Friday Questions

Coming at ya every Friday.

Rob Larkin is up first.

When you and your writing partner began as story editors on M*A*S*H how was it dealing with veteran writers for the show such as Laurence Marks, Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum? Were they open to story suggestions? Or were they, "Who are you kids telling us what to do?"

That’s a great question. Jim & Everett could not have been nicer or more respectful. They were the most open to suggestions and rewriting. And ironically, their scripts required the least amount of rewriting. You could almost just shoot one of their first drafts.

We were such admirers of theirs and remained friends with them for the rest of their lives. I even did a blog post about them years ago.

The other veterans ranged from tolerating us to being downright rude. No names, but clearly they resented dealing with a couple of twentysomethings. And even then I’d forgive them if their drafts had come back better.

From Charles H. Bryan”

I was thinking today, a little, about THE COSBY SHOW of the 80s. I think if you mention the show to someone who was watching TV then, they'll say they liked it and think well of it, but it won't pop up on a list without the prompt. I think people more likely remember SEINFELD, or FRIENDS, or CHEERS as being part of NBC Thursday. I think more people would recall the Keatons than the Huxtables. Do you think THE COSBY SHOW gets the discussion that it should?

THE COSBY SHOW was one of the most influential television programs in the history of the medium. At the time it premiered in 1984 there was a lot of talk that sitcoms were an endangered species. That one show changed everything. The ratings were spectacular and no show in today’s landscape will ever have the impact THE COSBY SHOW had. CHEERS and FAMILY TIES only became smash hits because they followed THE COSBY SHOW.

Creatively, however, I don’t think THE COSBY SHOW aged well. And it’s not just because of those sweaters. In fairness, the first year was wonderful. Funny, fresh, and with attitudes that were real. And it had one of the best pilots ever.  I show it to my USC Comedy class every semester. 

But as the series progressed and Bill assumed more creative control the show became way more preachy. Scripts were routinely just thrown out by Bill so the poor writing staff was churning out material night and day. Not surprisingly, he would burn them out. And the end result reflected that.  Some terrific writers were reduced to galley slaves.  So you never got the advantage of seeing them at their best. 

Today the show feels dated and somewhat overbearing. But again, give it its due. THE COSBY SHOW must go down as one of the greatest shows in the history of TV.

Cpl. Clegg asks:

It appears that you are a veteran of many pitch meetings. From those, I assume, you must have formed some opinions on studio/network executives. What background makes the best executive? Former actor like Les Moonves? Long-term network employee like Fred Silverman? Or something else?

Taste, perspective, intelligence, showmanship, and courage. Courage to trust their instincts and make decisions out of conviction and not fear. And if they’re in comedy development it would help if they had a sense of humor. (Not all do.)

There are executives who have a great passion for television and always did. Then there are  executives that come from a strictly business background who are there simply to make money. They might as well be in banking or soft drink bottling.

A good executive can enhance a project and by establishing good relationships with top writers can attract the best people to their network. I’ve been fortunate over the years to work with some of these very talented men and women.

And finally, VincentS wants to know:

Although the "pilot" for THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW - which was actually an episode of THE DANNY THOMAS SHOW - was multi-camera, when the show proper was green-lit Andy Griffith insisted that it be single camera, his reasoning being that if the actors were performing in front of a studio audience they would be pushing for laughs. What's your take on that, Ken, especially since you're a director as well?

I think it depends on the premise and tone of the show. THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW had a more naturalistic easygoing tone – much like Andy himself. Other shows like BIG BANG THEORY really go for the big laughs, and in that case, a studio audience feeds the energy.

I can’t see MASH as a multi-camera show and I can’t see CHEERS as a single-camera show.



What’s your Friday Question? I’ll get to as many as I can. Thanks.

9/11 and David & Lynn Angell

I re-post this every year on this date and always will. 

9/11 affected us all, profoundly and in many cases personally. Two of my dear friends were on flight 11. David and Lynn Angell. There hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought of them, missed them, and not felt grateful that they were in my life.

David and I worked together on CHEERS, WINGS, and FRASIER (the latter two he co-created). We used to call him the “dean”. In his quiet way he was the one we always looked to for final approval of a line or a story direction. He brought a warmth and humanity to his writing that hopefully rubbed off on the rest of us “schickmeisters”. And he could be funny – sneaky funny. During long rewrite sessions he tended to be quiet. Maybe two or three times a night he’d pitch a joke – but they were always the funniest jokes of the script.

