On the occasion of Bugs Bunny's 50th anniversary, I wrote a feature page cover appreciation of my favorite cartoon character. One of our staff artists, Larry Stephens, drew a great Bugs in a trenchcoat, looking very much like Humphrey Bogart -- cool. We decided to run it by Warner Bros. since Bugs is trademarked and the studio warned us against using it -- because Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy" was coming out and they thought it looked like something from that film. So we used some WB stock art instead. After the thing was published, I sent a clip to the WB press people as a courtesy, and they were so thrilled with it they had it cleaned up from the newsprint version on beautiful white Velox paper and sent me back a rolled copy suitable for framing.
By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff
They say Bugs Bunny turns 50 this year. Which is like saying the Bible is a thick book -- it simply doesn't begin to tell the story. Bugs Bunny is ageless, so his being 50 years old is irrelevant -- except that it gives us one helluva good excuse to think about him.
So, on Easter Sunday as bunnies come to mind, let's do just that: Picture ol' Bugs in your mind. What do you see? Maybe he's casually nibbling a carrot and asking, "What's up, Doc?" while Elmer Fudd's double-barreled shotgun rests on the bridge of his nose. Or he has Yosemite Sam in such a snit that the mustachioed hothead is bouncing up and down on the heels of his boots like a superball on concrete. Or perhaps Daffy Duck is trying -- in eternal futility -- to outwit that wascally wabbit.
Whatever image springs to your mind, one thing's certain: You are smiling. It's impossible to ponder the Bugster and not smile. Einstein proved that; look it up.
Nobody ever gets the best of Bugs, because even in defeat -- which is rare -- Bugs has the last word. He is the coolest. The hippest. The best that's ever been.
PASADENA, Calif. -- David Letterman trekked to the West Coast Saturday to speak with assembled TV critics at the Summer Press Tour, once again proving he can play a room like no one else in show business.
Over the course of his 45 minutes with the media, he artfully dodged the hot topics of his "Late Show" 's first-ever ratings loss to Jay Leno's "The Tonight Show" last week in favor of laughs. Lots of laughs.
Of his much-criticized hosting of the Academy Awards telecast earlier this year: "I was so traumatized by that Oscar experience that I couldn't watch 'The Odd Couple' for a month," Letterman said, making a borderline obscure Oscar Madison joke. "At first when it happened, I thought, 'I'm out here in Hollywood and I've screwed up the Academy Awards,' and I'm thinking, 'I'll be arrested.' Or, 'What if they stop making films altogether? Oh, no!'
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| The pool at the Ritz. |
This is an editor's column written by the Standard's Managing Editor Ron Thornburg. He used to write one each week or two to help readers peer behind the curtain at the S-E.
By Ron Thornburg
Managing Editor
After attending the Summer Press Tour of the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, Calif., Don Porter returned to the office last week to some not so subtle kidding:
"How was your vacation, Don?" "Bet you spent it by the pool, didn't you?"
Some vacation.
For two weeks, Don started his days around 6 a.m. by viewing pilots of the programs that the major networks plan to air as part of the fall television season. Then he and the approximately 160 members of the critics association attended four, 45-minute press conferences.
By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner
Mary Tyler Moore was making no bones about why she's co-starring on the new CBS drama "New York News" -- admitting that her decision had as much to do with location as love for the project.
"It's going to be shot in New York City," Moore said at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif. "I live in the city ... and I was not interested in interrupting my life any more than that.
"It's wonderful to be part of a huge ensemble. It's not going to be falling on my shoulders, the responsibility for this show. I'll be one of many who are happily going to be doing our very best."
By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner
PASADENA, Calif. -- Robert Morton, producer of "The Late Show with David Letterman," was standing on the Ritz-Carlton hotel's lawn in the setting sun, wearing shades and a very expensive sport jacket over a black T-shirt, fielding questions from a gaggle of journalists. And what he was saying was odd.
It's a good thing, Morton said, that Jay Leno got "The Tonight Show" job and David Letterman didn't.
Really? Even given that Letterman was clearly the retiring Johnny Carson's choice, and that he fled the network (NBC) where he had become a star to start anew at another network (CBS)?
"I absolutely think it worked out for the best," Morton explained, "because I think Letterman, in having such respect for Johnny Carson, would never have toyed with the format of 'The Tonight Show.' "
Morton was saying, in essence, that Letterman may well have bellyflopped just like Leno did during the first year or two, looking uncomfortable in Johnny's old digs, trying unsuccessfully to be Johnny Carson II: The Sequel.
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Glover in "Rubin and Ed"
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For a few years in the early 1990s, I did movie reviews twice a week at Salt Lake City radio station KALL 910, one of the last of the full-service format AM stations. Most of that time I was on the air with midday host Peter Boam ("Peter B" on the air, great guy off the air), but remained after Peter was unable to renew his contract and spent some time with host Hans Petersen.
By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner
SALT LAKE CITY -- The news was both exciting and ominous: Crispin Glover would be joining me in the KALL radio studios for a live interview.
Exciting because Glover is one of those rare, genuinely original actors who delivers unexpected performances in films on a consistent basis -- Marty McFly's geeky dad in "Back to the Future," a teen speed freak covering up a murder in "River's Edge," Andy Warhol in "The Doors," a cockroach-obsessed wacko in "Wild at Heart," to name a few.
With Glover, you never know what you're going to get.
Which brings us to ominous: He has an unsettling reputation for giving interviews that turn ugly and stay that way. Glover frightened David Letterman sufficiently enough to get himself ejected from "Late Night with David Letterman" after nearly kicking the host's face (Glover returned, somewhat calmer, a week later). He stuttered and giggled his way through the "Tonight Show" a time or two and has transformed the occasional radio interview, conducted by ignorant and unsuspecting hosts, into Painful Radio Listening.
