Gee, I get more done in a day when the trial of Donald J. Trump does not convene.

Anthony Escartin sent me the following about a cartoon series called The Wuzzles which was part of the CBS Saturday morning schedule for one year commencing in September of 1985. We'll do this in two parts…

While you've been sharing a lot of your thoughts on the creation process and creator credits on the blog lately, may I please pick your brain on The Wuzzles, the cartoon you worked on in the 80's for Disney? Among the few articles on the blog that you've written about the show, you write that you "developed" it. I'd love to hear more details about that process. Was it a daily writer's room thing? How was the rest of the crew who developed it?

I don't know who worked on it before I was called in but I wrote the bible and the pilot by myself. CBS was not happy with whatever had been done up to that point and "suggested" they hire me. I put that word in quotes because while I don't know precisely what they told the folks at Disney, it was obvious that the subtext of what they said was "…or we won't buy the show."

I was handed a bunch of character sketches and a few notes but no actual storylines as I recall. Some of the drawings were done by Disney artists and some by folks at Hasbro Toys. I did a lot of simplifying and rearranging and inventing personalities for characters who up to that point just existed as drawings and prototypes of plush toys.  I was also loaned "for inspiration" — under penalty of death if I did not return them, which I of course did — a few of those prototype toys.

The premise of the show was said to have begun with an idea from Disney Head Honcho Michael Eisner.  It was about an island someplace where every creature was an amalgam of two different animals familiar to us. Bumblelion, for instance, was half-lion, half-bumblebee. Butterbear was half-butterfly, half-bear.

They also had in the regular cast, Eleroo (elephant/kangaroo), Moosel (moose/seal), Rhinokey (rhinoceros/monkey), Hoppopotamus (hippo/rabbit) and some villainous Wuzzles. Every episode would have some other mash-ups. In the pilot script, I had a Brahman Bullfinch — half-bull, half-finch.

It was one of the more challenging "developments" I did, in part because of what seemed to be an unofficial rule at Disney at the time. Or least it felt that way on several projects I wrote for various TV divisions there in the eighties. I am told it's no longer like this but here's how it went, at least with me…

A lot of different people at Disney would read what you handed in and critique it. There seemed to be an infinite supply of them and each time I took a meeting there, there would be some of the same folks but also some new people I'd never seen before and would never see again, all acting like I was reporting to them. Over at CBS, there were only two executives I had to please to get the network to buy the show. They liked what I wrote and bought the series.

But on the Disney lot, I had to please about two dozen transient bosses, some even after CBS had given The Wuzzles the green light. As was occasionally the case over at Hanna-Barbera, I felt that what I should do was to agree to write the script for nothing but to charge them for each person who gave me notes on it and insisted I change things their way. And I should charge double when, as was often the case, the notes one person gave me were the exact opposite of the notes someone else there had given me the day before. Here were just two of the many battles we had about the show — one that I lost and one that I won…

AN EXAMPLE OF ONE I LOST: All of the main Wuzzles had wings. I said, "Okay, I understand that a character who is half-bee or half-butterfly might have wings. But Eleroo is half-elephant, half-kangaroo. Did he get his wings from his elephant side or his kangaroo side?" Same with Hoppopotamus, Moosel and Rhinokey. That kind of goes against the premise here. And also, you want these characters to get in danger in every episode. If they have wings, the viewers are going to presume they can all fly and it's real hard to put a character in danger if they can just fly away."

HOW I LOST THAT ONE: I was told, "Hasbro did test-marketing and decided the toys would sell better if the characters had wings. End of discussion."  And that, by God, was that.

AN EXAMPLE OF ONE I WON: I wanted to insert a narrator into the show. The guy in charge at that moment then said with a kind of "I have the final say" swagger, "Narrators are old-fashioned. They slow down the action. Kids hate narrators. The narrator is out."

HOW I WON THAT ONE: I said, "Okay…these adventures take place on an island where every single creature is half one-thing and half-another. Let's say in one episode, we want to have a Mockingbirddog. Who's going to explain to the viewers that a Mockingbirddog is half-mockingbird, half-dog? Or that a Brahman Bullfinch is half-bull, half-finch? The characters in this world can't say that. They live in a world with no mockingbirds, dogs, bulls or finches."  He didn't have an answer for that so my narrator stayed in.

