LAST COMIC STANDING

This season of LCS has turned into one of the strangest reality programs I've seen.   First of all, an American Idol-like show about standup has a massive, built-in problem.  Standup comdey is different than any other art form.  Unlike singing, one performance really doesn't necessarily tell you much about the abilities of a comic.   You could have the same seven comics do a week together and each one could have a night where they had the best set.  While the idea itself is flawed, hey, reality TV is popular and you gotta go with the heat.  This is showbiz, baby. 

The first season of contestants were essentially open-mikers, undiscovered wannabes who were so raw that you couldn't really assess their potential.  Again, standup has it's own laws, one of them being that it's never clear how good someone will become when they're starting out.  No one, and I mean no one, is capable of forseeing that without a crystal ball.   The path to fame is without rhyme or reason and the ways people can "make it" have no bounds.  The problem with the first season of LCS was that these amateurs were truly not-ready-for-prime-time-players and yet they were on on prime-time.
 
A decision was made this season to open it up to any comic, regardless of how experienced or credential-filled their resume already was.  Mind you, I don't believe this was done strictly to make the show funnier.  Yeah,  showcasing acts that have been honed through years and years of experience will yeild a more entertaining program, but the real issue is that standup comedy has been struggling for about a decade.  Lots and lots of serious comedians are having a very tough time and it indeed seems a waste to give so much highly-watched screentime to beginners when there's so few venues for veterans these days.   

But while the new approach makes sense and while being on the show is amazing exposure, it still seems odd to see these pros reduced to this.  Many of the comics have already done the Tonight Show.  Sue Costello had her own sitcom.  Kathleen Madigan won female comic of the year in 1996.  It kind of made my skin crawl to watch them have to wait in line all day and then perform in front of Ross and Bob without an audience. 

I suppose the biggest irony is that the second most harmful blow to the standup comedy industry (America's decade-long disinterest in standup being the first) is the decline of the sitcom.  No longer is the Montreal Comedy festival ending in a string of network development deals with breakout performers there.  And why is the sitcom dying?  Reality TV is certainly a huge factor.  If a sitcom is built around this season's LCS champion and is aired, can it possibly be as successful as the show that spawned it?  It would certainly be an uphill battle.  Despite its flaws, this season of LCS does seem to have made America care about standup again. 

Much has been made of the show being "rigged."  While I do think NBC has covered their bases, there is a much greater connection between several contestants and some of the people making the show than is being shown.  And while Drew Carey and fellow celebrity judges got mad that they felt their votes were discounted (which they essentially were), I found it equally non-objective to watch Drew judge Monty Hoffman, his buddy and old co-star from The Good Life.

Since NBC and the producers are being so surreptitious in revealing the extent of their connections to certain contestants, I feel it would be sanctimonious for me to do so as well.   While I've worked with a number of people in the top 40 in one place or another, I've been buddies with John Heffron since his very first set.  It seems like just yesterday that Eric Champnella and I got him booked on his first paid gig in Alpena, Michigan and then laughed our assess off because we'd both done the room and knew he wasn't ready for that hell.  Well, the joke's certainly on us now.  Good luck, John.

I've been so out of it that I missed the release of a new Godzilla film.  Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S. has completely slipped in under my radar and will see its American premiere later this month at the Egyptian Theatre during the American Cinematheque's celebration of the 50th anniversary of Godzilla.  This sequel to the well-recieved Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla came out in Japan in 2003. How on Earth is it possible that I did not know this?  Why have I not already seen an untranslated, poor quality bootleg dub of this six months ago?  I really gotta start spending less time with my family and get on the ball.    

While I believe that blog entries should do more than just link to other things on the net, I'm kind of at a loss for words over JAY MAYNARD'S TRON COSTUME.  Where do you even begin? 

