Mark Evanier's Blog, page 179

Today's Video Link

There was a period there where any "name" comedic actor who could conceivably have played Oscar Madison and/or Felix Unger took a shot at The Odd Couple. Some played both roles at times. Here's a review of a production which starred Tom Poston and Tim Conway…and you'll notice that Mr. Conway added some physical comedy to the festivities…

ASK me: Freelancer Finances

Stephen Pickios sent me the following…

I wonder if you could write about your personal philosophy being a freelance writer towards finances, and retirement? I'm not trying to get you to reveal your personal financial status, but as a professional whose work and attitude I greatly respect, I've often wondered how a freelancer such as yourself handles things like healthcare expenses and savings when they don't work a "typical" corporate job with a guaranteed income and may not have had access to corporate sponsored health insurance.

I should point out that I've zero experience with writing for the entertainment industry or knowledge of how the Writer's Guild or SAG-AFTRA organizations work and whether they offered benefits like insurance or a 401k (which could make the answer to this extremely short, and extremely boring).

It's fairly simple. My health insurance came for a long time through the Writers Guild and since I hit that certain age, it has come from Medicare plus supplemental insurance from the Writers Guild. I have a private pension plan linked to investments plus I have a Writers Guild pension and Social Security. I handle savings the way anyone handles savings.

By the way: I have been a professional writer for 54 and a half years and in all but a few of those years, I wrote along with other things, comic books. I still write comic books. And in all that time, not one penny of one medical bill was ever paid with the financial assistance of a comic book company.

At the risk of stating the obvious: The trick to being a freelancer is to keep making enough money to maintain your current lifestyle and build up some sort of savings that will get you through those times when you (a) don't have the necessary income or (b) have some unexpected major expense or (c) both. I have somehow managed this for the 54.5 years.

I'm not wise enough to have done this alone. I had a couple of good agents along the way and I've had some good business managers as well as a couple who were not-so-good. I also learned, the need to be very realistic about money. No matter how likely or firm that next project may seem, don't spend the money (even in your imagination) until you actually have the money.

It's real easy to decide you want to buy something you can put on your credit card and think, "By the time I have to pay this off, I'll have the dough." No matter how sound that premise may seem, don't count on it. I've sometimes waited months for checks that were supposed to arrive next week.

And when you have a steady flow of income from one source, don't assume it will be steady forever. You should never be getting all your pay from one place even if that one place is a big, seemingly invincible company. Preferably, you should never get it from one kind of writing (see above remarks about health insurance and comic book companies).

You need to accept that by choosing to be a freelance writer, you're choosing to put yourself at the mercy of a capricious and often maddeningly unpredictable system. Look at all the Big Stars who draw in megabucks one day and wind up a few months later in bankruptcy court right next to Rudy Giuliani.

You may feel certain that that screenplay you're about to finish will sell immediately for six, maybe even seven figures. I know guys who felt that way about scripts they wrote decades ago and which have yet to net a nibble…and those may be great scripts, I don't know. It's a strange, not-always-logical business so you need to be very realistic about your income and your outgo.

And it helps to keep writing things that buyers want to buy. I have taken "retirement" to begin collecting pensions but I have not stopped trying to write things that buyers want to buy.

The Rainbow Coalition

I don't go out much these days. Instacart, DoorDash and the virus SARS-CoV-2 have turned me into a big stay-at-home but this evening I took my friend, the lovely Brinke Stevens, to the Orpheum Theater in Downtown L.A. There, we saw this gay guy singing well-known show tunes but he'd rewritten their lyrics to be about Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Red State Sweethearts.

This wasn't the first time I've taken Brinke to see Randy Rainbow perform live. Four years ago, I took her down to the Wiltern where, as he did this evening, Mr. Rainbow played to a sold-out crowd which loved just about every note and word that came out of his mouth. In fine voice and without so much as sitting down to rest a second, he performed a mix of old faves and new pieces for two hours. And he was very funny.

A lot of the show consists of videos he's made — some you may have seen on YouTube, some that haven't been there yet — and he sings his parts live with a small live band playing along. It's kind of semi-Karaoke. The video and audio on the screen were a bit outta-sync with each other tonight but no one in the audience seemed to mind. They loved everything he did except for when he ended the show.

About that audience: Brinke and I both felt it was markedly older than the folks at the Wiltern…or maybe it was the same people and they've aged a lot in four years. It also felt a lot straighter in the Orpheum. I have no idea what, if anything, that indicates.

I also have no idea why he's only playing the one night here in Los Angeles. Given the speed with which tonight sold out, I bet he could have filled the joint several more nights…but no. He's also doing one show only in San Francisco tomorrow night. You can find out if/when he's coming your way over on this page. If you enjoy his videos, you'll enjoy him in person.

The theme of this tour is Randy Rainbow for President and he explained his platform and sang his campaign song (this one) He also announced his forthcoming second book, Long-Hanging Fruit, which will be out in October.

