How Hef Saved the Hollywood Sign

Back in the mid-70s, when I was senior editor at Oui Magazine (which Hugh Hefner co-owned with Hachette's Daniel Filipacchi), we ran a pictorial that we shot at the Hollywood sign with girls' being "romanced" by men dressed as Los Angeles policemen. It was pretty racy and I think there were some shots featuring a baton.

Understand that, compared with what you can see today, this was all pretty tame. But, legend has it, the outcry was so loud that Hefner had to agree to donate money to help restore the Hollywood sign to its original glory to get the city officials off his back. (He had just steered his ship into Los Angeles and was trying to be a good neighbor — not that we editors down below in the galley cared one whit.)

I see now that nearly 30 years later, he's made the final down payment on restoring the sign. And all because we wiseacres at Playboy Enterprises had a dumb idea to mix Hollywood history with modern-day soft porn.

You're welcome.

From the Inside

These dewy-eyed liberals crack me up.

On the night of November 5, 2008 when Barack Obama and Joe Biden were elected to the highest offices in the land, suddenly the world sprouted a pair of rose-colored glasses. Whoop-de-doo with all your change and your hope. Yup, it was all going to change.

Libs are such chumps.

Sure, Obama is overwhelmingly popular with “the people,” about twice as popular as his predecessor and four times more popular than our former vice president. And yes, all those folks who want a more fair and just system of economics, who want to see our government wrenched from the special interests, who want peace and love to flower in the Middle East, who want a “fair” piece of the pie are still on his side.

But guess what, tools, it ain’t gonna happen.

For the truth is, we Republicans still run things. We’ve still got the power.

And the reason for that is pretty simple. Our money runs the permanent government. (And a big shout-out to the Supremes and the Citizens United folks for making sure it’s going to get even better.)

The first thing these libs don’t understand is that, after 30 years out of power, they no longer control the media. I know we’ve been selling that hoary line about the “liberal media” long enough that the simpletons actually buy it, but we know the truth. Do you think Disney, GE, Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch are invested in the common man’s interests? Like they're suddenly going to experience a Jerry Maguire moment, and antagonize and alienate all that corporate advertising cash, start digging into what’s really going on? What is this, some kind of movie fantasy?

Grow up, idiot-lefties. Sure GE (but maybe not Comcast) may have let the occasional Maddow squeak through the gates, but at the end of the day, it’s our highly leveraged (and heavily mortgaged) managing editors with children in expensive private schools who decide what angles to pursue and what we in the Grand Old Party end up telling you.

Or are these glib-libs so oblivious they don't even notice that we've got a Karl Rove fan running the Washington bureau of Associated Press.

We’ve got nothing to worry about, fellow Repubs, the fix is in. Obama’s big plans for change in energy, climate change, healthcare and foreign policy are just a pointy-headed pipe dream. File it all under “No Way.”

On energy independence, for instance, that’ll be easy. After all, did anybody raise a peep when Exxon Mobil and Chevron made more money than any other corporations in the history of the world and gasoline hit four bucks a gallon? Of course not. We've washed enough lame brains out there, heck, they expect to be gouged at the pump, all in the name of free market capitalism. (And none of you had better let on why capitalism doesn’t work when monopolies corner the market.) Besides, who cares if they're cursing us in the local bars. We wouldn't step foot in one of those places anyway. And as far as anybody on TV complaining... well, don't those networks (even PBS) get a ton of money from the oil companies? We're home free. Worst-case scenario: Just get a bunch of goons to holler "Drill baby drill!"

Obama also wants to tackle climate change? That's rich. See, we've been paying stooge scientists for 20 years to come up with ways to make it seem like a natural thing. And do you think the pinhead-population was paying enough attention in science class to fight back? We really had a good laugh this winter when snow fell in record numbers over the Northeast. Luckily, the average voter was sleeping in science class that day when the teacher explained how water from the ocean evaporates into the air and falls as condensation and so they missed the part where if the ocean’s warming, more water is evaporated and, bingo! More snow! And we can also distract them by pointing to e-mail scandals that were featured on page one and whose denial ended up on page 52.

