A Visit with Janis

Janis Ian came to town to work on an audio book of her autobiography. I was introduced to Janis in 2001 at the Philadelphia Worldcon, just as she was announcing  that she had just met Connie Willis and needed to go cry. She's a fan-girl geek at heart. We met up again the following year and have maintained a lovely friendship since then, solidified when I asked her to be my toastmistress at the 2009 Nebula Awards. Chuck Lorre, who turned out to be a huge fan of Janis' work, was my keynote speaker, and his partner in crime, Bill Prady is an even bigger Janis fan. So Janis' latest L.A. visit gave us an opportunity to get together for a taping of The Big Bang Theory. (The show ran a mere 10 days after it was shot. It's the one about Sheldon refusing to go to Amy's aunt's birthday party so he could play Star Wars on-line with the other guys.)

Here we are on the couch in the boys' living room. That's David Gerrold (who introduced me to Len Wein in 1989) and me in back of the couch and my husband, one of our "adopted daughters," Dani Dornfeld, and Janis in "Sheldon's place."

Janis wanted a photo of the forever-broken elevator. This set is redressed for each floor every time you see people using the stairs. They had to dig a hole for the down stairs on the right, because the rest of the set is on the ground floor. Penny's living room and the boy's living room flank the hall way, and those are the three permanently standing sets for the show.. The comic book shop swings with various bedrooms and Amy's stripped efficiency set was where we got to sit with the writers during part of the show.

Everyone wanted a chance to sit in "Sheldon's place." When I went to photograph Len in it, I couldn't help but notice that a copy of his DC Legacies hard back was sitting on the coffee table. I did not put it there. When we mentioned it to Bill Prady he said "we know what we're doing."

Janis was in town long enough for us to have dinner a couple of times and she even came by for a Sunday Super Supper Squad dinner. She was very impressed that I made bread and insisted on being photographed with it and Len, who had just donned his Captain America wardrobe. Yes, I am married to a 12 year old.

We're hoping Janis will be back out in L.A. to perform again sometime next year. She hasn't been out here as a singer for two or three years now. We could probably fill the audience just with our gang.

Dejah Thoris

 The golden age of science fiction is twelve. I started reading science fiction a bit earlier than that, but it set me on a journey which has taken me to wonderful places and given me amazing friendships and acquaintances. I read Edgar Rice Burroughs at exactly the right age, when I wasn't aware of his shortcomings as a writer, but I could soar on his imagination.  I loved his Mars books.

When I married Len and came out to California, our circle of friends grew to include several of the writers and the producer who were working to bring A Princess of Mars to the big screen for Disney. That movie never got made, but somehow a Pixar director got the project brought back to life and the movie hit the screen two weeks ago as John Carter.

It has been hailed as a flop of the magnitude of Ishtar, when the problem is not the film but the Disney marketing department.

My observations of the Disney marketing department go back to the time when Len was editor-in-chief of Disney Comics. This was at the height of the comic book collecting frenzy where books were selling in the millions to people who thought they would eventually get rich selling their copy of the "Death of Superman" or an Image #1 book. You would think that Disney would be happy to support this product which appealed to kids of all ages, but you would be wrong. Disney refused to make space in its stores for the 1 square foot of space a comics dump display would take for the monthly books. Disney's in-house U.S. comic book division lasted two years and they outsourced it again. I have a pretty low opinion of the Disney marketing division when it comes to supporting anything but the core Mickey Mouse characters and theme parks.

The first problem with marketing John Carter is the title. Isn't John Carter a character on ER? (Just another example of where Michael Creighton stole things.) My friend, the original producer whose name does not appear anywhere, not even in a credit to thank him for getting ERB, Inc. to agree to a Disney deal back in the 1980s, says that was part of the original agreement and that ERB, Inc. wanted that title for trademark purposes. ERB, Inc. is notorious for using trademark law as a way of maintaining control of a character where the copyright has long expired. (You can find plenty of examples where they've done this with Tarzan over the years.) As I said, big mistake number one. From a trademark stand point, the title could still have been big-letters-John-Carter, but it should have added a subtitle indicating that it is a series (and bolstering the trademark claim.) JOHN CARTER: A Princess of Mars would have been perfect.  JOHN CARTER: Under the Moons of Mars (the original title in serial form) would also have worked. If I hadn't turned down Danton Burrough's offer of employment 7 years ago--a short story for another time--maybe I could have convinced somebody this would be a very good idea. Oh, well.

