trail of bread leads off:
Watching a few clips of UK Sitcom Victoria Wood's Dinner Ladies (Lunch ladies for you, I think) they said that each (of the very few) episodes was filmed twice (Friday/Saturday) in front of a live audience. This is of course expensive (VW was indulged by the BBC on the basis that she was actually brilliant), but allowed for rewriting and tweaks to get the best from the episode. I wondered if any USA sitcoms had done something similar.
Yes. In the ‘70s the Norman Lear shows (ALL IN THE FAMILY, MAUDE, GOOD TIMES, ONE DAY AT A TIME, JEFFERSONS, etc.) were all shot on tape.
There were two performances with two different audiences. 5 PM and 8 PM. After the 5 PM the writers would sometimes tweak the script. What you saw on the air was the best take from each of those performances.
From Joe:
I've been watching a lot of MASH during social distancing, and it seems like Charles Emerson Winchester was Frasier Crane before Frasier Crane: Smart, snobbish, thrown in with a group of zany characters, with whom he's initially standoffish but comes to be more a part of the gang and displays a lot of depth. So with that long-winded intro, I think if any MASH spinoff would have worked, it would have been with Charles. What do you think?
It was my understanding that David was approached about doing the sequel but was not interested. And in future years he rarely took part in any MASH retrospectives. He didn’t want to only be associated with Charles Winchester.
I wasn’t there for the origination of AfterMASH. It was Larry Gelbart who came up with the concept and wrote the pilot. Larry also was present most of the first season.
The reason David Isaacs and I joined AfterMASH was the chance to work on a daily basis with Larry Gelbart. And it proved to be an experience worth its weight in gold. We learned so much and so enjoyed his company – despite the outcome of the series it was a once-in-a-lifetime incredible experience because of Larry Gelbart.
WB Jax queries:
I wanted to know if you ever met the late (film music composer) James Horner or if you and/or David attended any of the "Volunteers" scoring sessions. If so, can you share some memories about the sessions or about James Horner?
Unfortunately, no. Our only involvement in the music was to select the oldie used over the main titles (“Blue Moon” by the Marcells).
Otherwise, we were totally out of the loop. And to be honest, James Horner, at the time, was not as established as he would become, so we didn’t go “Wow! We got James Horner!”
But he was a phenomenal talent and died way too young (61). The music might be the best part of VOLUNTEERS.
And finally, from Bryan Price:
Ken - You mentioned in a previous post thinking that the SF Giants were loaded with some of the best broadcasters on a team. (I agree - it's a great foursome.) Can you think of another team that has four broadcasters with such high talent?
This is subjective, of course. But in my opinion: The Mets, the Padres, the Rangers, the Rays, the Phillies, the Braves, the Cubs, the Brewers.
Other teams might have a great TV crew and lousy radio guys or vice versa. Pretty much every team has at least one good announcer.
But for my money, the best of the best in radio and TV combined are the Giants, the Mets, and the Padres.
I have to know when it's Tuesday because we put the trash out Tuesday night.
ReplyDeleteI think the Phillies radio crew of Scott Franzke and Larry Anderson (who now only does home games) should be on TV and the TV crew assigned to the radio booth. Franzke and LA bring back some of the magical chemistry Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn had for 25 years.
ReplyDeleteSome of the best games with Kalas and Ashburn were during blowouts. Kalas would play straight man to Ashburn's double entendres. An example: Harry was talking about player superstitions and asked if Ashburn ever had any. Richie replied he had one - he slept with his bat. "In fact, I've slept with a lot of old bats in my time."
There was a time when a 4 man broadcast group, Kalas, Richie Ashburn, and Wheels with one other whose name escapes me, would alternate innings between tv and radio. I rather liked that setup as you never grew tired be of whoever was calling the game.
DeleteBack in the old radio days, shows like The Jack Benny Program were done twice, once for the East Coast and again for the West to accommodate the three hour time difference. Gags would be tweaked in the interval between performances. Recordings of both versions of the anthology series Escape are available.
ReplyDeleteJust saw a Trump supporter on YouTube protesting against the lockdown being asked by a journalist what she thinks of the scientific advice. She said "I don't believe your science, because I believe my god."
ReplyDeleteWho needs Netflix for comedy when you have people like this giving us so much laughter? ��
I thought one of the best Frasier episodes from the later seasons was the one with Stiers as a pseudo-father to Frasier and Niles. Perfect casting.
ReplyDeleteThe Carol Burnett Show also was shot twice in front of different audiences. Tim Conway stuck to the script at first taping and improvised during the second.
