He's the Cool Exec with a Heart of Steel

Karen and I saw "Iron Man" yesterday and liked it a lot. As a once-enthusiastic collector of "The Avengers," Marvel Comics' Justice-League-like supergroup that Iron Man helped form, I'm an old fan of shellhead's adventures.

I found the film very respectful of its source material--unlike many comic book adaptations that wink at their origins--and surprisingly faithful. Southeast Asia circa 1963 was easily updated to Afghanistan today. It has a nice mix of humor and action. Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark perfectly as a suave mix of Howard Hughes, Bill Gates and Errol Flynn. Stark has a satisfying emotional arc from insouciant weapons dealer to conscience-stricken knight, and Jeff Bridges plays the villain Stane with a great combination of warmth and menace. You'd believe he was your best friend until the second he stuck a knife in your ribs, and might even believe him when he said he regretted doing it.

All in all, I'd call it one of the best comic book movies ever and, more importantly, a movie that audiences completely unfamiliar with Iron Man (admittedly a second-tier character) will enjoy. My only caveat is that it's fairly violent; Iron Man doesn't hesitate to kill bad guys who deserve it, and though the deaths are mostly bloodless and off-screen, they might be too much for young or sensitive viewers.

That's all well and good, but I don't normally post movie reviews unless I have ulterior motives. In this case, I noticed an end credit acknowledging the work of four men in creating Iron Man: editor Stan Lee, (who makes his customary cameo in the film), writer Larry Lieber (Stan's brother, who wrote Iron Man's early stories), Jack Kirby (who I believe designed Iron Man's first armor), and ... Don Heck, Iron Man's first artist. I wrote about Mr. Heck in April, citing him as my personal example of an artist whose work I didn't appreciate until my critical eye had matured. Heck's loose brushwork was perfect for the Swingin' Sixties James Bond vibe of the early Iron Man stories. It was nice to see a maligned artist get his deserved due.

Iron Man sketch by Don Heck, done in the late 1960s

All The World Seems In Tune

Little by little, the industrious (or even lazy) blogger reveals more about himself than he realizes or intends. My few long-time readers may recall mentions of the roles Star Trek, Monty Python, Victor Borge, Carl Sagan, Walt Kelly, Disney, NASA, comic books, comic strips, and many other influences played in forming little me. However, I have never mentioned the towering influence of Tom Lehrer.

Mr. Lehrer is a musical satirist who came to prominence in the late 1950s and '60s, a proto-Weird Al who composed and performed little piano ditties on best-selling comedy albums and, occasionally, on stage. His songs were smart, sharp, funny, wry, very dark and a little naughty--the perfect combination to appeal to 14-year-old Brian. His heyday was before my time but we got acquainted through a local radio comedy hour that played him regularly, and he perfectly captured the dry, sarcastic, mocking, too-cool-for-school attitude that comprises the mandatory uniform of adolescence. Song titles include "The Old Dope Peddler," "The Vatican Rag," "I Got It From Agnes" (a saucily subtle ode to VD), and "Lobachevsky," a jaunty tribute to the Russian mathematician. Luckily, and unlike many favorites from my youth, Mr. Lehrer still turned out to be pretty cool even after I grew up.

Mr. Lehrer left entertainment to teach math at the University of California, Santa Cruz, cementing his nerd credibility forever. He became something of the Salinger of Satire (or perhaps the Watterson of Wit) and rarely performed in public after the 1960s, although he did surface briefly in 1980 when a Broadway show titled "Tomfoolery" revived his songs in a well-reviewed revue. He is also reputed to have invented the Jell-O shot. I won't go so far as to say Tom Lehrer was an important intellectual influence in my life, but he sure was a fun one.

That's my introduction to these videos that capture the magic of Mr. Lehrer. My favorite is the last, which not only features one of my favorite Lehrer songs but shows a rare later performance in 1998 to honor the producer of "Tomfoolery," who also did a little show called "Cats." If you're inclined to watch, I hope you enjoy.










Extra Bonus Video: Something else by Mr. Lehrer that those slightly younger may remember from "The Electric Company":

The Vast Wasteland

If you are anywhere around my age and grew up watching television in the United States, absolutely the worst possible thing you could do is click this link. (Link removed, see update below.)

I'm not kidding. Don't do it.

And if you do, don't leave it running on your computer all day. That would be wrong.

UPDATE: The link connected to a radio station that played nothing but old TV theme songs, commercial-free, around the clock. However, it looks like that was just a short-term gimmick while they switched formats. Now it's just a plain ol' rock-and-roll station, and more's the pity. They had a good thing going.

I'm Here!

Everything's fine, just very heavy on deadlines and light on blogging inspiration.

In an upcoming post I'll recap the two cancer-fighting walk/run events I plugged earlier this month. In short: Great! Thanks again to everyone who read about them here and was inspired to help out somehow.

