You likely saw the "news" story where "Fox News" bizarrely seemed to try to shame actor Geoffrey Owens -- who appeared on The Bill Cosby Show for seven years -- for now working at a Trader Joe's grocery store.  Even at face value, it was a bizarre thing to write about for many reasons, the most basic being obvious:  slamming someone for having a job just seems weird and nasty.  And picking on Geoffrey Owens seems especially odd.  Though it was good to see a lot of people noting on social media that what he's doing now is far superior to the star of the show he was on.

How aghast was social media at the unfairness of the "Fox News" article?  Not only were liberals and several "Hollywood actors" like Blair Underwood and Justine Bateman outraged at "Fox News" but I saw angry tweets from such far right voices as actor James Woods and Dana Loesch, spokeswoman for the NRA (and one-time aspiring actress) taking "Fox News" to task, as well.

All that aside, there's something else very notably to make clear --

What the "Fox News" story important leaves out is that Geoffrey Owens is STILL an ACTIVE working actor -- and simply checking the iMDB.com movie database would make that incredibly clear. It's not that he's been acting on and off for a while -- rather, he has seven TV and movie credits the past two years alone, including a role this season on the CBS series, Elementary.   Indeed, he was worked steadily in films and TV every year for the past 12 years (with one exception in 2012).  So, while it would be perfectly fine if he had gotten out of acting and just wanted a nice job at a good company to make a living and get health care and personal respect, in fact that's not the case at all -- he has an an impressively long career as an actor that goes back to 1985.  And "Fox News" didn't even bother to browse to his credits, which would have taken about 15 seconds.  In fact, given his long career and seven seasons on a hit series, it's likely that he has been successful enough to have been vested in the Screen Actors Guild health care program.  And so, he probably doesn't need the health care from Trader Joe's.  He just wants the work and salary.  Horrors! 

(And since he lives in New York, this doesn't include any of the stage work he might have been doing there over the years, as well.  I've read one story from a local school, too, that explained how he comes in to teach acting there on occasion, which they wouldn't be able to offer otherwise.  Another story was a reminiscence from someone of  "An act of kindness. Twenty-two years ago while I was in college, #GeoffreyOwens and his wife found out that I didn't have enough food to eat. I hardly knew them. They bought me bags of groceries and hugged me as I cried - shocked by their kindness. A hero stands tall anywhere.")

The reality is, for most actors, except those lucky few who become stars or who break through as supporting performers, jobs don't come regularly, so the option is to do nothing during your downtime (which can be months because jobs, even half a year) or stay busy with other work.  So, in other words, this break news "story" from "Fox News" is that a journeyman actor with a 33-year career has a has a second job to keep him busy and provide income.

I should also note that he picked a very nice company to work at.  I've been a huge admirer of Trader Joe's and shopper there for probably 40 years, when they were just a West Coast company, with most of their stores in Los Angeles.  And Joe Coulombe was still the owner, and did their radio ads himself.  There's a Trader Joe's about half a mile from where I live, and I pass it maybe four times a week on my morning constitutional -- I probably stop in once a week.  They're employees tend to be very friendly and incredibly helpful, and seem to actually like working there, so it makes all the more foolish to try to "shame" someone for doing so.  I suspect they have a long waiting list of job applicants and are very selective who they hire.

Today's Labor Day, so I won't head over, but I'll make sure to stop in on Tuesday, just on general principle to offer my support.  I really only have one quibble with Trader Joe's.  And it's not really a quibble at all, just a caveat --

I have a very nice Hawaiian shirt that my friend Deborah (who's from Honolulu) bought me several years back.  And I have to be incredibly careful NOT to wear it when I know I'm going to shop at Trader Joe's.  If you shop there, you know what I mean and where this is going.  One day I was wearing the shirt and browsing around the store -- and every five minutes, some customer would come up to me and ask for help.  I didn't mind explaining that, no, I wasn't an employee, I was just wearing my own Hawaiian shirt, but I felt bad for the people asking who always so embarrassed that they had confused my Hawaiian shirt with those of the store.  So, there have literally been times when I've gotten dressed in the morning, and then remembered I was going to be shopping at Trader Joe's that day and quickly changed shirts.

