Actress Wendie Jo Sperber has died. She was only 46.
Sperber is best known for her role on "Bosom Buddies". That very underrated show had one of the best ensemble casts of its era, and she was one of the best members of that great cast; always funny, and always projecting great warmth and likability, turning what could have been a degrading, stereotypical role (the young overweight woman with an unrequited crush on the Peter Scolari character) into a very human and attractive character. She also had funny roles in a number of movies written and/or directed by Robert Zemeckis, including I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Used Cars and Back To the Future III.
A very funny and lovable performer, and a very sad loss.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
"You're Never Out of ICE"
Gary Tooze at DVD Beaver has the first review of the complete Matt Helm set. The transfers are nothing special, but cheesy-looking, slightly substandard but cheap DVDs are probably in line with the inherent value of the films. Still, I won't be able to resist picking up this set, not when it features lines like these:
And, of course, the lyrics of the theme song of The Wrecking Crew are pure gold:
Matt Helm movies -- not to be confused with the badass Matt Helm books that were thrown out the window when making these movies -- embody all the worst, cheesiest, just plain wrong-est things about the '60s and wrap them all up in a brightly-lit, clumsily-shot, inanely-costumed package. Where else can you find Dean Martin stopping Ann-Margret's go-go dance, ripping off her explosive dress, and throwing it in the direction of a photograph of Frank Sinatra? ("Sorry, Frank!") God bless you, Dino.
NANCY KOVACK: Just drop my clothes anywhere. I won't be needing them till morning.
MATT: Don't you think we should be introduced first?
NANCY (aka THE FUTURE MRS. ZUBIN MEHTA): You're Matt Helm.
MATT: That's good enough for me.
MATT: We have a long wait ahead of us, so let's get comfortable.
JANICE RULE (wondering why she's in this movie when she was the star of the original production of Picnic): Oh? How comfortable?
MATT: Hey, it's broad daylight!
JANICE RULE: What's the matter with a broad in the daylight?
STELLA STEVENS: You're really a good sport about this. I'm surprised you didn't take umbrage.
MATT: Oh, I take a belt now and then.
And, of course, the lyrics of the theme song of The Wrecking Crew are pure gold:
On the street of many pleasures
Stands the House of Seven Joys.
Like you see it in the movies,
It's for groovy girls and boys.
In this Oriental pad,
You are welcome night and day.
Recommended by Matt Helm,
And by the A.A.A.
Ah, so
Ah, so
Very, very nice!
Matt Helm movies -- not to be confused with the badass Matt Helm books that were thrown out the window when making these movies -- embody all the worst, cheesiest, just plain wrong-est things about the '60s and wrap them all up in a brightly-lit, clumsily-shot, inanely-costumed package. Where else can you find Dean Martin stopping Ann-Margret's go-go dance, ripping off her explosive dress, and throwing it in the direction of a photograph of Frank Sinatra? ("Sorry, Frank!") God bless you, Dino.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Best Dickens Name Ever?
The success of the new BBC "Bleak House" miniseries has reminded the world once again of the most important thing about Charles Dickens: the man really knew how to come up with a name for a character.
For the most part, names of characters in fiction tend to be a) chosen at random; b) chosen for some very obvious symbolic significance; or c) shout-outs to the writer's friends. Dickens was not averse to any of those reasons -- names like "Dedlock" or "Krook" are obviously supposed to tell us something about the characters they're attached to, and occasionally he'll disappoint us all with a conventional name, like "Mary Graham" (a bland name for the bland heroine of "Martin Chuzzlewit"). But the most memorable Dickensian names are the ones that don't have any particular meaning, but shape our reactions to the characters just by the way they sound. A good Dickens name is like a musical theme: it has no literal meaning, but it has all sorts of connotations.
Some examples from "Bleak House": Tulkinghorn, Jarndyce, Chadband, Rouncewell, Turveydrop, Skimpole, Hawdon. You can analyze why these names have the effects they do. "Tulkinghorn" sounds sinister because "tulk" mostly rhymes with mean-sounding words (bulk, hulk) and "horn" has several unpleasant connotations; "Skimpole" sounds like a perversion of "simple," and that's what the character's behavior amounts to. But analysis is almost beside the point: it's the pure sound that works. These names resonate in a way that more conventional names never could.
What's your choice for best Dickens name ever, or, beyond Dickens, the best name in fiction? My choice for best Dickensian name might well be the conventional choice, "Ebenezer Scrooge." I don't think the story could even work if he were called anything else; the name just seems to tell us exactly what he is without ever meaning anything specific. I'm also very partial to "Podsnap" ("Our Mutual Friend"), which Dickens liked enough that he tried to turn it into a catchphrase within the novel itself (sub-titling one of the chapters "Podsnappery").
For the most part, names of characters in fiction tend to be a) chosen at random; b) chosen for some very obvious symbolic significance; or c) shout-outs to the writer's friends. Dickens was not averse to any of those reasons -- names like "Dedlock" or "Krook" are obviously supposed to tell us something about the characters they're attached to, and occasionally he'll disappoint us all with a conventional name, like "Mary Graham" (a bland name for the bland heroine of "Martin Chuzzlewit"). But the most memorable Dickensian names are the ones that don't have any particular meaning, but shape our reactions to the characters just by the way they sound. A good Dickens name is like a musical theme: it has no literal meaning, but it has all sorts of connotations.
Some examples from "Bleak House": Tulkinghorn, Jarndyce, Chadband, Rouncewell, Turveydrop, Skimpole, Hawdon. You can analyze why these names have the effects they do. "Tulkinghorn" sounds sinister because "tulk" mostly rhymes with mean-sounding words (bulk, hulk) and "horn" has several unpleasant connotations; "Skimpole" sounds like a perversion of "simple," and that's what the character's behavior amounts to. But analysis is almost beside the point: it's the pure sound that works. These names resonate in a way that more conventional names never could.
What's your choice for best Dickens name ever, or, beyond Dickens, the best name in fiction? My choice for best Dickensian name might well be the conventional choice, "Ebenezer Scrooge." I don't think the story could even work if he were called anything else; the name just seems to tell us exactly what he is without ever meaning anything specific. I'm also very partial to "Podsnap" ("Our Mutual Friend"), which Dickens liked enough that he tried to turn it into a catchphrase within the novel itself (sub-titling one of the chapters "Podsnappery").
Monday, November 28, 2005
T Time
An in-depth analysis of the history, rules and significance of the Mr. T webcomic.
Late-'90s/early-'00s internet fads already seem so remote that they're ripe for nostalgic pieces (I write nostalgically about the Good Old Days of usenet slang and "all your base are belong to us") and rigorous analysis. Maybe we'll be seeing university courses on "classic" internet culture before the decade is out.
Late-'90s/early-'00s internet fads already seem so remote that they're ripe for nostalgic pieces (I write nostalgically about the Good Old Days of usenet slang and "all your base are belong to us") and rigorous analysis. Maybe we'll be seeing university courses on "classic" internet culture before the decade is out.
Those Dastardly Sony Guys
From USA Today:
So those who already have the other four films on DVD but want Holiday will be obliged to get the box. Oh, well. It's still probably worth it, because Holiday was one of the most-needed titles among the unreleased "classic" movies: made by the same director (George Cukor), writers (Donald Ogden Stewart adapting a Philip Barry play) and stars (Grant and Hepburn) as The Philadelphia Story two years later, it's a much better movie. It's also continually relevant in its story of a young man who wants to drop out of the corporate rat race and explore the world while he's still young enough to enjoy it. The plight of the bored white-collar worker is a cliché now, but in 1938 it was an unusual subject.
Holiday also has great performances from everyone in the cast, especially Grant as the wannabe bohemian and Lew Ayres as the heroine's brother. This is also one of only two movies where Katharine Hepburn played a character I find sympathetic. The other is Stage Door. (Usually she either played characters who were basically unsympathetic people -- Bringing Up Baby, Philadelphia Story -- or else she was so annoying that I wound up hating the character anyway, as in every performance she gave after 1950 or so.)
Hopefully the new box will have a new transfer for The Awful Truth, which looked rather sub-par in its last (overpriced) DVD outing.
Cary Grant classics in time for 'Holiday'
Just in time for Valentine's Day, five classic Cary Grant films will be available Feb. 7 in the Cary Grant Box Set (Sony, $60), including the DVD debut of 1938's Holiday, starring Katharine Hepburn. The collection - which also contains Only Angel Have Wings, The Talk of the Town, His Girl Friday and The Awful Truth - features new bonus material on each disc and a set of collectible postcards.
So those who already have the other four films on DVD but want Holiday will be obliged to get the box. Oh, well. It's still probably worth it, because Holiday was one of the most-needed titles among the unreleased "classic" movies: made by the same director (George Cukor), writers (Donald Ogden Stewart adapting a Philip Barry play) and stars (Grant and Hepburn) as The Philadelphia Story two years later, it's a much better movie. It's also continually relevant in its story of a young man who wants to drop out of the corporate rat race and explore the world while he's still young enough to enjoy it. The plight of the bored white-collar worker is a cliché now, but in 1938 it was an unusual subject.
Holiday also has great performances from everyone in the cast, especially Grant as the wannabe bohemian and Lew Ayres as the heroine's brother. This is also one of only two movies where Katharine Hepburn played a character I find sympathetic. The other is Stage Door. (Usually she either played characters who were basically unsympathetic people -- Bringing Up Baby, Philadelphia Story -- or else she was so annoying that I wound up hating the character anyway, as in every performance she gave after 1950 or so.)
Hopefully the new box will have a new transfer for The Awful Truth, which looked rather sub-par in its last (overpriced) DVD outing.
Hey, That's Not Bad!
You find the strangest things when you look through the Usenet archives, and one thing I found was a copy of one of my favorite pieces from the early, funny years of the National Lampoon. (The good years of the publication were roughly 1970 to 1975, or perhaps even 1974 when Michael O'Donoghue left.)
This is "Chums in the Dark," written by Hugo Fleisch and Lampoon co-founder Henry Beard, a great parody of the Hardy Boys that captures all the gee-whiz-gosh narrative style of the books. Apart from the accuracy of the parody, most of the fun of the piece comes from forcing poor Frank and Joe Hardy to deal with subjects, like sex and drugs, that they've literally never heard of before in any of their many adventures, and consistently fail to understand.
Chapter 1 * Chapter 2 * Chapter 3 * Chapter 4 * Chapter 5 * Chapter 6
If you want a "legit" copy of the piece, try to get a used copy of the excellent This Side of Parodies, a collection of parodic material from the 1970-1974 Lampoon.
This is "Chums in the Dark," written by Hugo Fleisch and Lampoon co-founder Henry Beard, a great parody of the Hardy Boys that captures all the gee-whiz-gosh narrative style of the books. Apart from the accuracy of the parody, most of the fun of the piece comes from forcing poor Frank and Joe Hardy to deal with subjects, like sex and drugs, that they've literally never heard of before in any of their many adventures, and consistently fail to understand.
Chapter 1 * Chapter 2 * Chapter 3 * Chapter 4 * Chapter 5 * Chapter 6
If you want a "legit" copy of the piece, try to get a used copy of the excellent This Side of Parodies, a collection of parodic material from the 1970-1974 Lampoon.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
I Am Just a Simple Paperboy, No Romance Do I Seek
For those who are interested in sweaty atmospherics, as well as a case study of what had to be changed in order to bring an "adult" play to the screen in the '50s, there's a Tennessee Williams Film Collection coming next March. The films are The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana, and two-disc special editions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Baby Doll.
Baby Doll would have to be my favorite of the bunch; the sheer trashiness of it is exhilarating, because it's not often you see such trashy material brought off with such style and skill in all departments. It's a great companion piece to Elia Kazan's similarly over-the-top, unsubtle movie of the following year, A Face in the Crowd, which also used a mostly unknown cast, and which also flopped. I think I like Kazan's flops a lot better than his hits.
Baby Doll would have to be my favorite of the bunch; the sheer trashiness of it is exhilarating, because it's not often you see such trashy material brought off with such style and skill in all departments. It's a great companion piece to Elia Kazan's similarly over-the-top, unsubtle movie of the following year, A Face in the Crowd, which also used a mostly unknown cast, and which also flopped. I think I like Kazan's flops a lot better than his hits.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
That's Kleinzach!
I wish I liked the movie The Tales of Hoffmann better. When I say I wish I liked it, I don't mean that I feel it's my duty to like it; I mean that there's so much I admire about the film that I really want it to add up to an enjoyable experience, and it just doesn't.
The admirable things about the film have been much-remarked-upon by people wiser than I am (like Martin Scorsese and George Romero in special features on the new Criterion DVD). The magnificent use of Technicolor; the revolutionary "multimedia" concept behind the combination of song, dance, stylized sets and special effects; the utterly unique look of the film; the constant flow of new and unique visual ideas in every shot. Michael Powell had a visual imagination comparable to the early Disney animated features, and Tales of Hoffmann is Powell and Pressburger's Fantasia: an attempt to exploit all the possibilities of cinema, and a celebration of cinema as a combination of all the arts that have come before it.
But unlike Fantasia, The Tales of Hoffmann is based on a single work (albeit a work that consists of three or four only semi-related stories), and there's supposed to be a story somewhere in there. And that's what keeps me from liking the movie: it's awesomely beautiful and imaginative, but emotionally it's the coldest of cold fish. The opera Offenbach and Jules Barbier wrote, or mostly wrote (Offenbach died before the premiere, and people have been arguing for 125 years over what form the opera was intended to take), is also somewhat emotionally cool, as befits a somewhat cynical fantasy which concludes that an artist is better off concentrating on art and giving up romance. But it does have its moments of warmth, and something to say about love and art and the dangers inherent of devoting oneself to art (a theme, in one way or another, of all the stories). The movie puts so much distance between itself and the story that there's never any question of emotional involvement: when Hoffmann first becomes openly emotional, in the middle section of the Kleinzach ballad, the movie cuts away from him to a ballet-pantomime with a couple of dolls on the shelf.
It is, ultimately, a movie about nothing except itself; it ironically exemplifies the self-absorbed kind of artistry that Offenbach and Barbier make fun of in the original opera. Hoffmann in the Olympia story is mocked for being someone so cut off from reality that he can't tell the difference between a woman and a robot; Powell and Pressburger, who drain all the humor out of this sequence and reduce all the characters to automatons, are more like Hoffmann than they perhaps would like to admit.
On the upside, though, the choice of Robert Rounseville to play Hoffmann -- one of the few performers in the film who does his own singing; most of the others are dubbed -- was ideal. Rounseville was a wonderful singer who went back and forth between opera and musical theatre without ever making an issue of whether he was "crossing over"; he was Stravinsky's original Tom Rakewell, Bernstein's original Candide, the Padre in the original production of Man of La Mancha, and his Enoch Snow is one of the few highlights of the movie version of Carousel.
The admirable things about the film have been much-remarked-upon by people wiser than I am (like Martin Scorsese and George Romero in special features on the new Criterion DVD). The magnificent use of Technicolor; the revolutionary "multimedia" concept behind the combination of song, dance, stylized sets and special effects; the utterly unique look of the film; the constant flow of new and unique visual ideas in every shot. Michael Powell had a visual imagination comparable to the early Disney animated features, and Tales of Hoffmann is Powell and Pressburger's Fantasia: an attempt to exploit all the possibilities of cinema, and a celebration of cinema as a combination of all the arts that have come before it.
But unlike Fantasia, The Tales of Hoffmann is based on a single work (albeit a work that consists of three or four only semi-related stories), and there's supposed to be a story somewhere in there. And that's what keeps me from liking the movie: it's awesomely beautiful and imaginative, but emotionally it's the coldest of cold fish. The opera Offenbach and Jules Barbier wrote, or mostly wrote (Offenbach died before the premiere, and people have been arguing for 125 years over what form the opera was intended to take), is also somewhat emotionally cool, as befits a somewhat cynical fantasy which concludes that an artist is better off concentrating on art and giving up romance. But it does have its moments of warmth, and something to say about love and art and the dangers inherent of devoting oneself to art (a theme, in one way or another, of all the stories). The movie puts so much distance between itself and the story that there's never any question of emotional involvement: when Hoffmann first becomes openly emotional, in the middle section of the Kleinzach ballad, the movie cuts away from him to a ballet-pantomime with a couple of dolls on the shelf.
It is, ultimately, a movie about nothing except itself; it ironically exemplifies the self-absorbed kind of artistry that Offenbach and Barbier make fun of in the original opera. Hoffmann in the Olympia story is mocked for being someone so cut off from reality that he can't tell the difference between a woman and a robot; Powell and Pressburger, who drain all the humor out of this sequence and reduce all the characters to automatons, are more like Hoffmann than they perhaps would like to admit.
On the upside, though, the choice of Robert Rounseville to play Hoffmann -- one of the few performers in the film who does his own singing; most of the others are dubbed -- was ideal. Rounseville was a wonderful singer who went back and forth between opera and musical theatre without ever making an issue of whether he was "crossing over"; he was Stravinsky's original Tom Rakewell, Bernstein's original Candide, the Padre in the original production of Man of La Mancha, and his Enoch Snow is one of the few highlights of the movie version of Carousel.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Still Not On DVD, Sorry
Thanksgiving (the American version, I mean) is never complete without the "Turkeys Away" episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati." But due to music rights issues, that show will probably never be on DVD -- as I've lamented many times before -- and it isn't in syndication anywhere as far as I know, so if you want to see that episode, you're kind of out of luck.
"Turkeys Away" was only the seventh episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati," and while it's the most famous episode of that show, it's not necessarily one of the very best. Hugh Wilson (the creator of the show) had the idea for the turkey drop from the beginning. The story of a radio station that dropped turkeys out of a helicopter was a radio-industry urban legend; it's likely that it never actually happened, but instead was a composite of a number of disastrous promotional stunts at various U.S. stations. Wilson presumably assigned the writer of the episode, Bill Dial, the task of writing up an episode based on this idea.
Because main idea of the episode doesn't kick in until the last three or four minutes, the episode consists almost entirely of buildup to that big scene, and for that reason it can feel a little slow in spots, especially if you know what's coming and are waiting for them to get on with it. So it's not one of my upper-echelon WKRP episodes, but that's only because when the show was at its very best -- in episodes like "God Talks to Johnny," "Real Families," "Frog Story" and "Changes," to name only a few -- it was as good as any situation comedy ever made, a rich mixture of smart stories, perfectly in-character lines that never sounded like jokes, and great characters who interacted beautifully and really grew and developed.
The characters were in their TV infancy in "Turkeys Away," so when you watch the episode you can get a sense of where they started as opposed to what they finally became. The premise of "WKRP" as Wilson pitched it to the network was "The suits vs. the dungarees" (he actually incorporated the line into an episode). The fault lines at the station would be between the older employees left over from WKRP's first incarnation as an easy-listening station (Mr. Carlson, Herb Tarlek and Les Nessman) and the hipper employees who turn the station into a rock station (Andy, Venus, Dr. Johnny Fever). The central relationship on the show was supposed to be between the head of the Suits, Mr. Carlson, and the head of the Dungarees, tight-pants-wearing Andy; they would learn how to bridge the generation gap.
"Turkeys Away" is one of the few episodes of the show that actually used this formula: Mr. Carlson is feeling left out at the station, so he decides to take charge, and with Herb and Les (who also feel left out because they have had less power at the station since Andy showed up), undertakes a disastrous promotion without consulting anybody who could warn him what a disaster it will be. The generation-gap stuff doesn't really work, especially since Andy never was able to establish himself as the central character of the show (his role would soon be very effectively switched from the hero to the once-normal guy being driven slowly insane by his employees). But the episode is very effective at establishing Carlson as something other than a fuddy-duddy buffoon, which he might have been on any other show: he is a nice guy who wants to run a successful station and give the staff the freedom they need to make the new format work, but feels genuinely hurt at the fact that no one seems to think he's useful. That's why the episode isn't just a crazy farce.
Several characters, at this point in the series, had really not come into being at all except in name. That's especially the case with Venus (Tim Reid), who essentially had no character for most of the first season. As Reid said, "my character would come in, flash his clothes, and leave." It wasn't until the last produced episode of the first season, "Who is Gordon Sims?" (in which Venus turns out to be a fugitive who, strangely, deserted from the army after coming back from combat in Vietnam) that Wilson and co. hit on the idea of making Venus a serious-minded guy who is the exact opposite of the "hip" wardrobe he adopts as a gimmick. By that time, all the characters had been pretty much fleshed out, so that by the end of the second season, Jennifer (Loni Anderson) could concisely sum up each member of the workplace "family":
Also by that time, "WKRP" had established its greatest strength, which is that as a true ensemble show, all the characters could interact with each other in different ways. The producers of "NewsRadio" have pointed out that "every character had different chemistry with every other character," and that's true of "WKRP" too: you could put any two characters together in a scene and they'd be funny together in a unique way, because not only were the characters well-defined, but their relationships were well-defined too. (So you not only know that Andy is annoyed by Les, Herb, Mr. Carlson, Johnny: you also know that each one annoys him for a different reason, and those reasons play out in any scene between them.) Instead of a show about a down-the-middle split between two groups of characters, it became a show about the diverse and funny interactions between individual characters.
Some quotes from the Thanksgiving episode, to bring this back on topic (mostly taken from the WKRP Quotes Page:
"Turkeys Away" was only the seventh episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati," and while it's the most famous episode of that show, it's not necessarily one of the very best. Hugh Wilson (the creator of the show) had the idea for the turkey drop from the beginning. The story of a radio station that dropped turkeys out of a helicopter was a radio-industry urban legend; it's likely that it never actually happened, but instead was a composite of a number of disastrous promotional stunts at various U.S. stations. Wilson presumably assigned the writer of the episode, Bill Dial, the task of writing up an episode based on this idea.
Because main idea of the episode doesn't kick in until the last three or four minutes, the episode consists almost entirely of buildup to that big scene, and for that reason it can feel a little slow in spots, especially if you know what's coming and are waiting for them to get on with it. So it's not one of my upper-echelon WKRP episodes, but that's only because when the show was at its very best -- in episodes like "God Talks to Johnny," "Real Families," "Frog Story" and "Changes," to name only a few -- it was as good as any situation comedy ever made, a rich mixture of smart stories, perfectly in-character lines that never sounded like jokes, and great characters who interacted beautifully and really grew and developed.
The characters were in their TV infancy in "Turkeys Away," so when you watch the episode you can get a sense of where they started as opposed to what they finally became. The premise of "WKRP" as Wilson pitched it to the network was "The suits vs. the dungarees" (he actually incorporated the line into an episode). The fault lines at the station would be between the older employees left over from WKRP's first incarnation as an easy-listening station (Mr. Carlson, Herb Tarlek and Les Nessman) and the hipper employees who turn the station into a rock station (Andy, Venus, Dr. Johnny Fever). The central relationship on the show was supposed to be between the head of the Suits, Mr. Carlson, and the head of the Dungarees, tight-pants-wearing Andy; they would learn how to bridge the generation gap.
"Turkeys Away" is one of the few episodes of the show that actually used this formula: Mr. Carlson is feeling left out at the station, so he decides to take charge, and with Herb and Les (who also feel left out because they have had less power at the station since Andy showed up), undertakes a disastrous promotion without consulting anybody who could warn him what a disaster it will be. The generation-gap stuff doesn't really work, especially since Andy never was able to establish himself as the central character of the show (his role would soon be very effectively switched from the hero to the once-normal guy being driven slowly insane by his employees). But the episode is very effective at establishing Carlson as something other than a fuddy-duddy buffoon, which he might have been on any other show: he is a nice guy who wants to run a successful station and give the staff the freedom they need to make the new format work, but feels genuinely hurt at the fact that no one seems to think he's useful. That's why the episode isn't just a crazy farce.
Several characters, at this point in the series, had really not come into being at all except in name. That's especially the case with Venus (Tim Reid), who essentially had no character for most of the first season. As Reid said, "my character would come in, flash his clothes, and leave." It wasn't until the last produced episode of the first season, "Who is Gordon Sims?" (in which Venus turns out to be a fugitive who, strangely, deserted from the army after coming back from combat in Vietnam) that Wilson and co. hit on the idea of making Venus a serious-minded guy who is the exact opposite of the "hip" wardrobe he adopts as a gimmick. By that time, all the characters had been pretty much fleshed out, so that by the end of the second season, Jennifer (Loni Anderson) could concisely sum up each member of the workplace "family":
There's Mr Carlson, the occasionally confused but always concerned father; Andy, the success-oriented, competent, tight-panted son; Les, the consistently strange bookish brother; Herb, the semi-loveable troublemaker and general jackass; Johnny, the weather-beaten uncle who always wanted to be a sailor - no, that's not right, I never could nail you down... Venus, the spiritual, loving brother; and Bailey, the beautiful shy sister with the brains.
