Spoofing Session

Those who attended the Screen Writers Awards dinner are still
rolling with some of the punches the authors tossed at each other and
life in Hollywood generally. The proceedings started out with a solemn
oath to stamp out togetherness and along toward midnight things became
downright gamey.

A skit having to do with "Lolita" brought out a remark, "This thing couldn’t get a seal of approval in Tijuana."

A
comedy-writing team came up with a tired routine and one said, "Put an
exclamation point after that so he’ll know it’s a joke."

One
of the most devastating spoofs was a parody of Ed Murrow’s "Person to
Person" show. A man resembling Ed sat on the edge of the stage smoking
a cigarette and talking long-distance with his subjects.


THE LIGHTS
came on a scene showing a man shaving in his bathroom. "You got the
wrong house, Mac," he told Murrow, "Mr. Jessel’s three doors down."

The
next subject was a renowned author shown in his dilapidated one-room
shack in the Deep South. Asked if he used an electric typewriter he
said, "No, that’s a butane typewriter." Between killing a  huge rat and
scratching himself the overalled author said to his grown but childish
sister, "Why don’t you go down to the schoolyard and play?" She
replied, "Ain’t nobody to play with but the National Guard."

Program
notes on the event were also illuminating. One writer was described as
"Nero’s rosin boy." It was stated of another that he didn’t believe in
putting anything in writing. Of another that although he wasn’t born in
a log cabin he moved into one as soon as he could afford it.

THEN THERE
were the collaborators who abandoned writing and concentrated on
punctuation, contributing commas, dashes and three dots to 14 feature
films and one quivering colon for TV.

Guests also received the
first draft of the menu with penciled revisions. Comment on the cracked
crab: "Let’s call it maladjusted." Red cabbage: "Offensive to Formosa."
Baked Alaska: "Good! Very topical."

So don’t give up on movie making. There’s life in the old industry yet.

THEIR BOSSES
may not be aware of it but legal secretaries, while waiting for the
next sentence to be dictated, idly scan the alphabetical titles of law
books. One of them, named Priscilla, remains intrigued by Vol. 16 of
Cal. Jur. 2nd, ‘Descent and Distribution to Drains and Sewers’ and Vol.
40 of the same, ‘Privacy to Public Officers.’"

OBVIOUSLY
there’s disquiet in Detroit. After loftily ignoring the outcries for
smaller, plainer, cheaper, more economical cars, the big boys are
rushing into production with them.

Perhaps they’ve been reading the scorching letters of the last three months in the magazine Product Engineering. A few samples:

"The
American car can no longer be regarded as a means of transportation.
Rather, it has degenerated into an expression of social prestige."

"They are merely rolling nightmares, four-eyed blathers of whirling nonsense, contorted, obscene and trivial."

"There is nothing more ridiculous than high fins and a rocketlike appearance on a Los Angeles street at 30 m.p.h."

"Current automobile design trends indicate a moral decay in America that is most alarming."

Boo!

EXCEPTION
Telling the truth is all very fine,
But not when you’re 30, goes on 29.
–GLADYS FOREMAN

AT RANDOM — The
line "You can’t get there from here" isn’t apocryphal argues Ben
Cherroff of the Terminal Annex Post Office. While in S.F. he asked a
policeman how to reach Judah Street and the officer said it and meant
it. Something about a bay intervening . . . Note from John Odell of
Alhambra re the new picture: "I’m afraid it’s hopeless. You still look
like a Main Street wino with a hangover." . . . To keep the record
straight, Tom Cassidy of KFAC presented a program on stereophonic tape
in December, 1955.