House of Elliotts

Monday at 6 pm, I’ll be at The Paley Center for Media (the renamed Museum of Television and Radio) in NYC for a seminar/tribute to Bob and Ray (and Chris) hosted by Keith Olbermann and featuring a distinguished panel of Elliotts (Bob and Chris, whose novel The Shroud of the Thwacker is highly recommended).

In a recent NPR telephone interview, Bob’s voice sounds hardly different from the one we all grew up with.

I had the extremely good fortune to work with Bob and Ray on an industrial video taped at the old 23^rd Street HBO studio, and in the run-up to the taping, I visited B&R in their office at the Greybar Building. I will never forget the sight: as you walked in, towards the back of the reception room was an open archway, beyond which was a wall jutting out perpendicularly which neatly bisected what had once been a single office. On the right side of the wall sat Bob, on the left side sat Ray, who could not see each other but could easily hear each other when speaking in a normal tone of voice. As the visitor, you saw both Bob and Ray; both Bob and Ray only saw you.

Butter 'em on the far side and write if you get work.

He's In The Cast Of Supporting Players And So Can You

I had forgotten that Dana Carvey's short-lived TV show had such a brilliant supporting cast, many destined for greatness.

This sketch is one of the funniest I've ever seen. (Wait for it; the last few seconds of the preceding sketch will hit your screen first)

The Art Of Banksy, With A Nod to Flora

I met a very interesting chap up at the Floratorium* by the name of Chris Wildman, who suggested that my online life would not be complete without a visit to the site of an English artist named Banksy.

Turns out he was right. Very clever; very conceptual. Some of Banksy's art is pushing at the boundaries of good taste, but then, that's what art is supposed to do, right? Here's a link to a page on the site suitable for viewing by the whole family: Outdoor Work.

Disney fans may know Banksy from some 'outdoor work' he once did at Disneyland, placing an inflatable figure representing a Guantanamo detainee as an little extra added attraction for the riders of the Big Thunder Railroad attraction. That little prank is documented on Banksy's site in a three-minute video on his films page. His works have also been on display at New York's famed Metropolitan Museum of Art - don't miss the hilarious video, also on the films page, that tells the story.

If you decide to snoop around elsewhere on the site, be forewarned that some images might not be appropriate for all ages and political persuasions.

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*What's the Floratorium? It's the hidden fortress where the collected original works of the great Jim Flora are stored. Original paintings and drawings, layouts for children's books, catalogs and commercial work, incredible sketchbooks that reveal one mini-masterpiece after another, each time the page is turned. The picture below is nothing more nor less than what happened to be out on a table during a previous visit.


The Flora family is making limited edition prints available of a few of Flora's finest works, and during my recent visit I was able to compare some of these new prints directly with the originals. The new prints are astonishing works of art in their own right, losing absolutely nothing in translation, thanks to the dedicated, painstaking work of Barb Economon, digital media specialist at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Amazing and recommended.

You've Seen The Movie...

...Now read the book! You've got to love these paperbacks. This one is tough, though, since it's a translation from the French original.

"Look here!" said Gévigne. "I want you to keep an eye on my wife."
"The devil! ...Running off the rails, is she?"
"Not in the way you think."
"What's the matter, then?"
"It isn't easy to explain... she's queer. I'm worried about her."
"What are you afraid of, exactly?"
Gévigne hesitated. He looked at Flavières..."

All right, I'll try to remember that the Jimmy Stewart character has his accent mark pointed backward, and the Tom Helmore character has his pointing forward...


Wow, the movie's in black and white, but the novelization is in color!

It's 1962, and novelist (novelizationist?) Irving Schulman is coming off one of his biggest novelization successes ever, West Side Story, which went through over twenty printings. It shows you how far some people will go to avoid reading Romeo and Juliet.

Intriguingly, the original short story upon which the film is based is titled The Notorious Tenant. I'm guessing that the movie-going public was more intrigued by a notorious Kim Novak than a notorious Jack Lemmon.


Well, no, maybe it's just Hollywood tradition.

In Rupert Hughes' story, the patent leather kid is the girl who dances her way into men's hearts. When First National films the epic two-and-a-half hour silent movie, however, they make Richard Barthelmess the patent leather kid, which is not to say that as a result he dances his way into men's hearts, but rather that the film script swaps the names of the two lead characters. The name of Curly Boyle, the boxer/soldier of the story, is given to Molly O'Day's character in the film.

No wonder there's a note on the dust jacket stating: "Be sure to read the introduction BEFORE YOU BEGIN."


Wow, the movie's in color, but the novel is in black and white!

The on-screen chemistry between Hayley Mills and Eli Wallach is electrifying. Why were they never teamed again?


OK, OK, calm down, take a deep breath, and I'll explain.

No, George Pal never made a sequel to The Time Machine. He wanted to, and this is a novelization of his script. Read the novelization and you will know why the movie never got made. George (The Time Traveler) and Weena (The Eloi pin-up girl) are killed in the first four pages, during World War II, presumably to set the stage for an all-new, cheaper cast.

The cover of the Time Machine II is calculatedly confusing. They put a Malcolm McDowell look-alike in Pal's time machine, presumably because McDowell had appeared as a time-traveling H.G. Wells in the film Time After Time (which Pal had nothing to do with) two years before this paperback original came out. Parenthetically, there have been lots of sequels written to the H.G. Wells novella. Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships is probably the best read of the lot, but the prize for best title goes to The Man Who Loved Morlocks, by David Lake.


Danny Kaye gets into trouble by extending credit to people who are clearly unacceptable credit risks, thus predicting the sub-prime mortgage crisis by a full 45 years.



Um, if you're going to put Frankie Avalon into a post-apocalyptic tale of survival... shouldn't it have been On The Beach?

In New York City I Was Born In

New national motto coming soon: In God We Trust In.