Edward leads off.
You discussed how the script for "The Jeffersons" got your career going. But you also said the show was not one that you really cared for. Once your writing career was working out, did you need to personally like a show to be enthusiastic about writing an episode or does an assignment for a show fall under keeping your career going and making sure the rent gets paid?
We were thrilled to get ANY assignment. A number of projects we wrote never got on the air – back up episodes for pilots that didn’t go, that sort of thing.
We also happily pitched any show that would hear us. We wrote two episodes of JOE AND SONS. Ever hear of it? But we were over-the-moon happy to get those assignments.
Even after we had done MASH we rewrote a couple of network pilots just for the money.
Trust me – work was work. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
From chris dellecese
About those insipid network promos we see all day long on Sunday NFL games.
Is there any evidence that those actually WORK?
YES!
Having the NFL on your network elevates your other programming. That's why networks pay ungodly sums for NFL rights.
Those football games bring in new viewers to their network and exposes them to their programming. An on-air CBS promo for only the CBS audience is not nearly as effective as a promo on an NFL game.
That said, the audience for NFL games are primarily men, so promos for fare they might be interested in is more effective than say, promos for GREY’S ANATOMY.
I was always thrilled when a promo for one of my sitcoms aired during an NFL game.
DBenson has a question I assume about filming last episodes of series knowing the show has been cancelled and the episode is not guaranteed to air.
Was there ever a situation where an actor or other member of the production decided "S**** this!" and just goofed off or ad-libbed through a shoot or rehearsal for a doomed episode?
No.
Every actor I’ve ever worked with in those situations was a consumate professional. Same with the crews. Everyone took pride in their work and did the best job possible.
And to this day I admire each and every one of them as a result.
And finally, from Shane:
Talking about being protective of kids, did you at anytime worry that Hollywood would be a bad influence on your kids when growing up?
We tried to give our kids as normal an upbringing as we could. They went to public school, we never tried to get them work in commercials, they never guested on my shows, and although they certainly came to sets and went to audience tapings, they never hung around stages, and we never tried to get them agents.
I believe it was a wise decision. Of course you'd have to ask them, but I think they'd agree.
What’s your Friday Question?
20 comments :
Your answer to the first question,and the photo, motivated me to pull up information about JOE AND SONS. Richard Castellano was an actor that I always liked.(I heard
that he was in the running to play Vito Corleone before they got Brando.) The show also featured a pre-Seinfeld Jerry Stiller and a pre- Night Court Florence Stanley. I don't recall ever seeing an episode.
You left out that Yes Dear basically just ad libbed thru a whole season when they knew they were being cancelled, breaking the 4th wall with a character thinking they were a character in a sitcom.
As for men being the audience in NFL, I remember watching one game, they showed the upcoming schedule. Later the game is running long, and they put the schedule back up, and cross out 'The Five Mrs. Buchanans', and the announcer start laughing, 'I don't know why they would drop that.'
You can't really teach someone to write unless they already have an innate understanding of the craft. I've tried to tell wannabes about structure and characterization, but it's like trying to explain Chinese Algebra to them. Their work is never going to come to life.
Likewise, if someone doesn't come to the field with a sense of professionalism, sincerely respecting their fellow workers and the audience, there's no way you can give it to them. They may try to fake it, smiling and nodding hoping people will take that as a sign that they're on board, but at heart they really can't raise their game from hanging around with their friends telling each other how great they are.
You can tell very quickly if you're dealing with someone who is not only inevitably going to screw up in the middle of a serious deadline, but will grin after being caught out in it and expect to be indulged, sometimes even trying to pull the excuse that everybody working their tails off on a project needs to lighten up and smell the roses. There's no room for dead weight like that while trying to pull off a job that's difficult enough when everyone is fully committed to it. Most of the time they don't get past the initial interview, and go back to their buddies complaining about how unfair the system is.
E. Yarber - Can you link us to some of your stuff so we can see how it's done?
Have you thought about doing a Sunday post? Note that I didn't use the adjective "new" in my initial question. As the blog's owner I'm sure you can see a list of every post and the number of views it has. So why not sort the list by most views and on Sundays re-post the next most read posting on the list. Some of them might need an introductory paragraph if you had to stop and remember why you wrote that particular posting at the time, especially since some of them go back 14 years. TONIGHT SHOW reruns used to have the title THE BEST OF CARSON, so you call title Sunday re-blogs "The Best of Levine" or take the self-deprecating route and call it "Levine's Least Effort."
Ken,
RE: Your kids--so ask them as guest posters. What were the pluses and minuses of growing up that way in Hollywood?
As always, appreciate you.
Keith in Kalama
"exposes them to their programming." Like being exposed to measles. Pretty much every time I'm watching my weekend sport (Indycar racing in my case) and I see the promos for other shows on the network, I think, "thank you for the warning." I'm trying to remember the last time I was attracted by a promo. I was probably 12 years old.
Off topic: if you don't already know it, the Danny Thomas 70s sitcom version "The Practice" is now on DVD. I'm hoping to get it for Xmas. I haven't seen it since first-run. Occasionally I'm burned when I see an old show again for the first time in decades and find that my memories were faulty and kind (example: The Invisible Man with David McCallum), but a lot of them turn out to still be fun, even if you just have to get used to the rhythm and style of the time.
I've been doing a re-watch of Frasier lately (or at least I will be until it leaves Netflix later this month) and I had some questions about the guest voices who served as callers to the radio show. How were those celebrities recruited? Did producers have to reach out to them or, once the show gained in popularity, were they lining up to do it? Did you ever write a call with a specific celebrity in mind? How challenging was writing those calls in general?
If you erred in writing for Joe and Sons, it was in not taking your payment
in signed Richard Castellano photos. An Oscar nominee, and a Godfather actor
who died relatively young, his signature is quite collectible.
