I’ve monetised that nerdy niche American history knowledge to write lots of pieces over the years, although I’ve really tried to do less of that in recent times. I wrote a piece four years ago which it turns out was far too optimistically called “The last thing I’ll ever write about Donald Trump.” Hah, we were so young and innocent then. (Getting plentiful hate emails, creepy social media stalking and the like from T**mp fans after one piece also kind of cured me of giving hot takes.)
But, we live in unprecedented presidented times, don’t we? The first presidential debate of 2024 a week ago was a shocker – I wrote a preview, live-blogged the actual event and did a bit of a historical deep dive analysis afterwards all for Radio New Zealand. While live blogging it, I had the strange sinking feeling that I was watching history, rather than just another forgettable debate. Here’s what I wrote, with gratuitous arcane Benjamin Harrison and Woodrow Wilson references galore!
I’ve been watching presidential debates for 40 years now, ever since Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale crossed swords … and I’m afraid President Biden’s performance was the worst I’ve ever seen at one of them.
Will Biden hold the course or step aside? The clock is ticking and just over the last week, while I’ve been on a lovely holiday down south, the narrative keeps changing.
I gave up on making presidential predictions after the 2016 fiasco, and am not entirely sure what the coming days will hold – but I feel 90% sure that if Biden stays in, he actually lost the election on that June evening long before the first vote. It doesn’t matter how well he’s done or not, because, I think, for far too many voters, perception is everything. As far back as last Christmas I did not think Joe Biden should have run again and this whole year has been like a slow-motion car crash, but the thing about car crashes is sometimes, they don’t go quite like you think they would.
So it is with America, shakily, here in 2024. I wonder what precedented times feel like.
The Flash probably has one of the three best superhero costume designs of all time. Bold, red and emblazoned with lightning bolts, it’s a killer. And his power – running super-duper fast – is elegantly simple, yet full of possibilities.
The Flash has been running since the very first Flash hero debuted back in the early 1940s. Because comic books have become all about legacy and rebooting characters, there are now a lot of Flashes out there, but for me, Wally West will always be the best Flash. I just wish the comics world would let him be that.
Wally West is, basically, the third person to be called the Flash, and somehow, despite having been doing this since 1987, he’s still somewhat treated as the “new” Flash. It’s a shame, because he’s by far the best character of all the Flash folk and one of the only “legacy” superheroes to truly outshine his predecessor.
West began as a sidekick – “Kid Flash” to Barry Allen’s 1960s Flash – but has since gone on to become a father, husband, and more than worthy successor to Barry Allen, who died – the first time – in 1985’s Crisis On Infinite Earths.
There are a lot of great stories with the Barry Allen Flash out there – a knotty mix of nerd science and colourful “Rogue” villains – but let’s face it – Barry Allen, to be charitable, was a bore. A straight-laced policeman with a very ‘60s crewcut, Barry Allen in the original comics remained opaque – the powers were cool, the costume was swell, the villains great, but Barry Allen, more than many other DC comics characters like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, defied any real depth. He just kind of was there.
Not so Wally West, who started off as a headstrong teenager, then a girl-chasing member of the Teen Titans. When he took over as the Flash after Barry Allen’s death, it was a breath of fresh air. The terrific, underrated Mike Baron and William Messner-Loebs ’80s Flash series radically scaled back his powers, and made Wally kind of an engaging jerk – selfish at times, foolhardy at others, always trying to outrace Barry Allen’s shadow.
It’s a pet peeve of mine that comics characters aren’t allowed to age but that’s been changing in recent years. West, unlike Allen, has been allowed to grow – under the excellent writing of Mark Waid and Geoff Johns and others, he became his own man – got married, and now has a family and several children. He’s a fun Flash, mostly, and while Flash comics themselves have been good and bad over the years, Wally West has – for more than 35 years now! – been the Flash.
But. He’s still chasing Barry Allen’s shadow. Because comics just can’t let dead be dead, of course Barry Allen was brought back to life back in 2009, and saddled with some new pointlessly grim-dark backstory about his mother being murdered and his father accused of the crime. You can load Barry Allen with all the baggage you like, but perhaps his finest moment was his starkly moving original death back in Crisis On Infinite Earths #8.
