Friday Questions

Well, it’s November.  Christmas commercials and music have officially begun.  Here are some pre-holiday Friday Questions.

Guffman is up first.  He need not wait.

As a collector of memorabilia and autographs, I’m sure you’ve had opportunities to get a souvenir or two from shows along the way. Anything you’re particularly proud of latching onto for reasons that aren't necessarily monetary? Anything you've had an opportunity to pick up and sorry you didn’t? Anything you’ve had personally signed that means the most to you?

Like an idiot, I never took anything off the stages of either MASH or CHEERS.  I always thought having production scripts with my name on them was a unique souvenir.  I’ve got autographed scripts and an autographed CHEERS sweatshirt.  

A prized possession is a copy of one of Larry Gelbart’s hand-written first drafts from MASH, signed to me personally.   That’s way more important than a bedpan from post op.

When BIG WAVE DAVE’S ended (prematurely in my humble opinion) we had all these props from a surf shop.  I took home a bunch of surfboards and have the big “Big Wave Dave’s” sign up in our house.   No one else has that.  Of course no one else knows what that is.

ReticentRabbit queries:

Ken, you've held at least three of my dream jobs (screenwriter, DJ, baseball announcer). What jobs do you wish you'd worked but never did?

I would love to be a panelist on a game show.  The idea of sitting back and tossing out one-liners while getting paid for it and being on TV seems like the ideal job.  There’s no preparation, no pressure. Perfect for a lazy bum like me!  

I very much enjoyed hosting that TCM film festival a few years back.  I wouldn’t mind doing that again.

I’d also like to be a Benihana chef but only if I could do it without knives.  

Caleb Martin asks:

What's the largest creative similarity you've discovered between one of your shows and another sitcom, intentional or otherwise? Have you seen a scene or storyline you wrote more-or-less happen on another show, or vice versa?

Not a sitcom, but HOUSE pretty much stole our P.O.V. episode of MASH.  

I’ve seen a number of sitcoms use Sam & Diane storylines, but I can’t remember specifics.  

Many years ago I was in a UCLA library and bumped into a writer friend.  He wrote freelance episodes of dramas (back in the days when you could make a living as a freelancer).   He was there to go through old editions of TV GUIDE to come up with stories to pitch.  He’d take a story from say PETER GUNN and pitch it for a current private eye show.   He said it was a common practice, but it's sure nothing I would ever do.

Compare that to CHEERS where someone would pitch a story and if any one of us had seen something even remotely similar on another show we immediately tossed it.  

And finally, from Brian Phillips:

Have you done any or were you ever asked to do any work for the BBC or any other entertainment concern outside of the USA?

Yes.  There’s a production company in the UK called Hat Trick.  I assume they’re still going.  At the time, they had a lot of shows on the air.  This was quite a few years ago.  They invited David Isaacs and me to come to London for a year and create a series.  We were told we’d have enormous freedom.  

I must say the offer was very intriguing.  We ultimately didn’t do it because our kids were little and we didn’t want to completely disrupt their lives by moving to a different country, much less school.  Also we would be taking a very sizable pay cut at a time when American TV still paid writers well.  

But it would have been a fun adventure.  I’d do it now if it weren’t for COVID.  

What’s your Friday Question?