Bruce, CHOICE is the key word. I'm perfectly content with anyone saying whatever they want about my work...I'd just like the final say-so as to whether I think the note is good or bad, workable, adjustable, or whether the critique is valid, but their reason is wrong behind it (Many folk will think sometimes something is too long, that the trouble's in the second act, etc. when the actual fact may be that something is too short or the reason the second act doesn't quite work is because there is a set-up or some sort of elucidation missing in the first act). I'm the dramatist. I always say you don't pay me the big bucks just to write, but for my sense of dramaturgy. I once had a producer try to get me to tart up some bad note of a director's by saying: "You're a great writer, you can write anything." I replied: "No, I'm a great writer because I DON'T write anything."
I enjoyed the Hell out of Johnny Depp's performance in PIRATES and think he may be the best young actor working, but at the end of the day, his Jack Sparrow really is just a music hall turn...I suspect there are richer, denser performances eligible for an Academy bid.
I too can dimly remember the great days of Jack Paar (listening in my bed to the TV coming from downstairs) and the early days of Johnny Carson when the show was an hour and half five days a week and you had guests on because they interesting conversationalists, not because they had something to sell or hype.
I remember quirky folk like humourist Jack Douglas (Never Trust A Naked Bus Driver & My Brother Was An Only Child) and his Asian Wife, Reiko, they were like a Burns and Allen act. Sam Levenson, Sammy Cahn, etc.
Does anyone else remember the infamous Custer sketch that Johnny Carson did in his early days? It was a huge flop and laid the biggest egg. It became the standard for flops. He and Ed talked and joked about it for months afterwards. I'm surprised he never included it in any of his clip anniversary shows.
