“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Monday through Friday around 7:30 AM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moment’s notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013-16 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Program scripts from week of April 4, 2016
My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
RIP Patty Duke
I very nearly passed on this story. We’ve lost so many stars throughout the media world so far this year that Patty Duke’s death seemed like just one more. Then I realized, while Duke was a big star if you’re my age or older, there were plenty of people, entire generations in fact who may have never heard her name.
That’s not surprising since she moved away from the spotlight thirty years ago. She had lived in Couer D’Alene, Idaho and had even gone back to the first name on her birth certificate, Anna. For the younger generation here’s your connection to Patty Duke, she is actor Sean Astin’s mother. Astin is best known as Sam Gamgee from the Lord of the Rings movies.
And it was in movies that Anna Marie Duke would burst into America’s spotlight. Her childhood was very hard. Her dysfunctional parents would eventually turn her over at age eight to a pair of unscrupulous talent agents who would take pretty much every kind of advantage of the girl. They decided to change her name to Patty. She worked mostly in television as a child, including being one of the contestants caught up in the game show rigging scandal centered on the program “The $64,000 Question”. Duke would eventually have to testify before Congress about that. It was at age 13 that she stepped into the role that made her a star. She played Helen Keller next to Anne Bancroft’s Annie Sullivan in “The Miracle Worker” on Broadway. She would continue that role for nearly two years, becoming the youngest star to have her name above the title of the show on the marquee. Duke then re-created the role for the movie version, winning an Academy Award for her work. At the time, she was the youngest winner in history for a competitive category. Her success propelled her back to television, this time as the star of “The Patty Duke” show. There she played identical cousins and the show ran for more than a hundred episodes. The years that followed showed steady work that won her both a Golden Globe and several Emmys. It was also a time when she struggled with bipolar disorder. Duke continued to work into the 21st Century but had slowed down considerably. She was married four times and at one point was romantically linked to Desi Arnaz, Jr., a relationship very much opposed by his mother, Lucille Ball.
In the end, the star chose to live a quiet life, away from the spotlight. It appears that she finally found happiness. Anna Marie “Patty” Duke died as a result of sepsis following an internal rupture. She was 69 years old.
Social Media Fails
A couple of interesting stories in the last week or so that show we still don’t truly understand how this whole social media thing really works.
The first involves Los Angeles Lakers point guard D’Angelo Russell. The rising NBA star secretly taped a conversation with his teammate Nick Young about Young’s, um social life. This is a problem because Young is engaged. The video went viral and Russell is deep in the doghouse with his teammates, while it appears Young is also there with his fiancee, pop star Iggy Azalea. Russell has apologized for making the tape.
The second story comes from my old hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. There, WTAE-TV, Channel 4 has fired long time anchor Wendy Bell over some racially insensitive remarks she made on her Facebook page. Bell had worked at Channel 4 for eighteen years and won several regional Emmys. The post was in regard to a shooting in the Pittsburgh area. She got into trouble when she began to make racial assumptions about who the shooter or shooters were, at a time when no description was available. She later edited the comments and apologized for them.
Neither one of these folks used anything like good judgment. Russell has the defense that he is still young. Learning the balance of risk versus reward takes time to develop. That’s why we so often look at young folks and ask “What were you thinking?”. Bell is a veteran journalist and an adult. She failed to properly edit her public thoughts. She certainly should know better.
What fascinates me is the difference in response in these two cases. D’Angelo Russell has been getting a full on shunning by his teammates. They won’t even sit at the same table with him at meal times. That’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. The team is handling this internally.
The response at WTAE strikes me as less reasonable. Bell’s comments, while stupid and clearly grounded our institutional racism, pale in comparison to some comments being tossed around in the current political arena. This is clear suspension territory. The escalation to termination makes you wonder what’s going on behind the scenes. Was this latest in a series of events (of which I can find no reference in any coverage) or did the station take advantage of the situation to clear what is undoubtedly a very large contract from the books?
In the end, what we find is that social media continues to be a minefield for the unwary. Of all the people involved, I only see one in control of their media responses. That’s the pop star fiancee, who seems content to deal with her personal issues in private.
Toonz For All
Once upon a time, there was a wonderful magical forest called the Internet. It was a world created by powerful wizards that could connect people all over the real world. Then the wizards decided to just set it free. People believed that with this wonderful world anyone could become a creator and share their creations with the world. There would be no limits and no boundaries, and the world would become filled with beautiful, wonderful works of art. And everyone would live happily ever after.
Of course, real life never quite lives up to fairy tales. The Internet was going to unleash a tidal wave of new creativity, allowing musicians and writers and photographers and graphic artists and movie makers the ability to directly reach their audiences. While there’s a whole lot of energy being expended, the overall quality varies widely. Personally, I’ve come across a lot of awful writing and I’m pretty sure the world is reaching the kitten meme saturation point.
So it kind of felt like maybe there was a ray of sunshine gleaming through the clouds a couple weeks ago with the announcement that the software known as Toonz was being released for free. Toonz is a program developed by Italian developer Digital Video. At the end of March they sold the software to a Japanese company named Dwango as part of the process of making the software free and open source.
Toonz is the software used to create the U.S. animated television called “Futurama” but in the animation field it’s better known for being the software used by the legendary Studio Ghibli to create such beloved films as “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Ponyo”.
Here’s what’s really exciting about this release. The new owner’s have pledged to continue support and development of the open source software, henceforth known as “OpenToonz”, while simultaneously offering a reasonably priced pro version called Toonz Premium. It means that a state of the art 2-D animation software is now available to anyone and everyone. Animation software at this level has been a dream for amateur animators or game developers. Now it will be available with further development and even training being offered by Dwango.
I don’t know that OpenToonz is going to unleash a tidal wave of great new animations. In fact, history would indicate we are going to see an awful lot of really bad work first. But there has been some wonderful music and writing and movies that have grown in the magic forest called the Internet. Let’s hope there’s yet another chance for “Happily Ever After”.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2016
Theme music for “The View From the Phlipside” and “TVFTP – Podcast” is “Hustle”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
Stories Are My Life 
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