The Death of Tommy Cooper

Yesterday, I came across a video on YouTube of the death of the British magician and comedian Tommy Cooper.  (I’m neither going to link directly to the video or embed it due to the subject matter.  If anyone wants to view it, it is easy enough to find.  There are several versions of it, all essentially the same, it appears, on YouTube. )  Cooper died while performing on a live TV show called “Live from Her Majesty’s,” and perhaps it was a fitting end and perhaps not.  Morbid curiosity was only a small part of why I watched it.  The more compelling reason is that I am 50 now, and he died at 63, a point that is not that far away for me in time.

The odd thing about Tommy Cooper’s death was that people kept laughing at him while he was dying.  Cooper’s act was to effect being an incompetent magician (which he wasn’t).  He would tell jokes while putting off the inevitable failure of the trick he was performing and there would be mistakes and interruptions.  So, when he faltered a bit and fell to a sitting position on the floor, the members of the audience thought it was just part of the act.  And they laughed.  And as he sat slumped and breathing laboriously, they laughed.  And when he fell back dead on the floor, they laughed again.  Because each discreet action was believable as part of his act and each happened, quite amazingly, with the same timing that he used in pacing his gags.

I wonder how it felt for him to die with laughter in his ears.  I would like to think that it was pleasant.  He had spent his career making people laugh, and what more fitting way to go?  But as he sat slumped dying, did he not most likely think, “I’m dying, you bastards!  Don’t fucking laugh!  Call me a doctor.  Help me!”?

It is a mysterious thing, this passage from life that we call death.  I think that what is compelling about that video is that while most of us are familiar with the before and the after, it is rare for us to see the transition.

Still the important thing about Tommy Cooper, from our perspective, is not that he died, but that he lived.  He was, I think, a wonderful comedian who makes me laugh quite a bit.  So that’s why I decided to embed a clip of him quite alive and quite funny.  Enjoy.

What Closes on Saturday Night

People like to throw the word “satire” around a lot these days, but the term is rarely understood or applied properly.  I say this after reading a review of what sounds like a dog of a movie, Hamlet 2, in The New York Times.  At several points, the reviewer, Stephen Holden, refers to the satire in this film, only I don’t see anything satiric about it.  It’s merely a spoof, and Mr. Holden seems to think that sending up Dead Poets Society–however abysmal and worthy of derision that film may be–qualifies as satire.  However, it doesn’t, at least not to my mind.

Satire is a political and social weapon, and it has one target:  Those who have too much, control too much, and think that they have a right to dictate what sort of lives the great mass of humans get to live.  It is a cudgel that should be used in defense of the defenseless and against those in power.  You can make fun of a cripple, but a cripple can’t be satirized.  Neither can someone who is poor.

However, it seems to me to have been a trend in this country over recent years to attack those without power while giving those with power a relatively free ride, the main exception being partisan caricatures.  The Daily Show is capable of rising to the level of satire, but not much else that I see.  In the main, we spoof the rich and powerful–the “how stupid is Bush” trope is more spoof than anything else– while attacking the poor and downtrodden.

Let me use a couple of examples to show what I mean.

The first is an example of how popular it is these days to kick the poor. It’s a sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look concerning two homeless men, Sir Digby Chicken Caesar and his cohort, Ginger.  Now, I like Mitchell and Webb.  I’m not here to run them down.  I just found this sketch disappointing because it does nothing except reinforce stereotypes and take potshots at people who are already down.  This takes no courage, no wit, no incisiveness, nothing.  At best, it takes a bit of a mean streak.

Contrast this with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer as Tom fun and Derek:

There is an element of understanding and sympathy here that makes it poignant in a completely unsentimental way.  The small stain of satire in the piece is inherent in its sympathy with the characters and addresses the narrowness of a society  that pushes some of its weakest members to homelessness for their eccentricity (in losing their lodgings for Derek’s “unconventional way of eating an arctic roll“–a kind of dessert) and to theft in search of a bit of fun.

Satire denies the supremacy of the powerful by invoking laughter, but it is a laughter tinged with outrage.  Satirists are injured idealists, disappointed lovers.  They are people who use wit in order to defend those who cannot defend themselves and to deflate pretension.  And of all the things that one might claim about the homeless, calling them pretentious isn’t one of them.

