I didn't have much to add on the "Looney Tunes All-Stars" DVDs and the decision to present all the post-1954 cartoons in widescreen format (that is, with the top and bottom cut off). But Thad has some comparisons of screenshots from the fullscreen and widescreen versions, showing that compositions -- and sometimes even the ability to read signs -- aren't helped by the cropping.
I'll add a couple of things: starting in 1957 or so, the films seem to have gotten a little bit better about composing for the possibility of matting. I saw "Ducking the Devil" and a Road Runner cartoon ("Zip n' Snort," I think) in widescreen in a movie theatre, and they looked all right that way. "Ducking" looks OK on the DVD too. And you'll notice that even in that screenshot from "Mad as a Mars Hare," Jones made sure to keep the "Earth" sign in a spot where it wouldn't be cut off. Many of the 1954-1956 cartoons, however -- cartoons that were either made or begun before the studio shut down -- look quite bad in the fake widescreen; not only are the compositions bad but there's a feeling that the cartoons have been blown up or zoomed in.
The most irritating of all is "Lumber Jack Rabbit": the credits were not made with widescreen in mind, so WB has to present them in fullscreen (otherwise, as Thad says, they'd lose the copyright information), and then they switch to matted widescreen for the cartoon proper. And all of this without giving us the 3-D version that justifies this film's existence.
This thing does answer my question about why WB's "family entertainment" division was, according to rumor, reluctant to release any cartoons made before 1953. I wondered "why 1953?" Now we have our answer: they don't want to release cartoons in fullscreen. Yes, we're seeing a transition away from the days of pan n' scan to something arguably even worse: an insistence that all films shown on TV or home video must fill up the new widescreen TVs. I say this is even worse because it will effectively make it even more difficult than it is already for older films to get home video releases. Companies are now worried that customers will not accept a film that has those black bars on the sides.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Abbey Lincoln, 1930-2010
She had an exceptional, multi-layered career. As the obituary notes, the early phase of her career culminated in her appearance in The Girl Can't Help It, where her outfit was recycled from Marilyn Monroe's wardrobe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. (There's at least one other Blondes costume that turns up in the film; medium-budget studio films got the most bang for their buck by re-using glamorous sets and costumes from earlier films.) She's one of the few non rock performers in the movie, yet she makes one of the biggest impressions.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
To Melodrama And Back Again
I've been asked by a couple of people what I think of the new Life With Archie magazine, which continues the Archie "marriage" flash-forwards from last year's famous arc. (For more details on the first issue, see Albert Ching's review at Newsarama and Chris Sims' review.) I may not be the absolute right person to ask, since although I'm a genuine Archiephile, I haven't really followed much of the company's recent output.
From what I do know, I think their work has improved in the past few years -- they no longer ask everybody to draw like DeCarlo; Jughead is no longer being given personality makeovers to make him more appealing to girls -- but there still hasn't been much, in art or writing, to compare to the era when they had some of the best humor comics in the business. (As I've said elsewhere, if you compare Frank Doyle's scripts for Betty and Veronica in its prime -- the late '50s and early '60s -- and compare them to the Stan Lee scripts Dan DeCarlo was illustrating for Marvel at the same time, you'd conclude that Archie was a better company than Timely/Marvel. And for humor comics, it was.) It's partly about an inability to get the best people, or perhaps an unwillingness to pay for them. (Though I don't want to disparage some of the people who are there: at least two writers, Kathleen Webb and Craig Boldman, do fine work in the Frank Doyle tradition.) But mostly it's just that they're not funny enough.
Now, Archie has been getting genuine buzz in the last year for the first time in a long time, and it's a sign that Jon Goldwater's aggressive new approach is working. (The aggressiveness is all a means to an end, of course: trying to increase awareness of the franchise to the point that they can finally, at last, get that elusive movie.) But most of this approach is based on comics that aren't really humor comics. The marriage arc that started all this was alternate-universe melodrama. Archie's romance with Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats: more soapy melodrama. Tom DeFalco's current arc in Archie is solidly in the franchise tradition, but it's light tongue-in-cheek action in the style of the original Life With Archie title. The only pure comedy stunt was getting Robot Chicken's Tom Root to write an issue of Jughead, and that didn't make as much noise as the others. (Unfortunately Jughead under Craig Boldman and Rex Lindsey, which has been the company's best title for some time, hasn't sold terribly well -- proof, perhaps, that funny doesn't sell any more.) This is still a humor comics company, but it's less of one than it was.
Now, I think it's mostly the extreme restrictions they've put on themselves in terms of what the characters can do. When Dan DeCarlo was booted out, he was free to complain that Betty and Veronica had lost the distinctive personalities that made them fun to draw: specifically, it had been years since Veronica was allowed to act really mean. (This was an ongoing process; Betty had been getting nicer, sweeter and less crazy -- and less funny -- since the '60s at least.) Bob Bolling said in his 2004 interview in Comic Book Artist that "I get these scripts that are nothing but heads talking... I got two stories recently that were exactly alike." Which is a consequence of the limitations on comic violence, anti-social behavior, and so on. It's not just Archie; nearly all of children's entertainment now suffers from gigantic self-imposed restrictions on what you can do and say. But since a funny Archie story, like a funny animated cartoon, depends on behavior that is mean or anti-social if you really look at it carefully, it's not surprising that it's hard for the comics to be funny.
So, given the fact that it's hard for kids' comics to be funny these days, and that funny isn't a great sales proposition anyway, it may make sense for their output to move more toward drama and romance and adventure. Which is what's good about this Life With Archie magazine: unlike the marriage arc, which felt like a bit of a stunt and had a lot of sloppy drawing, this one actually sort of feels like a concept that could work and has something new to say about the characters.
A lot of this has to do with the art, by Norm Breyfogle. He's using an art style that feels right for this franchise: it's dramatic and atypical of Archie in layouts and angles, but the characters all look like themselves, and their physical personalities are as we've come to expect after 70 years. This is a much better "Archie as drama" approach than the realistic new-look stories (which Breyfogle also worked on). In the melancholy feel and specific sense of place, it sometimes has a Bob Bolling feel to it, though more polished and with a less tongue-in-cheek sensibility.
The influence of Bolling seems pretty strong in Archie lately, not surprising given that Mike Uslan is a big fan and Victor Gorelick has tended to champion his work. Bolling's Mad Doctor Doom and Chester are the villains in the current Archie story, and in a key moment in Life With Archie, Archie meets a grown-up version of Ambrose, illustrated with bits from the 1958 one-shot "Little Ambrose" comic.
(Incidentally, Ambrose says here that he met the Martians Abercrombie and Stitch; that would be a so-called continuity error except that Bolling himself did a story a month ago where he brought those characters back to meet the young Ambrose. I don't know if that was deliberately co-ordinated.)
Second, while the stories are crazy melodramatic, they are at least sort of plausible -- unlike that To Riverdale and Back Again TV movie (and Gene Colan's comic-book spinoff, done in a realistic style). The way the familiar characters develop, in both stories, usually fits what we know about them, and it's a way of thinking about how permanently-young characters might grow up, if they were allowed to grow up.
And finally there's the already-infamous device of tying together not only the two stories, but literally the entire 70-year history of the franchise, by suggesting that there are parallel universes and that every Archie world is "real" within its own universe. This is nutty, but it's also kind of brilliant, because it's got something for everyone:
- For people whose interest in the franchise is mostly historical, like me, it allows for lots of shout-outs to history from a company that used to want to downplay how old the characters are. (One of the new characters owns a banking firm called "Mirth of a Nation," a reference to Archie's old tag-line.)
- For comic book fans, who don't usually read Archie, it gives them something to talk and argue about. It also brings the franchise in line with the modern requirement that they have continuity (something that was never necessary in the classic comics, any more than in Looney Tunes cartoons) while not forcing them to disown any of the nine zillion variant versions.
- And for kids, it's potentially a way of guiding them to other titles or at least the concept that there are other forms of this comic to explore.
I don't know how any of this is going to hold up in future issues; Paul Kupperberg takes over the writing in issue # 2, but I don't know what he has planned or if this conceit can be sustained. But for now, it's the first comic of the new run that has the potential to justify the move to melodrama: it has certain similarities to Marvel's soap-opera retools of Millie the Model and Patsy Walker (and let's not get into Patsy's superhero makeover), but unlike them, it doesn't reject the original purpose of the characters and therefore has room to move without alienating existing readers.
All in all, it's pretty impressive that they've made something interesting of this, given how bad it sounded. It was originally announced as two separate comics, which sounded like a silly attempt to keep the marriage publicity alive. Then it was announced as two comics in one magazine, which just seemed like a way of avoiding the inevitable lower sales for an "Archie Marries Veronica" comic. But there actually seems to be method to most of the madness: the magazine format is getting them back onto news-stands where they belong, and the presence of Justin Bieber on the cover might be worth it. They may sort of know what they're doing, which would be the first time in a while that you could say that about this company.
Monday, August 09, 2010
Patricia Neal, Like Marcia Jeffries, Has Left
Another classic film actress is gone: Patricia Neal, who was 84.
