By Chris Ryall
June 23, 2003
Are You Partyin' With Me?
In which Chris Ryall attends the AFI dinner for Robert DeNiro, searches for Orlando Jones at a launch party, and ends up chatting with the director of the History Channel's comic book documentary, which airs tonight.
What, turn down a good party, me? Never. Well, not this time around, anyway. Besides, I'm pretty sure you don't say no to Robert DeNiro.
Not that Robert DeNiro knew I was at the dinner where he was awarded the American Film Institute's (AFI) 31st Life Achievement Award. But regardless, there I was, at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre on June 12, when the tribute was filmed. (The special airs tonight on USA at 9:00 PM)
I attended last year's show, honoring Tom Hanks, so I expected more of the same -- DeNiro's celebrity friends praising and oh-so-lightly roasing him, lots of film clips and then Bobby D giving his acceptance speech and making some crack about how he's still too young to be receiving a "lifetime achievement award."
What I didn't expect was to find the whole proceedings so...slow. The Hanks show seemed lively, and I don't think it's that I've gotten jaded over the past year. Hell, after spending the better part of the past year in front of a laptop, it's nice to just get out of the house and get dressed up once in a while. The event was "black tie," which meant black suit for those of us not on the lower floor. See, the way they have the Kodak set up for these events, there's one big half-moon table down below where the guest of honor and friends sit ("the last supper in Little Italy," as Billy Crystal called it); that table is flanked by a lot of other circular tables, and at the oppostie end is the stage. They're served dinner. In the balcony, the rest of us sit in theater seats and watch the show. (But not the dinner; while the other folks eat, we all mill around the open bar and track down the roaming trays of appetizers, which is fine, too.) For the second year in a row, gossip maven Liz Smith was hanging out with all of us. Standing next to her at the appetizers table, I was sorely tempted to tell the fiancee some bad story like "I just saw Dewey from MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE doing coke in the bathroom" or something, to see if her shell-like ears perked up. But I behaved.
The show opened with a nice tribute to Gregory Peck, who died earlier that day. But first presenter Billy Crystal wasn't going to let the maudlin mood continue all night. He started things off, talking about DeNiro's early years and working in his DeNiro impression (is there anyone who doesn't have a DeNiro impression?), of course. He covered the many ways of addressing DeNiro, including "Bobby" (what movie executives who don't know him call him) and "Mr. DeNiro" (what these same executives call him when they meet him.
As this sort of approach, gentle ribbing and overt respect, continued throughout the night, a few things crystalized for me: one is that DeNiro, who I've felt has tended to coast through some recent roles, truly is one of the best actors we've ever seen. I think that might be part of why the night seemed to carry this extra weight that the Hanks dinner didn't--every clip showed Bob (what online schmucks call DeNiro) doing solid, mostly serious ACTING. But taken alone, in 30-second clips, it's...well, it's not all that fun. The clips either make you want to see the movie again, or they make you want to rush ahead to clips from MEET THE PARENTS for a laugh.
The other thing the night showed me is that, taken in 30-second increments, a LOT of DeNiro's movies look very similar. Period pieces and gangster pieces and so many different films set in New York; the AFI wisely showed more than just all the oft-quoted scenes from some of DeNiro's more popular movies, but then again, without an easy "you talkin' to me?" to respond to each time, the clips started to blur into one. Luckily, interspersed throughout was a recently taped interview with DeNiro, where he weighed in on most all of his films.
The thing is, these dinners make you feel like you're crashing someone else's party. The room down below felt so insular, like these are all Bob's old friends from the past thirty or so years, trading stories (or in some cases, heavily editing stories, like when Harvey Keitel or
 |
Joe Pesci started in on the old days) and rememberances. In the audience, it causes a bit of a detached feeling, so instead, at times, I fixated on Hugh Hefner's table, filled with all blonde heads (and one gray one). Hef (what internet schmucks who've been to the Plaboy Mansion call Hugh hefner) seems to be a fixture at all these events. His girls took a shot from a couple presenters, like James Woods. Woods, never one to pass up a shot at putting down a pretty girl, was actually one of the funnier presenters that night.
