There is a great argument against putting eyes on inanimate objects,
for this action is inviting you to take that object as having become an autonomous
being, capable of emotion, making you feel guilty for disposing of it at the
end of its useful life.
Then, there is Mayor McCheese, resident of, and remnant from
McDonaldland, an advertising campaign introduced in 1970 to sell fast food to
children, when that was still acceptable. Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar and
Grimace were all residents of McDonaldland until 2003, when McDonald’s dropped the
use of it, but while those characters continue to be used, Mayor McCheese had
been kicked out of town as long ago as 1985.
Ultimately, the reason for this exile is obvious – Mayor McCheese
is a humanoid with a burger for a head, a mayoral sash, and the voice like
comedian Ed Wynn, who was the Mad Hatter in Disney’s animated “Alice in
Wonderland” (1951), the perfect combination of “what was that about?” that makes
for cutaway gags in episodes of “Family Guy.” However, that very combination of
nightmare fuel was what ultimately tripped up Mayor McCheese and McDonald’s, when
they were sued for copyright theft.
I don’t believe the children’s TV series “H.R. Pufnstuf,”
shown in 1969, ever made it to the UK, but because “The Banana Splits,” also created
by puppeteers Sid & Marty Krofft, did reach us, it is easy to extrapolate. The
show was performed using large costumes and puppets, and was the story of a stranger
in Living Island, where all inanimate objects could come alive, and were targeted
by the witch Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo. The stranger, Jimmy, was played by Jack
Wild, just nominated for an Oscar for playing the Artful Dodger in “Oliver!”
H.R. Pufnstuf was the name of the mayor of Living Island,
and while he was a dragon, he was a humanoid character, with a very large head,
a mayoral sash, and an odd voice, if not sounding like Ed Wynn – many other
characters on the show, however, did parody Hollywood film stars. There are
enough elements shared between H.R. Pufnstuf and Mayor McCheese to argue there
was, at the very least, a coincidence, but it was one was big enough to
question the character’s origins, which brought the rest of McDonaldland down with
it.
As detailed in the lawsuit “Sid & Marty Krofft
Television Productions Inc. v. McDonald’s Corp.”, the Kroffts had been in
contact with Needham, Harper & Steers, the advertising agency that created
the McDonaldland campaign, about working with them. After a number of phone
calls, the Kroffts were ultimately told the campaign had been cancelled, when
in fact the agency was to proceed on their own -the first advertisements were created
by former Krofft employees, while “H.R. Pufnstuf” voice actor Lennie Weinrib was
also involved. The newer work became more popular than the Kroffts’ original show,
causing them to lose licensing deals for toys and other products.
In the original case, the Kroffts won $50,000 in damages,
deemed to be the value of their work that McDonald’s benefitted from – both sides
appealed. Four years later, the Kroffts won over a million dollars in damages.
What had changed was the case having established extrinsic and intrinsic tests
for whether a work had violated copyright, moving beyond simply deciding if an idea
had been copied, into comparing both the factual similarities between works,
and whether “the man in the street” would consider the two works to be similar.
A footnote in the case’s decision reads: “Both lands are governed by mayors who
have disproportionately large round heads dominated by long wide mouths. They
are assisted by ‘Keystone cop’ characters... It seems clear that such similarities
go beyond merely that of the idea into the area of expression.” For the record,
copyrights relating to the Keystone Cops expired some time beforehand.
McDonaldland continued in its original form until 1985,
although McDonald’s would later advertise their evening opening times with the “Mac
Tonight” advert, featuring a man at a piano, singing “Mack the Knife” – “now
that Mac[k] is back in town” – with a crescent moon for a head, wearing
sunglasses. Sid & Marty Krofft would later be sued by Paul Simon, as the
theme for “H.R. Pufnstuf” sounded too close to the Simon & Garfunkel song, “The
59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy),” both extrinsically and
intrinsically. No-one put eyes on a burger ever again.
“My definition of a film director is the man who presides
over accidents... Everywhere there are beautiful accidents. There’s a smell in
the air, there’s a look that changes the whole resonance of what you expected.”
– Alfred Hitchcock Orson Welles.
If 2018 could be remembered for anything good, it is because
two of the most extreme examples of film development hell finally saw release:
“The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” directed by Terry Gilliam, and Orson Welles’
“The Other Side of the Wind,” released by Netflix thirty-three years after its
creator’s death. Like Gilliam’s project, Welles’ film has its own
behind-the-scenes documentary, daring to tell a more interesting story than the
film itself.