FANBOY GOLDEN BOY

It was recently announced that five more episodes of "Clone Wars" will air on Cartoon Network next March.  As I've said before, the main problem with the initial runs of CW was that the mostly-three-minutes-long-episodes were too short.  As a viewer, you never had enough time to get into things.  Even when you watch a bunch in a row, stories never were allowed to pick up steam.  The last three chapters are an exception.  The two-part fight between Anakin and Asaji was great and was only eclipsed by Chapter 20.  The introduction of General Grievous was amazingly well-handled and powerful.  It's important to note that it was, by far, the longest chapter, clocking in at over seven minutes.   It is therefore wonderful news that each of the five new episodes currently being produced will be TWELVE minutes in length.  With Grievous now in the picture and so much time to tell these new chapters, it's tough not to get really excited about this. 



Chapter 20 of Clone Wars is my favorite thing these days.  I watch it all the time.  The extent to which the Jedi are frightened of GG before you even see him says so much.  The actual second Grievous is introduced -- when he stomps on the Hudson-from-"Aliens"-like padawan and then unfolds -- is quite momentous, although certainly not as cool a design or transformation as when the Iron Giant turns into Battle Giant.   Things really go off the hook once he starts fighting.  His moves are endlessly inventive and graceful.  I haven't seen a robot kick butt so beautifully since  Black Magic M-66.     




The obvious comparison to this one-verses-many animated fight is the the classic appearance of Great Mazinga in the end of Majingâ Zetto tai Ankoku Daishôgun (Mazinga Z vs. General Dark).  GM probably puts on an even greater show of jaw-dropping power, but since Great Mazinga is technically on the side of good, the effect is much different.   General Grievous is a villain and seeing his effortless ass-whupping has a more heart-stopping impact.  You're watching a conclusion where evil wins, wins easily and you can't imagine anything being able to stop it.  It's just brilliant.   



The success of "Clone Wars" has to fall squarely at the feet of Genndy Tartakovsky, who's really become the fanboy it-boy these days.  In addition to helming these additional CW chapters, he also has just been hired to write and direct the new live-action ASTRO BOY, which will be produced by Don Murphy and Christine Belson.  The project has been in development for a long time, but with the red-hot Tartakovsky on board, I'd say the classic Osamu Tezuka property will indeed finally show up on the big screen.  In an age where cheerished properties are "messed up" by Hollywood left and  right, it's refreshing to see something you care about fall into the hands of someone who will respect and understand the source material.   

But it's important to note that Genndy isn't someone who just likes the right stuff and has fanboy street cred.  His own, original creations have garnered high respect.  Samurai Jack followers are almost manical in their praise of him and the internet is filled with bulletin boards pointing up clever Dexter's Laboratory jokes.   

In re-watching the first 20 Chapters of Clone Wars with a friend, something was pointed out to me that I somehow hadn't noticed before:  not one second of Jar Jar.  Considering what a Rosetta Stone Tartakovsky has become to fanboy sensibility, it wouldn't surprise me to learn the omission was something he put in his contract. 

Poochieness is so pervasive in our culture, that it's easy to miss obvious examples.  I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but GARFIELD is pure poochie, arguably a poochie archtype.  The commercials have him wearing sunglasses and even say flat out "He's got attitude."  Again, although "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show" is my favorite episode of "The Simpsons," I must contest the passionate rejection of Poochie by the Simpsons-universe public.  Certainly Poochie aesthetics are enemies of art, but unpopular?  The Garfield movie has a 14 percent fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, with many critics actively hating it.   I'm sure you may know people who were dragged to it and are still trying to wash the viewing off of them.   And yet, it will gross about $24 million dollars in its opening weekend, only two million less than the TOTAL domestic grosses of both THE IRON GIANT and MEMENTO. 

A little while ago, I got an assignment to write a freelance episode of a new cartoon series on Cartoon Network called "The Life and Times of Juniper Lee."  While the money isn't great in animation and it's much better to be on staff than doing freelance work, this was still a great break for me.  I consider myself very lucky to have gotten the opportunity.  The process was quite fascinating, surprising me at every turn.  The voices for the episode were taped two days ago and I'm still shocked at how quick the whole thing went by. 

The development of screenplays (which is where I had been focusing my efforts) goes on forever.  I've had scripts at studios that have gone through rewrites for years and years, not get produced and yet still not be officially "dead."  In the screenplay world, it's not uncommon to get excited about being replaced by other writers.  This excitment isn't the result of you being tired of the script, but rather the fact that the studio will never allow you to write the shooting draft and that they're bringing in bigger names to replace you and gut your script means it could actually see production!  