Guys and Dolls

As you may or may not know, there’s a new production on Broadway–currently in previews and opening March 1st–of the classic musical, Guys and Dolls, starring Oliver Platt and Lauren Graham.  The advance word thus far has been good.

Now some may wonder why they should give a crap.  Isn’t this, after all, just another musical?  Not really.  In a part of theater that is generally the province of gay men and straight women, Guys and Dolls is a straight man’s paradise.  In fact, it is legendary in my family because it is the first show my mother ever persuaded my father to see.    How did she do it?  She let him know that it involved horse racing and gambling.  He still had his doubts, but, by the end of the opening number, “Fugue for Tinhorns,” he was hooked.   Here’s the number from the so-so 1955 movie (although still a great number):

That’s not to be confused with “The Hills Are Alive” from The Sound of Music.

Now for a couple of numbers from the 1992 Broadway production.  First, Nathan Lane and the priceless Faith Prince as the lovers who have been dating for 14 years, Nathan Detroit and his girl Adelaide:

That’s two great performers working together with skill and panache.

Finally, here’s a performance on the Tony broadcast for 1992, featuring two songs with extraordinary lyrics, “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” featuring Walter Bobbie and “Guys and Dolls” with the entire cast:

Lyric writing just doesn’t get any better than “And the devil will drag you under/By the sharp lapels of your checkered coat” or “When you spot a John waiting out in the rain/Chances are he’s insane as only a John can be for a Jane./When you meet a gent paying all kinds of rent/For a flat that could flatten the Taj Mahal./Call it sad, call it funny./But it’s better than even money/That the guy’s only doing it for some doll.” And composers for American musical theater don’t get much better than Frank Loesser.

Brian Blessed on Have I Got News for You

I can’t seem to get my brain together enough to write a cogent post today, so instead I’ve posted, below, a compilation of clips of the appearance Brian Blessed made last year on the BBC comedy quiz show, Have I Got News for You.  My favorite part is the story he tells concerning John Gielgud, but it all makes me laugh.  Enjoy.

The Means of Distribution, Part I

Over the last few days, after the broadcast of “Phil’s Deli” and in reaction to a post and comments on Baby Got Books, I’ve started thinking about how works of art get distributed, particularly in regards to books, movies and TV shows, and audio plays.  Each is being affected by the Internet and the digitized life, but none, it seems to me, has caught up with technology yet.  What finally pushed me over the precipice to write this post was getting an email forwarding a link to Michael Moore’s new film, Slacker Uprising.

Moore is trying something different here.  He’s giving his movie away.  (And, just for the record, I’m not endorsing, condemning, exfoliating, or cleansing the film.  I haven’t watched it and haven’t decided whether I will or not.  If you don’t care for Michael Moore, I would suggest that you not watch it and that you don’t bother leaving angry comments on this post.  I’m concerned here with art, society, and technology, not politics.)  He’s not the first show biz figure to try giving some content away; Radiohead got some very nice news coverage doing so, and a couple of others have apparently tried it out.

What is occurring to me is that we are about to see a vast–and quite possibly useful–change in the way that works of art are distributed.  I don’t claim that this is some kind of original insight; I’m just trying to work through this, and this blog has become the medium through which I think through these things.

Let’s start with movies.  Film, as an art form, is all but dead.  Oh, sure, you can see loads of violence, trillions of dollars-worth of special effects, and computer animation out the wazoo, but precious little of it even aspires to art.  The economics of the movie business have gotten to the point where, not only would Citizen Kane not get made today, neither would Stagecoach, On the Waterfront, The Hustler, or Five Easy Pieces.  And yet, there might be hope.

The most public face of this hope is, of course, YouTube.  People are already making short films and releasing them on YouTube or its equivalents and hoping that viral marketing will get them the attention they desire.  And now we’re getting a feature film.  And some TV shows.  People are starting to figure out how you can make money–and show business is, in the end, a business–by doing things online.

This is a major change in the means of distribution.  And being the means of distribution is the whole point of being a movie studio or a TV network.  If someone takes that away from you, your goose is cooked.  Just look at the record companies.  iTunes and iPods and programs like Garage Band and Audacity have made it possible for anyone to produce music and to distribute it without a record company.  Paul Simon discusses this and the evolution of recorded music from the vinyl album to the mp3 in a discussion with Charlie Rose (starting at minute 43:00 of the video).  He indicates that he’s no longer thinking in terms of making another CD, but instead releasing new songs individually and less as groups of songs and more as lone items.

