You may have heard of industrial musicals.  They can be performed live or filmed and they're often produced on big budgets and with major talents involved.  But they're not seen by the general public.  Some company makes them as a sales tool for their products or to teach or energize their employees of…well, there are a lot of purposes.

Here's a filmed one that runs a little over a half hour and it stars Stubby Kaye, who presumably was paid well for his participation.  It was made for the Bell Telephone folks to push the idea that florists can network over the phone to get flowers delivered to customers.  I don't know much more about it than you will after you watch it if you watch it. Thanks to several different folks who sent me links to this…

Here are five more pretty-good (I think) movies that are currently free to watch on YouTube. As with all of these, they may suddenly not be free or may not be free without ads but right now, they're free. Someone has classified them as adult in some undefined way so YouTube will not allow me to embed them but if you click on the hyperlinked name of any of these movies, you should be able to watch it — at the moment, free and without ads…

I always really liked Billy Wilder's 1960 movie with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, The Apartment.

And I always liked another film made the same year, Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March. Hard to believe this film was directed by the same man who, just three years later, directed Tracy in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

And also from 1960: The Magnificent Seven. If you know, you know.

And moving up more than a few years, here's the Director's Cut of Mr. Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Warning: Don't watch this if you're seated next to Abe Vigoda. Here's why and yes, I know Abe Vigoda has passed-away but with him, it was hard to tell.

And I can't embed it but if you're in a Christmasy mood, you might enjoy one of the most-imitated movies ever made, Die Hard.

I have a question from the Netherlands — from Theo van Amelsvoort…

A few posts ago you mentioned that you received a free link to see the SNL movie. I was always under the impression that the companies who wanted to promote their movie for awards would send out free DVDs to people eligible to vote. And that voters would get dozens of DVDs. Do they still do that? Or do some do and others via a link to view online? Do you have a preference?

Yes, they used to do that…and I would get tons of them each year, way too many to possibly view. I got them as a member of the Writers Guild. I got them as a member of the Television Academy. I got them as a member of ASIFA, the Animation Society, which I don't think I belong to anymore. I got an awful lot of them…and a lot of them had these dire threats to prosecute the hell out of me if I didn't destroy them after one viewing. It was like: "You didn't ask for this but since we sent it to you, you're obligated to follow our instructions as how to handle them or we'll put you behind bars!"

But that was before most of us were hooked-up for streaming services and being able to watch stuff on the Internet on our TV sets and such. It was also before someone realized what a tremendous waste of money and time and resources it was, to say nothing of the environmental impact, to send out zillions of unsolicited DVDs. (And before that, they used to send out VHS tapes.) Some of them came in very elaborate, expensive packaging.

So I think some of the studios got together and switched to sending out links with passwords to watch their offerings online…and I think pretty much everyone else fell in line. I only got about ten "For Your Consideration" DVDs this year. One of them was Anora and a lady friend and I were halfway-through watching it when all my electricity went out a few nights ago.

Thus, the answer to your question is: Yes, they used to do that…and no, they don't do it very much anymore. I do however get a number of copies of the screenplays to read, as well as some links to read them online.

It's hard to get my mind off the fires. They're still raging, still very far from me, still likely to continue for some time. I'm saddened for the folks whose homes and even lives have been destroyed. I'm angry at the political types trying to blame this on their opponents. (Politifact and FactCheck.org both have good summaries of lies being told.)

What little I've seen of the news has spent way too much time focusing on the celebrities whose homes burned. Then again, I don't see what's achieved by interviewing anyone, famous or not, at one of the worst moments of their lives. I remember a local disaster when I was young — I think it was when the Baldwin Hills Dam burst and flooded local neighborhoods. It was not as big a catastrophe as the current one but just as painful to the people who were affected.

One of the local TV stations that was covering it all had its News Director (or someone in charge) taking phone calls live. My mother called up, got on the air and asked, "What good does it do to shove a camera into the face of someone who's just lost their home? Aren't these people entitled to a little privacy at an hour like this?" The News Director (or whoever it was) said, "You obviously have no idea what news is," then he punched a button to disconnect her call.

I remember her standing there, holding the phone handset in her hand and saying, mainly to herself, "Well, now I know what it's about on your channel."

I feel bad for all the people affected including those who are or will experience collateral damage. The guy who cleans my pool stopped by this morning to do his duty here and then he asked if I could pay my next few bills in advance because he's lost a third of his clients. Some of those whose homes were destroyed owed him for past services and he can't bring himself to send them bills for what they owe him. It's not a huge amount of money compared to most losses but he needs it to pay his rent, buy groceries, etc.

