Mark Evanier's Blog, page 244

Today's Video Link

Here's a short video that does a good job explaining what the Writers Strike is all about…

There's a mention in there of the studios "stockpiling" scripts in anticipation of a strike. I have no idea how true that is this time but in the four previous strikes I've been in, we kept hearing that they wouldn't need our services for months because they'd stockpiled scripts…and that really wasn't true. Here and there, there were a few shows that had some and there were a few largely-unsuccessful attempts to produce new shows by reusing old scripts. But for the most part, it didn't work. Even when they did have old scripts, there was no one there who could rewrite what needed rewriting.

One thing that made it obvious they didn't have the rumored stockpiles was that they were also trying to cast us as the Bad Guys by saying, "Look how many cameramen, make-up people, grips, lighting guys (etc.) are out of work because the writers forced us to shut down production!" Obviously, if you have plenty of stockpiled scripts, you don't shut down production.

About Gordo

I said earlier that Gus Arriola and his newspaper strip Gordo fell short of beating Russell Myers' record for drawing a newspaper strip all by himself. A couple of e-mails (especially one from Mark Mayerson) make me realize Arriola's run, though impressive in both length and quality, falls even shorter than I thought.

For one thing, he did occasionally use assistants. For another, there was a period in the mid-fifties when for medical reasons, Arriola took a month off from the strip and other cartoonists filled-in for him. And while Gordo did indeed start November 24, 1941 and end March 2, 1985, Arriola took almost a year off to fight in World War II and when he resumed the strip, it was for Sunday only for a while and then the daily strip restarted a few years later. So he did a lot less than 15,804 strips and not all were unassisted.

It was a great strip, though…always clever, often changing form and style. I was right about the part when I said it was underrated. If you ever come across the reprint collections — there were some but not enough — you'll see what I mean.

Witches Live Forever

Back in this post, we noted that my pal Russell Myers has been drawing his newspaper strip Broom-Hilda with no assistance since it debuted back in April of 1970. That's over 19,000 daily and Sunday strips and he ain't about to stop. As you probably would assume, newspaper strip artists work way ahead of schedule and Russell is way, way ahead. If he quit tomorrow, which he has no intention of doing, he already has enough Broom-Hilda strips completed to take him over the 20,000 mark.

A lot of folks seem to think Charles Schulz holds the record but he only did a paltry 17,897 published Peanuts strips. I have a lot of comic strip experts reading this site and I asked if anyone could come up with a run that beats Russell's streak. No one has yet.

A couple of folks wondered if Gus Arriolo, who drew Gordo, would qualify. Nope. Gordo — a wonderful and underrated strip, by the way — started November 24, 1941 and ended March 2, 1985. I don't know if it always had a Sunday page but even if it did, the span between those two dates is 15,804 days.

So I'm declaring Myers the winner and I'm now asking the many reporters who read this blog — some of whom report for pretty important outlets — who wants to be the first person to write an article about this record-breaker? I will gladly assist in helping you assemble your story and my contact info is in the grey margin on this page. Let's publicize this awesome achievement! Anyone know how we submit this to the Guinness Book of World Records?

WGA Strike News

I have no "insider" info to offer about this strike and some of you have sent in questions to which my answer would just be "I dunno." But I can perhaps point you to sources that may be of help. The Hollywood Reporter has this interview with WGA West president Meredith Stiehm and David Goodman and Chris Keyser, who are co-chairs of the negotiating committee. What they report sounds a lot like things we heard during the previous four Writers Guild strikes since I became a member.

And the Los Angeles Times has this explainer explaining what WGA members can and cannot do during the work stoppage. It pretty much comes down to doing anything on any project that is under the jurisdiction of the Guild. I can write comic books and articles and books…and that's fine.

When the 1985 strike hit, I was writing a live-action pilot script for a certain network's Saturday morning schedule. I had tried to finish it before the strike was called but some things just can't be written as swiftly as you might like. I don't recall what day of the week the strike was probably going to commence but let's say it was a Wednesday. On Monday morning, a senior exec at that network phoned me and the conversation went roughly like this…

EXEC: Any chance we could have it by close of business tomorrow?

ME: I don't think so. Not if you want it to be any good. You just sent me to script on this last Friday.

EXEC: I know. We should have given you the go-ahead two weeks ago. Well, take whatever time you need to finish it. You know, I'd never ask a writer to hand in material during a strike but it would not bother me if one morning, I opened my front door to find a manila envelope there next to my morning paper. You know where I live.

ME: I do. And if it'll make you happy, I'll swing by and leave a manila envelope on your front porch. It won't have anything in it…oh, wait. I could give you my mother's recipe for potato latkes. Would you like that?

EXEC: Thanks. But we can't fill the 9:30 AM time slot with your mother's recipe for potato latkes. It would certainly be more entertaining than the show we have on there right now but I wouldn't want to make your mother into a scab.

The End of That Story: The strike ended — badly for the Writers Guild — in two weeks. I then finished the script, handed it in and they bought a cartoon show instead of my project for the 9:30 AM time slot. Many months later after that other program had debuted, the Exec called and said he wished he'd put my mother's recipe on instead. He said, "At least the animation would have been better."

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.