News Page 1
About Harry Belafonte
It’s nice to have an encounter with an icon, right? Mine was back in 1995. My band, The Dukes of Soul, was contracted to play the wrap party for a new film “White Man’s Burden” starring John Travolta and Harry Belafonte. It was to be held at the Celebrity Centre, a posh event hall on the campus of the Church of Scientology in Hollywood. Now, we were not unacquainted with the Scientologists – we had previously been hired for a number of gigs (mostly New Year’s Eve parties) for them despite the fact that no one in the band was a Scientologist. Our booking agent (at the time) was a Scientologist and he had hired us for them because the bands they usually hired (consisting of Scientology members) were generally not up to snuff. I have my own feelings about Scientology, but I won’t share them here because the folks I dealt with were mostly always professional and paid us well for our services. Anyway, John Travolta was a Scientologist (and most people there thought we were too) and that’s how we got the wrap party gig. We played a couple of sets and then paused the music, turning over one of our mics to Travolta and the director who had some nice remarks to say to the cast and crew. Then Travolta handed the mic to Harry Belafonte who came up, said a few words and was about to leave when the crowd called out for him to sing. He then started singing Day-O. We in the band were all still standing on stage by our instruments, waiting for our cue to start up playing again when I got the notion – why not back Harry up? Now, I have to confess, I do not have perfect pitch. I do not generally hear a note played and know what note it is. But this time, something inside told me – he’s singing in D. So, while he continued singing the song, I came in on my keyboard with a calypso backup in D. And I NAILED IT. Perfect timing, perfect volume, perfectly on key. But then, Harry turned around, looked me straight in the eye and held up his hand like a crossing guard telling me to STOP. I got the message. He continued singing a Capella and when he finished got a nice round of applause. I got the snub. But I soon got over it. Because for a few short bars, I had backed up an icon. 04.26.23
About The China Spy Balloon
The Spy Balloon saga reminds me of the time my friend and I created a UFO. Dave Saylor was a friend who lived directly behind us on the next street over, Caesar Blvd. Dave was a year younger, and way smarter. He was technically very savvy and was the sound guy for our band – “Web” (we were too cool to have a “The” in our name). Dave even designed (from scratch) an electronic light controller that sequentially flashed colored spotlights on us when we played gigs at Clarence Town Park. One day Dave came upon a design for hot air balloons that were created out of tissue paper and balsa wood, and it became one of our pet projects. We glued white tissue paper sheet squares together with Elmer’s glue and attached the open balloon bottom to a ring of balsa wood that would hold, via copper wire, the flame that caused the balloon to rise. The balloons were about six feet high and four feet wide and suspended from the balsa ring by wire was a burning ball of wadded paper towels soaked in kerosene. Dave had even developed a gas burner on a hose from his dad’s backyard barbecue that filled up the balloon for launch with hot air within a minute. We first started launching these balloons in the day and tracked them in their flights on our bikes. They would sail for miles and miles, then the flame would die out and the balloon would return to earth. We eventually found that the balloons were even more spectacular at night, as the flaming ball would illuminate the entire balloon. Why did we do this? Because we were a couple of fifteen/sixteen-year-old kids having fun and messing (harmlessly, we thought) with perceptions of the good citizens of our locale. We even tried to create a UFO that would be tracked on the radar at Buffalo airport by gluing aluminum foil to two opposite sides of the balloon. Our thinking was that when the balloon with the foil side was turned toward the radar it would show up as a UFO, and when it rotated, it would disappear. Cool! Our most spectacular launch was one hot summer night. I believe it was one of our largest balloons and had the biggest ball of burning paper towels suspended so that it would go on the longest flight. It was a fantastic launch as it illuminated and drifted off into the night, rising hundreds of feet in the air. Then, as it was getting out of sight, to our horror, the flaming ball of kerosene burned through the copper wire and dropped out of the sky, falling to earth like a meteor. It was indeed a fantastic special effect. But our fun turned to shock when we heard the sound of honked car horns and fire sirens. Fortunately, the neighborhood didn’t burn down as the burning ball had fallen on the ground near the intersection of Main and Transit. Our fears turned to delight a few days later when we saw the article in The Amherst Bee. The headline was “UFO Story Turns Out To Be Hot Air!” Someone had recovered the balloon and solved the neighborhood mystery. We were very proud of ourselves, having made the local news. Unfortunately, Dave’s younger brother showed our news story to their father. Dave was grounded for a month, forbidden for a time to associate with “that Wilkerson boy” and that pretty much ended our adventures in creating UFOs. But I can’t help but wonder if the Chinese are having as much fun with their balloons as we did with ours. Probably not. 02.12.23
About A Dead White Man
I’ve been so disappointed by recent TV and Film that I’ve gone back to the past to recharge. Over the years I’ve read a few Charles Dickens novels: Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol in high school, Nicholas Nickleby and A Tale of Two Cities more recently, and a few years ago my wife, Beverly, directed the musical, Oliver, at St. Paul’s school. But I’ve never gotten around to reading some of the others. So, I bought a collection of all Dickens’s novels on Kindle (for next to nothing) and dove in at the beginning. The Pickwick Papers was fun and painted a lovely portrait of the curious English towns and their eccentric residents in the mid-1800s. I then read Oliver Twist, which was definitely worthwhile, even though the story was more about the characters (Fagin, the Artful Dodger, Bill Sikes) surrounding its hero than it was about little Oliver (who seems to be frequently a bystander to the story). Then I skipped over a few novels and jumped to David Copperfield and I’m simply awestruck at how good it is. Less a novel than a semi-autobiography, it’s the writing of a master revealing aspects of his life through his “fictional” characters. Three things immediately stand out: how the voice of the narrator (David