Other than that -- and that they periodically drop carrying favorite items of mine -- I think Trader Joe's is a terrific store.  And lest they get smeared, as well, for being a demeaning place to work, it's important to know that the very opposite it true.

On the positive side, I wouldn't be surprised if Geoffrey Owens gets a lot of positive notice from this story, bringing his name to the attention of casting directors who are inundated daily with piles of actors' resumes to try and sort through to figure out which lucky few will get to audition for producers -- and who know how monumentally unfair this "Fox News" smear was and may want to do right by him to correct that wrong.

One of the most difficult things for any career actor is to stay visible so that they get those auditions and stay in the eye of casting directors and producers.  It's my hope that the attempt by "Fox News" to meaningless "shame" someone living under the wire and out of the spotlight, like pretty much everyone in the world, backfires in a big way and ends up getting an actor more work than he would have had otherwise.  But at the very least, it's nice that it has brought out stories about what a good guy the fellow is.

Where is Al Franken when you need him?  The author of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot​ would have had a field day with Bill O'Reilly, but no, he had to go off and get elected to the U.S. Senate.

I know this took place a few days ago, though running around it's gotten me a bit behind and taken me a while to get up to speed.  But I'm referring to when Bill O'Reill went on a bizarre hissy-fit rant about how difficult it's become for Trump to get not just A-list entertainers to perform at his innauguration, but almost anyone.  However, as you may have read, he has a theory --

​“The harsh truth is that there is reverse McCarthyism going on in the entertainment industry.” If you've finished shaking your head and rolling your eyes, I'll continue with his descent into emptiness.  “A number of entertainers believe their careers will be harmed should they associate with a new Trump administration.” 

How stupid is this?  Even his guest Charles Krauthammer told O’Reilly off -- yes, Charles Krauthammer -- replying “I find it hard to get exercised over the fact that we may be short a Rockette at the inaugural celebration."  

So much to say, so little time..

The main thing is that it shows a willful disingenuous on what McCarthyism actually was.  Not that what he suggests has anything to do with what's at play, but if it did it wouldn't be even close enough to see the connection with the Hubble telescope, because it's McCarthyism was something else entirely.  McCarthyism was the actual U.S. government using its authority to investigate people based on their political belief, bringing people to be questioned in Congress and asking them questions about their thoughts anad what they believe, throwing people in jail (actual jail) if they refused to comply.

That was MCarthyism.  An offshoot of it is that people were literally blacklisted for their beliefs.  Literally.  Their names were actually kept in books (the most infamous was called Red Channels).  And people were actually denied work and their livelihood as a result of it.

That's McCarthyism.  This is people chosing of their own volition not to perform at an event.

Beyond that, Mr. O'Reilly in his meltdown has forgotten or chosing to ignore or just been to foolish to recognize several things.  High among them is that, given that me live in a Democracy, people acctually have the right to entertain whoever they want for any reason they want.  And more to the point is that it was clear during the election how many A-list celebrities didn't support Trump.  So, why would one expect them to want to celebrate his Electoral College victory.  And even more, it's not just a case of not supporting, but so many of them hating Trump, hating his racist statements, hating his encouraging racism, hating his misogyny, hating his ridiculting the disabled, hating his trashing of the press, hating his disparagement of U.S. Intelligence serves, hating demagoguery, hating his calls to "lock up" Hillary Clinton, hating his congenital lying, hating his support of hacking, hating his praise of Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the expense of President Barack Obama, and so much more.

And if people hate Trump SO much, hate him that much, why on earth would anyone sane and rational even think for a moment that such people would want to help celebrate his victory and entertain on his behalf???

Did Mr. O'Reilly not even consider such a possibility???  Hey, even Charles Krauthammer did.

While it's certainly possible that some entertainers' careers could be impacted negatively if they performed at a Trump Inauguration Ball (which speaks volumes), if it did possibly occur it would be because audiences were so offended that they stopped buying recordings or chose to not attend concerts -- not because of any institutional actions.  Not that Mr. O'Reilly provided event a speck of lint as evidence of such a thing.

On the other hand, let's say that Beyonce, for one, did perform.  I have a feeling that her career would be just fine.  As would most anyone who chose to perform.  But that's not at hand.  The issue is that they simply hate the guy and hate all that he stands for and just simply have ZERO interest in entertaining on his behalf.

