Mark Evanier's Blog, page 115

James Earl Jones, R.I.P.

Photo by Stuart Crawford

The voice tracks for all the Garfield TV shows I worked on were recorded at Buzzy's Recording Studio on Melrose here in Los Angeles. Buzzy's, sadly, no longer exists but just about every actor you ever heard of — voice or otherwise — active during the years the studio was operating recorded something there. It had a great staff, a great mood, a great history, a great atmosphere, great refreshments and like any other recording studio in town, a terrible parking lot.

But we all loved working there and one of many reasons — apart from the owner-operator Andy Morris — was that when you there working in Studio A, you could run into just about anyone in Studio B or vice-versa. Case in point: One day while we were recording in A, James Earl Jones was recording in B.

I have no idea what he was recording but once he was finished, he heard laughing coming out of A and peeked in to see what it was. We, of course, stopped what we were doing and crowded around so each of us could tell him what our favorite thing was he'd done. There was a pretty long list from which to choose. The man had an incredible career even back then — this would have been around 1992 — and everything he'd been in had been good and often very good and award-winning.

It turned out he was a very nice man and he loved Garfield. I'm not sure I had the courage to ask him, "Would you like to do a voice in an episode some day?" if only because I was sure he got Top Dollar for saying anything in front of the microphone and we paid our guest actors union scale. That was pretty decent money but maybe not for someone used to working for ten times that or more. In any case, I didn't have to find out if I had the courage because he said, "If you ever have a part that I'm right for, I'd love to do it."

All the other actors — thinking of how thrilling it could be to act with James Earl Jones — looked hopefully at me and I said, "Well, do you have any samples of your work?"

Everyone laughed — including, fortunately, James Earl Jones. And I'm not sure you ever heard it fully on the screen but that man had a great laugh. I told him we had another recording session in two weeks and I'd have a script that was perfect for him. He said, "Great…what do I play?" I said, "I'll know as soon as I write it."

The only difficult part of arranging all this was that his agent, as you might imagine, wasn't thrilled about his client doing a voiceover job for a fee so far below his usual quote. He insisted I try to get his client more money so I went to our Executive Producer, Lee Mendelson, and told him what was going on. Lee, who I'm sure I've said here on this blog, was the smartest, most honest producer I ever dealt with the TV business. He authorized me to go back to the agent and offer double-scale and then, if necessary, triple-scale.

I called back the agent and said, "I have an offer for you." He said, "Never mind. I spoke to James and he said he wants to do this for the same money you pay everyone else. Actually, I think he'd do it for free if he could." Then the agent said, "Just out of curiosity, how much were you going to offer?" I told him and he said, "Well, I wouldn't let him do it for that but I've been outvoted."

I wrote a script that was about two ghosts — one very meek (kind of a Casper parody) and one very evil and sinister (like, say, Darth Vader in voice). To play the meek one, I booked a fine actor I knew named Will Ryan. I can't link you to a video of the cartoon but here's what the end credits look like on the version of the show currently streaming on a great many networks…

Some of those folks were in the two other cartoons that made up that half-hour of Garfield and Friends.

The recording went fine. I didn't really have to "direct" Mr. Jones because he did every line right the first time. Our recording engineer joked that it was a little tricky to get Will's meek, shy voice and James' booming monster of voice onto the same tracks. The contrast was pretty amazing.

I remember Lorenzo being very happy and saying he was going to a party that evening and if anyone asked him what he'd done that day, he was going to just grin and say, "I acted opposite James Earl Jones!" Mr. Jones was an absolute delight in every way…just like he was every time he got on a stage, in front of a microphone or in front of a camera.  He even made my stupid writing sound like it was worth something.

Today's Video Link

Very busy today but I'll post more than this later.  This is Ben Meiselas of The Meidas Touch Podcast — a real good podcast to follow if you want to know the legal status and woes of our 45th President. The predictions of Mr. Meiselas and his partners Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo — attorneys, all — have been amazingly accurate.

Here, Ben presents a medley of some of the anti-Trump commercials that you might not be seeing if you don't reside in a swing state. They're pretty potent — but then the folks making them have an awful lot to work with…

Today's Video Link

Here we have the the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and what are they playing? Beethoven? Bach? Mozart? Nope, none of them, They're playing Hoyt Curtin…

A Quick Reality Check

I keep coming across the above list on Facebook and elsewhere so I thought I'd take one entire minute to take inventory…

Yes, I've used a rotary phone, a floppy disk, a typewriter, an encyclopedia, a phone book and a paper map. I've taken pics with a film camera, listened to music on a CD and a Boombox, made a mixed tape, owned a Walkman, watched a movie on VHS and even rented some from Blockbuster. I've learned Cursive, played an Atari, both sent and received Faxes, ordered from Columbia House, had an AOL address, accessed the Internet via dial-up, sent a postcard, uncurled a telephone cord and I still own a couple of dictionaries and I sometimes write checks.