Of all the many difficult parts she took on and did brilliantly, one of the most difficult may have been the one that made her a star in the first place: Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest, her prequel to The Little Foxes. The part of the young Regina Hubbard called for a young, relatively inexperienced actress who could be convincing as the character Tallulah Bankhead and Bette Davis had already made famous. It's too bad Neal wasn't chosen to do the film version, but the movie was made by Universal and Neal was under contract to Warner Brothers. (Universal gave the film to a former Warner Brothers player, Ann Blyth; I guess they were figuring she could do what she did in Mildred Pierce.)
Neal came to Warner Brothers at probably the worst time to be a contractee at that studio: most of their best people were leaving (directors, producers and stars) and they had little ability to develop young actresses into stars -- Doris Day managed it, but she had her singing career to help force Warners into giving her starring roles, plus her first starring film was a hit. New contractees seemed to get one shot at stardom and if it didn't take, the studio seemed to give up on them: so as Neal said, when The Fountainhead flopped, her chance to be a big star was over. (Even though she did what she could with a terrible part.) Her other Warners films didn't make much of an impact; The Hasty Heart was based on a good play -- her role in it isn't much, though -- and I remember liking The Breaking Point, which was Warners' attempt to do a To Have and Have Not movie that (unlike Hawks's) had something to do with the book.
Her career after leaving Warners follows a typical arc for the '50s: one good film as a freelancer, The Day The Earth Stood Still; some other not-so-successful freelance films, and more emphasis on theatre and New York-based TV, plus the occasional film that utilized a lot of New York talent (A Face In the Crowd is a Hollywood film, but made with mostly New York-based actors). Her theatre work helped get her back into a film industry that had more respect for theatre and TV success, until she suffered the strokes that derailed her career in its prime.
Of all the many difficult parts she took on and did brilliantly, one of the most difficult may have been the one that made her a star in the first place: Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest, her prequel to The Little Foxes. The part of the young Regina Hubbard called for a young, relatively inexperienced actress who could be convincing as the character Tallulah Bankhead and Bette Davis had already made famous. It's too bad Neal wasn't chosen to do the film version, but the movie was made by Universal and Neal was under contract to Warner Brothers. (Universal gave the film to a former Warner Brothers player, Ann Blyth; I guess they were figuring she could do what she did in Mildred Pierce.)
Neal came to Warner Brothers at probably the worst time to be a contractee at that studio: most of their best people were leaving (directors, producers and stars) and they had little ability to develop young actresses into stars -- Doris Day managed it, but she had her singing career to help force Warners into giving her starring roles, plus her first starring film was a hit. New contractees seemed to get one shot at stardom and if it didn't take, the studio seemed to give up on them: so as Neal said, when The Fountainhead flopped, her chance to be a big star was over. (Even though she did what she could with a terrible part.) Her other Warners films didn't make much of an impact; The Hasty Heart was based on a good play -- her role in it isn't much, though -- and I remember liking The Breaking Point, which was Warners' attempt to do a To Have and Have Not movie that (unlike Hawks's) had something to do with the book.
Her career after leaving Warners follows a typical arc for the '50s: one good film as a freelancer, The Day The Earth Stood Still; some other not-so-successful freelance films, and more emphasis on theatre and New York-based TV, plus the occasional film that utilized a lot of New York talent (A Face In the Crowd is a Hollywood film, but made with mostly New York-based actors). Her theatre work helped get her back into a film industry that had more respect for theatre and TV success, until she suffered the strokes that derailed her career in its prime.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
The Italian Screenwriting System
Thinking about Suso Cecchi D'Amico, the prolific Italian screenwriter who just died at the age of 96, it occurs to me: while it's often complained that U.S. screenwriters don't get enough credit, writers in other countries' film industries were in some ways even more anonymous.
When I became interested in old movies, the names of some U.S. screenwriters sort of leaped out at me from repeated viewing, but it was much more difficult to learn the styles of Italian or Japanese screenwriters -- and not just because of the names themselves. Italian movies usually credited the screenplay to a committee of writers, making it difficult to single out one particular writer as worthy of attention.
And outside the U.S. (and to a lesser extent England) it was much easier for a director to get a writing credit on a film: there are many directors from France, Italy and so on who were credited as writer-directors for contributions that would never have earned them a writing credit in the U.S. I'm not saying, mind you, that these directors didn't deserve writing credit or that their contributions to the writing were negligible. But some of them were not full-scale writer-directors like a Bergman or a Sturges; they hired writers and worked with them.
So in English-speaking countries, a director like Hitchcock or Lubitsch might put his stamp on every bit of the scripting process without being billed as a co-writer, whereas in other countries they (along with others who contributed) would get a screenplay credit. And when the director is listed as one of the writers, even if he's only one of five or six writers, it's hard to pay much attention to the other names. There were some directors who were not writers at all, and whose movies tended to be clearer (both in credit and style) about who the writers were; Alain Resnais, who rarely takes writing credits, is an example.
Add all this up and I think it's rare that a screenwriter -- with rare exceptions of genuine star screenwriters like Jacques Prévert -- gets much critical attention. Of course this is to some extent the way it should be: the writing of a film is usually done by several people, all supervised by and writing toward the goals set by one person (preferably the director). But I do think it's a gap in my knowledge that I don't fully understand what D'Amico brought to the films she worked on, and I think I need to find out more about that.
When I became interested in old movies, the names of some U.S. screenwriters sort of leaped out at me from repeated viewing, but it was much more difficult to learn the styles of Italian or Japanese screenwriters -- and not just because of the names themselves. Italian movies usually credited the screenplay to a committee of writers, making it difficult to single out one particular writer as worthy of attention.
And outside the U.S. (and to a lesser extent England) it was much easier for a director to get a writing credit on a film: there are many directors from France, Italy and so on who were credited as writer-directors for contributions that would never have earned them a writing credit in the U.S. I'm not saying, mind you, that these directors didn't deserve writing credit or that their contributions to the writing were negligible. But some of them were not full-scale writer-directors like a Bergman or a Sturges; they hired writers and worked with them.
So in English-speaking countries, a director like Hitchcock or Lubitsch might put his stamp on every bit of the scripting process without being billed as a co-writer, whereas in other countries they (along with others who contributed) would get a screenplay credit. And when the director is listed as one of the writers, even if he's only one of five or six writers, it's hard to pay much attention to the other names. There were some directors who were not writers at all, and whose movies tended to be clearer (both in credit and style) about who the writers were; Alain Resnais, who rarely takes writing credits, is an example.
Add all this up and I think it's rare that a screenwriter -- with rare exceptions of genuine star screenwriters like Jacques Prévert -- gets much critical attention. Of course this is to some extent the way it should be: the writing of a film is usually done by several people, all supervised by and writing toward the goals set by one person (preferably the director). But I do think it's a gap in my knowledge that I don't fully understand what D'Amico brought to the films she worked on, and I think I need to find out more about that.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Will Be Ours (Except On Sunday)
Who'd have thunk, there's an actual comics announcement from the San Diego Comic-Con. (Well, they have to happen every once in a while to fill time in between big network TV show panels.) And this announcement happens to be a very good one: Fantagraphics is going to bring out reprints of Floyd Gottfredson's "Mickey Mouse" comic strip. They're only going to print the dailies for now, with the Sunday strips -- which told separate stories -- possibly held over for later; here's an interview with Fantagraphics' Gary Groth where he talks some more about the project.
I've said it before, but I can't think of another case where the comics spinoffs improved the characters quite as much as they did for the Disney stars. Normally even so-so cartoon characters are watered down for the comics, where there were more restrictions on things like violence (at least for cartoony, kid-friendly characters). Casper the Friendly Ghost was arguably more successful as a comic book star, but I think he had slightly more of an edge to him in the cartoons. But Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were much more interesting characters outside of animation, under Gottfredson and Barks respectively, than they were in their films, even with all the added (theoretical) advantages of being able to move and talk.
I've said it before, but I can't think of another case where the comics spinoffs improved the characters quite as much as they did for the Disney stars. Normally even so-so cartoon characters are watered down for the comics, where there were more restrictions on things like violence (at least for cartoony, kid-friendly characters). Casper the Friendly Ghost was arguably more successful as a comic book star, but I think he had slightly more of an edge to him in the cartoons. But Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were much more interesting characters outside of animation, under Gottfredson and Barks respectively, than they were in their films, even with all the added (theoretical) advantages of being able to move and talk.
Friday, July 23, 2010
A Salute To The Unknown Bad Dancer
When I saw this episode as a kid, I was mostly fixated on Potsie's poor singing and the weird new Arnold's set (just before Ron Howard left, Garry Marshall ordered Arnold's burned down so the set could be rebuilt in a style that '80s kids could relate to). Now I'm fixated on something else: the uncredited guy in the blue sweater, whose dancing is prominently featured in this clip. It may be the worst dancing I've ever seen on a TV show, except for dancing that is intentionally supposed to be terrible. I guess it's possible that Jerry Paris told him to dance that way to add some comedy to the scene, but it doesn't really come off; it's just bad spastic hair-coiffing dancing.