I saw the new Disney movie "Enchanted" a few days ago and thought it was very good. Many nice references to Disney classics that you'll catch if you've seen them a thousand times (during my raising of two girls we wore out tapes of "Little Mermaid," "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," and Disney's "Robin Hood") and know some of their backstory. "Little Mermaid" voice actress Jodi Benson has a good role as Patrick Dempsey's secretary, and I've since read that Paige "Belle" O'Hara and Judi "Pocahontas's singing voice" Kuhn are in it as well, though I didn't catch them at the time. I think the movie's real accomplishment is successfully navigating the fine line between mocking the genre (as with "Shrek") and respecting it (I almost typed "respecting the essential validity of its archetypes" but then pulled the stick out of my rear and thought better of it). And little bits of cartoon at the beginning and end sure made me miss good ol' hand-drawn two-dimensional animation, which I understand John Lasseter has restored to Disney after previous administrations scoured it. Good for him.

Thanksgiving (U.S.) at the in-laws was very nice family time. It occurs to me I haven't often expressed thanks to the people who've bought my book, read my blog, or gone to the time and trouble to send me a note. So ... Thank You. It means a lot. Special appreciation for those few friends who were among the first to find Mom's Cancer online and have stuck with me since.

I expect I'll have more to say soon.
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Lulu Radio & MoCCA

Two things:

I forgot to follow up on an earlier post and mention that my interview with Lulu Radio is now available online. I just listened to it and, while I always hate the sound of my own voice, it's not terrible. Some things I'd've done differently: I said toward the beginning that Mom was diagnosed with cancer in 2004; it was 2003. I began drawing the comic in 2004. I'm bad with dates.

In the interview, I referred to "Mom's Cancer" a few times as "the project." Listening back, that grabs my attention like a pointy stick jabbed in my ear. Calling it "the project" makes it sound too impersonal, like a new account you take on at work. Trust me, there was nothing impersonal about it. I wanted a word that encompassed not just the comic but the book, the correspondence, the press, the recognition, the whole "Mom's Cancer" ball o' wax, and "project" was the best I could do on the fly. Better next time.

At the end, the interviewer asked me where people can find my book. I mentioned Barnes & Noble and Borders, and added that the easiest and cheapest place would probably be Amazon--which is true, but I wish I'd mentioned Your Local Independent Bookseller. Those are the people who love books, deserve the support, and in some cases have treated my book very well. They're cultural heroes. But another reason authors always urge readers to patronize small independents is that their contracts are probably structured to give them a bigger royalty if a book is sold by a Mom 'n Pop shop rather than a giant chain that gets a big discount on the wholesale price. When a book shows up on a pallet at Costco marked down 50%, the author's getting pennies (a lot of pennies, but still...). Just being honest with you.

The interviewer, Rich Burk, did a nice job and seemed like a very good guy. When we spoke before the interview, he explained that he's a radio announcer who, among other jobs, does play-by-play for the Portland Beavers minor league baseball team. He's got one of those great radio voices that always takes me aback a bit in person: "Wait, are you talking to me? The voices in the little electric boxes never talked to me before...!" Still, it was an enjoyable few minutes.

Item Two: The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in New York City has asked me to loan some original art from "Mom's Cancer" to an exhibition of graphic novels they're hosting in the fall. MoCCA's mission is the "collection, preservation, study, education, and display of comic and cartoon art," and it has become an important, high-profile, well-respected institution in the field. It's a great honor to be asked and I'm thrilled to contribute. More details as the date approaches, I'm sure.
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Whew.

Two hours ago I finished a big, important, exhausting project that's been getting me up early and keeping me up late for a couple of weeks, not to mention cutting into my blogging time. I'll tell you about it someday. Meanwhile, I'm planning to get back to a saner work schedule that should include time to write here. That is, as soon as I return from a few days' travel starting tomorrow--

Funny. Just as I was typing that sentence (precisely between the words "return" and "from," in fact) I got a phone call from Rich Burk from Lulu.com, who interviewed me for a podcast that'll be posted at Lulu Radio (http://lulu.libsyn.com/) sometime soon. You'll recall that Lulu is the kind and generous publishing company that awarded Mom's Cancer the Lulu Blooker Prize on May 14. So if you ever want to hear a six-minute interview with me, featuring my flat nasal voice stammering "um" and "uh," there it is. Or will be.

Incidentally, before we started recording, Rich and I spent a minute debating how one should pronounce "blook." I've never thought about it much but have been rhyming it with "kook." However, Rich was surely correct that it should rhyme with "book," especially since the Blooker Prize is a pun on the more literary and high-minded Booker Prize. So we went with that. Nice guy, nice interview.

Thanks for reading. More and better later.

