Originally published January 13, 1995, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1104
This & that:
So there were the two women at the health spa in a small East Coast state. And one of them was describing to the other about how she worked for this guy, Jim Shooter, and how he had this deal in the works to get involved with a major video outfit and produce comics for them.
“My brother’s in comics,” said the second woman. “I wonder if he knows this Jim Shooter guy.”
“Oh? Who’s your brother?”
“Peter David.”
I’m told the first woman got kind of ashen. Here she’d thought she was just discussing business with a neutral, probably disinterested party, only to discover she’d been chatting with the sibling of one of the industry’s biggest mouths. Casual conversation had suddenly morphed into a premature press leak, especially when said sibling relayed the conversation to me.
First I considered running the item as a scoop. Calling up Jim and saying, “Care to confirm what my sources tell me…?” Then I considered running it blind. I even thought about running it as a prediction so that, when it did break, people would oooh and ahhh and say, “Wow, Peter David sure saw that one coming a mile off.”
Ultimately—in defiance (sorry) of everything I learned in journalism classes—I didn’t say anything to anyone. I mean, Jim’s last venture got off to a rocky enough start. So my personal little aid to Jim this time around was to keep my mouth shut and not steal his thunder.
Good luck this go-around, Jim. Learn from mistakes of the past, or at the very least, acknowledge that there were mistakes made. Or to quote Lou Grant’s marriage-eve advice to Ted Baxter: “You know the way you are? Don’t be that way.”
And everyone, always be careful of what you say. I may not always be so generous. I have ears in women’s health spas throughout the country. And remember: I have a brother out there, too. All roads lead to But I Digress…
* * *
A correction from an earlier column: It turns out Harlan Ellison does, in fact, have an SAG card. Which means he could have played Dr. Soran in Star Trek Generations. The fact that he did not is yet another glaring oversight in the film; one which I trust will be rectified in subsequent endeavors.
(By the way, I have it on reliable authority that, having been menaced by the Ribbon in Generations, the sequel will have the crew attacked by a giant killer dust bunny. But they defeat it by using… the vacuum of space!)
(Or—y’know—not.)
* * *
Oblivion, the SF western I wrote for Full Moon, was touted as being one of Full Moon’s first theatrical releases. It won awards. It got good reviews. It had sneak previews at several comic book conventions, all well received.
And, of course, wasn’t released theatrically.
Well, now it will be. Taking the Rocky Horror Picture Show route, Oblivion begins an ongoing (and, I hope, long-term) theatrical run at the Laemmle Theatres Sunset 5 in West Hollywood (Sunset at Crescent Heights). It will be the midnight show Fridays and Saturdays, beginning January 27 and 28. On January 27, three of the film’s stars will be in attendance to introduce it: George Takei, Julie Newmar, and Carel Struycken.
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I know we live in a country where self-evident statements are the norm. So much so, in fact, that it becomes an insult to even moderate intelligence. As one comedian pointed out, anyone who really needs the instructions on a can of soup (“Open can. Pour soup into saucepan. Heat.”) deserves to starve to death.
The instructions on the new stroller I purchased for my youngest included, “Look both ways before crossing street.”
And as I’ve stated in the past, where is the sense in an announcer intoning at the beginning of a TV show, “This program is close-captioned for the hearing impaired”? Why was the printed information insufficient? Who benefits from the audio announcement? If you’re deaf you won’t hear him; if you’re not deaf, you won’t care. The only circumstance in which this declaration is useful is if the program is being watched by an illiterate person who can hear, and is seated next to a deaf person whose back is to the screen. “Hey! Some guy just said you can watch this program!”
Yet I think we’ve finally found the all-time capper: the ultimate, unparalleled, unnecessary piece of information.
A BID reader has brought to my attention, in a recent Newsday, in the Sports section, next to ads for hair restoration and, appropriately, hot air balloons, an ad for surgery that (how to put this delicately?) lengthens or enlarges one’s Significant Other. One’s Chairman of the Board.
Free consultations are available since “surgery is impossible to explain over the phone.” I bet.
What makes it amusing is the huge lettering at the top of the ad: “MEN ONLY.”
Men only.
We really needed to be told that? Are Americans that clueless that certain elective surgery has to be spelled out along gender lines, just in case readers are unaware what goodies they have and don’t have?
Sure puts the elections in perspective, doesn’t it?
(Along those same lines, I saw an ad for something that I understand in principle, but nevertheless consider a bit amusing. There’s a new TV out that has a special function. Let’s say you’re sitting there and you can’t find the remote. You can walk over to the TV, push a button, and it will cause the remote to beep so that you can find it wherever it’s hiding. Now, speaking as someone who once misplaced a remote for six months, I can grasp the basic concept. Still, there’s something simplistic in me that makes me giggle at envisioning the scenario. You’re sitting there. The remote isn’t at hand. You walk over to the TV. You beep the remote. You dig the remote out from under a sofa cushion. And you sit down again. I mean, jeez—while you were over by the TV set, why didn’t you just change the dámņëd channel by hand? This goes beyond Couch Potato. This is Couch Potatoe.