For those of you hoping to become comedy writers yourselves, let David Angell be your inspiration. Before breaking in he worked in the U.S. Army, the Pentagon, an insurance firm, an engineering company, and then when he finally moved out to L.A. he did “virtually every temp job known to man” for five years. Sometimes even the greatest talents take awhile to be recognized.

I first met David the first season of CHEERS. He came in to pitch some stories. He had been recommended after writing a good NEWHART episode. This shy quiet man who looked more like a quantum physics professor than a comedy writer, slinked into the room, mumbled through his story pitches, and we all thought, “is this the right guy? He sure doesn’t seem funny.” Still, he was given an assignment (“Pick a con…any con”) and when the script came back everyone was just blown away. He was quickly given a second assignment (“Someone single, someone blue”) and that draft came back even better. I think the first order of business for the next season was to hire David Angell on staff.

After 9/11, David’s partners Peter Casey & David Lee called me and my partner into their office. There was a FRASIER script David Angell was about to write. (It was the one where Lilith’s brother arrived in a wheelchair and became an evangelist. Michael Keaton played the part.) Peter & David asked if we would write it and for me that was a greater honor than even winning an Emmy.

David’s wife, Lynn, was also an inspiration. She devoted her life to helping others – tirelessly working on creating a children’s library and a center that serves abused children.

My heart goes out to their families. To all of the families.

I still can’t wrap my mind around it.

So tragic, so senseless, and even thirteen years later, so inconceivable.

King Kong, your frapaccino is up!

When was the last time you went to your local ATM and stood in line behind a Klingon? Or you were in line at a sandwich shop and in front of you was a guy dressed as a giant celery stalk? Such is life on a movie studio.

Forget the fact that you may see stars. On any given day you may see a woman with a giant snake around her neck. Or five bloody zombies playing basketball. (THE DRIBBLING DEAD)

When it takes four hours to apply gorilla make up, the actor is not going to get shed his fur to grab a latte at the studio coffee bar. “Chloe, your coffee is ready. King Kong, your Frappuccino is up!”

When Jamie Farr was doing MASH he’d always go to lunch in a dress.

It’s not unusual to walk through a movie lot past twenty ancient Roman soldiers or three prisoners chained at the ankle and not even blink. I recently saw a guy in a giant bulbous Beefeaters’ uniform try to wedge into a booth at the commissary.

On any given day at lunch you might see four bloody ER patients at one table, three hookers at another, and five aliens at the counter. And the funniest part is that everyone else in the restaurants ignores them. Nothing to see here other than space creatures and hot women with their breasts hanging out.

I spent twenty years on the Paramount lot, which at the time was hopping. All of the various STAR TREK series were filmed there. Data once asked me where the credit union office was. Our bungalow was near the daycare center and we would routinely see all kinds of Romulans and Denobulans dropping their kids off for the day.

Of course it’s one thing for all of us to be blase about these outlandish costumes, it’s another for the actors themselves.

A few years ago they were making the Coneheads movie at Paramount. We were filming a pilot on the adjacent stage. I drove up in a golf cart and there were fifteen Coneheads outside their stage milling about and smoking. I slowed down the vehicle and called out to them as a goof: “Hey, could any of you tell me where the Coneheads stage is?” They all said “Right here” and never got the irony that duh, they were all dressed as Coneheads.

As fun as it is seeing all these elaborate get-ups, I bet in the golden age of films (back in the 30s and 40s) it must’ve REALLY been fun. Cowboys mingled with submarine crews and Frankenstein shared a smoke with Harem girls. Back in the 50s when Hollywood was making all those sword and sandal films I bet you had some extras going to lunch at the studio commissary dragging crosses.

For all the aggravation of show business, I must say there wasn’t a day I didn’t drive onto a studio lot and think, “How cool that THIS is where I work.” But I never took full advantage of it. I never wore my Princess Lea costume to work.

Reporting from New York

It’s been awhile since my last travelogue. I had trips planned to Ferguson, Syria, and West Africa but couldn’t get bonus miles so what’s the point?

Spent a long weekend in New York City. Was there to attend a family Bat Mitzvah, see some shows, and sweat. Took Virgin American going. It was my first time on that airline. Never been in a cabin with soft purple club lighting before. Or seen emergency instructions delivered as a hip hop video. (Yo! Evacuate bitches and children first.) I was expecting a bouncer and velvet rope in front of the lavatories. We took off late. There was a mechanical problem. I think the fog machine was on the fritz. But the Flight Ho’s were very nice. They went down the aisle offering headphones and iced out jewelry.