Other presenters included Robin Williams, manic as ever, who somehow worked comments on Martin Scorsese's moustache into a Madonna merkin joke, Edward Norton, who spoke of the high standard DeNiro has set for his generation. Norton, and most other presenters like Jodi Foster, Carrie Fisher (filling in for Meryl Streep, who is caring for her sick father) and others, offered up a view of DeNiro as extremely prepared, extremely helpful (when he speaks, that is; his silence was a running joke all night) and always the hardest-working man on any set. If the night overall felt like it ran long, it also only adds to the respect you feel for DeNiro and his contributions to film -- he (and his partner Jane Rosenthal) started the Tribeca Film Festival not long after 9/11 as a way to help the city and its inhabitants heal.
When DeNiro finally got up to speak at the end, after a nice introduction from Scorsese, his speech was relatively brief but heartfelt. Fittingly, he concluded with "Good night," looked up and added, "and good night, Gregory Peck."
USA Network will broadcast the 31st AFI Life Achievement Award tribute in June 2003, continuing its multi-year relationship which began last year. Bob Gazzale, who produced and wrote the AFI Tributes to Tom Hanks and Barbra Streisand, will serve as Executive Producer.
ROBERT DE NIRO TO RECEIVE 31st AFI LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
AFI airs on USA Network, tonight, June 23, from 9:00 - 11:00 PM
For more information, visit the AFI Web site.
Anyone Seen Orlando Jones?
Orlando Jones, who you might remember from such forgettable movies as and BIKER BOYZ, and also some 7-Up commercials (the ones before he was replaced by a guy doing his best Orlando Jones impression, I mean), is entering the talk-show arena. Like everyone who enters the talk show arena, he's spoken about how his show is going to tweak the format, is going to be a bit different, will feature a couch instead of a desk and two chairs...you know, finding minor innovations for a pretty tired format. Of course, Pat Sajak, Chevy Chase and Magic Johnson said the same things.
Still...I think there's a lot more to Orlando than just the goofy roles he's played thus far. I talked to him a little at the BIKER BOYZ junket, and he had more to say than anyone else in the movie -- he was open and honest and direct, and not just a goof. It's semingly impossible to make a new talk show work these days, and yet, someone new is bound to catch on at some point, right?
Orlando's show airs at 11:00 PM, so at least he's getting out of the gate before the network heavy hitters. Of course, he is going up against ever-excellent DAILY SHOW in most markets, and he's got the other uphill battle of airing on FX, a smaller cable channel that's not offered everywhere. But I like the guy--he seems likable, and he seems like he could give this a run. So when the girlfriend...er, fiancee now (hard to get used to saying it, because I don't really refer to her like that most of the time..."hey, fiancee, get me another beer, it's a good dry run for the real thing!") got a late invite to a launch party for the show, we accepted.
[NOTE: You should know that the show debuted last Monday, June 16, but this piece was written just before it aired so the tone is still "coming soon."]
The launch party was being held at the Shelter Supper Club in Hollywood, one of the always-changing "latest hot spots" and featured music by DJ Ruckus and libation courtesy of Bacardi.
Okay. The preceeding was all written before the party. Now here, after the party, is where I tell you that I have nothing else to report. The party was more of a fete for Jones and his hundred or so closest friends; other than a plasma screen with the show's logo in one of the club's many darkened little rooms, there wasn't any real sign that this wasn't any other night in a small Hollywood club. The night basically went this way -- valet park for $20, wait outside for half an hour, get our names checked off the list and head in, sample the comp Bacardi drinks, wander around, never see Orlando, admire/gape at the decor, leave. That's about it. The club, despite its docile name, seemed to be going for a bondage-chic decor: the place was nearly pitch dark, but you could make out paintings on the walls of people in their best bondage gear, and the staff all wore Clothing Beyond Thunderdome; a couple zmbified hired dancers (one on the roof over the back patio) did their best to set a specific mood (think "Thriller"). But Orlando was caught outside doing press most of the time we were there, so...well, so this is basically a non-story. And since I'm bound to run long this week, I'll move on. They're not all winners, I guess.
