A yearly tradition...
For several years I've been talking about the "Lost" CHEERS scene. David and I wrote it for the 1983 Super Bowl Pre-game show to promote our fledgling series. They ran it just before game time and it was seen by 80,000,000 people. Nothing we've ever written before or since has been seen by that many eyeballs at one time. But the scene was never repeated. It never appeared on any DVD's. It just disappeared.
Until a couple of years ago.
Sportswriter supreme, Joe Resnick has taped every Super Bowl including that one. And since the scene aired so close to the game, it was on the tape. Thanks to friend of the blog, Howard Hoffman, he was able to digitize it and post it on YouTube. Here's the text of the scene.
So here it is. The Super Bowl is next.
Very cool. Well written, I say.
ReplyDeleteThe characters seemed as well-formed in this promo as they were throughout the run of the show. That, and the patience of the network, brought us some fun entertainment for years afterwards.
ReplyDeleteCharacters and network patience - probably tough to find in these days of nanosecond attention spans and the demand for instant revenue from old-school media.
When I'm king, things will be different!
Wow, a different time... when the Redskins and Dolphins actually played in the Super Bowl.
ReplyDeleteOl' Pete probably felt even worse after the game, given how John Riggins ran roughshod over that Dolphins defense.
I bet George Wendt would have given anything to be able to make this type of scene three years later when Da Bears went all the way (that game was on NBC as well).
I remember seeing that.
ReplyDeleteSo Paramount just tossed this into the dumpster after it was shown that one time? Well, I guess that was before the era of DVD extras, before they were hanging onto every scrap of footage as a potential bonus feature. Not that, as I recall, the CHEERS dvds had much of anything in the way of bonus features.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, Ken.
ReplyDeleteSo Paramount just tossed this into the dumpster after it was shown that one time? Well, I guess that was before the era of DVD extras, before they were hanging onto every scrap of footage as a potential bonus feature. Not that, as I recall, the CHEERS dvds had much of anything in the way of bonus features.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, TV shows that Paramount releases on DVD get little, if anything, in the way of bonus features, however much a show may deserve them. The two exceptions to this are any series with STAR TREK in its title, and any series starring Lucille Ball. Those will be loaded down with bonus features. Everything else? Forget it.
How was it working with Pete Axthelm?
ReplyDelete