You bleeding hearts wanted universal health care and wanted to separate the insurance companies’ stockholders from their dough? Ain’t gonna happen. Wellpoint and our AMA buddies haven’t spent zillions of dollars lobbying our BFFs in the Senate for 30 years just to let them off the hook now. Besides, if the vote gets tight, all we have to do is scream “socialized medicine” and the lemmings pick up the chant and fall right off the cliff. God, I love simple bumper stickers. (And please don’t tell the unwashed that Obama’s plan actually transfers millions of taxpayer dollars into the insurance companies’ hands.)

Foreign policy? Those peacenik hippies want to dislodge our forces from the Middle East? As if. We know how to scare people real good. Drag old Rudy out, he’s always good for raising the hair on the back of people’s necks. And, let’s face it: If Obama can’t fight back against our boy Dick and his daughter, does he really have any fire in the belly for fascist Islamism?

Our friends, the defense contractors, know how to play this game. We may have hit a rough patch when Ike sounded the alarm about our cozy daisy-chain, but, he was Republican In Name Only, remember, and that was a long, long time ago. The Ikester (or Reagan with his nutty no-nukes pledges) wouldn’t get past Iowa today with that kind of talk.

The minute Mr. Obama tries to upset our little apple cart and pull out of Iraq and figure out a way to escape the clutches of Afghanistan, we'll simply hire some retired CIA operative or Blackwater, er, Xe thug to drop an incriminating bag of cocaine in the Oval Office or, hey, this is better, hire some underage boy to claim he slept with BHO. (Or do those lefties think Monica was an accident the last time a liberal Democrat tried to shake up our little club? You are too funny.)

All we have to do now is wait for the tide to turn against Obama and these liberals. After we get through with this naïve fellow, the suckers will wonder why in the world they ever voted for him in the first place.

Oh, and just in case all of that doesn’t work, well, we also have gotten quite good at stealing elections, in ways even Lyndon Johnson never thought of.

So enjoy your time in the sun, liberals.

We're just sitting back enjoying the show.

That’s our hopey-changey thing. And it's working out for us.

Outsmarting TIVO

DVR is great for that extra kick in time-shifting ratings (just ask Keith Olbermann or the creators of Lost) but it’s been heck on advertisers. People skipping past commercials is not what television pioneers had in mind when the economic model was set up. Trudging through commercials was supposed to be the price one paid for this “free” entertainment.

With DVR, however, folks are rushing through your work. All that time spent crafting and producing (not to mention the grueling getting-of-approval) of these works is being undermined by a nation of itchy trigger-fingers.

But don’t give up hope. Clever advertising agencies can still evade the DVR system and render it powerless. We just have to all work together and try any of the following little tricks.

1. If you’ve noticed, when you hurry through commercials with the DVR system, you’re still seeing the commercials only in quick-speeded up time. Why not create commercials in slow motion? That way, commercials, when hurried through on high speed, will be at the right selling speed.

2. OK, that’s stupid. We’re brainstorming here, remember, no judgments. How about this one: Notice that when you time-shift, you still catch the tail end of the commercial before the program begins again. Be sure to put your logo and message in that last frame and make it last longer. That way the viewer sees who paid for it and what you were trying to tell these folks who are in such a big hurry.

3. Trick the viewer. There’s a Nikon commercial featuring Ashton Kutcher taking photos at a wedding. In one scene he spills a tray full of Champagne glasses. Why not pull a Dick Van Dyke on your next commercial? Remember how sometimes Rob would come in the front door and greet Sally and Buddy and Laura and that smirky kid and fall over the ottoman but sometimes he’d dance around it? How about if, when you film a commercial you change some of the details so the viewer has no idea which version is coming up? In this alternative universe, for example, Ashton starts to knock over the Champagne-laden tray but doesn’t.

4. DVR people are heavy viewers. Sometimes they skip through commercials because they just saw them and, enough already. Why not create more and more commercials at shorter lengths and rotate them more frequently. And how about requesting cable stations to stop running the same spots over and over again? Cable is not that cheap anymore, folks. Creating more messages is more expensive, granted, but I hope you never told your clients advertising was going to be cheap and easy.