The second problem with the marketing of John Carter was the lack of any reference to Dejah Thoris, either as a kick-ass scientist-warrior or as the love interest of the film.

Rumor has it that Disney did not want "princess" in the title, because boys won't go to a "princess" movie. They didn't want "Mars" because of some other flop they had. Disney had its head in a dark place about this one. LOTS of twelve year old boys read A Princess of Mars growing up. Depending on their current age, they will talk about covers by Frank Frazetta (below), Michael Whelan, or another artist. Some of them will even admit to entering puberty upon seeing those covers. As for "Mars," maybe if the other film had been less of a POS, it would not have flopped.

 I saw exactly one trailer for John Carter. It did not make me want to see the film. But we went anyway, with some trepidation because it wasn't going to be the film Ted and Terry or Melinda wrote for Michael, and we knew where the broken hearts were. Knowing Michael Chabon wrote the film we were going to see was encouraging, and seeing how some writers we knew with advanced screenings felt encouraged us.

We loved the film. I thought it started out slowly, but it reached an emotional hook and carried me through to the end. John Carter looked just fine, although he lacked the wear-and-tear I pictured a Civil War vet from the south would have. Tars Tarkis and Sola were wonderful, and who could resist Woola. And I loved, loved, loved Dejah Thoris.

In all the time Princess of Mars was part of the dinner discussions with our friends, I don't remember us ever taking about who would play Dejah Thoris. We spent plenty of time on casting John Carter. Disney wanted Tom Cruise, which we all thought was a terrible idea. Tom Hanks wanted the part before he had two Academy Awards, but Disney said no (I love Tom Hanks, but I don't see him in a period piece.) Michael (the producer) wanted Viggo Mortensen, before he did Aragorn, after seeing him in A Walk on The Moon. That would have been brilliant casting. I pushed for Hugh Jackman from the moment we saw him as Wolverine. He turned the part down. He could have had two franchises. So we got Gambit instead of Wolverine. I can live with that.

But Dejah Thoris? It's not the kind of part a lot of actresses get to play. Carie Fisher played her in Star Wars (and make no mistake about where George Lucas stole a lot of Star Wars) and Karen Allen played her in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think that Lynn Collins, whom I had only seen previously in Wolverine, did a great job. Smart, brave, honorable. A great role model for girls, much as Hermione is in Harry Potter (as opposed to that idiot Bella in the Twilight franchise.)

I want my Dejah Thoris Disney Princess Barbie Doll. My husband (and every male I know) wants a Woola stuffie. But Disney didn't even bother to do merchandise based on this film, which says to me they scuttled it from the get-go. Nevertheless, I think you should all gather up the family and go see John Carter.  You really will enjoy it. It is a beautifully designed and executed swashbuckling film. And maybe this fan trailer will do what the Disney trailers didn't do for me: make you want to see the picture.

Kvelling

My niece Kristina Valada-Viars just opened in her first play at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Reviews were posted last night in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and elsewhere, and I am just so proud of her. The play is Time Stands Still and it runs until mid-May. She's wearing the blue scarf in the photo below. Yes, that's her natural hair (just like her mother's.)

Kristina was an understudy for Steppenwolf's New York production of August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for best new play and garnered a bunch of other Tony Awards. She made her Broadway debut in that show, performing at various times in the three different roles she understudied.

She worked with Austin Pendleton, her director in Time Stands Still, in an off-Broadway play by Romulus Linney called Punch Drunk Love at the end of her run in August: Osage County. In the photograph above, you can see why reviewers call her "leggy" or, sometimes, coltish. She's got legs that go from here to there and back again.

The photographs are publicity stills I pulled down from the Internet. If I knew who took them, I'd be happy to give credit. If the lower one was shot by Joan Marcus, "Hi, Joanie. Do you still have that picture of me with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in your files?"

HE Himself

I first photographed Harlan Ellison about 10 years before we were actually introduced. It was at the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston in 1980. I had started shooting for the Washington Post only a few months earlier and I ran into the illustrious Michael Dirda who was planning an article for the Sunday book supplement. We hooked up and the WP ran several of my photographs, including one I got of Harlan talking to a small group of people after his full-house performance.

I've seen Harlan in action many times since then, usually from a much better vantage point because we've been close friends ever since I photographed him in 1989 and the photograph rather knocked his socks off.  You can find it--illegally and in poor resolution--on the Internet when you do a Google Pictures search under his name. It is usually among the first that come up. He's sitting on the back of a chair in strong directional lighting. Somebody scanned it from the back of the Harlan Ellison Hornbook. I had a dispute with the LA Times when they illegally used it one day, proving the value of an actual copyright registration when you want a quick resolution to copyright infringement.