Here's the rest of Anthony's e-mail…

I like that the voice cast of the show reads like a list of all the performers you admired as a young person. I'm pretty sure you had a big hand in casting them. Was finding the voice talent part of the job description? Did you attend the recording sessions? A cursory glance on the internet says the show was created by Fred Wolf, and you wrote three episodes. I was wondering, should you have had a "developed by" credit to your name? Or are you happy with the way things are?

I did not attend recording sessions. I did make suggestions for voices, some of which were followed — Stan Freberg as The Narrator, Henry Gibson as Eleroo, Joanne Worley as Hoppopotamus. I suggested a certain voice of Bill Scott's for Rhinokey but while he was in auditioning for that role, they also had him read for Moosel and he got that part instead. Alan Oppenheimer became Rhinokey, Brian Cummings played Bumblelion and Kathleen Helppie-Shipley was Butterbear.  (Freberg, by the way, was very happy with his job as The Narrator but pissed that Hasbro never put out a Narrator doll.)

Actually, I left the show after the pilot. CBS wanted me to story-edit the series and write episodes but my agent quoted Disney my established price for those duties and they offered a lot less on a "take it or leave it" basis.  We left it so I went and did other things and they went through a couple of different story editors and tossed out a couple of scripts they paid for and production hit a major logjam. Finally though, they hired two very bright gents named Ken Koonce and David Weimers to story-edit.

Ken and David made the show work quite well, I thought, but everything was dangerously behind schedule before they signed on. To get on schedule, a Disney exec called me one Monday and said they'd pay my price for two scripts if I could write one of them by Wednesday and the other by the following Monday. I did and that's how I wrote two more of the thirteen episodes that CBS ordered.

Later, when there was talk of picking up the show for a second season, I was called into a meeting at CBS about revamping the series a bit and maybe being the showrunner. I heard a couple of different reasons why there ultimately wasn't a Year Two but apparently it was a joint decision by CBS and Disney and maybe Hasbro.

Disney refused to give me a "Developed for television by…" credit for that first season claiming it was against some company policy. I was not happy about that but sometimes in life you take a deal you aren't completely happy with.

I never heard of Fred Wolf being considered the creator of the series but I'm not saying he might not deserve that. Fred produced and often directed the show but we had little contact and like I said, I have no idea who did what before I was hired and very little sense of who did what after I declined the staff position. I dealt mainly with two wise men, Gary Krisel and Michael Webster, who seemed to be very much in charge but whose names appeared nowhere in the show's credits.

And that's all I remember and way more than you wanted to know. It didn't come out quite the way I wanted but I thought it was still a fun show and it was a tremendous hit in many countries. Alas, it was not in this one but I think it could have been if Disney had assigned about nineteen fewer people to think they were in charge of it. I later took my name off another Disney show I worked on that suffered from overexecutiving and I'm happy (and envious) when I hear that it ain't like that there these days.

I've recently been watching a lot of episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show on a 24/7 Dick Van Dyke Show channel on Roku. In the next few days, I'll be writing something here — I'm not sure what or when — with some new thoughts about my favorite TV series. In the meantime, here's a blooper reel from the show. I think these are all from first season episodes and a few seconds from an I'm Dickens, He's Fenster seems to have snuck in as did a photo of a naked woman…

From Bruce Bennett…

I like to watch old sitcoms, especially the well-written ones, and after seeing a particularly good episode of The Bob Newhart Show, I noticed Lorenzo Music happened to write it. I also remember that Steve Martin mentioned him in an interview about the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he wrote a lot for Pat Paulsen, which was some of my favorite stuff from that wonderful series.

So my question is, did Lorenzo Music stop writing comedy after becoming such a successful voice actor playing "Carlton, Your Doorman" on Rhoda, and then Garfield the Cat? You wrote Garfield. Did he ever make suggestions for storylines or dialogue with you? Or was he satisfied to be just a voice artist?