5. Finally, use your commercials to tell a serialized story so the viewer never wants to miss a chapter. That funny Tanqueray guy, for example, would be a great character to follow through a story. BMW created a storyline that ran only on its web site; why not use it as commercials? Ten second installments would go a long way to keeping viewers interested.

6. Those are some techniques agencies can employ. You’ve probably already got a dozen more ideas. But there’s one really big thing that the cable and broadcast networks themselves can do to retain viewership through the DVR-ad-shunning commercial block. Take a tip from the Graham Norton talk show on BBC. Snuck in between the commercials, Graham runs snippets of the interviews that are not in the show. Imagine if, during Law & Order, for example, the producers snuck in a montage of all of the cop-and-DA teams that have peopled the series since the beginning. Or all of the different hairstyles that the coroner has sported over the 20 years of the series' run. Or if during Ellen, the syndication stations ran vignettes of dancing audience members in the middle of the ad breaks. Every series has these little interstitial devices that usually end up on the DVD “Special Features” section. Use them during the commercials. Sneak them in between the spots so people have to stick around and not hit that funny button with the right facing multiple arrows.

Heck they might even start using the button with the multiple arrows going the other way.

Billy Joel Slams Palm Springs Indian Casino

Raise your hands. Who wasn’t surprised that Billy Joel would turn out to be such a jerk, someone who’d take a huge payday to open a casino showroom and then turn around and trash the place?

Me, me. Pick me. I wasn’t surprised.

A quarter of a century ago this year, you see, I had my own Billy-Joel-the-Jerk moment. It’s sort of our anniversary.

Back 25 years ago, I published the book Radio Eyes, which consisted of the lyrics of some of rock music’s greatest songs, interpreted visually by the best illustrators in the country. The songs ranged from the 50s’ “Heartbreak Hotel” by Hoyt Axton's mother to the 80s’ “Never Say Never,” — the writer of which, Deborah Ayall, now lives in Desert Hot Springs, they tell me.

This publishing thing wasn’t as simple as it sounds: The lyrics I chose were some of these writers’ most personal and interesting works. For instance, I could have picked “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” from the Steve Wonder songbook. Instead I chose “Cash In Your Face,” a searing indictment of discrimination in housing. You get the idea.

So we had to haggle with many of the writers and, in some cases, the writers wanted to see the illustrations first.

That part was easy: These illustrators’ names are probably not familiar to anyone outside of the commercial art world but they included all those men and women who do the illustrations on movie posters, greeting cards, book jacket covers and print advertisements. All of them did amazing work interpreting these lyrics.

Another snag: Because I didn’t have a lot of money to pay for the rights, my representative, Mary Williams of Mary Williams Music Clearance Company, God rest her soul, tried to get all of the songwriters and illustrators to work for a “most-favored-nation” fee, meaning no one got any more than anyone else. The whole process took two years and a good percentage of my hair.

But it worked out great for the most part. John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, James Taylor, David Byrne, Randy Newman, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, Brian Wilson and about 40 more writers all agreed to allow me to publish their works for the same fee.

And then my art director asked about getting the rights to Billy Joel’s “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant.”

Repressing a gag reflex (Billy Joel? In the same breath as Paul Simon?) I dutifully asked Mary to make the offer to Joel’s people.

Sorry, they said, Billy wants more money than all of the rest of them.

Radio Eyes: Great Rock Lyrics Set to Art came out; the book was featured prominently in the Swiss magazine Graphis (that’s a big deal, by the way), was featured on a "Radio Eyes Day" on a NYC radio station, and earned praise nearly universally (except from an LA Times’ reviewer, who tried to kill it in the crib).

And there were no scenes and no Italian restaurant in any of its 98 pages.

Billy Joel.

Jerk then. Jerk now.

In Defense of Rupert Murdoch

OK, I’m not totally impartial. After all, Murdoch hired me (four times!) when nobody else wanted to. Besides my stellar yet litigious work for TV Guide (see another post below), I worked on the launch of the cable FX Network (creating a USA Today parody celebrating its debut) and wrote the DVD catalogues for 20^th Century Fox’s films for three years. (He also fired me when he realized why I wasn’t able to get any employment — I’m a cheap and lousy reporter.) And so maybe I should hold some kind of grudge but, hey, I don’t hold grudges. That’s the advantage of ADHD.

