"HEEEEEEEEERE'S ...um...who?"

I don't watch any of the NBC Latenight Boys, preferring Letterman if I am in the mood for such things. But I have to join in the chorus of those proffering their respect for Conan O'Brien's announcement to the Earthlings the other day. It was heartfelt, a bit self-deprecating, and well-received by just about everybody. Well, except the hacks at NBC.

What a mess Jeff Zucker (right) created when he replaced five primetime hours of scripted programing with a talk show. It will remain one of the lousiest decisions in the history of television. That guy from the affiliate in Boston was right months ago. Remember him? When this half-assed decision was announced last spring, Boston station owner Ed Ansin announced his plans to decline Leno's show and move his own local news program into the 10 PM hour instead. He requested that his station be allowed to delay the Leno show until 11 PM, a request which was vehemently rejected by NBC. The network was so incensed (and so frightened that the move in Boston, the 7th largest viewing area in the country, would encourage other stations to follow suit), they warned Ansin that if he preempted Leno, they would strip his station of the NBC affiliation completely, and turn their local Telemundo station into the Boston NBC affiliate. Ansin backed down, and, well, we now know what a crummy idea putting Leno on at 10 PM has turned out to be. (I knew it all along, but nobody asked me.)

But back to Conan. He's now decided he will not continue with The Tonight Show if it moves to the post-midnight slot; he feels strongly that the franchise cannot survive that late in the evening. Leno, meanwhile, seems agreeable to return to the 11:35 slot with a half-hour show, whether it's called The Tonight Show or not.

There are several aspects of this issue which interest me. A talk show seems to be the most "personality driven" of all television programs. The host's personality dominates just about every creative decision made for these shows, so it must be particularly devastating to be jerked around like these NBC guys. The host position carries so much weight that his show is always referred to by the host's name, regardless of the actual title of the program. Do you tune into The Late Show? No, you watch Letterman. Even The Tonight Show, the most recognizable name-brand in the evening talk show arena, is almost always referred to by its host. Did you watch The Tonight Show during its heyday? No, you stayed up to see who was on Carson. These days, it's Conan and Leno, Kimmel and Fallon; I would have to stop writing, and google these guys to get the actual names of the programs they host.

What am I getting at? I understand completely the sense of betrayal Conan in particular is feeling, which must be frustrating as he is still, technically, employed by The Tonight Show. If the network decides to change timeslots for its show, I'm not sure he has much to say in the matter.

Primetime stars, no matter how powerful, have very little, if any, influence on where their shows are placed on the schedule. I'm thinking now of three huge sitcom stars of past years: Seinfeld, Roseanne, and Cosby. All three headlined programs which weren't just smash hits, but were actual cultural touchstones for their eras. They may have partially owned their shows, but none of them had any input on where their programs would be placed on the network schedule.


Oprah, arguably the most powerful woman in television, owns her show, and is not tied to a particular network, but other than insuring she is never in competition with Dr. Phil (which she produces), even she cannot dictate exactly where her program is placed on the schedule.

Conan can't either. I'm not suggesting he roll over and play dead for the network nitwits who are scrambling to rectify a mistake which never should have been made in the first place; if I were in his position, I would probably give NBC the well-deserved finger, and bolt. From what I understand of his contract, the network is within its rights to move The Tonight Show to 12:05 and expect Conan to remain with the program, but everyone will be surprised if he does so. NBC cannot force him to continue with the show, they can only prevent his working elsewhere for a time. I read somewhere that neither the network nor Conan are looking for a legal battle over this debacle.

In my opinion, the villain here is NBC honcho Jeff Zucker, who created this fiasco. He should be sacked, but first he should be sent back to Boston, so station manager Ed Ansin can tell him I Told You So.

The Case of the Bra Brouhaha

Anyone who frequented Facebook this week knows at least part of this story. But according to the Washington Post, we may never know the whole tale.

Back in July, a British group promoting breast cancer awareness was formed on Facebook; it invited women to post the color of their bra in their status update. They languished throughout subsequent months with only a handful of fans. As of Friday, their membership had jumped to over 30,000.

Somehow, early this week, a chain letter email began to circulate on Facebook. Addressed only to the female of the species, it suggested that it would be fun to post bra color in status updates, without explaining why, or even what. The ladies were instructed to post just one or two words to describe their bra. So, toward the end of the week, status updates across the globe began to pop up: black, pink, biege, cinammon, none, nude, etc. The idea here, apparently, was to peak the interest of others, who would respond to each update with a "Whaaaaat???", giving an opportunity to be reminded about the toll breast cancer continues to take.

That laudable goal fell by the wayside for many, who just ended up having fun with their status updates. I've read that some ladies were offended by the fun-loving and somewhat cavalier way breast cancer was being treated.

