Lee Goldberg

Mannix is the Man

by

The Los Angeles Times published a lengthy appreciation of MANNIX today:

Ph2007111600187
Somewhere out there, in the weird, quivering underbelly of the American dream, "Mannix" still lives.

Somewhere, there’s a place where a sportcoat-clad private eye can whip
around L.A. in a convertible, get beaten down by goons, shake it off
with a scotch on the rocks, then solve the case of the week with an
assist from his leggy secretary.

Somewhere out there, but not on DVD.

"Mannix," one of the longest-running, most violent (for its time), most
popular television detective shows in the medium’s history, has been
left out of the DVD trade. It’s fading into the forgotten realm of old
television shows nobody remembers.

I do. What the reporter didn’t mention was that two decades after the show was canceled, Bill Rabkin and I brought MANNIX back in highest rated DIAGNOSIS MURDER episode ever. The LA Times was one of the many newspapers and magazines that wrote about it back in 1997:

Mannix
Mike Connors acknowledges that it’s been "kind of strange" to step back into
private investigator Joe Mannix’s well-worn shoes after 22 years for Thursday’s
episode of CBS’ "Diagnosis Murder."

"I’m really enjoying it," says the very fit 71-year-old actor. "Once they
start calling you Mannix and Joe, of course, it becomes a little easier."

Connors played the strong and suave shamus on the CBS action series "Mannix"
from 1967 to 1975, receiving four Emmy nominations.

This unique episode of "Diagnosis Murder" cleverly teams Mannix with his old
friend Dr. Mark Sloan (Dick Van Dyke) to solve a murder case that the detective
was unable to crack on his own series 24 years ago.

Scenes from the 1973 "Mannix" episode "Little Girl Lost" are used in
flashback sequences. Pernell Roberts, Beverly Garland and Julie Adams, who were
guest stars on the original episode, also appear.

"It’s such a good idea," the jovial Van Dyke says between takes on the
"Diagnosis Murder" hospital set in Van Nuys. "We weave the old show in so well
with the flashbacks."

The program marks the first time these two TV icons have worked together. "I
have known Mike for a long time," Van Dyke says. "We are really having a good
time."

Watching the filming with great delight are supervising producers Lee
Goldberg and William Rabkin, who came up with the idea of weaving the two series
together over lunch one day.

"We talked about one of our favorite shows, which was ‘Mannix,’ and we
couldn’t believe no one had brought back the show," says Goldberg. "When we were
kids we used to pretend we were Mannix. He drove the coolest car. He never got
his hair mussed. I wanted to be as self-assured and as confident as he was."

After coming up with the idea of combining an old "Mannix" show with
"Diagnosis Murder," Goldberg and Rabkin, who describe themselves as "TV geeks,"
began their search for the perfect "Mannix" episode.

"I had a book called ‘Television Detective Shows of the 1970s,’ which lists
every episode of every single detective show of the 1970s," Goldberg says. "So
we started looking through eight seasons of ‘Mannix’ and making a list of
episodes where the guest stars were alive, affordable and the story sounded
interesting. We must have pulled 30 of them and watched them."

"Little Girl Lost," Goldberg says, "had enough emotional resonance that it
would carry over 20 years. What is great about this episode is that Mannix
promised this little girl he would find her father’s killer. In the episode, he
actually discovers this whole mob plot, but he never actually nails the killer."

Goldberg then had to get up enough nerve to call his idol. "We couldn’t write
the episode until we got him on board. So essentially I spent an hour on the
phone assuring him this wouldn’t be a ‘Naked Gun’ spoof. We wouldn’t be making
fun of him and this would be a genuine continuation and it would be a real meaty
part."

Though his hair is still perfect, time has caught up with Mannix after too
many years of hard living. While in the emergency room, Dr. Sloan discovers
Mannix has a potentially deadly heart condition. Being the ultimate tough guy,
the private eye refuses to listen to his old friend’s warnings.

"We knew we couldn’t have him be the man he was 20 years ago," Goldberg says.
"But we also had to be true to that man and we got a kick pairing him up with
Dr. Sloan, who is soft-spoken and tries to get answers out of people being
roundabout and clever, and Mannix is in your face."

Beverly Garland, who is reprising her role as a tough cookie named Stella,
quips that doing this show was like "coming back from the grave!"

"It was the best," says Garland, who first worked with Connors in the
low-budget 1955 Roger Corman flick "Swamp Women." "It’s going to be fun to see
all of us the way we were. It’s going to be an interesting show. It works."

 

Run Away Screaming from Hilliard & Harris

by

I got this email today:

I am thinking about submitting my mystery/romance/thriller to Hilliard & Harris. What can you tell me about them?

In my opinion, Hilliard & Harris are essentially a Print-On-Demand vanity press that gets you to pay on the backend rather than upfront (if you don’t include what you pay to buy copies of your own books). Here’s how they do it:  they load their contract with an enormous number of egregious charges against royalties so that in the highly unlikely event that your book does make money, you won’t see much of it.

For example, they deduct from your sales the cost of returns, cost of printing, cost of shipping, sales transaction costs, cost of insurance, commissions, discounts, cost of promotion, collection costs, taxes, as well as "other reasonable costs,"  just in case they left anything out, like maybe their electric bill and the pizzas they had for lunch.