Animation

I enjoyed the YouTube newsreel mini-doc below about the making of Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (8:32). It's a good look at not just the creation of an animation classic but a glimpse at Old Hollywood as well. It's impossible not to notice the strict division of labor: artists and animators were men, while women (or "pretty girls") did ink and paint, which was the more mechanical (though still creative and demanding) process of tracing and coloring the animators' pencil drawings.


The transparent plastic sheets that the crews work with in the film are called cels (for "celluloid"). Like so much else in the history of both animation and comics, the materials actually used to produce the finished products got very little respect. To the creators, they were a means to an end, often considered disposable. Some animation studios scraped the paint off of cels to reuse them; others piled them in big heaps and burned them. In addition, the paints weren't intended to last and often flaked off over time, adding to the scarcity of cels that managed to survive.
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For a while, the Disney Studios sold cels to tourists at Disneyland for a few bucks each. When I finally figure out how a flux capacitor works and build my time machine, that's one of the first place-times I intend to visit. In the last 20 or 30 years, of course, the value of original animation art has been recognized and, in some cases, inflated beyond reason. Today an early Disney cel in decent condition with a famous character could sell for several tens of thousands of dollars or more.
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As I wrote about original comic art a while back, original animation art is something I could easily become obsessed with. Too easily. Fortunately I have some self-control, and have so far limited myself to three pieces, ranging from ridiculously modern to almost as ancient as you can get.

This is three-cel set-up from the PowerPuff Girls cartoon. The two girls on the sides (Buttercup and Bubbles) are on one cel, the center girl (Blossom) is on another, and Blossom's mouth is on a third, all stacked atop one another. The mouth gets its own cel so the animators can draw Blossom talking without redrawing the entire figure each time. My girls and I were fans of the PowerPuff Girls, which I thought was occasionally one of the smartest, funniest cartoons around. I bought this as kind of a gift for us all.

Above is a two-cel set-up of Piglet from the 1968 movie "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day," which won an Academy Award for "Best Cartoon Short Subject." Piglet is on one cel and his chair is on another. Since they came without a background, I painted a watercolor landscape to go behind them and printed the lyrics on the painting. I was drawn to this piece for perhaps the most common reason people collect stuff like this: I remembered loving this movie from my childhood and wanted a piece of it. It was Disney. And it was Piglet, who's been a favorite character around our house. I lied and told my family I got it for them; it was really for me.

One of the fun parts of getting an animation cel is watching the movie and freeze-framing it to find exactly where your cel was used. My Piglet actually has little dimples in the pink paint on his arm and foot that I assumed were age-related damage until I saw the exact same dimples on-screen. The flaws are impossible to see blazing past at 24 frames per second, but they were there in the original. I thought that was pretty cool.

I've written about this piece--not really a cel because it was drawn on rice paper before animators began using transparent celluloid--and what it means to me before. This is a frame from "Gertie the Dinosaur" by Winsor McCay done in 1914, many years before Disney made "Steamboat Willie." McCay was a giant in both cartooning and animation, and buying a piece of his work was a long-time ambition of mine and the first thing I did with the "cartooning money" I earned as an advance on Mom's Cancer. When my house catches fire, this is the one thing I plan to grab on my way out the door. After the people and animals are safe. Of course.

That's my entire animation collection. As long as my will is strong and my kids remain in school, that'll be it for a while. I can see how people could go crazy with this hobby, though. Collecting favorite films, themes, artists, owning a unique piece of movie or television history. It's probably just as well I don't have all the money in the world.

Strange Old Worlds

When I woke up this morning, I didn't know today was going to be Star Trek Saturday. Then I opened an e-mail from my cartoonist buddy Mike Lynch telling me about this:


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Kids, the 1960s were fun but they're over. Just Say No.

Then, following a trail of comments on that video, I found this on my own. From German television:


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You know, that last one is obviously a spoof, but if you don't get a little chill when the orchestra plays those first four notes and the French horn fires up, I'll be nice to you but I'm afraid we can never truly be friends.

Slightly more seriously, I love the fact that a contemporary audience in Germany can hear the opening of a 40-year-old American TV theme song and roar in appreciative recognition. That's the definition of "iconic."

March 12 Addition: I remembered seeing the video below a while ago but didn't look for it until this morning. For the past several months, Paramount has been redoing the special effects for the original Star Trek and broadcasting the results, often buried on obscure channels in the late night or early morning hours. Fans seem divided on the results--with a few quibbles I think they've been very respectful and successful. At any rate, as part of the refurbishing, they re-recorded the Star Trek theme song, which is what the 1 minute and 27 seconds below is about:

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And that's all I'll have to say about Star Trek for a while.