ReplyDeleteComparing the Mets TV crew to the Yankees, I think one big advantage is the Mets only have total of 3 who have been together for years with Gary Cohen handling all the play-by-play duties, while the Yankees have too many to count - never know when tune in who will be doing play-by-play or analysis. The Mets announcers seem to have better chemistry as a result. As far as radio, Howie Rose of the Mets has been great for years.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more on your assessment of baseball broadcast teams. It's a shame that most of the country doesn't get to enjoy Donny and Mud on the Padres' TV broadcasts. They have often made a Padres hopeless cause an entertaining delight.
ReplyDeleteI've read that the Carol Burnett Show taped both their "dress rehearsals" and later the "actual show". Quotes because Tim Conway would stick to the script for the first. When assured they had a usable version from that, he'd do changes and improv during the latter. They'd then pick the funniest to air usually the latter.
ReplyDeleteI’m not in the business but had heard decades ago that the Lear shows were shot in the way you describe. AITF was my favorite show (the earlier seasons were the best) and those actors performed as if the show were a play. I had so much respect for them. None of this nonsense of actors cracking up or forgetting lines or the Lorre ilk of shows taping 15 second scenes that get pieced together. He’s clearly successful but his shows are just different animals from the Lear classics.
ReplyDeleteCan't keep up with which day of the week it is? Welcome to my world, Ken. You all are just catching up to where I've been for years.
ReplyDeleteFRIDAY QUESTION: Have you heard of the "24 Hour Plays project?" This is where playwrights with no other venue (due to the Corona virus) can do a reading of their plays online. It is essentially a virtual Ten-minute play festival. I believe there are a couple of other similar platforms.
Would you, have you considered submitting some of your plays to one of these virtual festivals? It might be a good place to try out some new stuff.
M.B.
P.S. To Wednesday's blog. I tried Lucky Charms when I was a kid. I wasn't a fan. Of course, back then they only had the four, original marshmallow shapes: yellow moons, pink hearts, orange stars and green clovers.
Thanks for recognizing the Phillies broadcast team, Ken! They're terrific, especially Scott Franske and Larry Anderson on radio. Baseball can be so good on the radio in the hands of skilled announcers who can manage to juggle the play by play with pertinent facts all while letting the game breathe. Scott and LA manage to do this incredibly well and their chemistry adds for some hilarious comedy at the same time.
ReplyDeleteFRIDAY QUESTION: Now that masks and face-coverings are in public consciousness again, I'm reminded of a question I always had about M*A*S*H--
ReplyDeleteIn the operating room scenes on MASH, the doctors usually wore their masks with the lower strap tied around the neck and the upper behind the head (like this.) The nurses on MASH usually tied their masks differently, with both straps crisscrossing and tied behind the head (like this.)
Is there any reason to this difference? Historical accuracy (but, even so, still why?) Just a preference by the actors or costumers? Something else?
Completely minor thing from a long-ago TV show, but it's the kind of thing that once you notice, you wonder about forever, so I figured I'd ask the question...
Ken, since you broached the topic, what is your opinion of the Dodgers' primary announcing team of Joe Davis and Orel Hershiser? Personally, I think they're solid regarding calling the games and Orel's analysis and breakdown of plays and situations is excellent. I just find some of their banter gets a little too cute sometimes and they need to remember, as Vin Scully always reminded us, to talk to the audience, not to each other.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a sitcom, but Saturday Night Live is done twice, with the dress rehearsal being deliberately overloaded so that Lorne Michaels always has some sketches to cut before the live show.
ReplyDeleteIn reruns (and sometimes even in the same-day West Coast feed), they often used to substitute a rehearsal performance for the original live performance if it was clearly better or if the live version was marred by technical problems. I think they do that less often now since screwups tend to go viral immediately, and it's pointless to try to hide them anymore (plus the show now airs live in every time zone).
Unfortunately, "Volunteers" is one of the few James Horner scores that has never been released as a soundtrack album. Intrada Records (a soundtrack specialty label) has apparently been trying to get the license to release it, but without much success. This thread on their online forum (from about 5 years ago) talked about it.
ReplyDeletehttp://intrada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6686&p=77187&hilit=Volunteers#p77187
About Davis and Hershiser: I am a big fan of Young Davis. He has been very respectful of his predecessor while carving out his own niche. I'd rather have what we always had: Vin talking to us.
ReplyDeleteA great story. When Don Drysdale came to the Dodgers, he told Ross Porter that on all of his broadcasts, the two announcers had talked. Could they do that? If that's what you want, Ross replied. So on their first spring training broadcast, they did that in the top of the first. Between innings, the phone rang in the booth. It was Peter O'Malley, telling them to stop.
After the game, Don saw Peter and asked why. Peter said, we don't do that. Don said that there were 26 teams and 25 did that. Peter said, fine, they can. We don't.
