No, the Smithee name is controlled by the Directors Guild, and they have strong rules about when a director can use it. That’s based on the union’s longstanding philosophy that the director is the “author” of a film and so that part of the burden of taking credit for creative successes is also taking the blame for failures.
HOW BIG A SECRET IS THIS SMITHEE THING?
In Hollywood, it’s no secret at all. In fact, it’s become an in-joke that everybody’s in on. For example, a Simpson’s episode featured an industrial safety film at Homer’s plant that was credited as “An Alan Smithee Production.” In 1997, the University of Pennsylvania held a none-hour seminar on the societal ramifications of Alan Smithee. The organizers’ rationale: “[The Smithee concept is] a stark reminder of Hollywood’s economics: You can make a name for yourself, but it never belongs to you.”
Also in 1997, Disney released a movie about Hollywood titled An Alan Smithee Production, about a film director whose name really is Alan Smithee. An irony, completely unintended—its director, Arthur Hiller, hated the final cut demanded by its writer joe Ezsterhas so he applied to have his name taken off the final product. As a result, An Alan Smithee Film is officially directed by “Alan Smithee.” What could be more fitting?
Abe Lincoln’s favorite sport was wrestling.
THE RESURRECTION OF ELVIS
Since his death in 1977, Elvis’s popularity has grown. Once he was just a singer. Now he’s an icon with his own church (the Church of Elvis), and his own holy site (Graceland). It’s an amazing phenomenon—but it hasn’t been entirely accidental. Behind the scenes, a handful of people have orchestrated Elvis’s return from the dead for their own benefit. Here’s part of the inside story. For a more complete story, we recommend Elvis, Inc., by Sean O’Neal. It’s entertaining bathroom reading.
BACK FROM THE DEAD
Ironically, the tale of Elvis’s resurrection begins with the story of a vampire.
In 1960 Universal Studios dusted off a number of its classic horror films and released them for TV broadcast. It was the first time baby boom kids had ever seen the original Frankenstein (starring Boris Karloff), The Wolfman (starring Lon Chaney) or Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi)—and the films were phenomenally popular. In fact, a huge “monster” fad swept America…and Universal cashed in by licensing its characters for T-shirts, posters, lunch boxes, etc. One of the most popular images was Bela Lugosi in his Count Dracula costume.
Courting Universal
When Lugosi’s widow and son found out about the merchandising deals, they filed suit to block them. Their argument: Lugosi’s name and likeness should be passed on to his family, as his worldly assets had been. At the very least, they had a right to share in the profits.
The Lugosis won their lawsuit. But Universal appealed the decision. The second time around, appellate judges reasoned that if the names and likenesses of famous people could be inherited, the relatives of all public figures—past and present—could sue for royalties. Even George Washington’s descendants could charge the federal government for the right to use his image on the $1 bill. The judges ruled in favor of Universal.
Boris Yeltsin’s favorite Elvis song: “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
Laurel and Hardy
In 1975, after Laurel and Hardy’s old films became popular on TV, the heirs of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy filed a similar lawsuit against the Hal Roach Studios. This time, the heirs won, throwing the entire issue of posthumous “intellectual property” into chaos.
Based on legal decisions, it was impossible to tell who owned the rights to a dead celebrity’s image—the public…or the celebrity’s family.
ELVIS PRESLEY
That was the situation when Elvis died from a drug overdose on August 16, 1977. His death was announced at 3:30 that afternoon; within a few hours, newspapers were speculating about his estate’s value.
The media figured the King had to be worth a bundle: in his more than 20 years as a performer, he’d recorded 144 Top 40 songs, starred in more than 30 films (at one point he was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood), performed in hundreds of sold-out concerts, and sold more than 600 million records. No other recording artist had ever even come close to his accomplishments.
Estimates of Presley’s fortune were as high as $150 million. (When John Lennon was assassinated three years later, he left an estate valued at more than $200 million). But they were way off.
The Awful Truth
What the media failed to take into account was that Elvis was one of the most poorly managed and morbidly self-indulgent superstars in entertainment history. True, he had generated more than $4 billion in revenues during his career. But surprisingly little of the money found its way into his pockets—and even less stayed there.
Bad management and bad financial advice ate up about 60# of every dollar Elvis earned; letting the IRS fill out his tax forms (he really did—Elvis hated audits) took an extra 20¢. on the dollar. And the King had no trouble finding ways to blow the rest.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE…
Unfortunately, that turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. It turned out that his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had made a deal that cost Elvis more than $500 million in potential earnings—including $320 million in lost royalties from records sold after Elvis’s death alone. In March 1973, he’d sold RCA the royalty rights to all of Elvis’s songs up to that point for $5.4 million. After Parker extracted his usual 50% commission, Elvis was left with $2.7 million—$1.35 million after taxes—for virtually his entire life’s work. (Nearly all of that went to pay off ex-wife Priscilla Presley, who divorced him in October 1973.)
Who’s got the highest average blood pressure in America? People in Orange County, California.