But he dances so badly with so much enthusiasm that he's almost a predecessor of Jeff from Mr. T's "Be Somebody Or Be Somebody's Fool." Never have I found it more unfair that a show could get away with not crediting someone if it didn't give him any lines. This man deserves to have his name, and his shame, preserved for posterity.
But he dances so badly with so much enthusiasm that he's almost a predecessor of Jeff from Mr. T's "Be Somebody Or Be Somebody's Fool." Never have I found it more unfair that a show could get away with not crediting someone if it didn't give him any lines. This man deserves to have his name, and his shame, preserved for posterity.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Loud as a Chanticleer
This is (for now) one of the few flop musical clips from the Ed Sullivan Show that's still online, after Bluegobo.com had to divest itself of all its Sullivan material. (Of course the copyright owners have no apparent intention of making anything available except a few select clips from hit shows.) It's Lucille Ball and Paula Stewart performing the big hit from Wildcat, written by N. Richard Nash (The Rainmaker), directed by Michael Kidd, with a score by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh.
The cast album of Wildcat is one of the ones I listen to a lot despite the fact that the singing is very unpleasant to listen to: specifically, Ball can't sing, and while she at least tries to sing the notes (which puts her one up over Katharine Hepburn or Rex Harrison), the result can't really be said to do justice to them. Still, this is one of only two scores the great Coleman/Leigh team wrote for the theatre -- Little Me is the other -- and while they were better suited to pop than theatre, there is nothing like the combination of Coleman's nervous, rambling, constantly "busy" music with Leigh's colloquial, laid-back, yet brilliantly-rhymed lyrics. Encores! really ought to do this show (with someone who can sing better than Ball).
The cast album of Wildcat is one of the ones I listen to a lot despite the fact that the singing is very unpleasant to listen to: specifically, Ball can't sing, and while she at least tries to sing the notes (which puts her one up over Katharine Hepburn or Rex Harrison), the result can't really be said to do justice to them. Still, this is one of only two scores the great Coleman/Leigh team wrote for the theatre -- Little Me is the other -- and while they were better suited to pop than theatre, there is nothing like the combination of Coleman's nervous, rambling, constantly "busy" music with Leigh's colloquial, laid-back, yet brilliantly-rhymed lyrics. Encores! really ought to do this show (with someone who can sing better than Ball).
Friday, July 09, 2010
Laugh-Out-Loud Songs In Musicals
I've been listening to some old musicals lately, and one thing they've gotten me thinking about is the difficulty of writing a really laugh-out-loud funny comedy song. Of course most comedy songs are funnier in the theatre, with an audience, than they are on a record, so I'm not judging them fairly, but even in the theatre it's hard for a song to make me laugh as hard as funny dialogue or physical action -- there's just too much going on for a joke to "land" even in a first-rate song. "I Cain't Say No" is a funny lyric, but there are no spots for audience laughter, and the point is more to make us smile than laugh.
Also, while comedy songs are often loaded with rhymes and puns, those things don't always get laughs. If you look at the original cast performance of "Please Hello" from Pacific Overtures, in ten minutes of dazzling rhymes, there aren't many laughs from the audience except at the simplest jokes: the repeated "Don't touch the coat," and the first mention of "Detente" where the audience gets the topical joke. (Stephen Sondheim has also said that the song "Barcelona" gets its biggest laugh right at the beginning, with the simple exchange "Where you going?" "Barcelona.")
The songs that get the biggest laughs are, first of all, songs that have some built-in laugh pauses (either a literal pause or a repetition, like of the song's title, where we don't need to hear the lyrics). And they're often songs that don't have a lot of big jokes in them, but have some overriding comic idea. "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" is, in my experience, a song that gets big laughs even on a record -- but only if it's sung by the kind of voice it was written for, a legit soprano voice. The gag is the contrast between the carnal sentiments of the lyrics and the sweetness of the melody and voice; when it's sung breathy and sexy, it is (again, in the performances I've heard) not a big laugh-getter.
And then there are some songs from unsuccessful shows that make me laugh harder than even comedy songs from some of the great shows. That's what got me thinking of this: I was listening to the cast album of the 1964 failure Bajour (about a band of Gypsies pulling an elaborate con on a naive anthropology student and her mother), and I was reminded that the song "Honest Man" always makes me laugh out loud.
It was added on the road as an eleven o'clock number for Herschel Bernardi (as the leader of the main Gypsy tribe) and Herb "Golden Girls" Edelman (as the leader of the Newark tribe). It's built around basically one joke, the "echo" joke where the characters repeat the last few words with a different meaning. But, because of the timing and the placement of the jokes, plus Bernardi and Edelman's delivery, I always, always laugh. And I bet I'd have laughed even harder with some of the visual business, like both actors taking off their hats as they sing "I swear by every hair on my head."
Are there any musical-theatre songs that always make you laugh?
Bajour is a pretty interesting show, though unrevivable since it's almost entirely built around negative ethnic stereotypes. It had great choreography by Peter Gennaro (who choreographed "America" and some of the other Sharks dances in West Side Story). The score, by a newcomer named Walter Marks, is quite good overall, entertaining even in the weaker songs, but Marks faded into almost complete obscurity after writing one other musical later in the decade (Golden Rainbow for Steve and Eydie, which produced Marks' only hit song, "I Gotta Be Me"). I think he wrote some material for Carol Burnett, and wrote the Merchant-Ivory flop movie The Wild Party. There were a lot of talented newcomers in the Broadway of the '60s who didn't quite make it, like Milt Schaefer (Drat! The Cat!), but Marks just sort of seemed to vanish, though I believe he's still alive.
The show was not an out-and-out flop, managing a run of about half a year. The problem with it, according to musical director Lehman Engel, was that it had two female stars, Chita Rivera (as a gypsy in charge of pulling the con) and Nancy Dussault (as the conn-ee). Rivera was better known, and you'd think that the "bad girl" would have the best material. But in fact, Dussault's material was generally better, and she was so good that she stole the show from Rivera. A lot of the tryout period was apparently spent trying to build up Rivera's part rather than fixing the fact that the male characters (except Bernardi) were weak.
Dussault and Bernardi proved they had the goods in another number that always makes me laugh, "Words, Words, Words," essentially a Vaudeville word-association sketch in musical form.
And, not comedy-related, but here's a sample of Gennaro's choreography, Chita Rivera dancing the title song. In this clip she sings it as well; Bernardi's character sings it on the cast album and in the script.
Also, while comedy songs are often loaded with rhymes and puns, those things don't always get laughs. If you look at the original cast performance of "Please Hello" from Pacific Overtures, in ten minutes of dazzling rhymes, there aren't many laughs from the audience except at the simplest jokes: the repeated "Don't touch the coat," and the first mention of "Detente" where the audience gets the topical joke. (Stephen Sondheim has also said that the song "Barcelona" gets its biggest laugh right at the beginning, with the simple exchange "Where you going?" "Barcelona.")
The songs that get the biggest laughs are, first of all, songs that have some built-in laugh pauses (either a literal pause or a repetition, like of the song's title, where we don't need to hear the lyrics). And they're often songs that don't have a lot of big jokes in them, but have some overriding comic idea. "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" is, in my experience, a song that gets big laughs even on a record -- but only if it's sung by the kind of voice it was written for, a legit soprano voice. The gag is the contrast between the carnal sentiments of the lyrics and the sweetness of the melody and voice; when it's sung breathy and sexy, it is (again, in the performances I've heard) not a big laugh-getter.
And then there are some songs from unsuccessful shows that make me laugh harder than even comedy songs from some of the great shows. That's what got me thinking of this: I was listening to the cast album of the 1964 failure Bajour (about a band of Gypsies pulling an elaborate con on a naive anthropology student and her mother), and I was reminded that the song "Honest Man" always makes me laugh out loud.
It was added on the road as an eleven o'clock number for Herschel Bernardi (as the leader of the main Gypsy tribe) and Herb "Golden Girls" Edelman (as the leader of the Newark tribe). It's built around basically one joke, the "echo" joke where the characters repeat the last few words with a different meaning. But, because of the timing and the placement of the jokes, plus Bernardi and Edelman's delivery, I always, always laugh. And I bet I'd have laughed even harder with some of the visual business, like both actors taking off their hats as they sing "I swear by every hair on my head."
Are there any musical-theatre songs that always make you laugh?
Bajour is a pretty interesting show, though unrevivable since it's almost entirely built around negative ethnic stereotypes. It had great choreography by Peter Gennaro (who choreographed "America" and some of the other Sharks dances in West Side Story). The score, by a newcomer named Walter Marks, is quite good overall, entertaining even in the weaker songs, but Marks faded into almost complete obscurity after writing one other musical later in the decade (Golden Rainbow for Steve and Eydie, which produced Marks' only hit song, "I Gotta Be Me"). I think he wrote some material for Carol Burnett, and wrote the Merchant-Ivory flop movie The Wild Party. There were a lot of talented newcomers in the Broadway of the '60s who didn't quite make it, like Milt Schaefer (Drat! The Cat!), but Marks just sort of seemed to vanish, though I believe he's still alive.