Also by that time, "WKRP" had established its greatest strength, which is that as a true ensemble show, all the characters could interact with each other in different ways. The producers of "NewsRadio" have pointed out that "every character had different chemistry with every other character," and that's true of "WKRP" too: you could put any two characters together in a scene and they'd be funny together in a unique way, because not only were the characters well-defined, but their relationships were well-defined too. (So you not only know that Andy is annoyed by Les, Herb, Mr. Carlson, Johnny: you also know that each one annoys him for a different reason, and those reasons play out in any scene between them.) Instead of a show about a down-the-middle split between two groups of characters, it became a show about the diverse and funny interactions between individual characters.
Some quotes from the Thanksgiving episode, to bring this back on topic (mostly taken from the WKRP Quotes Page:
Mr. Carlson: Young lady, I've done thousands of promotions in my time. Now tell me, what's the problem?
Bailey: We don't know whether to give away Boston T-shirts or Foreigner T-shirts.
Mr. Carlson: Boston. Foreign stuff shrinks.
Johnny: Look, man, I took this job because I thought Carlson was like me. A guy who doesn't quite know what's going on around him, and he likes it that way.
Herb: Andy, I've got to complain to you about Mr. Carlson.
Andy: Well, get in line.
Herb: Okay.
(Herb gets in line behind Johnny and Venus)
Andy: Herb, I was kidding.
Herb: I knew that.
Herb: When that farmer asked me what I wanted with twenty live turkeys, I had to do some pretty fast talking, let me tell you.
Les: What did you tell him?
Herb: I told him it was a secret.
Andy: That's pretty fast, Herb.
Venus: Les! Are you okay?
Les: I don't know. A man and his two children tried to kill me. After the turkeys hit the pavement, the crowd kind of scattered, but some of them tried to attack me! I had to jam myself into a phone booth! Then Mr Carlson had the helicopter land in the middle of the parking lot. I guess he thought he could save the day by turning the rest of the turkeys loose. It gets pretty strange after that.
Andy: Les, c'mon now, tell us the rest.
Les: I really don't know how to describe it. It was like the turkeys mounted a counterattack! It was almost as if they were ... organized!!
Ira Levin, You Old Softie
The lyrics I feel like quoting today are some very sweet, sentimental lyrics from an unexpected source: Ira Levin, of "Rosemary's Baby" fame and "A Kiss Before Dying" acclaim.
This is a song from Levin's musical Drat! The Cat! It's a song called "She's Roses," sung by the innocent, almost childlike hero of the show, Patrolman Bob Purefoy, after falling in love with the heroine (at this point he doesn't know that she's the notorious thief, the Cat, whom he has vowed to capture). The sweet list song, about all the things that his beloved means to him, is obviously inspired by "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, but I actually like this one better, especially for the mention of "the automobile" as a thing of wonder and beauty (the show is set near the end of the 19th century) and the line about " Marbles, the clear ones." Mr. Levin, you should've written more musicals.
This is a song from Levin's musical Drat! The Cat! It's a song called "She's Roses," sung by the innocent, almost childlike hero of the show, Patrolman Bob Purefoy, after falling in love with the heroine (at this point he doesn't know that she's the notorious thief, the Cat, whom he has vowed to capture). The sweet list song, about all the things that his beloved means to him, is obviously inspired by "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, but I actually like this one better, especially for the mention of "the automobile" as a thing of wonder and beauty (the show is set near the end of the 19th century) and the line about " Marbles, the clear ones." Mr. Levin, you should've written more musicals.
She's roses, she's snowflakes, she's barrels of apples,
And ice cream and velvet and bells when they ring.
She's birthdays and New Year's, the night before Christmas,
The last day of school and the first day of spring.
Other girls, other girls borrow and buy
Cosmetics and feathers and fur.
Other girls, other girls hopelessly try
To change from themselves into her.
She's bluebirds and baseball and hitting a long one,
And laughing and dreaming and Central Park Lake.
She's marbles (the clear ones) and milk when you're thirsty,
She's five kinds of candy and six kinds of cake.
Other girls, other girls, ain't it a shame,
They're seaweed and splinters and glue.
Other girls, other girls, no one's to blame,
Pray God the poor creatures pull through.
She's all of the stars and the moon when it's rising,
And music and peace and the automobile.
And how can I live till the next time I see her?
She touched me right here, and she's really real.
Hi, This is Jim Rockford...
This Amazon.com review indicates that the first season set of "The Rockford Files" isn't all we could have hoped for: not only are the discs apparently poorly produced (a constant problem with TV DVDs from Universal, which likes to squeeze as many episodes as possible onto as few discs as possible), but it's missing the two-hour pilot, where Rockford's father was played by Robert Donley (Noah Beery took over, memorably, for the series).
So, caveat emptor, and all that, but still, I mean, it's "The Rockford Files." It would take a lot to stop me from recommending "The Rockford Files." Maybe if they digitally replaced Noah Beery Jr. with Jar-Jar Binks. And even then, I might suggest you buy it just for James Garner, Angel, and that angry cop guy.
So, caveat emptor, and all that, but still, I mean, it's "The Rockford Files." It would take a lot to stop me from recommending "The Rockford Files." Maybe if they digitally replaced Noah Beery Jr. with Jar-Jar Binks. And even then, I might suggest you buy it just for James Garner, Angel, and that angry cop guy.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Lyrics On My Mind
The songs going through my head lately are mostly songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, especially their out-of-left-field love songs. No one was better than Hart at writing a love song that didn't sound like the typical gooey ballad; indeed, some of his love songs can be downright dark. Here are some examples:
From On Your Toes:
From Higher and Higher (which also produced the greatest Rodgers and Hart song, "It Never Entered My Mind"), the love duet "I'm Afraid":
Or for something less dark, "Morning is Midnight," a love song (with a gorgeous, classical-sounding tune) celebrating shared slackerdom:
Hart's way with a love song was certainly the quirkiest of any popular songwriter; he just seemed to want to find the strangest angle on the subject. When he did write a conventional-sounding love lyric with all the usual love-song phrases, he subverted it by subjecting it to a little pronoun trouble (tm Daffy Duck) in the song "If I Were You":
"Morning is Midnight" and "I'm Afraid" were recorded by Ben Bagley for his "Rodgers and Hart Revisited" series (Dorothy Loudon sang a fine "Morning is Midnight" on the first and best of those albums); "If I Were You" was recorded by Frederica Von Stade for her "My Funny Valentine: A Rodgers and Hart Anthology"; "It's Got to Be Love" is on the 1983 cast recording of On Your Toes.
From On Your Toes:
It's got to be love,
It couldn't be tonsilitis,
It feels like neuritis,
But nevertheless it's love.
Don't tell me the pickles and pie a la mode they served me
Unnerved me
And made my heart a broken-down pump:
It's got to be love,
It isn't the morning after
That makes ev'ry rafter
Go spinning around above.
I'm sure that it's fatal, or why do I get that sinking feeling?
I think that I'm dead,
But nevertheless it's only love.
From Higher and Higher (which also produced the greatest Rodgers and Hart song, "It Never Entered My Mind"), the love duet "I'm Afraid":
I'm afraid of snow and ice,
I'm afraid of rats and mice,
I'm afraid of reading scary tales,
Even of fairy tales.
I'm afraid of rain and fogs,
I'm afraid of touching frogs,
I'm afraid of counting sheep at night,
'Cause sheep can scare me too.
Afraid of cops,
Afraid of crooks,
Afraid of germs,
Afraid of worms
You put on hooks.
I'm afraid of Fu Manchu,
And of tigers in the zoo,
But most of all
I'm afraid I'll fall
For a horrible thing like you.
Or for something less dark, "Morning is Midnight," a love song (with a gorgeous, classical-sounding tune) celebrating shared slackerdom:
Morning is midnight
And the sun's the moon.
My break of day
Doesn't start, let us say,
Until half-past noon.
Later to bed
And later still to rise,
Who cares for health
Just as long as he's wealthy
And wise?
They say that the early
Bird will catch the worm;
I prefer a girlie,
If she doesn't squirm.
Morning will come,
But must it come so soon?
My break of day
Doesn't start, let us say,
Until noon.
Hart's way with a love song was certainly the quirkiest of any popular songwriter; he just seemed to want to find the strangest angle on the subject. When he did write a conventional-sounding love lyric with all the usual love-song phrases, he subverted it by subjecting it to a little pronoun trouble (tm Daffy Duck) in the song "If I Were You":
If I were you,
Here's what I'd do:
I'd tell me that I really loved me.
I wouldn't hide it,
I'd just confide it,
I'd pet me and let me pet you.
I'd be oh so tender
Sitting on my knee,
Then, with sweet surrender
I'd give in to me.
Gosh, you ought to see,
I'd hold me closer,
I'd kiss me too,
I'd do that if I were you.
"Morning is Midnight" and "I'm Afraid" were recorded by Ben Bagley for his "Rodgers and Hart Revisited" series (Dorothy Loudon sang a fine "Morning is Midnight" on the first and best of those albums); "If I Were You" was recorded by Frederica Von Stade for her "My Funny Valentine: A Rodgers and Hart Anthology"; "It's Got to Be Love" is on the 1983 cast recording of On Your Toes.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
A Couple of Travelling Guys
Just a brief addendum to my post on Martin and Lewis: Jerry Lewis has reportedly been telling audiences that the Martin and Lewis movies are going to be released on DVD by Paramount, and a poster at Home Theater Forum has semi-confirmed this, saying that the following double-feature DVDs are slated for August 2006:
Those are the late Martin/Lewis movies, including some duds (Three Ring Circus, Pardners), but also the cream of the crop, the two films with Frank Tashlin, Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust. If that information is correct, then hopefully the earlier Martin and Lewis movies will appear in the first few months of 2006.
Living It Up/ Three Ring Circus
You're Never Too Young / Artists and Models
Pardners/ Hollywood or Bust
Those are the late Martin/Lewis movies, including some duds (Three Ring Circus, Pardners), but also the cream of the crop, the two films with Frank Tashlin, Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust. If that information is correct, then hopefully the earlier Martin and Lewis movies will appear in the first few months of 2006.
I'm Not Even a Little Bit Country
I haven't seen Walk the Line yet (though I am one of the few people who has managed to sit through even a portion of I Walk the Line, a movie known only for the title song and for Gregory Peck looking ridiculous as Tuesday Weld's love interest). It did get me to thinking, though: have we reached the end of the era of universally-popular country singers? I'm not saying everybody likes Johnny Cash, but I don't think I ever met anyone who didn't like Johnny Cash. He's a performer like Elvis or Louis Armstrong or Sinatra whose work transcends his genre and appeals to everybody, even people who aren't into "that kind of music."
Now, even beyond Cash, I can think of plenty of country singers who are popular performers and/or personalities even with people like me, who aren't country-music buffs. But they're either dead (the first and best Hank Williams; Waylon Jennings) or elder statesmen of one kind or another (Loretta Lynn; and, yes, Dolly Parton, who is cool for every possible reason). Are there any current country performers who have that kind of "crossover" appeal? I wouldn't be surprised if there are some and I've missed them -- I miss a lot of stuff that's contemporary -- but most of the contemporary country musicians I hear, or hear of, are clearly "niche" performers, as much as any other type of specialized musical performer.
Now, I know there are a bunch of obvious explanations for the disappearance of the universally-loved country performer. Start with the obvious point that country stars are stars, building their careers and images like any other kind of star, and therefore they can't have the kind of authenticity that Johnny Cash projected; even if they have colorful biographies (and a colorful biography probably helps someone get signed up by a recording company), they just don't feel "real" once they get on the stage in their carefully-chosen wardrobe and those damn hats. (I really don't know what it takes to look "authentic" wearing a cowboy hat indoors, but I know most people don't have it.) Dolly Parton created a persona for herself, but the persona is unique and funny. Some guy with a beard and a cowboy hat is not playing a part that I find particularly entertaining.
The music, or what I've heard of it, tends to be more obviously market-driven and to shy away from anything really dark or potentially controversial, so there goes the chance to hear another "(Mama's Got) the Pill." (Though the point of a song like that is not the "controversial" aspect of it but the realism of it; it's a celebration of a real-world fact that nobody had mentioned, let alone celebrated, in song.) The appeal of a good country song is that more than any kind of popular music -- more even than the folk-rock style of Cash's friend Bob Dylan -- it sounds like one man or woman talking directly to us through song, telling us what he or she has been through. It may be simple, it's sometimes crude, but it's direct and sounds like it hasn't been filtered through the formulas of popular songwriting or the demands of the marketing people. (Of course country songs have their formulas and their marketing strategies, like any other kind of song; the point is that a good country song sounds unfiltered and direct.) It seems to me, again, speaking from a position of less-than-complete familiarity with today's country music, that country songs now sound like any other commercial pop music.
Probably a simpler way of saying this is that Johnny Cash could kick the ass of any living country star with one hand tied behind his back and the other hand strumming a guitar. And he'd make them take off those hats.
Now, even beyond Cash, I can think of plenty of country singers who are popular performers and/or personalities even with people like me, who aren't country-music buffs. But they're either dead (the first and best Hank Williams; Waylon Jennings) or elder statesmen of one kind or another (Loretta Lynn; and, yes, Dolly Parton, who is cool for every possible reason). Are there any current country performers who have that kind of "crossover" appeal? I wouldn't be surprised if there are some and I've missed them -- I miss a lot of stuff that's contemporary -- but most of the contemporary country musicians I hear, or hear of, are clearly "niche" performers, as much as any other type of specialized musical performer.
Now, I know there are a bunch of obvious explanations for the disappearance of the universally-loved country performer. Start with the obvious point that country stars are stars, building their careers and images like any other kind of star, and therefore they can't have the kind of authenticity that Johnny Cash projected; even if they have colorful biographies (and a colorful biography probably helps someone get signed up by a recording company), they just don't feel "real" once they get on the stage in their carefully-chosen wardrobe and those damn hats. (I really don't know what it takes to look "authentic" wearing a cowboy hat indoors, but I know most people don't have it.) Dolly Parton created a persona for herself, but the persona is unique and funny. Some guy with a beard and a cowboy hat is not playing a part that I find particularly entertaining.
The music, or what I've heard of it, tends to be more obviously market-driven and to shy away from anything really dark or potentially controversial, so there goes the chance to hear another "(Mama's Got) the Pill." (Though the point of a song like that is not the "controversial" aspect of it but the realism of it; it's a celebration of a real-world fact that nobody had mentioned, let alone celebrated, in song.) The appeal of a good country song is that more than any kind of popular music -- more even than the folk-rock style of Cash's friend Bob Dylan -- it sounds like one man or woman talking directly to us through song, telling us what he or she has been through. It may be simple, it's sometimes crude, but it's direct and sounds like it hasn't been filtered through the formulas of popular songwriting or the demands of the marketing people. (Of course country songs have their formulas and their marketing strategies, like any other kind of song; the point is that a good country song sounds unfiltered and direct.) It seems to me, again, speaking from a position of less-than-complete familiarity with today's country music, that country songs now sound like any other commercial pop music.
Probably a simpler way of saying this is that Johnny Cash could kick the ass of any living country star with one hand tied behind his back and the other hand strumming a guitar. And he'd make them take off those hats.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Gotta Jump Down, Spin Around, Pick A Dress Of Cotton, Gotta Jump Down, Spin Around, Pick A Dress Of Wool...
Finally, after all these years, Allan Sherman's recordings are finally out on CD, in a rather pricey limited edition. Here is Sherman expert Mark Evanier's review.
The New Boy In The Neighborhood
My heart leapt up when I saw that "Charles In Charge" will be on DVD. Then I realized that this is the first season, when "Charles in Charge" was not the horror of awfulness that it became when it went to first-run syndication. In its first season, it was on CBS, was produced by the underrated Michael Jacobs (one of those showrunners whose shows, like "Boy Meets World," tended to have far better writing and craftsmanship than their premises or time-slots would suggest), and really wsn't all that bad. Not really worth a DVD purchase, but not bad. Hopefully the first season will sell well enough to get us to the first-run syndication years, because those episodes were made for drunken late-night viewings and Rocky Horror-style group catcalls.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
It's Official....
....The worst audio-commentary commentators in the world are Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. Their commentaries on the "Seinfeld" DVD sets set a new low standard for DVD commentaries that should be an inspiration to all. Any Seinfeld-David commentary consists of the following things:
a) Lots of dead space. I estimate that some of their commentaries include as much dead space as actual talking.
b) Lots of laughing at jokes or "Oh, I love that" type of lines.
c) Occasional confusion as to what episode they're watching.
d) Almost no actual information whatsoever, and any information they actually do give is repeated in the "inside look" featurettes.
Now, you might plausibly point out that most of the "Seinfeld" DVD commentaries share these features: the commentaries with Jason Alexander, Michael Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are the same way, and so are the commentaries with the "other Larry," writer Larry Charles (who's sort of a hippie version of Larry David, both in appearance and in writing style). But something like the Seinfeld/David commentary on "The Opposite," on the upcoming Season 5 set, is truly a masterpiece of vapidity. Sample lines from this commentary:
The sad thing is that I think I've just transcribed the bulk of the commentary.
Admittedly, a lot of TV-on-DVD commentaries are a little like this; there's not a lot of time to talk over them, and TV production is so fast that it's hard for the participants to remember what went on in a specific episodes. (One of the reasons why a show like "The Simpsons" lends itself to audio commentary is that an episode takes nine months to produce, which perhaps means that the participants can recall more details of the production.) Still, the Seinfeld/David commentaries are kind of in a class by themselves: they sound like two guys who have been locked in a room with a bunch of episodes and are just watching the show and making occasional small talk until they can get out again. Which might, for all I know, be the case.
By the way, the season 5 set -- I haven't seen season 6 yet -- is excellent, as long as you stay away from the commentaries; the "inside looks" provide more information than the average commentary anyway. I particularly like the collection of promos for the show's move to the time slot previously occupied by "Cheers," which are relaxed little scenes done in the style of the show, instead of the high-pressure promos we'd expect from a major network today.
a) Lots of dead space. I estimate that some of their commentaries include as much dead space as actual talking.
b) Lots of laughing at jokes or "Oh, I love that" type of lines.
c) Occasional confusion as to what episode they're watching.
d) Almost no actual information whatsoever, and any information they actually do give is repeated in the "inside look" featurettes.
Now, you might plausibly point out that most of the "Seinfeld" DVD commentaries share these features: the commentaries with Jason Alexander, Michael Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are the same way, and so are the commentaries with the "other Larry," writer Larry Charles (who's sort of a hippie version of Larry David, both in appearance and in writing style). But something like the Seinfeld/David commentary on "The Opposite," on the upcoming Season 5 set, is truly a masterpiece of vapidity. Sample lines from this commentary:
LARRY: What show is this? This is the end of season what?
JERRY: The funny way he prounounces "parents."
LARRY: Yeah.
JERRY: "Pa-rents."
LARRY: "Pa-rents."
(Long pause)
JERRY: That's one of my favorite lines.
LARRY: Mine too.
JERRY: It makes sense to him.
LARRY: Makes sense to me too.
LARRY: Boy, that was a great show.
JERRY: Yeah.
The sad thing is that I think I've just transcribed the bulk of the commentary.
Admittedly, a lot of TV-on-DVD commentaries are a little like this; there's not a lot of time to talk over them, and TV production is so fast that it's hard for the participants to remember what went on in a specific episodes. (One of the reasons why a show like "The Simpsons" lends itself to audio commentary is that an episode takes nine months to produce, which perhaps means that the participants can recall more details of the production.) Still, the Seinfeld/David commentaries are kind of in a class by themselves: they sound like two guys who have been locked in a room with a bunch of episodes and are just watching the show and making occasional small talk until they can get out again. Which might, for all I know, be the case.
By the way, the season 5 set -- I haven't seen season 6 yet -- is excellent, as long as you stay away from the commentaries; the "inside looks" provide more information than the average commentary anyway. I particularly like the collection of promos for the show's move to the time slot previously occupied by "Cheers," which are relaxed little scenes done in the style of the show, instead of the high-pressure promos we'd expect from a major network today.
Grudge Matches I'd Like To See: Elmer Fudd vs. Ranger Smith
SCENE: Jellystone National Park.
A hunter tiptoes through the park with his gun, looking for rabbits. What he finds instead is the park ranger, who takes his gun and throws it in the river.
RANGER SMITH: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't allow hunting in Jellystone National Park.
ELMER FUDD: Why, you wascawwy wanger! You've wuined my twusty wifle! Pwepare to be eviscewated!
-----
Who wins a knock-out, drag-down brawl, without weapons, between the two most pathetic humans in cartoondom: ELMER FUDD, the foil of a wisecracking rabbit, or RANGER SMITH, the foil of a wisecracking bear?
A hunter tiptoes through the park with his gun, looking for rabbits. What he finds instead is the park ranger, who takes his gun and throws it in the river.
RANGER SMITH: I'm sorry, sir, but we don't allow hunting in Jellystone National Park.
ELMER FUDD: Why, you wascawwy wanger! You've wuined my twusty wifle! Pwepare to be eviscewated!
-----
Who wins a knock-out, drag-down brawl, without weapons, between the two most pathetic humans in cartoondom: ELMER FUDD, the foil of a wisecracking rabbit, or RANGER SMITH, the foil of a wisecracking bear?
Saturday, November 19, 2005
J.C. Melendez
Bill Melendez Productions is the excellent homepage of animator José Cuauhtemoc "Bill" Melendez. It gives a nice overview, in pictures and words, of the life and work of one of the great living animators.
As the bio on the site mentions, Melendez started animating for Disney, and then moved to Warner Brothers, where he stayed for the better part of a decade (minus a stint in the army during WWII). He animated for director Bob Clampett, then for Clampett's successor, Art Davis. When Davis's unit was shut down, Melendez moved to Bob McKimson's unit, but he wasn't happy animating for McKimson; like a number of animators, he felt that McKimson had overly rigid ideas about what constituted good animated "acting," and wouldn't allow animators enough freedom. (McKimson and Davis, promoted to director at WB within a few months of each other, had sort of complimentary strengths and weaknesses: Davis was good with animators and kept a consistently strong animation team, but displayed a lack of confidence when it came to stories and had trouble keeping a story man; McKimson was arguably better with stories and certainly better at creating recurring characters, but had trouble holding on to animators.)
Melendez left Warner Brothers about 1950, and moved to UPA, where he animated on some of that studio's early successes, including "Gerald McBoing-Boing." His subsequent work, as a producer-director of commercials and television specials, often showed the influence of the UPA studio style in its use of stylized backgrounds, character designs, and movement, and the conscious adoption of drawing styles that wouldn't normally be considered animation-friendly.
His ability to adapt other cartoonists' drawing styles to animation made him the perfect choice to direct "A Charlie Brown Christmas," where he solved the problems of animating characters who were hard to animate: in the strip, Charlie Brown is usually seen only from two angles -- front and side -- so Melendez and his team had to work out all the details of what Charlie Brown and co. would look like when they turned their heads, how they should move, and so on. They did it so well that people often mix up the way the characters are drawn in the TV shows with the way they're drawn in the strip; the adaptation is seamless enough that it seems a natural extension of Schulz's drawing style. Melendez went on to direct most of the "Peanuts" specials and movies, and produce the ones he didn't direct; he also did the same for the "Garfield" specials.
His style as an animator was of the loose, fluid variety, showing his Disney training (like Emery Hawkins, with whom he worked in the Davis and McKimson units). He had an interesting way of making the characters hold up both of their arms while the rest of their bodies move freely and fluidly. It's not wild, broad gesturing; it's more something to focus on amidst the more-or-less free movement:
("Falling Hare," Clampett)
("Baby Bottleneck," Clampett)
("Bowery Bugs," Davis)
("An Egg Scramble," McKimson)
Melendez turns up in several featurettes and audio commentaries on the Looney Tunes DVDs, which are also where I got the screencaps. Unfortunately the DVDs of the Charlie Brown specials don't have any special features, so there's no chance to hear from Melendez on the subject of his biggest successes.
