On this week's Hollywood and Levine Podcast, Ken switches things up and invites entertainment reporter Arlen Peters to take the reins and interview him. We hear all about Ken's lengthy career in the world of comedy and entertainment as a Writer, Director and Producer.
Spoiler Alert: He does not make Ken cry.
3 comments :
Nice podcast, I learned a lot. I've worked in radio too, and I think if I had to play "Kung Fu Fighting" overnight for 6 hours, I might have lost it too. Fortunately, I wasn't born quite yet.
The first few seasons of Cheers were absolutely amazing, and Gene Reynolds sounds like a mensch. Would have loved to be around then.
This was my first HOLLYWOOD AND LEVINE podcast! Listened to it in the FedEx van as I delivered packages in rural south-central Indiana. Loved it! (You and Arlen are almost voice twins, though!)
What struck me most about this first half of the interview was how you and David got writing. Particularly, the nights you'd spend outlining MTMS episodes for weeks on end. That took commitment! Just doing basic--even tedious--exercises like the Levine-Isaacs Method employed is probably a lot more useful than reading about the formulas posited by McKee, Vogler, Snyder, Field, etc.
I've largely avoided the Levine-Isaacs kind of screenwriting training and gone with the formulas because it seemed like they were easier and would save me time. They saved me time getting a story started, but I quickly got lost and had to restart because of it. So I probably wasted more time than I would have (to the tune of 15 years) just teaching myself screenwriting by watching shit and taking notes.
Plus, I think the effort put into those transcripts/outlines was also a GREAT study in discipline. It taught you guys that stories are not as easy as they look--which is what the formulas want us to believe. For this reason, you and David were ready to go several rounds longer to put in the work of breaking a greater story.
I really admire this approach to studying the more I think about it. You should write a book about it!
(Oh, wait...)
Thanks. 1974 was really a lousy year for Top 40- I also remember "The Night Chicago Died" and Paul Anka's "You're having my baby" getting heavy airplay that summer.
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