Lucky People (With a little Judy on the side)

Don't miss the last one:

In Honor of the Oscars.

The trailer for every film that ever won an Oscar.



And, yeah, I loved The Hurt Locker. It was my favorite film of the year.

Mark Evanier Remembers Arnold Stang.

Arnold Stang died. He had one of the greatest voices ever committed to film or TV. It was both immediately identifiable, uneasily imitated, and always, always hilarious. A sadsack Daffy Duck.

Mark Evanier, whose blog is an essential, tells his story here.

He was a joy to work with. The only direction I gave him — the only direction you could give a guy like that — was, "Try to sound like Arnold Stang." He did so with ease, like he'd been doing it all his life and he was perfect. He was also gracious enough to record a message for my answering machine.

While I was recording with Arnold, Eddie Lawrence arrived. You may not know Eddie's name but he's a wonderful character actor and comedian who did a series of much-quoted records as "The Old Philosopher." His catch-phrase was, "Hey, is that's what bothering you, Bunky?" Anyway, he and Arnold were longtime pals, and when Arnold and I were done with his cartoon and he exited the booth, he and Eddie embraced.

Then Arnold looked him in the eye and sounding as serious as Arnold Stang could possibly sound, he pointed to me and said, "Eddie, don't give this young man any trouble. He's a fine director and you just do everything he says."

Eddie promised he would. That wasn't good enough for Arnold. He added, "If you give him any crap, I'll come back here and kick your ass." Then he handed me his pager number and said, "Remember...if he gets out of line, call me and I'll come back and kick his ass." This wasn't necessary but there was one moment when Eddie was giving me a little problem and I had to threaten, "I'll call Arnold." He immediately apologized and agreed to do it the way I wanted. The power of an Arnold Stang threat.

The notion of anyone being afraid of Arnold Stang is so wonderfully absurd. Thanks, Mark, for that story. Go to his site for videos and a sound clip.

Zero Hour in NY 7: Snow Day

Anticipating the first big snow storm of the season, we introduce Taylor and then spend time chatting on the stage of Zero Hour with the Jim Brochu and crew. Hilarious bits: Don teaching Steve how to do the pre-show announcements, and Jeramy imitating Jim answering the phone as Zero.



(Video is mislabeled "#5" but changing it is too much of a hassle, so it'll just have to stay as it is.)

A Day At The Newseum.

Video Blog: Driving to San Francisco

Breakfast with Ernie & Steve.

I've talked a lot about my friend, Ernie, but I've never put him on youtube. We usually try to have breakfast together about once a week. So this past week, I grabbed the camera and, over a Mexican breakfast, told him to interview me about the upcoming New World Waking! Since Ernie laughs at all my jokes, I told him we'd have to do this more often.

Why "Twilight" is BAD for girls but GREAT for guys.

I just finished reading the first book in the "Twilight" series. I can summarize it easily:

Girl moves to new town.
Meets vampire boy.
Describes (endlessly) how beautiful vampire boy is.
The end.

So, as a reading experience, I found its crimson prose to be dull and obvious. However, given its sensational popular amongst young teen girls, it provides a valuable insight into the emotional, romantic and sexual fantasies of estrogen-based life forms (and that's not a put-down; I'm just stating a fact).

So, if "Twilight" is an accurate mirror, girls wants a guy who:

1. ...at first eye contact, forgets that he ever knew or met another living female. His life didn't START until he sees her.

2. ...a guy who is a loner, doesn't hang with the locker room crowd and has no friends... until he sees her.

3. ...has great breath. (This was one feature of the book that mystified me. She had to mention that he has great breath? Fascinating. A dead person with great breath.)

4. ...is the strongest human alive and could kill anyone, but he has the heart of Jesus and can't kill a fly, and if he does get out of hand, only she can talk him down.

5. ...will pledge to protect her eternally and be there for her, night or day.

6. ...will refuse to have sex with her because his passion for her is so great, it might kill her.

7. ...has infinite patience and complete understanding of estrogen-based mood swings. In fact, the crazier she gets, the more he loves her.