Unmasking rhe Comic Book Heroes
Well, what do you know? A program on comic books that actually takes comics seriously.
Tonight on the History Channel, all you Nazi buffs will have a two-hour break in order for the channel to air COMIC BOOK HEROES UNMASKED, a documentary that focuses on the (roughly) 70-year history of the medium. Narrated by Keith David, it also features numerous clips from comics creators as well as author Michael Chabon and Poop Shoot Patron Saint Kevin Smith.
If you're a long-time comics fan, the documentary won't exactly break new ground for you. In fact, in my head as I watched, I could "hear" voices of the message board lunatic fringe, asking things like "where is Jim Shooter?" and "how come Todd McFarlane got attention whereas John Byrne did not?" You know, the types of details the obsessive fans get...obsessive...over.
However, if you've got either a healthy respect for the medium or a curiosity about it, this documentary will work for both audiences. It goes a long way toward explaining that comics are a great medium for reflecting the prevailing attitudes of any time period, even moreso than any movie or TV show. After all, comics are much more of a singular vision than any television program or studio movie could ever be. The show also explains where comics came from, how they've evolved, how the industry has been threatened by both external and internal forces and managed to survive and why it is now facing a bit of a renaissance, at least as far as its respect among Hollywood folks go.
The documentary opens the only place it really could, and that's the 1938 "birth" of Superman. As the documentary points out, comics in the late `30s were largely the province of Jewish immigrants, and nowhere is this more typified than in SUPERMAN's creators, the young Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. After all, their creation, a costumed strong man influenced by the pulp serials and newspaper comic strips alike, is the ultimate immigrant. The last survivor of a doomed planet, as Chabon points out, is a perfect allegory for the Eastern Europe these creators left behind.
Creator Jim Steranko serves as the primary Creative Consultant on the show, and he interjects quite a bit. I talked to James Grant Goldin, the writer/producer of the documentary, about Steranko's involvement, as well as how he picked other creators to be a part of this special.
"Part of [how we settled on the creators] was geographical. We had the budget to do a couple of days' interviews in New York and a couple in Los Angeles. At the time we started, I believe Roy Thomas was in North Carolina, Mark Waid was in Florida, Alan Moore was in England. Les Daniels, historian, was up in (I think) Rhode Island. I originally wanted to get Todd McFarlane but that didn't work out. We were VERY lucky that Neil Gaiman was doing a book tour and that Will Eisner happened to be in New York, not Florida, the weekend we had to interview.
"For the most part, I was trying to get people who were, at least, double threats. So Kevin [Smith] is a writer and filmmaker and he owns a comic store AND revamped both DAREDEVIL and GREEN ARROW; Steranko is an artist and the author of one of the first great histories of the medium (at least the Golden Age aspect), and one of the few people left who worked at Marvel during the 1960s --- and how cool was it to actually get Steranko?; Denny O'Neil is a writer and editor and he, of course, was "Mr. Relevant" in the late 60s/early 70s, and I wanted him since the focus was always going to be socio-political. Mike Richardson would represent the "indies" and he's an historian, too. Will Eisner was a) Will Eisner and b) there at the beginning. I mean, here's someone who actually rejected Superman! As Neil Gaiman said to me, "Will was there during the Council of Nicea!" Stan Lee was a must. Paul Levitz -- writer and president/publisher AND former fan. Joe Quesada -- writer/president. Frank Miller -- well, without him and Alan Moore, there wouldn't have been a 1980s. And Frank revitalized both BATMAN and DAREDEVIL.
