This is a yearly tradition.
For several years I had 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 few years ago.
Sportswriter supreme, Joe Resnick had taped every Super Bowl including that one. And since the scene aired so close to the game, it was on the tape. Sadly, Joe passed away a few years ago. You can read my tribute to him here.
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 Sunday.
GO RAMS!!!
Nice to remember when the Super Bowl wasn't an all-day recruiting video for the armed forces.
ReplyDeleteSo whatever happened to this show "CHEERS"? Did NBC pick it up for another season after 1983?
ReplyDeleteI looked it up on Wikipedia, and it only says "a short-lived sitcom starring Al Rosen as 'Sinatra'".
Btw, it seems this is the first time a back-to-back World Series and Super Bowl have been between teams from the same two metro areas.
ReplyDeleteI am not a big fan dynasties. It probably stems from Yankee hatred in my youth. 50's and 60's It always seemed like they got the best players and this was before free agency. Of course this goes back to the time when they acquired Ruth. How ever I would like to see the Pats win. Their run has been so rare. As great as the Packers were under Lombardi they never had a run like this. The 49ers were pretty close but they had two different coached and two great quarterbacks. Warren Moon was pretty good when he was 40 but not like Brady. Spygate and deflate gate were way over blown. No pun intended on the latter. In an age of free agency and salary cap no one is ever going to match what the Pats have done. Even if they lose tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteUgh! After that block pass interference by Rams player Nickell Robey-Coleman toward New Orleans Saints player Tommylee Lewis near the final minutes of the game at the NFC Championship bout, no way am I gonna cheer for the LA Rams during the Super Bowl. Since I'm working that day and the breakroom TV doesn't have CBS reception, I actually won't be watching but if I were, I'd definitely say "Geaux Patriots"!
ReplyDeleteFriday Question:
ReplyDeleteWhen I was watching a soap opera in a waiting room I was struck by the acting style, which I would describe as "selling your lines." Right on the edge of hamming it up, every line by every actor seemed to be accompanied by raised eyebrows, widening eyes, or other changes in facial expression to reinforce what was being said. Where did this come from? Does somebody make them do this or is it a cultural thing, or what?
Since we seem to be allowed to engage in political discussions around here, I'm just gonna put this out here:
ReplyDeleteEverybody's joking right now in light of Trump's "hamberder" dinner, that he'll probably invite the winning team to the White House for a dinner of Little Caesar's Hot-N-Ready pizzas.
But . . . Trump (and Pence, and a lot of the GOP) has been boycotting the NFL over the knealing.
Whoops.
Was this from the first year it aired? They look SO young, especially Wendt and Ratzenberger.
ReplyDeleteBut Kraft is a big buddy of Trump's (if indeed Trump has such things), so if the Pats win, they'll be going.
ReplyDeleteCould you imagine what type of Super Bowl parties Sam and the gang at CHEERS would have had in the many years in which the Patriots were playing? I know it would have been nearly impossible to write an episode based on a Super Bowl matchup, given the very short turnaround between them making it and the game airing compared to producing a sitcom...but maybe a quickly-written live episode of CHEERS for the Patriots Super Bowl. But I was really just thinking in the sitcom world and not the sitcom writing world.
ReplyDeleteOf course as a life long L.A. boy I'd love for the RAMS to win the Super Bowl. Yet, if for no other reason Tom Brady already has more S.B. rings than any other quarterback. Plus, he gets to bone Gisele Bundchen without a rubber. As the liberals say about the rich, he's already got more than his fair share. He doesn't need any more. It's time to share the wealth.
ReplyDeleteI'd bet the over.
M.B.
Hi, Ken. A couple of years ago, I downloaded the video, fixed the aspect ratio and cropped out the VHS distortion at the bottom, just for my own amusement. You're welcome to the file. It's a little over 11 MB.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dropbox.com/s/t8ew5acuhh645dk/Cheers%20Super%20Bowl%20Special%2019830130.mp4?dl=0
That will play the file, and you can download it from there.
It's small thanks for all your work here. Take care. (No need to post this. I just don't know how else to get the URL to you.)
Pete Axthelm. Brilliant writer. Died of alcoholism at 47- complete liver failure. I remember he was eulogized as a free spirit who lived life to the fullest-I don't think you would hear that kind of talk today.
ReplyDeleteHe was NBC's answer to Jimmy the Greek in that he predicted games against the point spread (he picked the Dolphins to beat the Skins BTW). Then the press started taking the networks to task for encouraging gambling, so NBC dropped him. He wound up on ESPN.
Not watching today. If either the Chiefs or Saints had made it, I would be watching- but I really have no interest in this matchup.
Don't like either team. I'm burning off stuff on my DVR, such as rugby and soccer games, and if I have time "Die Hard" (haven't seen it yet).
ReplyDeleteAn unfortunate new Superbowl tradition in recent years is the annual scientology Superbowl ad, which always results in hilarious tweets mocking the creepy ads.
ReplyDeleteStart at 8 seconds, go exactly one minute, ending with Cliff's "SuePear Bohl SevOnTeen" (and Diane's reaction), and there's a perfect Cheers opening ... one that could replace that first-season one which was just a reshoot of the spraying-the-bar-for-germs gag from an earlier episode.
ReplyDeleteWell, okay, you need to figure out a way to have something else on screen when Pete Axhelm enters. A little re-editing, though, and there's a great little self-contained teaser.