8. ...has the maturity of a man of 100 but is cute and naive, and shy.

9. ...has biceps and muscles of hard statuesque stone.

10. ...can't stop talking about how alive he is now that he's met her.

So, how is this bad for girls? Because it gives teen boys a roadmap into how to seduce teen girls. How? By imitating the above fantasy traits.

Let's see.

Stare directly into her eyes. Let her make the first moves. Keep your mouth shut. When she's completely insane, just smile and say you understand and love her anyway.

What else? Go to the gym. Don't join a sport. Don't joke with your male friends. Don't date any other girls until you've met "her."

Work out.

Oh, and take breath mints everywhere.

See how easy that is?

Going For An English

I laughed so hard at this, I was hurting. "Going For an English" is a classic sketch from the British variety show "Goodness Gracious Me," in which an Indian family goes out "for an English" after drinking too much, patronizing the waiter and demanding the blandest thing on the menu.



h/t: Doug who hat tipsboing boing who hat tips Neil Gaiman.

B&W TV: "Line" finds Steve Allen. Col. Sanders on "Secret."

Last night on "What's My Line?" Steve Allen joined the panel for the first time, filling in for vacationing, the poor, doomed Hal Block. It was the first episode of 1953, the year I was born. On TV.COM where they have a total recap of each episode in order, I learned:

(1) THE LOOKS OF THINGS: For this new show of the new year of 1953, and the first to boast the "classic" lineup of Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis and Steve Allen, all four panelists have new nameplates on the panel desk, all set in Title Gothic Condensed No. 11.

I love trivia about font typefaces.

But, you can just imagine that the producers were watching Allen closely.

Meanwhile, on "I've Got A Secret," out walks Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Friend Chicken. A completely natural event given the fact that he's one of the most recognizable faces alive, right?

The panel had no idea who he was.

He was there because he had just sold his "chicken business." Gary Moore had him pull the check out of his pocket which they showed the audience. Everyone "oohed" and "aahed". Moore said, "How many of us have seen a two million dollar check?"

Two million dollars.

What the panel had to guess was how his "chicken business" was financed.

(The answer is that he financed it with his first Social Security check for $105 after having gone bankrupt. He used the money to make chicken, put it in his truck and drive around franchising restaurants and bus stations to use his recipe).

ADDENDUM: On the first blog entry I made several days ago regarding Black & White TV, someone named "Daniel" posted a very long and fascinating theory about why "I Love Lucy" was seen as so "realistic" for that era. I have reproduced it in its entirety because I think it's provocative and very well thought out. I don't know if I buy all of it completely, but it's too brilliantly stated to just let it pass as a forgotten comment.

One morning while surfing the channels and landing on "Lucy", as settled in to watch yet again another familiar episode, I suddenly began ooking beyond the comedy. I began to realize that the lives of the Ricardos and Mertz's weren't as simplistic as Lucy's legendary writers would have us believe they were.

For one thing, I began to wonder what prematurely frumpy Ethel would be like if she were ever to really vent her anger at losing out on nearly every joy in life instead of hiding her lifelong bitterness behind a cheery face and even cheerier words, most of the time. How come the Mertz's never had any children? And why did she consent to marry a man so much older than she was? And what's her life really like in that depressing apartment when she's alone with Fred Mertz, who's a grouchy old slob when not out in public? Scary, huh? Is it any wonder why she's always hanging around Lucy and Ricky Ricardo? Ethel over-eats because she's sexually frustrated! This is made clear by the way she constantly moons over Lucy and Ricky whenever they show affection for one another. However, Ethel would sooner jump off the Empire State Building before she'd let old man Fred come near her. How sad for a vital woman to be stuck with an impotent man twenty years older than she is.

And so I began to ponder over what the writers were thinking when they came up with such a radical twist on a whitebread sitcom for 1950s audiences.

