Ye Olde Televisionne Scriptte

I've decided to order some older television scripts, the better to analyze them to death (Script City still beats Ebay when it comes to finding older scripts), but in the meantime, I thought I'd point to some examples of scripts -- as opposed to transcripts -- for some pre-1990 shows, available at Twiztv.com:

- The Andy Griffith Show: "The Sermon For Today" - a season 4 script written by John Whedon (father of Tom Whedon, grandfather of Joss Whedon)

- The Mary Tyler Moore Show: "Chuckles Bites the Dust" - written by David Lloyd

- The A-Team, pilot (PDF Format) - written by Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo; one of those Cannell scripts that in some ways reads better than it plays.

U.N.C.L.E. Meets L.A.W.Y.E.R.S.

TV Shows on DVD now reports that the planned DVD release of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." has been put on hold because of unexpected copyright issues:

Anchor Bay licensed the series from someone believed to own the rights, but Warner Bros also claims to own the rights to the show. Lawyers at Warner Bros have been in contact with Anchor Bay, and the release of the DVDs has been put on hold until the issue of who owns the rights can be ascertained. How long will that take? No one knows.

According to the Internet Movie Database, "U.N.C.L.E." was a co-production of MGM Television and producer Norman Felton's company, Arena Productions. Warner Brothers bought the MGM catalogue, so that would explain why they think they own the rights; the Sam Rolfe interview I linked to indicates that the ownership was split half-and-half between whoever ownes the MGM catalogue (Ted Turner at that time) and Arena Productions.

Herman, My Hero, Herman, My Hero

This Daily Telegraph article interviews composer/lyricist Jerry Herman about Mack and Mabel, one of the most-revived flop musicals ever. The show failed in 1974, yet there was so much affection for the score -- Herman's own favourite -- that there has been effort after effort to fix the book, the stagecraft, the unpleasant characters and ending, anything to get the thing back on stage.

I've never been fully convinced that Mack and Mabel deserves all that attention; a lot of the score is great, but there are some pretty dismal songs too (like "When Mabel Comes in the Room," an endless "Hello, Dolly!"-style anthem where absolutely nothing happens for five minutes), and as for fixing the problems with the show as a whole, I tend to agree with Ken Mandelbaum that "If it didn't work in 1974 with Robert Preston, Bernadette Peters and [director] Gower Champion, it never will work." In any case, I tend to think, myself, that Herman has always been at his best not in the brash glitzy songs that he's associated with, but more delicate, operetta-style songwriting that he did in parts Milk and Honey (1961) and Dear World (1969). But the article is a good one, and a good introduction to a songwriter who deserves to be remembered for more than the occasional anthem for cartoonish ladies on staircases.

(Hat tip: 42nd Street Moon.)

Yip Harburg Lyrics: "I Got a Song"

Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg wrote several new songs for the film version of Cabin in the Sky (supplementing the three Vernon Duke/John LaTouche songs that were retained from the Broadway score), including the hit "Happiness is Just a Thing Called Joe." They also wrote at least two songs that were cut, only to be recycled elsewhere. One was "Ain't it the Truth," which would have been sung by Louis Armstrong and reprised by Lena Horne. The other, "I Got a Song," doesn't appear to have made it to the recording stage, and I don't know who would have sung it in the movie; but Harburg and Arlen dusted it off the following year and put it into their Broadway show Bloomer Girl. The song combines Arlen's usual blues-iness with a folkish structure (a lot of repetition of words and musical phrases), and it includes one of my favourite Harburg lines: "Got to sing 'em while you're livin' 'cause you're dead so long."

SINGER
I got a basketful of songs!
Railroad, woman, sinner, bullfrog, steamboat, underground songs!
I got 'em, I got 'em!
Railroad song, woman song....

MAN
You got a railroad song?

SINGER
I got a railroad song!

ALL
He's got a railroad song!

SINGER
Railroad needs a hammer,
Hammer gotta be.
Railroad gets a hammer,
And back of that hammer is little ol' me.
Railroad needs the tracks,
Little me lays the tracks.
Now then come the facts:
The big ol' train goes a-whistlin' by,
It'll puff in your face and spit in your eye.
Choo-choo! Goodbye!
That is a railroad song.

ALL
That is a railroad song.

SINGER
I got a song!

MAN
What kind of song?

SINGER
I got a woman song!

ALL
He's got a woman song!

SINGER
Woman needs the lovin',
Lovin' gotta be.
Woman gets the lovin',
And back of that lovin' is little ol' me.
Woman needs the shoes,
Little me gets the shoes.
Now then comes the news:
The shoes you bought ain't under the bed,
Some big boy's shoes is there instead.
Oh-oh! You dead!
That is a woman song.

