Mark Evanier's Blog, page 40

A Story About a Producer I Worked For

This is going back maybe twenty-five years. I did some work for a TV producer who was obsessed with specificity. I didn't do a lot for him because, like I said, he was obsessed with specificity. He judged everything I said to him and everything I wrote not based on whether it was clever or funny or exciting or anything like that. The only question he seemed to ask himself about anything was "Is it specific enough?" And almost nothing was.

The first time I encountered his odd demands came when we started talking about a then-recent special I'd done for Dick Clark. He asked "How many months did you work on it?" and I replied, "About six weeks," which you'd think was a perfectly responsive response, right? But in his eyes, I'd made two mistakes, the first being the "about" part. Not specific enough.

And you know what the other mistake was? "I asked you how many months, not weeks!"

The correct answer to his question was something like "1.35 months" — and that number had to be exact. After a couple of other matters like that, he lectured me, "People in this world are too vague. They say 'That brand of cheese is three dollars a pound' when the actual price is $2.98! I prefer to deal in precision."

I said, "I'll try to be more accurate" and I did but in everything I wrote for him, he kept asking questions and demanding that I insert more specificity into the script he was paying me to write. I no longer have my early drafts of that script and it never got past the development stage but I would write something like this…

Our hero BLAINE enters the bar just as the sun can be seen setting behind him. He stops in the doorway and gives the room the once-over, registering a bit of disgust with the motley patrons who are downing drinks and pretending not to notice him.

To make this producer happy, I would have to rewrite it more like this…

Our hero John Foster BLAINE enters Guido's Tavern at 6:45 PM just as the sun is setting behind him. Much CHATTER can be heard from the patrons within as Blaine — 6'2" and 35 years of age enters wearing a dark brown, wrinkled overcoat and a hat pulled partway down his piercing brown eyes. As he moves among the patrons, the chatter dissipates and ANNIE (45 years old and Caucasian with bleached blonde hair and a cheap green cocktail dress) turns away to avoid making eye contact as does her companion HARRY, a black 30-year-old off-duty U.P.S. driver still clad in his uniform and sitting there quaffing a beer with a thick head of foam that suggests Guido's in the kind of place that doesn't fill its drinks up all the way.

"You need to give anyone who reads the script a complete picture," the producer said to me.

I tried to give him what he wanted. Oh, how I tried to give him what he wanted but he'd read something like the above and complain, "You didn't describe the bartender. If it's a bar, there must be a bartender. And how attractive is Annie? And what's Harry's last name? Blaine is coming in from the sundown. Is he wearing tinted glasses?"

It went like that for a couple of drafts of a couple of scenes — forgive my lack of specificity as to how many of each — and I finally decided to ask off the project even if it meant not being paid a cent for what I'd done. Before I could, the producer called my agent and announced that he had lost his source of funding and would have to freeze the project for the time being. My agent said, "That's up to you but you still owe my client the full amount." They haggled a bit and argued but the producer finally agreed to pay me the full amount within thirty days.

The check arrived three-and-a-half months later and it was $150 short. Specificity, it turns out, has its limits.

Today's Video Link

Let's spend some time with Jasmine Amy Rogers, star of Boop! The Musical. She and it are still playing on Broadway and I hope they still are when next I'm in the vicinity…



Today's Video Link

Charles Strouse died on Wednesday…an important figure in the annals of musical comedy. He wrote the music for a great many shows including Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and Annie. He also wrote scores for motion pictures including one of my favorites — The Night They Raided Minsky's — and unmentioned in most of the obits was his work with his frequent lyricist Lee Adams on one of the best things that ever came out of the Hanna-Barbera studio.

I speak, of course, of the 1966 animated special, Alice in Wonderland (or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?) But obits like this one will tell you some of the other things he did, including the Superman Broadway musical and the opening theme for the TV show, All in the Family.

Here's a video from a few years back with Mr. Strouse (he's the one at the piano) talking with his collaborator Martin Charnin about Annie…

FACT CHECK: Shaky Estimates, Chickenpox and Genocide

Glenn Kessler shows us how Presidential Administrations — and not just the current ones — play fast 'n' loose with financial estimates.

And Politifact shows us how even Bernie Sanders can sometimes make economic projections that seem a bit deceptive. Some folks at FactCheck.org say much the same thing.

YouTube is crawling with video clips from the recent appearance before Congress by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. If someone was bribing this man to convince people he was unqualified and largely unable to answer questions he should be able to answer, he couldn't have done a better job. Other folks at FactCheck.org discuss one of the many things he said that was, at best, misleading.

And still others at FactCheck.org point out that Donald Trump doesn't seem to understand what the word "genocide" means.

ASK me: Cartoons Into Comics

Donald Benson wrote to inquire, with reference to animation studios…

How closely did various studios monitor comic books of their characters? I'm guessing the non-superheroes didn't bother too much about continuity, being based on theatrical cartoons or short TV episodes that rarely bothered at all. But presumably somebody was there to say Yogi has to be a real bear in Jellystone Park, or Mickey can't have a different girlfriend than Minnie, etc.

Most of the comic books based on animated properties over the years were produced out of the Los Angeles office of Western Publishing Company, first under the Dell Comics imprint and later as Gold Key and/or Whitman comics. The staff at Western then enjoyed very close relationships with the cartoon studios whose properties they were turning into comics. For one thing, they employed a lot of the same talent. Most of the writers and artists who worked on those comics also worked for the studios.