Peter Ellenshaw

If you think the image above is a photograph, you've been fooled by the prodigious talent of Peter Ellenshaw, who I am sad to learn has died at the age of 93. Mr. Ellenshaw was a master of the nearly lost art of matte painting, the movie special effects process in which live-action film footage is projected onto or composited into a photo-realistic landscape painted on glass, combining them into one. It's a terrific combination of artistry and technology that, when done right, goes unnoticed. I was a great admirer of his work years before I knew it. These days those types of effects are mostly computer-generated, and while much has been gained by that advance I think quite a bit of style, vision, and artistry have been lost.

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Mr. Ellenshaw was born in Britain and began working for Walt Disney in the 1950s on movies such as "Treasure Island," "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," "Mary Poppins," "The Love Bug," "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," "The Black Hole," and (years after his official retirement) "Dick Tracy," creating bustling seaports, London parks, San Francisco streetscapes, and entire universes with paint. He also worked for Stanley Kubrick on "Spartacus" and produced artwork for Disneyland. In addition, Mr. Ellenshaw did the movie-going world a great service by teaching the ropes to his son Harrison, who made his own mark in matte painting, notably with "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back."

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Mary Poppins portrayed by Julie Andrews;
everything else portrayed by Peter Ellenshaw.

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Winner of an Oscar for "Mary Poppins" and named a "Disney Legend" in 1993, Mr. Ellenshaw was also reportedly one of the kindest, humblest, most generous people in the business. A better tribute with more examples of Mr. Ellenshaw's artwork can be found on writer Brian Sibley's blog, and the Ellenshaw family has its own website with a tribute and samples of his work as well. You can't feel too bad when someone passes away after a long life well-lived, but Mr. Ellenshaw will be appreciated and missed.

Ich Liebe Dennis Wagner

Man, this is too good.

Dennis Wagner, the German journalist who interviewed me last July, left a comment in my previous post to which I immediately and enthusiastically replied privately. I somehow missed an e-mail from him in September, about which I feel bad (not really my fault, but I can still feel bad about it). Dennis pointed me to this:



What a sensitive, creative report! When we met, Dennis told me how he envisioned animating some of my artwork and asked my permission to do so. I think he did a fantastic job, both technically and in his selection of images. Very, very cool.

My only criticism is that I wish Dennis had left his Ugly Lens at home. I swear, I don't really have an enormous bobble head with squinty bag-rimmed eyes (all right, maybe I'm packing eye bags--but just little tiny over-night eye bags, not enormous steamer-trunk eye bags). Don't watch this video with small children, easily startled pets, or sensitive houseplants in the room, because I'm hideous.

Many thanks, Dennis. Aside from my face, I thought it was wonderful.

Kulturzeit

Thanks to Olison, who left a comment in my last post, and others who e-mailed me, I've confirmed that my book appeared on German television last night. The program was "Kulturzeit" ("Culture Time") broadcast on the ZDF/3SAT network. Based on the surge of both Web hits and German-language book sales (for a while I was #286 on German Amazon, which is pretty darned high), it must be a pretty popular show. My German publisher seems extremely happy.

I still don't know if this is the program for which I was interviewed last July. German TV reporter/producer Dennis Wagner e-mailed me in June 2006 and said he had a relative dying of cancer, saw a review of my book in a German magazine, read it, and liked it very much. He said he was planning a U.S. trip in July and would appreciate a chance to interview me. We subsequently met in San Francisco. However, at the time he told me he worked for another program on a different station, so I don't know if what appeared last night was his piece or something completely different.

I actually met with Dennis twice. He was on vacation driving down the West Coast with his girlfriend and her three young children, when he thought he'd take advantage of my proximity and interview me. He wanted a photogenic location and I suggested San Francisco's Legion of Honor, an art museum on a bluff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, about an hour's drive from my home.

Dennis was a very enthusiastic, friendly man, maybe in his early thirties, and I liked him immediately. Unfortunately, the Golden Gate was completely socked in by fog. We drove high and low, all over the Presidio and down to Baker Beach, trying to find a location either above or below the deck of gray clouds, me in the back seat of his rented minivan with curious and adorable non-English-speaking moppets singing songs in German. Even within 20 paces of the bridge's toll booths, we couldn't see a bit of it. Gesturing at a wall of gray fluff and reassuring Dennis, "But it's right there! Big bridge!" did not seem to help.

At last, resolved that the fog wouldn't burn off in time to do us any good, Dennis settled for a road overlooking a golf course rimmed by cyprus trees with the fog billowing through the branches. I think it actually looked pretty cool--telegenically interesting and a bit gloomy, fitting the mood he wanted. If you couldn't shoot a big orange bridge, this was second best.

So Dennis set up his tripod and camera, wired me for sound, asked about two questions... and his battery died. He thought he'd charged it but his Europe-to-USA current adapter must not have worked correctly. He had no backup, no plug that could run off the car battery. We were done. He apologized with much regret, I told him about the American wonder called "Radio Shack," and we parted. Half of my day and his journey of 10,000 miles wasted by a bad transistor.

