Mark Evanier's Blog, page 238

Free Lewis Black

A lot of you are going to thank me for this. For what I think is a limited time only, Lewis Black's new comedy special is available to watch for free on YouTube. It's a little over an hour of him talking about what The Pandemic meant for his life and ours and I really enjoyed watching it. I think he's one of the most original voices in stand-up comedy of this century. I've seen him live about a half-dozen times and I've never been disappointed.

Go watch it because I don't believe it'll be online for very long.

On the Line

Well, now that I'm officially on strike, let me say a few things. This is my fifth strike since I joined the Writers Guild in 1976. For the record, the previous four were in 1981, 1985, 1988 and 2007. The issues were different in each strike but in a sense, they were all the same: The old contract was expiring and the alliance of the major producers were using the need to arrive at a new contract as an opportunity to achieve two closely-related goals…

To lower what they paid us for our work…or to at least not give us an increase that kept pace with inflation and the rising cost of living and…To establish that we — and the directors, actors and everyone else — would get the smallest possible share of the revenues being generated by new income streams and new forms of technology. At the moment, that's mainly streaming but in past strikes, it was the increase of new cable channels, the sales of programming on videotape and (later) LaserDiscs and DVDs, etc.

There are frequently other issues and while some of them matter, a lot of them are things the producers are quite prepared to drop if they can achieve the two above goals. A frequent negotiating tactic they love is to offer us a really, really, really awful deal (three reallys) and then, if/when we refuse to swallow it, they'll drop one really in the hope that we'll grab the really, really awful deal (two reallys) thinking we've won something.

Already, I'm seeing angry posts on message boards from folks who work in the entertainment industry but who are not writers. They're angry because they know production will slow to a trickle and some of them will be laid off or not hired. Too many of them leap to blame "greedy writers" instead of producers who want everyone to take less. I wish more of those folks would understand that if we get rolled back, everyone will eventually get rolled back. These strikes are never just about one labor organization's compensation.

I was quite active in the '85 and '88 strikes. I am not as active in the Guild now. I support it wholeheartedly but I'm still learning about the specific details and terms in the current action and I know very few folks in the present Guild leadership. Ergo, this blog may not be the place to find out what's happening on the inside. If you want to keep on top of that, you may need to find another source.

What I can tell you is that I've lost money and opportunities in each past strike. In '81, I walked out on one of the best-paying TV jobs I ever had. In '85, the strike collapsed quickly due to a rift in the Guild and a lot of members who literally — and I'm not making this up — insisted there would never be any money in the sale of movies and old TV shows to be watched at home. That year, the Writers Guild gave up on getting a meaningful share of that revenue and, of course, that led to everyone who didn't own or run a studio getting only a teensy share of those riches.

In '88, the studios attempted to better their win in '85 with another shitty offer and it took the longest strike in Hollywood history — 22 weeks! — to get them to give us an acceptable offer. That year, I had a script I'd written for a hit TV show not get filmed because of the strike and a screenplay I was writing for a major movie studio get shelved. I forget what I lost in 2007 but I know there was something. And I have a project now which may be impacted by the current impasse.

I have never regretted any of those strikes. Show business obviously pays quite well at times — well enough to sometimes make up for the times when we don't get hired and what we're selling goes unpurchased. I believe it would never pay well for those who fall outside the categories of Owners and Management if labor unions like the Writers Guild of America were unwilling to say no to bad offers. What we walked out on an hour or so ago seems to be a very bad offer.

In the interest of Full Disclosure, I have other things to write that will not be affected by the strike. I learned long ago that a writer needs to diversify and not be at the mercy of any one source of income. Still, I stand to lose in many ways with this current strike as do a lot of people before this nasty business is over. It's just that when you go through as many strikes as I have, you learn that if you take a bad offer this time, you just get a worse one the next time out. And a worse one after that and a worse one after that…

Starting in Two Hours and Fifty-Seven Minutes…

Today's Video Link

As we wait to see if the Writers Guild is going to call a strike today, let's enjoy this. I wrote back here how when I was a wee lad, my Aunt Dot used to always coax me to do my Jimmy Durante impression which to her was the absolute peak in the world of entertainment. Give her the choice of Brando doing Tennessee Williams, Olivier doing Shakespeare, Sinatra doing Cole Porter, Caruso doing Verdi or Evanier doing Durante, she would have gone for the kid in an instant.