Lorenzo was a much-praised, very successful writer-producer before transitioning into (mostly) a much-praised, very successful voice actor. He didn't stop writing completely but a lot of his later writing was the kind he described as "for myself." He was a co-writer on one of the prime-time Garfield specials before I got involved with The Cat but he never suggested any storylines to me.

As for dialogue, yes. He didn't do it often but sometimes, he would ask me if he could rephrase a line to make it funnier and I probably said yes every time. Most good voice actors do at least a little of that. Lorenzo was very sharp and he'd had years of fine-tuning dialogue for comedy shows so as to wring all possible mirth out of a speech.

I should explain that on many cartoon shows — including all the ones I've voice-directed — the actors do not get the scripts in advance. On Garfield and Friends, I spent every possible moment writing and rewriting. I even sometimes rewrote during a session after I'd heard the lines read.

There are other ways to do it but the way we found worked best would be that we'd hand the actors a script for a cartoon and I'd assign the roles of non-recurring characters. In addition to playing Odie, Gregg Berger might also do the voice of a policeman or an alley cat. The scripts merely had the dialogue — no description of what the characters were doing in each scene — so I'd walk the actors through the script: "On line 22, you're falling down a flight of stairs…on line 23, you crash into a live goat…"

Then we would start recording. There was no point in rehearsing since we'd just do it over and over until we all thought it was as good as it was ever going to get. If a script was ten pages, we might do the first three until we were happy and then do the next three and so on. Our cast was amazing and a lot of what made it onto the air was the first time we did it. Some of the seven-minute cartoons were recorded in under fifteen minutes. As I explained back in this post, a guest star might occasionally be stunned by how short a time they were there.

So Lorenzo didn't have a lot of time to study the script and think of ways to improve it. From the moment my assistant handed him a script to the moment the engineer said "This is Take One" was about five minutes. But he was very fast and very funny and that was more than enough. And since I'm talking about Lorenzo — and because I miss the guy — here's a photo I've run here before of the two of having lunch at one of his favorite (but now defunct) restaurants…

Lorenzo is on the left, of course. And the reason I have that odd look on my face is because, I suspect, I just realized that the restaurant served nothing but cole slaw. No wonder it went out of business.

The latest from Randy Rainbow…

Not long ago, the legendary "CBS Television City in Hollywood," which was not really in Hollywood, was sold and largely shut down. I hear there are still some tapings (which are not really on tape) there but most or all of the offices have been vacated, most of the studios are like ghost towns, The Price is Right is being done at an old warehouse out in Glendale, etc. It's just a matter of time before the entirety of what was CBS Television City is displaced by a new, gigantic complex that will combine offices, television studios and retail outlets.

Folks who live nearby (Full Disclosure: I am one) are concerned that what's planned is waaaay too big for that piece of real estate, especially given that traffic is already bad with what's there now. The plans of the developer, Hackman Capital Partners, have been scaled down a bit due to the objections of locals but there is currently a crusade to get them to scale back more…a lot more.

No one, as far as I can see, is objecting to them redeveloping and expanding the facility. I'm not sure in this town, anyone could. There seems to be an understanding that the needs of everyday citizens must never get in the way of someone making a movie or a TV show. If someone wants to shoot a film on your street, there will be only minor controls placed on how many roads they can close, how much noise they can make, how much they can complicate your access to your property. A year or two ago, just a few blocks from me, some movie was setting off explosives in the street.

The film/TV production company will always get most of what it wants because, you know, they're good for the economy. Never mind that you can't get to work.

I have no doubt Hackman Capital Partners will get all or most of what they want and I strongly suspect the original proposals for all developments of large scope are drawn up to include sacrifices. They want what they're building to be the size of Mars so they announce it'll be the size of Venus. Locals will protest, the company will agree to cut their plans down to the size of Mars and the protesters can be satisfied with that seeming "win." You know how that works.

According to the protesting group in this matter — The Neighbors for Responsible TVC Development — the plans for the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly Boulevard where TV City is/was currently call for a facility of 1,724 million square feet. The protesters are calling for Hackman to eliminate — this is how the group describes it — "a whopping 550,000 square feet of office space unrelated to studio operations." There will be a public hearing tomorrow about this.