He contacted me that afternoon to say he'd found a new adapter and would appreciate a chance to meet again the next day--this time with a guaranteed charged battery. I liked Dennis a lot but wasn't thrilled. I might have even grumbled and declined, until he asked pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top. Oh, all right. Dammit.

Back to San Francisco, fog just as impenetrable as before. Back to the exact same spot wearing the same clothes, in case he could salvage some footage from the previous day and stitch it together. He interviewed me for maybe 15 minutes, seemed very satisfied and appreciative, and took off with his girlfriend and moppets toward Santa Cruz.

And that's the last I heard until maybe yesterday. As I said, I'm not sure that was Dennis's piece. If it was, I'm glad he got it together and it was well received. He promised to send me a copy; if I get it, I'll let you know.

Readin' and Writin'

Yesterday my wife took me to see "The Holiday," a film in which Kate Winslet (above left) and Cameron Diaz play women who try to mend their broken hearts by swapping their homes in England and Hollywood for two weeks over Christmas. It's what some would call a "chick flick," a genre for which I actually have some tolerance, and I think I spoil no surprises by revealing that hearts are indeed healed with the help of Jack Black (above right) and Jude Law. I appreciated the fact that the emotional arcs for the Winslet and Diaz characters weren't mirror images of each other--they start out in different places and end up in different places--and I think the filmmakers even pull off the improbable use of Black as a semi-romantic lead.

What really impressed me about the movie, and the reason I'm bothering to write about it, is something hinted at by the full bookshelf behind the characters in the photo above: it is a love letter to writing. Winslet's character is a newspaper reporter and Law's is a book editor. Houses are full of cabinets that are packed with books (I noted that the set decorator seemed to have a fondness for Jonathan Franzen). And in what my wife and I agreed was the best subplot in the movie, Eli Wallach plays an elderly neighbor of Winslet's who was one of the great screenwriters in the Golden Age of Hollywood, his dusty study studded with honors and Oscars (and books). Winslet befriends him and tries to convince him to accept the gratitude of younger generations of writers who revere the words he wrote. I thought theirs was the most warmly satisfying relationship in the film. This through-line of literary appreciation was an unexpected pleasure and added depth to what could have been a pleasant but routine romantic romp.*

Reading and writing have always been important to me. Writing is how I've earned a living for about half of my adult life. I knew I was going to buy the house we live in now when I walked into the family room and saw that the owner had surrounded the fireplace with floor-to-ceiling oak bookshelves. One of the two big rules my wife and I made when we had children was that if either of the girls asked us to read a book with them we'd drop whatever else we were doing to do it. (The other big rule was that we'd never contradict each other's discipline or permission decisions even if we privately thought the other was wrong. "Divide and conquer" never worked on us.) As the girls got older we pretty much bought any books they wanted, which can get expensive but was still cheaper than the clothes, cars, make-up, music and bail money their peers demanded from their parents. I can't guarantee my child-rearing tips will work--in fact, I'm increasingly convinced that babies emerge pretty much as the people they're going to be, and if either of my girls had been wired to become a delinquent moron I don't know how we could've stopped them--but I'm ecstatic at our results.

I don't like recommending things. Any things. It's too much responsibility. I'd feel terrible if I advised someone to spend their time and money on a movie, book, restaurant, CD, piece of hardware, piece of software, or barber and they hated it--and worse, doubted my taste and sanity for inflicting it on them. So I'm not recommending "The Holiday," just mentioning something about it I enjoyed and appreciated. If you decide to see it it's your fault, not mine.

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*I tried real hard to think of another word here besides "romp." Couldn't do it. Sorry.