ALL
That is a woman song.

SINGER
I got 'em, I got 'em!

MAN
I bet you ain't got no sinner song.

SINGER
I got a sinner song!

ALL
He's got a sinner song!

SINGER
Sinner craves a halo,
Halo gotta be.
Sinner gets a halo,
And under that halo is little ol' me.
Devil starts to call,
Little me hears the call.
Now then comes the fall:
Right over my head that halo gets loose,
Falls under my chin and turns to a noose.
Oh-oh! Cooked goose!
That is a sinner song.

ALL
That is a sinner song.

SINGER, then ALL
I got a railroad and a woman and a sinner song,
Got to sing it while you're livin' 'cause you're dead so long.
Makes it easy on the goin' and the gettin' round
When you're travellin' on the upper or the underground.
Railroad, woman, sinner, bullfrog gotta be,
And back of them all is little ol' me.

SINGER
I got a song!

MAN
What kind of song?

SINGER
I got a bullfrog song!

ALL
He's got a bullfrog song!

SINGER
Bullfrog needs a big swamp,
Big swamp gotta be.
Bullfrog gets a big swamp,
And back of that swamp lives little ol' me.
Bullfrog starts to croak,
I yells: "Don't you croak!"
Now then comes the joke:
"Oh, the brown boy sing, and the bullfrog croak,
I's got a green back, you is broke!"
Ha-ha! Big joke!
That is a bullfrog song.

ALL
That is a bullfrog song.

MAN
I'll bet you ain't got no freedom song.

SINGER
I got a freedom song!

ALL
He's got a freedom song!

SINGER
Freedom needs a sweet song,
Sweet song gotta be.
Freedom gets a sweet song,
And back of that song is little ol' me.
Freedom needs a noise,
Little me starts the noise.
Now then come the joys:
The dawn comes up like a cinnamon bun,
You sink your teeth in the rising sun.
Amen! Some fun!
That is a freedom song!

ALL
That is a freedom song!

SINGER, then ALL
I got a railroad and a woman and a freedom song,
Got to sing it while you're livin' 'cause you're dead so long.
Makes it easy on the goin' and the gettin' round
When you're travellin' on the upper or the underground.
Railroad, woman, sinner, freedom gotta be,
And back of them all is little ol' me.

SINGER
I got 'em, amen!

Finally....

Double Idemnity two-disc special edition DVD, tentatively scheduled for August 29.

I was hoping somebody would get around to this before the inevitable retirement of DVD and its equally inevitable replacement by the super-terrific-happy-DVD format.

Good for a chuckle, as usual, is the original New York Times review by Bosley Crowther, the epitome of the critic who had no idea what was going on in American movie-making at any point in time. In this case, Crowther didn't seem to understand the emergence of the film noir style, or, to the extent that he did understand it, he didn't like it:

But the very toughness of the picture is also weakness of its core, and the academic nature of its plotting limits its general appeal. The principal characters--an insurance salesman and a wicked woman, which Mr. MacMurray and Miss Stanwyck play--lack the attractiveness to render their fate of emotional consequences. And the fact that the story is told in flashback disposes its uncertainty. Miss Stanwyck gives a good surface performance of destructively lurid female, but Mr. MacMurray is a bit too ingenuous as the gent who falls precipitately under her spell. And the ease of his fall is also questionable. One look at the lady's ankles and he's cooked.

So he doesn't like toughness, unattractive main characters, flashbacks, lurid females and ingenuous guys who are suckers for them -- basically, he describes the entire noir style accurately and then sniffs at it. As so often in the '40s and '50s, it took the French critics to notice, and praise, what American moviemakers were doing.

Some Old Posts For a New Hiatus

While I'm in non-blogging mode for the next week or so, here are some previous posts of mine that I like and want to re-direct your attention to. Comments and destructive criticism still welcome:

1. My series of posts on "Lost Starlets of the '60s" -- movie actresses who should have been big stars, but -- due to the almost complete lack of good women's roles in America in the '60s and early '70s -- never got to do anything more than serve as decoration. This post deals with Pamela Tiffin, Angie Dickinson, Ann-Margret and Paula Prentiss; there are posts about Marianna Hill and Stella Stevens, and this post is about the good work some of these actresses did with director Howard Hawks. This is probably near the top of subjects I'd like to turn into a book someday, but probably won't.

2. "The Synthetic Musical Comedy" --
On why the musical version of The Producers really wasn't all that.