The Western Publishing Company office in L.A. did plenty of business and had much interaction with the cartoon studios in Los Angeles: Disney, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz, Hanna-Barbera, etc. My editor at Western, Chase Craig, told me a number of stories of lunching with or visiting Walt Disney. Del Connell, who was also an editor there, did a lot of moonlighting for Western. (And Western Publishing was also an earlier investor in Disneyland.) When I met Walter Lantz and told him I'd written Woody Woodpecker comics for Chase, he told me how much he loved Chase and his whole long history with Western.

So the studios didn't worry about Western doing wrong with their properties. Hanna-Barbera did hate most of what Charlton Comics did with their characters and eventually canceled that deal. Charlton was on the other side of the country, employing no one who'd ever worked for the studio and paying them just about the lowest wages in this business. That was a problem. But it all comes down to good working relationships. When you have them, things work out fine.

FACT CHECK: Citizens and Cops

That Trump guy keeps claiming that the United States is the only country that offers birthright citizenship. He is, of course, wrong — as the Associated Press reports.

And that same Trump guy keeps claiming to be an unwavering supporter of law enforcement officials. Steve Benen explains why that is not so…as if pardoning the January 6 criminals who attacked police officers wasn't evidence enough.

Today's Video Link

As I've mentioned here, I sometimes like to watch "how to cook" videos on YouTube for two reasons. One is that it's interesting to me to see how foods I eat are made. And the other reason is that most of these videos disabuse me of the silly idea that I could do what these expert chefs do. I do not have the patience to be a good cook and I will never have the time to learn how to do these things right.

The video today shows me some of the things I've done wrong when I've tried to prepare a steak at home. They've always come out lousy and I'm not trying again because I know I could never be anywhere near as competent as Brian Lagerstrom, who logged years and years learning his craft in restaurants and now makes videos like this one.

If you're a skilled cook, I envy you and you might learn something from this lesson. If you're like me, it's like watching Simone Biles or Elly De La Cruz. I see folks like them perform and I think "I'll never be able to do what they do" — and I'm right…

FACT CHECK: There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch Plane

Apart from the obvious illegality of a President of the United States accepting a gift worth $400 million from anyone, let alone Qatar, there's another problem: The "free airplane" would cost this country a fortune, perhaps more than $400 million smackers. Steve Benen explains.

ASK me: The Kirward Derby

My piece here yesterday about Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra brought about twenty e-mails asking that I explain all about The Kirward Derby, another famous time when a cartoon show fiddled with the name of a celebrity. This was another one of those instances where a lawsuit was threatened and people think it was filed and the parties went to court…but all that happened was a threat was made and never pursued.

The show we now think of as Rocky and Bullwinkle actually began as a series for kids called Rocky and His Friends. It debuted on ABC's late afternoon schedule in November of 1959. Less than two years later, NBC bought a variation of the same show and slotted it at 7:00 PM on Sunday evenings just before Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. Obviously, they hoped to lure both adults and kids to the set with what was now called The Bullwinkle Show.

The new time slot encouraged the writers to include some jokes for the parents watching. The first story arc in the (serialized from week to week) adventures of the Moose and Squirrel was about a search for a legendary hat which, when worn, makes its wearer super-intelligent. They called the hat "The Kirward Derby" — named after a TV personality named Durward Kirby who served as announcer/sidekick on The Garry Moore Show and also as co-host of Candid Camera. Those were both series on CBS.

Before long, a letter arrived from Mr. Kirby's attorney…and for the next part of the story I'm going to quote from the superb must-have book, The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose by my friend Keith Scott…

Jay's lawyer was instructed to reply by saying, "Tell Mr. Kirby that he has our permission to name any one of his hats after any character in our show." In fact, Ward actually sent Kirby a hat. Then he replied to Kirby's lawyer: "The only other names for the Derby — Kentucky and Brown — were already taken. We had toyed with the idea of calling it the Bullwinkle Bowler, but discarded this as being too chauvinistic. Please sue us, we love publicity." As he told the press a year later, "Whenever anybody says they are going to sue us, we always tell them we will send our lawyer right over to help them draw up the papers. Nobody has ever accepted the offer."

And that pretty much was the end of that. No lawsuit was ever filed. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that thereafter, Mr. Kirby would tell people who asked about it, "That was my lawyer acting without my knowledge. Personally, I was flattered by the reference." Which might be true or it might be what you say when you find yourself looking like a comedian who can't take a joke. (By the buy: You can order a copy of Keith's book at this link…and should.)

Lawyers send letters like that all the time, even when they know they have no legal legs on which to stand. Durward or his lawyer might even have thought Jay Ward might start selling the hats and they wanted to position themselves to demand a cut. Durward Kirby was actually kind of a funny fellow who had a fairly decent career, working in all corners of the broadcasting industry until his retirement. Almost none of the thousands of hours of TV and radio he did are available these days but a lot of people still remember the Kirward Derby.

FACT CHECK: Deportations, Drugs and Flying Bribes

Donald Trump keeps saying that President Dwight D. Eisenhower deported over a million people from this country. Fact-Check Guy Glenn Kessler says that ain't so.

Trump says that under this new plan to lower prescription drug prices "almost immediately." The folks at Politifact say that even if that eventually happens, it's going to take quite a while.

Trump says that other countries are to blame for high drug prices in the United States. The Associated Press says this is not true.

And FactCheck.org looks at this whole story about Trump maybe accepting the gift of a $400 million dollar airplane from Qatar and says that a lot of things being said and written about it are not true.