Superman

Mark Evanier, whose excellent blog (www.newsfromme.com) is often my first daily Internet stop, posted this 10-minute Google video today and I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd borrow it myself. In 1941, just three years after Superman's comic book debut, Max and Dave Fleischer began producing a series of animated shorts starring the Last Son of Krypton. I love these cartoons, which I believe are now in the public domain, and this is the first one they made. According to Evanier, at the time this was the most expensive non-Disney cartoon ever produced. It's gorgeous. The art is art-deco lush and expressive throughout, and I think the sequence at the end with Superman punching out (!) a death ray is truly one of the best bits of animation art ever done. Also interesting is how much of the Superman mythos and family of characters was already in place. Each of the Fleischer cartoons distilled them to their essence: Lois and Clark are professional rivals and spunky Lois gets into trouble that meek Clark finds a reason to avoid so Superman can save her. It's a lovely little cartoon formula that, like Road Runner vs. Coyote or Charlie Brown vs. Lucy's Football, has worked in countless permutations for many decades. At the same time, you can see they were still working out the bugs. This Baby Kal-El wasn't found and raised by the Kents but grew up in an orphanage. The opening title states that Superman could only leap great distances, but the cartoon clearly shows him free-flying. All of his auxiliary powers (X-ray vision, heat vision, super-breath, whatever) would come later, along with a gradual ratcheting up of his strength to absurd levels--an error that subsequent creators tried to correct once in a while and then committed all over again. Anyway, this cartoon backs up a strong opinion of mine that the 1940s and '50s was a Golden Age of comic and cartoon art that has not been and probably never will be surpassed. There are a lot of reasons why. One is that the people producing it were adults creating to entertain adults. Their work was never condescending. Another is that they were professionals who'd paid their dues mastering (and in many cases inventing) their craft. Very few cartoonists or animators working today would be fit to clean the old guys' inky brushes. They also brought a wealth of life experience to the job that I think enriched their work. (I often think of the latter point in relation to the original Star Trek, which I believe had a verisimilitude that subsequent spin-offs lacked because Gene Roddenberry, Gene Coon, and the others involved had long, interesting pre-TV careers--including military service--that gave their adventures and characters a realistic edge despite the groovy far-out setting. In contrast, Star Trek writers and producers in the 1980s and '90s were relatively recent college grads whose life experience consisted of writing screenplays--and watching old Star Trek. Not that the newer Treks were bad, but I think they could have benefitted by hiring a fifty-year-old writer who'd maybe served aboard an aircraft carrier.) At any rate, I'm rambling and I think this cartoon speaks for itself. If you haven't seen the Fleischer Supermans before and have 10 minutes to spare, I think it's time well spent.

More Miriam

Melissa Block, who interviewed Miriam Engelberg and me for NPR's "All Things Considered," broadcast a very nice remembrance of Miriam yesterday. The three-minute segment, which you can hear here, captures Miriam's voice and some of her personality, I think. It's good.

I've corresponded with both Melissa and USA Today reporter Liz Szabo since Miriam died, and it is evident they both considered Miriam more than "just another assignment" and were very moved by her passing. That's good, too.

Gertie the Dinosaur (again)

Mark Evanier, whose "News From ME" blog is one of my daily reads, posted this 12-minute silent-era film a couple of days ago. It's Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" circa 1914, and this movie is an interesting artifact. McCay originally showed the short cartoon within this movie as part of a live vaudeville show, during which he stood on stage and "commanded" the dinosaur on screen to do tricks. However, McCay couldn't be everywhere at once, and this film was made to recreate that stage experience for theater audiences around the world.

[NOTE: I originally embedded the Gertie movie here, but something about its HTML coding played havoc with my Blogger template in some browsers. I tried to work around the problem but couldn't solve it, so the best I can do is point you to it at the Google Video site here. It's worth the effort.]

Title cards take the place of words McCay would've said in person. At one point, Gertie catches a pumpkin; on stage, McCay would've tossed it to her himself (although I always heard it was an apple). At another point, an animated McCay comes on screen to take a ride on Gertie; on stage, McCay would've walked behind the screen so it appeared he became part of the movie. The framing story of a group of cartoonists finding a museum and wagering on McCay's ability to "make a dinosaurus live" is interesting only for glimpses of McCay at work and cartoonist George McManus. Also for the fact that 1914 is probably the last time a cartoonist dressed up to go to work.

Though not the first animated cartoon, Gertie is an animation pioneer, appearing years before Mickey Mouse's "Steamboat Willie." She was evidently a popular sensation, the first real animated character in an extended story, and years ahead of her time. Compared to her rubber-limbed, stick-figure contemporaries, Gertie had volume, mass, personality and life. I particularly love how she breathes and flicks her tail. Watch Gertie's tail as she drinks the lake dry: that's superior animation in any era.

I've written before of my enormous admiration and respect for McCay's work, particularly his classic "Little Nemo in Slumberland" newspaper strip, and the fact that the first (and only) self-indulgent thing I bought with my advance for Mom's Cancer was one of the hand-drawn animation cels that comprised the film above. My cel appears at about the 8:41 mark, as Gertie licks her lips after eating a tree trunk. In fact I think it appears twice, as McCay--no dummy--has Gertie lick her lips twice and re-uses the same drawings for each motion. Here's mine:

This drawing is ink on rice paper, about 6 x 8 inches (15 x 20 cm). Animation was at a very early stage; artists hadn't yet figured out the trick of drawing the characters on transparent plastic so they didn't have to redraw the entire background for each frame. For Gertie, McCay and an assistant redrew every mountain, rock, and ripple in the water thousands of times (the movie says 10,000 cels, but I believe that number is disputed. As I indicated, McCay very sensibly used many drawings more than once, as when Gertie sways in time to the music.) Some 300 to 400 of the cels have survived the nearly 100 years since they were drawn. I'm very happy and grateful to be the temporary steward of one of them.