The implication is that the record company is no longer a part of the equation.  The means of distribution have changed.

Phil’s Deli

The Shoestring Radio Theatre has produced and broadcast a production of my radio play, “Phil’s Deli,” to a hungering world, first this past Wednesday on KUSF in San Francisco, and then nationally starting on Friday.  The show will be available for download via Real Player and as an mp3 through this coming Friday, September 26th.  Anyone and everyone is encouraged to download the show.  You won’t be disappointed.  It’s pretty funny.  (If you don’t come across this until after September 26th, just email me at rudyvalue at nextintheseries dot com, and I will supply an mp3.)

And now for the story behind the story.

A few years ago, I had a scheme that involved developing a radio campaign for my then employer, a mid-sized telecommunications carrier.  Well, I developed a sample radio spot with my partner-in-audio, Tom O’Neill, and submitted it to the marketing department.  They declined to use it, and, after a short negotiation, I came away with the right to use the spot as long as we did not use the name of the company.  Fair enough.

I told Tom this, and he sent me a version back almost immediately where he had dubbed himself saying “Phil’s Deli” over the name of the telecommunications company.  I thought it was hysterical.  And I started thinking about how to use it in a script.

What I came up with was a script about pipe dreams and the power of belief.  It is also, I think, a solid example of the craft of writing a sitcom.  It’s farcical and funny.  In the best of all possible worlds, I would probably direct my own version of it, most likely for podcasting.

I really wish I had better understood the future of podcasting when I was trying to develop the radio show.  I’m pretty sure that my concept would do well as podcasts, perhaps would even expand the limits of what people think of as podcasts.  The kind of layering of sound and the establishment of a sense of place would really be enhanced in a podcast.

And maybe it will still work out.  You never know.  I have a bagful of scripts and the desire to pursue it.  What I need is a competent producer.  I write well, I act well, I can do a decent job of directing.  What kills me over-and-over again in show business is my complete lack of talent for producing.  Anybody who has a knack for it, however, is welcome to drop me a line.

My News Addiction

The Internet made me a news addict.  It’s always up, always there, just lurking behind a tab or a bookmark or as a memory in the address bar.  There are newspaper websites, news-related blogs, and news magazines.  There are feeds and summaries and convenient links.  It’s everywhere, news as entertainment.

And none of it matters.  At least not to me.

Let me give you an example.  In recent days, we have seen the American financial markets implode, the stock market experience a nervous breakdown (it’s gone from depression to mania quicker than you can say “government bailout”), and a slapdash and inconsistent government response.  I’ve read reports, and I’ve read commentaries.  I’ve looked at charts and listened to experts.  And I have no more control over these events now than I did before Lehman Brothers failed.  And yet I worry over them.  How can that be healthy?

The same goes for the Presidential campaign.  I know who I’m voting for based what I’ve gleaned from the policy papers published on their websites and with no thanks to the news cycle whatsoever.  In fact, all I ever see in the news are distractions.  Stuff and nonsense.  Meaningless gloop.  It’s all been reduced to the level of a reality game show, one that could be called Survivor:  White House.  It’s an odd way to choose our leaders and ought to be beneath us.

But nothing is beneath the news game.  Although we like to think of the news as something that is presented in the public interest, it is actually just the honey that attracts the flies to the trap of advertising.  And there’s no way of getting around this.  If the government owns the news organization, you end up, most likely, with mere propaganda.  If you leave it to the whims of the market, you end up with pabulum and pap.

Of course, as is the case with so much, The Firesign Theatre summed it up beautifully, this time on their album, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.  They have a newsreader say the following:  “Those are the headlines, and now for the rumors behind the news.”

I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m not trying to prescribe a cure for everyone.  I just know that I have to wean myself off.  The news eats up my attention, makes me crabby, and gives precious little in return.  It is the enemy of enlightenment and peace, and has a tendency to narrow the mind rather than to expand it.  We’ll see how it goes.  If I write a post on Monday about the Federal bailout of a Presidential campaign, you’ll know that my plan will still need work.