The only one currently on eBay:
4032 Richard Castellano Signed Index Card AUTO Autograph Beckett BGS BAS
PROBSTEIN123 $449.99
I'm one of those guys that can't stand watching the National Felons League [NFL]. Didn't grow up with the sport and don't understand why a game that's supposed to be an hour in length takes 3-4 hours to play. So if there's a game on one of the broadcast networks, I've tuned out and find something else to watch. Eventually I just don't go back to that network because if they game goes over or the idiots with the post-game wrap-up might be cutting into a show that I had really wanted to watch. So, even if I am in the minority, they lose me as a viewer for their other shows. I celebrate the Stupor Bowl because then, finally, I know football is done for a while.
To Yekimi, the NFL games last longer now
1. so that more ads can be run,
2. so that a billionaire owner like Robert Kraft can afford hand jobs from sex trafficked women,
4. at a “spa” conveniently located near his Presidential Pal’s resort,
5. said “spa” being part of a chain founded by Chinese National Cindy Yang, who allegedly sold access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago,
6. Posting many online selfies with the Ttumps in the process.
But I digress. I meant to write of your National Felons League jest.
Here is part of a lengthy fact check from Snopes
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/are-there-871-convicted-felons-currently-playing-for-the-nfl/
“As Schrotenboer noted, the idea that NFL players have a higher propensity to commit crime than the rest of the population has been debunked with research. A 2015 University of Texas, Dallas study found that NFL players actually have a lower arrest rate than population at large. According to a press release published by the university about the study’s findings:
‘For every year between 2000 and 2013, the total arrest rate for the general population was significantly higher than the total arrest rate for NFL players. For example, the total arrest rate for the general population was 4,889 arrests per 100,000 people in 2013; the total arrest rate for NFL players was 3,740. For most years, the total arrest rate for the general population was one and a half to two times as high as the total rate for NFL players.
‘The data show that the perception that NFL players are overly criminal compared to the U.S. population is false,” [researcher and criminology professor Alex] Piquero said. “In fact, when you look at the forest and not the trees, the trends over the 14-year period show that the general population has higher arrest rates than NFL players do.”
NFL players have been kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem before games in a protest started by then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016. Kaepernick was protesting issues like the fact that African-Americans are roughly three times as likely as white people to be killed by police, and that they are incarcerated at a much higher rate. Since Kaepernick started the protest, it now includes other players on other teams. Since a deadly, racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, and an angry reaction to the protests by President Donald Trump the following month, it has grown to include non-athletes.
Trump in a September 2017 speech opined that team owners should fire protesting players saying, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now …He is fired.” After those comments, some team owners protested as well, locking arms and kneeling alongside players.”
MOONLIGHTING’s finale felt like a “to heck with it” episode, though I don’t remember much else about it. The fourth wall was famously obliterated in the final I MARRIED DORA, which did air; possibly the only thing anyone remembers about the show.
But probably my favorite “we-know-it-won’t-be-aired” story is what the team behind Rob Lowe’s LYON’S DEN did in the final episode, where they decided Lowe’s super-earnest lawyer character was really a serial killer. Because, why not? Clips from that have surfaced from overseas DVDs.
I don't watch the NFL for many reasons (mostly the owners and the mental injuries) but I REALLY appreciate this well thought out post, anonymous. The owners are just as criminal as the players and both don't have as high of a percentage of criminals as the White House does. The entire league has issues but most of those issues don't fall on the players.
@John Jackson Miller:
Lyon's Den spoiler: The whole series was screened here in the UK and that ending is brilliant, coming out of nowhere. Lowe has been all integrity, while his father has been the manipulator, then in literally the last minute, everything switches. I've often wondered as to the story behind it.
But Wiki has it wrong. There is no jump. Lowe merely phones his father and tells him: "I've done it again".
Question about "Frasier": On the series, it was established that Roz was from a small town in Wisconsin, while the real life Peri Gilpin has a pretty distinctive Texas accent. Do you know the thinking behind this? Seems like it would have been just as easy afor Roz to hail from Texas.
If you believe television sitcoms, Wisconsin is the home of disparate accents.
As someone else noted,who knew Milwaukee had so many with Brooklyn accents until "Happy Days" and "Laverne & Shirley" came along?
Sadly, Joe and Sons had potential. Good talent, a blue collar, East Coast-ish story that played well in New York and Philly. And it led into the hit variety hour hosted by Tony Orlando and Dawn. Its rapid disappearance surprised me. Perhaps, it would have done better "hammocked" between two of CBS' big Saturday night hits.
Yeah. Might've worked especially well with "All in the Family" as a lead-in on Saturdays.
is there a topic on your blog about old shows that have not aged well. where you cant believe that people thought they were funny. that would be a great topic for you to have Ken. The Jeffersons to me was one of those shows. Not funny. i have a channel where i live that shows nothing reruns of shows from the 60's, 70's and 80's. Happys Days, Laverne and Shirley, Good Times, Taxi. Cheers, The Partidge Family, One Day At A time. interesting to watch a lot of these shows for for good and bad reasons. :)
Have been a fan of FRIENDS going all the way back to when it originally aired. This scene has always bothered me and I am surprised the producers and network allowed it since it is downright mean. What is your take?
[Scene: Chandler and Joey's apartment. Chandler and Joey are sitting in their recliners watching TV. Monica, Ross, and Phoebe are there.]
PHOEBE: I can't believe two cows made the ultimate sacrifice so you guys could watch TV with your feet up.
CHANDLER: Well they were chair-shaped cows. They never would have survived in the wild.
ROSS: This screen is amazing, I mean Dick Van Dyke is practically life-size.
ALL: Woah!
MONICA: Rose Marie really belongs on a smaller screen, doesn't she?
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