To me, much more shocking is that Ted Nugent hasn't volunteered or been asked to perform.  Now, there's something for Bill O'Reilly to truly get up-in-arms outraged over...

Ultimately, the only McCarthyism at play here is Charlie McCarthy.  Because Bill O'Reilly has shown himself to be a dummy.  Perhaps even mouthing someone else's words.

Here at Elisberg Industries, we like to keep our fine readers and loyal worldwide customers as informed and up to date with as much insight as possible.  That's why we have our correspondents, agents and brokers scouring the globe to stop on top of as close to everything as we can.

As you might recall, just the other day, I posted a couple videos of a wonderful moment at a recent Bruce Springsteen concernt in New Jersey when a couple got engaged in the audience, and he brought them up on stage.  Well, as it happens, we had a correspondent there.  The recently-mentioned Don Friedman, my fellow Glencoenian and New Trier grad, was at that very show at MetLife Stadium.  In his words, "Great moment!"  I suspect he'd have written more, but it's difficult when you're busy yelling, "Bruuuuuuuuuuce!!!!"

As I've mentioned here lately, Garrison Keillor is retiring as host of A Prairie Home Companion after 42 years.  (The show will continue in October, though with a new host, Chris Thile.)  And tonight is the last show.  It's being recorded, though, for airing on Saturday in its normal time slot at 5 PM, Central time.

Notable for our purposes here -- this last show tonight is being done in, of all place, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.  And yes, as I've mentioned, I have tickets.  It didn't even occur to me not to go.

I've told some of these stories before, but because of the occasion it's a good time to repeat them.

I first went to an A Prairie Home Companion live show before it even become a national program.  My brother John was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the time, and he would write me about this great local radio show, A Prairie Home Companion.  And so, when I went to visit him once, we went to see the show live, at the World Theater.  As I said, it was still just a local show, and didn’t go national for maybe another 3 years.  I still have some paraphernalia from going to that show.  One is a 20-page pamphlet called The Collected Poems of Margaret Haskins Durber. She was Lake Wobegon's poet laureate, and Keillor would often recite her wonderful, sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful work.  For whatever reason, he dropped her as a character to talk about decades ago.  The pamphlet by Ms. Durber is dedicated "For My Husband," and reads --

Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord that he will keep
To his own side, for goodness sake.
Unless, of course, he is awake.

I also even remember a passage from one of the songs he sang at that local show.  It came in a sketch about a sad sack of a fellow, and Keillor wrote a song to the tune of "My Way," sung in the first person by the man who had so many things coming on him.  It went --

Those guy,
They threw mud pies.
And threw them...
My way.

Oddly, and happily, when Garrison Keillor first retired from the show a long while back, in his intended farewall program, he did a sketch that actually used a verse from that same "My Way" parody.  I leapt out of my seat while listening, overjoyed.

While on the visit to St. Paul, I didn't only see and hear Garrison Keillor doing a local version of A Prairie Home Companion -- but he also had a local radio morning show.  And I remember every morning during my visit listening to Keillor do that show, as well.

So, how in the world could I not go to Garrison Keillor’s last A Prairie Home Companion?!
 
Yet, in addition to all that, there's another reason, as well.  I am literally – without exaggeration – the reason A Prairie Home Companion got on the air in Los Angeles.  It’s a long story, but this is very brief version:
 
Back around 1980, my brother -- still in St. Paul, told me that the still-local A Prairie Home Companion was going to do a national fundraiser on NPR from the University of Minnesota, and I really wanted to hear it.  So, I called around all the NPR outlets in Los Angeles to see if any were carrying it, and no one knew what on earth I was talking about.  Only one station, KCRW in Santa Monica, had sort of heard of it. 

The problem was, by the time I reached them, and by the time they looked into deciding what to do, the airdate had passed.  And they didn’t know if they were even allowed to air the previously-live show on tape delay after the fact.  They had to check with NPR in Washington.  I kept calling them and calling them, reminding them and noodging them to find out. 

At last, at least a month later, or maybe even two months, they got permission and aired the program.  And it was wonderful.  I called KCRW up to thank them, and the person said, “No, we want to thank you.  We’ve been getting phone calls all day from people who LOVED it, and we never would have put the show on if it hadn’t been for you following up with us.”