Reader-of-this-blog Curtis Burga found this clip of some upstart doing my act in the 1994 movie, Greedy. I was about this good except that I didn't do it in costume, I didn't have an accompanist and I sounded more like Durante — or maybe Doggie Daddy — than this copycat did…

Late in the Evening…

Here's Brian Stelter with a piece about late night TV and its future — if it even has one. Of special interest to me is the suggestion that James Corden's show ended because it was so expensive and losing so much money. I would love to know how much more his Late, Late Show cost over Craig Ferguson's.

Ferguson's ratings were pretty impressive, especially when you consider that he worked with a tiny budget, a tiny writing staff, no band or musical director, no sidekick for his first few years (he eventually had to have one built for him), very little money for remotes or sketches and at times, a pretty low-rated lead-in. Even when Letterman was pulling down decent ratings for the hour, his last fifteen minutes weren't watched by too many people besides Paul Shaffer.

I'd also love to know how much less than his competition (i.e., Conan O'Brien) Ferguson had to work with and what kind of restrictions Letterman put on the show that followed his. I can believe that Corden chose to leave at this time because of other, more interesting offers and also fatigue, as he sure seemed to work hard…but I wonder if he'd have stayed even this long if he'd had to play the hand Mr. Ferguson was dealt.

As for Stelter's pessimistic outlook on the future of late night programming…there will of course be shows in that time slot. They just may not be in the Johnny/Dave/Jay tradition and that may be a good thing. Stelter describes the decrease in audience favor for that kind of show and it roughly mirrors my own. As I've written here before, I'd like to see those shows have more spontaneity as well as less editing and fewer interviews that were written by the publicists for the Big Name Guest's new movie, TV show, album or live appearance.

I do know another reason why I no longer TiVo all the late night shows. Once upon a time, there was the fear that if you didn't watch (or at least record), you might miss something wonderful. Now, we all know that when something wonderful happens on one of those shows, it will be available the next day and for a long time after on YouTube. And to get to it, you won't have to wade through the non-wonderful parts and the commercials. I don't know about you but watching TV shows on cable, sans commercials, has made me less tolerant of watching programs laced with them.

ASK me: Palisades Amusement Park

Brian Dreger, who sends in great questions, sent this great question regarding DC Comics of the sixties…

Is there some reason why Superman always appeared in ads for the New Jersey Palisades amusement park? Wouldn't they have had to pay a big advertising fee to have the character appear continuously in those ads? The ads were all over the place in the sixties. I could never figure out why Superman was advertising for an amusement park in New Jersey.

I wondered about that too, Brian. I'd buy comics and see ads like this one…

…and I'd think, first of all, what good is a discount ticket to an amusement party in New Jersey to a kid in Los Angeles?  And I'd also wonder why that amusement park would spend all that money to buy ads in comic books when at least 80% of the kids who bought those comics — and maybe more — lived nowhere near New Jersey? I wanted to write in and demand discount tickets to something like Pacific Ocean Park out in Santa Monica or Marineland out here in Palos Verdes.

Then around 1968, I met a man named Whitney Ellsworth who had been at one point the editor-in-chief of DC Comics. He was now living in Los Angeles — Beverly Hills, actually — and supervising TV projects for DC. I wish I'd met him a few years later because in '68, I didn't know enough about the comic book industry to know what questions to ask. I did though ask him about those ads.

Mr. Ellsworth was a nervous man who I think feared that if he said the wrong thing to this 16-year-old kid visiting his office, it would somehow get back to the folks in charge of DC in New York and they'd use it as an excuse to fire him. He dodged every question I had about Siegel and Shuster or Bob Kane or even which DC comics sold best. When I queried him why an amusement park in New Jersey advertised in DC's books, he looked around nervously, thought for a second, then made me promise not to tell anyone.

Since it's been more than half a century and everyone involved is dead, I'll take a huge risk and break my promise. He told me, "The people who run DC…some of them invested money in that amusement park."

That was in 1968 and a mere three years later, Palisades Amusement Park was torn down and a high-rise luxury apartment complex was built on its that land. I swear it wasn't because of me. I didn't tell a soul.