First thing I learned upon landing was that Joan Rivers had passed away. She was a giant, a trailblazer – the Jackie Robinson of women comediennes. I especially felt the loss being in her town. My first thought though – and I imagine Joan herself would not say “too soon” – was that for next year’s Emmys they should air the In Memoriam segment during the red carpet show.

If they gave away free iPhones, the line wouldn’t be as long as the one at JFK trying to get a taxi. Had to be a thousand people. Even if the nearest Uber cab is in Philadelphia book it.

Stayed at the Shelburne in the Murray Hill district. It wants the public to think of them as chic and are as successful in that goal as Buick is.

First night my wife and I went to see BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL. Jesse Mueller won a Tony for playing Carole King. Sure wish we had seen her. We got the understudy. Rebecca LaChance. But she was actually quite good. Hey, it’s not like she had to duplicate Barbra Streisand’s voice. Of course you wonder – how exceptional is a Tony-winning performance when the understudy can pull it off? By the way, you can only get a refund if the star’s name is above the title, although you can still get your money back if the night you attend the title is BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROL O’CONNER MUSICAL.

It was a lovely warm night so we walked through Times Square. Tourists were taking pictures of the guy dressed as Spiderman, two Cookie Monsters, and the girl in patriotic body paint who was completely naked but for panties. The Jennifer Lawrence nudes were less revealing. Star Spangled Girl might still be there in the winter. But hurry. After October she paints herself wearing a coat.

The U.S. Open tennis tournament was going on at Flushing. I didn’t attend but to show my allegiance to this great country of ours I did take a photo of the naked girl in red, white, and blue body paint.

There is scaffolding around St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Either they’re refurbishing or converting it into a shrine for Derek Jeter.

Don’t sleep in the Subway. Bed bugs have been reported on four major lines.  And NY subways are usually so sterile. 

Had lunch with comedy writing royalty – Bob Ellison. Afterwards we took a stroll. 55th Street was blocked for some film production. Bob said, “They’re shooting GAME OF THRONES.”

I took a photo of a police booth on Lexington and posted it on Facebook saying I was in town to pitch a new low budget cop show, POLICE KIOSK. My Facebook friend Pamela Pettler, suggested even better titles. KIOSK 54 WHERE ARE YOU?, HILL STREET BOOTHS, and KIOSKJAK.

But New York’s Finest was on the case. “Squeegee Man” was arrested for the 226th time. Citizens are breathing much easier now that the serial windshield washer is off the streets.

Of course the big commotion was at 61st Street outside Joan Rivers’ building. Every TV news van, satellite dish, searchlight, and camera was out there along with a thousand paparazzi. What were they hoping to see? I can almost hear Joan calling down from the heavens, “Where were you bastards when I was alive?”

Saw IF/THEN, which should be called IF/ONLY (I had seen anything else). Navajo Code Breakers couldn’t decipher this convoluted story. The only reason to go is to see Idina Menzel belt every song so loud that one night she’s going to projectile vomit her liver right into the balcony.

It was Fashion Week in New York although you’d never know it from walking the streets. The Carole King schlump look is still very much in.

For all its craziness, New York always wins me over because WPIX, Channel 11 still airs the original 39 episodes of THE HONEYMOONERS. Saturdays at 11. Ralph, Norton, Alice – baby you’re still the greatest. And Trixie.

The Kramden’s one bedroom apartment in Bensonhurst with just a table, two chairs, and 1943 ice box today is renting for $3,000 a month.

On Sunday everyone in New York was not just in mourning, they were inconsolable as they said goodbye to one of their own. The Derek Jeter retirement ceremony was held at Yankee Stadium. Oh, and there was the Joan Rivers memorial too.

Returned home via American Airlines so we had not one but two mechanical problems that delayed us. The second one after an hour on line on the tarmac. Fortunately our flight wasn’t cancelled. That should be their new slogan: “American Airlines: You’re lucky we fly at all.”

My guess is mechanical problem number two was the windows in the cockpit were smeared. Where is "Squeegee Man" when you need him???

In the mood for a post about MASH?