Barry Allen was brought back likely at the behest of corporate bean-counters, but DC Comics has never really seemed to know what to do with him. The Barry Allen version of Flash has been in a long-running TV show and a convoluted moderate flop of a movie, but to be honest, neither one of those Barry Allens was very much like the comic version. The CW Network Flash played by Grant Gustin was wide-eyed and perky and had a fair amount of Wally West’s charm grafted on, while the DC movie universe Flash played by controversial Ezra Allen was jittery, annoying and pretty much bore no resemblance to any comics version of the Flash other than perhaps his enthusiasm.
Ever since Barry Allen was resurrected, the comics have juggled West and Allen back and forth confusingly. West has been treated appallingly badly at times by the comics, with the nadir being the horrible Heroes In Crisis miniseries that somehow made West both a mass murderer and a traumatised victim and killed him off for good measure. West deserved better (don’t worry, he came back, because comic books).
Meanwhile, pretty much all of the most memorable Flash comics the past 35 years have been Wally West, but for some reason they can’t just kill Barry Allen off once and for all and let Wally be the true Flash. An intriguing current series of Flash comics I’m enjoying by Simon Spurrier are delving into pseudo-science cosmic horror and star Wally West, yet Barry Allen is still, confusingly, running around in the mix as well. Just pick a Flash, DC Comics.
For years, Flash comics would start off with the line, “My name is Wally West. I’m the fastest man alive.” After doing the main job for the better part of 40 years now, isn’t it time to just give up on trying to make boring Barry happen and acknowledge Wally as the one, true Flash?
It’s time for not one, not two, but THREE new Amoeba Adventures stories in the brand new Amoeba Adventures #34, now released digitally FREE to all the people of the internet!
But heck, I get it, you want a physical release, too? The print editions have been scaled back a little bit starting with this issue and will be print-on-demand. If you’re down, order one up for a mere US$7.50 to ship anywhere in the world from Hobbit-plagued New Zealand by sending cash to me via PayPal at dirgas@gmail.com. They’ll be sent out in July! Also, I’m clearing out the storeroom a bit and just for the next short while, print copies of Amoeba Adventures #31, 32, 33 and the special anniversary reprint of #27 are a mere $2.00 US each if you order a print copy of the new issue!
And as always, your feedback, applause and condemnations are eagerly requested – I’m not doing this to get rich or famous, but I do always like to hear what you might think of the latest of Prometheus the Protoplasm’s never ending adventures!
Here’s a wee sample of the weirdness this issue contains:
And obligatory plug, if you’re one of the unlucky few who haven’t picked up the hefty archival tome The Best Of Amoeba Adventures over on Amazon, what are you waiting for? This 350-page book collects the best of the original 1987-1998 Amoeba comics written by me with art by me, Max Ink and many more, plus tonnes of bonus essays, rare artwork and cover gallery – it’s available in sultry paperback and decadent hardcover over on Amazon right this second – please buy a copy and save my financial future!
And as always, thanks for reading my goofy comics!
A vintage horror movie, a vaguely spooky host and lots of lame jokes – what’s not to love?
On my recent travels to the US, I got to experience a lot more of the cluttered joys of infinite American cable TV than I usually do, and one thing I particularly enjoyed was catching up with long-running horror movie host Svengoolie’s Saturday night movie of the week on MeTV.
Svengoolie’s schtick is a grand throwback to the pre-internet world, where you couldn’t just find movies like Scream, Blacula, Scream! or House of Frankenstein through a few clicks. On stations throughout America, horror hosts would showcase dusty old vintage movies with plenty of jokes, skits and commentary.
Svengoolie (aka Dave Koz) has been doing this since 1979, believe it or not, and syndicated throughout America for the last decade or so. His campy, corny host act leans into the cheese and groan-worthy puns. But it’s also great fun because it feels like a secret club of fandom run the way it should ideally be. There’s no toxicity here, just silly in-jokes, rubber chickens, and an unending adoration for things like wolf men, Roger Corman flicks and giant ant invasions.
There’s something kind of charmingly low-fi and comforting to me about a grown adult dressed up in Halloween gear introducing schlocky old movies. The horror host first emerged at the dawn of television in the ‘50s, and has shambled along semi-underground in some form or another to this day, with a new generation even taking the format to streaming.