Harlan hasn't been doing too many appearances lately, but he recently did two evenings at the Cinefamily/Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles for an SRO crowd. One was in November, the other was last week. Screenwriter Josh Olson (see, Josh, I spelled it right this time) "interviewed" him, which means Josh occasionally got to say something so Harlan could go off on a tangent. In theory, both nights were about Harlan's work as a television writer, and a very fast research in the projection booth managed to get things up on the screen to illuminate the "discussion." Another theme of the more recent evening was the publication of a spectacular reprint of "The Glass Teat" and "The Other Glass Teat," two collections of television (and, frankly, political) commentary articles Harlan wrote for the Free Press many years ago. Read it. The issues haven't changed.

A bit more than halfway through the evening, there was a commotion as this guy came up to the stage muttering and using his cell phone to record things. For a moment I thought it was a fan with a lack of manners, and then I realized it was Patton Oswalt doing a great turn as a fan with no manners. Patton took over "interviewing" duties from Josh for a bit, and for whatever reason, I can't seem to upload the four minutes I caught on video. Trust me, it was hysterical.

Proud Kiva Plug

I've reached a point where I have no idea how long it has been since I've posted a blog. This has gotten so bad that I didn't even check to see that I had comments awaiting action. So I apologize to Mike Garrett, who wanted advice about appearing on Jeopardy! I hope he had a great run on the show. According to the J-Archive, his episode(s) (which shot in mid-December), has (have) not yet run, so I can at least look forward to watching him compete.

And congratulations are in order for Amy Stephenson,  a fellow member of the Friends of Bob Harris lending group on Kiva, who had a three-day run on Jeopardy! earlier this month. She'll be contributing some of her earnings to our worth efforts when her check shows up late this spring. Thus far, our group has loaned over $1.5 million and Bob himself has loaned over $100,000.

Bob Harris himself is on the down-hill side of finishing his book about micro-loans called The First International Bank of Bob. I highly recommend his previous books Prisoner of Trebekistan and Who Hates Whom.  While I sometimes feel I've known Bob forever, we met only about four years ago. Before that I "knew" him from his many appearances on Jeopardy! as a regular contestant, a Tournament of Champions contestant and a contestant on two different special Jeopardy! championship series and from the radio commentaries he used to do for KNX radio that may have been syndicated around the country. Bob and I also both have degrees from Case Western Reserve University (his is an undergrad degree and mine is from the law school) but we were there about 10 years apart. Should he ever appear in your area to do a talk or a book signing, go.  He's very, very funny.

Because of Bob, I joined Kiva and talked about it when I appeared on the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions in 2010. I've made 80 loans so far, all of them to women who are trying to improve their lives and the lives of their families in something in excess of 30 countries. It's a great way to remind myself that I am helping to improve the world $25 at a time with money that can then be re-loaned upon repayment.  Feel free to join me.

S'mother

I met Adam Chester because he's an amazing pianist who provided the accompaniment for What's My Line Live on Stage (for which I became the production photographer.)  Adam's accompanied Elton John's band in rehearsals and sung with him in concert.  A few years ago, Adam set up a website where he posted some of the  1300 letters he's received from his over-protective mother over the years.

I understand over-protective mothers.  When I went off to college, mine handed me a 1 pound bag of sugar packets, so people wouldn't spike my breakfast cereal sugar with marijuana.  I am not kidding.

Adam found a publisher (or a publisher found him) and, just in time for Mother's Day, a selection of the letters appeared in book form as S'mother.  Last night, Adam and his mother Joan appeared on The George Lopez  Show.

I don't give my cell phone number to my mother either.

Reruns

I wasn't home last night to see it myself, but Harlan Ellison called me to tell me I was on Jeopardy! reruns. If your local station does Jeopardy! reruns on the weekend, check next week.  I have no idea if they are running all five of my days of regular play or not, but if they are, I'll be on for the next four weekends.  I was disappointed when I seemed to be skipped over between the runs of two other people who were on the Tournament of Champions with me, but I wasn't the only one who got skipped.  I'm hoping that we'll see Col. Dave after my run.  And I'm also hoping that last year's Tournament of Champions gets its two week run during the weekday Jeopardy! reruns this summer.  Original episodes generally end this week or next.