I stepped inadvertantly into the Facebook Fad Thursday night. I had not been reading anybody's status updates, so I have no idea how many of my female friends were announcing "powder blue with lace" on their walls. I had crawled into bed and glanced out the window to see that snow had begun to fall. I lazily picked up my I-Touch, logged onto Facebook, and typed one word: "Snow."


When I woke up, I had a "like" response from my friend John (probably a bit tongue in cheek, since his home in Chicago is usually buried in the stuff), and a question from my friend Angie, who asked if that was the color of my bra? I replied I was unaware that bras came in shades of inclement weather, and asked what color drought may look like. It wasn't until later in the day that I detected what was going on with my other female friends, and the mini-controversy which was developing.


I consider myself a victim of breast cancer. Though I've never had it, I watched my mother suffer for a decade while that cancer slowly distroyed her; I feel very victimized by the disease. I have no problem whatsoever with anything which brings awareness of this ruthless killer front and center. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation (they are the folks who sponsor the annual Walks throughout the country) began the week with only 135 Fans of their Facebook page. They ended the week with 135,000. That's a score in my book.


I suppose I can sympathize with those nay-saying folks who feel the issue is being treated too frivolously. If you've undergone chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, maybe you don't want everyone around you giggling about bra colors. But I have to applaud the ingenuity of this one gent, who playfully sent this message through the Facebook universe. He warned of an imaginary virus being transmitted through the original "Post your bra color" missives.


He advised, "To fix it, you must remove your bra, then go to Setting>Enable Webcam> Record Movie. Please re-post to your status."

Friday Dance Party: A Bollywood He-Man

I freely admit, I do not understand movies from Bollywood. Does any white boy? In an attempt to add some variety to the weekly Dance Party, which, let's face it, is usually about a Broadway musical or a dead person, or both, please enjoy this entry from across the globe. It's part Hollywood, part Broadway, part MTV video, part sci-fi. And completely incomprehensible. Thanks, Steve, for bringing it to my attention. Like a car crash or camels humping, you just can't look away.

If anybody can, please explain to me what Wonder Woman is doing with those dancing skeletons? And who is that gyrating dwarf in red? And who is that dude driving the jeep? And who is that sleazy guy watching the action, with the 70s porn mustache?

You do not, however, have to explain He-Man to me. I don't know who he is, but I don't care. I find this guy's mini-skirt and go-go boots to be oddly titillating. But that skanky wig has to go...

Theatre Droppings: A Trio of Fantasticks

I hesitated to see the current production of The Fantasticks at Arena Stage. When the show was announced last year, I admit I rolled my eyes a bit. Arena is the grandfather of the regional theatres in these parts, and the idea that they would devote their considerable budget to such a slender piece seemed like a mistake. I have seen The Fantasticks jazzed up before, when Jaston Williams and Joe Sears (the Greater Tuna boys) took on the show, and turned it into a quick-change tour de force right up their alley. They were not only playing the two fathers, they also played the two actors, which of course changed the focus of the piece. In addition to becoming the stars of the show, they also added a chorus!

The thing was not a success. I had visions of another overblown production on Arena's temporary stage at the roomy Lincoln Theatre.

I have a good bit of history with The Fantasticks, and still think I have unfinished business with this play. I'm about to wander off into Me-ville here, perhaps I'll get back to Arena's show eventually...

As the Stagemanager in "Our Town," 1973.
I'm still wearing that hair style.

The Fantasticks should have been the very first musical in which I appeared, but it wasn't. Back in the mists of time, I attended a brand new high school in Atlanta, one which was just getting a theatre department rolling. The drama coach (I called her "Doc," for reasons which escape me now. Wasn't I a scamp? She actually taught English; there were no theatre classes yet) took things slow and predictably. Our first year, "the drama club" (isn't that quaint?) produced a one-act during the school day (Sorry, Wrong Number. We performed it in the cafeteria; I got some laughs as the sergeant in the local precinct). The following year, we moved uptown (to the gym) and produced Our Town as our first full-length offering (wasn't that everybody's first play? I played the Stagemanager; the director gave me a pipe to smoke, and I barfed). The next year, which was to be my senior year, our little theatre was finally opening on campus, and the school's first musical was to be produced: The Fantasticks (again, what are the odds?). I've already whined in these pages that my family moved from Georgia to California around this time, so I missed out on appearing in the show. From that moment, I was determined to rectify that cosmic oversight, and get into a production of The Fantasticks, somehow, somewhere.

As Mortimer, the Man Who Dies, 1975. When I climbed out of a
trunk, wearing long johns and a loincloth, my mother wept with
laughter.