"I must confess that The History Channel strongly urged us to get Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon, and my executive producer wanted Brad Wright -- who was teaching in Germany at the time but was able to be in LA thanks to our months-long delay. Avi Arad was suggested to us during our talks with Marvel, and I really wish we could have used more of him. The guy talks about the Marvel characters as though they're of equal standing with the creations of Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and vitally relevant to everything that's happening today. Steranko, originally somewhat skeptical of the project, offered himself as consultant after we'd established a working relationship and he provided some really invaluable insights and direction.
"I can see doing the show with an entirely different group of interviewees, but, frankly, some of these guys meant a great deal to me growing up.
"If we'd done the show five years ago, it would have been hard to exclude the Golden Age creators who were still around. As it is, I regret that we couldn't work in Julie Schwartz and Joe Kubert; or Neal Adams. I would sometimes get suggestions from others to get people like Garth Ennis -- but I felt that this was a HISTORY Channel project, and so that excluded some more recent superstars. (Gaiman, of course, is recent, but he could speak about Alan Moore and represented the whole British Invasion. Plus, he's had a fair career taking old characters and reworking them, which fits into the history/change theme. As it is, we have far more interviewees than the average History Channel project."
As the documentary states, SUPERMAN (which debuted in ACTION COMICS #1), was an immediate hit. Kevin Smith points out that he envies kids in 1938 for the sense of wonder this new "comic book" must have evoked. To a small degree, it's what every kid who cracks open a comic felt, but magnified--these colorful pamphlets never truly existed in a palatable form before ACTION COMICS.
SUPERMAN became, in short order, the subject of a radio show, motion-picture cartoons, toys and even a daily strip read by some 20 million readers. And his monthly comic sold upwards of a million copies, a feat that will probably never be accomplished again (outside of another speculator's boom, like we saw with SPAWN in the early `90s). This, of course, led to the order for more superhero comics. Which begat BATMAN in 1939. But whereas Superman was, as comics historian Bradford Wright says, "a costumed version of FDR," Batman simply fought crime for revenge. He was also a big hit.
Other companies sprung up, of course, but their lesser attempts at creating popular titles (BULLETMAN, CAT MAN) never quite caught on. One that did was Will Eisner's SPIRIT. Even then, Eisner, now a cartoonist in his 80s who still produces notable works (and for whom comics' "Oscars," the Eisner Awards, are named), was pressured into adding a mask and gloves to his suit-wearing crime-fighter. Costumed heroes were huge then.
 |
A competing company that did thrive was then known as Timely Comics. Timely embraced more "maverick" concepts, such as the water-borne Sub-Mariner and the android Human Torch. And then Timely made the best move it would ever make--they hired young Stanley Martin Lieber. Lieber wrote everything he was given, war comics and romance comics and horror; he signed most with pen names, one of which, Stan Lee, would eventually become his legal name and the name for which millions of kids would know him. Stan, referred to here as the "father of modern comics," hated the kid sidekicks that were becoming so popular (as the logic went, kids reading comics could relate to a young sidekick more than they could a square-jawed hero. Hence, Robin and numerous others), a feeling that would pay off for him even more years later.
The documentary then details the effects of World War II on the industry, both in the fact that creators left their books to join the war effort (which led to some books' original creators leaving and being replaced by more straightforward authority figures. It also led to some extreme stereotypes of foreign enemies. Of course, the 1940s also gave comics the introduction of Jack "King" Kirby, still widely regarded as the most influential comics artist in history. As Michael Chabon says, he was comics' "Shakespeare, or Cervantes."