The reason why we weren't home is that we decided to catch Green Lantern last night. Len had seen it already and I decided to give it a try despite the critical hashing because I liked what we saw up in San Diego.  Also, I wanted a chance to see one of Len's characters up on the screen, which he did not see when he went to the 3-D screening.  Sometimes, it just takes two sets of eyes, because Len did not see Walt Simonson in the Valhalla scene of Thor on his own either.

First of all, the movie is getting a bum rap.  It's quite entertaining and Ryan Reynolds is charming. It's not X-men: First Class, but few superhero films are.

We saw Galius Zed in one of the early GL Corps scenes peeking out from behind Hal Jordon, so you can pick up your GL Galius Zed action figure and help pay for Casa Wein-Valada. 

Musings

If you want to be noticed, let Neil Gaiman post a link to your blog on Twitter or on his blog. I got 6000 hits within hours of Neil directing people to the photos I did at his appearance in L.A. last week. Then there was another bump of about 1000 hits after he reposted the link in his blog a couple of days ago.

Thank you, Neil, my friend. It's one posting that I know had an audience.

I realized today that I need to start gathering up paperwork for Comic-con.  In two weeks, we'll be on the drive down to San Diego, for five days of business and a bit of fun.  Invitations for evening parties and dinners have started to come in and I find myself wondering what all I will do during the days when the hall floors are just too crowded to contemplate. I tend not to get to many of the larger programs unless we've been given the special wrist bands that bypass lines that are (literally) hours long. Sometimes even those don't work. If Peter Jackson brings anything to the convention  (and he promoted the hell out of Lord of the Rings before it openned), I'd like to see that (but I probably won't get in.) I'd like to see the panel for A Game of Thrones, but that's only likely to happen if George R.R. Martin can get me a guest pass.  Ditto with The Big Bang Theory, where I've only been able to get in the room the year Bill Prady got me a guest pass.  Last year, my girlfriend stood on line for 3 hours and couldn't get into the room. (The nice thing about TBBT is that I can always catch a taping and hang out back stage afterwards here in L.A.)

For outside entertainment, I bemoan the loss of antique shops within walking distance of the hotels. Most of them disappeared when the baseball stadium and new hotels were built.  It is still possible to drive to Ocean Beach or Solano Beach for their antique malls, but the antique-store lined streets in most other areas have been lost to the power of e-Bay.  I miss the thrill of the hunt and immediacy of the kill that e-Bay lacks.

The week could be a good one for meals, if we weren't always constrained by time and crowds. We were in San Diego last month to see "August: Osage County" at the Old Globe Theatre and had a terrific meal at a nearby restaurant, and it was only one of several suggested to us in that area.  While I might be able to go to Balboa Park during the day, an evening trip will not fit into a schedule that includes publishers' parties and other business gatherings.

How I Spent Tuesday Night

It is great to be a grownup.  Really.  I wouldn't want to be fourteen again unless I could have a good look at what my future would be, because fourteen was just the worst year ever. But it got better. And sometimes I do wish I could let that geeky fourteen year old know just how much better it would get to be. A while ago, I either tweeted or posted to Facebook that if my fifteen-year-old self could know what my present day life was like, she'd say "way cool" (and, probably, "worth the wait.") The first person who expressed agreement with what I was saying, because he felt the same way about his own life, was my friend Neil Gaiman.

I first met and photographed Neil before he was the super-star author he has become. It was at the 1990 World Fantasy Convention in Chicago. I was in law school, but I was still actively adding photographs to the growing exhibit of professionals in the field of science fiction, fantasy and horror that's traveled farther than I have.  So I took the weekend to fly to Chicago to have some time with Len Wein and to add to the photographic collection.

Len introduced me to Neil, who was building a nice career with the Sandman comic books he was writing for DC Comics.  Len had been midwife to the influx of British writers at DC, starting with bringing Alan Moore in to write Swamp Thing and following that as Alan's editor on Watchmen.  Neil came along a few years after, a fan of Len's from reading his run on Phantom Stranger, and one of the first stars of DC's Vertigo imprint.

In the first portrait of I made of Neil (below, in 1990), he reminded me of a young John Lennon.  

Maybe it was just the accent. Love that accent.

The following year, Neil won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story with the Sandman story "A Midsummer's Night Dream." The rules for the Awards were immediately changed so that a comic book could never win again.

