In the mid 80’s my partner and I had a pretty good movie career going along with our TV work. (I think this was that honeymoon period between the time VOLUNTEERS was made and actually released…because that window was pretty short as I recall.) Disney wanted to meet us.
We trooped down to Burbank, appropriately entered the Dopey Building and met with this very nice energetic young executive. If we had any movie ideas he wanted us to bring them to Disney first. Because of our work on CHEERS we were the perfect writers for them. They were looking to do sophisticated romantic comedies with with and heart, and smart crackling dialogue. Very few people could do that but we could and that’s what they wanted. We were obviously very flattered and said when we came up with something we would call them.
He then said, “Listen, while you’re here, we do have one project that’s open, and we think you guys would be perfect for it. THIS was the movie:
We graciously passed. We could write sophisticated comedy but we weren’t Noel Coward.
Are you suggesting Ernest Goes to School wasn't good comedy? Apart from Al Jankovic, Jim Varney was the funniest Ugly white guy of the nineties.
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm not being serious. Or aaaam I?
Varney was actually a very talented, classically trained actor, but that Ernest character, originally created for commercials, took off big time and I guess he knew what side his bread was buttered on. At least he got at least a couple of true classics under his belt before he passed on, voicing Slinky Dog for the Toy Story movies. I seem to recall that his Jed Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies was nicely subdued. I've always wanted to see how Billy Bob Thornton utilized him in "Daddy and Them," his final non-Ernest role.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame that Disney DIDN'T hire writers of your caliber to do something with the guy, although I'm sure the public would've rejected him in any other style of comedy. Too bad; he seemed like a good guy (he did a lot of appearances for sick kids) and he died way too young, at 50. I've never seen an entire Ernest film, and I'm sure they're every bit as dumb as their rep, but they always seemed like inoffensive, silly slapstick for kids and families, and no threat to the republic.
But I'm probably just being an apologist for a fellow Kentuckian (apparently, he even attended my first alma mater, Murray State University, and some of his commercials were for a car dealership in my hometown).
If you had gotten in during "Ernest Goes to Camp", you would have been legends. Instead, you're just "Those guys who did Cheers, MASH, Frasier, Becker, Wings, and 20 other things that won awards." Oh, what could have been!
ReplyDeleteAs another southerner, I must point out the problem with Varney's Jed Clampett. Not that Varney wasn't likeable, he always was. But. There was a huge difference between the movie and T.V. Jeds.
ReplyDeleteThe movie version had Jed as a total idiot. All the hicks were stupid. Modern Hollywood just lurves them backwoods' morons.
Then think about Ebsen's Jed. He wasn't sophisticated, but he was very smart and very wise. He and Miss Hathaway were intelligent, everyone else was either dense or nuts. How, exactly, did halving Jed's I.Q. help the movie?
Okay, okay, factor Jethro in and rural Americans are, ON AVERAGE, the stupidest people ever to draw breath. But that's what makes "Double-Ought Agent" Bodine a legend.
marlon - maybe I shouldn't have brought Jed Clampett into the conversation, since I never saw more than a few minutes of the Beverly Hillbillies movie. If indeed they dumbed Jed down, it's a shame. Even though the series got plenty of laughs out of some of the Clampetts' naivete and ignorance, the city folks didn't fare much better, and Jed's wisdom always shone through (as you note). That show is typically underrated by those who think "southern accent = brain damage."
ReplyDeleteI have a book that tells why Disney singed Varney...Michael Eisner witnessed Jim/Ernest get an enormous crowd reaction from the spectators at the Indy 500.
ReplyDeleteMr. Levine,
ReplyDeleteI understand that you probably won't give us the Disney exec's name, but can you say if he's still working, and if so where?
Of course, the biggest irony of Jim Varney was that he died of lung cancer, and Ernest appeared in several anti-smoking ads where he chastised Vern and worried about his health.
ReplyDeleteI knew it once I read it, but I'm embarrassed to admit that I had forgotten that Jim Varney died. I mean it's not that I ever saw him in anything - not intentionally, anyway - but still...
ReplyDeleteVarney's reel from '86 is a wonderful collection of his spots, plus an "attack" of a frontier fort during which he plays approximately 15 different characters. Jonathan Winters' quality.
ReplyDeleteIn "Ernest Saves Christmas, he assembles holiday lights on the living room tree, and that scene gave me a line I love to repeat when things unexplicably go awry in my real world, which they often do:
"It looks like a transmutation of the 110 to the 220!"
As others have noted, you likely couldn't have done something with Jim Varney that was other than Ernest, but that guy was so cool that back in 1986 my very northern wife and this very northern proud-to-be-a-Yankee whose forbears saved the Union, really liked that reel of Varney doing his ads and such. The one thing I learned long ago is that those who think some dumb southern hick is a dumb southern hick had best keep their hands around their neck so they can detect the otherwise-undetectable knife that slices their head off their shoulders, so sharp they can't feel it or notice it till they try to look left or right.
ReplyDeleteBut I'll also say that your decision also falls under what my father once told me: "the really smart person is the one who knows where they're stupid." Most people don't know that till they discover it the hard way.
my undergrad screenwriting professor's sole film credit was as writer on an ernest movie. he did not even get the job until he had left la and met the producer in nashville. somehow he turned it into a profession as a professor. you gotta hustle...
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