I generally missed out on the peak horror hosts era from the 1960s to the 1980s, although I have hazy memories of old Universal Monster movies being shown on Saturday morning TV in the early ’80s with some goofy small-time local hosts kicking off the show.
I also honed my bad-movie love back in high school watching the USA Network’s “Up All Night” panorama of abominable flicks like Night Of The Lepus and Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes, sneeringly hosted by the late Gilbert Gottfried, and the classic riffing hosts of Mystery Science Theater 3000. These snark-fests all share a little DNA with the horror hosts idea.
The horror host was pioneered by the iconic wasp-waisted charms of the still-eerie Vampira, whose 1954 show didn’t even last a year but who paved the way for many others.
Vampira, alias Maila Nurmi, lived a complex life trying to recapture her brief stardom with things like an appearance in Ed Wood’s legendarily bad Plan Nine From Outer Space. Very little footage of her show survives now, but even brief clips show how this primordial queen of goths scared stiff the buttoned-up world of ’50s TV, and forged generations of successors:
There were many more – Zacherle, who chilled spirits on the East Coast for decades, or the famed Elvira, who successfully homaged/ripped off Vampira’s sexy bad girl act in a later, far more relaxed cultural era to become one of the most recognisable horror hosts of all time.
Svengoolie, who has been doing his own thing for 45 years and is easing in a cast of possible replacement ghouls, is pretty much the biggest name left on the scene, but the success of his show on MeTV gives hope that the horror host idea isn’t dead just yet.
In a world of TikToks and YouTubers, everyone is a host now if they want to be. Still, I’m pretty turned off by the influencer aesthetic of random strangers shouting and hustling at me from their phones while sitting in cars.
But give me a guy dressed up like a corpse or a shapely vampire woman in a bargain basement crypt setting, a few Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee flicks and a bucket of popcorn, crank up the groan-worthy jokes, and I’m happy to be scared silly in their company.
Regular posting will resume soon after the difficulties of the past six weeks or so. In the meantime, here’s a few things to catch up with by or about me that have been circulating out there elsewhere on the internet:
As part of RNZ‘s occasional “What To Watch” series highlighting the quirky and obscure corners of the streaming cinematic universe, I wrote up a little review of the extremely weird offbeat Korean comedy Chicken Nugget: What To Watch – Chicken Nugget
Over at the New Zealand Listener magazine, I did a review of Everest, Inc., a fascinating new book by Will Cockrell that looks at how the world of daring mountain summiteers has changed since Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first conquered Everest. You can read it over here (paywall).
And elsewhere, friend Bob had a very kind post the other day about my long-running obscure small press comic Amoeba Adventures, in which he compared my timid scribbling to Scott McCloud’s awesome Zot!which is high praise indeed. (And by the way, if you’re one of those folks who haven’t gotten around to ordering my hefty compendium of classic Amoeba comics over on Amazon, go grab yourself The Best Of Amoeba Adventures right now!)
We bid a final goodbye to my father Richard Dirga this week, at a memorial service underneath the tall pines he loved so much in the California foothills. Thank you so much to everyone who came, friends and family and people I hadn’t seen in years. We had to break out the extra chairs in the end, but Dad was worth it. And thanks to all those who have reached out via message, email, letters and more these last few weeks. Every kindness is appreciated.
Myself, my brother and two beloved family friends all spoke to honour Dad’s remarkable life.
Here is what I said:
Dad didn’t want a funeral, or a big fuss made of him, but we decided we couldn’t let him go without doing something.
We received so many messages, emails and calls after Dad died, and the words that kept coming up again and again were about his kindness, his fundamental good heart and eagerness to help whenever asked. He was part of a vanishing breed – the humble but confident man. He never bragged, never boasted, but everyone who knew him knew that he could command attention when it was called for. He was a born leader who chose to be a helper rather than a commander.
Dad had an extraordinary career with the Air Force that began long before my brother and I were even born. He signed up when he was only 17 years old – when I was 17, I could barely drive a car. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in an almost 20-year career, and he probably could have risen even higher, but he said he never liked the ‘playing politics’ that came with the highest ranks.