3. "Anatomy of a Sitcom Revision" --
I was embarrassed to post this because it was my 99,000th post in the space of a week about '60s sitcoms and the first season of "Bewitched" in particular, but I still like the post: It compares an unused first draft of a first-season script (by a freelancer) to the final version that aired (rewritten by producers Jerry Davis and Danny Arnold), to show, point by point, how a bad sitcom story can be re-worked into an effective one. It's sort of my amateur-night version of a how-to screenwriting post.

4. "Putting the Record Straight" --
About the autobiography and career of John Culshaw, one of the very few classical record producers who can be considered an auteur. (Some people still feel that the Solti recording of Wagner's Ring is really Culshaw's recording, with Solti conducting to Culshaw's specifications -- and if you watch the documentary about the making of the recording, there may be something to that.)

5. "Frank Doyle, 'Archie''s Comic" --
A post about comic-book writer Frank Doyle, who wrote hundreds of surprisingly sophisticated and funny stories for "Archie" comics.

6. "Obscure Plays: Darkness At Noon" --
I need to get back to writing some posts about obscure older plays (I'm still trying to put together that Elmer Rice's Dream Girl post I've been promising to write for years). Here's an older post about playwright Sidney Kingsley's well-crafted but flawed attempt to turn Arthur Koestler's novel into a Broadway stage play.

7. "Bugs Bunny vs. America" --
About the strange and wonderful Bugs Bunny cartoons of director Robert McKimson, particularly the truly demented "Rebel Rabbit."

8. "Harold Arlen On Broadway, Part 1" and "Harold Arlen On Broadway, Part 2" --
A two-part post on the uneven but often very successful Broadway musical work of one of the great popular song composers, Harold Arlen.

9. "Dickens and the Dead" --
My latent English-major side takes over as I try to figure out why Charles Dickens' characters keep dying for no particular reason.

10. "Original Screen Played" --
On why the role of the screenwriter in the success of a movie may have gone from being underrated to being overrated.

Happy holidays, all!

DVD Beaver, RIP?

It looks like DVD Beaver may be about to shut down. Too bad. This was a site that the big studios should really have helped out, with free DVDs if nothing else; the site creator, Gary Tooze, did a tremendous job analyzing the image quality of DVDs (and posting screenshots so we could see for ourselves) and comparing different DVD transfers of the same film. I often decided what to purchase based on DVD Beaver reviews, and I know other people who did too. Hopefully the site will come back in some form.

Late Scribner

One of the many great posts at Thad Komorowski's Classic Animation Blog is the one with clips from Rod Scribner's 1950s animation for Bob McKimson. He joined McKimson's unit in 1950 after he'd been away from the studio for several years, and the new unit -- as well as the new atmosphere at the studio -- wasn't particularly congenial for him; the studio was less freewheeling and less willing to tolerate his wildness (Lloyd Turner recalled that Scribner's idea of a practical joke was to tip over a phone booth with somebody in it), and McKimson was less tolerant of Scribner's wildness as an animator, constantly after Scribner -- and all his animators -- to practice self-control and stick as closely as possible to the director's pose drawings.

And yet, as Thad shows, Scribner's style was still distinctively his own even in the button-down '50s, and while he doesn't include some of the really broad scenes McKimson gave to Scribner (like the scene in "Of Rice and Hen" where Foghorn Leghorn sees a character leap off a roof: his body practically flies apart in all directions), the scenes he includes shows how much character and individuality Scribner could create even in "little" scenes.

Or look at McKimson's "Hoppy Go Lucky" (one of the better Hippety Hopper cartoons, mostly because of Stan Freberg as the voice of Sylvester's Of Mice and Men-ish sidekick). In the middle of the cartoon, Scribner handles the scene between Sylvester and his sidekick Benny after Sylvester has first encountered the "giant mouse"; the way he bends Sylvester into all kinds of shapes is funny, but just as funny is the relatively non-exaggerated acting of Benny as he reprimands Sylvester ("Shame on you, George!"). The way Scribner manipulates a character's body and face, even in "quiet" moments, gives the character a kind of expressiveness and specificity that you can't get by just following the director's pose drawings -- which is what many of McKimson's other animators were doing by this time, and what Chuck Jones's animators were doing nearly all the time.

"Evil comes in many forms, whether it be a man-eating cow or Joseph Stalin."

Ah, "The Tick." Not the pointless live-action version with Patrick Warburton, but the animated version with Townsend Coleman as the voice of the big, strong lummox who thinks he's a superhero because he dresses up in a blue suit to fight crime. And whose battle cry is "SPOOOON!"