The only thing I've never done from that list is have a MySpace account.  So I guess at the age of 72, I'm old, at least by the standards of whoever compiled this list.  If so, I'm glad I've lived long enough to see most things on this list be replaced by something newer and better.  So I don't really feel it's about me getting older.  I think it's about things around me improving.

Today's Video Link

Here's a nice mini-doc on Joe Besser's days with The Three Stooges. It takes the viewpoint I have — that he has been unfairly unappreciated. Yeah, the sixteen films he made with Moe and Larry were not great…but I don't think they were not great because of him. They were not great because Columbia was making these films for a buck and a half with a deliberate intention to shoot them in a day or three through the use of old scripts and old footage. Also, Larry and Moe were getting older and the Stooges' act was also getting older. Joe just had the misfortune to join the act when it was on its way out, at least insofar as the short subjects market was concerned. He brought a new energy to old material as this video shows…

Mushroom Soup Saturday

Much must be done today so I won't be around a whole lot. As always, I will make it up to you later…especially you nice folks who contributed to our annual "Help Mark Pay For Keeping the Blog Online" campaign. We covered my annual outlay with enough left over for dinner for two from my fave L.A. Chinese restaurant…so I thank you all and hope you always think you're getting your donation's worth.

This December, newsfromme starts its twenty-fifth year and I'm trying to think of some way to make it special. Maybe if Trump wins, I'll try blogging from a bunker somewhere near that watering hole in Namibia. I wonder if my fave L.A. Chinese restaurant delivers that far. It might be nice to share their Double Mushroom Chicken with a couple of warthogs.

Today's Video Link

Seth Rudetsky introduces and accompanies my talented friend, Christine Pedi.  This is what the show Evita would be like if various divas had the title role…

Happy Sergio Day!

I don't post a lot of Happy Birthday wishes here because just about every day is the birthday of someone I know but I usually make an exception for my collaborator and best friend Sergio, who is  AGE REDACTED  today. He sure doesn't look or act like he's  AGE REDACTED  or even  AGE MINUS 5-10 YEARS REDACTED . I guess drawing silly pictures keeps you young.

I have known Sergio since  YEAR REDACTED  so we've been friends for  IMPRESSIVE NUMBER OF YEARS REDACTED  and in all that time working together, we've had about five fights, one of which was about how many fights we'd had. Whatever the precise number, they all total up to about three minutes and then we were friends again.

I once wrote a particular issue of a comic book and had literally — and yes, I know what "literally" means and I'm using it correctly — more arguing its artist,  NAME OF ARTIST I WILL NEVER WORK WITH AGAIN REDACTED, than I have with Sergio for  NUMBER OF ISSUES WE'VE DONE REDACTED  on Groo the Wanderer. In fact, you can toss in all of our non-Groo collaborations and we still had fewer difficulties than I did with the artist of that one issue of that one comic, the name of which was  NAME OF NOT VERY GOOD COMIC BOOK REDACTED .

What else can I write about this guy? You know how talented he is. You know how beloved he is. You probably know approximately how much work he's done…although I'd bet there's way more that you don't know about. Did you know what a fine cook he is? There, you see? You didn't know that. So I'll just wrap this up and say, "Happy Birthday, Sergio! You don't look a day over  AGE MINUS 20 YEARS REDACTED ."

ASK me: The CAPS Logo

Here's a fast one from Matt Tauber…

As a founder of C.A.P.S., do you have any info on the "Steve Canyon"-inspired logo and who drew it?

Yep. William Stout drew it and I think it was his idea to somewhat ape the style on Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon strip. Mr. Caniff was briefly a member from afar. I don't recall him ever attending a meeting but I think he paid dues for a little while to support the group.

There are an awful lot of stories to be told about the group, at least from the days when I was active with it. I'll try to get around to posting some in the coming weeks. One of the things I discovered early-on was that when you start a group and decide you're going to restrict membership to "professionals only," there are some people who get really, really mad that someone has decided they don't qualify as professionals. There are also a few people who are inarguably professionals who get really, really mad when the group admits someone they don't consider a professional.

I'll try to tell some of the nicer stories. Some really wonderful things happened because of that group including folks making some of connection that really helped their careers.

Go Read It!

As I've mentioned here, I was very impressed with the Democratic National Convention as a piece of television. I'm not talking about whether it helped Kamala Harris get a lot of votes. I have no idea how many of the people who tuned in were inclined to support her anyway and how many people who weren't were watching and transformed. But just as a very difficult-to-do TV show, I thought it was especially well done — and especially that Tuesday roll call vote.

I also had no idea who had been behind the production but Vince Waldron sent me this link to an article by Andrew Rice who went behind-the-scenes on that end of things. Turns out it was a number of folks who usually produce or direct the Tony Awards each year. You might want to read a little about how they did what they did.