WE ARE LUCKY. WE GET TO MANUFACTURE MAGIC AND, IN SO DOING, PRODUCE A PRODUCT THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE:  Somewhere in the deep recesses of your memories, you may recall hearing of a "Katzenberg memo" which was a big deal in the movie industry about twenty years ago, a manifesto faxed all over town for its decrying a “tidal wave of runaway costs and mindless competition,” calling for Disney to turn away from blockbusters like Dick Tracy and from paying excessive fees for celebrity talent. ("It is a performer’s talent that can make a film a success. Celebrity can be an important bonus, but celebrity is really all about timing.") A memo which became so notorious that it prompted a young, more hirsute Alec Baldwin into calling Katzenberg "the eighth dwarf—Greedy."

Letters of Note has reprinted the 28-page Jeffrey Katzenberg memo dated January 11 1991, "Some Thoughts On Our Business." It's a great longread:

In the dizzying world of moviemaking, we must not be distracted from one fundamental concept: the idea is king. Stars, directors, writers, hardware, special effects, new sound systems… all of these can have a role to play in the success of a film, but they must all serve as humble subjects to the supremacy of the idea....

This is the key for controlling our destiny -- to have the courage to search out authentic, great ideas… and then have the steadfastness to control the material that is subsequently developed.

If the idea and the screenplay are strong, then it is possible to hire a less established star and a less established director and as a result be less of a hostage to the marketplace. Or, conversely, an idea and a screenplay can be so great as to attract major talent, who will be sufficiently excited that they will agree to terms that are acceptable to us.

The irony, as the above LA Times story notes, is that if anyone succeeded in this path it wasn't Katzenberg's next venture, Dreamworks SKG, but rather Pixar ... which Disney acquired.

A RECAP OF A SHOW I'VE NEVER SEEN: Last night, or perhaps some night prior or subsequent to last night, marked or will the debut of hit network comedy Work It, which ABC loves so much that it stuffed Cougar Town in a trunk and buried it under the basement. I didn't watch, but I think I've seen enough in commercials and TV criticism to offer this guaranteed 100%-accurate review:

ALOTT5MA FRIDAY PLAYLIST: We haven't done one of these in a while, but a reader made the request via Twitter: "On ALOTT5MA Music Friday, could I request a list of Positive Songs, in honor of the new year?"

WE SAY HALLOWED BUT ALLOWED: A 1922 poem by Gerard Nolst Trenité called "The Chaos" is making the rounds:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

It keeps going.

DOES THE LADY CHABLIS APPROVE?  The Girl Scouts will be adding Savannah Smiles cookies to the mix this year, "a lemon-wedge shortbread cookie dusted with powdered sugar ... cool and crisp, with just the right number of lemon chips to deliver tiny bursts of flavor." CSM notes:

Not all cookie varieties are quite so successful. The Girl Scouts have discontinued scores of cookie varieties during the program’s run, including Aloha Chips (with macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips), Apple Cinnamons, Double Dutch (chocolate cookies with chocolate chips), and the raspberry jam-filled Ice Berry Piñatas.

Despite Girl Scouts' efforts to make their cookies healthier (in 2007, several recipes were reworked so that they had zero trans-fat), the health-minded cookie offerings sell terribly. Many sugar-free and 100-calorie cookies have been briefly available, all disappearing quickly. Daisy Go Rounds, a 100-calorie replacement of the retired Cinna-Spins, only lasted two years (2009-2011).

Here's our previous discussion of the Core Six cookies.

IT HADN'T BEEN YOU:  Linda Holmes would like a disclaimer system in place to let us know when music has been replaced in streaming and dvd releases of tv shows and films because of rights restrictions. While watching When Harry Met Sally via Amazon digital download, she notes with regret how the ending is butchered:

We briefly reunite with the original soundtrack for Connick's plinking piano on "But Not For Me" and a quiet "Isn't It Romantic?" And then back to "But Not For Me," and then ... and then in the movie, there is a climactic moment when Frank Sinatra kicks in: "It had to be you." This is the moment that drives the entire concluding sequence of the film. Frank Sinatra is it. The alpha and the omega of love in New York on New Year's Eve, and instead of freaking Frank Sinatra singing a standard, the digital download gives you ... generic saxophone noodling.

It's pretty much an entirely different sequence, without any of the sense of inevitability and destiny — not to mention, you know, romance — that you get from Frank Sinatra kicking in.

WHO IS KAREEM ABDUL-JABAAR?  We've discussed a few of these before, but Mental Floss's 10 Classic Moments on Jeopardy! compilation nicely includes them all in one place.