As the bio on the site mentions, Melendez started animating for Disney, and then moved to Warner Brothers, where he stayed for the better part of a decade (minus a stint in the army during WWII). He animated for director Bob Clampett, then for Clampett's successor, Art Davis. When Davis's unit was shut down, Melendez moved to Bob McKimson's unit, but he wasn't happy animating for McKimson; like a number of animators, he felt that McKimson had overly rigid ideas about what constituted good animated "acting," and wouldn't allow animators enough freedom. (McKimson and Davis, promoted to director at WB within a few months of each other, had sort of complimentary strengths and weaknesses: Davis was good with animators and kept a consistently strong animation team, but displayed a lack of confidence when it came to stories and had trouble keeping a story man; McKimson was arguably better with stories and certainly better at creating recurring characters, but had trouble holding on to animators.)
Melendez left Warner Brothers about 1950, and moved to UPA, where he animated on some of that studio's early successes, including "Gerald McBoing-Boing." His subsequent work, as a producer-director of commercials and television specials, often showed the influence of the UPA studio style in its use of stylized backgrounds, character designs, and movement, and the conscious adoption of drawing styles that wouldn't normally be considered animation-friendly.
His ability to adapt other cartoonists' drawing styles to animation made him the perfect choice to direct "A Charlie Brown Christmas," where he solved the problems of animating characters who were hard to animate: in the strip, Charlie Brown is usually seen only from two angles -- front and side -- so Melendez and his team had to work out all the details of what Charlie Brown and co. would look like when they turned their heads, how they should move, and so on. They did it so well that people often mix up the way the characters are drawn in the TV shows with the way they're drawn in the strip; the adaptation is seamless enough that it seems a natural extension of Schulz's drawing style. Melendez went on to direct most of the "Peanuts" specials and movies, and produce the ones he didn't direct; he also did the same for the "Garfield" specials.
His style as an animator was of the loose, fluid variety, showing his Disney training (like Emery Hawkins, with whom he worked in the Davis and McKimson units). He had an interesting way of making the characters hold up both of their arms while the rest of their bodies move freely and fluidly. It's not wild, broad gesturing; it's more something to focus on amidst the more-or-less free movement:
("Falling Hare," Clampett)
("Baby Bottleneck," Clampett)
("Bowery Bugs," Davis)
("An Egg Scramble," McKimson)
Melendez turns up in several featurettes and audio commentaries on the Looney Tunes DVDs, which are also where I got the screencaps. Unfortunately the DVDs of the Charlie Brown specials don't have any special features, so there's no chance to hear from Melendez on the subject of his biggest successes.
P.G. Wodehouse on Hollywood
I thought I'd type up a quote from the story "The Castaways," about a man who goes to Hollywood and is more or less kidnapped by a Hollywood studio and forced to work on a script that has been in development for years. The situation of writers in Hollywood, always a sore point with Wodehouse, is explicitly compared to the "press gang" which would force people into military service.
Here's the scene where the hero, Bulstrode Mulliner, goes to the studio to get back a hat he lost, only to discover that they won't give him his hat but will force him to stay there forever:
Bulstrode and the other writers are finally set free when the studio head is informed that the studio never actually bought the rights to Scented Sinners.
Here's the scene where the hero, Bulstrode Mulliner, goes to the studio to get back a hat he lost, only to discover that they won't give him his hat but will force him to stay there forever:
The motion picture magnate took a quick look at Bulstrode and thrust a paper and a fountain pen towards him.
"Sign here," he said.
A receipt for the hat, no doubt, thought Bulstrode. He scribbled his name at the bottom of the document, and Mr. Schnellenhamer pressed the bell.
"Miss Stern," he said, addressing his secretary, "what vacant offices have we on the lot?"
"There is Room 40 in the Leper Colony."
"I thought there was a songwriter there."
"He passed away Tuesday."
"Has the body been removed?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then Mr. Mulliner will occupy the room, starting from today. He has just signed a contract to write dialogue for us."
Bulstrode would have spoken, but Mr. Schnellenhamer silenced him with a gesture.
"Who are working on Scented Sinners now?" he asked.
The secretary consulted a list.
"Mr. Doakes, Mr. Noakes, Miss Faversham, Miss Wilson, Mr. Fotheringay, Mr. Mendelsohn, Mr. Markey, Mrs. Cooper, Mr. Lennox and Mr. Dabney."
"That all?"
"There was a missionary who came in Thursday, wanting to convert the extra girls. He started a treatment, but he has escaped to Canada."
"Tchah!" said Mr. Schnellenhamer, annoyed. "We must have more vigilance, more vigilance. Give Mr. Mulliner a script of Scented Sinners before he goes."
The secretary left the room. He turned to Bulstrode.
"Did you ever see Scented Sinners?"
Bulstrode said he had not.
"Powerful drama of life as it is lived by the jazz-crazed, gin-crazed Younger Generation whose hollow laugter is but the mask for an aching heart," said Mr. Schnellenhamer. "It ran for a week in New York and lost a hundred thousand dollars, so we bought it. It has the mucus of a good story. See what you can do with it."
"But I don't want to write for the pictures," said Bulstrode.
"You've got to write for the pictures," said Mr. Schnellenhamer. "You've signed the contract."
"I want my hat."
"In the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Motion Picture Corporation," said Mr. Schnellenhamer coldly, "our slogan is Cooperation, not Hats."
Bulstrode and the other writers are finally set free when the studio head is informed that the studio never actually bought the rights to Scented Sinners.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Back to the '70s
According to message board posts (I haven't found the original article), USA Today reports that next February will bring two-disc special editions of scenery-chewing '70s favorites Dog Day Afternoon and Network, both with audio commentaries by the director, Sidney Lumet, renowned specialist in scenery-chewing movies set in New York City.
The New York Daily News mentions that George Clooney is planning a live TV remake of Network. That actually strikes me as a good idea, given that Network is essentially the lament of two veterans of '50s TV -- Lumet and writer Paddy Chayefsky for what was considered the "Golden Age" of TV.
Chayefsky's script for Network is a stream of invective against everyone who ever pissed him off -- mostly young people, women, young women, executives, and young women executives. But in between the apocalyptic ranting (as well as the moments of real insight, like the famous speech about globalization and multi-national corporations making nation-states irrelevant), there's a note of fuzzy nostalgia for a time when socially-conscious New Yorkers ruled the airwaves. Clooney, whose movie Good Night and Good Luck displays a similar albeit less strident nostalgia, should do very well with the remake; and it would be a nice touch to remake Network as exactly the kind of live, socially-conscious TV drama that Chayefsky was nostalgic for.
There's also a special edition of '70s favorite All the President's Men, but while I like the movie, it's become hobbled (for me anyway) by the whole Bob Woodward thing. It might be interesting to make a movie about that, though -- the reporter who becomes famous by breaking a political scandal and then coasts on his fame, disappointing the reporters who looked up to him. Redford would be right for the part, too.
The New York Daily News mentions that George Clooney is planning a live TV remake of Network. That actually strikes me as a good idea, given that Network is essentially the lament of two veterans of '50s TV -- Lumet and writer Paddy Chayefsky for what was considered the "Golden Age" of TV.
Chayefsky's script for Network is a stream of invective against everyone who ever pissed him off -- mostly young people, women, young women, executives, and young women executives. But in between the apocalyptic ranting (as well as the moments of real insight, like the famous speech about globalization and multi-national corporations making nation-states irrelevant), there's a note of fuzzy nostalgia for a time when socially-conscious New Yorkers ruled the airwaves. Clooney, whose movie Good Night and Good Luck displays a similar albeit less strident nostalgia, should do very well with the remake; and it would be a nice touch to remake Network as exactly the kind of live, socially-conscious TV drama that Chayefsky was nostalgic for.
There's also a special edition of '70s favorite All the President's Men, but while I like the movie, it's become hobbled (for me anyway) by the whole Bob Woodward thing. It might be interesting to make a movie about that, though -- the reporter who becomes famous by breaking a political scandal and then coasts on his fame, disappointing the reporters who looked up to him. Redford would be right for the part, too.
Oscar Hammerstein vs. Rhyme
My previous post mentioned the Rodgers and Hammerstein song "Isn't it Kind of Fun." One arcane thing I didn't mention is that Hammerstein's lyric for that song was an early example of a technique that he came to favor in his songwriting, namely, using as few rhymes as possible and not rhyming lines that would normally be rhymed. The typical Hammerstein lyric from about 1945 onwards tends to consist of a lot of unrhymed words placed on the ends of musical phrases, with only a token rhyme or two at the very end of a section. Example:
And of course, more famous under-rhymed songs like:
Hammerstein's early lyrics often had a lot of rhymes, but he never felt completely comfortable with lots of rhyming, and felt that too many rhymes were distracting. Some of his early lyrics, like "Ol' Man River," put this theory into practice by using as few rhymes as possible, but it was in his work with Rodgers, writing the lyrics before the music and therefore essentially free to structure a lyric any way he wanted, that he started to show a really strong preference for the sparsely-rhymed lyric.
Sometimes he'd make up for the lack of rhyme by using "balance" words, repeating the same word twice instead of rhyming it. Sometimes he'd balance an under-rhymed lyric by taking a whole phrase and repeating it twice:
A related strategy for the lyricist who doesn't want to write a lot of rhymes is to match similar vowel sounds or consonants at the ends of lines, so there's a slight "chime" without anything that really sounds like an attempted rhyme:
Hammerstein's very sparse use of rhyme, along with his use of those self-conscious repetition and balance techniques, plus his oddly formal language ("I am starry-eyed and vaguely discontented"), gives his lyrics a rather stilted quality, almost as if he thinks he's writing poetry rather than theatre lyrics. Since Hammerstein thought of himself as a poet, and reportedly sometimes considered giving up theatre writing for poetry, that's not surprising.
Maybe you'll never be
The love of my life,
Maybe I'm not the boy of your dreams.
But isn't it kind of fun
To look in each other's eyes,
Swapping romantic gleams?
("Isn't it Kind of Fun")
It takes all kinds of people
To make up a world,
All kinds of people and things.
They crawl on the earth,
They swim in the sea,
And they fly through the sky on wings.
("All Kinds of People," Pipe Dream)
And of course, more famous under-rhymed songs like:
Some enchanted evening,
When you find your true love,
When you feel her call you
Across a crowded room,
Then fly to her side
And make her your own,
Or all through your life
You may dream all alone.
Hammerstein's early lyrics often had a lot of rhymes, but he never felt completely comfortable with lots of rhyming, and felt that too many rhymes were distracting. Some of his early lyrics, like "Ol' Man River," put this theory into practice by using as few rhymes as possible, but it was in his work with Rodgers, writing the lyrics before the music and therefore essentially free to structure a lyric any way he wanted, that he started to show a really strong preference for the sparsely-rhymed lyric.
Sometimes he'd make up for the lack of rhyme by using "balance" words, repeating the same word twice instead of rhyming it. Sometimes he'd balance an under-rhymed lyric by taking a whole phrase and repeating it twice:
A fellow needs a girl
To sit by his side
At the end of a weary day,
To sit by his side
And listen to him talk
And agree with the things he'll say.
A fellow needs a girl
To hold in his arms
When the rest of the world goes wrong,
To hold in his arms
And know that she believes
That her fellow is wise and strong.
A related strategy for the lyricist who doesn't want to write a lot of rhymes is to match similar vowel sounds or consonants at the ends of lines, so there's a slight "chime" without anything that really sounds like an attempted rhyme:
Shall we still be together
With our arms around each other,
And will you be my new romance?
On the clear understanding
That this kind of thing can happen,
Shall we dance? Shall we dance? Shall we dance?
Hammerstein's very sparse use of rhyme, along with his use of those self-conscious repetition and balance techniques, plus his oddly formal language ("I am starry-eyed and vaguely discontented"), gives his lyrics a rather stilted quality, almost as if he thinks he's writing poetry rather than theatre lyrics. Since Hammerstein thought of himself as a poet, and reportedly sometimes considered giving up theatre writing for poetry, that's not surprising.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
I Tell Ya, She's WRECKED
As I implied in a previous post, one of the best "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" sites is Boils and Blinding Torment. It's a tough-love fan site, with snarky comments about the weak episodes, incomprehensible plot twists, sappy love plots ("Buffy and Angel: What the Hell") and clothes. Unlike Television Without Pity or Fametracker, where the authors often affect a snarky tone but pull their punches about really criticizing anything, the authors of "Boils and Blinding Torment" apply a real satirical scalpel to the weaker moments of the show. Typical of the site is their summary of the entirety of the fifth season of "Buffy":
My favorite post on that site is their elaborate, play-by-play evisceration of the worst "Buffy" episode ever, "Wrecked." This is the one that used Willow's "magic addiction" as a barely-metaphorical metaphor for a hideously preachy and awful don't-do-drugs lecture. Boils and Blinding Torment's recap takes the whole thing apart and exposes every preachy moment, every plot hole, every heavy-handed moral. My favorite line from the recap: "Willow, you summoned me with your floaty stoner magic."
Other great articles from the site: "The Idiot's Guide to Continuity" and "The Post-Season 7 FAQ."
Once upon a time there was this evil hellgod who was banished from her kingdom and imprisoned within a human boy, in the human realm. This angered the evil hellgod, although she made the most of it by wearing really sexy dresses and high heels. Also, she sucked out people's brains for fun. Far and wide, she searched for the key back to her world that would open the portal between dimensions.
But there were those on earth who opposed the hellgod, and fought to keep her from creating a rift between the realms. Sadly for the earthly realm, her foes consisted of weak, foolish monks and dumb knights with magic horses. Quite naturally, they realized they were no match for her, depsite hundreds of years of preparation. The knights and the hellgod searched for the key: the knights hoped to destroy it, the hellgod hoped to use it. Unfortunately for both the knights and the hellgod, it was the dumb weak monks who had actual possession of the key. Unwilling to destroy it, they instead transformed it into a little sister for Buffy, to teach her a lesson about sharing. I mean, so she would protect it.
Unfortunately for said key, this turned a very small object that was easy to hide into a large teenage girl, and placed her in the same town as the hellgod. Ultimately, the hellgod tracked down the key and used her to open the door, letting in lots of flying dragons. Buffy, tired of all this newfound "sharing", jumped off a tower to make it stop.
My favorite post on that site is their elaborate, play-by-play evisceration of the worst "Buffy" episode ever, "Wrecked." This is the one that used Willow's "magic addiction" as a barely-metaphorical metaphor for a hideously preachy and awful don't-do-drugs lecture. Boils and Blinding Torment's recap takes the whole thing apart and exposes every preachy moment, every plot hole, every heavy-handed moral. My favorite line from the recap: "Willow, you summoned me with your floaty stoner magic."
Other great articles from the site: "The Idiot's Guide to Continuity" and "The Post-Season 7 FAQ."
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
The Downside of Canada: Bilingual Covers
I am very fond of Canada. And since Montreal was my favorite city to live in, I have great affection and admiration for French-Canadian culture and the French language. I was living in Montreal the last time there was a referendum on Quebec separation, and my most vivid memory is of a guy on a soapbox on St. Catharine Street, telling Quebeckers why they shouldn't separate: "I have come here, even though I do not speak your language, to tell you that you Quebeckers should stay in Canada. You Quebeckers don't realize the contributions you have made to Canada. Some of the best hockey players...." So I don't want to be that guy; I like the French language and I don't have a major problem with official bilingualism, even though I once got turned down for a job for not being fully bilingual. I am a happy-go-lucky guy.
But. Ah, but. There's one problem. Official bilingualism requires, apparently, that a DVD that includes a French soundtrack (as many DVDs do) must have a cover both in English and French. And this leads to Canadian versions of DVDs having ugly-looking covers with so much text that the cover art is obscured. Just look at the Canadian cover art for The First Season of "Hill Street Blues." Great that there's a French soundtrack, but do we really need to know that the French title of the show is "Capitaine Furillo?" It just doesn't work. I know some people who just order all their DVDs from the States to avoid the ugly bilingual cover.
It could be worse, though: we could have a law mandating that movies in Paris French be translated into Quebecois French. It's already happened in the other direction. I once saw a Quebec-made show, "Lance et Compte, on a French television station, and there were subtitles translating the heavily Anglicized Quebecois French into correct Paris French. The line "J'ai coaché ma dernière game" became, in the subtitles, "J'ai dirigé mon dernièr match."
But. Ah, but. There's one problem. Official bilingualism requires, apparently, that a DVD that includes a French soundtrack (as many DVDs do) must have a cover both in English and French. And this leads to Canadian versions of DVDs having ugly-looking covers with so much text that the cover art is obscured. Just look at the Canadian cover art for The First Season of "Hill Street Blues." Great that there's a French soundtrack, but do we really need to know that the French title of the show is "Capitaine Furillo?" It just doesn't work. I know some people who just order all their DVDs from the States to avoid the ugly bilingual cover.
It could be worse, though: we could have a law mandating that movies in Paris French be translated into Quebecois French. It's already happened in the other direction. I once saw a Quebec-made show, "Lance et Compte, on a French television station, and there were subtitles translating the heavily Anglicized Quebecois French into correct Paris French. The line "J'ai coaché ma dernière game" became, in the subtitles, "J'ai dirigé mon dernièr match."
Isn't It Kind Of Stupid
In a previous post, I wrote that in pop culture of the late '50s and '60s you'd often get "absurdly sexualized material within what was supposed to be a "wholesome" piece of family entertainment." Nothing better exemplifies this bizarre type of G-rated sleaze -- as well as how truly clueless the American movie industry was in the early '60s -- than a number in the 1962 remake of State Fair, now on DVD with a commentary by (heaven help us) Pat Boone.
This is the infamous "Isn't it Kind of Fun," a song from the 1945 State Fair re-conceived as a solo showcase for the young, and obviously destined for stardom, Ann-Margret. (There's a story that the following year, at the wrap party for Bye Bye Birdie, Maureen Stapleton got up and said: "I guess I'm the only person in this room who doesn't want to fuck Ann-Margret." Whether Paul Lynde was in the room at the time is not recorded for posterity.)
The number is, first of all, just terrible: poorly staged, cheesily designed, choreography that consists of nothing but walking back and forth. Even the song is all wrong for Ann-Margret's vocal range, so she sounds bad singing it. Musicals were dying out by 1962, except for the occasional pre-packaged blockbuster like West Side Story; and you can see why: nobody knew how to film a musical number any more.
But the thing that makes the number so perversely memorable is that it is so sleazy and trashy within the context of what presents itself as a wholesome family film. What exactly is an audience, settling down for a nice piece of Rodgers and Hammerstein Americana, based on a very wholesome 1945 film, to make of a musical number that goes from this:
To this....
And finally to this:
It's a tasteless, garish, leering striptease number -- but the producer, Charles Brackett (at one time the producer and writing partner for Billy Wilder; after he and Wilder broke up, he spent the rest of his career producing glossy schlock and being a Republican party activist, and whether those things are connected I couldn't say), thinks he's making a family-friendly movie. The weird hybrid a number like this embodies, the combination of hypocrisy and sheer obliviousness, is characteristic of a lot of '60s entertainment, and explains why people were on so many drugs in that decade; how else can you make sense of an Ann-Margret movie?
By the way, and I think I've mentioned this before: despite its sheer awfulness, I still enjoy the 1962 State Fair more than the bland 1945 version, just because, a, the 1962 version is insanely stupid rather than bland, and b, the 1962 version has the glorious accomplishment of featuring the young Ann-Margret and the young Pamela Tiffin in the same movie, a feat matched only by the even more insane The Pleasure Seekers. The best version of State Fair is the still DVD-less 1933 nonmusical version with Will Rogers.
This is the infamous "Isn't it Kind of Fun," a song from the 1945 State Fair re-conceived as a solo showcase for the young, and obviously destined for stardom, Ann-Margret. (There's a story that the following year, at the wrap party for Bye Bye Birdie, Maureen Stapleton got up and said: "I guess I'm the only person in this room who doesn't want to fuck Ann-Margret." Whether Paul Lynde was in the room at the time is not recorded for posterity.)
The number is, first of all, just terrible: poorly staged, cheesily designed, choreography that consists of nothing but walking back and forth. Even the song is all wrong for Ann-Margret's vocal range, so she sounds bad singing it. Musicals were dying out by 1962, except for the occasional pre-packaged blockbuster like West Side Story; and you can see why: nobody knew how to film a musical number any more.
But the thing that makes the number so perversely memorable is that it is so sleazy and trashy within the context of what presents itself as a wholesome family film. What exactly is an audience, settling down for a nice piece of Rodgers and Hammerstein Americana, based on a very wholesome 1945 film, to make of a musical number that goes from this:
To this....
And finally to this:
It's a tasteless, garish, leering striptease number -- but the producer, Charles Brackett (at one time the producer and writing partner for Billy Wilder; after he and Wilder broke up, he spent the rest of his career producing glossy schlock and being a Republican party activist, and whether those things are connected I couldn't say), thinks he's making a family-friendly movie. The weird hybrid a number like this embodies, the combination of hypocrisy and sheer obliviousness, is characteristic of a lot of '60s entertainment, and explains why people were on so many drugs in that decade; how else can you make sense of an Ann-Margret movie?
By the way, and I think I've mentioned this before: despite its sheer awfulness, I still enjoy the 1962 State Fair more than the bland 1945 version, just because, a, the 1962 version is insanely stupid rather than bland, and b, the 1962 version has the glorious accomplishment of featuring the young Ann-Margret and the young Pamela Tiffin in the same movie, a feat matched only by the even more insane The Pleasure Seekers. The best version of State Fair is the still DVD-less 1933 nonmusical version with Will Rogers.
No DVD For You
The Hollywood Reporter has an excellent article about music clearances for TV shows on DVD, or "why WKRP in Cincinnati will never come to DVD."
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
How Could You Love an Umpire?
On the occasion of the release of a big "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" boxed set, I would like to disinter a quote from Nicholas Brendon (Xander), talking to backstage.com about the development of his character over the course of the series:
People who watched "Buffy" had differing reactions to the increasingly decreased role of Xander as the show went on. Some people didn't much care, or at least felt that he'd been de-emphasized in favor of other, darker characters who could carry more grown-up storylines. And some of us thought that Xander was the best character on the show and had been screwed over in favor of various boring romantic storylines and Fonzie-like vampires.
In my experience, people who started watching "Buffy" in the first or second season usually, not always but usually, share my frustration with the de-Xanderization of the show. It was a symptom of a number of things that choked off and diminished "Buffy" as it went on: the increased emphasis on the soapy romance element, the increasingly absolute division of all episodes into "serious" and "comic relief" moments (instead of being funny and serious at the same time, as the best episodes usually were), and a glut of dull new characters.
The show would probably have developed differently if Xander had been given the big storyline in the fourth season; I don't know that it's ever been officially confirmed, but there's a general consensus that the story about "The Initiative," and a character who gets recruited by that shadowy organization, was supposed to be about Xander. Instead it was given to a new character, Riley, introduced as a new love interest for Buffy; Xander therefore spent most of the fourth season without anything to do except make wisecracks and have a dull romantic storyline of his own, and this continued for the duration of the series.
"Buffy" was probably done in -- creatively, at least -- by the "'shipper" mentality, the idea that the most important thing about a show is pairing off each character with a romantic partner and focusing as much attention as possible on the question of who would get together with who. By far the worst thing about "Buffy" in its first (and best) three seasons was the Buffy/Angel romance; it may have been a godsend to fanfic writers, back before slash became the fanfic style of choice, but it mostly produced goopy, treacly, mopey, dopey episodes. (Except for the "Angel goes evil" storyline in the second season, because that was an appropriately "Buffy"-esque combination of angst and humor.) Boils and Blinding Torment has a funny redux of one of those interminable Buffy/Angel scenes:
So Angel leaves to headline his own spinoff and actually be interesting, given that he now has the opportunity to do something other than teenybopper romance (well, until that show gets taken over by who-loves-who plots, but I digress), and what does "Buffy" do? Concentrate on the interesting stories about friendship and fitting in and using monster stories as serio-comic metaphors for the everyday problems and decisions that young people face? No: introduce more boring love interests, male (Riley) and female (Tara), and reduce all the characters' lives to the question of who they are or are not sleeping with at the moment. One of the refreshing things about early "Buffy" was that it was one of the few high school shows that acknowledged that there are, in fact, other aspects of a teenager's life than who he or she is romantically involved with: there's also the pressure to conform (Xander in "The Pack"); the pressure of trying to combine school, extracurricular activities, and having some fun on the side ("Reptile Boy," but, more generally, Buffy's whole life is about trying to combine school with a crushing after-school training program); trying to change your image to be cooler (Willow in "Doppelgangerland"), and so on, all realistic teenage problems that happen to be played out as monster stories. Once a show spends too much time on romance, it's cut itself off from the really interesting stories.
Xander was hit the hardest because he had literally nothing to do on the show except be another supporting character's romantic partner, and it's a long way to fall from being one of the funniest and most interesting characters on TV for the first three years.