Some of the things he did are still classified and the stories he told us are pretty amazing – up to 24-hour missions flying over the North Pole, over Soviet space and over Cuba during the missile crisis, his 6-foot frame crammed into a tiny space the whole time. He would fly with nuclear weapons on board at the height of the Cold War, ready for any sudden escalation. He worked with the B-58, the SR-71 and others during his career, all these clandestine spy missions. It took me years to realise that when we used to watch James Bond movies on the TV as a kid, he wasn’t just watching a fun adventure – he was critiquing it against his own life! (I always thought he looked just a LITTLE bit like Roger Moore, too)
We weren’t even born when he did some of these things, but he carried that calm authority with him his whole life – how many fathers do you know who had the responsibility of flying with active nuclear bombs? It’s not for the nervous.
Mom and Dad always encouraged us to have adventures, to see the world and not be people who spend their whole lives in one small town. When I was nearly 8 years old, they packed up the house and took us to Europe for an entire year, traveling around in an increasingly rickety and mildewy tiny motorhome. It’s fair to say that year changed my life. When I moved to New Zealand with my family nearly 20 years ago, they could have objected. I mean, we were taking their only grandson to the other side of the world, after all. But Dad, who spent a lifetime saying yes to people, never said a word against it. It was a great adventure, and he loved those.
My son Peter is 20 years old now and in his third year studying history and art history at university back in New Zealand. He wouldn’t be there without Dad. When Peter was just four or five years old, Dad took him out to fly remote controlled planes, and that was it – Peter went on to become a military history buff, to build dozens of intricate planes and military models himself, to constantly be excited by the past. Dad’s military career fascinated Peter, and the two of them had a great and wonderful bond. Every time we visited for years, from barely kindergarten age until the beginning of college, Peter and Dad would spend some time flying planes out at Beale. Dad helped set the path of my son’s future.
In the last few years, despite the obstacles life threw at him, despite some of the suffering he had to endure, Dad somehow just kept becoming a better person all the time. It’s as if in his final years, he was distilled down to his purest essence – a kind and curious man whose first thoughts were often about others. At his heart he wasn’t judgmental, and I think he believed that our ultimate goal is just to be decent.
There was a moment when we visited in February that I took a mental photograph of, that I can’t quite forget, and all it was was a simple look Dad gave Mom, as they were sitting together on the couch. It was a look filled with such pure love and admiration, a look that maybe you only get to see when you are married more than 50 years, through thick and thin, the good and the bad. We should all be so lucky to have someone give us a look like that once in our lives.
The last lesson he had to show us was how to go – not with anger and rage at the unfairness of things, but with gratitude. He said again and again these last months how glad he was for an extraordinary life, how lucky he was. The very last conversation I had with him was just a day or two before his final illness, and one of the last things he said was how incredibly proud he was of my brother and I and our families and children.
He fought, hard, and for days after I think whatever made him him left, his body kept on, that mighty heart pumping away. He would never boast, never swagger into a room, but he showed us how strong he really was until the very end. If things had gone differently, I like to think he could’ve made it to 100. He was like a redwood or a towering oak tree in the grand forest of our lives – steady, reliable and protective of us all until his final days. Those who knew Dad know he was a planner, and so it’s probably no surprise that he left a very, VERY detailed to-do list after his passing, to provide for Mom and to make things easier for Chas and I. He’d probably have planned this event too, if he could.
I am sad, still, deep down, and I guess part of me will be that way for a long time. And that’s OK. But right now, right here, I just keep thinking of his smile, the smell of his aftershave, the scratchy stubble I felt on his cheek when he picked us up as kids, the enormous “Dirga dimple’ on his chin that always fascinated me. He always felt like the biggest man in the room to me, even when I grew up to be just a LITTLE taller than him; the way he always felt like he was lifting us up rather than pushing us down. I wouldn’t have been a writer without him; Chas would not have become a nurse. And I am grateful to have had him, for as long as we did, even if it would never quite have felt like enough. How lucky we were.
He loved flying, and the wide open blue skies of California. In an email to a military historian several years back, he wrote that “One benefit I found in flying aircraft was I always felt closer to God. I can’t tell you how many times I felt like I was ‘touching the face of God’ while flying missions over or around Vietnam, Korea or Russia.”