The brilliance of this show is not only in its very funny dialogue and superb physical comedy, grand though they are, but in its reality. These characters shout, scream, fight, they get mad-- really in-your-face angry!! These four people cuss one another out as much as the 50s censors would allow. In one episode, "The Ricardos Break Their Lease," the entire episode revolved around the visciousness that can surface when best friends fight. Lucy & Ricky do everything they can to make the Mertz's life miserable. Of course, it's all played for laughs, but the reality of the situation is that there's nothing really funny about it if it were happening to someone in real life. Lucy and Ricky purposely throwing heavy objects on the floor, which is the Mertz's ceiling below, is not really funny at any time of day, especially in the middle of the night. The Mertz's show up at the Ricardo's door in their bedclothes with a ceiling light fixture that looks like a K-Mart version of a chandelier planted heavily over Ethel's head and shoulders, and her looking like she's ready to kill. Funny here, yes, but not really funny at all if you think about it.

These characters are passionate about their beliefs while not being the least bit pious, like Donna Reed or Andy Griffith could be. They also don't seem to attend Sunday church, which in itself is very radical for a 50s sitcom! Of all the countless things they discuss or even mention as couples or as individually married couples, church is never one of them. On every other fifties sitcom, having strong religious beliefs was the backbone for being a good, honest American, and was itself a constant plot point, especially for the closing morale talk, when things would quiet down and the child or spouse would "learn his/her lesson". Ricky being from Cuba is most likely a Roman Catholic, with a devoted mother who most likely has that Latin quality for being very religious, especially Catholic religious. Yet, none of the Cubans ever pictured in various episodes even mentions church! Ricky has no Catholic statues in the bedroom and they don't send their son to Sunday school just in case the boy's not being raised Catholic because Lucy is a Protestant, which is exactly the way Lucille Ball plays her. She and Ricky were not married in a church of any denomination. They were married by a justice of the peace! This was revealed in an episode when Lucy accidentally discovers that Ricky's last name on their marriage certificate is misspelled. She raises a fuss because she doesn't want to be married to Ricardo Bacardi, so, they go off to Connecticut where they were originally married, and we meet the man who married them. They still don't go seek out a church, as they had in real life when Desi's mother insisted they be remarried in the Catholic Church, but instead have the same justice marry them all over again!! Why not a simple church wedding? What's to stop them? Why do they not even discuss this option before leaving New York for Connecticut? How radical is that during a very conservative time in America when marriage was synonymous with church or synagogue? If you look beyond the comedy and see these people for what they truly are, they are all very odd-- and what's more-- non-conformist radical!

Perhaps this lack of piety is one of the reasons why the show remains so fresh. They did film a Christmas episode, which I've seen twice a few years back when CBS ran it during the Christmas season, colorized and in primetime, yet this episode was long held out of syndication because Desi Arnaz didn't want it showing up somewhere during July or some other inappropriate month, yet in that episode there is not one word about the Ricardos or the Mertzes attending church as part of the festivities. America in the 50s surely must have wondered why their supposedly fellow all-Americans were not planning to attend any services of any denomination when just about the entire country practically would be. Had this been The Donna Reed Show or Andy Griffith, you just know that before this episode was over, the entire clan would be getting into the car and off they would go to that little white clapboard building with the cross on the roof.

In this regard, I Love Lucy was very brave. Especially when one considers that during the early 50s Lucille Ball herself was named as a Communist, a fact long forgotten by most people today. It nearly destroyed her and I Love Lucy. Desi Arnaz and CBS immediately began heavy damage control. The charges were eventually dropped, as they should have been since she was not a Red, yet she and Desi went through weeks of hell before this finally occurred. One would think that the writers of the show would start focusing on the heretofore unknown religious side of Lucy Ricardo. After all, the 50s paranoia about communists was that they were heartless, cruel robots, and worse-- ungodly!

On the contrary-- the very radical Lucy scribes saw no reason to suck up to what they considered persons beneath contempt. Remember, Lucy's fellow sitcoms during this time were Father Knows Best, Make Room For Daddy, Leave It To Beaver, et al. Every one of them were wholesome family comedies. To accuse a lead performer working on any of these celebrated sitcoms of being a communist was tantamount to saying that that person was nothing short of a national menace and a security risk!