“They’ll love me when I’m dead” may well be something Orson
Welles said, but that was not true in the New Hollywood of the 1970s – the old
one kicked him out for making uncommercial or downbeat films, leaving him to
scrape together funds for his work in Europe by resorting to cameos and
commercials. Welles had the reputation of “Citizen Kane” loom over him for the
forty-five years from its release to his death, especially when the film
students and scholars that rose up in that time lionised his craft as a
cinematic auteur. He still couldn’t get his films made – the ones that did were
the scholars, like Peter Bogdanovich and Steven Spielberg. In this environment,
the only option for Welles was, effectively, to make a student film.
When it eventually appeared, “The Other Side of the Wind”
could not be more of a self-portrait: an old-time director, played by old-time
director John Huston, is making a film that attempts to evoke the vogue of
atmospheric European productions by directors like Michelangelo Antonioni (and
starring Oja Kodar, the film's co-writer and Welles' lover), while being
followed around by journalists with tape recorders, forever asking about his
life and his work, because there can be no difference between them. The film is
shot like a documentary – point-and-shoot, get as much footage as you can, and
make sense of it later. The film within the film itself is wordless, arty,
impenetrable, and unfinished - the fictional director also ran out of funds.
“They’ll Love Me When I Dead” is linked by Alan Cumming, who
appears to be turning into James Mason, and while it tells the story of a man
that could never finish his films due to circumstance, you get the feeling that
Welles probably deserved it: the unplanned nature of the production, with a
constantly rewritten script, is as chaotic as the outtakes show. The money was
scraped together from various sources - Welles would use an American Film
Institute ceremony, held in 1975 in his honour, to unsuccessfully make a bid
for funds to complete the project. One source of funds was a son-in-law of the
Shah of Iran, which ultimately led to the film being impounded by the Ayatollah
Khomeini’s regime. Peter Bogdanovich, a defender of Welles’ reputation, later
cast in the film as a confidante of Huston, later had Welles living out of his
house for two years, filling his rooms with cigar smoke and Fudgsicles. The
director of photography, Gary Graver, spent fifteen years answering to Welles
every day, but was not paid by him, and resorted to camerawork on over a
hundred porn films, to make ends meet, most notably for the notorious Ed Wood –
Graver would later spend eighteen months carrying around Welles’ ashes in the
boot of his car.
The documentary ends with a reminder of other Welles
projects that went unfinished including, appropriately enough, a version of
“Don Quixote,” as if to prove that anyone attempting to film that story must be
quixotic in their own way. As much as Orson Welles left behind, his reputation
means what was left behind will come to light: with “They’ll Love Me When I
Dead” focusing squarely on Welles, we do not get the story of how it took until
2014 for the litigation around “The Other Side of the Wind” to finally end, and
how it was eventually completed – that needs its own documentary. What we do
get, however, is an idea of the Orson Welles that was drawn upon to finish the
film, the Welles that put into the mouth of John Huston: “We can borrow from
each other, but what we must never do is borrow from ourselves.”
With its future in limbo, I visit the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre, and find that it’s business as usual - a dead mall wouldn’t have working escalators.
A question has been plaguing me for weeks: should I buy a
Yamaha reface DX?
One new year’s resolution for me is to make more music. I
can read music, and play the piano a bit, but there Is much space for
improvement. Music is just one of those things it feels like I should be able
to do. But when a particular idea plants itself, one that will require a
substantial commitment from me, in terms of time and financial outlay, in order
to justify itself, it is a decision I could not take lightly – it has been in
the back of my mind for months.
The Yamaha reface DX is one of a series of four music keyboards,
released in 2015, that aims to replicate other keyboards in Yamaha’s history
and, like the Sega Mega Drive Mini and Nintendo NES Classic Mini, give users the
experience of using the original hardware, with authentic knobs, switches and sliders
– the CP is an electric piano, the YC a combo organ, and the CS is a synthesiser
representing the late 1970s / early 1980s period when sounds where carefully shaped
through adjusting many different levels, meaning it is the only keyboard in the
range with no sound presets.