* * *
I’ve spent the past five years writing Star Trek novels, and the question I get most often from fans is: When are you going to write an episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The series has gone off the air, and they’re still asking me that. Or asking if I’m going to write the next movie. (Sure. Writing a Trek movie probably pays somewhere in the range of several hundred grand. And you think the Trek powers that be are going to kick that money over to the outside writer in New York? Not bloody likely. My prediction is that every Trek film henceforth will be an in-house job.)
So I wrote an episode of Babylon 5, which received very nice response from the fans when it aired. (Except in Los Angeles, where KCOP preempted it to air a Clippers game. Understand, if it were the Lakers, well, okay, I wouldn’t be that annoyed. They did run it the following Saturday, twice. And it’s the Lakers. But the Clippers? It’s like being bumped for a Jim Varney press conference.)
And what was practically the first question fans asked me, after my TV episode debut?
“Are you going to write a Babylon 5 novel?”
Sigh.
* * *
Picked up a couple of interesting laser discs. One is the Ed Wood Collection, featuring pristine versions of such cracked oeuvres as Night of the Ghouls, Jail Bait (the director’s cut…”the way Ed wanted it”) and, of course, the dreaded Plan 9 from Outer Space, arguably the worst film ever made. (Which, frankly, I’m not so sure about anymore: not only have I seen worse on Mystery Science Theater, I’ve seen worse on HBO. Hëll, I’ve seen worse in theaters.)
In any event, it was amusing to see Plan 9 for a couple of reasons. First, as a consequence of Tim Burton’s magnificent Ed Wood, I find myself saying, “There’s Bill Murray’s character! There’s the real Martin Landau!”
Second, I never noticed before that a lot of the music in Plan 9 also showed up in the old George Reeves Superman TV series, which will now forever give the latter series a certain Ed Wood feel to it.
And third—and most frightening—with just a little bit of work, Plan 9 From Outer Space could probably be made into a credible episode of The X-Files.
You say prove that it could happen? I say, prove that it couldn’t!
Another laser disc purchase is the expanded edition of The Nightmare Before Christmas. What makes this such a bizarre package is that the actual movie is 76 minutes, but the so-called “supplemental material” clocks in at 105 minutes. Am I the only one who finds this just a little bit weird?
* * *
My two older kids got bored playing the game of Life. So they retooled it to make it over into the game of Death. Changes include car crashes, various natural disasters, and even the option of not playing the game at all: One of the professions you can take on is “Lord of the Underworld,” in which event your playing piece is shoved under the board and you just sit there waiting for other players to die.
Ðámņëd Addams Family movies…
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)
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My prediction is that every Trek film henceforth will be an in-house job.
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Hey, you were finally wrong about something with your predictions! Granted, it took until the last TNG film for them to go ‘outside’, and even then Berman still gets a credit… 😉
My two older kids got bored playing the game of Life. So they retooled it to make it over into the game of Death. Changes include car crashes, various natural disasters, and even the option of not playing the game at all: One of the professions you can take on is “Lord of the Underworld,” in which event your playing piece is shoved under the board and you just sit there waiting for other players to die.
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I would SO play this game…
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J.
The two of them would’nt happen to be working for Robot Chicken, would they Peter?
I updated the Wikipedia article for Oblivion (film). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblivion_(film)
Interesting fact: Even though the writer is always the most important person involved in any film, when I put the writer category in the infobox first, it automatically readjusted it to being placed after the director. Directors always steal attention away from the writer it seems.
“Even though the writer is always the most important person involved in any film.”
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This is not true at all. Try giving Michael Bay the script to Raging Bull, and Martin Scorsese the script to The Rock, and telling them to remake them. I guarantee you The Rock will be the better movie.
I remember the joke about the naive young would-be actress that gave a bløwjøb to the writer when trying to get a role in a movie…
Poor girl.
Never heard of Oblivion before, and just now bought a copy on Amazon. Looking forward to watching it!
As for “self-evident statements,” these have hit a new level when it comes to television ads. Anytime a commercial has any potentially dangerous situation, there’s a warning along the lines of “Professional stuntman/closed course — do not attempt.” Today I saw one for a muffler company — Meineke, I think — where the mechanic training involved putting strings of raw meat around their necks, then running across the African plains while pursued by two lions. And there was the disclaimer, in case anyone bought a muffler, thought of the commercial, and decided to go meat-wearing lion-racing.