The show was not an out-and-out flop, managing a run of about half a year. The problem with it, according to musical director Lehman Engel, was that it had two female stars, Chita Rivera (as a gypsy in charge of pulling the con) and Nancy Dussault (as the conn-ee). Rivera was better known, and you'd think that the "bad girl" would have the best material. But in fact, Dussault's material was generally better, and she was so good that she stole the show from Rivera. A lot of the tryout period was apparently spent trying to build up Rivera's part rather than fixing the fact that the male characters (except Bernardi) were weak.
Dussault and Bernardi proved they had the goods in another number that always makes me laugh, "Words, Words, Words," essentially a Vaudeville word-association sketch in musical form.
And, not comedy-related, but here's a sample of Gennaro's choreography, Chita Rivera dancing the title song. In this clip she sings it as well; Bernardi's character sings it on the cast album and in the script.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Wanda WTF
Sorry for not posting recently; I think I'm going to return to posting a clip or story here until I can get some longer posts in the pipeline.
In my Bob Bolling post a couple of weeks ago, I didn't mention one story from the same period (mid-'80s) that I have never really understood, though I think I kind of like it in a weird sort of way. It's the five-page "Wanda Wunderbuss," which appeared in Pep in 1984, written, drawn, inked and lettered by Bolling. I know the omnibus titles Pep and Laugh did a few pilots for potential series that didn't take off (Jack Kirby even contributed a failed pilot to Laugh in 1947, called "Pipsy"). I guess this was one of them, but I can't quite believe anyone thought there was series potential in a story about a news reporter whose boyfriend turns out to be a robot, at a news station populated primarily by robots. It reads as one-third a parody of soap operas, one-third a parody of inane pretty-boy newscasters (three years before Broadcast News) and one-third just plain strangeness.
Adding to the strangeness is that Wanda's last name has clearly been changed to "Wunderbuss" from the original "Wunderbust" (the original name slips through at one point). Bolling sometimes tried to turn his fondness for puns into an attempt to get stuff by the editors, but I guess they caught this one.
Wanda Wunderbuss in"The Noose Behind the Nightly News, Or It Was a Real Hang-Up"
Script: Bob Bolling
Art, Inks and Letters: Bob Bolling
Coloring: Barry Grossman
In my Bob Bolling post a couple of weeks ago, I didn't mention one story from the same period (mid-'80s) that I have never really understood, though I think I kind of like it in a weird sort of way. It's the five-page "Wanda Wunderbuss," which appeared in Pep in 1984, written, drawn, inked and lettered by Bolling. I know the omnibus titles Pep and Laugh did a few pilots for potential series that didn't take off (Jack Kirby even contributed a failed pilot to Laugh in 1947, called "Pipsy"). I guess this was one of them, but I can't quite believe anyone thought there was series potential in a story about a news reporter whose boyfriend turns out to be a robot, at a news station populated primarily by robots. It reads as one-third a parody of soap operas, one-third a parody of inane pretty-boy newscasters (three years before Broadcast News) and one-third just plain strangeness.
Adding to the strangeness is that Wanda's last name has clearly been changed to "Wunderbuss" from the original "Wunderbust" (the original name slips through at one point). Bolling sometimes tried to turn his fondness for puns into an attempt to get stuff by the editors, but I guess they caught this one.
Wanda Wunderbuss in"The Noose Behind the Nightly News, Or It Was a Real Hang-Up"
Script: Bob Bolling
Art, Inks and Letters: Bob Bolling
Coloring: Barry Grossman
Monday, June 28, 2010
Alan Jay Lerner Hates the '80s
I've been wanting to write something about Dance a Little Closer, possibly the biggest musical flop of the '80s (even more than Carrie) and Alan Jay Lerner's last completed musical.
Like every show Lerner did without Fritz Loewe, it was unsuccessful (though Coco, probably his worst, actually made some money due to the presence of Katharine Hepburn) and like almost all of those shows, it has some wonderful things in it side-by-side with embarrassing things. In this case, the embarrassing things were apparently the staging -- Lerner directed it himself, creating a show that every critic condemned as ugly -- and the book, Lerner's over-ambitious attempt to update Robert Sherwood's anti-war comedy Idiot's Delight to the nuclear era. Critics also said that one of the embarrassing things was Lerner's subplot, about two gay men who ask a clergyman to marry them before nuclear Armageddon hits. But this subplot, which was attacked as Lerner's hopeless attempt to seem with-it, now seems ahead of its time.
Also, Lerner cast his umpteenth and last wife, British actress Liz Robertson, in the difficult lead role; Charles Strouse, the composer, wrote in his autobiography that a show should never have one man on songs, script and direction, and especially not if he's in love with the lead actor.
The good thing about the show, at least relatively, was the score. That's true of most of Lerner's shows; no matter how frustrating he was to work with, composers understood that he got good work from them. Burton Lane hated working with Lerner, in the middle of his Dr. Feelgood period, on On a Clear Day, but the score they produced was so good that Lane came back to him for Carmelina (and turned out another fine score for a flop show). Leonard Bernstein's score for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has some of the best music he'd done since the '50s, even for some songs where Lerner provided awful lyrics. John Barry's music for Lolita My Love was the best he ever produced for a stage show.
Charles Strouse's music for Dance a Little Closer doesn't stand out as much if only because he'd done better scores recently (Annie) and would do a better score right after (Rags). In my opinion Strouse is the most talented musical theatre composer of his generation -- roughly including Cy Coleman, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, John Kander, and so on -- a wonderful melodist with an eclectic style that somehow never sounds like anyone other than Strouse. Some of the songs in Dance a Little Closer are cheesy or sleazy, particularly the faster songs. But the ballads are frequently gorgeous.
"There's Always One You Can't Forget," the last song in Act 1, would have become a big hit if it had been in a show that ran more than one performance, even though Len Cariou, the star, has some trouble with it. (It's been speculated that Cariou over-extended himself by playing Sweeney Todd; this score, which was more within his normal range, had his voice sounding ragged a lot of the time.) The orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick are excellent here, as they are throughout the show -- a reminder of how much of the Stephen Sondheim sound is Tunick's as well, since portions of the score sound a lot like A Little Night Music without being melodically similar.
The Sherwood play, about an entertainer in a hotel in the middle of a war zone, appealed to Lerner for two reasons. By updating the story to the 1980s (though in turning the villain into a parody of Henry Kissinger, he betrayed the fact that he started writing it in the '70s), he was able to write a show that combined topical social commentary with nightclub numbers that commented on the action, like his ambitious 1948 failure Love Life.
One of the better numbers in this vein is "Mad," a number where Harry (Cariou) complains about all the things that bother him, while his backup singers comment on what's really bothering him. (The way Strouse and Tunick manage to combine two completely different moods in one song is a tribute to their skill as theatrical musicians.) The song is so clearly Lerner's own complaints about stuff that bugged him circa 1983 -- "Whoever made Atari should be hung by his thumbs" -- that it's a strangely enjoyable time capsule; I like finding out what was pissing off cranky 60-something writers in the '80s.
The other thing Lerner clearly liked was the romantic plot of the play: the hero meets a woman he recognizes as the one who left him years ago because he couldn't give her the life she wanted; she's now pretending to be a high-class Englishwoman, and is the mistress of the wealthy bad guy who's behind the upcoming war. After My Fair Lady, every show Lerner wrote -- except Camelot and maybe 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- is about the same thing: a woman who either is made over or makes herself over into someone else. In On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, the hero falls in love with the person the heroine was in a past life. In Coco, Gabrielle Chanel has transformed herself into "Coco." The guy even made a musical out of Lolita for heaven's sake (it closed on the road).
The heroine's decision to transform herself gives rise to a song that's had a certain amount of life outside the show -- Robertson has sometimes performed it and it gets done in auditions and musical-theatre recitals. "Another Life" is a weird song because it's a classic, by-the-numbers "I Want" power ballad, complete with big orchestral climax, yet the lyrics are completely materialistic and bitter. It's a big romantic song about preferring money and security to romance. The fact that Strouse's melody sounds a bit like "I Remember It Well" creates an additional level of weirdness here.
No one will ever revive Dance a Little Closer (nicknamed Close a Little Faster at the time). But we can be glad that it was given a cast recording after it closed; there's more worthwhile material in it than in most '80s musicals, and as with many of Lerner's shows, I can't help thinking that it could have been good if only someone else had had more control over it. (Lerner was all right when working with a strong director who could force him to cut and change, as Moss Hart did on My Fair Lady and Camelot.)
To close this off, here's the song where the issue of gay marriage was discussed for the first time in a musical. It's actually not a very good song; the lyrics are goofy doggerel (a lot of Lerner's shows have these types of lyrics in them) and the tune and ostinato accompaniment are the sorts of things Strouse could turn out in his sleep. However it does segue into another nice ballad, "Anyone Who Loves," which, again, would be an anthem by now if the show had been a hit.
Update: In comments, Griff, who saw the show in previews, gives some more details on why it was such a disaster.