TV is different.  Networks have to keep cranking out product and simply don't have the luxury of non-stop rewriting.  What a TV writer focusses on is also very, very different.  With movies, concept and tone are huge struggles.  While the actual writing in spec screenplays must be of a very high quality in order to get read by anyone, it's essentially meaningless.  It's guaranteed that you are going to be completely rewritten, so the real question is if the overall concept is commercial enough to warrant buying the thing.  With TV writing (except for pilots), concept and tone have already been determined.  Your struggles become  "Does this line capture the voice of the character?,"  "Is this joke efficient enough?" or  "How can I cram more jokes into this scene?"     Movie scripts are all about macro-managing and TV scripts are all about micro-managing.

The main war of wannabe Hollywood writers is one of access.   The sad truth is - and this isn't fun to hear - your opinions don't really matter.  People like their own ideas and don't care about yours.  The real goal is to find out what a person of power wants and then give it to them.  In the long run. this approach will win out over working on your own masterpiece.  At least while you're a nobody.  If you become a hit TV or movie writer, you can do whatever you want and they'll throw money at you. 

And the law that "people like their own ideas" is true of you as well.  Writers tend not to want a word they've written to be touched.  And that's not always because it's the best way, but because the ideas are their own.  I've written a number of scripts with other people.  Whever you do this, invariably, you'll arrive at places where you disagree.  You think it should be A, he thinks it should be B.  You're convinced your're right and don't understand why your partner can't see the light.  You'll put a pin in the argument and say you'll come back to settle it later.  I find it very telling that whenever this has happened to me, I'm shocked at how often I can't remember which side of of the argument I took.  I'll have no idea whether I wanted A or B.   The reason I had a preference in the first place was that I liked my own idea more.

The situation with Juniper Lee was ideal.  I had direct and constant access with Judd Winick, the show creator.  Moreover, Judd was able to be incredibly specific on what he wanted every step of the way.  I almost feel embarrassed at how easy he made the whole thing.  Make no mistake, this is far from common.  Most people of power are not creative folks, and although they love their own ideas, often don't know what those ideas are or how to articulate them. 

"The Life and Times of Juniper Lee" is scheduled to premier next spring.  I have no idea what order they will air the episodes, but mine "The World According to L.A.R.P." is the eighth one recorded. 

What a surprise!  I've just been doing this blog whenever I get the chance - which has turned out to be about once a week.  Aside from just being plain busy, one reason has been a lack of obligation to a readership.  I've just been attaching the URL as a signature in emails to freinds, who occassionally forward it to other people.  But yesterday, my attack on quidditch was sent to and posted on The Volokh Conspiracy, a REAL blog with real traffic.  The viewings went through the roof and the item got a high number of comments (the whole blog has had only one comment up to this point).  Although I didn't forward my article myself, looking over the comments shows you just how wise it can be to really scrutinize where you link from.  I'm blown away by the high quality of the discussion, which I truly believe is a rare find on the internet.  Thanks to all, but it looks like the debate on quidditch is a moot point, as the following article reveals... 

-- From the Daily Prophet

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore stunned students, faculty and alumnae when he announced that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry would no longer field the sports of quidditch and wrestling upon the conclusion of the current school year. "I'm shocked," said Draco Malfoy, Hogwarts precocious 135 pound league champion wrestler. "We've just finished one of the best seasons we'd ever had here. And with our off-season Greco training, we were even starting to show success against eastern European Trolls. What did we do wrong?"

While the elimination of a 13-3 wrestling team that showed unexpected success in the post-season was a shock to many, the real bomb came one sentence later when it was announced that the school's quidditch players would be using their broomsticks to sweep out their lockers.

