Every week, Ask The A.V. Club answers your pop-culture questions. And some weeks, we ask you to answer each other's pop-culture questions. This week, it's some of each:
Local Heroes
Back in the mid-to-late '90s, I was a college student down in Champaign, IL, and there was a lot of buzz about the local music scene because of a one-hit wonder (Hum's "Stars"). Champaign-Urbana was supposed to be the next Austin or Seattle, but of course it didn't really happen. I graduated, worked for five years, and came back for grad school. I've gotten re-involved with the music scene and write for a local arts weekly, and I feel that the town's indie-rock product is stronger than ever. But friends living elsewhere think C-U missed its chance, and its bands will be stymied for eternity. I guess my question is if this is your opinion, or are we such a tiny blip on the indie-rock radar that you couldn't care less?
Matt Hoffman
Veteran "scenester" Noel Murray replies:
Does anyone in indie-rock still think in terms of scenes? I mean, sure, New York went through a mini-boom a couple of years ago, but it was more genre-specific than region-specific, just as was the case with Detroit immediately after The White Stripes hit. I do confess that I've been liking a lot of bands from Canada lately—Toronto especially—and there seems to be a lot of diverse and interesting music still emerging from Sweden. Then there's the Sunderland/Newcastle scene, which has produced Maxïmo Park, The Futureheads, and Field Music, though the rise of the region seems to have more to do with the close-knit group of musicians who live there, not any kind of organized talent magnet.
Don't get me wrong: Local scenes do matter, to the locals at least. A thriving local scene needs good nightclubs, enthusiastic college students, an all-ages performance space for the high-school punks, maybe a visionary entrepreneur or two willing to start a record label, and an alternative weekly with a varied staff of music critics. Oh, and musicians who think in terms of doing something unusual and exciting, instead of, "What's the quickest way to get a record deal?"
And yes, it's probably true that major-label A&R guys still sniff around cities that are drawing a lot of heat, though typically by the time they arrive, the initial spark has begun to dim. But when it comes to music critics, I don't know how much attention we pay to that stuff, beyond noting when more than one good band has come from the same region. For my part, I listen to everything that gets sent to me, and if it's good enough, I write about it. I can't remember a time when I've picked up a band's press kit and said, "Oh, they're from Champaign-Urbana? Forget it!"
When Critics Attack (Each Other)
Two questions: How often do you argue over a review with each other? I occasionally disagree strongly with a review (Mean Girls comes to mind), and I always wonder how well that review speaks for the rest of group.
The second question is related: How do you dole out the films that everyone's pretty sure are going to suck? Straws? Ro-Sham-Bo? Or is there some sort of rating system, and you cycle so that everyone has to deal with these films periodically? Or is there a certain enjoyment to be found in dealing with these?
Pete
Film critic Tasha Robinson answers:
Like any other group of opinionated people, we disagree with each other all the time, though not necessarily vehemently; debating over our responses to a given film, TV show, album, or what have you is fun, and it's one of the reasons we started our Crosstalk feature. If you saw the online version of our Year In Film, it should be clear that while we might nominally all agree that, say, Children Of Men is a terrific movie, that doesn't necessarily mean that we all loved it in the same way, for the same reasons, or that we'd write the same things about it when reviewing it. And sometimes we do disagree vehemently. Taking each other to task over things that one A.V. Clubber liked and another didn't, or vice versa, is a regular office sport for us. These days, though, if one staffer strongly disagrees with another's review, you're likely to hear about it when they have their own say in the blog or the bulletin boards. Unfortunately, those weren't around when the Mean Girls review ran.
There's a lot less argument over who has to review oh-God-that-looks-bad films. Some of our writers are more appreciative of bottom-of-the-barrel cultural kitsch (hello, Nathan Rabin) than others are, and often someone will volunteer to cover a terrible-looking film because morbid curiosity has set in over some aspect of it—say, Britney Spears' starring role. If it's a sequel, or was directed by a known hack like Uwe Boll, the duty might fall on whoever's most familiar with the franchise or the filmmaker. (After someone's dutifully watched and reviewed something like Alone In The Dark, the rest of us generally don't rush out to see it just to keep up, so areas of regrettable expertise develop.) And sometimes it's just a scheduling question, since we're all juggling a lot of responsibilities, and sometimes one person can make it to a screening that no one else is free for. But we do try to spread the burden around equally.