Copperfield) changes in awareness as he travels through life – Dickens gives us the innocence of David's youthful observations while at the same time communicating the truth of the moment to the more knowledgeable reader. Then, the observations about life become more clear as David grows in experience. Next is his ability to detail the nuances of conversations and the emotional impact each moment has on the participants. It’s amazing how conversations that took place nearly two hundred years ago (in the mind of the author) resonate so strongly today. Most admirable is Dickens’s mastery of subtext. So much of David Copperfield’s adventures are told in subtext that the reader has to slow down and savor the lines to truly appreciate what exactly is going on. Then there is Dickens’s incredible vocabulary which makes us realize how limited our word choices are today. If you read his work without using a dictionary (fortunately Kindle provides one) it’s easy to miss how words are chosen by the author to fit exactly the meaning he wanted conveyed. I’m not quite finished reading David Copperfield, but I’m already looking forward to going back and starting it over again from the beginning. These days in our culture we encounter such a rejection of Western Civilization and the work of “dead white men” that we forget that, in many ways, those who came before us, might actually be better than we are. 01.10.23 07.21.22
About Censorship
As a writer, I view censorship as a negation of what I do. The idea that someone could cancel someone else by censoring their work is simply abhorrent. If you grew up in the United States, you’ve enjoyed the freedom of speech your entire life. It’s a right that’s enshrined in the first amendment to the Constitution. And yet, as we’re learning from the past policies of Twitter (and likely other social media) as exposed by Elon Musk, censorship was a part of their everyday life. Most awful is how many people are OK with it. I saw a congressman interviewed who said it was “much ado about nothing.” Nothing? Why not burn a few books while we’re at it? I don’t often get political in my posts, but this is not about politics, it’s about freedom. If people feel it’s OK to cancel the voice of others, then they don’t believe in freedom. All voices should be heard. Then let those who hear those voices decide to listen to them or not. Anything else is tyranny, and has no place in America. 12.10.22
About Surviving Covid
Seven Days of Covid. My wife, Beverly, got it last week and it seemed to follow the usual trajectory of a bad cold. On Monday, I noticed a sore throat and achy body. On Tuesday I was tested positive for Covid, went on prescription Paxlovid. But it wasn’t really that much of a cold so I did my usual day’s work. On Wednesday, I was feeling fairly normal and thought “What’s the big deal?” I even taught my online screenwriting class on Wednesday night. Lost my voice near the end, but made it through. Thursday I was much worse – bad body aches and constant cough. On Friday I hit the wall. Friday night I hit bottom. My lungs were wheezing, and I couldn’t lay down without the wheezing getting worse. Constant junk (without getting too specific) coughing up. The only way I could breathe at all normally was to sit up and lean forward. That’s how I spent all Friday night. Saturday, I spent the day in bed, recovering from Friday night. Sunday, the sun seems to be shining. I feel like myself again. Still weak, still achy, still coughing but I think the worst is over. I think Covid affects different people differently. If you get it, take it seriously. 07.10.22
About Originality in Hollywood
Originality has always had a tough time in Hollywood. The safe course has never been about trying something new and exciting, but rather remaking something that has been successful in some other form. Copying success, any degree of success, has always been a more bankable proposition for Hollywood executives when choosing properties to develop. In doing my research for the Dreamland project, I’ve been reading a lot of Tradeviews, the column written in nearly every issue of The Hollywood Reporter by publisher Billy Wilkerson (a distant relation). Here’s some wisdom from his column on July 15, 1931. Billy writes…
“The trouble with the whole system of selecting and buying story material in the picture business is just this – stories are not bought because they are GOOD. They’re bought for every other reason but that. They’re bought because they were produced as plays on Broadway. They’re bought for the Broadway stamp, however meaningless it may be. Stories are bought because some magazine published them, or because some book publisher put them out as novels. It doesn’t matter whether the sale of the novel went to five thousand copies, or five hundred thousand. They received the magic baptism of printer’s ink. Therefore they MUST be good. They MUST be great.”
It’s not much different now, is it? Studios put out pictures to make money, sure, but is that the only reason people are in the entertainment business? I recently watched The Batman on HBOmax. There is nothing new here, other than a different guy in the bat suit. Everything else has been done many times before (and mostly done better). Yes, it made money, but is that the only reason we're creating film and TV? Haven't we learned anything about originality in ninety years of film production? Apparently not. 06.22.22
About Neal Adams
Really sorry to read about the death of comic book artist Neal Adams. When I was a kid, I was far more drawn to DC Comics than to Marvel, and Neal Adams was the reason. His drawings were not only more detailed than any other comic art, but they were filled with incredible movement, mood and action. Neal Adams was the DC artist who rediscovered the strength of Batman and remade him into the powerful image we have of him today. So, back in the 1980s, when I was running my advertising agency, Wilkerson Advertising, it was a real thrill for me to be able to hire Neal Adams for a series of ads we were doing for our client, Roland Corporation and their division, BOSS Products. We somehow came up with the idea of using comic book art in our ads, probably to deal with a good product with a goofy name – the Dr. Rhythm. It was the kind of name that the Japanese market (where it was made) really liked, but didn’t exactly “play” in the USA. We knew we had to come up with a way of making Dr. Rhythm somehow cool, otherwise we were sunk. The answer was to hire Neal Adams to do the artwork which was simultaneously outrageous fun and imparted a kind of “cool factor” to the product. The four ads that Neal Adams drew for us were really well received, and, most importantly delivered sales for our client. I know we are merely a footnote to the work of a great comic artist, but I’m glad to be part of that footnote. 04.30.22.