Ready For My Close-Up

Back in March, just after Mom's Cancer was released, I was interviewed on the KTVU (Oakland, California) program "Mornings on 2," a fine news and chat show hosted by Ross McGowan. Although it's an old interview, I've just now acquired the technology and skills to upload video to YouTube and thought I'd post it here as my first experiment.

I cringe at how I look, talk, move, gesture, dart my beady eyes, and everything else. All I see is a giant goober, but people I trust who don't live in my head tell me it's fine. Or at least accurate. Enjoy.

Strange New Worlds

This'll be the last "Star Trek" post for a while, I swear. However, my friend, cartoonist, and fellow Trek fan Patricia Storms left a comment in my post of September 22 suggesting I list my favorite episodes. She didn't actually specify how many, but since she has three clear favorites I thought I'd try to match her. Interestingly, only my top two sprang instantly to mind:

1. Balance of Terror. If I had to put one "Star Trek" episode in a time capsule to explain to future generations what it was all about, this would be it: The battle of wits and wills between Kirk and his equally matched Romulan opponent, wonderfully and sympathetically played by the late Mark Lenard ("In a different reality, I might have called you friend"). The deliberate evocation of World War II submarine movies, right down to the Enterprise crew whispering as if the sound of their voices could somehow travel through space. Stiles finding a little love for Vulcans in his racist (specist?) little heart. I think this episode is the perfect balance of action, character development, and Roddenberrian idealism.

2. City on the Edge of Forever. Of course. A lot of fans would list it first, but I downgrade it only slightly because it was such an atypical episode; if it were the only "Star Trek" episode anyone ever saw, I suspect they'd find it a gripping story but not come away with a full appreciation of what the series was about. Still, it had Joan Collins in her prime, Spock at his most ingenious and loyal, and Kirk faced with a truly unwinnable dilemma. It was an unusually adult story with a great mix of drama and comedy (and it contains quite a bit arch comedy). I've read Harlan Ellison's book in which he complains about how his original script was bowdlerized by Roddenberry. Comparing the two, with all respect to Mr. Ellison, I think Roddenberry did him a favor.

3. A difficult choice. There are plenty of great episodes left to choose from, but do you go with high-concept sci-fi, drama, comedy? "Where No Man Has Gone Before," "The Corbomite Maneuver," Arena," "Doomsday Machine," "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "Amok Time," "Trouble With Tribbles"? Somewhat to my surprise, one did emerge to stand out in my mind. But I'm gonna have to explain.

"The Savage Curtain." A chubby rock monster captures Kirk and Spock and pairs them up with a fake Abraham Lincoln and Surak of Vulcan to fight four of the most evil characters in history (also fakes). I have no excuse; I just love everything about this episode and watch it with a dumb goofy grin every time.

One reason is that I was around 13 when a local television station began syndicating "Star Trek," which hadn't been on the air since 1969. They made a very big deal about it and kicked off the series with a midnight showing of "The Savage Curtain." I could barely contain my excitement waiting weeks for that midnight to roll around. So there's some personal nostalgia involved.

A better reason is that "The Savage Curtain" has one line of dialog that I think perfectly sums up everything "Star Trek" is about and has stayed with me all these decades later. Surak is the Vulcans' Christ/Buddha/Socrates who led them to the path of pacifism and reason. When Surak meets Kirk, he gives him the Vulcan salute and says, "In my time we knew not of Earthmen. I am pleased to see that we have differences. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us."

"I am pleased to see that we have differences."

That's just about all anyone needs to know about "Star Trek" right there.

Pitching to the Stars

I wrote about my great affection and appreciation for the original "Star Trek" a while ago, but in fact my relationship with the series goes a bit further than that. This is a story I don't tell very often--mostly because it ends in abject failure--but I did talk about it during my Comic-Con Spotlight Panel and I think it gives some insight into how I approached the writing of Mom's Cancer.

The 1960s' "Star Trek" was followed by another series that began in 1987 called "Star Trek: The Next Generation." It ran for seven seasons. I enjoyed the show as a fan, though never as passionately as I did its predecessor, and around the beginning of season six I heard from a friend that the show would consider scripts from unagented writers. This policy was unique in all of television and the news hit me like a thunderbolt. In a few weeks I came up with a story, figured out proper TV screenplay format, and sent off a full script with the required release forms. Shortly afterward, I followed with a second script, the maximum number they allowed.

I don't know how much later--surely months--I arrived home to a message on my answering machine. "Star Trek" wanted to talk to me. Neither of my scripts were good enough to actually shoot, but they showed enough promise that they were willing to hear any other ideas I might have. Would I care to pitch to them?

Yeah. I think so.