"The days of revenue-producing sports being safe from Title IX quotas are over," said Jessica Gavora, author of Tilting the Playing Field: School, Sports, Sex and Title IX. "Quidditch draws big crowds and makes lots of money for schools. The layperson would think it would be immune from Title IX bean counting. But the disparity in the numbers of boys and girls interested in sports, combined with the demand that the gender breakdown of athletic participation mirror the overall student population, well, it makes a decision like this inevitable."

"It shouldn't have come to this," said Donna Lopiano, head of the Women's Sports Coven. "Title IX is not a quota. Cuts come when administrations don't allocate their resources wisely. The quidditch arms race that we've seen over the past decade has resulted in massive excesses and huge financial losses for schools. I mean, does a fourth-string bludger really need a Cleansweep Seven broomstick?"

Hogwarts had been granted a reprieve from Title IX litigation three years ago when it added equestrian and womens' crew. However, a WSC investigation revealed that all of the participants on the two teams were apparitions, the result of spells cast by Dumbledore himself. Donna DeVarona, member of the Office of Civil Rights Commission on Opportunity in Athletics called the tactic a "deceitful attempt of compliance." She added "The OCR is very clear on this. The policy clarification of the three -prong compliance test (created in 1995 when Brown University attempted to meet roster minimums for their gymnastics team by gating in female demons from other dimensions) demands that a school can claim to be 'substantially proportionate' by measuring only actual, non-hologram players. Moreover, the policy specifically forbids unused roster spots being filled with female players created by illusionary spells."

Eric LeSher, Title IX expert and head of the organization "Muggles Against Quotas," found the elimination ironic. "Advocates of the current interpretation of Title IX are always saying that the reason that more women don't come out for sports is because of the stigmas of being a female athlete. That societal pressure discourages otherwise interested women from participating. Well, I can't think of an accoutrement more associated with women than a broomstick. Witches, maids, you name it. Yet over 85% of quidditch players are male. They don't seem to have a problem of being labeled a 'sissy with a broom.' The argument just doesn't hold up to any sort of scrutiny."

Oliver Wood, head coach of the Hogwarts now swan-song quidditch team, agreed. "There's this belief that quidditch is some sort of utopian sport. That boys and girls play together with equal interest and ability. Well that's fine for some politically correct fantasy world. But at tryouts this year, I had to cut twelve males - all walkons, all willing to ride the bench for as long as it took for them to get a chance to whack a quaffle. Meanwhile, the six girls I have on the team are all on full scholarship and three of them were recruited by me in our cafeteria. And unless I let them be seekers - and start a good number of games - they don't want to play."

While there is much discomfort all around the campus, the affected athletes must quickly ponder their future. Although Hogwarts has said it will honor all existing scholarships for those eliminated, Malfoy is considering transferring, even if it means to a non-magical school. "I don't know what to do," the young wizard said "Wrestling has always been number one. It means everything to me. Why can't I play the sport I love and get a non-Muggle education at the same time?"

QUIDDITCH SUCKS


A big part of the appeal of the Harry Potter books is how easy they are for kids to relate to. Even though Harry spends much of his time at a magical boarding school, the personal struggles he goes through are not foreign to real-universe kids. The schoolwork is hard, the bullies aren't always easy to deal with and his family is a nightmare. I don't believe for a second that any of this is an accident. While so much of this saga is escapist, fantasy-fulfillment for kids, J.K. Rowling certainly works hard at making readers recognize Harry's plights in themselves. No one ever grew up wanting/expecting a honest-to-goodness magic broom, but creating a universe where there are different broom models and then having your hero look longingly at the latest and best model in a store window is completely germane to adolescent materialistic desire. It removes much of the abstractness of the supernatural, brings you closer to the story and makes you care more about the characters.

Perhaps the most hip, of-today element of the fantastical Harry Potter universe is the sport of quidditch. Again, what Rowling has done is take an old standard in supernatural lore (broom riding for witches) and Poochie it up for today's kids by turning it into an athletic competition. When you throw in all the normal sports-drama components - making the team, training, strategy and the big game - you have a story that's much more close to real-life than it is to one of wizards and witches. If you're looking for a big audience, it's a really smart idea. Almost a stroke of genius. The only problem is quidditch sucks.