Unlike most Saturday morning cartoons based on comic books, this one had the full participation of the creator, Ben Edlund, and it was more character-based, with more of a dry sense of humour, than the completely nutty superhero-parody cartoons that followed a couple of years later ("Freakazoid," "Earthworm Jim"). It only lasted 36 episodes, though: while superhero parodies like "The Tick" gained a big cult following among adults and college kids, who enjoyed the sendup of comic-book clichés, they may have been too meta-humourous for kids, who tend to prefer something that is either pure comedy or pure adventure. And this was the period when advertisers were pulling their ads from "kiddie" shows that had any appeal beyond a kiddie audience, so the adult cult following hurt, rather than helped, shows like "The Tick."

It was a good show and hopefully the DVD set will do right by it; just identifying who all the various supporting characters are supposed to be parodies of ("Die Fledermaus," "American Maid," "Sea Urchin") is enough reason to watch.

Flintstones Celebrities For Our Time

Really stupid, random thought: if modern-day celebrities appeared on The Flintstones, what would their names be changed to? Remember Ann-Margrock, Stoney Curtis, and so on; every celebrity needs to have a Flintstones-appropriate name. Some contemporary equivalents would be:

Jennifer Anistone
Tom Crust
Paleozoic Hilton
Brad Tar-Pitt
Brute Willis

Other suggestions?

Anatomy of a Sitcom Revision

At the risk of boring you to death -- a risk I'm always willing to take -- I wanted to return to something I highlighted in a couple of earlier posts: the steps for re-shaping a bad sitcom story into a good one. Normally I'd leave this sort of thing to the professionals, like Ken Levine or Jane Espenson, but they're not here, so there.

I would prefer to use some other show as an example, since it seems that 99 out of my last 100 posts have dealt with this one season, but the only good example I have in front of me is that side-by side comparison of the episode "Ling Ling" from season 1 of "Bewitched." So I'll take that as the example and try to find a later example from a more recent show.

Now, the finished product is not one of the better episodes from that season, but it's a solid enough effort, and certainly much better than the original story submitted by the freelance writer. The freelance script had a normal idea for this show: a cat is turned into a beautiful woman; someone falls in love with the woman; Samantha has to figure out how to break up the romance and turn the woman back into a cat. This idea was retained in writer-producer Jerry Davis's rewrite, but all the weak elements in the original script were turned into things that either felt a little fresher or worked a little better.

So what I'll do is go through some of the changes between the freelance script and the final episode. I'll list a story point from the original, identify the weakness of it, and explain why (as I see it) the rewrite fixes that weakness. And if you're not interested in sitcom script revisions, well, what kind of person are you anyway?

Original Script: Begins with Samantha in the kitchen making hors-d'oeuvres for a party. Endora appears and criticizes Samantha's marriage. She also brings along a Siamese cat belonging to one of Samantha's uncles.
Weakness: Too many episodes of the show begin exactly this same way in this same setting.
Final Episode: Begins with Samantha in the backyard reclining on a chair and reading; a Siamese cat walks around on the fence near her.
Why This Works Better: It's a set, and an opening, that we haven't seen over and over again in the season so far. It also introduces the cat in the very first shot of the episode.

Original Script: Endora turns the Siamese cat into a woman, hoping to use her to break up Darrin and Samantha's marriage (reasoning that since Durwood is an "animal," he needs an animal for a mate). Darrin and Larry see the woman and decide to use her as a model for an advertising campaign.
Weakness: The story is driven solely by something Endora does, not by anything the main characters do (a problem that would pretty much choke off the show by its third year).
Final Episode: Samantha, hearing that Darrin needs an "exotic" model for an advertising campaign and can't find anyone appropriate, decides to help out by turning a Siamese cat into a woman ("Cat, how would you like to be a cover girl?")
Why This Works Better: The story is now driven, Lucy-style, by a bad decision that the main female character makes. Samantha is now driving the story instead of standing by and watching it happen.

Original Script: Samantha brings the cat-woman, Felicia, into the living room to talk to Darrin's advertising client, apparently hoping to focus Felicia's attention on someone other than Darrin. The client, Mr. Ames, starts to fall in love with Felicia, unaware that she's only interested in the sardine Samantha has slipped into his breast pocket.
Weakness: The situation is too silly; Samantha's motives are confusing; the client is basically another in a long line of clueless clients who (we can predict) will be talked into giving Darrin the account at the end.
Final Episode: The client does not appear. The person who falls in love with the cat-woman (here named "Ling Ling") is the photographer for the modeling session, a friend of Darrin's named Wally. That night, Darrin brings several people home for dinner to celebrate. Samantha is shocked when she sees who Wally's date is.
Why This Works Better: It's a stronger act break; no farcical complications have been introduced yet (the first act is setup; the complications are saved for Act II); the young, naive, shy photographer is a funnier pairing with the bitchy cat than a businessman type would be.

