Mark Evanier's Blog, page 45

Today's Video Link

It's Randy Rainbow. Yes, it's Randy Rainbow…definitely Randy Rainbow…

Today's Video Link

Here's a really odd video…a 1994 roast of Morey Amsterdam — about two years before he passed away. It was taped at a place called The Ventura Club that was out in Sherman Oaks in a building that's now a Poquito Mas fast food joint and a Pilates studio. The video runs an hour and forty-seven minutes and I haven't watched all of it just as you won't watch all of it.

But one of my favorite stand-up comedians of a bygone era, Dave Barry, is one of the hosts and among the speakers are Gene Barry, Rose Marie, Paul Winchell and Foster Brooks. I don't want to cast any aspersions on the character of the departed but I have the feeling Foster Brooks had a few drinks. Rose Marie is probably the best one and her speech starts around an hour and seven minutes in.

Thanks to Brian Dreger for telling me about this. If you fast-forward and skip ahead a lot, you might enjoy some of this…

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.