Meanwhile, we're all checking on our friends, breathing barbecued air and getting very frustrated that there's no instant cure to stop the devastation. I'm going to try to work on assignments and when I do post here, it'll mostly be things unrelated to the fires, just to get my mind off these horrid events. Maybe some of it will help you do likewise.

Of course you want to help. You're a human being, you're horrified by the destruction here in Los Angeles and you want to do what you can to help the folks whose homes, jobs and lives have been damaged by the fires. So once again, I refer you to my favorite charity, Operation USA.

There are many fine agencies out there but I know some of the people behind this one and I know that they spend very little on administration and themselves and that most of what you send them will be put to good and immediate use.  That's where I send whatever I can afford to give. Here's their ad banner. Use it in good health and spirit…

Skywald Comics was a short-lived comic book company that went into business in 1970 and out in 1975. It was an alliance between Sol Brodsky (former production manager and occasional artist for Marvel) and Israel Waldman, a publisher specializing in low-budget periodicals including (at times) comic books. Waldman's main venture into comics previously has been with a company called variously I.W. Publications, Super Comics and I think some other names. To quote Wikipedia, they issued "…in the late 1950s and early 1960s…unauthorized comic book reprints for sale through grocery and discount stores."

Brodsky had had a major falling-out with Marvel publisher Martin Goodman and left the company. He teamed up with Waldman, they published some comics (mostly on the cheap) then Brodsky pulled out and returned to Marvel after Goodman left.

And now, following up on my follow-up to this question, Rob Allen asks…

Following up on your post about why Jack never worked for Western, I wonder about another path not taken.

Did Jack consider joining Sol Brodsky in his new venture with Israel Waldman? It seems likely that Skywald couldn't afford Jack's page rate, but if they could, the possibilities seem enticing. I think the Fourth World would have sold better than the Western comics that Skywald did produce. And Skywald had more success than DC in black & white magazines. Jack and Sol left Marvel almost simultaneously; did they talk to each other about their plans?

Nope. They weren't quite as simultaneous as that in their departures and Jack probably wouldn't have left without an offer than would pay him as well or better…which, as you note, Skywald was unlikely to do. There was also something chintzy and crooked about the company and Jack didn't like that, which is why he rejected the occasional suggestions of Steve Ditko that he work for Charlton.

Simon and Kirby had briefly done some work through Charlton and had never been paid-in-full. Jack once said of that company something like, "The guys who run it don't belong in comics…or anywhere that's not a prison." That's an approximate quote. He liked Sol Brodsky but Sol never made an offer and Jack recalled how Waldman had reprinted Simon & Kirby material without their permission.

Just to head off further questions about other companies then publishing comics: I don't think there was anyone besides DC and Marvel that had the stability and the budgets that Jack felt were mandatory. He either didn't trust other publishers because of past dealings or knew they weren't interested in the kind of material he did or just knew (roughly) their page rates. He was approached by a few different people who wanted to get into the business but none of them seemed to have the start-up capital, an understanding of the industry or the connections to get decent distribution.

He'd also heard stories from Wally Wood about how he (Wood) believed Tower Comics had been sabotaged. Going with an unestablished publisher was not a gamble Jack was prepared to take. In a very real sense, he was trapped working for DC or Marvel…and I don't think either one treated him very well. Maybe they would have later but not then.

Since I've been writing about Mike Schlesinger here, I thought I oughta post this photo that was taken on September 29, 2019 at the Cinerama Dome Theater. That was the theater in which It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World opened — a theater literally built to show it — and a bunch of us were there that day to see it for the umpteenth time on that amazing screen. The pins we're wearing were to commemorate whatever anniversary it was.

Dave Woodman is a fine cartoonist and Mad World historian.  The other three are Mad World historians who are heard on the commentary track for the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray of that movie.  Paul Scrabo is a producer and jack-of-all-crafts in the TV and movie businesses.  Collectively, the four of us have probably seen this movie three jillion times.  After the film, my lady friend and I left but Mike stayed around outside for an hour answering questions about the film for all who had just enjoyed it.

Last night, we showed you our pal Mike Schlesinger talking about a favorite movie, 1776. Mike noted how in its initial release, the film endured some unfortunate cuts because of pressure from the administration of Richard Milhous Nixon, a man who no longer holds the title of being our most sinister president. This morning, I awoke to this message from Steve Bacher…

I'd like to know if the version of the movie 1776 currently available on YouTube (at 2 hours and 45 minutes) is the restored version or the one with the Nixon-mandated cuts as described in the trailer.

It's the restored version and here it is…the whole thing, including the song "Cool, Conservative Men," which was the main thing Nixon wanted out. The cut version runs 148 minutes. As is the case with these YouTube uploads, they are sometimes free, sometimes free with ads and sometimes they cost money to watch and some of them change back and forth. Don't ask me why.