The Yankees probably have the oddest (and most irritating) radio announcing situation, with John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman, in that there's no swap during the game -- Sterling does all nine innings and Waldman simply serves as color commentator and post-game interviewer (Sterling came on with the Yanks in George Steinbrenner's first year of owning the team, back in 1973, as the post-game radio host, and outside of his 1980s sojourn down to work with Ted Turner and the Braves in Atlanta, pretty much has been locked in as the lone play-by-play guy on the radio for the past 17 years, since Charley Steiner fled to the Dodgers).
ReplyDeleteTV question -- As a show-runner, is there any other show-runner(s) you know/respect for having to deal with a less than ideal situation due to non-cooperative talent, unforeseen circumstances, or just a lack of network support, and still managed to make the show work, and keep it going?
You think all those multi-million dollar deals will be re-written / cut in half, after this is over? That's the only way all these networks, studios, netflix will survive.
ReplyDeleteWill these "special talents" (assholes) take the cut? Or will it be the small people who are gonna be fired?
James Horner's big break in film scores came with the score to STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN.
ReplyDeleteIt remains a great score today....
I rewatched Star Trek II just this week. Absolute masterpiece. Nicholas Meyer directed the two greatest Star Trek films, Wrath of Kahn and The Undiscovered Country, Khan being the best Trek film ever.
DeleteRicardo Montalban should have got an Oscar for his incredible performance. Shatner was never better as Kirk than he was in II. I can only imagine how shocked the opening weekend audiences were at the ending.
Ken, have you listened to Jeff Francouer for the Braves who took over for Joe Simpson on the tv? He is fantastic if not. A have a feeling he will not be here for long and head to ESPN or Fox like John Smoltz did
ReplyDeleteFriday question:
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about Radar's bear and how it became almost another character on the show. Was that intentional, or did it just happen organically?
Are there other instances of an inanimate object holding such meaning throughout?
ST2:TWOK is an indelible component of my early movie-going life. I can play the opening and closing title scores in my head.
ReplyDeleteHorner was also in a DVD extra for "Field of Dreams" discussing the melodies for that movie and seemed like a cool dude.
I could be misremembering this but I recall Victoria Wood saying she wanted to record Dinner Ladies twice because Cheers did the same.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, for US readers who probably don’t know her, Victoria Wood was considered a 100% comic genius here in the UK.
Personally, I'm just shocked to see you start off paraphrasing a line from Gypsy without using a Natalie Wood photo.
ReplyDeleteKen, hi.
ReplyDeleteThis is a Friday question.
Do you know if Gene Reynolds & others took into account the ages of both Alan Alda & Wayne Rogers before hiring them for the M*A*S*H pilot nearly 50 years ago now? As I understand it, a typical drafted doctor in Korea was still in his twenties, not his late thirties.
Thank you.
Paul D.
Know you love Bob Uecker on Brewers broadcasts, and rightly so, but the rest of the team leaves a bit to be desired. Ueck has had a long parade of bland young guys as broadcast partners. Lots of times, they wind up being straight men to Ueck. Brewers have long needed a more contemporary former player as a radio analyst. Looked like Darryl Hamilton would be that guy, but he died young. TV crew is better, with Brian Anderson or Matt Lepay and former Brewers catcher Bill Schroeder. I prefer Lepay, who's big in Wisconsin, to Anderson, who's known nationally.
ReplyDeleteI saw Wrath of Khan with friends in a packed theater on the first day of release, when the initial film prints didn't yet use the "II" in the title. The audience went wild when the music began with the old series' trumpet fanfare (by Alexander Courage), missing from the first movie. The best thing about Meyer's movie was that it completely ignored the existence of that first movie.
ReplyDeleteThe audience wasn't "shocked" at the ending, as that feature of the plot had been leaked, but it was very well handled and had a big impact nonetheless.
I've read that Ricardo Montalban agreed to reprise his role as Khan because he'd thought so highly of Meyer's earlier movie Time After Time.
My favorite James Horner cue is "Enterprise Clears Moorings", especially starting around 1:30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeS0Eo8fAnw
The best thing Paramount could do is hire Meyer to write and direct a new Star Trek film. Either a continuation of the recent films or a brand new iteration. As much as I like JJ Abrams, his two ST films were soulless machines, and ST Beyond by Justin Lin was tedious.
DeleteSadly, though, the studios don't make intelligent science fiction like Wrath of Khan anymore. Rewatching it this week, it occurred to me that the pacing would be deemed too slow now. Intelligent, artful science fiction is a thing of the past in Hollywood.
Series: "AfterMASH". Episode: "Staph Inspection".