Border Crossings – Part 3

Before you partake of this installment of this series, you may wish to read or review Part 1 and/or Part 2.

Western Printing and Lithographing Company was a company founded in 1907 by a man named Edward Henry Wadewitz. Why it was called "Western" when it began in Racine, Wisconsin is just one of those questions I wondered about for years. When I did work for the company in the seventies, it was one of about eight thousand things I asked about and here is the closest thing to a good answer I got…

Mr. Wadewitz was a printer working for a company in that city called West Side Printing. The person at Western who told me this said, "I assume it was called that because it was on the west side of Racine." He further told me that West Side wasn't well managed and was losing money so Wadewitz saw an opportunity. He bought the company and renamed it "Western" so it kind of seemed like the same company but not exactly. You can believe that explanation if you want. I decided it would do until a better one comes along.

Under Wadewitz's management, the firm did much better and was printing books and magazines for a wide array of companies. Some of those companies were unable to pay their printing bills so Western wound up owning those companies…which put them into the publishing business. This is the way quite a few printers became publishers. The founding of DC Comics was a not-terribly-dissimilar situation.

So Western Printing also became Western Publishing, more so when one of the publishers it acquired was a large outfit called Hamming-Whitman. Eventually, Whitman became the name for a subsidiary of Western that specialized in books for younger audiences. And some of those books were in the area of activity books — coloring books, puzzle books, connect-the-dots books, etc. Whitman jigsaw puzzles were a very big thing and they had another division making stationery and yet another manufacturing playing cards.

Yet another division was K.K. Publications, "K.K" being the initials of Kay Kamen, an enterprising gent who was in charge of character merchandising for the Walt Disney Studios. Eventually through his good offices, Western would sew up the publishing rights to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and anything else that came out of Mr. Disney's empire. Later on, they made similar arrangements with other animation studios including Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz and M.G.M. These were deals to feature those studios' properties in every kind of item Western produced and that would include comic books.

In 1938, they made a deal with Dell Publishing to furnish Dell with a comic book line. Dell would "publish" the comics in terms of deciding what to publish, putting up the money to produce the comics and then distributing the comics. The editors of those comics worked for Western, not Dell, and the writers and artists of those comics were paid by Western, not Dell. Carl Barks, who wrote and drew some of the best Disney comics published under the Dell logo worked for Western, not Dell, and the rights to do Disney comics were among the many held by Western, not Dell.

For decades, it was a very lucrative arrangement for both companies. Some of those comics sold in the millions per issue and in addition to comics made using the characters licensed by Disney, there were the licenses with Warner Brothers, Lantz, M.G.M. and hundreds of others that Western acquired. They also did adaptations of movies and live-action TV shows and there were original properties, as well. The Dell/Western line was at times, the best-selling line of comics in the business…an achievement that often went unrecognized by their competitors.

In 1970, I started my relationship with D.C. Comics. This was at a time when Marvel was starting to claim that they had the best-selling line in the field. It was arguably true then and soon became inarguably so…but at the time, a senior D.C. staff member told me, "D.C. Comics has always been #1 in this industry." Being the kind of person who would ask something like this, I asked, "What about Western and Dell in the fifties and early sixties?"

The gentleman gave me a look of contempt and said, "They don't count."

They counted a lot for a while…but then something happened. In 1962, Dell Publishing and Western got a divorce and split, in effect, into two separate companies. This will be explained in greater detail in the next part of this series…and right about now, some of you are probably wondering, "What does any of this have to do with word balloons in comics touching panel borders?" Well, that will be explained, too.

Today's Video Link

As much as I like James Corden, I couldn't help but feel that the send-off of his Late, Late Show was excessive in terms of press and self-congratulation. It was like the folks behind it felt that his eight years deserved more praise and attention than the exits of Carson (30 years), Letterman (33 years) and Leno (17 years and then 4 more) combined. Craig Ferguson's Late, Late Show was on for just shy of ten pretty good years and his departure didn't get a prime-time special or anywhere near as much hoopla.

Ferguson also never had the budget to produce segments like some of Corden's more impressive ones like this video.  It gathers together — and I'm not including a SPOILER ALERT because you probably know by now and if not, the thumbnail gives it away — appearances by Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman and Trevor Noah.