Regarding DANCE A LITTLE CLOSER's "embarrassing" subplot with the gay couple who wished to be married, well, this was just handled so poorly (and cluelessly) by Lerner as director, one wanted to just look elsewhere in the theatre, think of other, better shows, hope for a sudden power failure. It could probably have be reworked and handled well by another director (who might have, of course, also suggested certain key revisions to the scenes) but it came across as altogether flatfooted -- indeed, painfully so.
I had no issues with the idea of the Kissinger-like villain, which didn't so much betray the '70s origin of the libretto as the fact that it was penned by a New Yorker with a long memory; I daresay that this is one aspect of Lerner's book that has not really dated, at least not for many residents of Manhattan.
Some of the songs are lovely. But the overall effect of the show, which I saw in previews, was stultifying; it made one want to flee the theatre. It wasn't just bad (my date regretted that we had attended the damn thing) -- I was actually surprised that the show did indeed open.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Perfectly Frank (And Dan)
I'll have more to say about IDW's Best of Dan DeCarlo: Volume 1 collection later, but for now I'll note that -- as first pointed out by Sean Gaffney, and confirmed when I got the book -- the table of contents includes credits for every story. They're in very small print, but they're there.
Because all the stories in the book are Betty and Veronica stories from the period of 1958 through 1969, nearly all the "written by" credits are, of course, for Frank Doyle. There's one story by George Gladir, one by Sy Reit, and one ("The Original") where the credit is "Writer Unknown," though it sure reads like a Doyle script to me. There are one or two stories where I'm not completely sure that the writing credit is right, and a couple of others where the inking credit is hard to figure -- Rudy Lapick is credited for most of them, but I thought there was a period in the '60s where DeCarlo replaced Lapick with his brother, Vince (who usually did DeCarlo's letters until his untimely death in the late '60s). Still, most of the credits look right at a glance.
I wouldn't say that every story here represents the best of DeCarlo or Doyle from this era, though some of them do, and anyway I would assume that the choice of stories was dictated to an extent by what original art was available. Anyway, more on that later.
Update: Here are the stories selected for this book.
All scripts are by Frank Doyle unless otherwise noted:
1. “Birth of a Notion” (Betty and Veronica # 37, July 1958) – The boys toss around a doll and fool the girls into thinking they’re tossing around a baby. (Script: Sy Reit)
2. “Flip Flopped” (Betty and Veronica # 38, September 1958) – Veronica signs up for the cheerleading squad.
3. “Sheep Skinned” (Betty and Veronica # 44, August 1959) – The boys accuse the girls of being “sheep” for following the latest, unattractive-looking fashions.
4. “A Choice Choice” (Betty and Veronica Annual # 8, 1960) – Archie has to break his date with Veronica to take his mother out on her birthday.
5. “Something to Remember” (Betty and Veronica # 63, March 1961) – Veronica is peeved because Archie can never remember what she wears.
6. “The Reader Knows Best” (Betty and Veronica # 63) – Archie tries to do the same task for both Betty and Veronica, while assuring the reader that he knows what he’s doing.
7. “The Bluest Angel” (Betty and Veronica # 63) – Betty feels guilty about exploiting a misunderstanding between Archie and Veronica.
8. “Gambler’s Luck” (Betty and Veronica # 65, May 1961) – The girls toss a coin to see who gets Archie.
9. “Snob Sister” (Betty and Veronica # 69, September 1961) – After Betty berates her for being a snob, Veronica argues that everyone is a snob about something or other.
10. “Switchcraft” (Betty and Veronica # 69) – When Betty has a date with Archie, Veronica thanks her for taking the dull boy off her hands.
11. “The Original” (Betty and Veronica # 77, May 1962) – Veronica explains that she doesn’t wear real jewels in public, just copies of them. (Credit reads “Writer unknown,” though it might also be Doyle)
12. “Commercial Caper” (Betty and Veronica # 83, November 1962) – Betty blows up “Archie Loves Betty” balloons and sends them floating all over town.
13. “Glad To Help” (Betty and Veronica # 86, February 1963) – Archie tries to use Betty to make Veronica jealous, and she’s only too happy to be used.
14. “Dear Diary” (Archie Giant Series # 23, September 1963) – Betty writes her version of the day’s events in her diary, while we see what actually happened.
15. “Sugar Doll” (Betty and Veronica # 103, July 1964) – Veronica tries to make candy, and both she and Betty get tangled up in the sticky goo.
16. “Heat Wave” (Betty and Veronica # 106, October 1964) – Archie, Betty and Veronica spend a hot day squirting each other with hoses.
17. “Bully Girl” (Betty and Veronica # 106) – Veronica shows off her new martial arts skills by beating up everyone in sight.
18. “The Midas Mess” (Betty and Veronica # 112, April 1965) – Everything and everyone Betty touches turns to gold.
19. “Prize Package” (Betty and Veronica # 112) – Betty tells Archie he’s won a “most popular boy” contest.
20. “Message Center” (Betty and Veronica # 116, August 1965) – Betty has to break her date with Archie when she sees a message on the bulletin board saying Miss Grundy wants to see her after school.
21. “The Phenomenon” (Betty and Veronica # 117, September 1965) – Betty and Archie discover that when Veronica stands on her head, her speech balloons are upside down.
22. “Rhyme Time” (Betty and Veronica # 119, November 1965) – The narrator re-introduces us to the Archie gang, in rhyme.
23. “Do No Evil” (reprinted in Archie Giant Series # 137, January 1966 — but from the look of it it’s clearly an earlier story, probably from 1960 or so) – After the girls accuse them of being slobs, Archie and Reggie try to avenge themselves by ruining the girls’ clothes.
24. “Feed Deed” (Betty and Veronica # 130, October 1966) – At the beach, Veronica tries to outdo Betty’s cooking. (Script: George Gladir)
25. “Wing It” (Betty and Veronica # 155, November 1968) – Betty impresses the boys with her great throwing arm, but Veronica gets more results by throwing badly.
26. “Drive To Distraction” (Betty and Veronica # 167, November 1969) – Archie uses a beach umbrella to give Veronica some shade in his car.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Armond White, Rotten Tomatoes and General Hilarity
You may have noticed that Armond White, whose contrarianism and combination of unpredictability and utter predictability (he's loved every Spielberg movie since god knows when) were once known only to a few film buffs, has become more widely-known lately. But not in a good way. There's even a petition to ban him from Rotten Tomatoes.
As movie fans have gotten obsessed with Rotten Tomatoes rankings -- rooting for their favorite action/animation/sci-fi movies to get 100% positive rankings -- they've noticed that White frequently goes against the critical consensus (though not always), and that he single-handedly stands in the way of getting Toy Story 3 a perfect score. And so they're enraged. Since I think a collective critical ranking is kind of useless, particularly a numerical one, I kind of enjoy seeing him screw it up.
And it's also interesting to witness the anger of people who think The Dark Knight is the last word in cinema but can't stand a single contrary opinion. It's as if they don't have full confidence in their own opinions. White fills his contrarian reviews with references to other movies, often very worthwhile ones (I may not agree with his pan of Toy Story 3, but I agree that Small Soldiers is an underrated film), and obviously knows a lot about movies -- not just recent Hollywood movies either, but movies from all places and time periods. That gives his writing a certain authority that can make a person very uncomfortable; I think some (not all) of the people who get really angry at White are worried that he may be right. It's a bit like I used to get angry at John Kricfalusi for his opinions on cartoons I liked, because I wasn't secure enough in my own likes and dislikes. I'm now at the point where I know enough to agree or disagree.
Of course White is not right, or at least I find it very difficult to believe that he means what he says all the time. He denies that he's going out of his way to offer the opposite opinion from other critics, but since it happens so often, it almost comes off as a parody of criticism, a bit of performance art designed to show how meaningless critical buzzwords are. He uses the same words lots of critics use, and makes them argue the exact opposite from what the rest of them are arguing.
I also wonder if White's increasing weirdness is just based on his lack of interest in most current Hollywood movies. As a regular reviewer he has to be, officially, interested in every movie that comes out, and especially the big Hollywood releases. Except I doubt he cares very much about most Hollywood blockbuster sequels, whether it's Transformers 3 or Toy Story 3. And if he doesn't care, he might as well argue the opposite of other critics. Especially when it gets a rise out of the kind of filmgoer who is his natural enemy -- the filmgoer who is almost exclusively interested in current Hollywood product.
That's not really a defense of White. The thing I can say in his defense is that he still can and does write interesting pieces on small, foreign and past films -- that is, the kind of films where no one cares about the Rotten Tomatometer. Those are the films that he clearly gives a damn about, and if you look at his reviews with the new Hollywood movies filtered out, he looks a lot less bizarre.
But, of course, if he really is just having a lark with contrarian reviews of movies he doesn't care about, that's not a defense either. I'm sure it can be a chore to find something to say about every new movie, but his criticisms are so non-specific that I can't help thinking (again) that they're just some big joke on criticism.
Still, I can't help but feel a bit of enjoyment at watching the reaction to a critic who refuses to consider movies important just because they're big and new. I mean, if you look at the famous list of movies he hates and likes -- yes, the hates are sometimes weird and the likes equally so. But I don't think most of the movies on the "hate" list are immortal masterpieces, and his hatred of them isn't that much weirder than the reviews that proclaim these movies to be four-star perfection.
