What’s it like to break in and sell your first script? Ken tells his experience when “the Jeffersons” hired him and partner David Isaacs. It was quite a learning experience as you will hear.
Ken, I don't know how else to tell you about this, so I'll try a comment here. I was watching a video of David Milch in the aftermath of the DEADWOOD movie, and he was talking about starting a school for writers. He went on about how it would work, then someone asked what it would be called.
"I don't know. The Writers' College, probably. Maybe Big Wave Dave's. Nah, probably The Writers' College."
Just thought you'd like to know, if you don't already.
Very smart of you guys to have practiced writing outlines before your first "professional" one. But hey, where were the comedy writers in Full Metal Jacket?
B100 Program Director - nice guy to celebrate your Jefferson's sale.
Finally you've got a girlfriend for a cheap date at the Jefferson's show - too bad she made Carla Tortelli look genteel. Didja (and Isaacs) stand up and take a bow?
"So it's 1973, I'm sitting in my parents' condo watching daytime television, waiting for a phone to ring that never did."
Have any more depressing words ever been uttered? That sounds like a movie scene that could be interposed with clips of people dancing to disco, snorting coke, and fucking, with sad dirge music playing in the background.
Of course I'm glad it worked out, though. Movin' on up indeed.
"So it's 1973, I'm sitting in my parents' condo watching daytime television, waiting for a phone to ring that never did."
Funny (not really) that today we berate the boomerangs. Maybe we shouldn't, maybe there was a lot more of that long ago than we'd like to admit. That sentence also applies to me (insert 1976). Got a job out of college that had been misrepresented and I quit a month later, showing up on very shocked parents' doorstep, "i'll just take my old room for a while." Typing resumes, mailing resumes, "long distance phone call" followups, and sitting by the phone cause there was no answering machine.
Good ending: Found another job within a month which set the gears in motion for my career in which I still continue.
Don't apologise to your listeners (the >6 of us) because they may have heard part of the story before.
The new material embellishes our memory of your original recollection, with your vocalization style of storytelling adding to make the story fun to hear, even if parts of it were familiar.
I particularly like hearing about writers from the pre mid 80's era, whose works I greatly admired, but about all I knew about them at the time was their familiar name winking at me as their credits appeared.
And back then TV producers were often writers or ex-writers (compared to today).
Over the years some have finally stepped into the spotlight in some form or other e.g. Ron Friedman (thru Mark Evanier), Joe Bonaduce (thanks to his son), Frank Buxton (you mentioned), while others like Arthur Alsberg & Don Nelson, Albert E. Lewin & Burt Styler, Ed Jurist and Marty Roth appear to remain elusive.
7 comments :
Ken,
I don't know how else to tell you about this, so I'll try a comment here. I was watching a video of David Milch in the aftermath of the DEADWOOD movie, and he was talking about starting a school for writers. He went on about how it would work, then someone asked what it would be called.
"I don't know. The Writers' College, probably. Maybe Big Wave Dave's. Nah, probably The Writers' College."
Just thought you'd like to know, if you don't already.
Very smart of you guys to have practiced writing outlines before your first "professional" one. But hey, where were the comedy writers in Full Metal Jacket?
B100 Program Director - nice guy to celebrate your Jefferson's sale.
Finally you've got a girlfriend for a cheap date at the Jefferson's show - too bad she made Carla Tortelli look genteel. Didja (and Isaacs) stand up and take a bow?
"So it's 1973, I'm sitting in my parents' condo watching daytime television, waiting for a phone to ring that never did."
Have any more depressing words ever been uttered? That sounds like a movie scene that could be interposed with clips of people dancing to disco, snorting coke, and fucking, with sad dirge music playing in the background.
Of course I'm glad it worked out, though. Movin' on up indeed.
I'd heard or read elements of this story, but it was still great hearing it all together.
"So it's 1973, I'm sitting in my parents' condo watching daytime television, waiting for a phone to ring that never did."
Funny (not really) that today we berate the boomerangs. Maybe we shouldn't, maybe there was a lot more of that long ago than we'd like to admit.
That sentence also applies to me (insert 1976). Got a job out of college that had been misrepresented and I quit a month later, showing up on very shocked parents' doorstep, "i'll just take my old room for a while."
Typing resumes, mailing resumes, "long distance phone call" followups, and sitting by the phone cause there was no answering machine.
Good ending: Found another job within a month which set the gears in motion for my career in which I still continue.
Don't apologise to your listeners (the >6 of us) because they may have heard part of the story before.
The new material embellishes our memory of your original recollection, with your vocalization style of storytelling adding to make the story fun to hear, even if parts of it were familiar.
I particularly like hearing about writers from the pre mid 80's era, whose works I greatly admired, but about all I knew about them at the time was their familiar name winking at me as their credits appeared.
And back then TV producers were often writers or ex-writers (compared to today).
Over the years some have finally stepped into the spotlight in some form or other e.g. Ron Friedman (thru Mark Evanier), Joe Bonaduce (thanks to his son), Frank Buxton (you mentioned), while others like Arthur Alsberg & Don Nelson, Albert E. Lewin & Burt Styler, Ed Jurist and Marty Roth appear to remain elusive.
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