Did any article or anything anyone said say where and when they shot this?  It was a marvel of coordinating schedules, probably helped a bit by the fact that some of these men have the same agent.  (And yes, I know Letterman was filmed separately from the others and so was the segment with Corden and Noah together.)

Before anyone asks why certain other people weren't in it: I believe Conan O'Brien has been shooting his new show in other countries.  As for the rest, I dunno.  Here's the video…



Tales From My Childhood #15

This first appeared here October 1, 2015. Nothing has changed since then. In fact, nothing has changed about the guilt I felt when the events described below first occurred around the age of eleven…

My Aunt Dot was a very sweet, loving woman.  As I've related in past installments of this series, she was sometimes a bit ditsy but she was at heart a very happy, loving lady.  And she thought everything I did was adorable.  Everything.

When I was under the age of around ten, everything I did was especially adorable but it was adorable the way everything a cocker spaniel puppy does is adorable.  Once when I was six or so, I did a Jimmy Durante impression in her living room and you can just imagine how much I looked and sounded like that great entertainer.  Aunt Dot thought it was the single greatest moment in the history of show business.   For her, the top three were Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow," Harold Lloyd dangling from that clock face and her nephew doing Durante.  Not necessarily in that order.

Whenever I visited her home if there was anyone present who'd seen it fewer than five times, I had to perform it.  To her dying day, I think she felt I'd missed my true calling and should be touring in Durantemania.

Jimmy Durante

As I got older, I grew weary of striding through my aunt's living room singing "Inka Dinka Doo" in the raspiest version of a voice which had yet to change.  Mostly, I was tired of being cute.  When you hit a certain age, you'd like to be treated as a person of that certain age.  I especially wanted her to stop laughing and telling everyone about The Watermelon.

As much as Aunt Dot loved my Durante, what she really thought was wonderful was me doing chores like a grown-up.  When my parents and I took her and Uncle Aaron to the airport, which we did a lot, she was in ecstasy if eight-year-old me carried her suitcase.  It was as cute as…well, as if a cocker spaniel puppy had carried her suitcase.  She kept laughing and saying, "Smash your baggage, sir?", which I guess was a line she'd heard someone say on TV once.

Then one day, I went to the market with her and it was somehow up to me to carry in The Watermelon —

— which I dropped right in the middle of her living room.

I can still hear the sound of it exploding.  If this were a Don Martin cartoon, it would go KA-PLOOOP!!  With two exclamation points and three Os.

A watermelon

Aunt Dot shrieked and moaned and threw herself to the floor with a sponge and some sort of cleaner she grabbed from the kitchen, making a desperate attempt to save her beloved wall-to-wall carpeting.  No luck.  The rug had a huge discoloration for the rest of its life — and it was right in the center so you couldn't walk into the apartment without noticing it.

I felt terrible…so awful that I momentarily wondered if the proper thing to do would have been to give up buying comic books until I'd saved enough money to get all new carpeting for Aunt Dot's apartment.  This was around 1960 and if I'd made that supreme sacrifice, I might have been able to resume my funnybook collecting in time to buy the first issue I wrote of Woody Woodpecker in 1971.

It also occurred to me that maybe most of the damage was actually done by Aunt Dot and her cleaning fluid — a suspicion partially confirmed on my next trip to the public library where I researched the staining capabilities of watermelon.  I never brought this up with Aunt Dot because she suddenly saw the entire blemish in a whole new light…

She decided it was adorable.  In fact, it was in some ways better than my Durante.  And you know by now how awesome my Durante was.

Thereafter when I went to Aunt Dot's and she had anyone else there (and she always had someone else there), we had a double feature: I had to do my Durante and stand there and listen to the hilarious story of how clumsy me had ruined her living room rug by dropping The Watermelon.

One night I had a dream: I cure a dread disease or abolish war or achieve my lifelong goal of eradicating cole slaw in our lifetimes.  Whatever it is, it's big and very heroic and the world press rushes to Aunt Dot to ask her how she feels about her nephew winning the Nobel Prize.  Standing before every microphone on the planet, she says, "He was always such a bright boy…but let me tell you about the time he dropped The Watermelon.  Oh, and make sure he does Jimmy Durante for you.  Now, that's impressive!"

Today's Video Link

Here's a short clip of John Mulvaney saying something that I believe is very true…