He always liked this poem, High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr, and while Dad didn’t want a funeral, I know that he wouldn’t mind one bit for me to read it here today:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air …. Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark nor ever eagle flew— And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
For family, friends and those who are interested, the entire memorial service can be viewed here on YouTube as well:
Tall and strong, he was the oak at the center of our family tree. He had a precise mind, an easy smile and a gentle, firm heart.
For years he flew on Cold War missions for the U.S. strategic air command, doing things like taking off from Alaska and flying over the North Pole on Soviet reconnaissance. After retiring from the Air Force as Lieutenant Colonel, he earned degrees in English literature and electronics.
He never stopped wanting to know more. Our house was full of books. He believed we should know about the whole wide world. He was always there for my brother and I with advice, encouragement and love.
One of his best friends of the past 50 years told him at the end, “You’re the pilot.” He really was. He told us a lot the last few months how grateful he was for all that he got to have, and he fought so very hard to stay.
There’s so much more I could say, but all I can tell you now is how much we will miss him. He was the pilot.
As I’ve written about before, I’ve always loved the Apes series, with its distinctly bleak and apocalyptic vision. It’s versatile enough as a concept that we’re seeing the tenth Apes movie opening this week, the very nifty looking Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes.
Unlike several other long running sci-fi series, the Apes saga generally has had a higher success rate for its sequels, which generally haven’t felt like laboured intellectual property cash-ins (I’m looking at you, Terminator and Alien franchises). There’s only one, maybe two truly bad movies in the whole series, in my humble opinion.
That said, in honour of the 10th Apes extravaganza, here’s my entirely personal Beneath the Escape from the Ranking of the Apes movies (pre-Kingdom!):
9. Planet of the Apes (2001) – Tim Burton’s oh-so-millennial reboot showed that you should never try and just remake the original POTA (which, I hope, the current series isn’t working its way towards doing, either). A wooden Mark Wahlberg stars in a strange sideways version of the original’s astronaut journey. Like many Burton movies it often looks great but the story is a bit of a mess with a legendarily dumb ending. The single best thing about this movie is the excellent makeup for most of the apes, especially sneering Tim Roth. (A freakish design for Helena Bonham Carter, on the other hand, manages to look worse than the female apes did in the 1960s.)
8. Battle For The Planet Of The Apes (1973) – The least of the original series is also by far the cheapest. Made for what looks like about $25, it’s got an OK plot that revolves around the final days of man and ape attempting to live together kind of peacefully, touches on the mutants from BeneathThe Planet Of The Apes, and as always Roddy McDowall is worth watching in his fourth turn in an Apes film. But the sluggish movie lacks any scale – the “battle” of the title is about a dozen humans puttering around in off-road vehicles, and everything just feels a bit exhausted by this point.
• Everything from here on up is still a very good Apes movie, in my humble ape-inion – just varying degrees of personal preference and heck, my rankings might change on a daily basis.
7. War of the Planet of the Apes (2017) – Up until now the latest in the series, this concludes the Caesar reboot ‘trilogy’ in a typically bleak, cynical Apes fashion. Humanity is truly falling apart now, and even starting to lose their voices in a callback to the first movie. Woody Harrelson’s fanatical, scenery-chewing Colonel is one of the series’ best human villains, and Caesar truly becomes a Christ-like figure with all his suffering in this one. At nearly 2 1/2 hours it’s a bit overlong and does bog down a bit in the prison camp scenes, and there’s a little too much torture and cruelty, even for an Apes movie, but it rallies for the biggest battle seen yet in the climax.
6. Conquest Of The Planet Of the Apes (1972) – So how did the Apes take over the world? This bleak (surprise!) third sequel to the original attempts to fill in the blanks by showing a subservient class of apes basically used as slaves one of those fascist-looking stark 1970s movie urban futurescapes. The parallels with the civil rights movement aren’t subtle, but mostly effective. Led by Roddy McDowall’s Caesar, the apes rise up to overthrow their masters. Hamstrung by a lower budget – the ape masks look particularly grotty in group scenes, and most of the action appears to take place in a few office blocks – Conquest is still a solid, hardboiled franchise entry, with probably McDowall’s best performance. The “theatrical” cut went for a neutered ending; if they’d used the darker original ending it’d probably go up a place or two here.