Most movies, then and now, don't matter that much in the long run. And the ones that do turn out to matter often aren't the ones that get the four-star reviews at the time. That, at least, is something that White keeps pointing out in his own strange way. And while everyone should like what they like, there's a weird sense of entitlement in some of his attackers, the idea that not only did they think Toy Story 3 was great (a perfectly good opinion) but that because it's the biggest movie of the week, everybody must validate this opinion. White's performance art is suggesting that most of these big movies are just the flavor of the week, and it doesn't matter much what critics say about them. I'd prefer this suggestion to be coming from a regular critic who actually discusses the movies, not a distant idea of what they are, but at least he's goading people into questioning some assumptions about what the "important" movies are at a given moment.
Update: In comments, Bwolowitz has a different perspective on where White is coming from:
I've read enough Armond to believe that he truly considers himself to be the savior of a diseased film culture. He constantly lashes out viciously against critics and so-called "hipsters" (White's favorite pejorative that's utterly meaningless in his hands) who have taken film culture in the wrong direction. And only he can right the course. So what we see as contrarianism, he sees as corrective measures. (And sometimes - rarely nowadays - he's right.)
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Talking Owls, River Rats, and a Wolf Named Kanyook
I discovered some interesting comics and contributions during last year's bout of Archie Comics research, but one of my favorite discoveries was a run of comics I actually remembered reading as a kid: Bob Bolling's two-year run as the writer and artist on Archie and Me, from issue # 141 through issue # 152. Since today is Bolling's 82nd birthday, I thought I'd write a bit about this run, probably his best contribution to the regular Archie comics and one of the more personal, idiosyncratic creator runs of the '80s.
The background is this: Archie and Me was a title launched in the '60s, and the "Me" was Mr. Weatherbee; all the stories had Weatherbee in them and were mostly about his relationship with Archie. It was one of the titles that Bolling was assigned to after he was forcibly removed from his own creation, Little Archie; he drew several issues in the mid-'60s, though from Frank Doyle's scripts, not his own. From the late '60s through the early '70s, the title was mostly written and drawn by the late Joe Edwards (creator of Li'l Jinx), who tried to do longer and more sentimental stories than you'd find in the other books; and then Al Hartley did some that were unbelievably preachy even by his standards. By the late '70s, though, the book became one of many titles that was just an "inventory" book: it had no style or consistent artist of its own, and the editors would just fill it up with four stories that happened to feature Mr. Weatherbee.
This continued up until 1982, when the Archie company contracted heavily (the collapse of the newsstand and subscription markets threatened to kill them off). All their titles were changed to bi-monthlies; many of their artists were temporarily laid off, and when they started producing new stories after several months of getting by mostly on inventory, they were determined to try and make the comics a little more relevant and hip. (I said a little.) This was the period when they switched back to the larger number of panels they'd used in the '50s and early '60s -- trying to "give the kids more for their money," as editor Victor Gorelick put it -- introduced new characters like Cheryl and Jason Blossom, and gave a makeover to a number of their lower-selling titles.
Bolling was originally assigned to Sabrina the Teenage Witch, with a mandate to include more fantasy and adventure elements rather than the humdrum domestic comedy stuff. He produced some excellent stories in this vein, but the title was canceled soon after he started, and most of the stories were burned off in other comics. Little Archie had also been canceled as a regular title (though Bolling and Dexter Taylor would continue to do stories for the digests and special issues), so Bolling wound up being given Archie and Me as his regular beat, writing and drawing an issue every two months (while also illustrating other people's scripts for the other comics).
It was his upcoming work on Archie and Me that Bolling was talking about in 1983 when he told an interviewer that he was "trying to bring Archie into today" and "give him some problems to wrestle with." Because this was Archie comics, that didn't really mean anything big or shocking, and Archie remained the good all-American boy who always does the right thing. But in many ways, Bolling's Archie and Me stories were different from anything the company had done. The only rule they followed was that Weatherbee was in every one of them (though he plays only a small part in a few).
The look was different: instead of the bright, light style of the usual Archie comic, these stories were filled with melancholy shadows, characters seen from a distance, and very specific evocations of nature, the seasons, and the times of day. The distinctive feel of all these stories comes from the fact that Bolling is usually quite specific about when a scene is taking place: many comics have just "day" and "night," but Bolling tried to give a different look to dawn, dusk, the time you walk to school and the time you walk home.
The range of subject matter also broadened. As most of you know, regular Archie comics basically had two modes: comedy and adventure. The comedy stories were in the tradition created by Bob Montana, and the adventure stories were the very melodramatic, slightly tongue-in-cheek kind created by Bob White and Sy Reit for Life With Archie. But most of Bolling's Archie and Me stories don't fit into either category. There are adventure stories, but much more serious and earnest than the Life With Archie material. And there are stories that play more as straight drama, like "The New Teacher" (about a meek teacher who turns out to be haunted by his failure to save his buddies in Vietnam) or "Heart's Desire" (Archie buys an obviously stolen tape player, and feels so guilty about it that he can't enjoy anything). There's even a sad, quiet Twilight Zone-ish story about a ghostly girl Archie meets, called "Jogger Jill." And yeah, there are a few regular slapstick stories mixed in there.
All of this is not much like a normal Archie comic, but it is a lot like Bolling's Little Archie, and that's what this run basically was: for the first time, Bolling was doing Archie stories that exist in the same world -- tonally and continuity-wise -- as his own Little Archie creation. The stories are flooded with references and characters that Bolling created in Little Archie and that no one used except him. Spotty, Little Archie's dog, becomes big Archie's dog as well. A guy who tries to rob the school is Chester Punkett, formerly Mad Doctor Doom's teenage assistant. In a Little Archie mystery story, Betty's brother Chick went to work for Kindly Mother Kelly's bakery, run by the unseen but rapacious and evil capitalist Kindly Mother Kelly; when Archie goes to get a job with her in Archie and Me, she's become "Kindly Mother Kelly Industries," with her corporate headquarters guarded by vicious dog. Even the throwaway references are tied into things that only regular Bolling readers would remember; when we see one of the places Malcolm Meeks worked after leaving the army, it's "Dreggs" gas stations, a Lodge-owned gas chain that Bolling created in the late '60s.
Partly because its references only existed within Bolling's stories (though some of them have been taken up by other writers/artists since then), this entire run sort of exists in its own world. Another reason is that the run has its own separate continuity. Archie comics didn't usually have continuity (and they didn't need them; humor comics, like cartoons, regenerate in every story), but Bolling's Archie and Me, while consisting of self-contained stories, does have some continuing threads: Archie gets his wrist broken in one story, spends the next story in a sling, and his recovery becomes a major plot point in the next issue.
And many of the characters act differently than they normally would outside Bolling's world. Archie is much more like Little Archie, the earnest kid who frequently gets into trouble but is incredibly plucky in a crisis; the love-triangle stuff is almost absent here. Jughead is almost totally absent, appearing only in cameos and getting like one line in the entire run. (Jughead didn't appear that much in Bolling's Little Archie stories either; I don't think he's really that into the character.) Instead, Reggie becomes Archie's closest friend, and while they're still in competition over spots on sports teams and the like, it's more of a competition between two friends who have different personalities; this Reggie is Archie's more self-confident, slightly cooler pal.
Given the freedom to turn this comic into his own private world, Bolling responded with the best writing he had ever done for "big" Archie stories. Normally he would over-indulge in bad puns (perhaps a defense mechanism against accusations that his scripts didn't have enough hard jokes), and there are a few stories early in the run that do just that. But for the most part, the punning is kept to a minimum and he turns in the kind of work he had done on his Little Archie stories of 1956-1965 and 1979-81: excellent characterization, sentimentality that doesn't go over the top, and a really personal way of looking at the world, nature and fate ("I knew this tree was here for a purpose," Archie says when he uses a tree to save a bus full of students -- Bolling's stories have no religious content, but they have a lot of quasi-mystical content). There are also some strange framing devices, reminiscent of the talking toys in his classic "The Long Walk." One story appears to be narrated by the wind; another is quite literally narrated by a talking owl (who had actually appeared, though not talking, in some Bolling-drawn stories from the '70s).
Though Bolling probably inked the first couple of issues in this run, most of the others were inked by Chic Stone. Stone, who had been one of the best inkers for Jack Kirby, was working as Harry Lucey's inker when Lucey had to retire; this gave him the chance to draw Archie, but his work as a penciller was frankly awful. (Stone's pencilling on Archie, I mean, was awful; some of his other stuff is better.) As an inker, though, he was tops, and he's one of the few inkers Bolling ever had who doesn't diffuse the rough charm of the pencils.