My friend Mike Schlesinger was a frequent contributor to Trailers From Hell, a series of videos which use the trailer for a movie as an excuse to discuss the movie. Here's Mike talking about one of our favorite films, 1776…

In the next day or four, we'll be doing some of the software upgrading that your generous donations helped pay for. You don't notice any difference on this blog from your end but you may notice it being offline for five or ten minutes now and then. Do not panic. The changes will prevent longer outages.

My pal Mike Schlesinger died this morning…and movies have lost one of the best friends they ever had. I'm not sure I ever met anyone who loved them more…or knew more about them…or got so angry when they were mistreated.

When I first met this boy from Dayton, Ohio, he was an executive at Sony out here and was very much responsible for liberating many films from their vaults, restoring them, getting them released for home video or to revival cinemas, etc. We bonded over our shared love for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — and with Paul Scrabo, did the commentary track for its Criterion release. We agreed on that film but debated — always friendly — when our tastes differed. Mike actually was heard on a lot of home video commentary tracks and I was honored that he asked me to join him on several.

He was a fixture at a wide number of film festivals, screenings, lectures, interviews of stars and filmmakers (often, he was the interviewer) and he also made movies. After he left Sony, he wrote, directed and produced the Biffle & Shooster shorts and had recently made his first feature length comedy — Rock and Doris (try to) Write a Movie. It was a semi-remake of George M. Cohan's play Seven Keys to Baldpate, updated all the way to the sixties, starring Marilu Henner and Joe Regalbuto. It is, so far, unreleased. The last few times I talked to Mike, as he complained about various medical problems he was having, his biggest concern seemed to be that not feeling well was getting in the way of him hooking up with a distributor.

Then the medical problems got worse, he was hospitalized…and this morning, cancer took him at the age of 74. His friends (and he had many) owe a special thanks to his friend Catherine Dickerson who took so much loving care of him, especially in his last weeks. I am so very sad to lose a good friend like Mike…and like I said, movies never had a better one.

Please stop sending me photos and videos of burned-out houses, people crying because they lost everything, wide-spread destruction, the Magic Castle ringed in flames, etc. I'm not watching the news because it only saddens me to see this stuff. I know it's happened and if I want to look at such images, I have access to this thing called "The Internet" that has almost as much of that as it does of porn. It's almost like some people are thinking, "This horrifies and depresses me…I'd better send it to other people so they can be horrified and depressed, too!"

While we're at it: If you injure yourself, I will believe you injured yourself. You don't have to post bloody/bruised photos. Thank you.

Micki St. James wrote to ask…

You posted at 8:09 AM that you had no electricity and then at 9:03 PM that you were posting by thumb-tapping on your iPhone. What I want to know is, since you couldn't plug your phone in to recharge it, how did it manage to keep its charge for more than 12 hours? Mine doesn't last that long.

Mine doesn't either so I bought a couple of those portable phone chargers and I keep them charged so I can charge my phone with them. Also, there's this wonderful invention…

You see that thing there? That's the Duracell 2000 Lumen Tri-power Lantern and mine came in so very, very handy during my recent power failure here in L.A. "Mine" in this case is plural because I have several of these and I was glad I did.

What does it do? It's an LED light and you can set it to various levels of brilliance or make it blink. You can also plug a cell phone or other small electronic gizmo into it and recharge that gizmo. And how, you may ask, do you charge your Duracell 2000 Lumen Tri-power Lantern? Well, you can plug into the wall to recharge it or you can stick four "D" cell batteries into it or you can leave it outside in the sun and the little solar panel on top will charge it.

I got a batch of these from Costco and they still have them…for $21.85 and they occasionally go on sale for around fifteen bucks. The last time they were fifteen, I bought a dozen or so and have been giving them out to friends but I had five left — one opened, four unopened. They come fully charged so I opened 'em all up and put them to good use when my house went dark. By the way: Amazon sells them for $29.95 and Walmart sells them for $34.50.

There's less wind this morning, at least in my area and — according to the National Weather Service — most. Hopefully, all the fires will soon be controlled and then extinguished…but we're going to be moaning and shivering about this for a long time. And no, I don't know what you say to someone who lost everything.

With sadness usually comes anger and there is — and there should be — plenty of anger at the folks trying to make bogus political points off a tragedy like this. I'm trying to not read or watch a lot of the news coverage because it depresses me to no good purpose. But I came across Elon Musk's stupid statements and I also came across Kevin Drum debunking everything Musk is saying. This is the kind of thing we'll be seeing even more of in the next four years.

I may have underestimated the Department of Water and Power. They said my electricity would be restored by 10 PM and it came back on at 9:53. Wish it could be that simple for everyone.