5. Escape From The Planet of the Apes (1971) – The most “light-hearted” of Apes movies, until of course everything goes horribly wrong. Blow up the Earth in the last one? No problem! Sending ape survivors Cornelius and Zira back in time makes for some great broadly comic 1970s culture clash moments, but as always in the Apes timeline, darkness beckons. An inventive way of continuing the series and creating a time loop, but the comedy and tragedy make for a somewhat uneasy mix. Still, I always get a kick out of watching a charming ape couple swaggering around ‘70s California.
4. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) – After series reboot RiseOf The Planet Of The Apes, the world as we know it is crumbling due to war and pandemic, as Caesar and his apes form their own world in the redwood forest and come to clash with human survivors in San Francisco. Like most Apes movies, it’s about people and apes trying co-exist and failing. The modern-day special effects are remarkable – no masks here! – as we start to see ape society splinter between hard-liners and moderates, while the human characters are sympathetic and well-rounded. It’s epic, but full of sharp character moments too.
3. Beneath The Planet of the Apes (1970) – Sure, this one is a strange, strange first sequel, muddled up by Charlton Heston more or less refusing to return except in a cameo, a whole goopy mutant human society being introduced seemingly out of nowhere, and one of the darkest, most cynical endings a mainstream G-rated movie has ever had. Yet I still love it precisely because it goes so hard – that final fade to black scarred me as a young ape-lover and still blows me away to this day. Whatever its complicated origins, Beneath the Planet of the Apes is a sequel that feels like it isn’t just about making more money and plotting easter eggs for sequels. There’s an eerie, doomed tone to the entire movie – that fiery vision of crucified apes and bleeding statues! – that carries me over some of the clumsier plot holes. Despite the end of the world thing and all, of course, it was only the beginning for this unkillable series.
2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) – Rewatching this series reboot recently, I was amazed at how gripping the emotional journey of young Caesar (Andy Serkis in the first of three astoundingly good motion-capture performances) is. Set pre-apocalypse, this one aims to tell us how we ended up with a “Planet of the Apes” through a combination of chance and human-created plague. Unique in this entire series, it’s recognisably set in “our” world, and it’s really the only movie where we see a human and an ape truly have an affectionate familial bond (James DeFranco’s turn here is superb). Perhaps it has less “action” than some of the movies, but the Golden Gate bridge climax remains thrilling and for me it’s one of the best of the saga. It’s no wonder that unlike Burton’s flop, this energetic reimagining enabled the series to carry on for four movies and counting.
1. Planet of the Apes (1968) – The original and still the standard for this series. Charlton Heston’s aggressive, cynical spaceman, that dissonant and unforgettable soundtrack, the still amazing makeup work, Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter’s endearing apes, those vast desert vistas, Maurice Evans’ conniving Dr Zaius and what is probably the greatest twist ending in movie history. No wonder we’re all still returning to apeland 50-plus years on.
Somehow, I’ve ended up working in journalism an awfully long time. And in that time, I have had many good editors, a great editor or two, and couple of terrible editors. I’ve also been an editor myself many times (I’ll leave it to others to judge where I fell on the scale myself).
An editor isn’t as glamorous as the headline-chasing feisty street-level reporter, perhaps. But in this age where journalism seems to be constantly under siege from all sides, editors do matter. They guide, they teach, they question, they correct, they set the tone and they can make or break a media outlet. My industry has changed a hell of a lot in the years since I started, but no matter how many apps, algorithms and pivots you throw at it, you need an editor in the mix to make quality journalism.
So here’s a tribute to the bleary-eyed, coffee-fuelled, rage-filled and yet quietly inspirational editors, with a look at eight editors portrayed in fiction who have always inspired me in my own wayward journalism journey, for good or bad.
Lou Grant, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) played by Ed Asner. When I think of a newsroom editor, the rumpled face of Ed Asner leaps to mind. No-nonsense, idealistic and gruff but with a heart of gold, Asner’s Lou Grant was the comic anchor of the still-classic Mary Tyler Moore Show. “Spunk? I hate spunk!” he growls at Mary in the very first episode. Asner played a sitcom character who was still a believable editor, and after the delightfully wacky Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its run he went on to play the exact same character in a very different drama that lasted for five seasons. Now that’s adapting your skill set to changing times.