Over the years, we'd meet up at various conventions or signings, and keep in touch by e-mail or social media.  Neil morphed into a rock god, requiring body guards and the use of aliases to stay at hotels. Around 1999, I got him to agree to be my master of ceremonies at the 2001 Nebula Awards I produced in Los Angeles, which, by coincidence, was the first one at which he was nominated for a Nebula Award. A year or two later, he won the Nebula Award for best novel for American Gods.

Which brings me to Tuesday night.  Neil was in town for an appearance on the 10th Anniversary Tour for American Gods. I ordered four tickets as soon as I heard about it, which got us second row seats.  I invited one of the girls from the barn, who had recently gushed about Neil's episode of Dr. Who, "The Doctor's Wife," and who had asked me to pass on to Neil how much she liked it ("best episode of Dr. Who ever!") I figured it would give me the same kind of kick I got from introducing my girlfriend's granddaughter to Stan Lee last year at Comic-con to introduce Jenni to Neil. (It did.)

For reasons unknown, the local organizers of the appearance chose to make all tickets will-call (though, thankfully, they did assign seats so it wasn't festival seating.) This is not the best arrangement when there are some 1800 seats in the theatre, and, as you can see from the photo below, most of them were filled.  Ticket distribution started at 5:30, there were people buying tickets at the door, and the show started an hour late.

Besides Len, my son Michael, and Jenni, we picked up Susan Ellison, wife of Harlan, to take to the show.  She and I stood in line while the others went off to get some dinner, which turned out to be a good arrangement. I saw Neil's limo pull into the parking lot just as Susan got her tickets, so we walked around the theatre and found him.  He looked at us and asked "did you get your back-stage passes?" Uh, no. "They were supposed to be with your tickets." Oh. Fortunately, Neil's assistant for the evening got them for us while we stood around talking to Neil and waiting for Len, Michael, and Jenni to get back.  We had a nice chat with Neil, actor/comedian Patton Oswalt, and Zelda Williams (Robin's daughter) back stage and then headed in to our seats for the show.

And we waited. And waited.  Susan, who bought her ticket separately from ours, was way in the back of the orchestra.  Eventually, Len went back and brought her up to our row where there were a number of empty seats.

 And we waited some more.  The 8 P.M. start time kicked off at about 9 P.M. The audience was grateful.

 Neil and Patton chatted for a while. Neil talked about the inspiration for American Gods and alluded to things that might be in American Gods 2.

 Then Zelda Williams came out.

 The three of them did a dramatic reading of an early passage of the book.  It was unforgettable.

 Patton Oswalt and Zelda Williams reading from American Gods.

After the show, we all went back stage again.  I wanted to make sure I got a photograph of Jenni with Neil (below.) Jenni told me that it was the best night of her life and that Ace would be the most spoiled horse ever because of it. Gratitude is lovely.

Wil Wheaton showed up back stage with his wife, whom I had not met previously. Wil looked at us and exclaimed "I should have known you'd be here!" He's not at all like the "Evil Wil Wheaton" from The Big Bang Theory, which is why that character is such a hoot. Wil had also been back stage at the Craig Ferguson show that Neil had taped before heading over to the Saban Theatre. I didn't think it was possible to do both shows, but that was before the time between them increased by an hour!

We got home in time to tape the segment--too late for us to actually watch that night--but here it is for you to enjoy. Ferguson is quick and amazingly well versed in things literary. He must be one of us because he knew what Cthulu was and who wrote it. The awkward pause at the end of the set is priceless.

 I realize that Neil has helped build his audience by careful use of blogging and Twitter, but the evening made me think that this must have been like it was for Americans to attend an evening with Charles Dickens or Oscar Wilde. It was really quite thrilling to realize that writers still can still have an avid following and Neil has really earned it.

[American Gods is about to start production as a television series for HBO from Tom Hank's Play-tone production company. Neil's books Stardust and Coraline have already appeared on the big screen, but they make excellent reading. His Graveyard Book has won many awards and is a lovely read. Maybe, someday, the script that Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio wrote for Sandman will make it to the big screen,]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the high point of my niece Kristina's recent visit was a series of riding lessons at Total Equestrian Experience. As you can see from this photograph, she's got the kind of body we'd all like to have for riding. This was the only day she spent in the western saddle--other lessons were in a proper dressage saddle--but it got her quickly to the sitting trot and to the experience of a horse who decides that it is time to take off in a canter.  I was busy helping someone with a camera, so I missed that little event, but she rode right through it.  The horse is named Wizard and he's a nice quarterhorse.