I'd go and try to say something if I could but as you know, I'm kinda confined to my home at the moment. I'm going to "attend" instead via Zoom and if you want to learn more about all this, this is the website of the group.

They believe as I do that the current plans are just too friggin' big for an area where traffic ground to a standstill just with James Corden and some actors running out into the intersections to do snippets of his Crosswalk Musicals. I hate to think what adding thousands of drivers trying to get to work there every day will do. If it was all built now, I might not be the only person in the area physically unable to leave his home.

Hey, here's a clip from the last season of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In when our friend Frank Welker was briefly a cast member. Frank was then still an on-camera comedian who was occasionally doing voices for cartoons. He would soon go almost-full-time into the voice world and become the most-hired-and-heard guy ever in that profession…

Jim Held wrote…

Fun to see you posting some of the early Bob Hope stuff. Too many people only know him from the wax dummy that was trundled out to reel off unfunny one liners in front of his TV specials.

Seeing him dancing with Cagney and doing comedy from that period and earlier reminds me of the strong virile and funny Bob Hope of the fifties and sixties and of the classic comedy movies. Great physical comedy and good comedy writing. Dick Cavett and others were always in awe of his comic timing. He seems to have survived later reports of his horn-doggery around women and his well-hidden dislike of Bing Crosby.

Carson reportedly said of the older Bob Hope: "If I ever get that old, shoot me." But Hope is his prime was pretty amazing — a Star. I for one am grateful. Thanks for the (Good) memories.

Hope would never have attained his stature and longevity without delivering the goods earlier in his career. I really am kind of baffled as to how much he should be respected because for the last few decades, he was kind of regarded as a major star in spite of his performances. He was hardly the only comedian of his generation whose later years somewhat canceled out his earlier years.

There are a lot of online articles that say Johnny hated Bob Hope. I don't think it was hate so much as a discomfort that he kept having to have him on to promote those specials…and to use Johnny's studio audience. Bob would "borrow" Johnny's studio audience to record his monologue and closing a day or so before the air date of a special, the rest of which had been recorded a week or three earlier, sans live audience.

I perhaps should not write this but I suspect that if Hope had been born a decade or so later and behaved as he did, he'd have been indicted by the "Me Too" movement and his career would have had a somewhat disgraceful ending. As it was, he sure left a lingering bad impression with some just for what he did in public.

I've recently had conversations with a couple of different friends about performers who keep performing well past their prime. On the one hand, it's sad that they leave such bad impressions behind. On the other, some of them really seem to need that reason to get up in the morning and to try to stay healthy and to get some love from audiences and/or still being famous. I have seen older comedians get way older because no one seemed to want them, no one seemed to remember them.

Mr. Carson, having witnessed the senior years of Hope, Berle, Groucho, Benny and others seems to have valued leaving his legacy relatively intact over hearing applause to his dying day. Carson's longtime producer Fred DeCordova told me that Johnny was very conflicted when a Berle or Benny (especially Benny) would call him personally and say "Hey, you haven't had me on your show for a while. How about next Tuesday?" He felt he wasn't doing them any favors by having them on as a favor. In a few cases, he had them on and regretted it.

I asked DeCordova, "Did he ever turn one of them down and regret it?" Fred said, "Yes, it was kind of a no-win situation." He declined to elaborate.

Following this case, it helps to remember that we're mostly getting our accounts from (a) reporters who were in the courtroom and (b) newsfolks in studios who are basing their views of what's going on in the courtroom by listening to reporters who were in the courtroom. And ultimately what matters will not be what either group thinks. What matters is what the ladies and gentlemen of the jury think.

All the accounts of the folks in the first two groups say it went well today for the prosecution, not so good for the defense. But this is direct testimony that has been more-or-less rehearsed. It's supposed to go well. The question is how things will go when they get around to cross-examination…but even then, we'll only get the perceptions of the folks in those two groups that don't count.

I have to keep reminding myself of these things. In the process, I may keep reminding you of these things.