It was barely two years later when I caught wind of a production being produced at a junior college in L.A.. I was already attending Cal State Northridge at the time, but as the show was being rehearsed during the summer, it did not interfere with my studies; I auditioned to play one of the fathers. I can imagine with some certainty, in hindsight, that my singing audition convinced the director that I should be given a non-singing role, so I ended up playing Mortimer, the Actor whose specialty is death scenes. I had a ball; this part gave me the opportunity to explore physical comedy in a way I had not before.

We had a pretty good cast in that junior college production, but this guy playing El Gallo was a big snore.

In my directorial capacity, I expanded the
Mute's involvement; she freely interacted
with the other characters.

My buddies Matt and Janie did great jobs as
the young lovers.

This is not the best picture of my El Gallo, but John was the real star of  my little production.

I still felt unfinished with the play. Fast forward several more years, to my junior year in college. I was taking an advanced directing class, and for our final, each student was to direct a one-act, to be performed in front of a live, honest to god audience. I bit off more than I could chew by taking The Fantasticks (which is a full-length musical, mind you) and shrinking the thing to an hour (I think we actually ran several minutes over an hour...I probably lost some points for that.  The photos above are from my one-hour production). My teacher in the course was a woman with whom I had a confusing relationship ( I wrote about her a couple of years ago, when she died. Don't be frightened by my nightmare about her male genitalia). Anyway, I had a swell cast who did a bang-up job with this truncated version of the show, with my own work as director being my only disappointment.


Since then, I have probably seen a dozen various productions of The Fantasticks. I believe I have a love/hate relationship with this musical, a deceptively simple show on its surface, but actually a very difficult piece to pull off. So I had every expectation that Arena Stage would blow this play up into an extravaganza. But that did not stop me from being very curious about this production, so I snagged a half-price seat last weekend to take a peek.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I have to be honest: this is the strongest production of The Fantasticks I have ever seen. The expansion of the play to fit the large Lincoln Theatre has been handled with artistry and concern for the show's original tone. The band has doubled in size (from two pieces to four, still not too much for this delicate score), and is being led by George Fulginiti-Shakar, who has done a swell job adapting the music for this larger space. Director Amanda Dehnert has placed the action in an abandoned amusement park, which is a lot more interesting than the blank void the show usually employs. When I read in the reviews that she had incorporated magic, I was doubtful such trickery would enhance the show, but it has.


The show has been getting largely favorable reviews, with which I mostly agree. All the actors are being given their due, though I've read one or two which are disappointed in the leading man, Sebastian La Cause; with those, I heartily disagree. This guy is terrific in the role of El Gallo, and easy on the eyes to boot. After reading his bio, I have discovered that I've seen him several times in the past, most recently in She Loves Me, also at Arena. Frankly, I don't remember him much from that show. Years ago, I caught one of his earliest performances in New York, in a new comedy by my college chum Greg Fletcher. I remember La Cause clearly from that show. I'm not surprised I didn't recognize him as El Gallo, as he has buffed up considerably (the director of The Fantasticks has done us all a favor by allowing him to perform the Abduction Ballet in a T-shirt. Yowza.) He is gifted with the biggest hit in the show, "Try to Remember," and he wisely does not try to compete with the famous renditions of the song by Jerry Orbach and Robert Goulet; he makes it his own, and it's a subtle beaut.

Going back to that abduction sequence: it used to be called The Rape Ballet, but has since changed names for obvious reasons. When I did the show back in the 70s, we were still singing about the Joys of Rape at full voice, but in subsequent productions over the years the authors have been tinkering with this sequence to lessen its, well, inappropriateness. I applaud these changes wholeheartedly, and it looks like they have finally hit upon satisfactory substitutes in the lyrics of what is one of the show's few big numbers.



The other big number in the show, "Round and Round," provided my only real disappointment. This was the only sequence in the show where the addition of the magic seemed forced. The song became a montage of traditional magician's tricks, which prevented it from reaching its giddy, whirling climax.



But I'm picking at knits. I left the theatre very impressed with this production, and completely blown away by the particular performance of Nate Dendy, a young man with whom I am not familiar. I would never believe that a production of The Fantasticks could be stolen by the actor playing the Mute, but this one was. This kid, right out of his MFA program, is clearly going places.

Charon's Year

Charon, as everybody knows, is the mythological boatman who escorts dead people across the river Styxx. I mentioned him last year when I decided to avoid the New Year's Eve chaos and recap the 40 or so obits I had written in 2008. What a difference a year makes. This year, by my count, I have written 85 obituaries in these pages. Is that an improvement?