As Sean O’Neal writes in Elvis, Inc., “The final agreement signed by Colonel Parker…may have been the single most financially damaging contract in the history of the music industry.…Elvis sold the rights to the greatest master catalog in music history and was left with virtually nothing to show for it. Thereafter, his estate received no royalties at all for any songs Elvis recorded prior to March 1973.”
ALL THE KING’S WEALTH
When the probate court tallied up the King’s assets, all they found was Graceland, two airplanes, eight cars, two trucks, seven motorcycles, guns, jewelry, and miscellaneous other personal property. Total value: about $7 million. Elvis left everything to his 9-year-old daughter, Lisa Marie, who would inherit when she turned 25. Elvis’s father, Vernon Presley, a man with a seventh-grade education, was charged with keeping the estate solvent until then.
Going, Going…
What little was left of the King’s estate dwindled fast: In February 1978 the National Bank of Commerce sued the estate to collect $1.4 million in unpaid loans to the King. A short time later, the IRS upgraded its estimate of the estate’s value and slapped it with millions in new inheritance taxes—payable immediately. Security and upkeep on Graceland ate up $500,000 a year.
Vernon Presley sold off the airplanes, jewelry, and Cadillacs, and even the house that Elvis had bought him, in a desperate scramble to keep the estate off the auction block. But the Presley estate was edging closer and closer to bankruptcy.
How was Graceland saved? To find out, turn to page 376.
It takes an estimated 2,893 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop.
BARRYISMS
Dave Barry is one of the funniest columnists in America. Here are some of his “observations.”
“If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you’d find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from the ‘Beverly Hillbillies.’”
“A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation’s state legislators.”
“If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and sa
ving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.”
“I reached puberty at age thirty. At age twelve, I looked like a fetus.”
“Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.”
“Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.”
“I have come up with a surefire concept for a hit television show, which would be called ‘A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark.’”
“Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself.”
“I’ve noticed that the one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.”
“One popular new plastic-surgery technique is called lipgrafting, or ‘fat recycling, wherein fat cells are removed from one part of your body that is too large, such as your buttocks, and injected into your lips; people will then be literally kissing your ass.”
Central Park, in New York City, is almost twice as big as Monaco.
THE FORTUNE COOKIE
Confucius says: “Good book in bathroom is worth ten on library shelf.”
HISTORY
• “Legend has it,” a TV reporter told CNN viewers recently, “that the first secret message was sent hundreds of years ago during the Teng Dynasty. A pastry chef was in love with the daughter of the Lotus Queen, and slipped her rice-paper love notes in baked wontons.”
• It’s a romantic idea—but fortune cookies are actually American, not Chinese. They were invented by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodlemaker, in 1916, who gave them to customers at his Hong Kong Noodle Company to distract them while they waited for their orders.
HOW THEY’RE MADE
• A mixture of rice flour and other ingredients is squirted onto small griddles and forms a little pancake. While it’s still pliable, it’s taken off the grill and folded around a paper fortune.
• Traditionally, it was folded by hand. But in 1967 Edward Louie, owner of the Lotus Fortune Cookie Co., invented a machine that automatically inserts the fortunes as the cookies are folded. The strips of paper are sucked in by a vacuum.
THE FORTUNES
• The first fortunes were sayings from Confucius, Ben Franklin, etc. But today they’re upbeat messages. “Basically,” says Edward Louie’s son Gregory, “we’re in the entertainment business. We give people what they want.”
• Edward Louie was once asked the secret of his success. He answered: “Nobody can resist reading their fortune, no matter how corny it is.”
• Louie’s favorite fortunes were, “If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours” and “Don’t wait any longer, book that flight.”
• Overall, the ten most popular fortunes are: 1. You will have great success; 2. You will soon be promoted; 3. You will step on the soil of many countries; 4. Your destiny is to be famous; 5. Your love life will be happy and harmonious; 6. Your present plans are going to succeed; 7. Good news will come to you from far away; 8. Now is the time to try something new; 9. Be confident and you will succeed; 10. You will be rich and respected.
Big surprise: 41% of Americans call Geraldo Rivera “the most annoying news personality on TV.”
A REAL FORTUNE COOKIE
• Some fortunes have lottery numbers on the other side. Believe it or not, some people have played those numbers and won.
• According to one account: “In March 1995, Barbara and Scott Turnbull got a fortune cookie at a China Coast restaurant in the Texas town of McAllen. They both bought tickets with the same numbers—and won $814,000 each. Meanwhile, Nealy LaHair got a fortune cookie with the same numbers from a China Coast restaurant in Dallas. She played the numbers and won $814,000 for herself.”
BACK IN ASIA…
• In 1989 an entrepreneur in Hong Kong began importing fortune cookies and selling them as luxury items. They were offered as “Genuine American Fortune Cookies.”
• On Dec. 27, 1992, the Brooklyn-based Wonton Foods signed a joint venture agreement with a company in mainland China to build a fortune cookie plant there. The cookies had never been sold there before! Chinese fortunes are less direct than American ones. So instead of predictions, they offer comments like “True gold fears no fire,” “The only way to catch a tiger cub is to go into the tiger’s den,” and “Constant grinding can turn an iron rod into a needle.”
