began to foam, as a rainbow of colors emanated from his crotch area.  He later thanked me and said it gave him his first erection.  Now, that was a Happy Fizzies Party!

When the planes hit on 9/11, Michael Moore's new book, Stupid White Men, was all printed.  As it was a scathing onslaught on the morals of George W. Bush and his associates, that did not seem like a grand time to release it.  His publisher spoke of pulping the press run and either forgetting the whole matter or, if Moore was amenable to a rewrite, issuing a much toned-down version.  Moore was not amenable and, after much yelling and probably some threats, the book is now out in its original form.

I haven't read it yet but even if it's wildly off-base, inaccurate and foolish, it could do a lot of damage to George W. Bush, his administration and all that his supporters hope he achieves.  Why?  Because, as I write this, Stupid White Men is number one on both the Amazon.Com and Barnes & Noble best seller lists.  As Moore is just beginning a major book tour, it will probably reside on or about the top of the sales charts for a while.

I am not suggesting that anything Moore wrote or that he might say on talk shows will change a lot of minds.  America doesn't work that way.  Still, he may accomplish two things that could cause Bush & Co. a load of grief.  One is that he may make it, if not fashionable then at least not as unconscionable to attack the President.  A lot of folks who might be slamming Bush have been laying low, lest they be accused of treason, and this may give them the courage to speak out.  And the other thing Moore's book may accomplish is to demonstrate that a person can step up to big pay in the fast-paced world of Bush-bashing.

I'm going to show my cynical side here: I think we overlook how much of our public discourse is in the hands of pundits and columnists who have two priorities and, often, the one that advances liberal or conservative causes is not, to them, the more important of the two.  The other is personal fame and fortune.  They say what gets them on TV and makes money.  I don't mean they don't believe what their shpiels — though a few sure seem like they'd renounce every position they hold for the right price.  Arianna Huffington, for instance, seems to have found the competition among attractive conservative women too fierce and decided to stake out her turf in liberal country.

No, I mean even the pundits who earnestly hold the convictions they voice have learned that it's good business to be relentless and even to exaggerate those convictions.  It sure works for Talk Radio hosts.  (And I dunno…if you found that espousing some opinion made you rich and famous and caused audiences to cheer you, might you not tend to become more convinced of it?)

Early in the Clinton Administration, several publishers and pundits discovered that there was moola to be made from attacks on Bill and Hillary.  Even when Clinton had his 78% approval rating, the remaining 22% of America was willing to shell out serious coin for books that said Slick Willy had been running drugs and having people murdered while he was busily boffing trollops in the Lincoln bedroom.  There was — and in some circles, still is — a hatred out there that liked to hear that William Jefferson Clinton was the Anti-Christ, and some didn't even seem to care if the charges were dubious or disproven.  I was genuinely disappointed when Peggy Noonan — someone I'd kinda admired — wrote her anti-Hillary screed.  It was kind of like, "I don't have anything of substance to say about Hillary Clinton but I can't miss this chance to get a book on the Best Seller list."

Michael Moore may or may not have anything of substance to say about the current Oval Office occupant.  That may not matter.  What does matter is that Michael Moore is atop the Best Seller list.  If he's there a while, a lot of someones will decide — if they haven't, already — that Bush-hating may be even more lucrative than Clinton-hating.  And of course, the books don't even have to be true.  They just have to be vaguely credible to those who already hate the guy.  Clinton was vulnerable because of all the rumors of his womanizing and sleazy business deals.  Bush is vulnerable because of all the rumors of his drug use and sleazier business dealings.  The latter may make excellent fodder for further best sellers as more corporations go the way of Enron and the public loathing for the Ken Lays of the world intensifies.  Whether it's valid or not — and nowhere here am I suggesting it is or isn't — it will not be hard to whip up volumes that portray our current Prez (and even his father and Veep) as having habitually made millions off business deals where everyone else got screwed.

I said here before that I didn't think Enron would directly hurt Bush.  I don't believe anyone will ever draw a connection of the "smoking gun" variety between him and any illegal actions.  On the other hand, he will never shake the association with corporate rape.  And Moore's book will spawn others…because he's proving that there's money in proclaiming the scandals of the Bush Administration.  And the buying public always gets what it wants…

One more thought about Chuck Jones: One would have expected the tributes and regrets that are now filling the animation-oriented sectors of the Internet.  What is even more amazing — and indicative of his influence — is the mourning taking place in forums that have nothing to do with cartoons or comics.  On political chat boards, sports newsgroups, discussion groups of all subjects, one finds an outpouring of respect and people outside the cartoon community writing of their sense of loss.  I suspect those of us who thought of Chuck just for what he did for animation vastly underestimated his impact on American popular culture.  He left his fingerprints on an entire generation or three…