The nationalistic comics of the day were sent to troops, who loved them. They were selling 15 million copies in 1942, and almost 100 percent more than that a year later. Things were booming. Of course, the bottom was sure to fall out, and it did in the paranoid `50s. The documentary does a great job of showing how comics were changing to reflect the times, and how that change was then noticed and acted upon by ignorant adults. In fact, you can see parallels between the way comics came to be regarded in the 1950s and the way Marilyn Manson's music was castigated after Columbine. Comics were blamed for corrupting children. This culminated in a psychiatrist named Frederic Wertham publishing SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, his proclamation that comics led to "the Superman complex": fantasies of sadistic joy, and encouraged homexuality (those cursed kid sidekicks!). As Stan Lee says, the Senate hearings in 1954 to look at this "problem" nearly destroyed the industry. "Hitler was a beginner compared to comics," they said. That's pretty tough to combat if you're a kid who just wants to read comics.
Comics, a booming industry that could have fought this kind of thinking, caved in. They decided to self-govern their books, forming the Comics Code Authority. The CCA's tough restrictions effectively killed horror comics and neutered the rest. Sales dropped over 50% between 1954 and 1956.
Following this implosion, many titles were cancelled. TV replaced comics in kids' minds. New heroes were created, Flash, Green Lantern and other science fiction-related heroes (in the `60s, the time of space races and Sputnik, science fiction and looking to the stars was on the minds of most kids, so comics again reflected these attitudes. The thing the documentary does especially well is look at any time period's social mores and see how comics are a microcosm of that time. In that light, the violent, almost fascist turn some comics took in the Reagan `80s makes much more sense.
The space race between us and Russia is what informed the birth of the FANTASTIC FOUR, Stan Lee's 1961 title that gave birth to the modern-day Marvel Comics. And the FF, with their real-world problems, begat other heroes with similar concerns--the HULK; SPIDER-MAN. Stan nearly singlehandedly (with the able help of his artists, of course) made comics "cool" again. More than that, comics became cool for older kids, too. Colleges embraced the heroes, and comics soon came to reflect social concerns.
(This stuff may go on all the time now, but then it was very heady stuff. A couple of Stan's SPIDER-MAN comics that dealt with drug use were even shipped without the CCA's approval)
In 1968, 55 million a year were buying comics. Jim Steranko explained how he brought pop art, expressionism and surrealism to comics. Indeed, Steranko was one of the first "rock star" artists. Comics were again taken seriously. And then came BATMAN.
You all know the effect this campy show had on comics -- sure, the books sold a bit better, for a couple years, anyway, but they also made comics again appear as kids' stuff. Those damn newspaper stories that always lead with "Bam! Pow!" and that sort of thing? Yeah, blame BATMAN.
In the late 1970s, SUPERMAN THE MOVIE helped turn things around, which led into the `80s and the devolution of just what a superhero is. It's this time that the seminal comics works THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN were released--they focused more on the heroes' psychosis than they did on straight crime-fighting.
Like I say, if you're an old comics fan, you're probably rolling your eyes at this little history lesson (trust me, it's much more interesting and well-organized in the documentary than right here), waiting for something new. But understand you're in the minority--this documentary has mass appeal to both fans and especially non-fans. It shows you that these little colorful pamphlets might have a lot more to say than just juvenile wish-fulfillment. In fact, you can see that even to this day, comics have something to say about the state of the world (tribute comics to raise money after September 11, 2001 were among the first collective reactions amongst any form of media). And comics movies are more popular than ever. Of course, they may not always work as well as the comics themselves--as Smith points out, they're "missing the ability to internalize" the way a comic with its inner monlogues can do so effectively.
If, at the end of this documentary, you're not convinced that comics are just as valid a form of entertainment as anything else (moreso if you want more undiluted thoughts and concepts surrounded by striking visualizations), well, comics just aren't for you. As refreshing as it's been to see comic books in the news lately, it's even moreso to see a serious, captivating documentary on the subject. Tonight on the History Channel--set your TiVos now.
COMIC BOOK HEROES UNMASKED airs tonight at 9:00 PM EST/PST on the History Channel.
/chris
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
