American Idol: my take so far

As we head towards the final twelve, here are my AMERICAN IDOL thoughts so far this season.

The winner will be Melinda Doolittle or Lakisha Jones. Lakisha has the edge unless she wears a mini-skirt again.

At times the show should be called ARETHA IDOL. Please. No more “Chains of Love”.

If you have HD you can actually see brain cells pouring out of Paula’s ears.

What happened to Kellie Pickler? Where is that sweet girl next door? She appeared last week looking like the young Dolly Parton. Raccoon make up, J-Lo butt, body tan from a bottle, and she must’ve gone for the full Macy’s Day balloon size boob job. Bring back the old Kellie.

And Fantasia looked like a fullback in drag.

When Diana Ross is a guest judge will her advice to all the girls be “sleep with record presidents”?

New name for Blake Lewis: Twenty-five Cent.

New name for Jared Cotter: Cosby Kid

Ryan Seacrest is seamless hosting AMERICAN IDOL. I goof on him for being a toady red carpet interviewer but in this role there’s no one better.

I’m guessing the “major” announcement on Thursday is either that Paul McCartney has agreed to appear on the show or Paula Abdul has learned to print her name.

Jordin Sparks is the teenage Kimberley Locke.

In Antonella Barba’s bio she said people would be surprised to learn, “I win eating competitions.” After those oral sex pictures circulating the net I don’t think anyone is surprised. And then when asked, “Who are your heroes in life?” she answered, “Walt Disney”. My favorite shot of her is the one where she’s completely naked with a few rose petals sprinkled on her snow white body.

The Stephanie Edwards on AMERICAN IDOL is not the same one who got canned from the Rose Parade broadcast. I know there’s a lot of confusion about that.

Sanjaya Malakar – meet Prell!!!

He looks like Violet, the daughter in THE INCREDIBLES

I don’t get why the judges are so ga-ga over Chris Richardson. Well, Paula, sure, but why Randy and Simon?

Phil Stacey looks like Gollum in a Navy uniform.

Sundance Head is a good singer but his daddy, Roy was even better.

It seems almost inhumane that ten seconds after they learn they’ve been eliminated, contestants are asked to sing in front of 30,000,000 people. To me the only genuine touching moment in the show so far this year was Alaina Alexander being unable to sing her song and other contestants helping her out.

Does Brandon Rogers also play Gary on CSI?

One day he'll be singing backup for Melinda Doolittle.


I’m really looking forward to British Invasion week with guests Lulu (my personal favorite. I love Lulu) and Peter Noone (Herman from Herman’s Hermits). I can’t wait to hear contestants have to sing “I’m Henry the 8th I ‘am” and “Dandy”.

Whatever happened to Taylor Hicks? I mean, even Ace Young was sighted on the MIKE & JULIET SHOW.

This year they’ve introduced IDOL CAMP, a summer camp for kids. Finally, they’ve figured a way to capitalize on AMERICAN IDOL! I always knew there would be money in this franchise if they only looked hard enough.

Nicole Tranquillo, who was voted off, is better than half the singers still there.

Sanjaya Malakar – meet Head & Shoulders!!!

Randy’s added a new move this year! Sucking his teeth and saying “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Say what you will, the man is an entertainer.

Chris Sligh is genuinely funny and can sing. When he gets voted off, which he eventually will (because girls say they value a sense of humor above all else then vote for the guys who look like Justin Timberlake) I’m sure Fox will have a gameshow for him to host like ARE YOU SMART ENOUGH TO TIE YOUR SHOES?

And finally, I’ve said this before, it’s okay to be an AMERICAN IDOL fanatic, to watch every week, to read blogs, or post comments, but once you’ve actually VOTED, then you’ve crossed over to the dark side. Unless Antonella sings on the show wearing the rose pedals, then I’m on speed dial for two hours.