Incidentally, I wish someone would release a better DVD of the original "Buffy" movie. I know the Whedon fanatics despise it because it Wasn't True To Joss's Vision, but vision or no vision, the way it took a nutty concept and played it almost (but not quite) straight was something of a revelation at the time, and it anticipated the strengths of the series by finding the reality in its subject: it's ridiculous, but underneath the ridiculousness is a real story about a shallow girl who realizes that there's more to life than what she's been getting by with. Lots of memorable lines, too ("Kill him a lot!"). I'd a lot rather see the movie again than most of the episodes from the last two or even three seasons of the "Buffy" series, which are considerably less true to the original comic/dramatic vision of the series than the movie ever was.
(After the actor Bradley Cooper mentions that he left "Alias" because he wasn't happy with his part)
That really is admirable. Because after about Season Five on [Buffy], or the end of Season Four, I was that guy. Joss [Whedon] actually said Xander was done--that there was no more. I was just kind of relegated to the background. It was one of those things that, where I was at in my life, the money was more important than my pride or taking care of myself. [Leaving], especially as the show's just starting to take off...
People who watched "Buffy" had differing reactions to the increasingly decreased role of Xander as the show went on. Some people didn't much care, or at least felt that he'd been de-emphasized in favor of other, darker characters who could carry more grown-up storylines. And some of us thought that Xander was the best character on the show and had been screwed over in favor of various boring romantic storylines and Fonzie-like vampires.
In my experience, people who started watching "Buffy" in the first or second season usually, not always but usually, share my frustration with the de-Xanderization of the show. It was a symptom of a number of things that choked off and diminished "Buffy" as it went on: the increased emphasis on the soapy romance element, the increasingly absolute division of all episodes into "serious" and "comic relief" moments (instead of being funny and serious at the same time, as the best episodes usually were), and a glut of dull new characters.
The show would probably have developed differently if Xander had been given the big storyline in the fourth season; I don't know that it's ever been officially confirmed, but there's a general consensus that the story about "The Initiative," and a character who gets recruited by that shadowy organization, was supposed to be about Xander. Instead it was given to a new character, Riley, introduced as a new love interest for Buffy; Xander therefore spent most of the fourth season without anything to do except make wisecracks and have a dull romantic storyline of his own, and this continued for the duration of the series.
"Buffy" was probably done in -- creatively, at least -- by the "'shipper" mentality, the idea that the most important thing about a show is pairing off each character with a romantic partner and focusing as much attention as possible on the question of who would get together with who. By far the worst thing about "Buffy" in its first (and best) three seasons was the Buffy/Angel romance; it may have been a godsend to fanfic writers, back before slash became the fanfic style of choice, but it mostly produced goopy, treacly, mopey, dopey episodes. (Except for the "Angel goes evil" storyline in the second season, because that was an appropriately "Buffy"-esque combination of angst and humor.) Boils and Blinding Torment has a funny redux of one of those interminable Buffy/Angel scenes:
Buffy: A date! You're asking me on a date!
Angel: Hello? No, I am after all a vampire. I'm merely being confusing and obtuse.
Buffy: Since I'm been all lovey-dovey already in this conversation, I guess it's time for BitchyBuffy. I like to mix things up by going back and forth. So get the hell away from me.
Angel: Fine! After all, we have coffee, next thing you know, it'll be sex, and who knows, you could cause me to lose my soul or something.
Buffy: Great. Well, you are such a terrible kisser than when you kiss me I wish I were dead. Watch out or I might stab you and send you to hell.
So Angel leaves to headline his own spinoff and actually be interesting, given that he now has the opportunity to do something other than teenybopper romance (well, until that show gets taken over by who-loves-who plots, but I digress), and what does "Buffy" do? Concentrate on the interesting stories about friendship and fitting in and using monster stories as serio-comic metaphors for the everyday problems and decisions that young people face? No: introduce more boring love interests, male (Riley) and female (Tara), and reduce all the characters' lives to the question of who they are or are not sleeping with at the moment. One of the refreshing things about early "Buffy" was that it was one of the few high school shows that acknowledged that there are, in fact, other aspects of a teenager's life than who he or she is romantically involved with: there's also the pressure to conform (Xander in "The Pack"); the pressure of trying to combine school, extracurricular activities, and having some fun on the side ("Reptile Boy," but, more generally, Buffy's whole life is about trying to combine school with a crushing after-school training program); trying to change your image to be cooler (Willow in "Doppelgangerland"), and so on, all realistic teenage problems that happen to be played out as monster stories. Once a show spends too much time on romance, it's cut itself off from the really interesting stories.
Xander was hit the hardest because he had literally nothing to do on the show except be another supporting character's romantic partner, and it's a long way to fall from being one of the funniest and most interesting characters on TV for the first three years.
Incidentally, I wish someone would release a better DVD of the original "Buffy" movie. I know the Whedon fanatics despise it because it Wasn't True To Joss's Vision, but vision or no vision, the way it took a nutty concept and played it almost (but not quite) straight was something of a revelation at the time, and it anticipated the strengths of the series by finding the reality in its subject: it's ridiculous, but underneath the ridiculousness is a real story about a shallow girl who realizes that there's more to life than what she's been getting by with. Lots of memorable lines, too ("Kill him a lot!"). I'd a lot rather see the movie again than most of the episodes from the last two or even three seasons of the "Buffy" series, which are considerably less true to the original comic/dramatic vision of the series than the movie ever was.
"They All Stole From Me"
I occasionally (not too often, thankfully) use this blog as a dumping-ground for stuff I wrote and will never get to use anywhere else. Latest case in point: a song lyric I wrote a couple years back called "They All Stole From Me." The idea was that it was to be sung by a cranky elderly comedian, explaining that the reason his jokes seem stale is that he did everything first, and was stolen from by younger, more famous comedians. Like most song lyrics, it doesn't make much sense without a tune, but I might as well post it anyway, in lieu of fresh content:
Verse
I'm a comedy legend who's played ev'ry club
From this joint to... well, just here.
I remember the shoulders I once used to rub
With the greats of yesteryear.
Let me mention a few of them,
And the main thing I knew of them:
Refrain 1
They all stole from me,
They all stole from me,
From the highbrow guys
To the throwers of pies,
They all stole from me.
They all saw my act,
And they grabbed the jokes for free.
From the Catskill kvetch
To the SNL sketch,
They all stole from me.
From Ben n' Jerry Stiller
To that menace Dennis Miller,
I provided all the filler
That was killer.
Well, that's how it goes,
And my act ain't fun to see.
All the jokes I do
Sound familiar to you,
But they used to be new,
So if now I'm a bust,
Well, it's just
'Cause they all stole from me.
Patter
You're looking right now, all you lucky folks,
At the unsung inventor of lightbulb jokes.
I dropped comedy gold into others' laps
When I found out that men never look at maps.
The work that consumed me for half my life
Was finding two meanings for "Take my wife."
I got Richard Pryor's career on track
By telling him: "Take my advice, be black!"
But Seinfeld, that bum, was by far the worst:
Whatever he noticed, I noticed first.
My leastest-known triumph of all occurred
When I taught Lenny Bruce his favorite word.
Refrain 2
They all stole from me,
They all stole from me,
Even sour young hags
With their PMS gags,
They all stole from me.
They all paid me squat,
Not a single royal-tee.
At the improv club,
Ev'ry movie they dub
They all stole from me.
From hopeless Hope and Crosby
To that silly Billy Cosby,
They would hasten to me, view me,
Then they'd screw me.
Well, that's how it goes,
Now I think I gotta pee.
I'm a tired old coot
With a moth-eaten suit,
I missed out on the loot,
And if now I should fail,
If my schtick is all stale,
Just think back on my tale
And recall
That they all
Stole from me.
Verse
I'm a comedy legend who's played ev'ry club
From this joint to... well, just here.
I remember the shoulders I once used to rub
With the greats of yesteryear.
Let me mention a few of them,
And the main thing I knew of them:
Refrain 1
They all stole from me,
They all stole from me,
From the highbrow guys
To the throwers of pies,
They all stole from me.
They all saw my act,
And they grabbed the jokes for free.
From the Catskill kvetch
To the SNL sketch,
They all stole from me.
From Ben n' Jerry Stiller
To that menace Dennis Miller,
I provided all the filler
That was killer.
Well, that's how it goes,
And my act ain't fun to see.
All the jokes I do
Sound familiar to you,
But they used to be new,
So if now I'm a bust,
Well, it's just
'Cause they all stole from me.
Patter
You're looking right now, all you lucky folks,
At the unsung inventor of lightbulb jokes.
I dropped comedy gold into others' laps
When I found out that men never look at maps.
The work that consumed me for half my life
Was finding two meanings for "Take my wife."
I got Richard Pryor's career on track
By telling him: "Take my advice, be black!"
But Seinfeld, that bum, was by far the worst:
Whatever he noticed, I noticed first.
My leastest-known triumph of all occurred
When I taught Lenny Bruce his favorite word.
Refrain 2
They all stole from me,
They all stole from me,
Even sour young hags
With their PMS gags,
They all stole from me.
They all paid me squat,
Not a single royal-tee.
At the improv club,
Ev'ry movie they dub
They all stole from me.
From hopeless Hope and Crosby
To that silly Billy Cosby,
They would hasten to me, view me,
Then they'd screw me.
Well, that's how it goes,
Now I think I gotta pee.
I'm a tired old coot
With a moth-eaten suit,
I missed out on the loot,
And if now I should fail,
If my schtick is all stale,
Just think back on my tale
And recall
That they all
Stole from me.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Frank Doyle, "Archie"'s Comic
Like many people, I grew up reading "Archie" comics, and I have a residual affection for those comics. I also outgrew them, and I know that a lot of them weren't very good, that Archie is never, ever going to choose between Betty and Veronica, and so on. I know perfectly well the difference between thinking something is really good and just seeing it through the haze of nostalgia.
So when I say that "Archie" writer Frank Doyle was really good, you know I mean it, and I'm not just being nostalgic. Frank Doyle may well have been one of the best comic-book writers of all time.
I don't know much about Doyle except what's mentioned at the link above; he came from Brooklyn, joined "Archie" in the 1950s and stayed on until his death in 1996. He wrote for just about every Archie title; he also wrote the early, funny "Josie" comics (before it was re-tooled as "Josie and the Pussycats"). I don't know much about him, as I say; I do know that his stories were consistently funny, and very different from the other stuff being turned out by "Archie" comics -- the other most prolific "Archie" writer, George Gladir, was more conventional -- so much so that it's possible to identify a Doyle story even if, as often happens, the writer is not credited.
I have no idea whether Doyle had any particular theory of how to write a kids' comic. In practice, his stories usually reflect the idea that since "Archie" stories are very short (five-six pages, usually) and restricted in the types of stories they can do, the best way to approach it is to de-emphasize story and plot and concentrate instead on funny dialogue and the characters' reactions to everyday, mundane situations. Many of Doyle's stories have no plot, really, except maybe a minor twist at the end; instead they set up a situation and have the characters talk about it, crack wise about it, and just generally hang out and interact. It's a comic book about nothing.
And yes, I'm going where you think I'm going with this: I am comparing his work to "Seinfeld." Look at the beginning of this Doyle story from 1986, where Archie realizes that he overslept and forgot what day it is:
Doyle's stuff is extremely talky and often makes use of words, phrases and references that kids might not recognize; the "Archie" audience is young, but Doyle doesn't talk down to them:
You see, instead of concentrating on how to get from story point A from story point B, Doyle concentrates on the stuff in-between, and makes the characters articulate, smart and funny. He also sometimes liked to throw in elaborate introductory captions that were as much fun as the story itself. And he could sometimes throw in things that you wouldn't expect to find in an "Archie" comic. There was a Sabrina the Teenage Witch one-panel gag where Sabrina and her Aunt Hilda are decorating a Christmas tree; Sabrina puts an angel on top of the tree, but Aunt Hilda objects: "An angel offends my sense of witchery, somehow." Aunt Hilda transforms the angel into a devil, complete with horns: "Now, that's my kind of angel." This placement of a Satanic figure on a Christmas tree, as well as the acknowledgement of the Satanic side of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, was of course written by Frank Doyle. How this squared with the conservative and sometimes openly religious content of the rest of "Archie," I don't know.
Even when Doyle wrote a longer or plot-heavy story, something to fit in with whatever trend the publishers were trying to cash in on at the time, he often threw in some unique line of dialogue or funny observation that could only come from Frank Doyle. And I'm pretty sure, despite the lack of credits, that Doyle wrote the long and almost totally insane story where Jughead is mistaken for a diplomat and kidnapped by a gang of "banditos" in Honduras. The only thing that saves him and his friends from being killed is that Jughead earns the protection of the head bandito's fearsome mother, based on the fact that he's the only one who likes her cooking. Finally Veronica convinces the banditos to give up being banditos and go work for her father's corporation, whose cafeteria can give them better food than they'll get at home.
My feelings about Frank Doyle's work can be summed up this way: anybody (well, anybody who's capable of it) can do good work where good work is expected of them. What's especially impressive is someone who does consistently good work where he could easily get away with less. Frank Doyle could have had a forty-five year career with Archie Comics by writing stories that were not particularly funny or particularly unique; instead he was a truly funny and unique writer, and I'll always be grateful to him for subconsciously showing me, as a kid, the difference between run-of-the-mill work and something with a real creative spark.
To close my little tribute to Frank Doyle, here's a transcript of the complete text of a Jughead story called "In Search of Sanity." The artwork is by "Archie"'s best artist, Samm Schwartz (I never understood the fuss about Dan De Carlo), and while the script is uncredited, I'm almost certain it's by Doyle; if it's not, it's a terrific imitation of his style. Here's the whole story:
So when I say that "Archie" writer Frank Doyle was really good, you know I mean it, and I'm not just being nostalgic. Frank Doyle may well have been one of the best comic-book writers of all time.
I don't know much about Doyle except what's mentioned at the link above; he came from Brooklyn, joined "Archie" in the 1950s and stayed on until his death in 1996. He wrote for just about every Archie title; he also wrote the early, funny "Josie" comics (before it was re-tooled as "Josie and the Pussycats"). I don't know much about him, as I say; I do know that his stories were consistently funny, and very different from the other stuff being turned out by "Archie" comics -- the other most prolific "Archie" writer, George Gladir, was more conventional -- so much so that it's possible to identify a Doyle story even if, as often happens, the writer is not credited.
I have no idea whether Doyle had any particular theory of how to write a kids' comic. In practice, his stories usually reflect the idea that since "Archie" stories are very short (five-six pages, usually) and restricted in the types of stories they can do, the best way to approach it is to de-emphasize story and plot and concentrate instead on funny dialogue and the characters' reactions to everyday, mundane situations. Many of Doyle's stories have no plot, really, except maybe a minor twist at the end; instead they set up a situation and have the characters talk about it, crack wise about it, and just generally hang out and interact. It's a comic book about nothing.
And yes, I'm going where you think I'm going with this: I am comparing his work to "Seinfeld." Look at the beginning of this Doyle story from 1986, where Archie realizes that he overslept and forgot what day it is:
ARCHIE: You know what they say about Saturday night, old buddy. Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week.
JUGHEAD: I'll worry about that when it gets here. Right now I'm still working on Friday, of which today is a prime example.
ARCHIE: Say what? Today is not Saturday?
JUGHEAD: I assure you, it's been Friday all day.
ARCHIE: Wow. I fell asleep after dinner. I guess I woke up all confused. It really felt like it was Saturday night.
JUGHEAD: How could you forget? You put in a day of miserable tests.
ARCHIE: Ah, tests... school.
JUGHEAD: That's the trouble with school. All that stuff goes to your head.
ARCHIE: Hey, you know what this means?
REGGIE: Sure. You not only don't know what time it is, you don't even know what day it is.
ARCHIE: I have an extra night! One that no one else has.
BETTY: How do you figure? It's just as much Friday night for us as it is for you.
ARCHIE: Sure, sure. But you knew all the time that it was Friday. It wasn't the least bit unexpected.
BETTY: So? That just means we're brighter than you.
ARCHIE: No, no, no. When you get something unexpected, it is a gift of the Gods, a windfall, a new beginning, a touch of a magic wand.
VERONICA: You're making an awful lot of the fact that you overslept.
REGGIE: And forgot what day it was.
ARCHIE: Right. To me it's Saturday. So the fact that it's really Friday... don't you see? My mind, my whole being, is set on this being Saturday. And it's not. So tonight is like a free night to me. A treasure. A reward. A bonus.
JUGHEAD: You're bonkers. It's your Friday, it's my Friday, it's Ronnie's Friday, it's Betty's Friday, it's everybody's Friday.
REGGIE: Wake up and smell the burgers, Arch. It's Friday night, you're at Pop's, and this is your life.
Doyle's stuff is extremely talky and often makes use of words, phrases and references that kids might not recognize; the "Archie" audience is young, but Doyle doesn't talk down to them:
VERONICA: Ah, Reggie, Reggie, Reggie! How could you? As dear Willie Shakespeare once said, "These words are razors to my wounded heart!" You all remember, of course.
ARCHIE: Yeah, sure.
JUGHEAD: I never forget anything ol' Willie said.
You see, instead of concentrating on how to get from story point A from story point B, Doyle concentrates on the stuff in-between, and makes the characters articulate, smart and funny. He also sometimes liked to throw in elaborate introductory captions that were as much fun as the story itself. And he could sometimes throw in things that you wouldn't expect to find in an "Archie" comic. There was a Sabrina the Teenage Witch one-panel gag where Sabrina and her Aunt Hilda are decorating a Christmas tree; Sabrina puts an angel on top of the tree, but Aunt Hilda objects: "An angel offends my sense of witchery, somehow." Aunt Hilda transforms the angel into a devil, complete with horns: "Now, that's my kind of angel." This placement of a Satanic figure on a Christmas tree, as well as the acknowledgement of the Satanic side of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, was of course written by Frank Doyle. How this squared with the conservative and sometimes openly religious content of the rest of "Archie," I don't know.
Even when Doyle wrote a longer or plot-heavy story, something to fit in with whatever trend the publishers were trying to cash in on at the time, he often threw in some unique line of dialogue or funny observation that could only come from Frank Doyle. And I'm pretty sure, despite the lack of credits, that Doyle wrote the long and almost totally insane story where Jughead is mistaken for a diplomat and kidnapped by a gang of "banditos" in Honduras. The only thing that saves him and his friends from being killed is that Jughead earns the protection of the head bandito's fearsome mother, based on the fact that he's the only one who likes her cooking. Finally Veronica convinces the banditos to give up being banditos and go work for her father's corporation, whose cafeteria can give them better food than they'll get at home.
My feelings about Frank Doyle's work can be summed up this way: anybody (well, anybody who's capable of it) can do good work where good work is expected of them. What's especially impressive is someone who does consistently good work where he could easily get away with less. Frank Doyle could have had a forty-five year career with Archie Comics by writing stories that were not particularly funny or particularly unique; instead he was a truly funny and unique writer, and I'll always be grateful to him for subconsciously showing me, as a kid, the difference between run-of-the-mill work and something with a real creative spark.
To close my little tribute to Frank Doyle, here's a transcript of the complete text of a Jughead story called "In Search of Sanity." The artwork is by "Archie"'s best artist, Samm Schwartz (I never understood the fuss about Dan De Carlo), and while the script is uncredited, I'm almost certain it's by Doyle; if it's not, it's a terrific imitation of his style. Here's the whole story:
(Jughead appears at Betty's door, with a Steve Martin arrow through his head and strumming a ukulele.)
JUGHEAD: How do you do, Ma'am? I am a wild and crazy troubadour, searching for the Bluebird of Happiness.
BETTY: Of course you are. Mom, has the Bluebird of Happiness come by this morning?
BETTY'S MOTHER: No, dear, I haven't seen him. Or is it "her?"
(Betty and Jughead leave the house together.)
BETTY: Let me go with you, troubie-baby. We'll look for the cheerful chirper together.
JUGHEAD: Glad to have you aboard.
BETTY: Ah, here's Veronica. Let's ask her. Ron, this is a wild and crazy troubadour who's searching for the Bluebird of Happiness.
VERONICA: Any luck, Wild and Crazy?
JUGHEAD: Not yet. I did see three sad chickadees and a rather depressed owl. The closest thing to a happy bird was a snickering sparrow.
VERONICA: Well, at least it's an improvement in mood.
BETTY: Exactly how would one find a Bluebird of Happiness?
JUGHEAD: Delicious!
VERONICA: What do you do when you're not bird hunting, Bubbi?
JUGHEAD: What do I do when I'm not bird hunting?
BETTY: She asked you first.
VERONICA: That's right, I did.
JUGHEAD: I try to find the answer to the universal question.
BETTY: "What is the true meaning of life?"
JUGHEAD: People really ask that? The universal question I had in mind was, "What's for dinner?"
BETTY: Ah, that I can help you with.
JUGHEAD: Verily?
BETTY: Also in truth. Are you ready for this?
JUGHEAD: Oh, yes, yes!
BETTY: The answer to the universal question is....
JUGHEAD: Yes? Yes?
BETTY: Meatloaf!!
JUGHEAD: Wow! Ohh, wow!! Golly gee!! That's deep!
BETTY: Not really. About so high. But very tasty.
JUGHEAD: Am I invited?
BETTY: You're a wild and crazy troubadour -- do your thing.
JUGHEAD: You mean sing for my supper?
BETTY: That's it, Troubie! Make with the music.
JUGHEAD: Okay, let me tune up my zither.
VERONICA: They just don't make zithers like they used to.
JUGHEAD: Cough! Cough! Ahem! Hack! Mi mi mi! Do do do!
(sings, accompanying himself very badly on the ukulele)
Oh, they hanged ol' Ned from the ol' pine tree,
And his hound dawg howled till the clock struck three,
An' he pined away 'neath the ol' pine tree,
An' at dawn ol' Dawg wuz as dead as Ned!
BETTY: I'll throw in a hot apple pie for dessert if you don't sing anymore.
JUGHEAD: Now, that is music to my ears.
VERONICA: Sometimes I have the feeling I'm the only sane person left in the world.
The End
Operation Re-Syndication
This New York Times article outlines an interesting development for those of us who can't get enough of old TV shows:
This actually does sound far superior to traditional syndication, for the simple reason that the lower number of commercials will (at least, I hope) allow the episodes to be presented uncut. And at a time when most older shows are not shown on TV, and some of them can't profitably be released on DVD, putting them on the internet seems like a good use of the material, as well as a way to make the stuff accessible again.
How good the service turns out to be will depend in part on which shows are available and how many episodes of each are made available through the service. If WB offers all the episodes of these series, it'll be a tremendously valuable service. Even the Museum of Television and Radio only has four or five episodes of most series; for somebody trying to write, say, a long-winded blog post on an old TV show, being able to access every episode online would be a nice development. Hopefully this will turn out to be a useful service, and other studios will follow suit.
And I still remember only a few years back I was writing to VHS collectors asking them if they could send me their tapes of cancelled series X so I could write about it. Though I will miss some of the commercials that turned up on those tapes -- you'd never guess what depraved lives some used-car dealers lead....
Update: This article in "Information Week" lists some of the series that will initially be available.
Warner Brothers is preparing a major new Internet service that will let fans watch full episodes from more than 100 old television series. The service, called In2TV, will be free, supported by advertising, and will start early next year. More than 4,800 episodes will be made available online in the first year.
The move will give Warner a way to reap new advertising revenue from a huge trove of old programming that is not widely syndicated.
Programs on In2TV will have one to two minutes of commercials for each half-hour episode, compared with eight minutes in a standard broadcast. The Internet commercials cannot be skipped.
America Online, which is making a broad push into Internet video, will distribute the service on its Web portal. Both it and Warner Brothers are Time Warner units. An enhanced version of the service will use peer-to-peer file-sharing technology to get the video data to viewers.
Warner, with 800 television programs in its library, says it is the largest TV syndicator. It wants to use the Internet to reach viewers rather than depend on the whims of cable networks and local TV stations, said Eric Frankel, the president of Warner Brothers' domestic cable distribution division.
This actually does sound far superior to traditional syndication, for the simple reason that the lower number of commercials will (at least, I hope) allow the episodes to be presented uncut. And at a time when most older shows are not shown on TV, and some of them can't profitably be released on DVD, putting them on the internet seems like a good use of the material, as well as a way to make the stuff accessible again.