And what of Lucy Ricardo's missing father? In real life Lucille Ball lost her father to typhoid when she was only two years old. Is this why Lucy Ricardo doesn't have a dad, given the sitcom's penchant for using real characters and also on occasion actual situations as material for the show's plots?

A common practice by widows is to make references now and then to the deceased, yet on I Love Lucy Lucy Ricardo's mom Mrs. McGuilicuddy never does this! It's as if Lucy's father never existed! Neither does Ricky's mother ever speak of her husband. Could this be that because Desidero the First would soon enough abandon his wife and only child for another woman once he was safely restablished in Miami after the three of them had barely escaped war-torn Cuba, and by doing so would alienate his son to the point where young Desi couldn't bear to recognize him in later years?

Ethel Mertz also has a missing parent. Her mother. In the episode entitled "Ethel's Home Town," we meet her father, but there is no mother and no explaination as to why she is absent. However, in real life Vivian Roberta Jones was at constant odds with her mother, Venus Jones, over the fact that young Vivian had chosen show business as her life's career. Mrs Jones, a radical fundimentalist, was very much against her daughter's decision to enter a field she considered tantamount to godlessness and prostitution. This constant, relentless negativity would eventually send young, very successful Vivian to the psychiatrist's couch. For every alcolade Vivian received during her long, very successful career on Broadway, there was a lashing out by her mother all the way from Cherryvale, Kansas, to remind her that Vivian did not have her mother's blessing.

And so, all those years later, on seemingly innocuous I Love Lucy, Vivian's Ethel Mertz was mysteriously without a mother, and no one was about to explain why.

Again, radical writing for a 50s sitcom when you have these incomplete families and none of it is ever explained as to why.

Two Degrees From Barack.

It's a very weird feeling when you're reviewing the top news of the day and someone you know very well suddenly pops up.

It's regarding this whole flap about Obama's minister, Rev. Wright and his "anti-American" political rantings from his pulpit. One of the statements he made was how 9/11 was, in part, "America's chickens come home to roost." That our foreign policy had a great deal to do with why the radical Islamists did what they did.

Later, it was discovered that Wright was merely quoting the former Ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck.

Well, we know Ed Peck. In fact, he appeared in our home video mockumentary, "You Mean She's Here?" He has a quick appearance at a dinner table in which he says (about the elusive movie star we are chasing), "She helped design Saddam's bathrooms."



I also got video of him showing off his blue finger just after the Gaza elections where he was a monitor.

Meet Steinbeck's "Step-Dad" James Tobey.

Whenever Jim and I have to travel, we ask James Tobey, our good friend from Omaha who is now in Los Angeles pursuing an acting career, to come and apartment sit for us. He and Steinbeck have always had a special bond between them.

(When James comes just to visit, it's the only time I see Steinbeck move. He will jump up on whatever chair James is standing next to, and beg for attention.)

Recently, James taped a comedy program called "Fat Island" which appears about a minute and a half into this collection of comedy bits. He's the first one interviewed in the chair and is the last one standing as the "winner" of the competition.

The Greatest Ad You've Never Seen.

h/t: Dvorak

Sweeney Floyd

Growing up, our family loved The Andy Griffith Show. In fact, Jim and I watch it all the time now on TV Land. (We also love the early Beverly Hillbillies).

This little gem is pure genius if you know the show "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." And even if you don't...



Hat tip to Bev.

Big Voice in Tucson 3: Talkback!

After the show this past week, we held a talkback with the audience, answering their questions.

The Funniest Moment.

I have to tell you, I am so exhausted. Absolutely and completely worn out. Yesterday, during our matinee, I could barely keep my eyes open. After working so hard during the cruise, then one day home, then right into tech rehearsal and performances, it was almost too much. But I made it.

But something funny happened during the show -- so funny (and sweet, really) that I thought I was going to fall off the stage laughing. And worse, it was during a moment in the show where I couldn't laugh. So, I had to totally contain it without cracking so much as a smile -- and had to wait until we got to the dressing room. It came from a comment that popped out of the mouth of an audience member -- and I had no idea if Jim heard it. We couldn't look at each other and we couldn't do anything.