Let's start the week with a Three Stooges short — and not just any Three Stooges short. This is Micro-Phonies which most Stooges scholars — yes, there are such people — would tell you is one of their best short films…

It's going to be a rough week for those of us who are trying to not follow every little report from the Trump Trial. Trump's former lawyer, "fixer" and executive liar Michael Cohen is taking the stand, probably today, surely by tomorrow. There were a lotta fireworks when Stormy Daniels testified but her testimony wasn't about the issuance of checks, which is what this case is really about. The judge in the case said, while Ms. Daniels was on the stand, he could hear Trump muttering curse words. When Cohen's on the stand, we all oughta be able to hear Trump swearing like a comedian with an HBO special and Tourette Syndrome — and this, without a microphone!

Lewis Black has plenty to say about Teslas…

My mother left this planet and my life on October 4, 2012…so 11 years and 7 months ago. She was 91 years old — an amazing achievement when you consider how many Marlboros she smoked per day for most of those 91 years. They probably did not end her life too prematurely but they sure made the last dozen years torturous. She couldn't walk, she could barely see, she couldn't do almost anything without the assistance of one of her caregivers, two of whom robbed her.

In the Quality of Life Department, she was severely punished for all that smoking and for the last half-dozen years of that life, increasingly wanted it to end. A lot of that was because she knew how much she was costing me in terms of time, money, attention and emotion but she also would say things like "I'm so sick of myself" and "Why isn't there a way I can just push a button and painlessly end my life?"

She did have a button. It was on a chain around her neck whenever she was home and not in one of her constant visits to hospitals and their emergency rooms but it did not end her life. Quite the contrary, the button prolonged it, summoning paramedics and/or me. The last few times they and/or I were summoned to help her, she told me that she'd seriously considered not pushing the button. She pushed it, she said, not to save her life but to save her pain.

When I think about my mother — which I do, often — I try to think of the happier times. I think about how happy she was in her marriage to my father, who was equally happy to be with her. This would be the most wonderful of all possible Earths if everyone could connect with a Life Partner who was as supportive and loving as my parents were to each other. I also think (immodestly) about how happy she was to have had me and to see me turn out, at least from her POV, so right. In our house, the main way you showed love was to not cause your loved ones problems or grief and we did pretty good at that.

She had many days — no, make that decades of joy before the last few years of outliving her husband and her ability to do anything for herself or anything that brought her pleasure. Still, when I think of her, no matter what happy time period I start in, my mind can't help but wander over to those last, contrasting years. Writing about her now on Mother's Day of 2024, I'm going to try to keep my mind off the Last Act in the life of Dorothea Evanier and write about something that came before…

In past essays here, I don't think I've focused enough on her wonderful volunteerism. If there was something that had to be done — something which meant a lot of work with no tangible or monetary reward — you could count on my mother to put her hand up. And not only to tackle the task but to do it well and in an ingenious manner. The earliest example I can think of at the moment is when I was in the fifth grade (approximately) and my school had a big Halloween Festival one Saturday evening to raise money for…

…well, I don't know what for. But it must have been a good cause.

The event had been advertised by someone who promised a lot of things in the ads — music, dancing, a costume contest, games, prizes, etc. — without giving any real thought as to how they were going to make all those features materialize. The biggie was that there'd be a tour of a haunted house.

Somehow, a squadron of volunteer parents was assembled and one by one, the promises from the poster were distributed for fulfillment: This parent would arrange for music, this one would run some games, this one would organize the costume contest and so forth. Eventually, everything was assigned except for that danged haunted house. No one knew how to do that. No one wanted to have to make that happen, especially since there was no budget.

Guess who said, "I'll take a stab at it." And stab she did.

There was nothing resembling a haunted house on the campus of Westwood Elementary but there were a few bungalows in which classes were held. So the first part of the challenge would be to transform one of those classrooms — filled as it was with desks and books and learning supplies — into a haunted house. This would have to be done between the time class was dismissed at 3 PM on Friday afternoon and the time the Festival commenced at 6 PM Saturday evening. Then the haunted house would have to be transformed back into a classroom on Sunday so class could resume on Monday.

My mother had me draw a map of everything in the bungalow that would have to be moved in the makeover and later put back in its proper place. Then with not nearly enough manpower, desks and chairs were relocated so as to make a winding path through the classroom.