Original Script: Samantha tells Darrin the truth about what Felicia is.
Weakness: Just a standardized "revelation" scene with nothing much of interest before or after it.
Final Episode: Samantha confronts Ling Ling directly and tells her she has to stop leading Wally on. Ling Ling replies that she doesn't care about Wally, but she likes being pampered and made a fuss over, and as long as Wally can give her nice things, she will stick with him. Ling Ling leaves the room and Samantha tells Darrin the truth.
Why This Works Better: Now there's a direct confrontation between Samantha and the cat-woman, once again putting Samantha at the centre of the story. Also, in keeping with the style of the first season -- using fantasy situations as explicit parallels with real life -- we get a clearer connection between the cat-woman and real-life people: the joke is now that a cat turned into a woman acts a lot like a real-life bitchy gold-digger. And this creates a better reason for Samantha to tell Darrin the truth then and there, namely that she now knows that Ling Ling is out to break his friend's heart.

Original Script: Darrin tries to tell his client that Felicia is not right for him, but the client won't let him get a word in edgewise, instead announcing that he's engaged to Felicia. Endora pops in and tells Samantha that Felicia must be turned back to a cat by midnight before the owner comes to get her.
Weakness: Two more standardized scenes: The "can't get a word in edgewise to tell the truth" scene, and the addition of a "ticking clock" for bogus suspense.
Final Episode: Darrin tells Wally that Ling Ling is no good. Wally gets angry and tells Darrin that if he keeps insulting his girlfriend, their friendship is over.
Why This Works Better: The guy actually listens to the truth (or as much of the truth as it's safe to tell) and won't believe it. Also, again, fantasy works better when it parallels reality, and here we have the realistic situation of a young lover who won't believe that the woman he loves doesn't really love him. Finally, instead of the "ticking clock" situation, there's now a more interesting problem: before Samantha can turn the woman back into a cat, they have to figure out how to discourage Wally's feelings for her.

Original Script: To break up Felicia and the client, Samantha conjures up a mouse; Felicia pursues the mouse out of the backyard and into the alley, leaving the client broken-hearted. Samantha and Darrin convince the client that Felicia probably wasn't right for him anyway.
Weakness: The usual problem with solving a problem through magic: when your lead character can do just about anything, there can be no real cleverness in the way she solves the problem.
Final Episode: Samantha puts catnip into Ling Ling's drink. Under the influence of the catnip, Ling Ling hisses at Wally when he tries to take the drink away from her, and then scratches him across the cheek. Wally, realizing that the girl he loved is a violent drunk who doesn't care for him, decides to give her up and devote himself to his career.
Why This Works Better: In keeping with Danny Arnold's rule that magic should be used "sparingly" on the show, Samantha solves the problem with no supernatural help. The audience likes the character better if she solves a problem through cleverness rather than a supernatural deus ex machina. Also, the real-life parallel plays out once again in the scene: though it's a fantasy show, it's a real-life situation (a lover finding out something unpleasant about the person he/she loved, and realizing that the relationship won't work).

Also, the original script does not include Gladys Kravitz; the finished episode does. This is an improvement if only because you can never have enough Alice Pearce.

So, to review: in the original script, the main character reacts instead of driving the story; the story introduces too many complications too early and resolves the problem too easily; and it has no real point to it other than seeing a woman eat off the floor like a cat. The final script places the main character at the centre of the action, creates a relatively uncluttered Act I and saves the big complications for Act II; and draws funny parallels between the fantasy situation and the real-life, non-fantasy situation it resembles.

Now, if I can find an early draft of some other script for some other show, I can write something even longer....

Number 10 Browning Street

Robert Browning has been my favourite poet since college, largely because he does all the things that good serious poets aren't supposed to do: gruesome trick rhymes, un-poetic diction, language that seems more suited to an essay than a poem ("[George] Meredith is a prose Browning," wrote Oscar Wilde, "and so is Browning"), and lines that seem more like doggerel than poetry: one serious Browning poem starts with the line: "Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!" But all that gives his poetry a fascination that prettier, more "poetic" poetry loses once you get used to the lovely vowel sounds.

Browning's most famous quirk was that he almost never wrote a poem in his own voice, or even anything resembling his own voice: almost all his poems are "dramatic monologues" written in the voice of a character, who may or may not be telling us the whole story. Any Browning poem requires us to figure out whether the speaker is telling the truth or not, or whether there's something going on that the speaker doesn't mention directly: he wants us to "read between the lines" at all times, and we can never be sure, at the end, what message we're supposed to take from the poem -- because Browning won't editorialize and tell us for certain.