Another "lost" scene from ARTHUR

I love you people! Thanks for wanting more of Steve Gordon’s ARTHUR. Here’s another scene that never made the movie. I don’t think it was even filmed. It comes near the middle of the movie. Arthur (Dudley Moore) has agreed to marry Susan, succumbing to his father’s wishes. He tries to rationalize this agonizing decision.

INT. TENNIS COURT – DAY

Arthur and his father are warming up. From time to time, Arthur reaches for a tennis ball can and drinks from it. We hear the ocean pounding. The court is right next to the beach.

MR. BACH
(walking toward the net) Are you ready to play, Arthur?

ARTHUR
I’m always ready to play.

He drinks from the tennis can.

ARTHUR
Fuzzy drink. Serve, father.

Mr. Bach serves. Arthur doesn’t move. The ball goes by him.

MR. BACH
Arthur… you didn’t move.

ARTHUR
I was listening to the ocean. 15 love.

Mr. Bach serves again. This time to the ad court. Again Arthur watches the ball go by him.

MR. BACH
Arthur! You’ve got to move!

ARTHUR
I don’t care about winning. I’m just here for the exercise.

Mr. Bach walks to the net. Arthur meets him on his side.

MR. BACH
Arthur… Burt told me you went to see a young woman after your date with Susan the other night.

ARTHUR
Don’t worry about it, father. I want the money. I’ll never see her again.

He looks around. The house. The beach. The pool. The grounds.

ARTHUR
We really are rich, aren’t we?

MR. BACH
Yes. Yes, we are.

ARTHUR
If the poor people knew about this… they’d be even madder than they are.

MR. BACH
But they don’t know about this.

ARTHUR
I love money.

Arthur takes a tennis ball and hits it over the fence and onto the beach.

ARTHUR
I love having everything. Anything! I want it all! How’s that for values? I want everything! I want a fireplace in every room. Even in Acapulco.

He hits another tennis ball over the fence. Onto the beach.

ARTHUR
I love hitting tennis balls as far as I can!

He hits another one.

ARTHUR
Because we have so many more tennis balls! I want to be in the family I’m in. I want to be a Bach. I was born for it! Topspin! Bjorn Bach!

He hits another ball over the fence.

MR. BACH
Are you drunk, Arthur?

ARTHUR
No! But I know that if I wanted to be… we have enough 15-year-old scotch to make an army loaded! Now serve.

Mr. Bach goes back to the service line. He serves. Arthur hits a blistering winner.

MR. BACH
Nice shot, Arthur! I didn’t know you were that good.

ARTHUR
I have a tendency to let you win. Serve.

CUT TO:

Again, if you have any Steve Gordon scripts, lemme me know. Thanks! Tomorrow I rant on AMERICAN IDOL (some things are a MUST) but later in the week one final lost scene from ARTHUR. Stay tuned.

Scene from ARTHUR

Steve Gordon’s ARTHUR is probably my single favorite comic screenplay. Believe it or not the first draft was 147 pages. (Do NOT try this at home, kids.) So obviously there were scenes that never saw the flickering light of the projector. But here’s one of those missing scenes. Don’t you wish you could write as well? I do.

When Arthur (Dudley Moore) goes to Linda’s (Liza Minelli) apartment after proposing to Susan:

INT. LINDA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

It is a small room. Linda sits at the edge of the bed. Arthur paces.

ARTHUR
Nice. Really a nice place.

LINDA
I’m thrilled. A lush likes my furniture. Talk.

Arthur reaches for a yearbook that is on the table.

ARTHUR
Is this your yearbook?

Linda jumps off the bed and rips the yearbook out of Arthur’s hand.

LINDA
God damn it! I have to get up and go to work tomorrow! Now stop fooling around. What do you want? You want to see a funny picture?

ARTHUR
Yeah.

Linda flips through the book. They are close.

LINDA
This is me in the school play – I played Juliet. Martin Feinberg played Romeo. Look at the hair. God! Martin Feinberg became a lawyer.

ARTHUR
What did you become?

LINDA
I’m a waitress. I’m studying to be an actress.

She flips through the book.