I'll tell you one of many things I like about this fellow: I'm impressed by people who have, in effect, made their own industry. Longtime readers of this blog are probably weary of me raving about my buddy Frank Ferrante and it isn't just because he puts on a marvelously-entertaining show. It's because he invented his career. He didn't answer a classified ad in the newspaper — "Wanted: Groucho Marx impersonator." No, Frank was a self-starter in this. He started doing it and did it so well that it turned into a thing

Randy Rainbow, not so long ago, was just a guy making YouTube videos. There are skillions of 'em and most of those who make these videos do not make a living wage. Mr. Rainbow had the talent to perform, the skill to make and edit those videos and the perseverance to keep doing them until they got better and better and more and more noticed. And now that's a thing and he's a thing…a very successful thing.

And like I said, he's funny. Very funny. I suspect even some Trump supporters would have laughed at what he did tonight. Just not as long and loud as the rest of us.

Today's Video Links

I can't sit through the Emmy Awards or any of the shows like that. It's lots of very well-paid and famous people — some of whom deserve it and some of whom don't — fawning over each other and sharing perfunctory compliments and making like what they do is the supreme human achievement. I am not alone in my disdain for these telecasts. Viewership has been steadily plunging for years but despite this, content suppliers keep crafting new awards and new shows.

The one thing I like about the Emmys is that each year when John Oliver's show gets its obligatory two, Mr. Oliver is genuinely funny and spontaneous in his acceptance speeches and post-award interviews…and you can see that he doesn't attach any undue importance to the wins. Indeed, he seems to treat the statuettes and the attendant rituals as gestures that will keep his program on the air and free of network interference.

Here's an acceptance speech from the other night and a couple of the many interviews he did in the press room after…

And here he is, expertly handling a reporter from TMZ who stuck a camera in his face at the airport…

Today's Video Link

Broadway shows that are in rehearsal sometimes have a "press day" in which they invite reporters and cameras in to to view the work-in-progress. Here are two numbers from The Producers — one featuring Nathan Lane, the other featuring Matthew Broderick — from that show's press day. You may notice a few lyrics are different from what was on the stage on opening night. Opening night in this case was April 19, 2001…

Today's Political Comment

Well, Donald Trump didn't get kicked out of his trial today so we'll put another $10 in the jackpot. He pulled this miracle off by not showing up for the trial but he's still very much in "the rules don't apply to me" mode. A reporter who was in the courtroom the other day tweeted this…

Perfect little detail illustrating Trump's disrespect for process, judge, and jury: he walked out of the courtroom at the end of court day rather than standing for the jury and waiting for them to exit, as every litigant, lawyer, audience member knows to do.

What kind of man is he? Well, let's find out from seventeen people who worked for him and, before they criticized him, were referred to as "the best people in the world."

Today's Political Comment

I'm about to go to bed and I have the feeling that tomorrow will be the day that Donald Trump gets himself ejected from the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial currently going on in New York. He sure seems to be trying to get tossed out so he can complain that the trial is illegitimate because the judge wouldn't let him participate. You have here a man who will never ever learn that being loud is not the same thing as being right.

Meanwhile, Nikki Haley was asked, "How do you feel about your party's frontrunner being found liable for sexual abuse?" Take a look at what she said…or rather, didn't say.

On Sale Now!

I don't make any money off this unless you purchase it through an Amazon link like this one…but you can now purchase a nifty Blu-ray of the 1966 movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!. What? You say you already own a copy of it? Well, you don't own this one which has a commentary track by Yours Truly and my pal Mike Schlesinger.

This is the 1966 movie directed by Norman Jewison, written by William Rose (the guy who co-wrote It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) and starring, among others, Alan Arkin, Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Jonathan Winters, Paul Ford and Brian Keith. Personally, I think Brian Keith steals the film…and don't think that's easy, stealing a film with all those other folks in it. But everyone is real good and I'm not saying that because I'm on the commentary track. It's the other way around: I'm on the commentary track because I so love this movie.

Because someone asked: No, there is no DVD being released now of this new edition and I doubt there will be one. If you do not have a Blu-ray player, you're going to have to go Blu-ray sooner or later. I sympathize. I held off moving from Betamax to VHS as long as I could…then held out moving from VHS to Laserdisc…then from Laserdisc to DVD…

Been there. Done that. I held out going from records to CDs until the day something I desperately wanted came out on CD only. I've learned not to fight this. And really, you can pick up a decent Blu-ray player for under forty bucks and will also play all those DVDs you have. There are many battles in this world that are worth fighting. This is not one of them. And if you finally accept that and buy one, do it through my Amazon link over in the right margin of this page. Thank you.

P.S. ADDED LATER: Just to clarify, Kino Lorber does have a DVD version of The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. This new Blu-ray has our commentary track and the DVD does not.