How good the service turns out to be will depend in part on which shows are available and how many episodes of each are made available through the service. If WB offers all the episodes of these series, it'll be a tremendously valuable service. Even the Museum of Television and Radio only has four or five episodes of most series; for somebody trying to write, say, a long-winded blog post on an old TV show, being able to access every episode online would be a nice development. Hopefully this will turn out to be a useful service, and other studios will follow suit.
And I still remember only a few years back I was writing to VHS collectors asking them if they could send me their tapes of cancelled series X so I could write about it. Though I will miss some of the commercials that turned up on those tapes -- you'd never guess what depraved lives some used-car dealers lead....
Update: This article in "Information Week" lists some of the series that will initially be available.
We Hate Iambic Pentameter!
Season 3 of "Moonlighting" arrives on DVD in February 2006. This is the season that made the show the stuff of '80s legend: the behind-the-scenes fights, the fact that they were commissioned to produce 22 episodes and only managed to deliver 15; the story arc culminating in what was known as the "Big Bang," and the sudden collapse of the show in the following season (due to clumsy attempts to write around Cybill Shepherd's pregnancy) have all given the show a near-mythic status.
This was also the season when they really went wild with the gimmick episodes, including an episode done entirely in Shakespearean verse; an episode with a musical dream sequence directed by Stanley Donen; and an almost entirely self-referential episode where Rona Barrett interviews the characters on their behind-the-scenes conflicts. Best gag: when Shepherd makes her entrance in that episode, she holds up a screen in front of her face, a reference to her insistence that her close-ups be photographed through gauzy filters -- something that is all-too-noticeable on DVD, by the way.
This was also the season when they really went wild with the gimmick episodes, including an episode done entirely in Shakespearean verse; an episode with a musical dream sequence directed by Stanley Donen; and an almost entirely self-referential episode where Rona Barrett interviews the characters on their behind-the-scenes conflicts. Best gag: when Shepherd makes her entrance in that episode, she holds up a screen in front of her face, a reference to her insistence that her close-ups be photographed through gauzy filters -- something that is all-too-noticeable on DVD, by the way.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Welcome, Stranger
Welcome to anyone who stumbled upon this blog based on Terry Teachout's kind mention in the Wall Street Journal.
And by the way, Sarah is my sister and not, as sometimes believed, my distant American cousin.
And by the way, Sarah is my sister and not, as sometimes believed, my distant American cousin.
How Toyetic Can You Get?
I recently wrote, in full-on '80s nostalgia mode, a post about cartoons based on toys. Continuing that theme, I'd like to post an article I wrote about what was probably the most entertaining of the toy-based cartoons, "Jem (and the Holograms)." Warning: it's a long damn thing, and goes into way more detail about the relationship between cartoons and toys than any sensible person should really want.
This show was based on a line of Hasbro toys, and produced by Sunbow animation, which consisted mostly of people from the just-out-of-business DePatie-Freleng company. The success of “My Little Pony” made Sunbow the obvious choice to do a show based on Hasbro’s most ambitious project yet: Jem. Or, Jem and the Holograms. Or, Punk Rock Barbie.
For some time, Hasbro had been trying to come up with a way to outdo Mattel’s Barbie dolls, which had given Mattel an invincible lead among young girls. In the mid-‘80s, Hasbro came up with what they thought was the answer: create a doll as pretty and anatomically-impossible as Barbie, but make it cool and hip. And what was cool and hip at the time was punk rock, with its elements of – in the words of the Jem show’s theme song – “glamour and glitter, fashion and fame.” Al Carosi, Hasbro’s senior vice-president of marketing, explained to the Los Angeles Times: "We wanted to get into the fashion-doll section of the toy industry. We had identified the interest young girls have in rock 'n' roll music. With the advent of MTV, Nickelodeon and 'Miami Vice' a rock 'n' roll feeling has permeated the youth market.” So Jem had pink hair, what clothing she wore was pink, and she had a star apparently tattooed around her eye. All this was supposed to give the impression that she was more rebellious than Barbie, leading less of a sheltered life; but to make sure that she wouldn’t come off as a bad role model, she had a team of adversaries – a rival rock group known as “The Misfits” – who represented all the bad things about the punk rock world, so that Jem could look like a saint by comparison.
In fact, the backstory of “Jem” was unusually detailed for a toy, and this derived from the fact that the TV show was planned from the beginning as part of the promotion. Hasbro and Sunbow planned it out together: who is Jem, who are her friends, who are her enemies. The resulting scenario would be the basis for the toys and the cartoon: Jerrica Benton, the daughter of a recently-deceased music mogul, inherits a share in his record company, “Starlight Music,” and a shelter for homeless girls (the plight of the homeless had become the issue of the time), the “Starlight House.” She immediately comes into conflict with her partner at the record company, nefarious record executive Eric Raymond, over his corrupt business methods and his promotion of a trashy punk group, The Misfits. Jerrica’s problems are solved when she discovers a third thing her father left her: his secret supercomputer, Synergy, capable of projecting “sophisticated holograms” that can change people’s appearance. To get money to keep Starlight House afloat, and to stop Eric from taking over the record company, Jerrica uses Synergy to transform herself into the “truly outrageous” and mysterious Jem, and forms a rock group, The Holograms, with her sister Kimber and two multicultural friends, Aja and Shana. But she hides her secret identity from her purple-haired boyfriend Rio, which creates complications when Rio finds himself becoming more and more attracted to Jem.
This secret-identity gimmick derived from both toy-related and TV-related concerns. Hasbro wanted to make sure that Jem wouldn’t be too far out and funky for girls to relate to, so they created the “Jerrica” alter ego, to let girls know that underneath all those layers of pink, Jem is just a regular gal like them (if they owned a music company and a giant hologram-projecting computer). And Sunbow, conscious that the show would be going into a market dominated by boys’ action-adventure series like He-Man, wanted to make sure that Jem would have enough action elements to keep the boys from tuning out, the way they tended to tune out of My Little Pony. So Jem became something of a rock n’ roll superheroine, with a secret identity to preserve, and recurring villains to fight – Eric Raymond, the Misfits. Plus the Misfits tended to be so crazy and violent that they would inflict enough damage to keep the violence fans happy; indeed, they probably did more actual harm than Skeletor ever managed.
The head writer of the TV series was Christy Marx, who had started with DePatie-Freleng on a "Fantastic Four" series where network censors forced the Human Torch to be replaced by a robot. She later recalled that she didn’t particularly want to do Jem, feeling that it was too “girly” after all the red-blooded action shows she’d been doing. But she liked the challenge of writing a show that combined the features of girls’ shows – romance, friendship, music – with features taken from action-adventure and even soap opera. Her five-part pilot of Jem was unusually entertaining because, unlike any other Saturday morning cartoon of the time, you hardly knew what to expect next. It starts as a soap, with Jerrica mourning the death of her father and discovering Eric Raymond’s plot to take over the company. Then it becomes a fantasy, with the arrival of Synergy and its rather overblown computerized powers. (In the ‘80s, when computers were just starting to arrive in people’s homes, there were many movies and TV shows that fantasized about the power of computers, inflating their abilities to near-mythological levels; remember 1985’s Weird Science, where ordinary home computers literally have magical powers?) Then it’s a musical, with a battle of the bands between Jem and the Misfits. Then it introduces various action-adventure cliffhangers: Starlight House gets burned down, the Holograms are on a boat about to crash into another boat, Eric Raymond slaps Jerrica and Rio punches Eric (He-Man could never get away with that kind of violence). By the end of the fifth episode, and Jem’s first, truncated season, you feel like you’ve actually seen something unique, and whatever the crudities of the animation or the dialogue, that made Jem a breath of fresh air in 1986. The fact that it was based on a toy didn’t change the fact that it had more to offer than most shows that weren’t based on toys.
One of the things it had to offer was fairly entertaining music. “My Little Pony” had usually included one original song per episode, but “Jem” was a full-fledged musical: every episode contained three original songs, usually two by Jem and one by The Misfits. The songs were vaguely related to the plot (Jem sang a song called “Deception” castigating herself for deceiving Rio; the Misfits went to Hawaii and sang “We’re Misfits in Hawaii”), but they were presented as MTV-style music videos, complete with band and song identification at the beginning and end. The videos could be unusually wacky and visually imaginative for a Saturday morning cartoon, with lots of shifting backgrounds and crazy visual ideas that commented on the lyrics of the song: the videos for the Misfits’ “(I’ve Got) Universal Appeal” actually showed their faces floating in space, as big and bright as the Earth. These one-minute segments may have been silly, but they were among the few moments in Saturday morning cartoons that gave any real visual opportunities to the animators.
And if you listen closely, the songs weren’t bad either. The lyrics were by Barry Harman, who was a veteran of shows like “All in the Family” and “The Carol Burnett Show”; he was also a real musical-theatre lyricist, who would have a show produced on Broadway (“Romance, Romance”) not long after he started working on “Jem.” He and the composers, Ford Bryant and Ellis Kinder, responded surprisingly well to the challenge of writing songs that sounded like ‘80s-style pop songs but functioned like integrated musical-comedy numbers.
They also did a good job of coping with the rules that the show imposed on the songs: Hasbro’s rule was that Jem and the Holograms had to sing songs with positive messages, while the Misfits would sing songs about being greedy and selfish (but without directly telling the viewers to act that way). Not surprisingly, Harman found the Misfits more fun to write for. “Jem and the Holograms were sweet,” he recalled, “but it’s hard turning out songs that are all so positively based. I think we did a decent job, but it’s more fun misbehaving!” Jem’s lyrics usually sounded like this:
People who care
Are people who share,
People who give
So other people can live.
While the Misfits got the fun stuff, and allowed the lyricist to enjoy himself with some references and rhymes that the kids might not notice:
The world belongs to the major movers,
The ones who'll keep up a relentless pace.
If you ain't up to their fast manoeuvres,
You're gonna wind up in second place –
You're gonna wind up with egg on your face!
All the prizes go to the swift;
You gotta be fast, you gotta be fast
Baby, baby, are you gettin' my drift?
You can tell those aren’t real ‘80s pop/rock lyrics because they actually rhyme. But kids loved the songs, so much so that Sunbow considered doing an album of “Jem” songs.
Before that or any other “Jem” tie-ins could happen, though, a problem arose. Not with the show; the show was doing fine. But the toys weren’t. And because the show had mostly been intended to help sell the toys, that was a problem for the show, too.
While the Jem dolls didn’t sell that badly, they didn’t sell nearly well enough, considering the huge promotional budget Hasbro put into it and the equally huge number of dolls produced. At the end of 1987, the company was left with $9 million worth of unsold Jem dolls that had to be sold off at discount prices, like remaindered books.
Carosi blamed it on size: ''One of the things we did wrong, in retrospect, is that we made Jem an inch taller than Barbie, so that the clothes weren't interchangeable for both.” Another possible problem was that if you didn’t know she was a good girl – that is, if you hadn’t seen the show and learned about her reassuring backstory – Jem looked kind of scary, as if she’d been made up for Halloween instead of a date. Hasbro had counted on the TV show to give the doll mainstream appeal to little girls. It turned out that all the TV show did was give mainstream appeal to Jem as a cartoon character; the doll was on its own. It had succeeded as a cartoon series, but it failed as a marketing tool.
And so, in 1988, Hasbro announced that Jem dolls and all associated paraphernalia would be taken off the market. The company turned its attention to a new girls’ doll, Maxie, described by the New York Times as “a fresh-faced high-school girl from California - a sports- and beach-oriented type.” In other words, the punk look was out and wholesomeness was in again. (Maxie didn’t catch on either, but Mattel executives at least paid her the compliment of saying that she was a better doll than Jem ever was.) And Jem became a fixture in remainder bins all over the continent.
But what of the cartoon show? The ratings were still good; girls and even boys were singing the songs; the people who worked on the show were willing to make more episodes. But by the time the toys were off the market, the show had gotten up to the magic number, 65 episodes, and Hasbro had no intention of making any more; they didn’t need any more for syndication profits, and with no toy to sell, there was no benefit, as they saw it, in making more episodes. By the time she wrote the last episode, Marx knew there wouldn’t be any others, and she was able to write it as a sort of makeshift series finale (with one of Jerrica’s adorable orphan charges finding her long-lost father). And then, nothing. Jem, a successful, well-regarded show, had been cancelled not because it failed to pull in the advertisers, because it failed as an advertisement in and of itself.
While what happened to Jem was the most spectacular example of marketing problems taking precedence over ratings success, it happened elsewhere, too. To a certain extent it even happened with He-Man. Mattel launched a spinoff series about He-Man’s sister, She-Ra: Princess of Power, to promote a new line of girl-oriented action toys. The show was a mild success, but the toys were not, and the show faded away with the toys. Moreover, with Filmation having taken most of the He-Man staff off that show to work on the spinoff, the success of He-Man started to wane, and with it, the success of the Mattel toys (and He-Man was one of the few cases of a show that really demonstrably helped to sell the toys it was based on). So when Mattel got burned by its rush to promote new toys, Filmation wound up losing one big hit series and one mildly successful one. The company never really recovered, though there was one more Mattel-Filmation collaboration, Bravestarr, featuring a toy that was described as “A sort of sci-fi Western, featuring a Native American space sheriff.” It flopped.
This show was based on a line of Hasbro toys, and produced by Sunbow animation, which consisted mostly of people from the just-out-of-business DePatie-Freleng company. The success of “My Little Pony” made Sunbow the obvious choice to do a show based on Hasbro’s most ambitious project yet: Jem. Or, Jem and the Holograms. Or, Punk Rock Barbie.
For some time, Hasbro had been trying to come up with a way to outdo Mattel’s Barbie dolls, which had given Mattel an invincible lead among young girls. In the mid-‘80s, Hasbro came up with what they thought was the answer: create a doll as pretty and anatomically-impossible as Barbie, but make it cool and hip. And what was cool and hip at the time was punk rock, with its elements of – in the words of the Jem show’s theme song – “glamour and glitter, fashion and fame.” Al Carosi, Hasbro’s senior vice-president of marketing, explained to the Los Angeles Times: "We wanted to get into the fashion-doll section of the toy industry. We had identified the interest young girls have in rock 'n' roll music. With the advent of MTV, Nickelodeon and 'Miami Vice' a rock 'n' roll feeling has permeated the youth market.” So Jem had pink hair, what clothing she wore was pink, and she had a star apparently tattooed around her eye. All this was supposed to give the impression that she was more rebellious than Barbie, leading less of a sheltered life; but to make sure that she wouldn’t come off as a bad role model, she had a team of adversaries – a rival rock group known as “The Misfits” – who represented all the bad things about the punk rock world, so that Jem could look like a saint by comparison.
In fact, the backstory of “Jem” was unusually detailed for a toy, and this derived from the fact that the TV show was planned from the beginning as part of the promotion. Hasbro and Sunbow planned it out together: who is Jem, who are her friends, who are her enemies. The resulting scenario would be the basis for the toys and the cartoon: Jerrica Benton, the daughter of a recently-deceased music mogul, inherits a share in his record company, “Starlight Music,” and a shelter for homeless girls (the plight of the homeless had become the issue of the time), the “Starlight House.” She immediately comes into conflict with her partner at the record company, nefarious record executive Eric Raymond, over his corrupt business methods and his promotion of a trashy punk group, The Misfits. Jerrica’s problems are solved when she discovers a third thing her father left her: his secret supercomputer, Synergy, capable of projecting “sophisticated holograms” that can change people’s appearance. To get money to keep Starlight House afloat, and to stop Eric from taking over the record company, Jerrica uses Synergy to transform herself into the “truly outrageous” and mysterious Jem, and forms a rock group, The Holograms, with her sister Kimber and two multicultural friends, Aja and Shana. But she hides her secret identity from her purple-haired boyfriend Rio, which creates complications when Rio finds himself becoming more and more attracted to Jem.
This secret-identity gimmick derived from both toy-related and TV-related concerns. Hasbro wanted to make sure that Jem wouldn’t be too far out and funky for girls to relate to, so they created the “Jerrica” alter ego, to let girls know that underneath all those layers of pink, Jem is just a regular gal like them (if they owned a music company and a giant hologram-projecting computer). And Sunbow, conscious that the show would be going into a market dominated by boys’ action-adventure series like He-Man, wanted to make sure that Jem would have enough action elements to keep the boys from tuning out, the way they tended to tune out of My Little Pony. So Jem became something of a rock n’ roll superheroine, with a secret identity to preserve, and recurring villains to fight – Eric Raymond, the Misfits. Plus the Misfits tended to be so crazy and violent that they would inflict enough damage to keep the violence fans happy; indeed, they probably did more actual harm than Skeletor ever managed.
The head writer of the TV series was Christy Marx, who had started with DePatie-Freleng on a "Fantastic Four" series where network censors forced the Human Torch to be replaced by a robot. She later recalled that she didn’t particularly want to do Jem, feeling that it was too “girly” after all the red-blooded action shows she’d been doing. But she liked the challenge of writing a show that combined the features of girls’ shows – romance, friendship, music – with features taken from action-adventure and even soap opera. Her five-part pilot of Jem was unusually entertaining because, unlike any other Saturday morning cartoon of the time, you hardly knew what to expect next. It starts as a soap, with Jerrica mourning the death of her father and discovering Eric Raymond’s plot to take over the company. Then it becomes a fantasy, with the arrival of Synergy and its rather overblown computerized powers. (In the ‘80s, when computers were just starting to arrive in people’s homes, there were many movies and TV shows that fantasized about the power of computers, inflating their abilities to near-mythological levels; remember 1985’s Weird Science, where ordinary home computers literally have magical powers?) Then it’s a musical, with a battle of the bands between Jem and the Misfits. Then it introduces various action-adventure cliffhangers: Starlight House gets burned down, the Holograms are on a boat about to crash into another boat, Eric Raymond slaps Jerrica and Rio punches Eric (He-Man could never get away with that kind of violence). By the end of the fifth episode, and Jem’s first, truncated season, you feel like you’ve actually seen something unique, and whatever the crudities of the animation or the dialogue, that made Jem a breath of fresh air in 1986. The fact that it was based on a toy didn’t change the fact that it had more to offer than most shows that weren’t based on toys.
One of the things it had to offer was fairly entertaining music. “My Little Pony” had usually included one original song per episode, but “Jem” was a full-fledged musical: every episode contained three original songs, usually two by Jem and one by The Misfits. The songs were vaguely related to the plot (Jem sang a song called “Deception” castigating herself for deceiving Rio; the Misfits went to Hawaii and sang “We’re Misfits in Hawaii”), but they were presented as MTV-style music videos, complete with band and song identification at the beginning and end. The videos could be unusually wacky and visually imaginative for a Saturday morning cartoon, with lots of shifting backgrounds and crazy visual ideas that commented on the lyrics of the song: the videos for the Misfits’ “(I’ve Got) Universal Appeal” actually showed their faces floating in space, as big and bright as the Earth. These one-minute segments may have been silly, but they were among the few moments in Saturday morning cartoons that gave any real visual opportunities to the animators.
And if you listen closely, the songs weren’t bad either. The lyrics were by Barry Harman, who was a veteran of shows like “All in the Family” and “The Carol Burnett Show”; he was also a real musical-theatre lyricist, who would have a show produced on Broadway (“Romance, Romance”) not long after he started working on “Jem.” He and the composers, Ford Bryant and Ellis Kinder, responded surprisingly well to the challenge of writing songs that sounded like ‘80s-style pop songs but functioned like integrated musical-comedy numbers.
They also did a good job of coping with the rules that the show imposed on the songs: Hasbro’s rule was that Jem and the Holograms had to sing songs with positive messages, while the Misfits would sing songs about being greedy and selfish (but without directly telling the viewers to act that way). Not surprisingly, Harman found the Misfits more fun to write for. “Jem and the Holograms were sweet,” he recalled, “but it’s hard turning out songs that are all so positively based. I think we did a decent job, but it’s more fun misbehaving!” Jem’s lyrics usually sounded like this:
People who care
Are people who share,
People who give
So other people can live.
While the Misfits got the fun stuff, and allowed the lyricist to enjoy himself with some references and rhymes that the kids might not notice:
The world belongs to the major movers,
The ones who'll keep up a relentless pace.
If you ain't up to their fast manoeuvres,
You're gonna wind up in second place –
You're gonna wind up with egg on your face!
All the prizes go to the swift;
You gotta be fast, you gotta be fast
Baby, baby, are you gettin' my drift?
You can tell those aren’t real ‘80s pop/rock lyrics because they actually rhyme. But kids loved the songs, so much so that Sunbow considered doing an album of “Jem” songs.
Before that or any other “Jem” tie-ins could happen, though, a problem arose. Not with the show; the show was doing fine. But the toys weren’t. And because the show had mostly been intended to help sell the toys, that was a problem for the show, too.
While the Jem dolls didn’t sell that badly, they didn’t sell nearly well enough, considering the huge promotional budget Hasbro put into it and the equally huge number of dolls produced. At the end of 1987, the company was left with $9 million worth of unsold Jem dolls that had to be sold off at discount prices, like remaindered books.
Carosi blamed it on size: ''One of the things we did wrong, in retrospect, is that we made Jem an inch taller than Barbie, so that the clothes weren't interchangeable for both.” Another possible problem was that if you didn’t know she was a good girl – that is, if you hadn’t seen the show and learned about her reassuring backstory – Jem looked kind of scary, as if she’d been made up for Halloween instead of a date. Hasbro had counted on the TV show to give the doll mainstream appeal to little girls. It turned out that all the TV show did was give mainstream appeal to Jem as a cartoon character; the doll was on its own. It had succeeded as a cartoon series, but it failed as a marketing tool.
And so, in 1988, Hasbro announced that Jem dolls and all associated paraphernalia would be taken off the market. The company turned its attention to a new girls’ doll, Maxie, described by the New York Times as “a fresh-faced high-school girl from California - a sports- and beach-oriented type.” In other words, the punk look was out and wholesomeness was in again. (Maxie didn’t catch on either, but Mattel executives at least paid her the compliment of saying that she was a better doll than Jem ever was.) And Jem became a fixture in remainder bins all over the continent.
But what of the cartoon show? The ratings were still good; girls and even boys were singing the songs; the people who worked on the show were willing to make more episodes. But by the time the toys were off the market, the show had gotten up to the magic number, 65 episodes, and Hasbro had no intention of making any more; they didn’t need any more for syndication profits, and with no toy to sell, there was no benefit, as they saw it, in making more episodes. By the time she wrote the last episode, Marx knew there wouldn’t be any others, and she was able to write it as a sort of makeshift series finale (with one of Jerrica’s adorable orphan charges finding her long-lost father). And then, nothing. Jem, a successful, well-regarded show, had been cancelled not because it failed to pull in the advertisers, because it failed as an advertisement in and of itself.
While what happened to Jem was the most spectacular example of marketing problems taking precedence over ratings success, it happened elsewhere, too. To a certain extent it even happened with He-Man. Mattel launched a spinoff series about He-Man’s sister, She-Ra: Princess of Power, to promote a new line of girl-oriented action toys. The show was a mild success, but the toys were not, and the show faded away with the toys. Moreover, with Filmation having taken most of the He-Man staff off that show to work on the spinoff, the success of He-Man started to wane, and with it, the success of the Mattel toys (and He-Man was one of the few cases of a show that really demonstrably helped to sell the toys it was based on). So when Mattel got burned by its rush to promote new toys, Filmation wound up losing one big hit series and one mildly successful one. The company never really recovered, though there was one more Mattel-Filmation collaboration, Bravestarr, featuring a toy that was described as “A sort of sci-fi Western, featuring a Native American space sheriff.” It flopped.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Elsewhere, Back at the Meanwhile Ranch....
Thrilling Days of Yesteryear has a good piece on the show "The White Shadow."
And Man vs. Clown follows up my own post on the epic suckitude of "Richie Rich" comics by quoting a one-page gag that sums up all that was evil and wrong about that comic book.
Platypus Comix has Part 4 of the Jon McClenahan interview, dealing with the production of "Animaniacs" and that show's great "lost" character, Minerva Mink. Minerva was a sexy mink, voiced by Julie Brown in her "'Cause I'm a Blonde" mode; every male character reacted to Minerva with Tex Avery-style wild takes, and the idea of the character was that she would defeat her adversaries -- like Newt, a "professionally trained hunting dog" after her fur -- by exploiting her sex appeal. Unfortunately, it was felt, by executives at WB animation and at Fox, that a series of cartoons consisting almost entirely of sex jokes of one kind or another was not the sort of thing they wanted for what was ostensibly a kids' show, so after starring in only two cartoons, Minerva was relegated to cameo appearances for the rest of the series. Someone should bring her back.