In even a casual introduction to the game of quidditch, it's flaws are so obvious and so great that it strips JK Rowling naked and reveals just how divorced she is from our world of muggle sports. Perhaps her greatest flaw of all is how unafraid she is to go into the specifics of the game, despite the fact that she's way out of her depth.

The general idea of a broom-riding basketball/hockey/soccer game is not unsound. The problem is introduced with the position of seeker and the hunt for the golden snitch. The objectives of having chasers get the quaffles into the goals and the seeker catching the golden snitch are completely unrelated to one another. It's as if two separate games have been clumsily welded together.

I think the notion behind the creation of the seeker position is a cheap one: to create a position for the protagonist that's extra special. The seeker is the center forward, the quarterback, the fourth leg of a relay, etc. - except ten times more important. A quidditch game only ends once a seeker catches the golden snitch. It also gives his or her team an additional 150 points. (Quaffle goals are worth 10 points each)

If you were an avid quidditch fan, your most common feeling would be one of non-satisfaction. Essays by sports columnists attacking the rules would be commonplace. The better team would often lose and the winning team would often have hollow-feeling victories. There would be numerous tales of the seeker who lost the game for his team when he foolishly caught the golden snitch, not realizing his team was down by more than 150 points at that second. The fan outrage would dwarf all complaints about the BCS polling, Amateur boxing judging and World Cup penalty shootouts combined.

JK Rowling's creation of quidditch in the HP universe obviously had merchandising dollars in mind. This is completely fair game. Milking franchises for as many revenue streams as possible doesn't automatically hurt the art. It's all in the way it's handled. And again, quidditch just sucks. But there's no need for merchandising here. You can already play quidditch at home! The NBA finals are upon us. Bring a friend over, turn on the TV and each pick a team. Then pull out a chess board and play while the game is going on. If you win the chess game, give yourself 150 points and add it to the score of whichever NBA team you picked. If that total score is greater than the number of points of your opponent's NBA team, you win! The marriage of the two contests into one makes just as little sense as quidditch.

Although not without tension in the books and movies, in practice, quidditch doesn't hold up. As soon as I read the rules in the first book, my main thought was one of sympathy for the videogame designers who would inevitably be saddled with the chore of turning this reverse-engineered-for-dramatic-purposes smorgasbord of sports ideas into an actual game. It was therefore with great surprise that I learned that the game "Quidditch World Cup" was released by Electronic Arts.

What was I missing? I just couldn't believe that a game so ill-conceived could be made to work. Well, this is how they did it. They gave each team a "Golden Snitch Bar." As you and your opponent try to score quaffle points, your bar moves toward the center. Once the two sides meet, the golden snitch is released. This is an interesting solution, but certainly is not the quidditch Rowling describes, where the elements of quaffle play and golden snitch capture are concurrent, not sequential. The book of "Sorcerer's Stone" includes a second quidditch game, which was removed from the film. In it, Harry catches the golden snitch almost immediately, ending the game before it even began. Clearly, this game could not be replicated in the Electronic Arts re-envisioned version. Since no quaffle play took place, none could be rewarded with golden snitch bar advancement.

So why all the fuss? Well, I guess it's the snooty attitude that making a game that actually works isn't important as long as the trappings are fun. I truly believe that Rowling's cursory approach to designing the game thumbs its nose at all true sports enthusiasts. It trivializes us. It says "well the silly games that you watch don't make any sense, so why should mine?" Well, they do make sense, honey. And they're important. Although not exactly the same thing, look at all the work John Madden put into his line of videogames before he'd assign his name to them. He refused to allow technological limitations deter him from making games that were true to football. And his stubbornness yielded pure game greatness. It's quite clear that the game of quidditch has been devised by a soccer mom who most likely doesn't even understand soccer.

Well, the third AMERICAN IDOL will be crowned tonight.  The season hasn't gone without its share of controversy.  In fact, throughout its history, people have suggested the show might be rigged.  The phenomenon reminds me of a scene from QUIZ SHOW. 

GOODWIN:  I spoke with Herb Stemple.  And he told me that when a jew comes on and makes a lot of money they have a gentile come on and make twice as much.