The last story in this run appeared in Archie and Me # 152. After that, the title went back to a grab-bag inventory title for a few years (Bolling drew but didn't write a few stories in this period) and then was canceled. I don't know how well the Bolling run did, though lasting two years is pretty good considering the Archie company's tendency to get cold feet about everything. I remember as a child being very impressed by "Jogger Jill," but puzzled by this story, "Blue Saturday": I wondered why Spotty was there when I'd never seen him in any of the big Archie stories, where Jughead was, since when Mr. Svenson had a cat named "Loki" (Bolling, who adores cats, likes to give them to any character who could plausibly have one) and why the whole thing gave such a sad, melancholy -- that word again, I know, but it always seems to fit with Bolling -- air to what was otherwise just a normal Archie story. I don't know if my reaction was typical, but I'm not sure if we were ready to see Archie as a regular bittersweet coming-of-age tale.
(An added reference to an earlier story: "Any room in there for me?" is what Archie's father said to Spotty in a Bolling Little Archie.)
If I had to pick a favorite story from Bolling's Archie and Me, it would be the issue-length Lonely Lobo, about Archie's encounter with a wolf at Mr. Lodge's mountain retreat (which, again, is cross-referenced with a Little Archie story). It's got the obsession with nature and the animal world, and Bolling's objective attitude toward the cruelty and danger inherent in that world; it's got a sad but semi-mystical ending that hints at something much bigger than the story we just read.
The background is this: Archie and Me was a title launched in the '60s, and the "Me" was Mr. Weatherbee; all the stories had Weatherbee in them and were mostly about his relationship with Archie. It was one of the titles that Bolling was assigned to after he was forcibly removed from his own creation, Little Archie; he drew several issues in the mid-'60s, though from Frank Doyle's scripts, not his own. From the late '60s through the early '70s, the title was mostly written and drawn by the late Joe Edwards (creator of Li'l Jinx), who tried to do longer and more sentimental stories than you'd find in the other books; and then Al Hartley did some that were unbelievably preachy even by his standards. By the late '70s, though, the book became one of many titles that was just an "inventory" book: it had no style or consistent artist of its own, and the editors would just fill it up with four stories that happened to feature Mr. Weatherbee.
This continued up until 1982, when the Archie company contracted heavily (the collapse of the newsstand and subscription markets threatened to kill them off). All their titles were changed to bi-monthlies; many of their artists were temporarily laid off, and when they started producing new stories after several months of getting by mostly on inventory, they were determined to try and make the comics a little more relevant and hip. (I said a little.) This was the period when they switched back to the larger number of panels they'd used in the '50s and early '60s -- trying to "give the kids more for their money," as editor Victor Gorelick put it -- introduced new characters like Cheryl and Jason Blossom, and gave a makeover to a number of their lower-selling titles.
Bolling was originally assigned to Sabrina the Teenage Witch, with a mandate to include more fantasy and adventure elements rather than the humdrum domestic comedy stuff. He produced some excellent stories in this vein, but the title was canceled soon after he started, and most of the stories were burned off in other comics. Little Archie had also been canceled as a regular title (though Bolling and Dexter Taylor would continue to do stories for the digests and special issues), so Bolling wound up being given Archie and Me as his regular beat, writing and drawing an issue every two months (while also illustrating other people's scripts for the other comics).
It was his upcoming work on Archie and Me that Bolling was talking about in 1983 when he told an interviewer that he was "trying to bring Archie into today" and "give him some problems to wrestle with." Because this was Archie comics, that didn't really mean anything big or shocking, and Archie remained the good all-American boy who always does the right thing. But in many ways, Bolling's Archie and Me stories were different from anything the company had done. The only rule they followed was that Weatherbee was in every one of them (though he plays only a small part in a few).
The look was different: instead of the bright, light style of the usual Archie comic, these stories were filled with melancholy shadows, characters seen from a distance, and very specific evocations of nature, the seasons, and the times of day. The distinctive feel of all these stories comes from the fact that Bolling is usually quite specific about when a scene is taking place: many comics have just "day" and "night," but Bolling tried to give a different look to dawn, dusk, the time you walk to school and the time you walk home.
The range of subject matter also broadened. As most of you know, regular Archie comics basically had two modes: comedy and adventure. The comedy stories were in the tradition created by Bob Montana, and the adventure stories were the very melodramatic, slightly tongue-in-cheek kind created by Bob White and Sy Reit for Life With Archie. But most of Bolling's Archie and Me stories don't fit into either category. There are adventure stories, but much more serious and earnest than the Life With Archie material. And there are stories that play more as straight drama, like "The New Teacher" (about a meek teacher who turns out to be haunted by his failure to save his buddies in Vietnam) or "Heart's Desire" (Archie buys an obviously stolen tape player, and feels so guilty about it that he can't enjoy anything). There's even a sad, quiet Twilight Zone-ish story about a ghostly girl Archie meets, called "Jogger Jill." And yeah, there are a few regular slapstick stories mixed in there.
All of this is not much like a normal Archie comic, but it is a lot like Bolling's Little Archie, and that's what this run basically was: for the first time, Bolling was doing Archie stories that exist in the same world -- tonally and continuity-wise -- as his own Little Archie creation. The stories are flooded with references and characters that Bolling created in Little Archie and that no one used except him. Spotty, Little Archie's dog, becomes big Archie's dog as well. A guy who tries to rob the school is Chester Punkett, formerly Mad Doctor Doom's teenage assistant. In a Little Archie mystery story, Betty's brother Chick went to work for Kindly Mother Kelly's bakery, run by the unseen but rapacious and evil capitalist Kindly Mother Kelly; when Archie goes to get a job with her in Archie and Me, she's become "Kindly Mother Kelly Industries," with her corporate headquarters guarded by vicious dog. Even the throwaway references are tied into things that only regular Bolling readers would remember; when we see one of the places Malcolm Meeks worked after leaving the army, it's "Dreggs" gas stations, a Lodge-owned gas chain that Bolling created in the late '60s.
Partly because its references only existed within Bolling's stories (though some of them have been taken up by other writers/artists since then), this entire run sort of exists in its own world. Another reason is that the run has its own separate continuity. Archie comics didn't usually have continuity (and they didn't need them; humor comics, like cartoons, regenerate in every story), but Bolling's Archie and Me, while consisting of self-contained stories, does have some continuing threads: Archie gets his wrist broken in one story, spends the next story in a sling, and his recovery becomes a major plot point in the next issue.
And many of the characters act differently than they normally would outside Bolling's world. Archie is much more like Little Archie, the earnest kid who frequently gets into trouble but is incredibly plucky in a crisis; the love-triangle stuff is almost absent here. Jughead is almost totally absent, appearing only in cameos and getting like one line in the entire run. (Jughead didn't appear that much in Bolling's Little Archie stories either; I don't think he's really that into the character.) Instead, Reggie becomes Archie's closest friend, and while they're still in competition over spots on sports teams and the like, it's more of a competition between two friends who have different personalities; this Reggie is Archie's more self-confident, slightly cooler pal.
Given the freedom to turn this comic into his own private world, Bolling responded with the best writing he had ever done for "big" Archie stories. Normally he would over-indulge in bad puns (perhaps a defense mechanism against accusations that his scripts didn't have enough hard jokes), and there are a few stories early in the run that do just that. But for the most part, the punning is kept to a minimum and he turns in the kind of work he had done on his Little Archie stories of 1956-1965 and 1979-81: excellent characterization, sentimentality that doesn't go over the top, and a really personal way of looking at the world, nature and fate ("I knew this tree was here for a purpose," Archie says when he uses a tree to save a bus full of students -- Bolling's stories have no religious content, but they have a lot of quasi-mystical content). There are also some strange framing devices, reminiscent of the talking toys in his classic "The Long Walk." One story appears to be narrated by the wind; another is quite literally narrated by a talking owl (who had actually appeared, though not talking, in some Bolling-drawn stories from the '70s).
Though Bolling probably inked the first couple of issues in this run, most of the others were inked by Chic Stone. Stone, who had been one of the best inkers for Jack Kirby, was working as Harry Lucey's inker when Lucey had to retire; this gave him the chance to draw Archie, but his work as a penciller was frankly awful. (Stone's pencilling on Archie, I mean, was awful; some of his other stuff is better.) As an inker, though, he was tops, and he's one of the few inkers Bolling ever had who doesn't diffuse the rough charm of the pencils.
The last story in this run appeared in Archie and Me # 152. After that, the title went back to a grab-bag inventory title for a few years (Bolling drew but didn't write a few stories in this period) and then was canceled. I don't know how well the Bolling run did, though lasting two years is pretty good considering the Archie company's tendency to get cold feet about everything. I remember as a child being very impressed by "Jogger Jill," but puzzled by this story, "Blue Saturday": I wondered why Spotty was there when I'd never seen him in any of the big Archie stories, where Jughead was, since when Mr. Svenson had a cat named "Loki" (Bolling, who adores cats, likes to give them to any character who could plausibly have one) and why the whole thing gave such a sad, melancholy -- that word again, I know, but it always seems to fit with Bolling -- air to what was otherwise just a normal Archie story. I don't know if my reaction was typical, but I'm not sure if we were ready to see Archie as a regular bittersweet coming-of-age tale.
(An added reference to an earlier story: "Any room in there for me?" is what Archie's father said to Spotty in a Bolling Little Archie.)