(To this day, I don't know if KCRW realizes that they were the first station to air A Prairie Home Companion.  It didn't become a national program for another couple years after that, and when it did, it was on KUSC.)
 
So, again, there is no way I even considered not going to the final broadcast.  Tonight.  In just a few hours.

And I'll be leaving very shortly for the Hollywood Bowl to be there.  I'll have a report later.

The other day, I wrote a long addendum here  to the latest in a series of great articles that Mark Evanier has written about rejection in Hollywood -- mainly about writers, but it tends to be appropriate for anyone in Hollywood, or often for anyone trying to work, period.

He has a new one, and again it's terrific.  The short version is that this one is about how one should look at any job interview as just an interview for one job, and not make it more than it is.  The long version is...much better.  You can read the whole thing here.

I honestly have no idea who won any Golden Globe last night, other than apparently Lady Gaga because she bumped into Leonardo DiCaprio's arm and the Twitter World has gone crazy.  I haven't bothered to look and see who won because, well, I really, truly don't care.  About 30 or so people who are unidentified and possibly stringers who voted for a person just doesn't do much for me.  But godspeed to the winners.  It's nice to get any award, even it's one as meaningless as your office pool.

I did watch the opening monologue, because I like Ricky Gervais.  And I thought he was pretty amusing, even if not every joke was great.  (My favorite line, clearly appreciated by the knowing-audience, was about stars feeling obligated to show up because they knew their studio had bought the award for them.)  But I do love seeing the comments about how rude he was.  Yes, he was rude.  I have no problem at all with anyone being offended by any of his comments, just don't be surprised by them.  This isn't his first barbecue.

But I bring all this up because of my favorite comment of all, by far,  It was in an article whose headline caught my eye by Cole Delbyck, an entertainment writer for the Huffington Post.  Basically chastising the hijinks of the presenters, he wrote, "Seriously, everybody needs to turn down with the planned gags and forced humor. It's the Golden Globes, not an amateur stand-up set at the Chuckle Bucket."

"It's the Golden Globes"??? As if the evening is the equivalent in decorum to an invitation to dine with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.  Or your friends' wedding anniversary.  "It's the Golden Globes"?!  Really?  There is less etiquette required at the event than standing in line to get tickets for a Taylor Swift concert.  That's not hyperbole.  If you tried to cut in line, you'd probably get jumped on by the others.  If you dropped your trousers at the Golden Globes while presenting an award, there's a chance you could be invited to come back next year as host.

And by the by, it actually is a whole lot closer to amateur stand-up night the the Chuckle Bucket.  Really and truly.  Did the reporter not notice the glass of beer on the podium that Ricky Gervais kept sipping from?  Those in the audience might have been wearing nice clothes, but most were likely getting sloshed all night.

"It's the Golden Globes."  Hey, at least he used the word "gag".

I love Penn and Teller.  But I'm not particularly a fan of their show, Penn and Teller: Fool Us -- though it's a hit and was recently renewed for its third season.  I'm not quite sure why I don't like it much, but I think there are three reasons.  1) It's really not Penn and Teller doing much, but other magicians brought in, 2) when Penn and Teller explain how they believe the trick is done, they hide most of the details, so they're really not saying much of anything, and 3) I dislike the host Jonathan Ross, who's a smarmy guy with a chat show in England.

If you don't know Penn and Teller:  Fool Us, the premise is that magicians come on stage to do a trick, and Penn and Teller then try to figure out and explain (cryptically) how it was done.  Most of the time, they can.  But If they can't, the magician wins the opportunity to open for them in Las Vegas.

Here is a magician, Kostya Kimlat, who indeed fools them.  But that's not the fun.  The fun is how pissed off Penn is that he can't figure it out.  It's clearly not "angry" pissed off, almost more admiration that the guy is so good that he knows he won't figure it out.  And he wonderfully plays the "pissed off" to the hilt.

This is a bonus clip.  It's Penn Jillette later calling into another of Jonathan Ross's shows, this on the radio, and he talks about the as yet-unaired appearance of being fooled and you can tell clearly his admiration for the guy.  But his more-involved explanation with a background story that didn't get on the TV show makes his reaction all the more understandable.