One of the nation's most popular radio personalities, Paul Harris, broadcasts his popular program out of St. Louis on "The Big 550, KTRS."  His glorious tradition of interviewing the best and the brightest ends on Monday, 2/25, when the operator of this website joins him for a chat about the legacy of Chuck Jones.  It oughta happen around 1:30 in the afternoon, Central Time.  You can find out more about Mr. Harris's program at www.HarrisOnline.com.  (There's a link there to listen online but I never have much luck with those…)

Maybe I'm dense…no, no "maybe."  I am dense.  But that's not the reason I don't understand something rather basic about Internet Behavior.  The other day on a public discussion board, my name came up.  Someone forwarded me a message posted there where a person wrote, "I'd ask Mark Evanier but I don't know his e-mail address."

How can someone not find my e-mail address?  Even if it didn't dawn on them to try www.evanier.com (which forwards to this site, which has an e-mail link on every page), we have these things on the Internet called Search Engines.  I just went to ten of them, typed in "Evanier" and every one linked me to this site in under five seconds and three of them yielded my e-mail address instantly.  In the time it took that person to type that he didn't know my e-mail address, he could have found my e-mail address six times.

It's not just info about me.  All the time on public boards and newsgroups, I see questions that could be answered in under 30 seconds with a quick trip to www.google.com or any of several other popular Search Engines. The Internet is a terrific resource for looking up info.  I continue to be amazed at what I can find on-line and often with very little burrowing.  But you do have to look, at least a little.  It's not enough to just post questions and hope someone will tell you the answers.

One of the world's greatest animation directors, Charles M. "Chuck" Jones died this afternoon.  It hasn't made the wire services at this moment but any minute now, they'll erupt with the sad news.  Someone once wrote that if all Chuck Jones had ever given us was What's Opera, Doc? and One Froggy Evening, he would still be hailed as one of the greats.  It's very easy to forget — and watch the obits and see if this isn't the case — how truly staggering was this man's lifetime output.  He was born in 1912 and started as a lowly cel washer (the rock bottom job in the biz at the time) in 1932, working for Ub Iwerks.  In 1936, he became a junior, apprentice animator at Leon Schlesinger's cartoon studio (aka Warner Brothers) and, just two years later, directed his first cartoon, The Night Watchman.

Before long, he was among the architects of the legendary Warner Brothers cartoon style, supervising some of the exploits of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, as well as several series that were all his…most notably, Pepe LePew and the legendary Road Runner and Coyote.

When theatrical animation died out, he segued to television where his output was more varied, but still hit occasional heights with specials like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  The last few years, he had supervised several animation projects and done a lot in the field of limited edition cels.

This is only a short overview.  In the days and weeks to come, I'm sure we'll hear and see tons of specials, articles, obits and tributes to the man.  And you know what?  They still probably won't list all that he did.

Tom Galloway calls my (and, therefore, your) attention to this short-but-sweet article in USA Today.  It's about the Silent Movie Theatre, which is also the subject of this article on this site.  I've never met Charlie Lustman, the entrepreneur who saved the place from oblivion and is, apparently, making a go of it, but I am grateful to him for the effort.  He's a hero.  I would question though his quote in the article that, "Buster [Keaton] was the most original of all.  He never repeated a gag once in his career."  This is a minor point but it's an excuse for me to suggest that we oughta all badger Sony to release Keaton's sound shorts — assuming they own them — on home video.  Talk about repeating old gags.  The films aren't vintage Keaton but, hey, what is?

Some are a bit sad, especially when they recycle his old routines with increasingly-unfunny results.  But most are well worth watching and a few, like Grand Slam Opera, are quite enjoyable.  And while we're wishing, I wish someone would put out some good copies of The Buster Keaton Show — the one he did for TV, the one where he labored in a sporting goods shop.  Again, it's sometimes uncomfy to see him reusing old bits, but the genius was always evident, at least in the background, and sometimes it took center stage.  (Keaton also did a live show for TV, only a few bad kinescopes of which seem to exist…but I think all the episodes of the film show are still in existence.  I have one or two on tape and can't imagine that there wouldn't be a market for them.)

The prolific author Stephen Longstreet has passed away at the age of 94.  (Here's a link to an obit.)  But that's not a picture of him…that's Phil Silvers.  Long before Bilko, long before Silvers was a major star, he headlined a Broadway show called High Button Shoes, the book of which was sort of written by Mr. Longstreet.  That is, Longstreet penned the script and then — if we believe the legend — he departed, leaving others to revise it during its out-of-town try-outs.  Legend further has it that those try-outs were so disastrous that other hands — mostly Silvers and lyricist Sammy Cahn — wound up changing every word of the book.  In any case, High Button Shoes was a considerable success, and Silvers believed he was the reason.  He was therefore miffed, after the show opened, to read items that kept turning up in the gossip columns about a planned movie version.