(The most hypocritical warning comes at the start of TOSH.0. There’s a warning that the videos seen are potentially dangerous and should not be attempted. What they don’t say is that if you do make and send in such a video, you could be on the show! Whereas if you heed the warning, there’s zero chance you’ll be invited on. So don’t make a dangerous video — and now let’s watch all the dangerous videos that are getting national airplay.)
Well, remember that most of these “warnings” are’nt actually warnings; they’re intended to deflect legal action by folks who actually DO try to emulate the stuff they see on TV.
NEVER underestimate human stupidity (or at least obtuseness), or the human capacity to blame others for that supidity. I guarentee you that most of those disclaimers and warnings you see on products are discouraging behaviour that someone, somewhere, DID try, and the instructions on that can of soup are there because, in a market test, some shmuck literally could not figure out how to cook soup.
Wow! Someone who remembers laser discs. I still have my player and a few dozen discs, though I miss the terrific selection the main branch of our public library had available for borrowing.
It’s not a matter of “remembering.” This is a reprint of an article from 1995. Laser discs were state of the art at the time.
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PAD
And that pretty much tells you all you need to know about 1995…
I know about the reprint part, but in putting it up it fetched memories of the time. As for Michael P’s comment, laser discs were popular in some places for years. Japan had whole shops full of them for years. And they sold! The thing which got me was people in North America (well, Canada) saying they weren’t selling because, unlike tape, they were ‘read-only’. Funny how, just a few years later the ‘read-only’ DVDs seemed to do OK in the marketplace.
I wonder if David Duchovny read this column. have you seen Hollywood A.D.?
“The instructions on the new stroller I purchased for my youngest included, “Look both ways before crossing street.””
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My mother used to have a toothbrush with instructions printed right on the handle. They were along the line of “Use fuzzy end.”
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I, too, have oft wondered why DVDs took off like hotcakes, whilst laserdiscs took off like, well, fruitcakes. Maybe it was the size – weren’t they about record-sized?
Entire seasons of popular television shows were available for DVD players straight away, as well as hit movies. More of a reason for people to get them.
The first Atari 7800 has a port for a laserdisc player. Imagine the sorts of games you could’ve played back then, if they had sense enough to market it properly.
Of course the first Nintendo consoles had internet capabilities, but it was decided not to release this in America because some feared children would use it to gamble. The power of online game play didn’t catch on for consoles until much later.
Point being, even when something is superior and has great potential, you still need someone to point out that potential and run with it.
And how much did laserdisc players sell for compare to VCRs? What about the tapes? No one is going to pay more for something that just gives slightly higher quality playing films. Also didn’t the VCR take off because it could play pornography, that a main reason people were buying it early on, while its superior competition of betamax did not allow it? Maybe that’s another reason laserdisc failed, not providing people with the perversion they’d be willing to pay for.
Well, while some people like to use the availability of pørņ on VHS as a reason, that’s actually false. It’s far more likely that VHS became the pørņ industry preference because most of the consumers had already opted for the VHS format. What’s seemed to be the more likely cause for the Betamax downturn was the longer recording time for VHS; when the two started competing, Betamax only had a recording time of 1 hour while VHS had a 2-hour recording time. By the time Betamax had increased its recording time to 2 hours, you could get a reasonably decent 6-hour recording time from VHS (the typical consumer wasn’t generally that discerning in the lesser quality in the 6-hour recording time).
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As to the whole pørņ aspect, you might have to do a lot of digging around, but I believe Betamax offered pørņ.
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There is also one other factor: Cost. For much the same reason that the PC has the lion’s share of the personal computer market, the VHS format got the lion’s share of the VCR market. A Beta-format VCR could cost HUNDREDS of dollars more than a comparable VHS-format VCR. No one has ever lost money by selling the American public an inexpensive, but lower quality, product. (Well, okay–maybe the folks who tried to bring in the Yugo, but even cheap Americans have their limits.)
Well, I guess it’s the main reason: Laserdiscs were too big. They were also too expensive. DVDs are the size of compact discs, so you can store them more easily on bookshelves. I never bought a Laserdisc player because of that, and the price of the player. Plus, Laserdiscs were expensive. Not so with DVDs.
One of the disadvantages of laser disks was that quite often the entire movie didn’t fit on one side of the disk. And, most players weren’t two sided.
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So, halfway through the movie, you would have to go to the player, eject the disk, flip it, and restart it. But, very few movies required two VHS tapes (I think JFK was the first two-tape movie I ever bought), or two DVDs (again, I think the first multi-disk movie in my collection that wasn’t a separate disk just for extras was LOTR) today.