ARTHUR
You want to be an actress?

LINDA
No, schmuck… I’m studying to be an actress because I want to be a carpenter. (in the book) Look at this! Me playing vollyball! This guy went to prison.

ARTHUR
Sure… he probably got a lawyer who wanted to play Romeo. Did you go with anyone?

LINDA
Not really. My mother was sick then. I came home from school and spent as much time with her as I… anyway… it wasn’t a good time. This girl here…Mona… used to get laid 20 times a week.

ARTHUR
She looks tired there.

LINDA
Where did you go to school?

ARTHUR
I went to eight prep schools. I was thrown out of all of them. I was real unhappy as a kid.

LINDA
With all your money?

ARTHUR
Yeah. I had a big house. But nobody wanted me in it.

Linda puts her hand on Arthur’s face.

LINDA
You’re a lovely man.

ARTHUR
Lovely?

LINDA
Don’t worry about it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever said to anyone. Why haven’t you called me?

ARTHUR
Uh… that’s why I came here tonight. I think about you all the time. I am so fond of you…

LINDA
If you’re breaking up with me… I think it’s only fair to tell you that we’ve never had a date.

ARTHUR
(smiling) I am breaking up with you. We were so good we didn’t need dates.

LINDA
Why don’t we see each other and then break up?

ARTHUR
Listen… there’s stuff. Let’s not get into it. I can’t see you. Remember that ring?

LINDA
I had a feeling about that ring… you don’t clean that… you guard it.

ARTHUR
I gave it to somebody tonight.

LINDA
My ring? So what are you doing here?

ARTHUR
I had to see you to tell you I can’t see you.

LINDA
Neither of us is crying. Everything’s okay. You are the strangest person in North America.

ARTHUR
Yeah. Well… goodbye. It would probably be a mistake for you to come to that party Wednesday.

He starts toward the door.

LINDA
Yeah.

He turns.

ARTHUR
It’s the best way. There’s a lot involved.

LINDA
Right.

Arthur kisses her on the lips.

ARTHUR
(after the kiss) Goodbye. I guess this is it.

He continues to hold her.

LINDA
You’re holding me and kissing me. In my bedroom. With what you drank… you may be clearing up my sinuses.

Arthur kisses her again.

ARTHUR
Let’s just say goodbye. This is silly.

He kisses her again. This time it grows into a passionate kiss.

LINDA
(after the kiss) How long ago did you get engaged?

ARTHUR
About four hours ago. Jesus… this is wonderful.

LINDA
Make sure you come by your honeymoon night. Let’s stop. I enjoy you… but there are certain rules.

ARTHUR
Right… Goodbye.

He exits.

In the actual movie this scene was rewirtten and is much shorter. He goes to her apartment to give her $100,000 guilt money which she doesn't take. (Great shot of her dad outside the door, practically dissolving into tears.)

By the way, in the first draft Linda is not Italian. She's Jewish. Davidorf is her original last name.

If there’s sufficient interest I will post another scene later in the week.

Steve Gordon

From time to time I like to introduce you to comedy writers you may not know but whose work you probably admire. One such writer is Steve Gordon. Tragically, he died of a heart attack in November of 1982 at age 44. He is still one of my inspirations, and whenever I begin writing a screenplay I always reread one of his. It’s called ARTHUR.

For my money, nobody wrote sharper or funnier comic dialogue than Steve. His only other produced screenplay was THE ONE AND ONLY, which airs from time to time on HBO. It stars Henry Winkler as an narcissistic actor who becomes a TV wrestler in the early days of television. Like ARTHUR it’s brimming with wonderful lines.

And if you haven't seen ARTHUR starring Dudley Moore, I have just one made-up word for you: Netflix.

Steve started in advertising in the early 70’s. Feeling he could write a better play than the ones he saw, he banged out TOUGH TO GET HELP. In true storybook fashion it went straight to Broadway with Carl Reiner directing and John Amos starring. Okay, it closed in one night but still!