Since I worked on MASH for four years, I get a lot of MASH Friday Questions.  Thought I'd answer a couple today that require some really candid answers.  I may have answered some of these earlier.  I don't remember. 
From reader “Bee” comes:

Did it ever bother any of the MASH production staff that seemingly no attempt was made to make the women's hair and makeup seem to be of the 50's era? (Margaret had a Farrah Fawcett hairdo later on in the series fer cryin' out loud - and Klinger's getups were about the only reliable shout-outs to actual female dress of that time).

I LOVE the show, but this one thing always bugged me.
 
Bee, it bugged me more. To the point of driving me crazy. Nurses in Korea also didn’t have long nails, sport bright red lipstick, or wear tailored green sweatshirts with the MASH logo. Dog tags were for identification not accessories. Fashion experts were not consulted when designing wartime army fatigues.

But these are arguments producers rarely win. It’s the TV equivalent of trying to give a cat a bath.

From Just a Guy:

I’m curious what you think the fresh shelf life of a TV show really is--be it sit com or drama...
For example on MASH, if you watch real closely, after a couple of years (and this is especially true when new characters replaced the original), you can see where scripts are basically re-cycled, e.g. a situation occurs with Trapper and a few years later the same exact situation occurs with BJ and so on with Burns and Charles and other characters. Sometimes the role/words Hawkeye spoke to Trapper end up being the same (or virtually the same) or virtually identical are switched and BJ says them to Hawkeye, etc. etc. etc.

So my question is this: what's the shelf life of a TV show, how long do you think it lasts before it actually becomes redundant?

After five or six seasons every show starts showing its age. Sometimes recasting can add a freshness that keeps the show going for a few more years. And some shows that rely on a successful formula (like LAW & ORDER) seem to defy time and can go on forever.

But I’d say seven years is the magic number. Let’s see William Shakespeare come up with the 150th episode of Hamlet (and getting notes on the outlines from a network executive who just graduated from Sarah Lawrence).

The name of the MASH episode Just a Guy was referring to was Preventive Medicine from season seven. The story seemed very intriguing. The number of arriving wounded had increased because of one careless Colonel. Hawkeye slips him a mickey then to keep him from returning to the front removes his appendix. This was before malpractice suits and HMO’s, but there was still that pesky question of ethics. It created a nice debate between Hawkeye and BJ. We did a lot of rewriting on that episode, the cast was happy, we were happy, and they went off to the ranch to make it.

On Friday night David tuned in to the MASH rerun that CBS was airing at 11:45. After watching a few minutes he came upon a horrible discovery – IT WAS THE EXACT SAME SHOW THAT WE WERE FILMING. Identical. Same plotline, same argument. The only difference was it was better (no surprise there – Larry Gelbart vs. us).

We were mortified. I mean, it’s one thing to steal from other shows, but to steal from your own? We looked like a couple of blithering idiots. The amazing thing is that no one on the cast or crew caught it. And a lot of them were there for the original episode.

By the way, check out the first and last seasons of THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW.  There are some episodes that are practically identical.   So we weren't alone.  Although that doesn't help.  I'm still embarrassed.

The "Jumping the Shark" writer finally speaks out

This is a repost from many many years ago.

There’s a nice article in the LA TIMES “Calendar” section by Fred Fox Jr. the writer who wrote the famous “Jump the Shark” episode of HAPPY DAYS.

Very quickly, for those who don’t know, several guys were sitting around a bar one night discussing their favorite shows and wondering what was the precise moment that they went downhill? One suggested for HAPPY DAYS it was when Fonzie literally jumped a shark to prove his love for girlfriend Pinky Tuscadero. That expression caught on, a website was born, and the rest is infamous history.

You can read Fred’s article here.

He talks about dealing with it. Going from incredulous to embarrassment to acceptance. When I read the piece, this was my reaction: envy.

Seriously, how cool to say you wrote one of the single most famous episodes in television history! Bobby Thomson hit “the shot heard round the world” but everyone also remembers Ralph Branca, the pitcher who served it up. Name me one other relief pitcher from 1951.

I’m glad that Fred wrote the piece. I’m glad that he’s willing to accept the notoriety. I say, own it. Be proud of it.

And by the way, that shark episode was not the tipping point for HAPPY DAYS. As Fred points out, the series went on for another six highly rated seasons. That’s like the Titanic hitting an iceberg and sinking three years later.

One other point: To this day, HAPPY DAYS reruns make me laugh. They’re 30+ years old but are still funny. There are even some good laughs in the episode where Fonzie jumps the shark.