One of the few poems he wrote in something like his own voice was a poem called "House" -- which is an apologia for his habitual insistence on not writing in his own voice. The poem mocks people who look through an author's writings for signs of what he was really thinking or what he was really like. He compares these proponents of literature-as-autobiography to people who gawk at the inside of a house that was torn apart by an earthquake:

The owner? Oh, be had been crushed, no doubt!
    “Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth!
What a parcel of musty old books about!
    He smoked,—no wonder he lost his health!

“I doubt if he bathed before he dressed.
    A brasier?—the pagan, he burned perfumes!
You see it is proved, what the neighbors guessed:
    His wife and himself had separate rooms.”

He also mocks the statement of Wordsworth (in "Scorn Not the Sonnet") that poetry is the key to an author's inner life and that "With this key/Shakespeare unlocked his heart." Browning, who had earlier attacked Wordsworth as a sell-out, now attacks him for buying into the idea of poetry as autobiography:

“Hoity-toity! A street to explore,
    Your house the exception! ‘With this same key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart,’ once more!”
    Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

"Make It Stop! MAKE IT STOP!"

One of the best half-hour episodes Warner Brothers Television Animation produced in its '90s heyday was the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Toon TV." This was a follow-up to an episode they'd done in the first season, which featured segments timed to music by They Might Be Giants and other groups. For this "sequel," they weren't allowed to use any contemporary songs -- too expensive -- so they used a mixture of original songs and Golden Oldies that the creators of the episode didn't even seem to like very much. It worked very well, better than the first episode. The best segment is set to "Do You Love Me" by The Contours, and essentially mocks the song as a loud, repetitive mess -- the final gag has Babs Bunny screaming at the camera, begging someone to make the song stop playing.

More than that, the segment is a good example of the style of Rich Arons, the director and co-writer of this episode (and later the producer of "Animaniacs"). It's very fast-paced, tossing off gag after gag without a break and with the gags often lasting no more than a second. It's constantly going places you don't quite expect. You expect the standard cartoon gag of Buster Bunny turning up when Babs Bunny runs into a cab to escape from him; you don't expect the cab to suddenly drive over a map covered with footprints (based on the footprints on the floor in a rudimentary dance class), or Babs to jump in front of an onscreen caption in synch to the music, or the pointless involvement of an elephant with, yes, footprints on it. And some of the bits of animation -- especially the animation of Babs at the end, holding back the iris-out -- are hilarious. I wish I could say who storyboarded the segment; the episode credits Alfred Gimeno, Jim Fletcher, Rusty Mills, Enrique May and Eddie Fitzgerald as the storyboard crew, but doesn't say who storyboarded what. Anyway, here's the segment:



Also, here's the final segment of the episode, "Yakkity Yak" by The Coasters (where Plucky Duck's father is a caricature of storyboard artist Eddie Fitzgerald):

Depressing Lyrics: "Another Autumn"

Still another great depressing lyric, this one from Paint Your Wagon by Lerner and Loewe: "Another Autumn," sung by Tony Bavaar and set to one of those Fritz Loewe tunes that's half pastiche and half Viennese operetta: it sounds vaguely Western, in keeping with the setting, until you listen closer and realize that it's really more of an operetta ballad with a Johann Strauss-ish feel to it -- arranged differently, it could be a waltz.

Verse

Winter's coming on, I feel it all around,
The leaves are moving faster along the ground.
Why have all the dreams been broken wide apart,
And where is all the hope that was in my heart?

Refrain

Another autumn,
I've known the chill before,
But every autumn
I feel it more and more.
For you can dream in spring
When every hope is high,
But when the fall comes in
They all begin
To fade and die.
Another autumn,
So sweet when all is well,
But how it haunts you
When all is wrong.
For one thing time has shown,
If you're alone
When autumn comes,
You'll be alone all winter long.

Mel? God? Neely!

Valley of the Dolls, two-disc special edition. Our terrestrial existence is nearly complete. In case you wonder why this is the Most Important Film ever, let me refresh your memory:

"Ted Casablanca is not a fag, and I'm the dame who can prove it!"

"Mother, I know I don't have any talent, and I know I all I have is a body, and I am doing my bust exercise."

"The only hit that comes out of a Helen Lawson show is Helen Lawson!"

"Boobies, boobies, boobies. Nothin' but boobies. Who needs 'em?"