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Theno
Regarding the “self-evident statements,” it should be noted that preparing a can of soup is NOT quite as “self-evident” as that comedian might think. From what I remember, most cans of soup (until maybe the very late 80s or early 90s) that were available to the average American were sold as “condensed” which required the addition of a can of water (or milk, for the cream soup varieties) before heating. I’m sure there were some souls who would simply dump a can of (condensed) vegetable soup in a pan and heat it, then wondered why the soup tasted–and looked–so thick.
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On a related note, does anyone else think the Cialis commercials are completely asinine? They promote them as “for when that romantic moment comes” but then refer to erectile dysfunction and “for erections lasting more than 4 hours.” Now, perhaps I’m a bit unusual in thinking this, but why would you worry about erectile dysfunction and 4-hour+ erections if you want to be *romantic*? And of course, the images shown in the commercial are all sorts of truly romantic visuals–holding hands, going to the theater, a candlelit dinner, etc. But NONE of those would be the type of “romantic moments” that would lead a man to require the use of Cialis. (Yes, I know that “romantic” is the prime-time code word for “all hot and horny”; I’m just trying to point out the absurdity of the commercial.) I just have to wonder if there are any couples out there watching the commercials who REALLY think that the man needs a daily dose of Cialis just to go out for a candlelight dinner and a little dancing.
Here’s a tangential Cialis (and other erectile dysfunction drugs): Shouldn’t the men in these commercials have massive bulges in their pants? I thought those pills provided an instant erection, not something that only appears “when the moment’s right” — and not something that vanishes when an interruption happens.
(Of course, my favorite has to be the ROBOT CHICKEN sketch where Hourman is promoting his own hour-long e.d. pill!)
Well, if you use “dancing” in the Jack Harkness sense, Cialis might be needed…
Dear Peter David: I apologize if this is a repetition, I tried to do a comment elsewhere, but it didn’t seem to appear.
Anyway, I have a question for you, I read the Graphic Novel ‘Future Imperfect’ several years ago, but no longer own it. I have a vague memory from reading it, of the Maestro riding around in a chariot that was pulled by two tigers (rather than horses).
Did this actually happen, or am I confused? The reason I ask is that I want to write a Morbius fanfiction set in the Future Imperfect universe, and if this did happen, the first chapter of my story is going to be called ‘The Tiger Trainer’.
Let me know. Thanks.
– Ann Morgan
There’s nothing like that in my copy of Future Imperfect. On the other hand, there’s nothing in it that says the Maestro *doesn’t* have a chariot pulled by tigers either.
Ha! You’re funny. But I guess I am confused, don’t know why I thought the Maestro had a chariot like that. Maybe I got it mixed up with the Oz stories or something.
Regarding laser discs, perhaps they weren’t successful (or successful enough) in the U.S. because of the price, not the size (the same as records). After all, people bought records for decades, so it’s not like it would have been an unfamiliar format. Some people still buy records. I buy them occasionally myself.
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It’s also possible they weren’t marketed very well. I’m not sure I was even aware of laser discs when they were first out, while I do remember hearing about DVDs when they first came out.
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I may have first seen a laser disc about a decade ago at a place called Thomas Video, which was then in Clawson, Michigan (they’ve since moved). Remember video stores long before chains like Blockbuster? That’s what Thomas Video was like. They carried (and still do, I believe) not only movies, but episodes of TV series (videotape box sets and/or offerings from various “clubs”) and other items. Some were for sale, some for rent only. I bought videotapes of some Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man episodes, as well as some Outer Limits episodes there.
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In addition to VHS and laser discs, they also had some items in the beta format. And yes, they had some DVDs, too.
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Actually, long ago, Blockbuster (or at least the one near me at the time) did sell or rent episodes of TV series. I bought some three-tape box sets of Buffy episodes there. In later years, before that particular store closed, it seemed that all they carried were relatively recent the really popular older movies. Gone were the relatively obscure older movies.
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The first movie I ever rented from a video store, in 1983, was The Land That Time Forgot. I’m not sure how obscure it would have been considered by the 1990s, but I’d guess you’d be hard pressed to find it at a blockbuster by, say, 1995.
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On the topic of random thoughts, here are two. First, to those who are fans of old-time radio (and I know there are some among the regulars here), the 25th annual Cincinnati Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention will take place May 13 and 14 at the Crowne Plaza hotel. It’s a very casual affair, and the guests will be radio actors Bob Hastings, Rosemary Rice and Esther Geddes. Hastings and Rice played Archie and Betty, respectively on Archie Andrews (and each did other work as well). Most recently, Hastings was the voice of Commissioner Gordon on Batman The Animated Series..
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This link takes you to the convention flyer, with convention contact information, etc., for anyone wanting to attend.
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http://danhughes.net/cincy11/11cincy.htm
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Second, Silver Blade has posted the second installment of my novella, Kestor at http://www.silverblade.net/serials/?p=183
Rick