The first one said, "Author Stephen Longstreet is in talks with Danny Kaye to star in the movie of his Broadway smash, High Button Shoes."  The next said, "Author Stephen Longstreet says he expects Red Skelton to star in the movie of his Broadway hit, High Button Shoes."  The next said, "Stephen Longstreet reports that Ray Bolger is close to signing to star in the motion picture version of High Button Shoes."  It was when he read the Bolger one that Silvers lost his temper and, from his dressing room on Broadway, dispatched a telegram to Longstreet, who was out here in Hollywood.  It said:

IF I READ ONE MORE ITEM ABOUT WHO'S PLAYING MY ROLE IN A MOVIE OF HIGH BUTTON SHOES, I WILL START PLAYING THIS SHOW EXACTLY AS YOU WROTE IT.

The press items stopped.

The first 24 issues of MAD Comics — it became MAD Magazine with #25 — have to be the most-reprinted comic books in history.  I must have at least ten copies of the best stories and six or seven of the worst.  That's not even counting the fact that I own them all in their original printings…a revelation that probably causes you to wonder why then, I buy all the reprints.  It's because I am a monumental chowderhead, that's why.  (Didn't think I had a good reason, did you?)  Anyway, the first time any of that material was reissued was in a series of Ballantine paperbacks that came out in the fifties.  They were black-and-white and the pages were chopped up and printed sideways, one third of a comic book page to each paperback page.

It was a helluva thing to do to such wonderful material but, somehow, it didn't matter to those of us who discovered the golden wit of the seminal MAD in this venue.

It threw me at first.  I'd started reading MAD with #70, by which time it had evolved far from the comic book issues edited and written by Harvey Kurtzman.  I picked up the first paperbacks, which were then in print, expecting the kind of stuff being done in the current magazine — Spy Vs. Spy, Don Martin, movie parodies, etc.  When I didn't get it, I felt swindled…but when you're that age, you tend to think, "I paid for it, I'm going to read it."  So I read it, "it" being the very first one issued, The Mad Reader.  And I loved it.

As noted, I have all those stories in many color editions, with the pages intact and rightside-up.  Still, there's something wonderfully nostalgic and even historic about those old paperbacks.  I just thumbed through my first edition of The Mad Reader and vividly recalled where I was when I read it.  Like the Grinch's heart, my sense of humor grew three sizes that day.

If you just want to read Kurtzman at his best (abetted by Will Elder, Wally Wood, Jack Davis and John Severin), there are other reprintings you should seek out…including DC's forthcoming Mad Library editions in hardcover and vivid color.  But if you wax melancholy for those old paperbacks, you can order reissues of the first two over at Amazon.  They are The Mad Reader and Mad Strikes Back, and clicking on their names will whisk you over there to order them and give us a tiny cut.  And do beware of the Potrzebie.

A friend sent me this picture of a famous (in Broadway lore) full-page ad that ran only once and only in one edition of The New York Herald-Tribune.  Wanna hear the story behind it?  Good.  In 1961, the notorious Broadway producer David Merrick had a musical called Subways Are For Sleeping that was limping along at the box office, losing business and about to warrant closure.  One reason was that the seven major Broadway critics had been indifferent — some, outright negative — about it.  So, if only to cause trouble, Mr. Merrick had his staff dig up seven men with the same names as the seven critics. He brought the men in to see the show, wined and dined them, and secured permission to use their names and photos along with quotes about how much they enjoyed what they'd seen.

An ad was prepared and submitted to all seven newspapers…and it would have gotten into all seven, some say, had not a copy editor at one of the papers spotted the hoax just moments before press time.  (The tip-off?  The photo of Richard Watts.  The theatre critic with that name was not black.)  The alert copy editor phoned all the newspapers in town and they all pulled it…except that the early edition of the Herald-Tribune was already on the streets.  No matter.  Merrick secured what he wanted, which was an enormous amount of publicity.  The grosses on Subways took an enormous leap upwards and, while the show was never a huge hit, it managed to last out the season and turn a modest profit.

It was a brilliant publicity stunt…and one that Merrick had wanted to do since the idea occurred to him years earlier.  What stopped him was that, back then, the critic for The New York Times was Brooks Atkinson…and Merrick couldn't find anyone else with that name.  When Atkinson retired, he was replaced by Howard Taubman…and there was an insurance agent named Howard Taubman.

Some called Merrick "The Abominable Showman" and there are those who worked with him who still get migraines at the mention of his name.  I don't doubt that all or most of their tales are true…but I do think this ad was a stroke of genius.  They don't make them like David Merrick any longer…which is both good and bad.