​When you can’t think of anything meaningful to write, it must be time for ODDS and ENDS. For those new to this blog, this is the particular time when I go all Larry King on your ass. Not infomercial Larry King, or even CNN Larry King. This is Larry King at his best. This is U.S.A. Today Larry King. For those of you not familiar with his unique style, it goes a little something like this…
 
For my money, Doritos is the best corn chip on the market. And speaking of my money, my ex-wife will never get any of it. Okay, you get the picture.

​If you have just binged Dan Harmon’s Community and happen to be looking for another comedy that will quench your thirst for quirky comedy, may I humbly suggest Superstore created by Justin Spitzer. The characters are both hilarious and endearing and if you’ve spent any time in retail, you will realize how dead-on it really is. From the before store opening “huzzah” meetings to the interpersonal relationship stores, it is a comedy that has never really gotten it’s due.
 
Girls5eva is a bit more of a mixed bag created by Tina Fey and Meredith Scardino. While there are quite a few moments of brilliance, the Paul Simon-like anthem, New York Lonely Boy immediately coming to mind, it is still ironing out some of the kinks as it were. However, I am quite confident that like the once popular 90s girl band attempting to rise from the ashes of obscurity, I see only good episodes ahead.
 
(Are you getting how this whole Larry King-style reporting works? Good.)

​Nicholas and Alexandra is a sweeping historical epic directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, written by James Goldman and based on the book by Robert K. Massie.
 
(This is known as a Larry King abrupt U-Turn. Hold on.)
 
If you are a fan of the Russian Czars, hemophilia, and the ending of empires, this may be the movie for you. Produced in 1971, this historical epic never really caught on with audiences, but it happens to be one of my favorites. There is a tracking shot with the two title characters retreating to their quarters after a palace ball which is dazzling in its construction and while the whole move is a bit dry, I think stands right up there with some of Lean’s best films. Check out the Blu-Ray if you get a chance. Worth it! 
 
Okay, hopefully next week’s entry will have a bit more structure. Thanks for stopping by and have a great week.
 

​Most of us have written them, that Industry Hail Mary pass, tossing our idea all willy-nilly like into the fiery maelstrom we all call the movie business. Sometimes our total effort can number into the hundreds, the results being wadded up and tossed into admin trash cans, clogging fax machines, and filling up spam and junk email folders from Encino to Manhattan Beach. Yep, I’m talking query letters, the system of pitching our screenplays to people who don’t really care. Most are never seen; precious few ever get a response. If we’re lucky we may get an “unable to accept unsolicited material,” response or the even rarer sincere brief word of encouragement. Today I am not going to show you how to write one. There are a million websites, screenplay books and costly seminars that will teach you how to do that. Today, I offer something completely different. I call it, the revenge of the query letter.

Da-da-da! (Dramatic music)

And it goes a little something like this:

​Earl J, Waggedorn
818-221-1212
[email protected]
372 E Olive #4
Burbank, CA   91502  

​June 19, 2021
 
Re: 
 
Dear Waste-Paper Basket, Spam/Junk Folder or reluctantly possessed by some low paid Assistant:
 
(They say in the first paragraph you really need to sell yourself.)
 
I have spent the last fifty-five years in jungles of Borneo, fending off rival tribes while patiently teaching the collective works of Ayn Rand to the natives. My time here as made me proficient at head-hunting and low-level cannibalism, and I have many thrilling and humorous anecdotes of the occasional missionary or wild hog that slipped from my grasp. Obviously, this has left me many a solitary night to create stories, first shared around a campfire and later painted on the wall of a cave in the classic Syd Field three-act structure. 
 
(The logline. Two sentences or less that will trap the reader into an even longer paragraph just below)
 
A happy-go-lucky anti-vaxxer is conked on the head and wakes up surrounded by angry natives in the jungles of Borneo. With only the clothes on his back and a tattered copy of The Fountainhead, Merle, must battle adversaries, learn to smoke, and eat missionaries without a Traeger and find a way to get back to his home in a red state.
 
(Now your audience is hooked and it’s time to follow this up with what is sometimes referred to as the elevator pitch. Some say it’s because it should take the time required for an elevator to travel from one floor to the next. Wrong!  I believe It is the time required to identify who farted on a crowded elevator.)
 
Merle Wiggleworm loves Trump. He loves him so much that he is willing to sacrifice democracy in favor of a dictator ruled theocracy. Having had enough of such hijinks, his long-suffering wife, conks him over with a microwave and places him into an Zhen Hua Logistics shipping container. When I, I mean he, wakes up, he is alone in the jungles of Borneo, with only his copy of Ayn Rand, his political dogma and his worn MAGA hat to comfort him. Soon, the head-hunting natives are made aware of the island’s newest inhabitant, and it becomes a race against time subjugate an inferior race to win his freedom. 
 
(Wow, I think we can all agree that this story practically writes itself. So, we’ve hooked that industry like a big-mouth bass and now it is time to reel that sucker in with a closing line that will all but guarantee a response.)
 
I was thinking of Jon Voight to play me. What do you think?
 
Most Sincerely,
 
Earl

"I got off that boat with nothing but my dancers belt and a tube of CHAPSTICK." 
– Corky St. Clair.

Foreward
Back in 1977, I worked with a theatre director who was nothing like anyone I’d ever worked with before. He was more flamboyant than talented, possessed a heart of gold and a style that was uniquely his own. Ten years later, I was performing stand-up comedy in a Holiday Inn near where I first met this extraordinary man. After the show, an audience member discretely informed me that years before, the director had been found dead in the mountains with his throat slashed. But, hey, that’s a story for a different time. 
 