Wasn't He A Stinker?
How come, even though Warner Brothers used nearly 100 voice actors from the 1930s to the 1970s, Mel Blanc was the only one who got screen credit? Arthur Q. Bryan was Elmer Fudd from that character's inception until he died in 1959, but his name never appears on the screen, except for some joke credits in one cartoon. Bea Benaderet was practically every female voice, yet she never got credit either. Did Mel Blanc have some sort of contract exclusivity so that only his name appeared? "Here is a list I found online.
Greg Steinmayer
Nathan Rabin responds:
Like Looney Tunes collaborators Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett, Mel Blanc matched his creative genius with a flair for self-promotion. According to Wikipedia, by 1946, Blanc did indeed have an exclusive onscreen credit of "Voice characterization by Mel Blanc" written into his contract for every short film he lent his voice to.
Blanc's popularity didn't just come from Looney Tunes shorts; he also appeared on popular radio programs like The Jack Benny Show and The Abbott & Costello Show—he even had his own radio vehicle, The Mel Blanc Show, for a while. That afforded him the leverage to make those kinds of demands, unlike similarly gifted but less high-profile Looney Tunes peers like Arthur Q. Bryan, June Foray, and Stan Freberg, whose Warner Brothers work generally went uncredited. Blanc provided the voices for a dazzling array of beloved cartoon icons, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, and Barney Rubble, to name just a few, but his prominent credit and the uncredited work of his peers made him appear more versatile and ubiquitous than he actually was.
There are notable exceptions when Looney Tunes voice artists other than Blanc received onscreen credit, but they're few and far between—most notably, they include 1957's "Three Little Bops" (where Freberg is credited) and "The Mouse That Jack Built" (where the cast of The Jack Benny Show is credited). For more about Looney Tunes and the voices behind the Warner Brothers' beloved stable of cartoon mischief-makers, I highly recommend all four volumes of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection. They're filled with fascinating featurettes, audio commentaries, and essential ephemera that make learning about animation history deliriously fun.
Stumped!
It's time for another round of Stumped!, where we trot out a few questions we haven't been able to answer, and see whether any of you can help. Does any of this sound familiar to you?
A friend and I once saw part of a cheesy action movie that at first seemed to be a straightforward '80s low-budget rip-off of Rambo—we remember the vigilante hero being referred to simply as "Soldier." It did not seem to be a comedy for several minutes; however, it took a bizarre turn—the hero was crawling through a ventilation shaft and came upon a pizza deliveryman, also crawling, who cheerfully exclaimed "Pizza coming through!" The only other thing we can remember is that scene changes were frequently marked by a really cheap-looking effect where the whole screen turned into little blurred squares. Any ideas about the name of this movie?
Gene Magee
I remember a cartoon they used to show on Nickelodeon in the early days, probably 1985 or 1986, that was the story of a man sucked underground into a world populated by people with hoppity-balls for legs. It was shown at roughly the same time as the Danger Mouse and Bananaman cartoons, and the animation style looked roughly European, if that helps. Everyone thinks I'm nuts, but someone must remember this show.
Aaron
I grew up in London, Ontario, Canada, so my question may be out of your range, but here goes: I remember as a kid watching some children's television program that consisted of one guy with finger puppets in the form of various sea creatures. I distinctly recall a shrimp puppet. I'm not sure whether the puppeteer did the narration or it was a voiceover. I have tried various Internet searches (amazing what hits come up to the query "Guy with shrimp puppet fingers"), but so far have come up empty. Any idea what the show was?
Paul Smallbridge
If you can place any of these, drop us a line at [email protected]. And send us your own questions. Maybe you'll see them answered next week, when we talk about our cinematic product-placement Hall Of Fame, that one law-firm show, and more.