Through Reiner’s introductions, Gordon moved on to television, doing freelance episodes for shows you’ll never see again and within a couple of years created his own series, THE PRACTICE for NBC starring Danny Thomas (shown on the left). Picture Becker meets Uncle Tanoose. That’s where I first discovered Steve. The dialogue just crackled. My partner and I had just finished our first MASH and suddenly we were hot for five minutes. We pretty much had our pick of freelance assignments. And we chose THE PRACTICE.

Working with Steve we found him to be charming, incredibly funny, and maybe the most nervous intense human being I had ever met. Ohmygod! Two hours with him and I wanted to take up smoking. But it began a relationship that lasted until his death.

THE PRACTICE was cancelled in its second season. Next he created a series called GOODTIME HARRY about a womanizing sportswriter, starring Ted Bessell. It had Steve’s trademark brilliant dialogue but little network support. ABC scheduled it Saturday nights at 10:30. (If there’s a worse time slot for a comedy in the sixty year history of television I don’t know what it is. THE COSBY SHOW would have gotten a 2 share Saturday night at 10:30.)

You’re probably sensing a pattern. Terrific work. Fairy tale-like big breaks. Failure. Is it any wonder he made Richard Lewis seem mellow?

Steve turned to screenplays. The pattern continued. His very first script got produced (THE ONE AND ONLY) and did little at the boxoffice.

And then came ARTHUR. Breakthrough! It was the number four boxoffice hit of 1981. It earned Gordon an Academy Award nomination for screenplay and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for John Gielgud.

Steve was finally on his way. The hottest comedy writer and director in Hollywood. And then he died.

Some patterns are just hard to break.

I wish more of his scripts were available. If you have one, let me know. There is a special collection of his work at the University of Toledo but rarely will you see his name on TVLand. (I’m hoping that someday THE PRACTICE with Danny Thomas will resurface on DVD or at least on the Lebanese channel.) Steve gave me his original draft of ARTHUR, which I cherish to this day. Tomorrow, for the first time, I’ll share a scene that never made the movie. And hopefully you’ll miss Steve Gordon as much as I do.

Are you happy with your detergent?

Here’s the meme that went around the screenwriters' blogs. I've been tagged.

ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:

Seeing TEN COMMANDMENTS as a mere tyke and being scared shitless. Not by the special effects or torture to the Jews but by the bad over-acting. Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner in the same movie? Even Cinemascope couldn’t contain them. Both had me diving under the seat. And incredibly, they weren’t the worst offenders. That dishonor would go to Ms. Anne Baxter. She gave maybe the single worst most overblown performance in the history of film…rivaling Butty Hutton in THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. I still haven’t recovered.

TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:

From ARTHUR by Steve Gordon:

Arthur: Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take a bath.
Hobson: I'll alert the media.
Arthur: Do you want to run my bath for me?
Hobson: It's what I live for.
[Arthur exits]
Hobson: Perhaps you would like me to wash your dick for you... you little shit.

From THE LADY EVE by Preston Sturges:

Jean Harrington: They say a moonlit deck is a woman's business office.

THREE (3) jobs you’d do if you could not work in the “biz”:

Teacher
Cartoonist
Morning man at W.O.L.D.

FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:

Amway salesman (Hey, that detergent really works)
Record store clerk (I used to throw Neil Young out of the Wallich's Music City listening booths for smoking pot in the store's front window)
Comic strip artist (I had to come up with one joke a week, the pressure was unbearable)
Broadcasting teacher ("today I'm going to teach you how to announce the weather.")

THREE (3) book authors I like:

Philip Roth
John Kennedy Toole
Kurt Vonnegut

TWO (2) movies you’d like to remake or properties you’d like to adapt:

VOLUNTEERS. They never did justice to our script. When the movie came out I wanted to stand in the lobby and just hand out screenplays.

The other movie that I’d like to remake is THE PRODUCERS. Come on. It’s time.

ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:

Steve Gordon, author of ARTHUR. And tomorrow I'll tell you all about him.

