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McCanned Laughter
Just had lunch with one of the three most talented people on this planet, Chuck McCann, and I'm taking him down to USC later this afternoon to speak to my students. (I teach Comedy Writing down there on Wednesdays. So if you see a future generation of comedy writers who can only do "mulch" jokes, you'll know the reason.) Chuck is an actor and a writer and a filmmaker and a voiceover genius and if I ever need to have someone do a liver transplant on me, I'm betting he can handle that, too.
Each year, he organizes the Brown Paper Pete Film Festival featuring short movies that are made in a helluva hurry. They give you six weeks and a topic and then they see what you come up with. This coming Sunday at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills at 1 PM, they'll be unspooling this year's entries, which are in some way about cars. If you're anywhere in the area, go and I'll bet you enjoy yourself tremendously.
In the meantime, if you click on this link, you can watch a film that Chuck made for some past festival...or something.
• Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 3:00 PM · LINK
Wednesday Morning
In January of '05, a man named Juan Manuel Alvarez did what has to rank right up there with the crappiest things any human being has ever done to other human beings. After what were reported as several failed attempts to take his own life, Alvarez parked his Jeep Grand Cherokee on some railroad tracks in Glendale, apparently figuring that the Metrolink train that ran along those tracks would destroy it and him. He also, just to add to his certain demise, doused the Jeep in gasoline.
At the last minute, it is said, he got cold feet...or something. Whatever his motives, he fled the Jeep and so escaped death or even injury when the train collided with it. Alas, others were not so fortunate. Eleven people died and close to 200 more were injured, some of them quite seriously. Alvarez was taken into custody and now, more than three years after the horrible incident, he's about to go on trial, charged with 11 counts of murder, one count of arson and a number of other offenses for which prosecutors are seeking the Death Penalty. Jury selection began today and in this article, it says the trial is expected to last through June...
...to which I say, "Huh?"
Through June? Three months? Why should this trial take more than twenty minutes?
I'm not suggesting they should just throw the book at the guy, schedule the electric chair and adjourn to Chili's for the Smokehouse Bacon Burger lunch special. Everyone is entitled to a Fair Trial and Due Process. I'm just wondering what they have to talk about that's going to take that long.
It is not in dispute that he parked the Jeep on the tracks, intending to have the train hit it. There seems to be some disagreement as to whether he really was suicidal and ever intended to be in the vehicle at the moment of impact but, in the immortal words of Dick Cheney...so? Motive and mindset are obviously important in some cases but do they really matter a lot in this one?
The lawyers for Alvaraz are apparently not going to argue that he was framed and that a mysterious one-armed man actually parked the Jeep on the tracks and made it look like Alvaraz did it. Their primary defense will be that, okay, you're right...because of what he did, a train was wrecked and people died or were maimed. But he didn't mean to. He thought the train would just hit the SUV, destroy it and him, and then continue its merry way along the track. It will be further claimed that the train striking the Jeep did not cause all those deaths; that they were the result of a chain reaction of events — this hitting that which hit that, etc. — which could not have been anticipated. It will further be asserted that Alvarez was emotionally distraught and not in full possession of his faculties...
...to which I still say, "Huh?"
Apparently, the three months (and they're saying it could be longer) will be to determine if Alvaraz was really trying to kill himself, and there will be witnesses for both sides discussing what he was like as a child and to what extent he'd ever displayed suicidal tendencies. So what we'll have here is the Prosecution arguing he should die because he didn't want to kill himself...and the Defense saying he shouldn't get the Death Penalty because he did want to kill himself.
This is silly. Either way, this man should not be free to walk the streets...maybe not for the rest of his life but certainly not for a long time. I don't see that it matters a lot whether he spends all eternity in prison or if he's executed...and I don't mean just that the difference doesn't matter to society. I mean, it doesn't even seem to matter to him. A lot of my general opposition to the Death Penalty is because I don't believe it's sagely enforced. I think it's applied to a horrifying number of people who are either innocent or just plain did not receive fair trials and might be. That doesn't apply in this case.
This whole story is a great argument for some sort of government-sanctioned program for Assisted Suicide. I think you have a moral right to end your own life...and if things are going so poorly that you're thinking of parking your SUV on the Metrolink tracks, we oughta help you do it in a neater manner. I've written here in the past about a friend of mine who ended his botched-up existence by leaping from the top floor of the tallest hotel in Manhattan. I don't know if his life could have been put back together with professional help but it sure could have been ended in a less destructive (for others) way. He did great damage to total strangers who were there that day and witnessed that horror, to say nothing of what the spectacle did to his friends and family.