Perry White, Superman comics: The greatest editor in comic books, even when his newspaper staff appeared to only consist of Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane in the glorious Silver Age days. White is old-school journalism to the max, firmly pushing for truth, justice and the American way, just like the Daily Planet’s office mascot Superman. White is constantly shoving his reporters out the door on wacky circulation-boosting assignments, hunting for that story that will make him shout “Great Caesar’s ghost!” In a world filled with kryptonite, Bizarros, giant alien gorillas, fifth-dimensional imps and more, Perry White is a glorious constant. I would work for Perry White any day of the week.
Jane Craig, Broadcast News (1987) played by Holly Hunter: I can’t pretend I know what it’s like to be a woman in a newsroom, but in this classic ‘80s romantic comedy, we watch Hunter’s intense and driven Jane Craig rise through the ranks and juggle relationships with two good but flawed journalists (the amazing Albert Brooks and William Hurt) while never giving up on her own goals. Hurt’s vapid pretty face and Brooks’ charisma-challenged newsman represent the two sides of journalism that never quite come together, while Hunter – trying to keep her principles in a constantly changing industry – is the one who really succeeds in the business.
Charles Foster Kane, Citizen Kane (1941) played by Orson Welles: Is he a good editor-publisher? After all, Welles’ masterpiece is about the rise and fall of Charles Foster Kane. Yet while he’s an egotistical, perpetually unsatisfied tyrant, what we see of Kane’s managerial skills in Citizen Kane also shows us that he’s a darned good newspaperman, hustling for scoops, scandals and attention. Yeah, he bends ethical lines a fair bit, but I’m willing to cut him a little slack as he dates back to the peak era of yellow journalism led by Hearst, Pulitzer and the like. I don’t imagine I’d like to work for Kane, but I’d sure as hell read any newspaper he put out.
Charles Lane, Shattered Glass (2003) played by Peter Sarsgaard:Shattered Glass remains one of my favourite, still rather underrated journalism movies, about the plagiarist liar journalist Stephen Glass and his unravelling. Sarsgaard is fantastic as the unassuming editor who begins to smell a rat in Glass’ fabulist copy, and doggedly purses the loose ends to discover what the real truth is. Calm but determined and intensely offended by Glass’s stream of lies, Sarsgaard’s Lane makes the dull business of factchecking seem like a spy thriller.
Ben Bradlee, All The President’s Men (1976) played by Jason Robards. Robards is the only one on this list who won an Academy Award for playing an editor, and rightfully so – his inscrutable, steel-eyed Bradlee is the axis around which Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford’s Watergate investigation revolves in All The President’s Men. Without Bradlee’s guiding hand and consent, the story wouldn’t be told. Like the best editors, he’s kind of terrifying, too.
Robbie Robertson, Spider-Man comics: Look, Spider-Man’s nemesis J. Jonah Jameson is undeniably entertaining, but firmly belongs on the worst editor list. How worst? He fires Peter Parker about twice a week, lied repeatedly about Spider-Man in print, hired supervillains to kill him, and on several occasions personally piloted giant robots to beat up Spider-Man. That’s a bad editor. But shift your gaze slightly to the side to consider Jameson’s managing editor at The Daily Bugle, Robbie Robertson, who for decades has been a calm, firm but steady presence in the newsroom, frequently dealing with his impulsive boss’s rants and focused far more on truth than agendas. Jameson makes all the noise; Robertson gets the damn paper out.
Dave Nelson, NewsRadio (1995-1999) played by Dave Foley: As the news director of WNYX, perky Dave Nelson is a sweet-faced rube thrown into a lion’s den of ego, eccentrics and mania. Surrounded by blowhards like Phil Hartman’s anchor Bill McNeal and a variety of other kooks including Stephen Root, Andy Dick and Maura Tierney, Foley as an editor spends almost the entire run of this classic sitcom putting out fires. And you know, that’s often what an editor’s job is – dealing with your staff and juggling all the balls at once. While he occasionally snaps, Dave Nelson simply being able to survive in a radio newsroom bubbling over with complicated personalities is an accomplishment all by itself.
There’s something about this year in particular, where every time I turn around I see headlines blaring the 30th anniversary of things I lived through and considered cultural touchstones in my life – the death of Kurt Cobain, OJ Simpson’s freeway chase, the release of Pulp Fiction, the debut of Friends, whathaveyou. Watching elements of your life turn into nostalgia is always strange.