The thing about Murdoch is that he knows what people want. Pure and simple. Remember when he debuted Cops on Fox? Up until that point, there were no network outlets that showed the hard white underbelly (covered partially by a wife-beater tee) of America. No, until Murdoch’s folks decided to glorify our country’s various police forces, cops were pretty sanitized on television and the criminals always looked groomed. Murdoch and his crew understood how to create popular, unconventional television. These are also the folks who also green-lit the hilariously subversive The Simpsons and Married With Children.

Murdoch has a down-to-earth impression of America, probably because he didn’t grow up here and has no stake in our false façade and our “exceptionalism” mythology. And because he has held up this mirror, he has changed the way we look at ourselves.

Take his latest smash success, Fox News. Combining opinion-journalism, similar to the Fleet Street model, with blitzkrieg graphics, overly amped soundtrack and bright primary colors, Murdoch has brought to the news-a-tainment industry his peculiarly Australian-outback rebel instincts. Which jibes quite nicely with what I call the American Aboriginal outlook. Call it right-wing crazy, call it whatever you want, Fox News is sure as hell entertaining. Start watching it and you can’t stop. It tells a story 24 hours a day: Democrats are evil, Republicans are heroes, and white Christian Americans are under attack. Compare that with the other cable news networks: MSNBC can’t decide from morning to night where it stands politically and CNN still thinks people want to be informed and told both sides of a story: Its approach is, hey, moonbats and wingnuts, we’ll hold your coats while you two fight it out. How quaint.

Murdoch telegraphs his punches. He isn’t sneaky, give him that. Did Dorothy Schiff really think that when she sold The New York Post to Rupee, that that paper would continue along its Murray Kemptonesque path, maintaining the turgid, politically correct newspaper she birthed? He made no secret of his disdain for the aloof approach of that paper.

And as far as the Wall Street Journal being corrupted by Murdoch? That’s a real hoot. Reading the reviews of the arts and entertainment in the Journal has always been an exercise in watching one writer after another look down disapprovingly on the starry-eyed dreamers and liberals in Hollywood and New York. The Journal always had the approach of Brit-Hume, the basset hound-like guy whose blasé attitude toward Washington mutters, “I’ve seen it all.” Don't be surprised when one day The Journal becomes the full-color paper, THE DOW!

The media used to be where we reflected what we wanted ourselves to be: Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, John Chance-e-LOR’s stentorianism, Walter Cronkite’s wiping away tears, Mike Wallace’s going after the crooks. Murdoch has sure made a mockery of the phony impression we used to have of ourselves. He understands American human nature: We’re a bunch of resentful, prejudiced, greedy slobs who want something for nothing. And we’re proud of it. Murdoch knows us, warts and all. And so does anyone watching his television networks and newspapers.

Not that he’s a dictator. Rupert knows when to leave well enough alone when he buys media companies. After all, he’s left 20^th Century Fox to its own Holly-lib devices, ruling only on budgetary matters. (Who can forget the devastating portrait of our former vice president in The Day After Tomorrow?) The movies have enough magic in them already to repel even the Murdoch touch.

But his influence is everywhere else. Look at FX now, which couldn’t be further from the original vision its execs had when working on the launch. It’s become the home of such great, gritty and no-nonsense shows as The Shield, Rescue Me and the new who-can-look-away? series Damages and Justified. Imagine series like those on ABC-Disney...

And how about a round of applause for Fox Sports. Hard to believe, but before Murdoch started broadcasting football games, you had to wait until the commercial to get a score. It was Fox’s NFL coverage that put the stats on the screen during the entire game along with the other data we Americans love when it comes to sports. None of the geniuses at the “respectable” networks thought to do that.

And don’t count out his new business network, either. Poor CNBC. Those folks won’t be able to say one bad thing about the stock market or anything else associated with capitalism, lest they be accused of being “anti-business, socialist, Nazi-Commies.” I can see the campaign now: Fox Business: Unlike those other lame-stream outlets, we love business.

