How accurate is CALIFORNICATION?

For many of you the 4th of July holiday begins today. What better way to celebrate than with Friday Questions?

Dodgerdog has one near and dear to my heart:

Both "Episodes" and "Californication" have story arcs involving television writers getting it on with hot young actresses on their shows. (Hilarity ensues.)

The public is well aware that movie producers and directors often have "special" relationships with star actresses, but in films, the writers tend not to be around for the shoot, whereas in TV, the writers are always there (along with the producers and directors of course).

No question David Duchovny and Stephen Mangan are attractive guys. My question: since television writers are writing these shows, how much of this is from their own or observed experience as television writers, and how much is wishful fantasy?

There’s an old joke – Did you hear about the Polish actress who tried to get ahead in Hollywood by sleeping with writers?

I’m not saying it never happens, but it just doesn’t happen enough. That said, there have been occurrences. Chris Thompson created NAKED TRUTH for Tea Leoni that resulted in a rather public and ultimately messy affair. David E. Kelley is married to actress Michelle Pheiffer. There should be a statue of him in front of the Writers Guild.  Katey Sagal is married to Kurt Sutter and Jenna Fischer walked down the aisle with writer Lee Kirk. There are other examples. I’m sure you can Google them.

But CALIFORNICATION is as realistic as I DREAM OF JEANIE is. Actually, I DREAM OF JEANIE is more realistic.

Charles H. Bryan asks:

Ken, are there ever any discussions about casting actors that resemble each other when their roles are siblings? Or is the production happy to just find people who show up on time and can get the job done? I always think this of FAMILY TIES: "Those kids aren't related to each other. This is a scam." However, I never doubted that Niles and Frasier were brothers.

There is often discussion on the “look” of an actor for a part. Ideally, yes, you’d like to cast siblings who look like they could come from the same family.

But often you find yourself in a situation where you have two actors – one has the perfect look and the other has better skills. What do you do? Personally, I opt for the better actor.

And sometimes hiring actors who look too similar causes confusion. You like a little individuality – different hair color, one wears glasses, one is shorter, etc.

Remember, that in the original conception of the FRASIER series there was no brother. Casting director Sheila Guthrie saw a tape of David Hyde Pierce and suggested to the producers that if they ever wanted to give Frasier a brother, this might be the perfect guy. To Casey, Lee, & Angell’s credit, they saw the possibilities right away and snapped David up. So in this case, it wasn’t like a casting call went out for an actor who looked like Kelsey Grammer.

Side note: I can’t tell you how many times on shows I’ve gotten letters and photos from people who said they should play the brother or sister of cast members, and invariably they were so far off it was hilarious. I look more like Kirstie Alley than some of these women.

Matthew has a question based on a recent post regarding outlines.

Is it common for jokes and/or story lines that were in original outline but cut out of final script to be recycled in subsequent outlines?

Absolutely. On CHEERS we had what we called “the S.O.S. file” – Some Other Show.

And there was one bar run from the first season that we filmed but cut due to time. So a couple of weeks later we wrote it back into that week’s script. Again it was filmed and again it was cut because the show was too long. By the third time the cast almost killed us. But it was a good bit and we couldn’t just use their performance from a previous show because the wardrobe wouldn’t match. The third time proved to be a charm... thank goodness… for us.

What’s your question? Leave it in the comments section. Thanks. Happy 4th of July.