None of their listed costs, with the exception of returns, are "reasonable" charges against royalties. But since they are primarily a POD publisher, the cost of returns is a moot point anyway. No reputable, legitimate publisher charges authors for printing, shipping, insurance, collections, promotion, commissions, taxes and "sales transaction costs" (whatever the hell those are)…but vanity presses do.

That’s only one example of the many objectionable terms in their loathsome contract, which an author would have to be insane to sign. Run away screaming.

My Brother Gets BURNED

by

Vlcsnap1128215
Today, my brother Tod talks about his new, three-book deal to write original novels based on the USA Network series BURN NOTICE:

How this came about is how many things come about when you’re not
expecting them — your brother calls you from a scratchy phone in
Germany and says, "Hey, do you like the show Burn Notice?" You reply,
"Yeah, I love it. It’s like an Elmore Leonard novel crossed with Steven
Soderbergh’s direction and a dash of Albert Brooks’ mother issues for
good measure. Why?" And then twenty minutes later you’re on the phone
with your agent, 36 hours later you’re making demands of the publisher,
72 hours later you’re sitting down with Matt Nix […]and you’re discussing the show he created, Burn Notice, and then, about
100 hours later, you’re figuring out just how on Earth you’re going to
meet your first deadline — February — without getting hooked on crank
(again)

Chuck Norris Jokes

by

I’m a sucker for Chuck Norris jokes. I heard a few today that I hadn’t heard before…

Chuck Norris once walked down the street with an erection. There were no survivors.

Chuck Norris isn’t hung like a horse… Horses are hung like Chuck Norris.

If you misspell "Chuck Norris" on Google, it doesn’t ask, "Did you mean
Chuck Norris?" It just says, "Run while you still think you have a
chance."

Chuck Norris challenged Lance Armstrong to a "Who has more testicles contest"…Chuck Norris won by 3.

Variety Survey

by

Variety is doing a survey of its readers. Here’s most of it (there were a couple of questions that I didn’t correctly copy-and-paste…but the
browser wouldn’t let me go back to get’em. If I recall correctly, one asked if I belonged to a
Guild and, if so, which one and the other asked me if I was Hispanic):

Read more

A Song for Spenser

by

Like a white knight
strong and hopeful
lives by his code
proud and noble
Spenser For Hire
Rough and Tumble
He’d gladly risk his life to save humanity
he still believes in chivalry
on ABC

Those are just some of the cringe-inducing lyrics of this inane song cooked up by ABC to promote the premiere of SPENSER FOR HIRE…

Who Says There’s Anything Wrong with a Network Affiliate Owning a City’s Only Newspaper?

by

I liked Ken Levine’s observation about the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the WGA Strike:

Good news! The LA TIMES has begun its Oscar coverage with a weekly
special section called THE ENVELOPE. Meanwhile, strike coverage has
been relegated to the Business Section. I somehow can’t see THE DETROIT
FREE-PRESS not running stories about an auto strike on page one. But
then again GM doesn’t own the DETROIT FREE-PRESS.

The Times is owned by Tribune, which also owns KTLA, one of the major affiliates of CW, one of the TV networks hit by the strike.

Is Variety Publishing Lies?

by

Nikki Finke posts a brutal analysis of Variety’s strike coverage, accusing the trade publication and its reporters of printing total falsehoods.

The trade’s Jason Blairs — oh, excuse me, Josef Adalian and Dave McNary — keep inventing stories which purport to show that less than 2 weeks into the strike wither the WGA’s resolve is withering, and/or its writers are going back to work, and/or even its late show iconic hosts are going to double-cross their teams of scribes. Just one problem: those stories are either totally fabricated or highly exaggerated.

[…]First, there was McNary’s article wrongly claiming the WGA was backing off its position on changing on Reality TV. (See my previous,  WGAW Says Variety Scoop Has No Reality). Then, there was Adalian’s and McNary’s fabricated story about The Young And The Restless soap opera writers returning to work by opting for "financial core" status with the WGA.

Both stories turned out to be totally false. Variety’s tiny correction on the soap opera story was buried in the back pages a few days later.

My take on this is that Variety’s so-called "reporters" are so used to retyping press releases and passing them off as "reporting" that they have no idea how to actually report a story. So they are simply publishing whatever their studio and networks sources feed them without bothering to do the basic work of a reporter.

But they also have no incentive to do any actual reporting. I know what I am talking about. Twenty years ago, I worked as a reporter for a trade publication. I know the pressure the advertising side exerts on the editorial side. The wall between the two in the trade publication world is very, very thin. By nature, trade publication rely entirely on advertising by the industry they are reporting on, which raises all kinds of ethical issues every single day. The fact is that the editors are under enormous pressure not to piss off the people who keep them in business…and those people aren’t screenwriters.

On the Yellow Brick Road

by

Vlcsnap1549238
Here are some pictures from the NBC picket line this morning. I’m the yellow munchkin.

A woman writer asked me if it was true that John Edwards was coming to the NBC picket line later in the afternoon. I said that it was. She beamed.Pb150079

"I love him so much," she said. "I think it’s great that he can talk to the dead."

"That’s John Edward," I said. "This is John Edwards."
"There’s only one  famous John Edward," she said. "And he talks to dead people."
"This John Edwards is running for President," I said.
She gave me a long look. "Does he talk to dead people, too?"

That was an honest-to-God conversation I had. On a picket line with elderly munchkins handing out donut holes. This is a strange world we live in.