Paramount sent me a three-inch thick packet of sample scripts, writer's guides, director's guides, character profiles, episode synopses: all the background a writer would need to get up to speed (not that I needed them--I'd been up to speed since 1966). I spent several weeks coming up with dozens of ideas, distilled them to the five or six best, and made the long drive to Paramount Studios. Just getting onto the lot was a small comedy of errors: the guard at the gate didn't have my name on the list and I'd neglected to ask which office I was supposed to report to. Unlike anyone who's worked in Hollywood in the past 30 years, I wore a tie and sportcoat--a bad idea on a hot day when I was already inclined to sweat prodigiously. But I eventually made my way to the office of producer Rene Echevarria and threw him my first pitch. He stopped me after two sentences.

"We started filming a story just like that last week."

Crap. That was the best one.

Pitches two, three, four and five fared no better. After desperately rifling through my mental filing cabinet for any rejects with a hint of promise, I was done. In and out in less than 30 minutes, weeks of work for naught.

Still, I went home satisfied that I gave it my best shot. I wrote Rene a letter thanking him for the opportunity and expressing a completely baseless hope that he might give me another chance someday.

I got the next call a few weeks later. Rene had gotten my letter, looked over his notes, and decided that, although none of my pitches were good enough to shoot, I merited another shot.

Months later came my second try. Luckily, by now I was smart enough to spare myself the drive and pitch by phone. If I remember correctly, Rene liked a couple of my stories enough to take them to his bosses, but by this time the series was into its final season and the available episode slots were filling fast. In anticipation of the end of "The Next Generation," Paramount was already producing a successor series, "Deep Space Nine." In my last conversation with Rene, when it was clear "The Next Generation" was done with me, I asked if he could arrange for me to talk to "Deep Space Nine."

"Why would you want to pitch to those guys?" he asked, bewildered.

Nevertheless, I soon had an appointment to pitch to those guys, got another thick packet of blueprints and biographies, and started writing. I parlayed that opening into several pitches over the show's seven-year run, most to the very professional, generous and kind writer/producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe. And when Paramount started production on the next "Star Trek" series, "Voyager," I tried my old trick on Robert.

"Why would you want to pitch to those guys?"

So I got more packets of cool stuff, more experience, and more rejection. Although they liked some of my ideas enough to mull them over, I never got close. It was exhausting. At last, after eight or nine years and forty or fifty stories, "Star Trek" and I mutually agreed we'd had enough of each other and parted ways.

Lessons in Writing
Here's my point (and I do believe I have one, eventually): even as a complete failure, my experience pitching to "Star Trek" made me a better writer. What I realized was that the stories they quickly rejected focused on some science-fiction high-tech premise or plot twist, while the stories they liked focused on the characters. If I said something like, "Captain Picard begins at A, goes through B, and as a result of that experience ends up at C," I had their attention. I had to be hit over the head several times to realize that a good story isn't about spaceships or aliens or ripples in the fabric of space-time, but about people.

That sounds blindingly obvious, but I realized how unobvious it was as I talked to friends and family about the experience. As soon as someone realizes you have a distant shot at actually writing a "Star Trek" episode, they can't wait to share their idea with you (never mind how fast they'd sue if you actually used it). And literally without exception, every idea I heard from someone else was about a spaceship, alien, or ripple in the fabric of space-time. Not one that I recall even mentioned a character, how they'd react to the situation, or how they might be changed by it. Once I learned to look for it, it was striking.

These were lessons I internalized as best I could and took into the writing of Mom's Cancer. I realized early that my story couldn't be about the medical nuts and bolts of cancer treatment. First, because there are too many treatment options for anyone to cover; second, because I knew such information would be obsolete very quickly; and third and most importantly, good stories are about people. My book isn't about radiation and chemotherapy and cancer, but about what those things do to a family. If something I scripted or sketched didn't drive my mother's story--if the plot didn't serve the characters--I cut it.

Whatever success Mom's Cancer has had and will have, I think that was the key. With all due gratitude to all the Treks.

Oh, The Humanity!

I haven't done the "You Tube" thing before and don't intend to make a habit of it, but I just came across one I couldn't resist.



The first half of this clip is the funniest 2½ minutes of television I ever saw in my life, while its final line stands as the Gold Standard of well-intentioned befuddled futility. Of course your mileage may vary, and maybe you had to be there... If you're not as entertained as I am, that's all right. Sometimes I post as much for me as you.

Ich Liebe Annik Rubens

Many visitors are finding me today from a German podcast by Annik Rubens via her website Schlaflos in München ("Sleepless in Munich," I guess). If you understand German and can download and play an MP3, give it a listen. I think she said nice things. Even if she didn't, she said them in such a velvet-smooth sultry radio voice that I don't care. In any event, my thanks to Ms. Rubens.

And if anyone is actually interested in reading my book in German, it's available from Amazon.de. Danke!