In the latest edition of the Writers Guild podcast, 3rd and Fairfax, we hear about the new direction TV shows are taking -- heading online.  The online world was a major issue in the last WGA strike, and though the studios and AMPTP corporations were insisting that the Internet was all new-fangled and too distant to worry about or deal with, the writers understood that the reality was otherwise.  (And understood too that the companies knew that.)

So, what we have here are writers  David Slack and Joelle Garfinkel discuss about converting Joelle's drama pilot, Cam Girls, into a web series.  Also, for those interested in the inner-working of the Guild (something that isn't always the case with Guild members themselves, though can be interesting and important, depending on the area, there's a conversation with the head of the Guild's Diversity Department, Tery Lopez.

With just two shows left before he leaves The Daily Show, there's an odd article here in Reuters, "Why Jon Stewart Might Be Irreplaceable."

Seriously guys?  Is your attention span that short??

Mind you, I love Jon Stewart.  I think he's a gem of a rare talent, and wish that President Obama wasn't joking when he recently appeared on the show and said he was going to sign an Executive Order to ensure that Stewart stayed on the job as host as The Daily Show.

But when the article tries to explain why Stewart is irreplaceable and discusses, among others, Peter Lassally's opinion (generally highly-valued as the former executive producer of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and The Late Show with David Letterman) that Stewart's "mix of intelligence, quickness and comedic timing couldn't be readily replicated" -- all that I could think was:  what on earth are you talking about??  "It's a persuasive argument," the article goes on.  No, it isn't.  It's actually painfully weak.  Not only can it be replicated -- it has been!  Twice.  Is Mr. Lassally's or Reuter's or anyone's peripheral vision so limited or tunnel vision so narrow that they are unable to see Stephen Colbert or John Oliver???!

I'm not making the point of who's best or if they're all the same.  That's personal taste.  Just that these three gentlemen possess the very same, impressive attributes.  Does anyone think that if Comedy Central had announced that they were replacing Jon Stewart with Stephen Colbert or John Oliver that we'd be seeing an article like that that he's irreplaceable?  No, we'd be seeing articles about how thank goodness the brand was being carried on in such good hands.

I'll go further.  What if Al Franken didn't decide to go into politics.  Do you think he possesses the same mix of intelligence, quickness and comedic timing to have hosted The Daily Show.  What if Steve Carell hadn't left the program, might not he have been a wonderful replacement with a similar mix of intelligence, quickness and comedic timing?  How about if Comedy Central had gotten Ricky Gervais to come in as the new host?  Or even perhaps Tina Fey?

That's six additional people I can think of off the top of my head, who have a similar mix of intelligence, quickness and comedic timing and who can perform in a politic environment with charm.  But I'm okay stopping with Stephen Colbert and Jon Oliver who actually do have their own TV talk shows.  As does Seth Meyers, who could have done a good job hosting The Daily Show, too.  So, there's seven.  I'll bet cash money that given a few more minutes, other people could come up with others on top of that.  Who knows?  Maybe even the actual new host Trevor Noah will be yet another who can do it.  Maybe not, we'll find out soon enough.

Jon Stewart just happens to be so terrifically wonderful at what he does that it's a shame to let someone that great go.  Every individual is unique, so in that regard, yes, he's "irreplaceable."  But there are a lot of wonderful people with the same mix of talents who could take over The Daily Show with only a hiccup of regret.

I have to admit, I know that I made that easier by gaining a lot of bonus points bringing up a movie he'd directed that had flopped horribly, but I said I loved -- and loved for all the right reasons, as I explained them.  In fact, it was to tell him this which is, to a large degree, why I sought him out.  

The movie was called Milk Money, and was such a disaster, it's one of the things that pummeled his directing career.  The problem was that, long before the movie opened, almost a year, as I recall, word had somehow got to some right-wing religious family group that went on the rampage, slamming the despicable film for being all about a little 10-year-old boy who goes out with his allowance to buy a hooker for himself.  The campaign against the film was vociferous in outrage for its moral depravity on such a subject for a movie, and by the time the film opened, it was dead in the water.