In the meantime, one more quote from the movie.

Hobson: Normally, someone would have to go to a bowling alley to meet someone of your stature.

Gentlemen, start your feet!

This Sunday is the L.A. Marathon. I’ve decided not to run it this year. It was an agonizing decision but what tipped it was I’ve never run more than a block in my life. And like most sporting events, it’s more fun to watch it on TV than be in it.

There’s a new parade route. It used to go in a big circle from downtown to almost the Westside and back. But just getting near with Westside triggered complaints of inconvenience and you don’t mess with those folks. No siree. This year the race starts near Universal City (just a bunch of tourists and valley people so who cares?) and it ends downtown. So…uh, where do runners park their cars? At the starting line or finish line? Race organizers are suggesting they take busses or the Metro. They don’t have enough to worry about actually BEING in the race? And we’re talking 20,000 of them.

In general, traffic will be unbelievably screwed up anywhere near the race route. More than 350 major intersections will be closed, along with 22 offramps along the Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Harbor Freeways. If you’re staying at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood and have to get to the airport on Sunday morning – leave NOW. Don’t even finish reading this post. Go! GO!!

The route goes past the Hollywood Bowl (no salute to Gershwin and firework show that morning so runners are in luck there), into Hollywood, down Vine Street past Neil Sedaka’s star, Jiffy Lube (the one preferred by Mae West), and the KFC, winding into Hancock Park (rich people without the Westside clout), then Koreatown (massage parlors offer discounts for runners. Just show your registration fee. You could finish 12,048th and still have a happy ending), downtown, and for the first time – East L.A.

The fastest marathoner on earth will need at least three hours. Jack Bauer routinely covers that route in 36 minutes.

But I have an idea to improve runners’ times. Just hold the race at night. If you’ve got to run through downtown and East Los Angeles at night, trust me, you will not dawdle. World records will be set. In fact, depending on the night, they could be sprinting right past Jack Bauer.

Good luck to everyone participating on Sunday. And I hope that getting to your car doesn’t prove to be harder than running 26.2 miles.

Beware of this man

This is Robert McKee. I’m starting to think Robert McKee has done more harm to writers and the state of the movie industry than Rob Schneider. His two day weekend screenplay structure course became a sensation in the 90’s – EST seminars for writers. Granted, he presents some sound principles in structure. But adhering to his method forces you into a formulaic model. And worse, most junior studio execs and D-girls eagerly give up spa weekends to take the course so you can imagine what your notes will be. Have fun turning that slasher movie into CASABLANCA. (Mr. McKee spends an entire day breaking down CASABLANCA line by line.)

Any course that makes lower level studio executives two years removed from Cal State Northridge think they're suddenly experts in story structure is very destructive to the state of the art.

Yes, there are general guidelines. Screenplays should not be longer than 120 pages, especially comedies. That particular rule you need to follow because if a reader sees a script thicker than the Santa Monica phone book they’ll never read it no matter how good it is.

But the notion that the first act has to end around page 20 and the third act should start around 85 – don’t twist your story into knots trying to fit it into that template. God forbid your first act ends on page 12. The WGA storm troopers will not bust into Starbucks and haul you away. If you don’t have a mid-point plot turn, the ghost of Billy Wilder will not smother you with a pillow while you sleep.

A very general rule of thumb for a three act structure is: Act One – get your hero up into a tree, Act Two – throw rocks at him, and in Act Three – get him down. How you do that is up to you.

Here’s the Levine method: Just tell a great story.

Make it compelling, original, funny, exciting, romantic, spooky, erotic, surprising. David Mamet says the one question an audience asks is WHAT’S NEXT? I agree. Let each scene drive the story forward. Make sure each moment is vital no matter what page it’s on. Create memorable characters and situations. And allow yourself the freedom to really let your imagination go. Don’t restrict your thinking.

When I read a screenplay I want to hear YOUR voice, not Robert McKee's, or the Epstein brothers (even if they did write CASABLANCA).