Of course that means, just like with Fox News’ fair and balanced coverage of politics, we poor viewers won’t know the truth about bribes, corruption, fraud and slimy practices until it’s too late.

Hooray for Rupert!

Hollywood Values vs. Washington Values

It’s easy for politicians to run against Hollywood. Like AM talk-show jocks, some politicians dearly love to play off people’s resentments. And who’s safer to resent than Hollywood stars? I mean, what a fat target.

Hollywood stars have more money than we do. They have personal assistants and we don’t. They have all day to look beautiful while we have to be at work. They’re more creative. They’re better looking. They’re slimmer. They enjoy their work. When they go out in public, people notice them, not like we, who fade into the wallpaper.

So resentment against Hollywood is an easy sell if you want to score political points. And when politicians get really desperate, like, say when their popularity hits the 20s and only the most gullible still believe a word they say, well, the long knives come out for Hollywood.

In the upcoming election season, expect an escalation in excoriating “Hollywood values.” So, let’s take a close look at these “Hollywood values.” And let’s compare them to “Washington values.”

In Hollywood, for example, it’s common for people to be so absorbed in their jobs that they work long hours. When I was writing on-the-set features, I marveled that, at midnight, the lights would still be on at the Paramount lot. Inside. Washington’s lights burn only outside after dark. Heads would be rolling at Paramount.

In Hollywood, people participate in a collaborative art form. They work together to solve problems. Take a look at the credits at the end of a typical movie; they run on and on and on and on. When was the last time you heard about collaboration in Washington? Abraham Lincoln brought together a “team of rivals,” as historian Doris Kearns Goodwin noted. These guys in Washington can’t even agree that it’s wrong to take a bribe, give people the same healthcare plans that they themselves get, or subsidize former soldiers’ college educations.

In Hollywood, you have to stay on budget. Sure, some “auteurs” go off the deep end once in a blue moon and create the occasional Heaven’s Gate or Golden Compass. But studios keep a close eye on every dollar. Contrast that with contemporary Washington. Who was watching that missing millions that disappeared off the trucks in Baghdad? Who keeps track of private defense contractors? Who totaled up the cost of that drug prescription bill? Imagine a Hollywood project being green-lighted this way.

In Hollywood, people have to get creative to solve problems. The scene’s not making it? Rewrite! The set doesn’t look right? Scrap it! The actor can’t cut it? Replace! When was the last time you saw Washington people get creative to solve problems? What would happen, for example, if the government mandated that all federal-fleet vehicles had to earn 40 mpg by the year 2012? Don’t you think that would force Detroit automakers to put thousands of engineers, builders and auto assembly-line workers back on the payrolls?

In Hollywood, the studios bow to the will of the public; the only criterion that matters is whether or not the public buys the product. Maybe the squeamish studio heads don’t want to make another Saw movie. So what? The people obviously want to see one and were eager (at least until they got sick of them) to plunk down money at the box office. That’s democracy in action. Contrast that with Washington values: In November 2006 and 2008, the people voted to get us out of the mess in Iraq. They sent the message: Iraq is box office poison. And so what happens? The military strategists ordered a sequel in Afghanistan. What kind of studio boss would keep his job throwing good money after bad?

In Hollywood there is attention to detail. One cannot imagine Brad Pitt’s agent, for example, not checking every line in Mr. Pitt’s movie contracts. Not the case in D.C. How many Senators voted to pass the Patriot Act without even reading it? Don’t these people have people?

In Hollywood, people leave others alone when it comes to their sexual proclivities. Nobody cares what you do in your bedroom as long as you show up for work on time and the public buys tickets. In Washington, your representatives get way too interested in each other’s sexual adventures. Heck, they even tried to overturn an election over some hanky-panky.

And here’s the final Hollywood value Washington ought to embrace. Success. You can criticize Hollywood all you like but the fact is more people than ever are watching Hollywood’s products on television, listening to Hollywood’s music, going to Hollywood’s movies and paying higher prices for them than ever before.

By contrast, Washington is creating its own product these days and how that’s going? Heck, not even the hix in the stix are buying the tix.