More About The Bookshop Sketch

Quite a few of you have written to tell me that you first encountered The Bookshop Sketch on the 1980 Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album. Oddly enough, three people told me it was performed there by John Cleese and Terry Jones, whereas five of you said it was John Cleese and Graham Chapman. I just listened to it (which you can do here) and I'm siding with the five.

Reader-of-this-blog Jeff McGinley wrote to say he recalls the sketch being done on The Dean Martin Show by Dom DeLuise and Dean. I don't but I can believe it. There was a period when that show's producer, Greg Garrison, seemed to have acquired the right to use Python material…or at least he thought he had. I vividly recall the Python sketch, "How Not To Be Seen" being aired on an episode — same film but with a voiceover by Dean replacing the one by Mr. Cleese. I seem to be the only person on the planet who remembers this.

Its usage may or may not have something to do with the fact that Mr. Garrison produced Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers, a Summer replacement show for Dean's weekly series in 1970. It was shot in England and featured Marty Feldman, Charles Nelson Reilly and Tommy Tune along with The Golddiggers and others. Much of what Feldman did on the show was sketches he'd done before elsewhere, often with Mr. Reilly taking a role previously played by John Cleese or someone else on the At Last the 1948 Show show. Those episodes do not seem to be available anywhere but it would not surprise me if The Bookshop Sketch was in one of them.

And then the following year, Garrison was involved with Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine, an hour-long series done for both British and American TV, though for America it was chopped to a half-hour and Garrison inserted some comedy routines with American performers. Feldman also appeared a few times on The Dean Martin Show — sometimes even with Dean — and I think some sketches that were shot for the Golddiggers show or for the Comedy Machine were also edited into Dean's show. At least one of them from the former is on the home video collections of material from Dean's show.

If it sound like I don't understand the connection between various Greg Garrison shows and Marty Feldman and Monty Python, that might be because I don't.

Lastly for now, we have another version of The Bookshop Sketch and my thanks to Luke Menichelli, who told me about it. In 1977, some fine British comedians appeared in a benefit show supporting Amnesty International. It was called An Evening Without Sir Bernard Miles and it was staged at the Mermaid Theater. When it was turned into a TV special and a record album, it was retitled The Mermaid Frolics.

The cast included such Peter Cook, Terry Jones (who also directed), Peter Ustinov, Jonathan Miller…and John Cleese and his wife of the moment, Connie Booth. Mr. Cleese and Ms. Booth were then in the Fawlty Towers business and I think Cleese comes off more like Basil Fawlty in this version starring both of them.

What I have embedded below is the entire special but I've set the video so most browsers will open it at 42:15, which is when The Bookshop Sketch begins. After you watch it, you can watch the rest of the show if you want. You can also move the little slider back and watch the entire show. Right now, I'm only interested in The Bookshop Sketch…

Today's Political Comment

So I just saw this news item online…

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Tuesday that he is suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, dropping out after failing to register in the Iowa caucuses.

…and I thought, as you probably did or are thinking now: "Asa Hutchinson was still in the race?" Admittedly, I didn't watch the last few G.O.P. debates but I don't think I've heard or read that name in a month or two. I guess I heard Chris Christie saying, "I'm the only one in this race telling the truth about Donald Trump" and I just kind of assumed that Hutchinson, who was doing some of that, was out.

And I see that he got 0.2% of the vote in yesterday's caucuses which isn't all that far from how you and I did in them. He finished behind someone named Ryan Binkley whose name I don't think I've read or heard before. It sounds like one of those character names we used to make up at Hanna-Barbera. I may have written an episode of Scooby Doo where one of the suspects was named Ryan Binkley.

The strangest thing I saw in the news this morning was this statement from Nikki Haley — and this is an actual quote: "When you look at how well we're doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina and beyond, I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race." This is a very odd statement coming from the person who finished in third place. She also said Iowa demonstrated that her campaign has "momentum." Okay…but so does someone falling from a very tall building.

Meanwhile, there seems to be some controversy over the media calling the race for Trump when they did…

The Associated Press called the race just about 30 minutes after voting began, projecting Trump as the winner with only nine of 1,657 precincts reporting results, or 0.54%, according to Axios. Fox News, NBC News and CNN all projected Trump as the winner before 9 pm as well.

"Absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote," tweeted DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo. "The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet."

I kinda agree about calling the race before everyone had a chance to vote but they've kind of been doing that for months now. That same media has been telling us that Trump was going to crush all challengers and he did. What they did on Election Day or Caucus Day or whatever you'd call it ain't all that different from what they did the day before that and the day before that and the day before that…

And much of that media has been telling us that Trump was found to have sexually molested a woman and that he's likely to be convicted of one or more felonies in the coming months. If they're "in the tank" for him, they're doing a good job of disguising it.

Anyway, for an interesting take on what the vote in Iowa means, go read Mona Charen. She thinks there's a growing movement among Republican voters to vote for anyone else even if anyone else is Joe Biden.