And then there’s the Dandy Warhols, Portland, Oregon’s psych-pop cult sensations, who hit Auckland on their 30th anniversary tour this week. How is a band I still kind of think of as new-ish turning thirty, for crying out loud? But the Dandys still put on a spirited and rollicking old-school rock show at Auckland’s Powerstation, even if the band is – cough cough – like yours truly entering their 50s now.
The Warhols never quite ascended to the level of superstars like Pearl Jam or Green Day, but in some ways that’s their strength – they’ve felt free to play around in the murky area between hummable pop nuggets and sprawling psych-jams.
Live or on record, the Dandys have never quite settled on one signature sound – the impossibly catchy stuff of singles like “Bohemian Like You” and “We Used To Be Friends,” the yearning drone of druggy anthems like “You Were The Last High” and “Godless” or the clattering, Velvet Underground-adjacent jam of “I Love You.” Most of their hits got a workout in Auckland as well as some twisty new gems from their latest album Rockmaker. (The bouncy single “Summer Of Hate” really captures that caught-in-purgatory 2024 vibe well.)
Courtney Taylor-Taylor still has the easy charm of the pin-up frontman, while terrific drummer Brent DeBoer, guitarist Peter Holmström and keyboardist / bass / singer Zia McCabe all clicked with an effortless precision. The show perhaps lacked that spark of unpredictability and closing without an encore sapped the buzz a bit, but at their best the Dandys cooked up a warm singalong atmosphere with the honed skill that comes with having done this for (gasp) 30 years now.
The Dandys are always married in the popular imagination with another 1990s band, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, whom they costarred with as the subjects of one of the great music documentaries, 2003’s DIG! The documentary follows the steady rise of the Dandys and the clattering collapse of the Massacre and its unhinged frontman Anton Newcombe, and it’s a classic time capsule of 1990s alternative rock struggles.
Both bands started together and hung out a lot, but while the Dandys courted major labels and huge European crowds, Newcombe’s violent eruptions left that band a heap of “what ifs” in music history.
Rewatching DIG! again, the music scene has changed so much in the more than 20 years since that documentary came out that it’s like watching an alternative universe – no TikTok, no viral fans, just the hard graft of touring, magazine profiles and both bands constantly worrying about “selling out” (a concept which, as Chuck Klosterman has pointed out, has pretty much ceased to exist these days when everyone’s selling themselves in bite-size video pieces).
Long after DIG! the Warhols are still steadily driving along and while true music superstardom seems reserved for the Taylors and Beyonces of today, their big NZ/Aus tour is sold out and the Powerstation was jammed with appreciative fans Monday night. The Brian Jonestown Massacre are also still going, to this day, with their own fanbase, but carnage still follows them – they recently ended a New Zealand/Australian tour with a massive brawl on stage – the kind of thing that might have seemed edgy in your 20s but seems kinda sad when the band members are all well into middle age, frankly.
With DIG! it kind of felt like the story was that Anton Newcombe was some underappreciated genius and the Warhols too eager to court fame with their chill professionalism. (A failing of DIG! is we’re constantly told about Anton’s genius without really ever seeing evidence of it.) As I watch it now, Anton’s clear mental illness seems starker and his rambling music honestly lacks the snap and charm of the Dandys’ best tunes. Did the Dandys “sell out” and the Massacre get betrayed by corporate frauds? Or did the Dandys knuckle down and do the hard work and the Massacre succumb to its own pretensions?
At one point in DIG!, Newcombe rants, “I’m here to destroy this fucked up system. I will do it. That’s why I got the job. I said let it be me; I said use my hands. I will use our strength. Let’s fuckin’ burn it to the ground!”
Meanwhile, the Dandys opened up their Auckland show with the still stinging little satire “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth,” where Courtney croons, “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passe.” And so we all sang along about heroin. The Dandys gently mock the culture that spawned them, and somehow, they’ve survived. Does anyone care about selling out anymore?
Also in that same song: “You never thought you’d get addicted, just be cooler in an obvious way.”
Part of us is all still about chasing cool, whether it’s the 1990s or the 2020s. Hey hey hey.
Nik Dirga 