And Man vs. Clown follows up my own post on the epic suckitude of "Richie Rich" comics by quoting a one-page gag that sums up all that was evil and wrong about that comic book.
Platypus Comix has Part 4 of the Jon McClenahan interview, dealing with the production of "Animaniacs" and that show's great "lost" character, Minerva Mink. Minerva was a sexy mink, voiced by Julie Brown in her "'Cause I'm a Blonde" mode; every male character reacted to Minerva with Tex Avery-style wild takes, and the idea of the character was that she would defeat her adversaries -- like Newt, a "professionally trained hunting dog" after her fur -- by exploiting her sex appeal. Unfortunately, it was felt, by executives at WB animation and at Fox, that a series of cartoons consisting almost entirely of sex jokes of one kind or another was not the sort of thing they wanted for what was ostensibly a kids' show, so after starring in only two cartoons, Minerva was relegated to cameo appearances for the rest of the series. Someone should bring her back.
Mom, You Were Right
The "Which Peanuts Character Are You" test has been picked up on quite a few other blogs; it's shorter than most such tests, but produces fairly accurate results, as you will see from the results I got:
You are Charlie Brown!
Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
When I was a kid, my mother always used to worry that my interest in "Peanuts" would make me too much like Charlie Brown. I should've listened to her.
You are Charlie Brown!
Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
When I was a kid, my mother always used to worry that my interest in "Peanuts" would make me too much like Charlie Brown. I should've listened to her.
Prejudice, Schmejudice
I have nothing to say about the new movie version of Pride and Prejudice. No, I'm sorry, I just can't. I remember a time when there were almost no movies based on Jane Austen novels, and the conventional wisdom was that because her novels have very little in the way of physical action, they were basically unfilmable. The only well-known film version of an Austen novel was the 1940 Pride and Prejudice, which was based not directly on the novel but on a moderately successful Broadway stage adaptation by Helen Jerome. (Though Jerome can't be blamed for the infamously stupid ending of the film version; that was pure Hollywood.) Then suddenly it was 1995 and there were three successful movies based on Austen novels -- Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and the best of them, Clueless. And since then we've had to sit through movie after movie after movie: faithful adaptations, revisionist adaptations, post-colonial adaptations, re-adaptations.
Anyway, here's something I noticed about the book "Pride and Prejudice" that I haven't seen pointed out elsewhere (though I haven't read all ninety-seven billion words of analysis that have been published about the book). Wickham, the rake and/or rogue who feeds Elizabeth's prejudice against Darcy by convincing her that Darcy cheated and mistreated him, never actually tells a lie in his entire story about Darcy. Every detail of Wickham's story matches up with the account of the real story given later in Darcy's later; Wickham has simply omitted key pieces of information that place Darcy's behavior in a better light, or told the truth in such a way as to make Darcy sound as bad as possible. Austen's greatest strength as a writer was her unusually tight, rigorous sense of structure at a time when novels were often loose and rambling; like a mystery writer, she would play fair with the audience by planting clues early on as to what we're going to find out later on in the story. "Emma" is almost entirely a series of clues as to what is really going on, as opposed to the way Emma sees it; and "Pride and Prejudice" does the same thing by givng us Elizabeth's point of view of Wickham and his story, but giving us the clues we need to understand that she is seeing things in a distorted way. And so, late in the book, when Elizabeth confronts Wickham about his supposed lies, he replies to her, and by extention to us, that the real facts of the case were right there in front of us all the time:
Anyway, here's something I noticed about the book "Pride and Prejudice" that I haven't seen pointed out elsewhere (though I haven't read all ninety-seven billion words of analysis that have been published about the book). Wickham, the rake and/or rogue who feeds Elizabeth's prejudice against Darcy by convincing her that Darcy cheated and mistreated him, never actually tells a lie in his entire story about Darcy. Every detail of Wickham's story matches up with the account of the real story given later in Darcy's later; Wickham has simply omitted key pieces of information that place Darcy's behavior in a better light, or told the truth in such a way as to make Darcy sound as bad as possible. Austen's greatest strength as a writer was her unusually tight, rigorous sense of structure at a time when novels were often loose and rambling; like a mystery writer, she would play fair with the audience by planting clues early on as to what we're going to find out later on in the story. "Emma" is almost entirely a series of clues as to what is really going on, as opposed to the way Emma sees it; and "Pride and Prejudice" does the same thing by givng us Elizabeth's point of view of Wickham and his story, but giving us the clues we need to understand that she is seeing things in a distorted way. And so, late in the book, when Elizabeth confronts Wickham about his supposed lies, he replies to her, and by extention to us, that the real facts of the case were right there in front of us all the time:
"I have heard from authority, which I thought as good, that it was left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patron."
"You have. Yes, there was something in that; I told you so from the first, you may remember."
"I did hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you actually declared your resolution of never taking orders, and that the business had been compromised accordingly."
"You did! and it was not wholly without foundation. You may remember what I told you on that point, when first we talked of it."
Laudamus Te
I am currently listening to a good new recording of Mozart's Mass in C minor, K. 427. Known as the "Great" Mass because of its length and scope, it's Mozart's greatest religious work, and his second-most-popular religious work after the Requiem. What it has in common with the Requiem is that both pieces were left unfinished. Mozart wrote and premiered the Great Mass in 1783, but he only wrote half the Credo and didn't write any music for the final section of the Mass, the Agnus Dei. (He also left the orchestration incomplete for a few passages.) As the liner notes to the recording explain, nobody knows why Mozart didn't finish the Mass, or what music he used for the missing sections when he performed it. And since the movie Amadeus did not provide us with a made-up explanation for all this, we may never know for sure.
It's possible that Mozart didn't finish the Mass because it had simply gotten too long. The Mass as Mozart wrote it takes 50 minutes to an hour to perform; if he had finished the whole thing, it would have been as long as Bach's Mass in B minor or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis -- a huge work that's too long to be performable as part of a church service. The last part of the Credo that Mozart finished setting, the "Et Incarnatus Est," is a huge, nine-minute soprano aria in the style of the soprano arias from Mozart's operas, including his favorite device of accompanying the soprano with woodwinds that mimic her musical phrases; the other soprano aria, "Laudamus te," is an extremely difficult coloratura calling for phenomenal breath control (that the singer on this recording doesn't really have). And in between these grand-opera arias are numbers written in a "learned," pseudo-baroque style, even including a direct quotation from Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. It's a strange and wonderful mixture of styles that suggests that Mozart is trying to incorporate all his influences -- Italian opera, baroque religious music, popular tunes -- into one piece. You could even speculate that he didn't finish the work because, having written such a hodge-podge of styles into the work, he couldn't decide what style to pick for two of the climactic sections of the Mass (the end of the Credo and the end of the Mass itself), and finally gave up trying.
The tricky thing about the text of the Mass is that unlike most of the texts that are the basis for choral works, the Mass does not really have a built-in dramatic structure to it. The Requiem is a drama; it has an emotional arc to it, progressing from mourning ("Requiem aeternam") through fear ("Dies Irae") through other emotions, finally to a compromise between fear and hope ("Libera me, domine"). The Mass is more impersonal: most of it consists of either praise ("Gloria") or religious doctrine ("Credo").
Some composers have found ways to personalize the text by making it more about people than about metaphysics; Haydn's late Masses often included musical allusions to war, death, and even sex: one of his masses contains, at the world "Qui tollis peccata mundi," a self-quotation from a love duet for Adam and Eve in "The Creation," making it clear that sexual relations are not the sin that God is being asked to take away. Haydn also came up with the idea, in some Masses, of treating the final line, "Dona nobis pacem," as a loud and even angry demand for peace rather than a prayer. Haydn's pupil Beethoven would take these ideas and expand on them in the Missa Solemnis, which is basically a liturgical opera, using the text as a jumping-off point for a musical portrait of how human beings relate to God, the world, and each other.
Mozart's "Great" Mass is sort of in-between the non-dramatic Mass (the kind of short, de-personalized Mass for an aristocratic church service, which Mozart had written many times before) and the dramatic, operaticized Mass. Because he didn't finish it, and didn't decide whether he would approach the finale as a prayer or a demand, we'll never know for sure what kind of work he thought this Mass should be. But that's what's interesting about a great unfinished work; it keeps you asking what point it's making, and leaves the question forever open, with only the knowledge that whatever the artist was trying to say, he was clearly building up to something really fascinating.
It's possible that Mozart didn't finish the Mass because it had simply gotten too long. The Mass as Mozart wrote it takes 50 minutes to an hour to perform; if he had finished the whole thing, it would have been as long as Bach's Mass in B minor or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis -- a huge work that's too long to be performable as part of a church service. The last part of the Credo that Mozart finished setting, the "Et Incarnatus Est," is a huge, nine-minute soprano aria in the style of the soprano arias from Mozart's operas, including his favorite device of accompanying the soprano with woodwinds that mimic her musical phrases; the other soprano aria, "Laudamus te," is an extremely difficult coloratura calling for phenomenal breath control (that the singer on this recording doesn't really have). And in between these grand-opera arias are numbers written in a "learned," pseudo-baroque style, even including a direct quotation from Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. It's a strange and wonderful mixture of styles that suggests that Mozart is trying to incorporate all his influences -- Italian opera, baroque religious music, popular tunes -- into one piece. You could even speculate that he didn't finish the work because, having written such a hodge-podge of styles into the work, he couldn't decide what style to pick for two of the climactic sections of the Mass (the end of the Credo and the end of the Mass itself), and finally gave up trying.
The tricky thing about the text of the Mass is that unlike most of the texts that are the basis for choral works, the Mass does not really have a built-in dramatic structure to it. The Requiem is a drama; it has an emotional arc to it, progressing from mourning ("Requiem aeternam") through fear ("Dies Irae") through other emotions, finally to a compromise between fear and hope ("Libera me, domine"). The Mass is more impersonal: most of it consists of either praise ("Gloria") or religious doctrine ("Credo").
Some composers have found ways to personalize the text by making it more about people than about metaphysics; Haydn's late Masses often included musical allusions to war, death, and even sex: one of his masses contains, at the world "Qui tollis peccata mundi," a self-quotation from a love duet for Adam and Eve in "The Creation," making it clear that sexual relations are not the sin that God is being asked to take away. Haydn also came up with the idea, in some Masses, of treating the final line, "Dona nobis pacem," as a loud and even angry demand for peace rather than a prayer. Haydn's pupil Beethoven would take these ideas and expand on them in the Missa Solemnis, which is basically a liturgical opera, using the text as a jumping-off point for a musical portrait of how human beings relate to God, the world, and each other.
Mozart's "Great" Mass is sort of in-between the non-dramatic Mass (the kind of short, de-personalized Mass for an aristocratic church service, which Mozart had written many times before) and the dramatic, operaticized Mass. Because he didn't finish it, and didn't decide whether he would approach the finale as a prayer or a demand, we'll never know for sure what kind of work he thought this Mass should be. But that's what's interesting about a great unfinished work; it keeps you asking what point it's making, and leaves the question forever open, with only the knowledge that whatever the artist was trying to say, he was clearly building up to something really fascinating.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Gosh-Darn It
"Arrested Development" is out. (Also "Seventh Heaven," the show that everybody loves to hate but was always more popular than any of the WB's good shows.) We all knew it was coming, but it's a sad little moment.
The internet is already getting filled to the cyber-brim with "Damn Fox" and "I hate Fox" posts, though honestly I'm not sure what Fox could have done to make this show a hit. The default position is usually "If only they'd promoted it more," which begs the question: if lots of promotion can make a show a hit, then why do so many shows, good and bad, bomb after a huge promotional push? My own theory, admittedly not really based on any actual facts, is that at a certain point, promos for a show are more for the benefit of the advertisers -- to reassure them that they're buying time on a show that the network supports -- than for the benefit of the show, which isn't going to magically pick up several million extra viewers if the promos get better.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of show the creator of "Arrested Development," Mitch Hurwitz, does as his next project. I'd bet on it to be a bit more traditional than "Arrested Development" but somewhat similar in tone, and a bigger success. But, again, this isn't based on anything except pure speculation, along with a reading of what showrunners do after creating an acclaimed cult failure. (Example: Denis Leary and Peter Tolan following up the cult flop "The Job" with the similar but somewhat more traditional in format -- and more successful -- "Rescue Me.")
This is also a sad time for the many writers out there working on "Arrested Development" spec scripts, which will soon become useless due to the general taboo against sample scripts for cancelled shows. Though frankly I've never understood why that is; writing a spec for a show that's been off the air for years -- say, "Taxi" or "Dick Van Dyke" -- might be considered a better test of a writer's ability to change his or her style than a spec script for a current show. But that's my third consecutive statement based on absolutely no inside knowledge whatsoever.
The internet is already getting filled to the cyber-brim with "Damn Fox" and "I hate Fox" posts, though honestly I'm not sure what Fox could have done to make this show a hit. The default position is usually "If only they'd promoted it more," which begs the question: if lots of promotion can make a show a hit, then why do so many shows, good and bad, bomb after a huge promotional push? My own theory, admittedly not really based on any actual facts, is that at a certain point, promos for a show are more for the benefit of the advertisers -- to reassure them that they're buying time on a show that the network supports -- than for the benefit of the show, which isn't going to magically pick up several million extra viewers if the promos get better.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of show the creator of "Arrested Development," Mitch Hurwitz, does as his next project. I'd bet on it to be a bit more traditional than "Arrested Development" but somewhat similar in tone, and a bigger success. But, again, this isn't based on anything except pure speculation, along with a reading of what showrunners do after creating an acclaimed cult failure. (Example: Denis Leary and Peter Tolan following up the cult flop "The Job" with the similar but somewhat more traditional in format -- and more successful -- "Rescue Me.")
This is also a sad time for the many writers out there working on "Arrested Development" spec scripts, which will soon become useless due to the general taboo against sample scripts for cancelled shows. Though frankly I've never understood why that is; writing a spec for a show that's been off the air for years -- say, "Taxi" or "Dick Van Dyke" -- might be considered a better test of a writer's ability to change his or her style than a spec script for a current show. But that's my third consecutive statement based on absolutely no inside knowledge whatsoever.
Grudge Matches I'd Like To See: J.R.R. Tolkien vs. T.H. White
In this corner: J.R.R. Tolkien, an eccentric, bookish Englishman who wrote an immensely long, multi-volume novel, The Lord of the Rings, in an attempt to create a new mythology.
And in that corner: T.H. White, an eccentric, bookish Englishman who wrote an immensely long, multi-volume novel, The Once and Future King, in an attempt to re-create old mythology.
Who wins this fight to the death between two English guys in tweed? And who gets the adaptation rights to the story of the fight, Peter Jackson or Lerner & Loewe?
And in that corner: T.H. White, an eccentric, bookish Englishman who wrote an immensely long, multi-volume novel, The Once and Future King, in an attempt to re-create old mythology.
Who wins this fight to the death between two English guys in tweed? And who gets the adaptation rights to the story of the fight, Peter Jackson or Lerner & Loewe?
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Design For Living, or, Who Needs Subtitles?
I love Ernst Lubitsch's Design For Living (available in The Gary Cooper Collection in a pretty good print) for many reasons.
I love the performances: Gary Cooper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins all did some of their best work here.
I love the fact that Lubitsch and writer Ben Hecht dared to abandon almost all of the Noel Coward play the movie is based on, at a time when this was considered sacrilege (Coward was highly prestigious at the time, and a faithful movie version of Coward's Cavalcade had won the Academy Award), and came up with funnier characters and better dialogue than the original.
I love Lubitsch's use of elliptical and oblique jokes; no one has ever matched Lubitsch when it comes to mining humor and drama from things that are not said, or things that are not shown. Random example: the scene where Fredric March gets a letter announcing that Hopkins and Cooper have slept together. We never see the letter, we never hear what's in it; we just see his reaction to it, and witness his complete deflation. And it's not just about getting stuff past the censors (who, even in 1933, would have come down hard on some of the things that go on in the picture if they had actually been shown onscreen); it's Lubitsch's whole working method, to give every joke a fresh spin by keeping some part of it hidden from view. Gary Cooper breaking something in anger wouldn't be anything new; keeping the camera on Hopkins and March, sitting calmly but uncomfortably while we hear something break, is different and funny.
I love the suggestive visual jokes that would become hard to pull off only a year later, when the studios started enforcing the Production Code more rigorously; the shot of two obviously phallic flowers, presented to Hopkins as a wedding present from the two heroes, would seem like a raunchy joke even today:
I love the combination of Lubitsch's less-is-more style of building jokes and scenes with Hecht's more direct, wise-guy sense of humor. So yes, there are a lot of reasons to love this movie. But -- and here is where this post does a complete detour into something else:
One little thing I love about Design For Living is that the first dialogue scene (after an extended silent sequence) is conducted entirely in French. Cooper meets Hopkins on a train in France, and, each assuming that the other is French, they start talking, and then arguing, in French. (The first English line in the picture is "Oh, nuts!") There's another thing to love about the film: Gary Cooper speaking French, and, despite the American accent, speaking it quite well. But the great thing about this conversation is that it is conducted entirely without subtitles or any other method of indicating what the words mean in English; nobody translates it for us.
I'm not even sure if subtitles, as opposed to captions and intertitles, were commonly in use in 1933, so maybe the choice to do the scene in without subtitles was made out of technical necessity. Still, I always like it when a film contains conversations in a foreign language without feeling obliged to translate it for us. (This is more common in French or Italian movies, where you might frequently hear a few lines of dialogue in non-subtitled English, than in English-language movies.) Nowadays any line of foreign-language dialogue has subtitles, even if it's only "Bonjour" or "Adios." But if you look at, say, the German-language scenes in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three -- made in 1961, by which time subtitles were very common -- the scenes are in fluent German and unsubtitled, and Wilder assumes that we will pick up what's going on by means of the visual cues and the occasional recognizable word (you don't have to speak German to figure out, from the onscreen conversations, that "Americanischer spion" means "American spy").
I love the performances: Gary Cooper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins all did some of their best work here.
I love the fact that Lubitsch and writer Ben Hecht dared to abandon almost all of the Noel Coward play the movie is based on, at a time when this was considered sacrilege (Coward was highly prestigious at the time, and a faithful movie version of Coward's Cavalcade had won the Academy Award), and came up with funnier characters and better dialogue than the original.
I love Lubitsch's use of elliptical and oblique jokes; no one has ever matched Lubitsch when it comes to mining humor and drama from things that are not said, or things that are not shown. Random example: the scene where Fredric March gets a letter announcing that Hopkins and Cooper have slept together. We never see the letter, we never hear what's in it; we just see his reaction to it, and witness his complete deflation. And it's not just about getting stuff past the censors (who, even in 1933, would have come down hard on some of the things that go on in the picture if they had actually been shown onscreen); it's Lubitsch's whole working method, to give every joke a fresh spin by keeping some part of it hidden from view. Gary Cooper breaking something in anger wouldn't be anything new; keeping the camera on Hopkins and March, sitting calmly but uncomfortably while we hear something break, is different and funny.
I love the suggestive visual jokes that would become hard to pull off only a year later, when the studios started enforcing the Production Code more rigorously; the shot of two obviously phallic flowers, presented to Hopkins as a wedding present from the two heroes, would seem like a raunchy joke even today:
I love the combination of Lubitsch's less-is-more style of building jokes and scenes with Hecht's more direct, wise-guy sense of humor. So yes, there are a lot of reasons to love this movie. But -- and here is where this post does a complete detour into something else:
One little thing I love about Design For Living is that the first dialogue scene (after an extended silent sequence) is conducted entirely in French. Cooper meets Hopkins on a train in France, and, each assuming that the other is French, they start talking, and then arguing, in French. (The first English line in the picture is "Oh, nuts!") There's another thing to love about the film: Gary Cooper speaking French, and, despite the American accent, speaking it quite well. But the great thing about this conversation is that it is conducted entirely without subtitles or any other method of indicating what the words mean in English; nobody translates it for us.
I'm not even sure if subtitles, as opposed to captions and intertitles, were commonly in use in 1933, so maybe the choice to do the scene in without subtitles was made out of technical necessity. Still, I always like it when a film contains conversations in a foreign language without feeling obliged to translate it for us. (This is more common in French or Italian movies, where you might frequently hear a few lines of dialogue in non-subtitled English, than in English-language movies.) Nowadays any line of foreign-language dialogue has subtitles, even if it's only "Bonjour" or "Adios." But if you look at, say, the German-language scenes in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three -- made in 1961, by which time subtitles were very common -- the scenes are in fluent German and unsubtitled, and Wilder assumes that we will pick up what's going on by means of the visual cues and the occasional recognizable word (you don't have to speak German to figure out, from the onscreen conversations, that "Americanischer spion" means "American spy").
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Depressing Songs: "Doomed, Doomed, Doomed"
Another in my bizarre favorite category, the depressing song lyric. This is another song from the great 1954 flop musical The Golden Apple; more about that show and its brilliant lyricist, John LaTouche, here. The Golden Apple was a great, doomed show, and the song I'm quoting is, appropriately enough, called "Doomed, Doomed, Doomed."
The Golden Apple is an Americanized, musicalized version of Homer's Odyssey, and "Doomed, Doomed, Doomed" is part of the show's climactic series of Vaudeville turns: in successive numbers, characters from earlier in the show return as similar characters in the nightmarish city of Rhododendron, where Ulysses and his friends are corrupted and/or killed. Each number sheds some light on what's wrong with the modern world: "Scylla and Charybdis" are two stockbrokers who always do well no matter how many people's lives are ruined by their stock tips; "Calypso" is a society leech described as a "Nympho-megalo-ego-dipso-maniac," and the Sirens as hookers in fashionable Hawaiian garb singing "(By a) Goona-Goona (Lagoon)." The device probably influenced the similarly-structured climax of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, where the themes of the show are summed up in a succession of pastiche showstoppers.
The ragtime "Doomed, Doomed, Doomed" is sung by the actress who plays Minerva, the schoolmarm from Ulysses' hometown, here doubling as a crazy lady scientist who assures Ulysses and his friends that not only is the modern world terrible, it's only going to get worse. LaTouche spoofs doomsday prophecies (all the rage in the '50s, from all corners) and blind faith that science, and in particular the Space Race, can save us. And note that we're still worrying about quite a few of the same things today, fifty years later:
The Golden Apple is an Americanized, musicalized version of Homer's Odyssey, and "Doomed, Doomed, Doomed" is part of the show's climactic series of Vaudeville turns: in successive numbers, characters from earlier in the show return as similar characters in the nightmarish city of Rhododendron, where Ulysses and his friends are corrupted and/or killed. Each number sheds some light on what's wrong with the modern world: "Scylla and Charybdis" are two stockbrokers who always do well no matter how many people's lives are ruined by their stock tips; "Calypso" is a society leech described as a "Nympho-megalo-ego-dipso-maniac," and the Sirens as hookers in fashionable Hawaiian garb singing "(By a) Goona-Goona (Lagoon)." The device probably influenced the similarly-structured climax of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, where the themes of the show are summed up in a succession of pastiche showstoppers.
The ragtime "Doomed, Doomed, Doomed" is sung by the actress who plays Minerva, the schoolmarm from Ulysses' hometown, here doubling as a crazy lady scientist who assures Ulysses and his friends that not only is the modern world terrible, it's only going to get worse. LaTouche spoofs doomsday prophecies (all the rage in the '50s, from all corners) and blind faith that science, and in particular the Space Race, can save us. And note that we're still worrying about quite a few of the same things today, fifty years later:
LADY SCIENTIST
I've prodded the atom to its foundation,
Cross-indexed the human mind,
Reduced the universe to an equation.
ALL
What, oh, what did you find?
LADY SCIENTIST
Oh, the polar cap is slowly expanding,
In a million years we'll freeze to death, I guess.
If the Ice Age hasn't floored us,
There's a planet heading toward us;
When it hits, we'll be an interstellar mess.
Oh, the continent is crumbling and dissolving,
As our rivers wash our topsoil out to sea.
And the land we can retrieve'll
Be devoured by pest and weevil,
And there won't be nothing left for you and me.
ALL
Oh, we're doomed, doomed, doomed,
Oh, we're doomed, doomed, doomed,
Oh, we're doomed to disappear without a trace.
For the solar system's cracking up,
The universe is slacking up,
And time is running out at a rather hectic pace.
Oh, we're doomed, doomed, doomed,
Oh, we're doomed, doomed, doomed,
Oh, we're doomed to disappear without a trace.
Because all of us are just
Little specks of cosmic dust,
Oh, it's doom, doom, doom for the well-known human race.
LADY SCIENTIST
To save our all-too human necks,
I've now invented Gadget X.