Unmentioned in any recent article I've seen on Alvarez is a follow-up on something that was reported at the time of the tragedy. There was some question as to whether the injured and the families of the deceased had any financial recourse. The train company has insurance but the train company did not seem to have been at fault in any way...and Alvarez didn't have the funds to buy a bottle of Bactine, let alone pay for any of the destruction he caused. At last report, some of those injured were trying to recoup on huge hospital bills by suing the train company for not doing a better job of anticipating this kind of thing.
All of this — the deaths, the destruction, the injuries, the medical bills, the millions of dollars in legal fees from the trials, all of it — might have been averted if there was a place this Alvarez guy could have gone and gotten help, either to end his life or to help him save it. There are counselling services out there but they don't offer the option that Alvarez allegedly (if we believe his lawyers) felt he needed. I don't know if he did or he didn't...but if he was determined enough to do what he did, wouldn't it have been better if someone could have shown him a more efficient way to go about it?
• Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 9:43 AM · LINK
4 Times the Fun
Every so often, the software that maintains this site hiccups and something that I post once shows up twice or thrice on the page you read. Last night, I posted the previous message once and it somehow wound up on here four times. I deleted three of them but have to note the irony of four copies of a posting about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
• Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 8:38 AM · LINK
Today's Video Link
Someone posted the animated opening title sequence for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World to YouTube so I might as well link to it and point out the following.
I first saw this movie (one of my favorites) shortly after it came out...a few days after John F. Kennedy was murdered. My family and I were in the front row — way too close — of the Cinerama Dome Theater on Sunset in Hollywood. If you think Jimmy Durante's nose is frightening in normal viewing, you should have seen it from those seats.
One of the eight million things that fascinated me about this movie came in the titles...at the moment when the "world" blows up and the names of the stars rain down on the screen. Sitting there in the Dome, my eleven-year-old eyes thought they saw other names in there, names other than the performers in the film. I have always read very fast but that evening, I made Evelyn Woods look like...well, fill in your own joke. I definitely spotted other names in there. When I saw the film again a year or two later in a non-Cinerama theater, I again thought I saw the mysterious other names...but of course, in those days, we didn't have VCRs and TiVos and means by which one could slow-mo or freeze frame a movie.
The day I got my first home video copy of It's a Mad4 World — in Beta! — I immediately checked and sure enough, there they were...the name of men who'd animated the title, plus the names of what I guess were friends and family members. Years later, I asked one of them — Bill Melendez — about it. He remembered the staff all inserting their monikers but didn't recall which ones he was responsible for.
Anyway, they're in there if you want to peek for yourself. The cartoon world explodes around 2 minutes and 25 seconds into the clip. Happy hunting.
• Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 12:59 AM · LINK
Go Read It!
David Owen explains why we should get rid of the penny.
• Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 10:50 PM · LINK
From the E-Mailbag...
This is from Lars van Roosendaal...
I just read about your article "Spots Before My Eyes" on Animated News. As soon as I saw it was about a 101 Dalmatians song, I immediately remembered a song from the LP I had as a kid. Since I lived in The Netherlands, of course it was in Dutch, but the end is like: "…en honderd en een van die hongerige mondjes en honderd en een van die kwispelende kontjes, dat zijn dalmatiner hondjes!" (…and one hundred and one of those hungry little mouths and one hundred and one of those wagging little dog ends, those are Dalmatian doggies)
I was curious what you had to write about it and was surprised to learn this song is not in the movie. I can’t remember seeing the movie, but I just adored my record, especially this song. It is so catchy I too can remember it after so many years. Although you wrote your record dates from 1960, and the song wasn’t in the movie itself, my record is from the early eighties, me being born in 1977. I find it funny the song was used for a children’s record in The Netherlands, translated and stayed on the LP even twenty years after it was skipped from the original movie. Unfortunately, I don’t have the Dutch record here in Vienna, Austria...
Well, now you've done it. I'm going to be going around for weeks humming "…en honderd en een van die hongerige mondjes en honderd en een van die kwispelende kontjes, dat zijn dalmatiner hondjes!" to myself. Thanks a lot.
• Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 10:12 PM · LINK
Today's Audio Link
Now that I've learned how to embed audio links in this page, I'm going to share a few goodies, starting with the repost of something I put up here a long time ago, before most of you began visiting this blog. This is the demo tape of the late, great voiceover god, Paul Frees.
All voiceover actors have at least one demo and some have several — one for animation, one for narration, one for trailers, etc. Mr. Frees had a "one size fits all" demo. Actually, he had a couple different ones but they all had a wide variety of what he did, and of the three or four I have, this one's the best.
It's five minutes. Note to anyone who's considering a career in voiceover work: You would be a fool to make your demo five minutes. No one who can ever possibly give you work is going to listen to it and many of them will think less of you because you don't know that. You are not Paul Frees.
Actually, given his rep, his demo probably wasn't used primarily to get him work. It was probably more like a catalogue so that people who were already thinking of hiring him could get a fix on which Paul Frees voice they wanted. Even then, if Mr. Frees were around now and looking for work, this demo would be two minutes. The business has changed since his day and now agents and casting directors figure that if they don't hear something wonderful in about the first minute, there's no point in listening any longer. That's probably valid.
I once asked a top voice agent, "If this demo came to you from an unknown, how far into it would you get before you decided you wanted to take this person on as a client?" He said, "Halfway through the first voice on it." That's even discounting the most impressive thing about it, which is that about 80% of these are from real jobs Frees had, some of which were quite successful and loved. So was he, and I think you can hear why...
• Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 8:37 PM · LINK
Recommended Reading
Fred Kaplan discusses what George W. Bush means by "victory in Iraq." The definition keeps changing but we don't seem to be getting any closer to any of them.
• Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 6:11 PM · LINK
The Magic of the Internet
Now, that's service! Last night, I write a piece about how I wish The Night They Raided Minsky's would come out on DVD. I go to bed. I wake up this morning and there on Amazon, they're taking orders for The Night They Raided Minsky's, coming out on DVD on May 20! What clout we have here.
Amazing. True, there doesn't seem to be that commentary track I craved but that'll probably be done for a Deluxe Platinum Edition a few years down the line...about the time they're ready to try to get us to buy this DVD again. Guess you can't have everything. I'm just satisfied that my little item caused them to hurriedly schedule the release and design a DVD cover and get it all up on Amazon...and in under seven hours! (A few of the dozens who wrote me this morning to tell me about it are under the delusion that this was arranged some time ago and that I was simply unaware it had been announced. You folks don't understand the power of this weblog.)
If you'd like to pre-order, here's the link. I don't understand why the Amazon page says that the movie stars Harry Andrews and Jack Burns, when they actually have much smaller parts than Jason Robards, Norman Wisdom, Britt Ekland and Bert Lahr...but I guess whoever whipped up this listing was in such a hurry to surprise me with it that they got a little sloppy.
• Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 9:23 AM · LINK
Today's Video Link
Here's three minutes from a movie that as I've mentioned here before, really oughta be out on DVD. It's The Night They Raided Minsky's and it starred Jason Robards, Norman Wisdom, Britt Ekland and, briefly, Bert Lahr. Mr. Lahr passed away during the filming and his role had to be truncated (or in a few scenes, played by a look-alike dubbed by a sound-alike). The film was made in 1968, produced by Norman Lear and directed by William Friedkin. Mr. Friedkin more or less disowned it and it was heavily recut in the editing room, making it into quite a different movie. The seams show but I still like what resulted.
The blonde gentleman you'll see in this scene is Dexter Maitland who at the time of his death a few years ago, was hailed as The Last Burlesque Straight Man. In the late eighties, I got to meet and chat with him in Vegas where he spent most of his last few decades (either there or in Reno) performing in revues that vaguely recreated the old days at Minsky's Burlesque where he had once worked. In Vegas, he sang a little but mostly played opposite The Last Burlesque Funnyman — the equally wonderful Irv Benson — in comedy routines that Henny Youngman would have dismissed as out-of-date. And maybe they were but I thought they were wonderful. (To read all about Mr. Benson, go here. Better still, go here.)
Like I said, the movie oughta be on DVD...and maybe it soon will be. The oft-announced stage musical version is apparently getting its act together to play Los Angeles early in '09 with an eye on later migrating to Broadway. Now renamed Minsky, it reportedly now bears very little resemblance to the movie on which it is ostensibly based. Still, it might provide a nice external impetus to get a DVD done...and I do hope they persuade Norman Lear to do a commentary track. For now, you'll have to settle for this clip...
• Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 12:05 AM · LINK
This Impressed Me
Tom Richmond, one of the star caricaturists of Mad Magazine takes a stab at drawing Lewis Black...and nails him.
• Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 at 10:45 PM · LINK
YouTubeTiVo
Speaking of TiVo: During the recent Writers Guild strike, we tried to make a point here of why it was so important that the Guild get jurisdiction over shows made for Internet distribution and also that writers get compensated when their work, including work not made for the 'net, is disseminated that way. There are/were many fine reasons but one we mentioned a few times is that the line is blurring between the various delivery methods. It's getting harder and harder to tell what's a broadcast TV show and what's an Internet one these days.
It's only going to get blurrier and another step will be taken later this year. The TiVo folks have announced that those of us who have later models of their wonderful machines will soon be able to download YouTube videos to our TiVos.
This is a major development. It means that, for example, NBC can upload Jay Leno's monologue to YouTube and I can then download it to my TiVo. Then I can watch it on the same set in the same way I'd watch it via its traditional method of transmission. Or some civilian, unaffiliated in any way with the network or show, can capture the monologue and slap it up on YouTube...and by the time NBC tells them to take it down, it'll already be on my TiVo. This is going to change a lot.
One of the many friends I've made through this site is a gentleman named Dave Sikula, who occasionally sends in corrections or items that oughta be posted here. Dave is a contestant on Jeopardy! this coming Wednesday. Like all who appear on that show, he is forbidden to let anyone know how he fared at the taping so I have no idea if he won or lost. He's a bright guy but how fast is he on the button? I don't know. Let's watch on Wednesday and find out.
Shortly before Christmas of 1960, my mother entered and won a contest at the Robinson's Department Store in Westwood. It was one of those contests where it was hard to not win — hundreds did — and what she won was an invitation to bring her child (i.e., me) to a Special Disney Preview of a forthcoming movie called 101 Dalmatians.
It took place on a Saturday morning at the Ambassador Hotel near downtown Los Angeles. We reported at the assigned hour, checked in and were herded like cattle (or worse, Magic Kingdom visitors) into separate ballrooms. My mother was held captive, more or less, in a presentation for parents. They were served adult-type food and subjected to what I gather was an extended commercial for going to Disney movies, buying Disney toys for the kids, taking them to Disneyland, watching Disney TV shows, etc. The gist of it was that you weren't a good raiser of children if you denied your offspring any part of the total Disney experience. A decade or two later while visiting Las Vegas, she and my father got roped into one of those scams where in exchange for allegedly free show tickets, they had to sit through a hard sell pitch to buy time share condos, and were almost forbidden to leave without doing so. When she got home, she said it reminded her of that Disney gathering.
Meanwhile back at the Ambassador, I was taken into the other ballroom, the one for kids, which was decorated as if for a child's birthday party. There were dozens of little tables and I was stuck at one with a bunch of other eight-year-olds I didn't know and didn't particularly want to know, and we were served hot dogs and potato chips and ice cream and cake. Some of this was eaten but most of it was thrown around or up. Disney cartoons were run and there was, of course, an extended preview for 101 Dalmatians along with training on how to properly throw a tantrum if our parents did not take us to see it again and again and again and buy us every last bit of 101 Dalmatians merchandise.
There was also a live show. A woman dressed as a fairy princess of some sort sang Disney songs and then Clarence "Ducky" Nash performed with his Donald Duck puppet. I didn't understand a word he said in either voice but I knew enough to know he was the man who spoke for Donald, and it was thrilling to see him in person. There was also a Disney cartoonist — the "Big Mooseketeer" Roy Williams, I think — doing charcoal drawings of Mickey and the gang right before our eyes. I liked that part a lot.
At the end, before we and our respective parents were released from Disney custody and reunited, there was a drawing for prizes where everyone present was destined to win something. I wanted one of the charcoal sketches but had to settle for a 78 RPM Little Golden Record that featured two songs from 101 Dalmatians. One side had the movie's best tune, "Cruella De Vil." The other side had a title song that was very catchy and very bouncy and in the weeks that followed, I played it often on my little phonograph during the following weeks. The ending went...