THE UNFORTUNATE COOKIE
• In the 1970s, a company in New England called the Unfortunate Fortune Cookie Company offered “dismal forebodings…for misanthropes, masochists or what some might regard simply as realists.”
• What happened to them? They went out of business.
Dr. Seuss’ first book was rejected by 23 publishers.
MR. MOONLIGHT
Some facts about our night-light in the sky, from astronomer (and BRI member) Richard Moeschl.
It takes 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds for the moon to go through all of its phases (from one full moon to the next). This is close to the length of a month—which is why the word month means “moon.”
The light that comes from the moon is sunlight reflected off the moon’s surface. It takes 1 1/4 seconds for the light to travel to Earth.
The moon only reflects 7% of the light it receives from the sun.
The moon is smaller than any planet in the solar system, but relative to the size of the planets they orbit, our moon is the largest of the moons.
The moon is 2,160 miles in diameter—about a quarter of the Earth’s diameter.
If the Earth was as big as a fist, the moon would be the size of a stamp…placed 10 feet away.
The average temperature on the Moon is -283° to 266°F.
Since the moon spins once on its axis every 27 1/3 days—the same amount of time it takes to go around the Earth once—we end up seeing only one side of the moon (about 59% of its surface).
The side of the moon we always see is called “the near side.” The side we never see from Earth is “the far side.” That’s probably where Gary Larsen got the name of his comic strip.
There is no sound on the moon. Nor is there weather, wind, clouds, or colors at sunrise and sunset.
If you weigh 120 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 20 pounds on the Moon—1/6 of your Earth weight.
A 3-foot jump on Earth would carry you 18 feet, 9 inches, on the moon.
Astronauts have brought over 843 pounds of moon samples back to Earth.
The moon is moving away from the Earth at the rate of about 1/8 inch a year.
President Clinton’s favorite movie: High Noon.
TOP-RATED TV SHOWS, 1967-72
More of the annual Top 10 TV shows of the past 50 years.
1967-1968
(1) The Andy Griffith Show
(2) The Lucy Show
(3) Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
(4) Gunsmoke
(5) Family Affair
(6) Bonanza
(7) The Red Skelton Hour
(8) The Dean Martin Show
(9) The Jackie Gleason Show
(10) Saturday Night at the Movies
1968-1969
(1) Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In
(2) Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C
(3) Bonanza
(4) Mayberry R.F.D.
(5) Family Affair
(6) Gunsmoke
(7) Julia
(8) The Dean Martin Show
(9) Here’s Lucy
(10) The Beverly Hillbillies
1969-1970
(1) Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In
(2) Gunsmoke
(3) Bonanza
(4) Mayberry R.F.D.
(5) Family Affair
(6) Here’s Lucy
(7) The Red Skelton Hour
(8) Marcus Welby, M.D.
&
nbsp; (9) The Wonderful World of Disney
(10) The Doris Day Show
1970-1971
(1) Marcus Welby, M.D.
(2) The Flip Wilson Show
(3) Here’s Lucy
(4) Ironside
(5) Gunsmoke
(6) ABC Movie of the Week
(7) Hawaii Five-O
(8) Medical Center
(9) Bonanza
(10) The F.B.I.
1971-1972
(1) All in the Family
(2) The Flip Wilson Show
(3) Marcus Welby, M.D.
(4) Gunsmoke
(5) ABC Movie of the Week
(6) Sanford and Son
(7) Mannix
(8) Funny Face
(9) Adam-12
(10) The Mary Tyler Moore Show
1972-1973
(1) All in the Family
(2) Sanford and Son
(3) Hawaii Five-O
(4) Maude
(5) Bridget Loves Bernie
(6) NBC Sunday Mystery Movie
(7) The Mary Tyler Moore Show
(8) Gunsmoke
(9) The Wonderful World of Disney
(10) Ironside
Start counting: On average, an adult laughs about 15 times a day; a child laughs 400 times.
LEMONS
At one time or another just about everyone has owned a car that they thought was a lemon. But chances are, your car was nothing compared to these losers.
THE WOODS SPIDER (1900)
In 1900, the Woods Motor Vehicle Company of Chicago came out with a carriage powered by a tiny electric motor. Like in horse-drawn taxicabs of the day, the driver sat in an elevated back seat, behind the passengers (who sat in the front seats). But instead of using reins, the driver steered with a “tiller,” or steering stick, that was connected to the front wheels via two long rods running underneath the passenger seats.
Fatal Flaw: The steering. Horses pulled a carriage, so they easily turned the wheels when they changed direction. But in the Woods Spider, the driver had to wrestle the wheels himself to get them to turn—which was nearly impossible, since he was sitting in the rear of the car, behind the center of gravity. Bad weather was another problem. The passenger seat had its own convertible top. When it was closed, it blocked the driver’s view—he had to crouch and peek through a tiny window, over the passengers’ shoulders, to see the road ahead. If passengers were too tall or fat, he couldn’t see at all. In 1901, Woods succumbed to logic and moved the driver up front.
Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader Page 20