ALL
A gadget?
LADY SCIENTIST
A super gadget.
Now, just beyond the planet Mars
Is System Zero, lots of stars
Aglow there.
ALL
We ought to go there.
LADY SCIENTIST
So when destruction starts to fall,
Our Gadget X will save us all.
ALL
Our gadget?
LADY SCIENTIST
A super gadget!
Oh, it's effective, never fear.
Now, which of you will volunteer
To ride it?
I never tried it.
DOC
I will be a volunteer!
ALL
He will be a volunteer!
(Doc gets into Gadget X -- a rocket -- and is fired upwards and offstage.)
LADY SCIENTIST
It works! It works! It's plunging past time's track
In twenty seconds flat!
ULYSSES
But how is he gonna get back?
LADY SCIENTIST
Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I never thought of that.
Well.... back to work.
© 1954 by John LaTouche. All rights reserved.
Archival Survival
Am very slowly trying to work my way through some of the interviews from the Archive of American Television, now available on Google Video. The interviews are long, unedited and rambling, but if you're patient, they can provide the TV geek with plenty of stories, insights, and combinations thereof. Also, Google Video allows for keyword searches, so you can, with trial and error, locate the part of the interview that discusses the subject you're interested in.
I've been working my way through the interview with TV directing legend Jay Sandrich, chief director for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Soap," "The Cosby Show," and many pilots.
One of the pilots he did was the great but not-frequently-discussed "WKRP In Cincinnati," and fortunately the interviewer asks him about it. He doesn't have a lot to say about the show -- as he says, when he does a pilot he's only there for a week -- but he does talk about how "WKRP" was cast in a hurry. The original actor playing the part of Andy Travis was fired a week before taping started (unfortunately he doesn't name the original actor; he only states that he was let go because the creator, Hugh Wilson, didn't like his line readings). Gary Sandy got the part after a reading for MTM executives. Richard Libertini was supposed to play Dr. Johnny Fever, but pulled out, and Roddy McDowall proved unavailable for the part of station manager Mr. Carlson. Sandrich pulled two semi-regular actors off the cast of his show "Soap" to fill the roles: Howard Hesseman and Gordon Jump.
The interview with Sandrich's successor as sitcom directing king, James Burrows, has some good information on "Taxi," including confirming something that various "Simpsons" writers have said about James L. Brooks: he's able to pitch entire scenes, complete and perfect, off the top of his head. Burrows also mentions that he was impressed with the Charles Brothers on "Taxi" because they had the nerve to tell Brooks when he was wrong about something.
And so on. If you like trivia like that, welcome to the Archive. If you don't... I dunno, go enjoy the shows and don't think about behind-the-scenes trivia, you Philistine, you.
I've been working my way through the interview with TV directing legend Jay Sandrich, chief director for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Soap," "The Cosby Show," and many pilots.
One of the pilots he did was the great but not-frequently-discussed "WKRP In Cincinnati," and fortunately the interviewer asks him about it. He doesn't have a lot to say about the show -- as he says, when he does a pilot he's only there for a week -- but he does talk about how "WKRP" was cast in a hurry. The original actor playing the part of Andy Travis was fired a week before taping started (unfortunately he doesn't name the original actor; he only states that he was let go because the creator, Hugh Wilson, didn't like his line readings). Gary Sandy got the part after a reading for MTM executives. Richard Libertini was supposed to play Dr. Johnny Fever, but pulled out, and Roddy McDowall proved unavailable for the part of station manager Mr. Carlson. Sandrich pulled two semi-regular actors off the cast of his show "Soap" to fill the roles: Howard Hesseman and Gordon Jump.
The interview with Sandrich's successor as sitcom directing king, James Burrows, has some good information on "Taxi," including confirming something that various "Simpsons" writers have said about James L. Brooks: he's able to pitch entire scenes, complete and perfect, off the top of his head. Burrows also mentions that he was impressed with the Charles Brothers on "Taxi" because they had the nerve to tell Brooks when he was wrong about something.
And so on. If you like trivia like that, welcome to the Archive. If you don't... I dunno, go enjoy the shows and don't think about behind-the-scenes trivia, you Philistine, you.
Another Run
I missed this news item, but it appears that "The Love Boat" is being prepared for DVD release.
You don't need me to tell you about this (in short: Julie was on drugs, Captain Stuebing was bald, Vicki was annoying, Charro said "Coochie-Coochie" a lot, and no one really believes that Doc was popular with women). I will note that I never saw this show as a kid, and when I finally did encounter it, I was both appalled and fascinated by the look of it. It ran from 1977 to 1986, yet the staging, blocking, set design and above all the lighting made it look like it was filmed in the mid-'60s. It was like the crew from "Mr. Ed" moved over to a boat set.
The other notable thing about "The Love Boat" is that it has been the inspiration for countless easy pop-culture references in the last twenty years, particularly Isaac. You can basically assume that any comedy show with a scene on a boat will have an Isaac reference. A more creative version of this was on the show "Weird Science," where the characters are abducted by aliens, and are greeted by an alien holographic projection of Ted Lange:
You don't need me to tell you about this (in short: Julie was on drugs, Captain Stuebing was bald, Vicki was annoying, Charro said "Coochie-Coochie" a lot, and no one really believes that Doc was popular with women). I will note that I never saw this show as a kid, and when I finally did encounter it, I was both appalled and fascinated by the look of it. It ran from 1977 to 1986, yet the staging, blocking, set design and above all the lighting made it look like it was filmed in the mid-'60s. It was like the crew from "Mr. Ed" moved over to a boat set.
The other notable thing about "The Love Boat" is that it has been the inspiration for countless easy pop-culture references in the last twenty years, particularly Isaac. You can basically assume that any comedy show with a scene on a boat will have an Isaac reference. A more creative version of this was on the show "Weird Science," where the characters are abducted by aliens, and are greeted by an alien holographic projection of Ted Lange:
ISAAC (Ted Lange): Now who's up for a little shopping excursion into Puerto Vallarta?
CHETT (Lee Tergesen): Which Puerto Vallarta would that be, my man? The one with the dissection tables and the butt-probe? Thanks, but I've been there and it was no day at the beach!!!
Monday, November 07, 2005
Some Really Bad Lyrics From SNOOPY!!!
Snoopy!!! The Musical, a follow-up to the hugely successful You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, has never achieved anything like the success of its predecessor, and didn't really deserve to. In fact, Snoopy!!!! is primarily notable as a test case for the way a similar approach and similar material can produce two very different results.
Snoopy!!! had the same producer as You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Arthur Whitelaw. It used the same format: a bunch of sketches with dialogue taken directly from the Peanuts comic strip; songs based on situations from the strip; adults playing the children and Snoopy (and in this case, Woodstock too, a non-speaking role); minimal scenery. The composer-lyricist of You're a Good Man, Clark Gesner, didn't participate, but the songwriters hired for the show were quite a bit more talented than Gesner: composer Larry Grossman and lyricist Hal Hackady are best known to Broadway buffs for cult flops like Minnie's Boys and Goodtime Charley, and Grossman was one of the most talented melodists of his generation, though he never managed to associate himself with a genuine hit musical (he did win Emmys for writing songs for "The Muppet Show," though).
But You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a funny, unique and affecting show, and Snoopy!!! is kind of a mess. As far as I can see it got one big thing wrong and two little things wrong. The big problem was that a show focusing on Snoopy is not as emotionally satisfying as a show focusing on Charlie Brown. Snoopy is a more limited character than Charlie Brown, and he doesn't interact much with any of the characters except the even more limited Woodstock. So instead of the situations from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which add up to a realistic "day in the life" of the central character, Snoopy!!! becomes a series of wacky sketches based on strips that weren't Schulz's best work anyway (Woodstock falls in love with a worm, and so forth).
Second, the songwriters made the very basic mistake of basing many of their songs directly on individual Schulz strips. There's a song based on the famous "looking at clouds" strip (the one where Charlie Brown is going to say he saw a ducky and a horsie, but changes his mind); a musicalized version of Snoopy's "dark and stormy night" novel; a song based on the strip where Charlie Brown wants to be called "Poor Sweet Baby"; the London version of the show has a song that takes one panel of Peppermint Patty saying "Hurry up, face!" and repeats that theme for three minutes.
None of these songs add anything to the strips they're based on, and therefore they sound like retreads of stuff we already know about the characters. Clark Gesner wasn't much of a craftsman as a composer or a lyricist, but he found exactly the right way to write for the characters: create songs and musical scenes based on broad themes connected with the strip (failure at baseball, trying to fly a kite) but without any direct quotes from or references to Schulz strips: the songs are where you go to expand upon the strips, not quote them the way they're quoted in all the dialogue.
Grossman and Hackady were good songwriters and they did come up with a few good songs (the musical scene "Edgar Allan Poe" is funny, and songs like "Don't Be Anything Less Than Anything You Can Be" are catchy albeit generic). It does seem, though, like they never really "got" the material the way Gesner did. Their attempts at writing emotional songs for the characters are downright embarrassing. Gesner, drawing on but not re-hashing the strip, found the perfect theme song for "Peanuts": "Happiness," a song about taking pleasure in the little everyday things in life. The same spot in Snoopy!!! is occupied by a maudlin song called "(If) Just One Person (Believes In You)," whose sentimentality and facile, unearned optimism goes against everything the strip stood for in its prime. Not to mention that the lyrics include an unintentionally funny line (at least, I hope it's unintentional), italics mine:
The song goes on to tell you that if just one person believes in you, soon many, many people will believe in you, and then "maybe even you will believe in you too." It's hard to get that message from Schulz's strip, where nobody believes in anybody, and least of all themselves.
So that's Snoopy!!!: more evidence that one-of-a-kind successes are hard to duplicate -- particularly if the creative team doesn't fully understand what went into the original success.
Snoopy!!! had the same producer as You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Arthur Whitelaw. It used the same format: a bunch of sketches with dialogue taken directly from the Peanuts comic strip; songs based on situations from the strip; adults playing the children and Snoopy (and in this case, Woodstock too, a non-speaking role); minimal scenery. The composer-lyricist of You're a Good Man, Clark Gesner, didn't participate, but the songwriters hired for the show were quite a bit more talented than Gesner: composer Larry Grossman and lyricist Hal Hackady are best known to Broadway buffs for cult flops like Minnie's Boys and Goodtime Charley, and Grossman was one of the most talented melodists of his generation, though he never managed to associate himself with a genuine hit musical (he did win Emmys for writing songs for "The Muppet Show," though).
But You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a funny, unique and affecting show, and Snoopy!!! is kind of a mess. As far as I can see it got one big thing wrong and two little things wrong. The big problem was that a show focusing on Snoopy is not as emotionally satisfying as a show focusing on Charlie Brown. Snoopy is a more limited character than Charlie Brown, and he doesn't interact much with any of the characters except the even more limited Woodstock. So instead of the situations from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which add up to a realistic "day in the life" of the central character, Snoopy!!! becomes a series of wacky sketches based on strips that weren't Schulz's best work anyway (Woodstock falls in love with a worm, and so forth).
Second, the songwriters made the very basic mistake of basing many of their songs directly on individual Schulz strips. There's a song based on the famous "looking at clouds" strip (the one where Charlie Brown is going to say he saw a ducky and a horsie, but changes his mind); a musicalized version of Snoopy's "dark and stormy night" novel; a song based on the strip where Charlie Brown wants to be called "Poor Sweet Baby"; the London version of the show has a song that takes one panel of Peppermint Patty saying "Hurry up, face!" and repeats that theme for three minutes.
None of these songs add anything to the strips they're based on, and therefore they sound like retreads of stuff we already know about the characters. Clark Gesner wasn't much of a craftsman as a composer or a lyricist, but he found exactly the right way to write for the characters: create songs and musical scenes based on broad themes connected with the strip (failure at baseball, trying to fly a kite) but without any direct quotes from or references to Schulz strips: the songs are where you go to expand upon the strips, not quote them the way they're quoted in all the dialogue.
Grossman and Hackady were good songwriters and they did come up with a few good songs (the musical scene "Edgar Allan Poe" is funny, and songs like "Don't Be Anything Less Than Anything You Can Be" are catchy albeit generic). It does seem, though, like they never really "got" the material the way Gesner did. Their attempts at writing emotional songs for the characters are downright embarrassing. Gesner, drawing on but not re-hashing the strip, found the perfect theme song for "Peanuts": "Happiness," a song about taking pleasure in the little everyday things in life. The same spot in Snoopy!!! is occupied by a maudlin song called "(If) Just One Person (Believes In You)," whose sentimentality and facile, unearned optimism goes against everything the strip stood for in its prime. Not to mention that the lyrics include an unintentionally funny line (at least, I hope it's unintentional), italics mine:
If just one person believes in you,
Deep enough and strong enough,
Believes in you,
Hard enough and long enough....
The song goes on to tell you that if just one person believes in you, soon many, many people will believe in you, and then "maybe even you will believe in you too." It's hard to get that message from Schulz's strip, where nobody believes in anybody, and least of all themselves.
So that's Snoopy!!!: more evidence that one-of-a-kind successes are hard to duplicate -- particularly if the creative team doesn't fully understand what went into the original success.
This Sucks, Huh-Huh
Those of you considering buying the new Beavis and Butt-Head Collection should be warned that five of the cartoons are apparently cut (the missing footage was intact on previous DVDs released through Time-Life). More detail in the Amazon customer reviews.
The best part of the set is the bonus disc, with the eleven music videos that they were able to clear for DVD release -- the videos, as everyone seems to agree, were the best part -- promos, and a pretty good talking-heads documentary with Mike Judge, director Yvette Kaplan, and others. Oddly enough, this doesn't seem to have the original Beavis and Butt-Head short, "Frog Baseball," just as the new Office Space DVD doesn't have the animated shorts where the Milton character first appeared. More rights issues, maybe?
Beavis and Butt-Head are so much a part of their time and place that no DVD collection can really do them justice, anyway; you had to be there, back when it was unusual to do such a politically-incorrect show (today, of course, anti-PC is so common that being against political correctness is in itself the new political correctness), back when it seemed so crazy and subversive for MTV to do a show mocking its own target audience as brain-dead losers. Now, Beavis and Butt-Head cartoons are still funny, but they seem more like descendants of the cartoon shorts of the '50s and '60s, mini-adventures where the heroes get involved in a wacky situation and make a mess of everything. They're like Yogi and Boo-Boo for the MTV generation.
The best part of the set is the bonus disc, with the eleven music videos that they were able to clear for DVD release -- the videos, as everyone seems to agree, were the best part -- promos, and a pretty good talking-heads documentary with Mike Judge, director Yvette Kaplan, and others. Oddly enough, this doesn't seem to have the original Beavis and Butt-Head short, "Frog Baseball," just as the new Office Space DVD doesn't have the animated shorts where the Milton character first appeared. More rights issues, maybe?
Beavis and Butt-Head are so much a part of their time and place that no DVD collection can really do them justice, anyway; you had to be there, back when it was unusual to do such a politically-incorrect show (today, of course, anti-PC is so common that being against political correctness is in itself the new political correctness), back when it seemed so crazy and subversive for MTV to do a show mocking its own target audience as brain-dead losers. Now, Beavis and Butt-Head cartoons are still funny, but they seem more like descendants of the cartoon shorts of the '50s and '60s, mini-adventures where the heroes get involved in a wacky situation and make a mess of everything. They're like Yogi and Boo-Boo for the MTV generation.
The Chicago School
Also from Platypus Comix is an interesting interview with animator Jon McClenahan, founder of the Chicago animation studio StarToons, and animator and director for some of the best episodes of "Tiny Toons" and "Animaniacs."
Part one is about his work with overseas studios; Part 2 is mostly about how he got started on "Tiny Toons," Part 3 is more about his work for Warner Brothers, and the site promises that soon we'll get a Part 4 dealing with his "Animaniacs" work.
StarToons, one of the few American studios that did animation production on an American TV series (usually the actual animation is produced overseas), eventually included quite a few excellent young animators, including Spike Brandt, Tony Cervone, Neal Sternecky, and for about a month, Genndy Tartakovsky (who quit when he realized that "we weren't trying to emulate John K[ricfalusi]'s style"). McClenahan was probably the best animator at his own studio, and his animation for "Tiny Toons" and "Animaniacs" was some of the best TV animation I've seen. His animation style is aptly described at that webpage as "bouncy"; his characters don't move fluidly (though there were some animators at StarToons who animated that way, like Sternecky) but instead have very pronounced, sort of rhythmically jerky movement with a lot of humor and precise responses to the situation. He also drew characters much chubbier and rounder than most animators did, and had a fondness for drawing very broad facial expressions, like this one where Buster Bunny's eyes come almost semi-detatched from his head:
The interview has some good information on various aspects of his animation career and on some of the people he worked with, like the writers and directors on "Tiny Toons":
There's also some information on the best episode of "Tiny Toons," a season 3 episode called "ThirteenSomething," on which he directed and animated many of the best scenes, including "the 108 foot (1 minute, 12 seconds without a cut) split-screen phone conversation between Buster and Babs, who both really missed each other."
Part one is about his work with overseas studios; Part 2 is mostly about how he got started on "Tiny Toons," Part 3 is more about his work for Warner Brothers, and the site promises that soon we'll get a Part 4 dealing with his "Animaniacs" work.
StarToons, one of the few American studios that did animation production on an American TV series (usually the actual animation is produced overseas), eventually included quite a few excellent young animators, including Spike Brandt, Tony Cervone, Neal Sternecky, and for about a month, Genndy Tartakovsky (who quit when he realized that "we weren't trying to emulate John K[ricfalusi]'s style"). McClenahan was probably the best animator at his own studio, and his animation for "Tiny Toons" and "Animaniacs" was some of the best TV animation I've seen. His animation style is aptly described at that webpage as "bouncy"; his characters don't move fluidly (though there were some animators at StarToons who animated that way, like Sternecky) but instead have very pronounced, sort of rhythmically jerky movement with a lot of humor and precise responses to the situation. He also drew characters much chubbier and rounder than most animators did, and had a fondness for drawing very broad facial expressions, like this one where Buster Bunny's eyes come almost semi-detatched from his head:
The interview has some good information on various aspects of his animation career and on some of the people he worked with, like the writers and directors on "Tiny Toons":
There was a marked & somewhat hostile division between the writers and the staff animation directors (guys like Ken Boyer, Rich Arons, & Rusty Mills). When we first got the contract for 'Henny Youngman Day', they flew me out to LA to discuss it with them, and Tom & Sherri were very nice and handed me the script and then introduced me to Boyer and some of his guys, and we went into a conference room, and the directors all started saying things like, "Well, this is a pile of crap" and "We're going to have to cut this and cut that and" and "we'll just re-write all this stuff when we do the boards." I was surprised because for the most part I thought it was all pretty good, and I didn't see any reason most of the stuff they hated wouldn't be good & funny, but I figured I'm the new kid on the block, so I didn't say much. They all took notes and we broke up.
Then I went on a tour of the facilities, and about five minutes later, I heard a page over the loudspeaker system: "Jon McClenahan, please come to Tom Ruegger's office immediately." So I hustled back to Ruegger's office, and Stoner was in there breathing heavily with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face, and Ruegger was like, "Jon, let me ask you something: what the hell do you think you're doing?" I had no idea what he was talking about, so he pushed the notes toward me and said, "Well, these changes are just unacceptable, but go ahead and explain to me why you don't like them." I said, "Tom, frankly, I'm happy with the script as is. I was just going by the advice of your other directors." Tom & Sherri looked at each other, and then looked at me and said, "Well YOU'RE directing this one, not them." In other words, they wanted their script left intact. Seems like I had been set up by the staff guys - I had no idea there was this hostility going on.
There's also some information on the best episode of "Tiny Toons," a season 3 episode called "ThirteenSomething," on which he directed and animated many of the best scenes, including "the 108 foot (1 minute, 12 seconds without a cut) split-screen phone conversation between Buster and Babs, who both really missed each other."
Sunday, November 06, 2005
The Worst Cartoon Show of All Time?
Platypus Comix says it's "The Mork and Mindy-Laverne and Shirley-Fonz Super Hour". Sounds about right to me.
Though around the same time, Hanna-Barbera was reportedly asked to make a "WKRP In Cincinnati" cartoon series with all the characters as dogs. The plan was abandoned when "WKRP" was moved to a low-rated time slot, but that might have been worse than Laverne and Shirley in the army or even the animated version of Punky Brewster.
Though around the same time, Hanna-Barbera was reportedly asked to make a "WKRP In Cincinnati" cartoon series with all the characters as dogs. The plan was abandoned when "WKRP" was moved to a low-rated time slot, but that might have been worse than Laverne and Shirley in the army or even the animated version of Punky Brewster.
Yes, I Cantor
I've always liked the recordings of Eddie Cantor, and in some ways I think his taste in songs was better than that of his rival, Al Jolson; Jolson's megalomania meant he had to be more important than the song, whereas Cantor introduced or popularized quite a few songs that still hold up on their own as classics ("Makin' Whoopee," "Margie," "If You Knew Susie," "You'd Be Surprised," "My Baby Just Cares For Me").
What I find odd about Cantor's taste in songs is that the majority of his songs are set up in such a way as to be about someone other than him. We now expect a popular singer to sing songs that express what he or she is feeling: I love you, I hate you, I'm glad, I'm sad. That's what Jolson usually did; he picked and sang songs about missing his mammy or being down on his knee, sonny boy. But Cantor's songs are often "story" songs, where he is telling you the story of someone else ("Makin' Whoopee" is about other people's marriages, sung from the perspective of a happy bachelor). And where they're not stories, they're often put into the mouth of someone other than himself: the verse will tell us what someone else -- not him -- said, and the refrain will be quoting that someone else.
To show you what I mean, here are some introductory verses from songs that Cantor either introduced or popularized:
I realize that framing devices and story songs were very common in popular music in Cantor's time, but still, his reticence -- his apparent unwillingness to pick songs where he would express a feeling directly, rather than framing it as the words of somebody else -- seems unusual for a popular singer. It might explain why he doesn't have the same profile Jolson does; Jolson had his problems as a singer, but emotional reticence wasn't one of them.
What I find odd about Cantor's taste in songs is that the majority of his songs are set up in such a way as to be about someone other than him. We now expect a popular singer to sing songs that express what he or she is feeling: I love you, I hate you, I'm glad, I'm sad. That's what Jolson usually did; he picked and sang songs about missing his mammy or being down on his knee, sonny boy. But Cantor's songs are often "story" songs, where he is telling you the story of someone else ("Makin' Whoopee" is about other people's marriages, sung from the perspective of a happy bachelor). And where they're not stories, they're often put into the mouth of someone other than himself: the verse will tell us what someone else -- not him -- said, and the refrain will be quoting that someone else.
To show you what I mean, here are some introductory verses from songs that Cantor either introduced or popularized:
You can talk about your love affairs,
Here's one I must tell to you;
All night long they sit upon the stairs,
He holds her close and starts to coo:
("Margie")
I know a couple of newlyweds,
They've been newlyweds for years,
Just a pair of spooners,
Sunny honeymooners.
This happy couple lives next to me
And it's music to my ears
When after ev'ry kiss
I hear him saying this:
("Okay, Toots")
I was strolling out one evening
By the silvery moon,
I could hear somebody singing
A familiar tune.
So I stopped a while to listen,
Not a word I wanted to miss.
It was just somebody serenading
Something like this:
("Mandy")
What's the greatest problem now throughout the land?
What's the only problem needs a helping hand?
It isn't Prohibition or farm relief, I find;
It's something more important now on ev'rybody's mind.
Just walk into any home today,
It's ten to one you'll hear each husband say:
("My Wife is on a Diet")
I realize that framing devices and story songs were very common in popular music in Cantor's time, but still, his reticence -- his apparent unwillingness to pick songs where he would express a feeling directly, rather than framing it as the words of somebody else -- seems unusual for a popular singer. It might explain why he doesn't have the same profile Jolson does; Jolson had his problems as a singer, but emotional reticence wasn't one of them.
A Show That I Didn't Think Actually Existed
Apparently "Willo The Wisp" was a real show. I wasn't completely sure.
When I was a kid, TV Ontario, Ontario's public TV network (and a very good one, at that, though they're not as good now as they used to be) used to show a lot of cartoons imported from overseas, especially England. One of them was "Willo The Wisp," which is well-described at the review above; the star voice actor, Kenneth Williams, was best known from the "Carry On" movies. But the thing most people remember about it was Evil Edna, the talking television set.