Those who dared to enter the Haunted House would line up at the north door into the bungalow, pay admission and then be blindfolded. My mother or one of the other volunteering parents would then lead the intrepid adventurer through that path as spooky music played. The record she found somewhere ran for twenty minutes so they'd take as many blindfolded kids as possible through the path in twenty minutes, then there'd be a brief pause to reset all the spooky things inside and restart the record.

The spooky things included being offered an eyeball to eat (it was a grape) and a bucket of brains to feel (it was cooked-but-unsauced spaghetti). When I've told this story in the past, I've said that my mother made spider webs out of Silly String, a chemical marvel that comes in a spray can. Online sources however tell me Silly String was invented or patented in 1972 and my mother's haunted house existed for one day around 1960 so I don't know what she used. But she made some sort of sticky web in which blindfolded kids would get tangled…and there were wet pieces of sponge dangling from the ceiling which, in concert with the webbing, sure felt for a shocking moment like spiders. One little girl almost passed out from stark terror.

There were many of these scary things along the path and it took maybe five minutes to get from the north door to the south one where, once outside, you could remove your blindfold having "survived" the haunted house. I watched as my friends all said it was hokey and they weren't scared for a minute. Then they would run around and get back in line to pay another dime (or so) to go through again. And again and again.

It was a huge success. And sure enough, under my mother's direction and with her moving around a lot of furniture herself, the bungalow was transformed back into a classroom by mid-day Sunday.

She did stuff like that all the time…volunteering, figuring out how to do the impossible, contributing time and sheer physical labor. Our home was a polling place on several Election Days and when I hear about Rudy Giuliani and other Trump lackeys wanting to throw ballot counters in prison because their guy didn't win, I can't help but think, "Hey, my mother was a ballot counter and she worked like crazy for almost no money just because it was a job someone had to do!" In this world, selfish people can't recognize how anyone can do anything that is not in their immediate self-interest.

My mother cared about others and not just about us. Down the street from where we lived, there was a sweet little old lady named Mrs. Hollingsworth. She lived alone with a couple of cats and I don't think she had any non-feline family. Any time my mother cooked a big family dinner for some holiday, she'd make enough to prepare a plate for Mrs. Hollingsworth. Then she'd phone her and say, "We have so much food left over, I wonder if I could send Mark down with a tray of it." She always made it sound like Mrs. Hollingsworth was doing her a favor by accepting a free holiday dinner.

And when Mrs. Hollingsworth (who had come to expect it and looked forward to it) agreed, I'd trot down to her home with a beautiful tray of really delicious supper. Mrs. Hollingsworth would always ask me to keep her company while she dined and I would, whereupon we'd have as much of a conversation as an older adult can have with a kid whose age was in single digits. Over and over and over, she'd tell me what a wonderful woman my mother was and over and over and over, I'd just keep saying, "I know, I know…"

Obits like this one list just some of the movies that we had because of Roger Corman…and the long list of important filmmakers and actors who got their starts working for bad money in (sometimes) bad movies with bad budgets. Some of those films are dated, particularly in their treatment of women but there are plenty to form a solid legacy. If you programmed a Roger Corman Film Festival, you could easily fill a theater with delighted movie lovers.

The films speak for themselves. I especially love the original Little Shop of Horrors…though I think I loved it more before everyone discovered it and it was turned into a stage musical and a big-budget movie. Once upon a time, it was a cult classic and those who discovered it came to it with low expectations and thus were delighted.

I met Roger Corman twice. Once was when I helped out a bit with a documentary a friend was producing about him and his work. Some years later, I wrote a screenplay that was optioned — twice! — but never filmed. When things fell through the second time, a person involved with that aborted attempt sent it to Corman who read it and liked it but not enough to buy it. Instead, he asked me in and offered me a screenplay to rewrite for him. The script turned out to be dreadful, the money offered was insulting and the whole thing was non-union — three good reasons to decline, which I did.

But I enjoyed my one long meeting with Mr. Corman who turned out to be a very interesting man with no delusions about his place in the industry. What he was producing was product, pure and simple, and he may have had a more realistic assessment of his marketplace than any producer I met with higher aspirations. I'm sorry he didn't offer me a project I could have accepted because there was much to be learned from the man. I'm sure people will be watching Roger Corman productions for a long, long time.