So, here it is -- and I hope it translates:

First of all, the audiences here much older than we are used to. I think it's because Tucson has many retirement communities -- and senior folks love to go to theatre. So, the Invisible Theatre has reaped the benefits of this population. (And more power to them).

The folks come in groups many times so they know each other and they make for a looser audience. Very responsive. We've played to full houses, and they've VERY reactive to the show. It's so good to hear all the wonderful laughter coming from the other side of the lights.

But they also tend to talk back now and then, which we don't mind at all. Jim loves the interaction and is really good at playing with them if they talk out loud.

However, since they are older than we are, they don't always know exactly where we're going with the show. In act two, as any of you who've seen the show know, we delve into the drama of my living with AIDS. But we slide into it gradually before we say the word "AIDS."

So, last night, I was crossing to stage right, saying my lines, after setting up the fact that we were moving to Los Angeles, "Well, it was the right move to make. We had two great cats."

Jimmy says, "Nothing could go wrong."

And then I cough (as a signal that I'm coming down with AIDS-related pneumonia). This moment always stops the show into dead silence as people take it as a sign that something has gone wrong.

When, out of blue, clear as a bell, we hear someone say, with absolute sincerity:

"He's allergic to the cats."

I thought I would come unglued. It was so unexpected. Most audiences we've played to are kind of expecting the whole AIDS thing to pop up since we mention it in our bios, etc. or they've read the reviews. But if you're older and you haven't really read anything about the show, it's natural that your mind might not go there.

Now, I can NOT stop the show at that point. I mean THIS is the point where it's all about AIDS! This is the most deadly serious moment of the play. I don't know how I maintained my poise. But I didn't crack a smile. But INSIDE I was laughing so hard, I could barely stand. And all I wanted to do was stop the show, run over to Jim and shout, "DID YOU HEAR THAT???"

So, we moved on to the hospital scene, the break-up, the reconciliation, then the end of the show.

When we got to the dressing room, we both looked at each other and just BURST out laughing into each others' arms.

God, I love live theatre. There's nothing like it. I couldn't stop laughing the rest of the day.

Buna Texas, My Hometown 1

Although I was born in Arkansas, my family moved around a lot. My high school years were spent in a tiny, little town called Buna, Texas down in the southeast corner of the state up against the Louisiana border, on the border of the Big Thicket National Forest. Buna was actually a sweet town full of interesting and warm people.

In 1986, just after Jim and I met, I made a trip back home to Buna and brought a video camera along. It was one of the first things I ever shot. With my mother in tow, we cruised around Buna. The tape was locked away in a cabinet for a long time. Finally, last month, we transferred the VHS tape to a digital file. I've edited the footage and have uploaded it to YouTube in six parts. Here is part one:

Atlantic Crossing '07 1: Dublin (1)

On our cruise across the Atlantic, we first hit Dublin, where Jim had set up a radio interview on a local NewsTalk show. This is the first of two parts. Our friend, producer Steven Rivellino, joined us.

Trailers From Hell!

There is a WONDERFUL new website on the net called Trailers From Hell! featuring movie trailers from all these old classic movies, most of them grindhouse or horror flicks. But along with the original trailers, they have commentary from some of today's most celebrated directors and other movie insiders talking about both the movies and the trailers.

This is popcorn viewing at its finest. (You can watch the trailers with or without commentary).

Here's an example featuring "The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" with commentary by Joe Dante.

I also love this commentary by John Landis on a music concert movie called "The T.A.M.I. Show" where Lesli Gore is the biggest star on a bill with The Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, James Brown and Smokey Robinson.

Girlfight on the 6 Train

I never fail to check out Joe.My.God.'s blog. Aside from lots of postings about gay political news and little tidbits of gossip he always manages to find first, what I truly love are little portraits of New York that he paints with an unfailingly hilariously detailed eye. Today's is one of the best:

Girlfight on the 6 Train. (Not his title).