The only episode I remember very strongly is the one where the residents of Doyley Wood discover that Evil Edna has turned Mavis, the overweight fairy, into a tree. (Subliminal message to kids: TV will turn you sedentary.) Edna refuses to turn her back, and no one can figure out what to do, until Arthur, the caterpillar, meets a travelling salesman named Mr. Wand ("Now there's a name to conjure with!"). Arthur isn't interested in any of Mr. Wand's products except an "electronic miracle": a video-game set that you hook up to a television set to play Pong.
Arthur buys the "electronic miracle" and hooks it up to Edna while she sleeps. When she wakes up, Arthur switches on the video set and Edna's face starts to display the two lines hitting a dot back and forth. "It's just a bit of magic," says Arthur. "I've turned you into a game of tennis." Edna agrees to turn Mavis back to normal in return for being unhooked from the video game. The end.
Now, where's "Dr. Snuggles?"
When I was a kid, TV Ontario, Ontario's public TV network (and a very good one, at that, though they're not as good now as they used to be) used to show a lot of cartoons imported from overseas, especially England. One of them was "Willo The Wisp," which is well-described at the review above; the star voice actor, Kenneth Williams, was best known from the "Carry On" movies. But the thing most people remember about it was Evil Edna, the talking television set.
The only episode I remember very strongly is the one where the residents of Doyley Wood discover that Evil Edna has turned Mavis, the overweight fairy, into a tree. (Subliminal message to kids: TV will turn you sedentary.) Edna refuses to turn her back, and no one can figure out what to do, until Arthur, the caterpillar, meets a travelling salesman named Mr. Wand ("Now there's a name to conjure with!"). Arthur isn't interested in any of Mr. Wand's products except an "electronic miracle": a video-game set that you hook up to a television set to play Pong.
Arthur buys the "electronic miracle" and hooks it up to Edna while she sleeps. When she wakes up, Arthur switches on the video set and Edna's face starts to display the two lines hitting a dot back and forth. "It's just a bit of magic," says Arthur. "I've turned you into a game of tennis." Edna agrees to turn Mavis back to normal in return for being unhooked from the video game. The end.
Now, where's "Dr. Snuggles?"
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Wholesome Fetishists
I feel a little embarrassed bringing this up, but one of the least-known but longest-running sites devoted to old movies -- it's been around since the late '90s, I think -- is "!WOm!WAm! WOMEN Doing Things To Men", an anonymously-created site of stills and video captures from movies and TV shows of the '50s and '60s. The theme.... well, I'll let the webmaster describe it:
Basically the site examines, in terrifying detail, the fetishistic and outright weird content that became a standard part of popular culture (not only American, but British and Italian) in the '50s and, especially, the '60s.
As the '50s wore on, popular culture became more sexualized, but the taboos against overt portrayals of sex were still fairly strong, and outright nudity was not usually acceptable. So a strange hybrid started to take over pop culture, where you'd get absurdly sexualized material within what was supposed to be a "wholesome" piece of family entertainment. Think of The Dean Martin Show, or Ann Margret in Bye Bye Birdie playing a wholesome teenager as if she were a nymphomaniac, or Joey Heatherton on Bob Hope specials more or less stripping for the troops. Think of "Batman," a family show where every episode featured a good-looking woman in a cartoonily sexy costume; think of The Pleasure Seekers, a remake of Three Coins in the Fountain where the three girls abroad spend most of the movie in their underwear. It was a strange, strange time.
As I said, I'm a little embarrassed about linking to that site, because it does seem to be basically a fetish site, and some of the captions... well... let's say their interpretation of the movies can be kind of direct. Still, it's got pictures from just about everything, including a lot of movies and TV episodes that will probably never be available on DVD.
The webmaster writes at one point that Frank Tashlin is "the most represented director in this survey." I can believe it; as I wrote in my last post, Tashlin was incapable of getting through a movie without putting his heroine into a wholesomely fetishistic costume. The most famous is still Shirley MacLaine's Bat Lady costume in Artists and Models, see below, but the ultimate Tashlin scene (amazingly not represented on that site), is the number "A Day in the Country" (or "A Couple of Travelling Guys") in Hollywood or Bust.
In the "Day in the Country" number, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis drive through the countryside singing and waving to people they pass; the scene is (by Tashlin's own admission) a takeoff on the "Beyond the Blue Horizon" number in Lubitsch's Monte Carlo, except that this time, every single person Dean and Jerry wave to is a sexy chorus girl in a skimpy "farmer's daughter" outfit. I wish I could post screen captures of that scene, because it's almost impossible to describe what a strange scene it is: a combination of Playboy leering with family-fun wholesomeness. So are the credits of Hollywood Or Bust, where every credit is accompanied by a shot of Anita Ekberg in a different cheesekake pose. Tashlin had already done the same thing in the credits of Artists and Models, and he would continue this sort of thing right up through putting Doris Day in a mermaid outfit in The Glass Bottom Boat. He was a strange fellow.
In his best movies, and Hollywood or Bust is one of the best, Tashlin actually makes this combination work without coming off as sleazy or sexist, unlike most of the wholesomely fetishistic entertainment of the era. But that's why Tashlin was a genius and the producers of "The Dean Martin Show" were not.
Update: Here are some lobby cards from Hollywood or Bust that give at least a vague idea of Tashlin's weirdness; a still from the "Day in the Country" number is the second card on the right, and other scenes represented include Jerry pushing Anita Ekberg into a pool, which may have inspired her famous dunking in that exemplar of PG-rated fetishism, La Dolce Vita.
Update # 2: Here's the complete "A Day in the Country" number:
And another wholesomely fetishistic Tashlin scene, from Artists and Models with Dorothy Malone and Shirley MacLaine:
This site is a nonprofit Research & Review Reference studying male sexual fetishes in popular media during the 1950s/60s that feature scenes depicting 2 broad types of phenomena:
WOm: Women Overwhelming men
WAm: Women Attacking men
Basically the site examines, in terrifying detail, the fetishistic and outright weird content that became a standard part of popular culture (not only American, but British and Italian) in the '50s and, especially, the '60s.
As the '50s wore on, popular culture became more sexualized, but the taboos against overt portrayals of sex were still fairly strong, and outright nudity was not usually acceptable. So a strange hybrid started to take over pop culture, where you'd get absurdly sexualized material within what was supposed to be a "wholesome" piece of family entertainment. Think of The Dean Martin Show, or Ann Margret in Bye Bye Birdie playing a wholesome teenager as if she were a nymphomaniac, or Joey Heatherton on Bob Hope specials more or less stripping for the troops. Think of "Batman," a family show where every episode featured a good-looking woman in a cartoonily sexy costume; think of The Pleasure Seekers, a remake of Three Coins in the Fountain where the three girls abroad spend most of the movie in their underwear. It was a strange, strange time.
As I said, I'm a little embarrassed about linking to that site, because it does seem to be basically a fetish site, and some of the captions... well... let's say their interpretation of the movies can be kind of direct. Still, it's got pictures from just about everything, including a lot of movies and TV episodes that will probably never be available on DVD.
The webmaster writes at one point that Frank Tashlin is "the most represented director in this survey." I can believe it; as I wrote in my last post, Tashlin was incapable of getting through a movie without putting his heroine into a wholesomely fetishistic costume. The most famous is still Shirley MacLaine's Bat Lady costume in Artists and Models, see below, but the ultimate Tashlin scene (amazingly not represented on that site), is the number "A Day in the Country" (or "A Couple of Travelling Guys") in Hollywood or Bust.
In the "Day in the Country" number, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis drive through the countryside singing and waving to people they pass; the scene is (by Tashlin's own admission) a takeoff on the "Beyond the Blue Horizon" number in Lubitsch's Monte Carlo, except that this time, every single person Dean and Jerry wave to is a sexy chorus girl in a skimpy "farmer's daughter" outfit. I wish I could post screen captures of that scene, because it's almost impossible to describe what a strange scene it is: a combination of Playboy leering with family-fun wholesomeness. So are the credits of Hollywood Or Bust, where every credit is accompanied by a shot of Anita Ekberg in a different cheesekake pose. Tashlin had already done the same thing in the credits of Artists and Models, and he would continue this sort of thing right up through putting Doris Day in a mermaid outfit in The Glass Bottom Boat. He was a strange fellow.
In his best movies, and Hollywood or Bust is one of the best, Tashlin actually makes this combination work without coming off as sleazy or sexist, unlike most of the wholesomely fetishistic entertainment of the era. But that's why Tashlin was a genius and the producers of "The Dean Martin Show" were not.
Update: Here are some lobby cards from Hollywood or Bust that give at least a vague idea of Tashlin's weirdness; a still from the "Day in the Country" number is the second card on the right, and other scenes represented include Jerry pushing Anita Ekberg into a pool, which may have inspired her famous dunking in that exemplar of PG-rated fetishism, La Dolce Vita.
Update # 2: Here's the complete "A Day in the Country" number:
And another wholesomely fetishistic Tashlin scene, from Artists and Models with Dorothy Malone and Shirley MacLaine:
There's No Bat Lady, There's No Fat Lady
Via Mark Evanier, I only just found out that Jerry Lewis has published a book about his partnership with Dean Martin. (I've really got to stop following political crap and start keeping up to speed on the stuff that matters.)
Martin and Lewis, as a team, are still fascinating, perhaps more fascinating than funny. The continued fascination with them is pretty clear from books and movies like "Where the Truth Lies," or the many parodies of their 1976 Sinatra-hosted reunion. But they never left much of a comedy legacy, as a team, because the quality that made them famous -- unpredictability -- couldn't be carried over into their movies.
The critic Andrew Sarris wrote that while Martin and Lewis weren't at their best in any of their movies, when they were at their best -- in some of their live stage appearances -- they had "a marvelous tension about them." That "tension," I think, derived from the thing that made their partnership unique, and the thing that ultimately drove them apart: they were a rare case of two complete talents working as a comedy team. (You could make a case for Crosby and Hope, but they weren't really a team outside of the relatively few "Road" movies; they were occasional co-stars, not a comedy team.) Comedy teams, especially two-man comedy teams, are usually made up of complementary talents: two guys who are not necessarily star material on their own, but who gain star quality by the way they combine, the way each supplies qualities the other doesn't have.
Martin and Lewis weren't like that: they clearly had what it took to be stars on their own, as in fact they did become stars on their own. Each one had the kind of diverse talents, not to mention the desire to be the center of attention, that one associates with solo stars, yet they were working as a team. And a Martin and Lewis routine wasn't really teamwork, but competition: instead of working in synch they seemed to be trying to upstage each other, jockeying for the audience's attention. Their trademark routine had Martin trying to do a solo song and Lewis interrupting him with what amounts to a solo comedy act: they're not working together but working against each other. The fascination of Martin and Lewis, really, was wondering how these two massive talents and massive egos could possibly share the stage.
Most of their films were either remakes of earlier comedy films (The Ghost Breakers remade as Scared Stiff; Nothing Sacred remade as Living It Up with Jerry in the Carole Lombard role) or films that might just as well have been remakes. They all have their moments, as any movie would have with two gifted entertainers in their prime, but the only Martin/Lewis movies I'm a big fan of are their two with Frank Tashlin, Artists and Models and Hollywood Or Bust. Yet Martin and Lewis were already on the outs when they made these films, and they're not really at their best; they're great Tashlin films, not great Martin/Lewis films.
Most people who've seen Artists and Models remember a couple of Martin and Lewis routines -- mainly the "bat lady, fat lady" scene that is almost impossible to transcribe. But mostly they remember the comic book publisher's rant about the necessity of blood in comic books, or George "Foghorn" Winslow as the child corrupted by comic books, or Shirley MacLaine practically beating up Jerry as she reprises Dean's "Innamorata" song, or Tashlin's satire of American popular culture, or Tashlin's longstanding obsession with putting his female characters into fetishistic costumes. The final scene, with Martin, Lewis, MacLaine and Dorothy Malone, makes it pretty clear where Tashlin's interests lie, and it ain't with Martin and Lewis:
And so even though Martin and Lewis were huge talents, their most interesting movies, as a team, are only tangentially about them. It's hard to imagine what kind of movie could have made really good use of their qualities as a team. But it might have helped them to do a movie like Crosby and Hope's "Road" pictures where they were actually competing with each other -- incorporate some of their trademark competitiveness into the movie, instead of always having Jerry be Dean's loyal friend.
Martin and Lewis, as a team, are still fascinating, perhaps more fascinating than funny. The continued fascination with them is pretty clear from books and movies like "Where the Truth Lies," or the many parodies of their 1976 Sinatra-hosted reunion. But they never left much of a comedy legacy, as a team, because the quality that made them famous -- unpredictability -- couldn't be carried over into their movies.
The critic Andrew Sarris wrote that while Martin and Lewis weren't at their best in any of their movies, when they were at their best -- in some of their live stage appearances -- they had "a marvelous tension about them." That "tension," I think, derived from the thing that made their partnership unique, and the thing that ultimately drove them apart: they were a rare case of two complete talents working as a comedy team. (You could make a case for Crosby and Hope, but they weren't really a team outside of the relatively few "Road" movies; they were occasional co-stars, not a comedy team.) Comedy teams, especially two-man comedy teams, are usually made up of complementary talents: two guys who are not necessarily star material on their own, but who gain star quality by the way they combine, the way each supplies qualities the other doesn't have.
Martin and Lewis weren't like that: they clearly had what it took to be stars on their own, as in fact they did become stars on their own. Each one had the kind of diverse talents, not to mention the desire to be the center of attention, that one associates with solo stars, yet they were working as a team. And a Martin and Lewis routine wasn't really teamwork, but competition: instead of working in synch they seemed to be trying to upstage each other, jockeying for the audience's attention. Their trademark routine had Martin trying to do a solo song and Lewis interrupting him with what amounts to a solo comedy act: they're not working together but working against each other. The fascination of Martin and Lewis, really, was wondering how these two massive talents and massive egos could possibly share the stage.
Most of their films were either remakes of earlier comedy films (The Ghost Breakers remade as Scared Stiff; Nothing Sacred remade as Living It Up with Jerry in the Carole Lombard role) or films that might just as well have been remakes. They all have their moments, as any movie would have with two gifted entertainers in their prime, but the only Martin/Lewis movies I'm a big fan of are their two with Frank Tashlin, Artists and Models and Hollywood Or Bust. Yet Martin and Lewis were already on the outs when they made these films, and they're not really at their best; they're great Tashlin films, not great Martin/Lewis films.
Most people who've seen Artists and Models remember a couple of Martin and Lewis routines -- mainly the "bat lady, fat lady" scene that is almost impossible to transcribe. But mostly they remember the comic book publisher's rant about the necessity of blood in comic books, or George "Foghorn" Winslow as the child corrupted by comic books, or Shirley MacLaine practically beating up Jerry as she reprises Dean's "Innamorata" song, or Tashlin's satire of American popular culture, or Tashlin's longstanding obsession with putting his female characters into fetishistic costumes. The final scene, with Martin, Lewis, MacLaine and Dorothy Malone, makes it pretty clear where Tashlin's interests lie, and it ain't with Martin and Lewis:
And so even though Martin and Lewis were huge talents, their most interesting movies, as a team, are only tangentially about them. It's hard to imagine what kind of movie could have made really good use of their qualities as a team. But it might have helped them to do a movie like Crosby and Hope's "Road" pictures where they were actually competing with each other -- incorporate some of their trademark competitiveness into the movie, instead of always having Jerry be Dean's loyal friend.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Favorite Comedy Lines
Since I'm always talking about my theory that the best comedy lines are often the ones that don't look like jokes on the page, I thought I'd demonstrate how that theory works out in practice, by nominating ten of the lines of movie dialogue that I consider among the funniest ever. In another mood, of course, I could pick ten others, but here are ten that always, always, always make me laugh, even though they don't look like much, or indeed like jokes, out of context.
All these lines share the basic trait of a great comedy line: mention them to anyone who's seen the movie, and they will laugh; mention them out of context, and they make little sense. With that in mind, I'll take them out of context anyway, and encourage others to mention their own favorite not-funny-out-of-context lines:
1. "I was wondering, could you possibly see an older woman in the part?" -- Constance Collier, Stage Door
2. "Everyone will say anarchists can't spell." -- uncredited anarchist, Jules and Jim
3. "Duck, Magnum, duck!" -- Julie Brown, Earth Girls Are Easy
4. "You'd better go, Gilda, to Tarzan." -- Gary Cooper, Design For Living.
5. "Wait! This is Boomerang. This is Boomerang." -- Zero Mostel, The Producers (the script has the repetition written in; "This is Boomerang wouldn't be funny if he said it only once)
6. "Ting-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling." -- John Barrymore, Twentieth Century (Runner-up: "Anathema! Child of Satan!")
7. "You tell Daddy I'm off to the U.S.S.R. That's short for Russia." -- Pamela Tiffin, One, Two, Three
8. "Souvenirs, novelties, party tricks." -- Ian McNeice, Top Secret!
9. "Aw, I'm not gonna hurt him." -- John Wayne, Rio Bravo
10. "Remember what Napoleon said before he went to Elba: 'So long.'" -- Maurice Chevalier, The Smiling Lieutenant
All these lines share the basic trait of a great comedy line: mention them to anyone who's seen the movie, and they will laugh; mention them out of context, and they make little sense. With that in mind, I'll take them out of context anyway, and encourage others to mention their own favorite not-funny-out-of-context lines:
1. "I was wondering, could you possibly see an older woman in the part?" -- Constance Collier, Stage Door
2. "Everyone will say anarchists can't spell." -- uncredited anarchist, Jules and Jim
3. "Duck, Magnum, duck!" -- Julie Brown, Earth Girls Are Easy
4. "You'd better go, Gilda, to Tarzan." -- Gary Cooper, Design For Living.
5. "Wait! This is Boomerang. This is Boomerang." -- Zero Mostel, The Producers (the script has the repetition written in; "This is Boomerang wouldn't be funny if he said it only once)
6. "Ting-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling." -- John Barrymore, Twentieth Century (Runner-up: "Anathema! Child of Satan!")
7. "You tell Daddy I'm off to the U.S.S.R. That's short for Russia." -- Pamela Tiffin, One, Two, Three
8. "Souvenirs, novelties, party tricks." -- Ian McNeice, Top Secret!
9. "Aw, I'm not gonna hurt him." -- John Wayne, Rio Bravo
10. "Remember what Napoleon said before he went to Elba: 'So long.'" -- Maurice Chevalier, The Smiling Lieutenant
Thursday, November 03, 2005
More Lyrics I Like
I quote too many Yip Harburg lyrics, but the song "Napoleon," from Jamaica (music by Harold Arlen) has been going through my head lately. It's not very well-known, perhaps because many of the products it refers to don't exist any more (I don't recognize a lot of them), but it's one of the great comic meditations on the transience of fame and of life itself:
Napoleon's a pastry,
Bismarck is a herring,
Alexander's a creme de cocao mixed with rum,
And Herbie Hoover is a vacuum.
Columbus is a circle and a day off,
Pershing is a square -- what a pay-off!
Julius Caesar is just a salad on a shelf,
So, little brother, get wise to yourself.
Life's a bowl and it's
Full of cherry pits,
Play it big and it throws you for a loop.
That's the way with fate,
Comes today we're great,
Comes tomorrow we're tomato soup.
Napoleon's a pastry,
Get this under your brow:
What once useta be a roosta'
Is just a dusta' now.
Dubarry is a dipstick,
Pompadour's a hairdo,
Good Queen Mary just floats along from pier to pier,
Venus De Milo is a pink brassiere.
Sir Gladstone is a bag -- ain't it shocking?
And the mighty Kaiser, just a stocking.
The Czar of Russia is just a jar of caviar,
And Cleopatra is a black cigar.
Yes, my honey lamb,
Swift is just a ham,
Lincoln's a tunnel, Coolidge is a dam.
Yes, my noble lads,
Comes today we're fads,
Comes tomorrow we're subway ads.
Homer is just a swat,
Get this under your brow:
All these bigwig controversials
Are just commercials now.
Better get your jug of wine and loaf of love
Before that final bow.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
My Tashlin Prayers Are Semi-Answered
The Digital Bits reports that Fox is finally planning to give us DVD releases of the two most famous live-action movies of Frank Tashlin, The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? But they're doing it in a roundabout way:
The Wayward Bus is a black-and-white melodrama from 1957 featuring Mansfield and Joan Collins, and while the cast does make it sound pleasantly crazy, Tashlin's masterpieces deserve better than to be lumped in with one thing that is so clearly not like the others.
Oh, well, at least they're coming. These are two of the best movies of the '50s, where writer-director Tashlin gives the raspberry to everything and everything about American culture, from success-worship to advertising to breast fixations (Tashlin, a leg man, was quoted as saying that finding Jayne Mansfield's breasts attractive made no more sense than finding oversized feet attractive). If I had to choose, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is the desert-island title here, because of the presence of the great Tony Randall instead of the so-so Tom Ewell of The Girl Can't Help It.
Unfortunately this means limbo for Tashlin's two other films for Fox -- including The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, which is very nearly as good as the two Jayne Mansfield pictures (though it uses another of Fox's Marilyn Monroe substitutes, Sheree North). Hopefully Paramount will get around to releasing more Jerry Lewis films, upon which we can finally get Tashlin's insane masterpieces like Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust. Meanwhile, look forward to (despite the title) "The Jayne Mansfield Collection," and take a look at the Tashlin featurette on the third disc of the new Looney Tunes Golden Collection.
Other "Cinema Classics Collection" titles coming in early 2006 from Fox include... The Jayne Mansfield Collection (a box set including The Wayward Bus, The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?)
The Wayward Bus is a black-and-white melodrama from 1957 featuring Mansfield and Joan Collins, and while the cast does make it sound pleasantly crazy, Tashlin's masterpieces deserve better than to be lumped in with one thing that is so clearly not like the others.
Oh, well, at least they're coming. These are two of the best movies of the '50s, where writer-director Tashlin gives the raspberry to everything and everything about American culture, from success-worship to advertising to breast fixations (Tashlin, a leg man, was quoted as saying that finding Jayne Mansfield's breasts attractive made no more sense than finding oversized feet attractive). If I had to choose, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is the desert-island title here, because of the presence of the great Tony Randall instead of the so-so Tom Ewell of The Girl Can't Help It.
Unfortunately this means limbo for Tashlin's two other films for Fox -- including The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, which is very nearly as good as the two Jayne Mansfield pictures (though it uses another of Fox's Marilyn Monroe substitutes, Sheree North). Hopefully Paramount will get around to releasing more Jerry Lewis films, upon which we can finally get Tashlin's insane masterpieces like Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust. Meanwhile, look forward to (despite the title) "The Jayne Mansfield Collection," and take a look at the Tashlin featurette on the third disc of the new Looney Tunes Golden Collection.
Boingy, Boingy, Boingy....
More on the impending DVD release of "Animaniacs" and "Pinky and the Brain," from senior producer Tom Ruegger:
Here are some quotes from some of the "Animaniacs" episodes that we can expect to see in the first volume:
This is the info I can pass on to you from an unimpeachable Warner Bros. source:
Planned release of "Animaniacs Volume 1" and "Pinky and the Brain Volume 1" is currently scheduled for 7/25/06. Volume 2 of each title is currently scheduled for release on 12/6/06.
That's the entirety of what I can tell you at this point.
There's joy in the water tower tonight.
Here are some quotes from some of the "Animaniacs" episodes that we can expect to see in the first volume:
DOT: Oh, oh, my heart aches with the sorrow of a thousand Scouts! No merit badge. I mourn my loss.
EINSTEIN: Now to measure the speed of light. (Checks his stopwatch) Boy, that's quick. ("Cookies for Einstein")
MICHELANGELO: I'm the great Michelangelo and this is the Sistine Chapel.
YAKKO: Oh, yeah? If you're so great, what did you do with the other fifteen chapels?
("Hooked on a Ceiling")
SLAPPY: No one ever gets hurt in cartoons....
SKIPPY: But "Bumbie" wasn't a cartoon, it was a movie! Bumbie's mother is -- Waaaaaaahhhhh!
SLAPPY: Is it me? That mama deer was just an actress, Vina Walleen! We were pals. She used to date George Jetson. Look -- have I ever lied to you before?
SKIPPY: You said Keno was legal in Burbank. You said Magilla Gorilla was a woman. You said--
SLAPPY: Can it. ("Bumbie's Mom")
BRAIN: Now, Pinky, if by any chance you are captured during this mission, remember: you are Gunther Heindriksen from Appenzell. You moved to Grindelwald to drive the cog train to Murren. Can you repeat that?
PINKY: No, Brain, don't think I can.
("Where Rodents Dare")
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