Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Episode 22: Hanks for the Memories


Ken tackles a variety of subjects including getting Tom Hanks to star in his movie, dealing with agents, and the wacky fights he had with network standards & practices people. Lots of Hollywood stories and laughs. Plus, find out what the deal is with character actors.


Listen to the Hollywood & Levine podcast!

4 comments :

bruce said...

Ken, great as always.

I actually knew two of the people mentioned in this podcast. As Ken knows, I went to high school in LA with Honoria. When I was a math grad student at Stanford, Walter Parkes was my TA in Steve Kovacs' "Film Aesthetics" course. (Some of my professors weren't very happy that I took film classes.)

Also, my father, Sidney Reznick, was a writer from the 40s through the 70s and one of his former collaborators, Larry Markes, wrote several episodes of "McHale's Navy". Uncle Larry used his name for a threatened replacement for Capt. Binghamton (Joe Flynn). This is from memory -- I haven't seen the show in more than 50 years:

"I hear they're bringing in Capt. Sidney Reznick"
"You mean Sidney `Suicide' Reznick?"
"Yeah, the Kamikaze Kid!".

Made quite an impression on a 10 year old to hear his father's name used as a threat on national tv.

julian said...

hi Ken,

quick note on your sponsor WINC:

https://youtu.be/ojiHA64n6iw

not sure if this is a nod to 'A Mighty Wind', but i love it.

great pod,
julian


Andy Rose said...

There was a public TV documentary several years ago on the making of Homicide: Life on the Street, and one of the writers talked about how they would shuffle the cursing around in their drafts to get what they wanted. If they thought it was critical that one character call another one a son of a bitch, they would throw in 3 expendable hells and damns to have something to barter with when Standards came calling.

Sometimes that can backfire. On SCTV, Dave Thomas wrote a sketch called The Cruising Gourmet that he never intended to actually be in the show. It was a parody of the Al Pacino movie Cruising, which revolved around gay S&M clubs. In the sketch, Dave plays a chef on a cooking show who dresses in leather and has a turkey bound in chains. He "tenderizes" it with a whip and stuffs it by violently fisting the dressing into the cavity. He intended it to be a bargaining chip, but somehow NBC let it through without a peep, and it's even available on SCTV's official YouTube channel. Dave is ashamed of it now.

Mike Barer said...

The pods keep getting better!