The fact that the movie was directed by a "respectable" director, Canadian Mark Robson (who worked on most of Val Lewton's movies, first as editor, then as director), makes it all the more insane. Oh, and the screenwriters, Helen Deutsch and Dorothy Kingsley, were both veterans of glossy comedies and musicals at MGM. And the producer, David Weisbart, had scored a big hit with Rebel Without a Cause some years earlier and no doubt saw this project as another chance to tap into the zietgeist. No movie better exemplifies how completely, utterly, lost the big studios were in the late '60s, tossing huge amounts of money and studio gloss at the most putrid material. God bless 'em.

There's also a two-disc special edition of Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (not a sequel, but a parody of the original), with commentary by the screenwriter, Roger Ebert. It says something about Valley of the Dolls that it makes a Russ Meyer movie look respectable by comparison.

Deep Throat, The Musical?

In the category of "stuff I wrote but can't remember exactly why," I wrote this song lyric last year -- I think it was an exercise to see if I could write a musical-comedy song for a particularly sleazy character, in this case, the producer-director of a pornographic movie. The song was called "Little Miss Rose," where he touts the, er, virtues of his latest star discovery.

I am posting it here because a) It's my site and you can't stop me; b) I kind of like a few of the lines. What the heck.

Little Miss Rose

I’ve made a movie,
They call it pornographic.
The movie’s got no plot at all,
Is that a problem? Not at all!
‘Cause in my movie
The star is so seraphic
She interferes with traffic,
She’s also slightly Sapphic.

She’s the star of my flick,
She’s a great classy chick,
In scene one, she gets sick
Of wearing her clothes,
Her name, which I helped pick,
Is Little Miss Rose.
Last July, she was just
Julie Dirks, sweeping dust,
Brand new name, brand new bust,
And everyone shows
A new respect and lust
For Little Miss Rose.
From films with taste
A man will flee with haste,
But down he sits
For dames with great big… it’s so fearless,
‘Cause it’s brassiereless.
Every reel will appeal
To the average Joes,
They’ll love the aging queen
Who tastefully steps between
Little Miss Rose,
Little Miss Rose,
Little Miss Rose.

She can act when she tries,
Makes real tears when she cries,
But she don’t realize
That nobody goes
To see what’s in the eyes
Of Little Miss Rose.
Hollywood’s round the bend,
Downbeat plots are the trend
Why would you recommend
Depressives like those?
Go see the happy end
Of little Miss Rose.
It’s cheap, it’s low,
The pace is kind of slow,
No sets, no stunts,
But lots of shots of… once you run it,
You’ll wish you’d done it.
If you thought that we’ve got
Nothing left to expose,
You’re wrong, you horny jerks,
A sequel is in the works
With cinema’s queen,
Star of the screen,
Spotlessly clean,
Lissome and lean,
Know what I mean?
Like a machine,
Is she eighteen?
Nobody knows.
But it ain’t the last you’ve seen
Of little Miss Rose.

Macho Business Donkey Wrestler

Season 4 of "NewsRadio" is on its way.

This was Phil Hartman's last season; it was also the season where the writers of the show abandoned any pretence at being an observational comedy about office life, and went all-out for insanity. This was, in part, a reaction to the sudden explosion on NBC of office comedies that were very similar in style (and often in characters and stories) to "NewsRadio," like "Suddenly Susan" and "Just Shoot Me." With other shows doing the office ensemble comedy routine, creator Paul Simms steered his own show into new territory -- including a story arc, with Lauren Graham as an efficiency expert sent to shake up the office, that was a parody of NBC's suggestions for re-tooling the show.

But most importantly, this is the season with the episode where Jimmy James (Stephen Root), finding that his autobiography has become a hit in Japan, has it translated from Japanese back into English:

JIMMY: The original title of this book was "Jimmy James, Capitalist Lion Tamer" but I see now that it's "Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler." You know what it is... I had the book translated in to Japanese then back again into English. Macho Business Donkey Wrestler... well there you go, it's got kind of a ring to it, don't it? Anyway, I wanted to read from chapter three, which is the story of my first rise to financial prominence. "I had a small house of brokerage on Wall Street. Many days no business come to my hut. But Jimmy has fear? A thousand times no. I never doubted myself for a minute, for I knew that my monkey strong bowels were girded with strength like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung. Glorious sunset of my heart was fading. Soon the super karate monkey death car would park in my space. But Jimmy has fancy plans and pants to match. The monkey clown horrible karate round and yummy like cute small baby chick would beat the donkey."

REPORTER # 1: Mr. James, what did you mean when you wrote "Bad clown making like super American car racers, I would make them sweat, War War?"

JIMMY: Well, you know... it's like when a clown is making like a car... racer... it's sorta... like... the FCC. The clown is like the FCC... and I was opposed to the FCC at the time, right? So it was like I was declaring War. WARRRR!"