I only drudge up this story because Christopher Guest’s portrayal of Corky St. Clair in Waiting for Guffman channels this small-town impresario eerily. From tip of the beard, to top of toupee, to the total enthusiasm for all things theatre, Guest embodies my director, Cecil O. Johnson.  So, of in honor of Cecil, I present the wit and wisdom of Corky St. Clair.

​History:
 
“My first show was Barefoot in the Park, which was an absolute smash, but my production on the stage of Backdraft was what really got them excited. This whole idea of 'In Your Face' theatre really affected them. The conceptualization, the whole abstraction, the obtuseness of this production to me was what was interesting. I wanted the audience to feel the heat from the fire—the fear—because people don't like fire, poked, poked in their noses. You know, when you get a cinder from a barbeque right on the end of your nose, and you kind of make that face, you know? That's not a good thing. And I wanted them to have the sense memory of that. So during the show I had someone burn newspapers and send it through the vents in the theatre. And well, they freaked out, and 'course the fire marshall came over, and they shut us down for a couple of days.”
 
On budgeting and finance:
 
“So what I'm understanding here - correct me, if I'm wrong - is that you're not givin' me any money. So now I'm left basically with nothin'. I'm left with zero, in which, in which, what can I do with zero, you know? What can I - I can't do anythin' with it! I need to, this is my life here we're talking about! We're not just talkin' about, you know, somethin' else. We're talking about mylife, you know? And it's forcing me to do somethin' I don't wanna do. To leave. To, to go out and just leave and go home and say, make a clean cut here and say: 'No way, Corky, you're not puttin' up with these people!' And I'll tell you why I can't put up with you people - because you're bastard people! That's what you are! You're just bastard people! And I'm goin' home and I'm gonna, I'm gonna bite my pillow, is what I'm gonna do!”

On life, karma and his “wife” Bonnie:

I think that the elements, as Dr. Watson said to Sherlock, "are coming together, sir." I was shopping for my wife, Bonnie (I buy most of her clothes). And Mrs. Pearl was in the same shop, and it just was an accident. Y'know, we started talking... about pantyhose. She was saying—w-whatever, that's not the point of the story, but what the point is was that through this accidental meeting—it's like, y'know, it's like a Hitchcock movie, where, you know, you're thrown into a rubber bag and put in the trunk of a car. You find people; you find them. Something... It—is it karma? Maybe. But we found him; that's the important thing—and I got Bonnie a wonderful pantsuit.

"Who wants more drinkies?”
​Cecil Johnson

or
Comics for when you're  high.

​Back in the day, loaded on whatever smokable I could get my hands on, I perused such classics as Mr. Natural, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Trots, and Bonnie, gravitating in the eighties to the daring exploits of Reid Fleming: World’s Toughest Milkman. Giving my lungs and consciousness a much-needed respite, I moved away from these titles, settling on the more severe titles scribed by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Mark Verheiden. I was happy to remain here until…
 
One eventful Christmas, Pacia Marie Linde sent me the first two titles. I am reviewing both today. Both books have altered the delicate chemistry of my brain forever…most likely for the worst.  
 
I am lucky enough to know many very talented writers and artists in the comic book field.   They are intelligent, well-read, concerned with social issues, and would probably lynch me if they knew that I am a secret fan of the Batman ‘66 series of comics. Specifically, the mashups, teaming the television dynamic duo with whomever had a popular show around the same time. Specifically, I am talking about Batman ’66 meets The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and its Pulitzer Prize-winning companion opus Batman ’66 meets Steed and Mrs. Peel.  I was gifted these masterpieces by a daughter who truly knows the appreciation her father has for the literary giants.

​First review, Batman “66 Meets Steed and Mrs Peele. Remember the Cybernauts from Season 4, Episode 3?. Well, they are back and this time around they're teaming up with Lord Marmaduke Ffog as well as some other nefarious special guest villains. The writing is better than you'd expect with some of it actually sounding as if the writers had paid attention to the original BBC episodes. Then again, as advertised, I was a bit high. The art, is, eh, interesting to say the least. Some panels appear to have been rotoscoped using a process slightly reminiscent of someone who studied at Andy Warhol Community College, the characters actually resembling their television counterparts. In others, the art seems to be lifted out of a Dell comic book from the sixties.
 
Overall rating B-  (High Score  A)

​Batman 66 meets the Man from U.N.C.L.E. is definitely a mixed bag. Evil organization Thrush, under the evil guidance of Olga, Queen of the Cossacks, engineers a mass break out of Arkham Asylum.  Along the way we get a nice mix of villains, including The Penguin, Poison Ivy and even Egghead. The writing is not as crisp as in the previous book and, while the color pallet is just as loud as Steed and Peele, the bizarre Andy Warhol rotoscoping has been replaced in favor of an easy on the eyes coloring book feel. On the colorful, way too vibrant bright side, the estate of Robert Vaughn and David McCallum have nothing to sue over as the characters don’t even remotely resemble them. 

​Overall rating C- (High Score C-)
 
Now, that out of the way, I propose my own Batman ‘66 mashup:
 
Batman “66 meets Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife.
 
Here’s the logline:
 
The Joker’s car breaks down in Mayberry, the crown prince of crime swiping Fife’s only bullet while simultaneously toying with the affections of hillbilly socialite Charlene Darling and spinster telephone operator Sarah. 
 
Now all need to is find a coloring book.

See you all next week. Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.