The reface DX aims to capture a very specific period in pop music
that was defined by the original Yamaha DX7, known as an “FM synth,” as
Frequency Modulation Synthesis, in the most basic sense, involves using the
frequency of a sound wave to alter the sound of another one. The programming of
a DX7, which could use up to six operating frequencies at once, was notoriously
difficult, meaning most musical artists and groups stuck to the original thirty-two
preset “patches” it came with. Therefore, from the DX7’s release in 1983 to the
end of 1980s, by which point keyboards became more sample-based, the carefully-shaped
sounds of pianos, bass and tubular bells could be heard in songs by A-Ha,
Kraftwerk, Talking Heads, Jan Hammer, Genesis, Supertramp, Steve Winwood,
Vangelis, Toto, Elton John, Queen, Level 42, Beastie Boys, Stevie Wonder, U2,
Donald Fagen, Yes, Jean-Michel Jarre and Dire Straits – the last one is mainly
the opening bit to “Money for Nothing.” Brian Eno used the DX7 extensively, but
unlike most people, he mastered the programming.
Why wouldn’t I like to join that list buy buying a reface
DX? The nostalgia from that period in music is intoxicating, because it sounds
unlike anything that came both before and after it, as sampling slowly returned
a more natural sound into the 1990s. The FM Synth sound is something to which
people keep returning, both because it evokes a particular setting, or time period,
as much as being part of a musical palette. I would like to do something with
that.
Justifying the cost is one thing when you both consider its
deliberately smaller form figure, made to accompany bigger set-ups for performing
artists, makes it look like a toy keyboard. Korg also make the Volca FM, one of
their series of portable synthesisers, but it was too complex for me – the
reface DX uses touch-sensitive sliders and USB downloading for programming its
sounds, making them far easier to contemplate than the original DX7. Most of
all, the ability to emulate any old sound using computer programs and apps make
the idea of spending a single penny sound pointless.
What could I do? Over the last few months, I have read countless
articles, and watched numerous videos, from people talking about the reface DX,
going over every possible subject from what samples have been included – the link
to more recent drum ‘n’ bass and EDM music has been made as much as 80s pop –
to what happens If you run a factory reset. I know I will need to make space at
home for the new keyboard, and I will make time every day to practice making
music on it. Even as part of making a trip to London, I looked in at Yamaha’s
showroom in Wardour Street to try playing one...
Yes, of course I bought one. As soon as I hit an “F” note using
the Tubular Bell preset, that was it. I may have committed to this like I was
owning a pet for the first time, but I know I am going to enjoy using it.
One morning, getting ready to go out for a walk, I was asked
to buy some antihistamines. I knew what type was needed, so I checked: “is that
the Benadryl, in the yellow box?” Since there are so many types – cetirizine,
loratadine, acrivastine and so on – once someone has finally come across the
one that finally works, you must follow their instructions very closely.
In my nearest Asda – if you’re American, read Walmart,
because Asda is owned by them - there was only one box of the correct medicine
on the shelves: Benadryl’s One-a-Day cetirizine, and it was in a box of thirty tablets
for £9.50. I seriously considered walking to the next store to try there, but I
then saw Asda’s own-brand cetirizine, again a box of thirty, with exactly the
same dose per tablet, for £2.50.
The story should have ended there, but I did think that, if
I explained why this different box would be just as good as the branded
product, it will make sense. However, I compared the descriptions: the full
name of the medicine in Asda’s box was cetirizine hydrochloride – C21H25ClN2O3,
a combination of carbon, hydrogen, chlorine, nitrogen and oxygen atoms – while Benadryl
One-a-Day was cetirizine dihydrochloride, with an extra chlorine and
hydrogen atom attached to it.
I made a snap decision, probably one that Johnson &
Johnson, owners of Benadryl, wanted me to make – there was slightly more to the
Benadryl than the supermarket’s own-brand product, and that, plus I didn’t have
to walk any further than I originally planned. I bought wat I was asked to buy,
and made for home.
Naturally, I still wanted to know how effective cetirizine dihydrochloride
is in comparison to the other kind, so I looked it up and... none has been
detected. It is quite possible that Johnson & Johnson made a very slight
change to the existing molecular structure of cetirizine in order to register a
patent, but I have no evidence to confirm that a common practice in medicine
happened in this particular case.
Quite obviously, the power of advertising worked. Fruit and
vegetables are the same from one place to the next, but the more particular you
can make something, the more exclusive and individual it can be, and the more
essential you can make it, the more you can charge - being cynical is a two-way
street as far as advertising goes, because it still works no matter how
educated you are of its effects, and how dismissive of it you are as a result.
Arriving home, I handed over the Benadryl, saying not to worry
about the extra cost for the tablets, as I had been given material for an article
– I wait to see if, next time, I will be asked about buying the antihistamines
in the yellow box.