REPORTER # 2: So then, did the "American yum yum clown monkey" also represent the FCC?

JIMMY: Yeah, it did. Thanks a lot.

REPORTER # 3: What did you mean when you said, "Feel my skills, donkey donkey donkey, donkey donkey?"

The Noir-owers

Jonathan Rosenbaum has another article up at DVDbeaver.com, this time about "Ten Overlooked Noirs".

Actually I don't know that most of the films on his list are "overlooked," but it's still a good list. Also, I'm glad that Rosenbaum speaks up for the originally-released versions of Touch of Evil, which Universal has idiotically withdrawn to make room for the recut version Rosenbaum helped create:

I was a consultant on the third version--a re-edit by Walter Murch based on a memo written by Welles to Universal in the 50s--and it was never the intention of Murch, me, or our producer Rick Schmidlin to replace the film’s original release version or the longer preview version that supplanted it in the 70s. We were hoping that all three could be released in a DVD box set. Universal, are you listening?

They're probably not listening, but thanks for speaking up.

Some Pretty Music For a Monday Morning

From the new René Jacobs recording of Mozart's La Clemenza Di Tito, probably the prettiest tune Mozart ever wrote: the duet "Ah, perdona al primo affetto," sung by the young lovers (the operatic equivalent of the musical-comedy secondary couple that doesn't get to do a whole lot), Annio (Marie-Claude Chappuis) and Servilia (Sunhae Im).

I haven't figured out how to host audio files on the blog, but --
Click on this link
-- and then press the "Download" icon.

How To Make 39 Episodes A Year Without Really Trying

To follow up on my posts about '60s sitcoms, Bernard Slade's autobiography, "Shared Laughter," describes the difference between the way sitcoms were produced in the '60s and the way they've been produced from the early '70s onward. Unfortunately I don't have the book in front of me for an exact quote, but the gist of it is, in my own words and with my own embellishments:

'60s shows carried very few full-time staff writers -- there was a writer-producer, and another writer as the story editor, and that's about it. Most of the scripts were written by freelancers. Once the script had been written, it would go to the story editor for a rewrite and polish, but once the script went into production, there was almost no re-writing.

The system on sitcoms since "All in the Family" has been more akin to the system on sketch comedy shows: a stable of staff writers who re-write every script collectively, and continue re-writing it all through the production process. This is partly a function of the live-audience way of shooting, but not entirely; "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was a live-audience show that operated with a small staff, and "The Simpsons" has no audience (obviously) and a gigantic writing staff.

Slade doesn't write about this, but the change in staffing procedures has changed the nature of the titles; the job of "executive producer" is now a combination of several different jobs on the '60s shows (sort of a fusion of producer, executive producer and story editor), while the "story editor" isn't actually the one in charge of editing the stories.

As to what's the better system, I couldn't say; Slade reasonably says that while the '60s way may not have produced better results than the staff-writing system, it didn't produce results that were any worse.

The one thing that we can say about '60s sitcoms is that, because of the less extensive re-writing process and smaller writing staffs, a sitcom episode of the period (or any TV episode, really) has more of the individual writer's voice in it than we're used to today. Of course, the staff would re-write a freelancer's script to bring it more in line with the overall tone of the show, just like today, but even in a re-written script there would be fewer contributors than in the age of the gargantuan staff, where dozens of different writers contribute to the same episode.

If I could bring up the first "Bewitched" season one more time (largely because there are so many good online resources on this particular series), the "scripts and their differences" websites includes an interesting example of how a freelance script could be re-vamped into something different by the staff. The site has a description of the development of episode # 21, which started as a freelance script by Anthony Wilson about a cat being transformed into a woman. The script was completely rewritten by one of the show's two writer-producers, Jerry Davis, with even the name and breed of the cat being changed. The site has a synopsis of the original freelance script followed by a synopsis of the episode that emerged, and it's interesting to see how every change makes the story less predictable, more tied to the idea of what a cat would act like if it became human, and more focused on the main character. The original freelance script actually reads, in synopsis, like something the show might have done in its later seasons, which, I suppose, is the potential danger of the freelancers-first system: without a strong guiding hand behind the re-writes, the scripts can wind up being by-the-numbers formula stories.

Then, of course, there's the most famous '60s re-write of all, the re-writing of Harlan Ellison's script for the "Star Trek" episode "The City on the Edge of Forever." Ellison tried to portray this as a slap in the face to his vision, but obviously what went on is that the script had to be tweaked to fit in more with what the characters would or would not do -- the sort of re-writing that only the staffers can do authoritatively.