If I had to pick a favorite story from Bolling's Archie and Me, it would be the issue-length Lonely Lobo, about Archie's encounter with a wolf at Mr. Lodge's mountain retreat (which, again, is cross-referenced with a Little Archie story). It's got the obsession with nature and the animal world, and Bolling's objective attitude toward the cruelty and danger inherent in that world; it's got a sad but semi-mystical ending that hints at something much bigger than the story we just read.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
The Lost Continent of Alanis
I've said a few times that the late '90s (really, mid-to-late '90s, starting in 1995 or so) have their own very distinctive culture, and that when I watch a show or a movie from that era, certain obsessions seem to stand out and define the era. Other patches of years don't have that kind of identity as I see it, and others are defined only by the clothes or the style of music, but works from the late '90s seem to form their own weird little world.
One example that came to mind when I was re-watching some '90s TV shows: Alanis Morissette. It's not just that she was a phenomenon of the era, with Jagged Little Pill being played, talked about and imitated everywhere. It's that her success created a new archetype that became huge on TV for about three years: it seemed like everyone was making jokes, sketches, or whole episodes about angry young women singing songs about how much they hate men. Alanis jokes are still popular, come to think of it, since she's become comedy-writer shorthand for "man-hating." But in the late '90s, they were like a way of life.
I don't know if this stood out for anyone else, or if anyone remembers particular examples of pop culture's Alanis obsession. I can't actually name as many specific examples as I thought I could, because I remember several jokes or Alanis-like characters without remembering the source. (That's the problem with trying to reach back 15 years and remember what you saw: you can remember seeing it, you can't always remember where.) One I remember, because I saw it recently, was an entire Duckman episode where Bernice becomes a star by singing about how much she hates Duckman. Another example is below. Still another example is the French and Saunders bit "Bless U," though this one doesn't fit as clearly, because it's a parody of a song from a later album, rather than a response to the success of "Jagged Little Pill." I'll try and find some other examples from the era, or someone else can refresh my memory. But I definitely think it was a real phenomenon, because I remember seeing it in several different places.
It's not a big thing; I just find it very representative of the time. Everyone, everywhere, seemed briefly obsessed with the idea of the young woman who becomes a star by turning angry. I guess if you want to analyze it more, you could note that it's a bit sexist (young men singing angry songs are all over the place, but a young woman singing about her jerky ex-boyfriend is a freak), but lots of obsessions are. It just seems now like a very late '90s thing for writers to be preoccupied with.
Of the Morissette send-ups I remember -- and if you have any other examples from the '90s, refresh my memory -- the best was a Boy Meets World, where Will "Why Isn't This Talented Guy Doing More Non-Voice-Over-Work" Friedle meets a singer of sappy, cutesy songs (Leisha Hailey). When he breaks up with her, it drives her to write angry songs about him, and it makes her an instant star. "Planet Flaflooga" and "That's a minor chord!" are among the lines I have been quoting ever since this thing aired in 1996. It was written, incidentally, by Jeffrey C. Sherman, son of songwriter Robert B. Sherman of Sherman Brothers fame.
It's just me, I don't deny that; but to me, this clip just yells out "1996," just like many episodes from the seventh and eighth seasons of The Simpsons. Anything made in that era is just so redolent of its time, whereas something made in, say, 1992 or 2001 doesn't have as many clear cultural identifiers.
One example that came to mind when I was re-watching some '90s TV shows: Alanis Morissette. It's not just that she was a phenomenon of the era, with Jagged Little Pill being played, talked about and imitated everywhere. It's that her success created a new archetype that became huge on TV for about three years: it seemed like everyone was making jokes, sketches, or whole episodes about angry young women singing songs about how much they hate men. Alanis jokes are still popular, come to think of it, since she's become comedy-writer shorthand for "man-hating." But in the late '90s, they were like a way of life.
I don't know if this stood out for anyone else, or if anyone remembers particular examples of pop culture's Alanis obsession. I can't actually name as many specific examples as I thought I could, because I remember several jokes or Alanis-like characters without remembering the source. (That's the problem with trying to reach back 15 years and remember what you saw: you can remember seeing it, you can't always remember where.) One I remember, because I saw it recently, was an entire Duckman episode where Bernice becomes a star by singing about how much she hates Duckman. Another example is below. Still another example is the French and Saunders bit "Bless U," though this one doesn't fit as clearly, because it's a parody of a song from a later album, rather than a response to the success of "Jagged Little Pill." I'll try and find some other examples from the era, or someone else can refresh my memory. But I definitely think it was a real phenomenon, because I remember seeing it in several different places.
It's not a big thing; I just find it very representative of the time. Everyone, everywhere, seemed briefly obsessed with the idea of the young woman who becomes a star by turning angry. I guess if you want to analyze it more, you could note that it's a bit sexist (young men singing angry songs are all over the place, but a young woman singing about her jerky ex-boyfriend is a freak), but lots of obsessions are. It just seems now like a very late '90s thing for writers to be preoccupied with.
Of the Morissette send-ups I remember -- and if you have any other examples from the '90s, refresh my memory -- the best was a Boy Meets World, where Will "Why Isn't This Talented Guy Doing More Non-Voice-Over-Work" Friedle meets a singer of sappy, cutesy songs (Leisha Hailey). When he breaks up with her, it drives her to write angry songs about him, and it makes her an instant star. "Planet Flaflooga" and "That's a minor chord!" are among the lines I have been quoting ever since this thing aired in 1996. It was written, incidentally, by Jeffrey C. Sherman, son of songwriter Robert B. Sherman of Sherman Brothers fame.
It's just me, I don't deny that; but to me, this clip just yells out "1996," just like many episodes from the seventh and eighth seasons of The Simpsons. Anything made in that era is just so redolent of its time, whereas something made in, say, 1992 or 2001 doesn't have as many clear cultural identifiers.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
William A. Fraker
Having written about Frank's Place the other day, I'm sad to see that the man who helped create the distinctive look of the show died this Monday: the great cinematographer, Bill Fraker.
Though he didn't shoot as many successful films as some of his contemporaries, Fraker was, in my opinion, one of the best of the new generation of cinematographers that took over Hollywood in the late '60s and early '70s, when nearly all the old-guard cinematographers were forced into retirement around the same time. He combined the new look and new techniques with a bit of that old larger-than-life glamour; that's what made him a great choice for movies with an element of fantasy, whether it was Rosemary's Baby or Heaven Can Wait or 1941 (not a fantasy per se but certainly not at all realistic).
He didn't usually do TV, but he shot the Frank's Place pilot as a favor to Hugh Wilson (they'd worked together on the movie Burglar) while another film was delayed for some reason. He didn't do the other episodes, but the cinematic look of the show -- the "steam and smoke and food" -- followed the template he set in the pilot.
Though he didn't shoot as many successful films as some of his contemporaries, Fraker was, in my opinion, one of the best of the new generation of cinematographers that took over Hollywood in the late '60s and early '70s, when nearly all the old-guard cinematographers were forced into retirement around the same time. He combined the new look and new techniques with a bit of that old larger-than-life glamour; that's what made him a great choice for movies with an element of fantasy, whether it was Rosemary's Baby or Heaven Can Wait or 1941 (not a fantasy per se but certainly not at all realistic).
He didn't usually do TV, but he shot the Frank's Place pilot as a favor to Hugh Wilson (they'd worked together on the movie Burglar) while another film was delayed for some reason. He didn't do the other episodes, but the cinematic look of the show -- the "steam and smoke and food" -- followed the template he set in the pilot.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Terrifying Donkey Music
I'm sure this has been featured elsewhere, but it's the first time I saw it: the transformation scene from Pinocchio with only the music, no sound effects or dialogue.
What we learn from the scene in this form is pretty much what we knew before: it's terrifying even without Lampwick's cries of "mama!" (though the dialogue and effects certainly do make the scene even scarier) and Leigh Harline was good at writing horror music, as he would prove when he moved to RKO and scored some of their horror and noir films (including Val Lewton's Isle of the Dead). I've always thought of him as one of the best of the "utility" composers in Hollywood, the guys who were not assigned to big projects and had to work -- sometimes uncredited -- on anything that wasn't handled by the department heads or the more in-demand composers (like Herrmann or Rosza or Waxman). At Fox, for example, he doesn't seem to have been first choice for anything, but on a modestly-budgeted movie like Pickup On South Street he turned out a score whose nervous energy matches the director's.
What we learn from the scene in this form is pretty much what we knew before: it's terrifying even without Lampwick's cries of "mama!" (though the dialogue and effects certainly do make the scene even scarier) and Leigh Harline was good at writing horror music, as he would prove when he moved to RKO and scored some of their horror and noir films (including Val Lewton's Isle of the Dead). I've always thought of him as one of the best of the "utility" composers in Hollywood, the guys who were not assigned to big projects and had to work -- sometimes uncredited -- on anything that wasn't handled by the department heads or the more in-demand composers (like Herrmann or Rosza or Waxman). At Fox, for example, he doesn't seem to have been first choice for anything, but on a modestly-budgeted movie like Pickup On South Street he turned out a score whose nervous energy matches the director's.
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