What Time Is It, Eccles?

It’s Friday, and I’m feeling lazy, and there are some things that you just want to share with the world. Therefore, here is a snippet from The Goon Show, featuring Spike Milligan as Eccles and Peter Sellers as Bluebottle.

His Back Pages

Thanks to my cyber pal Kim at Mouse Medicine, I found out that today is Bob Dylan’s birthday. I wasn’t sure what to get him on such short notice, so I thought I’d just post some lyrics I started work on many years ago (maybe someday I’ll finish them) that were inspired by a song of his. The tune is that of “With God on His Side,” which might be Bob’s or might be traditional or might be Bob’s adaptation of a traditional tune. It doesn’t really matter. (And, as an aside, you might want to check out Bob’s XM radio show, Theme Time Radio Hour. You can get a three-day free trial. Just schedule it around Wednesday, when Theme Time Radio Hour is on around-the-clock on XM channel 2. It’s great show in which Bob plays songs from other artists, some well known and others not so much. His segues are funny and original. The whole thing’s a treat. Give it a try.)

Anyway, here’s my little bit of songwriting in Mr. Dylan’s honor:

Way back in the ’60s
I had my first thought.
And the guy who inspired it,
My God, he was hot.
His name was Bob Dylan,
And he never was wrong.
It just wasn’t a protest
Without Bob Dylan’s songs.

His voice was quite nasal,
This young voice of doom.
What I got for list’nin’
Was sent to my room.
No rumpus room priv’ledge,
I played no ping-pong.
Dad said only subversives
Played Bob Dylan songs.

Well, we had our Woodstock,
But also Kent State.
And, if that didn’t get you,
Then came Watergate.
I cut my hair short then,
And I sold off my bong.
I acquired a tie for
Some Bob Dylan songs.

Oh, Time, she’s a passin’.
She’s passin’ by me.
I woke up one day and
I was 43.
I had a big mortgage,
Two kids and a lawn.
It was hard to find time for
Those Bob Dylan songs.

Way back in the ’60s
My first thought I had.
But when I grew up I
Turned into my dad.
Yes, innocence fades, boy,
And it faded ere long.
And I don’t quite remember
Those Bob Dylan songs.

He Cried. Are You Happy Now, JK Rowling?

You would think that someone with half of the world’s known money supply would be above such things, but JK Rowling and Warner Entertainment are in the process of suing a 50-year-old geek librarian for having the temerity to compile a Harry Potter encyclopedia.

The plaintiffs claim that the encyclopedia plagiarizes the Harry Potter books by quoting from them without adding enough new content to justify the borrowings. Apparently the redoubtable Ms Rowling also had plans of her own for producing a Harry Potter encyclopedia, and she feels that Steven Jan Vander Ark (to quote Dave Barry, I am not making that up; and please, Dave Barry, don’t sue me for quoting you like that) and his publisher are stepping on her well-groomed toes.

Mr. Vander Ark and some others already maintain the Harry Potter Lexicon website, which she had apparently approved of, and he was simply moving it to the next level. Why it’s okay as a website, but evil when translated into handy book form, I’m not sure. Why it is different from the large number of books that explain passages from Finnegan’s Wake, I’m also not sure, even adjusting for the quality of the writing and the depth of Ms Rowling’s pockets.

As to the question of plagiarism, one must ask whether it would be possible to publish a gloss on these books without quoting from them. I don’t personally see how, unless there are actual spells and incantations involved. American copyright law provides an exception to infringement for “fair use” of a text. And while Ms Rowling and Warner Entertainment assert that potential sales of the Potter books will be lost, it is difficult to imagine how. Would someone–a reasonable person, to use the typical legal standard–really forgo buying the Potter books after acquiring The Harry Potter Lexicon? If that’s true, wouldn’t it follow that the Merriam-Webster dictionary infringes on every work ever written in the English language? And if it does, can I join the suit?

Mr Vander Ark and people like him are the pilot fish to Ms Rowling’s Great White Shark. The relationship is symbiotic, and a person cannot attain the heights that Ms Rowling has without picking up a number of–hangers-on isn’t quite the right word–attendants. Their prosperity arises from hers and cannot take the place of hers. In my opinion, this suit is paranoiac and pointless, and she should have been above it.