Picture one hundred and one mischievious creations
One hundred and one puppy birthday celebrations
One hundred and one, that's a lot of doggy rations
One Hundred and One Dalmatians!
To my surprise when I made my parents take me to see the movie, that song was nowhere to be heard. It was not on the LP soundtrack of the movie, either. Throughout the sixties, long after I'd lost or broken my Little Golden Record I had that tune running through my head but could not find a copy of it to save my life. I couldn't even find any evidence that it had ever existed. Around 1970, when I began to meet Disney scholars and asked about it, none of them had ever heard of it. One told me I'd obviously made it up. "I didn't make up those lyrics when I was eight years old," I replied.
One day last year, I lunched with Greg Ehrbar, co-author (with Tim Hollis) of Mouse Tracks: The Story of Walt Disney Records, the exhaustive book on the topic, and I thought to ask him about it. He knew of the song and thought it had been written by the team of Mr. Disney's favorite tunesmiths, Richard and Robert Sherman. When he told me this, I felt like more of a ninny than even usual because I know Richard Sherman. For some reason — a lot of mutual friends, I guess, plus the fact that we're both members of the Magic Castle — I run into him at least once a month somewhere. I could have asked him about it years ago!
I did, the next time we were together and he was quite amazed that I knew those lyrics and could sing them, albeit poorly, from memory and from when I was eight. He was also quite flattered (who wouldn't be?) and he told me the story of its creation and omission. Basically, Mr. D. came to them. They were new in his operation, this being before Mary Poppins or The Parent Trap or all those great songs they wrote for Disneyland attractions. The Great and Powerful Walt suddenly decided 101 Dalmatians needed a bouncy title song and they whipped one up which everyone liked but which they couldn't find room for in the movie. That Little Golden Record I won was apparently arranged before the movie was locked, at a time it was still believed the tune would get in. That it didn't was allegedly because some other high-ranked Disney official (not Walt) lobbied successfully for its exclusion.
Before I could ask my next question — where the hell do I find a copy? — Richard told me he thought it was being included among a bevy of "cut songs" on the new, then-forthcoming two-disc DVD release of 101 Dalmatians. I was delighted and a few weeks ago, while Costcoing, I picked one up and came home, gleefully anticipating being able to, at long last, hear this song I've had running through my brain since 1961 and last heard around then.
Well, guess what. It's not on the DVD. It's a great DVD, of course, and here's a link if you don't plan on doing any of your own Costcoing soon and you wish to order one. It does have some omitted tunes among its many and splendid special features but the song of my obsession is not among them.
It turns out that a stereo remake of The Song (very nice but not the original) is reportedly on a special 101 Dalmatians CD that you get if you purchase the DVD from WalMart. Here's a link to that deal if you're interested. But like I said, it ain't the original.
So am I forever frustrated in my yearning to again hear the original? Happily, no. Through other means, I finally got my hands and ears on a copy just this last weekend, plus someone sent me a link to an online excerpt that I think is/was part of an Amazon sample. It's not a fabulous song but I've had it caroming around inside my skull since around '62 or '63 or whenever I lost/broke that Little Golden Record, and I missed the one or two places it's appeared since then. This is satisfying to me in a way that cannot possibly mean as much to you. I'm also delighted that my memory of the lyrics was dead-on accurate all these years. So I'll close this by offering you the last thirty seconds of the record, the 45 year itch that I was finally able to scratch. Hope it doesn't haunt you as long as it's haunted me...
Happy news for those of us who've enjoyed the annual Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus, Ohio. Founder Roger Price had announced he was done with it unless someone bought him out...and someone has!
Yesterday, we linked to a sketch from Saturday Night Live with the late Chris Farley playing his character, Matt Foley, a motivational speaker. It's a shame Chris died when he did and took Matt with him...but at least, we still have Matt Kissane, a professional Chris Farley impersonator. Here he is in an outta-sync YouTube video...and a hat tip to "Balloon Entertainer" Smarty Pants, who told me about Mr. Kissane...
James Surowiecki explains the whole mess with Bear Stearns. I can explain it even quicker: The way business works in this country now is that a company like that can take any sort of wild, reckless risk with the money they hold because they know that if everything tanks, the federal government will bail them out and make good on their losses. And of course, either way, if they succeed or fail, the senior execs will take many millions of dollars home with them.