ReplyDeleteThe humanity and perspective presented here - especially toward episode's conclusion, as Potter commands the hospital staff to just go home and get out of here - made a pretty strong impression for this viewer. Episode - and moral - have actually stayed and remained vivid with me all these years, despite the unavailability of any rerun syndication.
Humanity. Perspective. Wanted throughout our lives. Needed now more than ever.
Thank you Ken Levine and David Isaacs.
Friday Question
ReplyDeleteSo we've come to conclusion of another season of Better Call Saul and Rhea Seehorn has somehow turned in a performance that tops her already magnificent performance in her first four seasons. How much longer until the woman is finally nominated for an Emmy?
But my real question is what wrong with the Emmy process when someone this dam good gets shafted every single year? It's not the caliber or notoriety of the show, BCS is widely as recognized as one of the best on television. Is it her not politiking hard enough because the committee needs to see some groveling? Is it that role isn't flashy enough because the Kim Wexler character plays thing so close to the chest (even though you can see a million gears churning ala Michael Corleone?
Whatever the disconnect it says alot more about how much of a joke these awards are than the quality of the performers going unnominated.
It would've been interesting seeing Larry Gelbart take on a "Charles" spinoff if only because Gelbart left "M*A*S*H" before the Winchester character was introduced.
ReplyDelete@Joe
ReplyDeleteI've commented on here and Reddit more than once that I've always felt that Frasier Crane was the spiritual successor to Charles Emerson Winchester III.
@Andrew
That episode is called "Fathers and Sons" and I too thought that the casting was inspired. If Joe is reading this, he should definitely watch that episode, which is Season 10, Episode 22.
@J Lee
ReplyDeleteI happen to like Sterling, but even so I think you are being a little hard on the guy. He only spent 9 years in Atlanta, and during his first 16 years back in New York he shared play-by-play in the usual manner with his partners, who over the years were Jay Johnston, Joe Angel, Michael Kay, and Charley Steiner. As you corrected stated, once Steiner left he took over completely, but that is because Suzyn Waldman insists that she is happy doing color commentary and not doing any play-by-play. Whether or not she is being completely honest about the situation is unknown.
Thank you for introducing us to Victoria Wood. Had never heard the name. But looked her up and watched an episode of Dinner Ladies which she wrote and starred in. Quite amazing.
ReplyDeleteRegarding David Ogden Stiers, he lived in my sisters city of Newport Or. Small town. He was out and about regularly, but would not speak about MASH to the locals. Apparently people respected that. I don't know about the Padres radio, the older guy sounds cheesy, but Don and Mud are extremely entertaining. Lifelong padre fan, so a tad biased. Sweeney is AWFUL though. He is a smarmy condescending D-Bag.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that James Horner was brilliant, and that he died much too young. His score for "Titanic" is probably his best known (and won him his only Oscars) but his depth and versatility were too little appreciated.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite Horner scores are "Glory" and "Legends of the Fall" - neither was even nominated. I listen to them to this day and I am always deeply moved.
Hi Ken. Have you been approached about doing a Masterclass?
ReplyDeleteHorner did a brilliant job on the "Volunteers" bridge building sequence, infusing an impressive, well-shot montage with a relentless musical energy that really moves the scene collage forward.
ReplyDelete1985 was quite the year for the, then, thirty-one year old composer, Horner, that year scoring "Cocoon," "The Journey of Natty Gann" and "Commando," as well as the"Alamo Jobe" episode of Spielberg's fantasy anthology series, "Amazing Stories."
purely subjective of course, but John Miller and Joe Angel with the Orioles in the late 80's and early 90's were my absolute favorites.
ReplyDeleteI have a Cheers/Nicholas Colasanto question. I didn't notice it so much when I a kid, but once I got older I began to notice Coach's shirt pocket. Being white, it's obvious there's a lighter and pack of cigarettes in it. Any particular reason he was never seen smoking on the show, or was it just one of those things that he just happened to keep it there and nobody ever thought anything of it?
ReplyDeleteRegarding David Ogden Stiers and MASH: Here's a relevant segment of a phone interview he did when he was on the series The Dead Zone after its first season had aired in 2002:
ReplyDeleteQ: The show that you referred to earlier as the army show...
Stiers: Yeeeeeessss?
Q: Is that just because you're tired of talking about it? Not hard feelings?
Stiers: Not at all. I did the reunion recently, simply as the firewall, so I don't discuss it anymore. That was my last participation in it, and I have resolutely moved on in the new millennium.
Thanks for the response, Ken.
ReplyDeleteI assume that the inability to shoot most television shows at the moment will mean that the networks will go to the vault and start airing pilots and other material that normally would never see the light of day.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the odds that some of these virtually abandoned programs will find audiences and become hits?