As I've mentioned before, I don't write an obit for every corpse who crosses my path, just those who hold some interest for me. Thus, the only show biz superstar to die this year, Michael Jackson, received no notice in these pages; the hooplah surrounding his death was so huge, I had nothing more to contribute. (I did write about Farrah Fawcett, who died the same day.)
I was lucky in 2009 that I did not lose anyone close to me (I lost several friends, colleagues, and mentors in '08), but there were a couple of folks others in the DC theatre community knew better than I, Paul MacWhorter and David Marks. I also mentioned more than a handful of folks who were not connected to show biz at all, but who attracted my attention anyway. There were a couple of political activists (Percy Sutton, who saved the Apollo Theatre, and Alice McGrath, who inspired Zoot Suit), and of course, a political superstar was lost this year, Ted Kennedy. (I spent a week on his obit, turning it into a rundown on all the Kennedys of his generation; it's worth a gander, I think).

I also mentioned several devils and a couple of heroes. John Allen Muhammed, one of the DC snipers, was executed this year, and Susan Atkins, one of Charles Manson's crazed clan, died in prison. Though I don't count her in the same dastardly league, I also wrote about prized manipulator Michelle Triola, who gave the legal system a whole new term, "palimony." And Robert Novak earned his horns by outing Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative, thus endangering the lives of everyone she was ever on assignment with. The heroes I mentioned included Jerri Fitzgerald, the doctor who treated her own breast cancer while stranded in Antarctica, and Brian Bradshaw, a foot soldier in Afghanistan who had the misfortune of dying the same week Wacko Jacko did, and was ignored by the press.

Some heavy hitters left the front office this year, including Roy Disney, who saved his studio's animation reputation, and sit-com scribe David Lloyd, who wrote his own obituary when he described how Chuckles Bit the Dust.

Anyone of a certain age (that is, slightly younger than I) will be missing John Hughes, who put the brat pack on the map, and everyone can thank Don Hewitt, who made a permanent place for news magazines in primetime.

We lost lots of stage folks this year, including one of the pioneers of "stunt casting," summer-stock impresario John Kenley. Frank McCourt, Hugh Leonard, and John Mortimer all wrote for the stage as well as other media, and Horton Foote died just before seeing his life-long dream fulfilled. I'll miss Larry Gelbart's wit and style every time I watch a M*A*S*H rerun, or catch a production of ...Forum. I'm not sure of the lasting influence of Millard Kaufman, who created Mr. Magoo, or of Tom Braden, whose writing inspired Eight is Enough. The inventor of the red-carpet interview, Army Archerd, should not be blamed for the travesty that particular institution has now become, and no one can blame the iconic Walter Cronkite for the current state of network news.

On the musical front, we lost one half of Ferrante & Teicher, Peter & Gordon, and the Hager Twins, and one third of Peter, Paul, & Mary. Let's not forget composers Ellie Greenwich or Maurice Jarre (that particular obit generated a bit of a do, which I loved). We also lost drummer Louie Bellson, and cabaret star Blossom Dearie. As for Robert Degen, well, we may never know if he's really to blame for the Hokey-Pokey...

The soap world lost only a couple of major players, to my knowledge, Phil Carey and Clint Ritchie, who played father and son Buchanans on One Life to Live for several decades. The bigger loss was the demise of the longest running scripted program in the history of television, Guiding Light (and there will be another such loss in 2010, when As the World Turns dies in September. I have no doubt I'll write about that one soon enough).


More than a few show biz dynasties are now a member smaller. The Chaplins lost favorite son Sidney (he was Funny Girl's original Nick Arnstein), and the Carradine clan lost David, under bizarrely questionable circumstances. The King Family's matriarch, the woman who first put them all on the stage, died very recently, and last spring, the Redgraves lost a shining star after Natasha Richardson's head injury went undetected.



We won't be swooning over Swayze anymore, nor giggling at Soupy. It's no surprise to regular readers of these pages that I particularly admire actors who make their career in support, so I tipped my hat to a whole slew, including Ron Silver, Mollie Sugden, Steve Gilborn, and Pat Hingle, not forgetting Bob May, who was the guy in the robot suit on Lost in Space. Karl Malden, Harve Presnell, James Whitmore, Patrick McGoohan, and Ricardo Montalban all had substantial careers on stage and in Hollywood, while Jack Wrangler had a bit of one in WEST Hollywood (if you don't recognize his name, go here, as you are not up on your top porn stars).
A couple of comedy greats will be sorely missed, Dom DeLuise and the spectacular Beatrice Arthur, and I guess I've lost my chance for Ed McMahon to knock on my door with a million dollar check.

It's a pretty wide-ranging gang, these folks whose deaths caught my interest in 2009. I must have enjoyed the research which went into these obits, or I would not have written them. If you are twisted enough to want to examine the full list, go here. I'm hoping we can give Charon a little less business in 2010.