The thing is, as the movie neared release, I got hired to write TV ads for it, and I was sent a copy of the film to watch in preparation.  I was, of course, wary about what I was going to watch -- and to my utter shock, what the public "word" was on the film had...absolutely nothing...to do with what it actually was about.  In fact, the movie is very charming and sweet, and funny.

naked There is a sequence near the beginning of the movie where a group of these 10-year-old boys from the suburbs pool their money, so that they can go into the city and see a naked woman.  After numerous turn-downs from any woman they pass on the street, despite their generous offer of  $103.62 in a bagful of change, the boys get held up at gunpoint, when a prostitute, played by Melanie Griffith, interrupts the robbery, and the boys give her the money as thanks for saving their lives. She only accepts because when she stopped the crime, her john drove off, so she's out $100, which her pimp will be furious about.  The boys are so utterly terrified that (in a very funny scene) they do everything possible to avoid seeing her, including turning out the lights, as she removes her blouse.  The main boy, at the center of the story, in fact is so freaked out that he covers his eyes and succeeds in seeing absolutely nothing.

That's the sequence that caused the uproar of Hollywood making a depraved movie that supposedly was all about a young boy who hires a hooker for himself.

What the movie is actually about is that Melanie Griffith's character is on the run from some thugs.  She sees the boys as a way to escape, and convinces them to let her take them home.  Once there in the safety of the suburbs, the main little boy -- who adores Melanie Griffith -- tries to set her up with his lonely, widower father (played by Ed Harris), who has no idea what she does for a living.  (His son says she's a math tutor.)  THAT'S what the movie is about, this offbeat love story, as the hoods are trying to track the woman down.  It's really sort of adorable, and enjoyable, and might even be worth adding it to your Netflix queue.

Anyway, I told Richard Benjamin all this, that I totally got what the movie was about, and how really good it was, and how horrible it was to be perceived SO incorrectly and unfairly.  And the look of appreciation and relief on his face was a joy I'll always remember.

I also got the chance to tell him that the very first time I ever got to see him act was in another Neil Simon production -- in the stage play of The Odd Couple when it was in Chicago.  It will not shock you to learn he played Felix.  And it will not shock you to learn that he was about as perfect for that angst-ridden role as an actor could be.  (The old film star Dan Dailey played Oscar, and was quite good.  But Richard Benjamin as Felix was...well, he was perfect.)  I got bonus points for that.

Richard Benjamin had a long, successful association with Neil Simon, and (with all due respect to Matthew Broderick) may be the quintessential Simon hero.  He also starred in the national touring company of Barefoot in the Park, and starred in the original Broadway production of Star-Spangled Girl.  He even was in the 2004 TV remake of The Goodbye Girl.  And further, it was Benjamin who directed the TV version of Simon's wonderful play, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, that starred Nathan Lane (in a role based on Sid Caesar).

By the way, the Benjamins have a daughter, Prentiss Benjamin, who also went to Northwestern, and is an actress.   My folks went to a lot of student production at NU and saw her a lot, telling me often how wonderful she was.  I finally got the chance to see in when I was visiting, and we went to see a student production of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Merrily We Roll Along.  She was indeed terrific -- and her parents were in the audience that night to see her, as well.

Anyway, this tale all came about because Mark Evanier wrote about how the movie of The Sunshine Boys (in which Richard Benjamin plays the agent-nephew of Walter Matthau) is about the be released in Blu-Ray.

What you read above is called "going off on a tangent".

And what  you'll see below to wrap things up is an episode of the wonderful, but short-lived 1967 TV series that Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss starred in, He & She.  It was a fairly sophisticated show for its time, which alas was ahead of its time, leading the way to series like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, yet winning an Emmy award for comedy writing.  (The award was won by Chris Hayward and Allan Burns -- who together wrote for Get Smart, and Burns later went on to co-create...The Mary Tyler Moore Show.)  Benjamin and Prentiss played a married couple (shocking, I know...), he a cartoonist, and she a social worker.  It also featured a terrific supporting cast, including Jack Cassidy (who in the show played the star of a TV series based on Benjamin's comic strip), Hamilton Camp (from The Second City troupe and a great folksinger with Bob Gibson), and Kenneth Mars (who the next year would play Franz Liebkind in Mel Brooks' film,The Producers), as well as Harold Gould.