Great innovator or menace to society?

There has been much debate about whether the Manhattan Project – that created the first nuclear bomb – was ultimately a positive thing because it effectively ended a World War and perhaps staved off future ones, or was a ghastly thing because of all the fatalities it caused and the threat to world annihilation. We'll leave that to Chelsea Handler and her guests to decide. 

But that debate pales in comparison to the innovation Ms. Doris Reilly created in 1955. Doris Reilly worked in the Campbell Soup Company’s test kitchen. She wanted to concoct a dish out of the two ingredients most Americans had in their house in the 1950’s. And from that came…

The green bean casserole.

This Thursday 20,000,000 households will serve this vegetable stew, made primarily from green beans and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. Other ingredients include milk, canned fried onion rings, a little soy sauce, and black pepper.

Yes, growing up this was a staple of my family Thanksgivings. And I never knew why. I wonder how many people routinely serve green bean casseroles as part of their menu not really liking it but thinking it is somehow a requirement of the holiday?

Or am I just a little weird and most folks love it? Thanksgiving would not be complete without that runny casserole occupying a corner of your plate.

Perhaps the cook in your family revised the recipe… like leaving out the green beans and the mushroom soup. I could see where that might improve the holiday savory. Any suggestions are welcomed. 

But in 2002, Ms Reilly presented her original recipe card to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. So it’s right up there with the steam engine and pop tops.

She certainly is in the Campbell’s Hall of Fame. About 40% of its annual sales of cream of mushroom soup are used to make these green bean casseroles. Ms Doris Reilly – the Steve Jobs of side dishes.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

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Claudine's back in jail again

As a perfect follow-up to my post today about Claudine Longet killing her boyfriend, here's a song by the Rolling Stones about the incident.  Thanks to reader LouOCNY for the heads-up.

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The perfect holiday gift for this year

I know it sounds like just another plug for my book but hear me out. This one’s legit! With the holidays just hours away, THE ME GENERATION… BY ME (GROWING UP IN THE ‘60s) would make the perfect gift for friends and family members who fondly remember that magic era when the surf was up, gas prices were down, music was psychedelic, and we kids didn't have a care in the world except Viet Nam and total nuclear annihilation.  Seriously, it’s a fun read. And it comes in three flavors: Kindle version. Paperback version (order now so it’s there on time). And audibook.

To help get you into the mood for the season here are two brief warm and touching excerpts:

Thanksgiving finally arrived and with it the cheese-rich Santa Claus Lane Parade down Hollywood Blvd. Unlike Macy’s with giant balloons and impressive marching bands, we had Hollywood B-actors, second bananas, local fringe celebrities riding in cars with their names hand-painted on the sides, and a few 100-year-old guys from an American Legion Post blowing their livers out through trombones. The big finale was the arrival of Santa Claus; usually on a float that looked like a Cub Scout project gone horribly wrong.

I never actually attended the parade. My parents were not about to wade through a million people so I could see talk show guest Oscar Levant either waving to the crowd or having another seizure. If we couldn’t walk to it (like the 4th of July parade) my folks weren’t interested. But I didn’t care. It was a TV event anyway.

Bill Welsh on Channel 11 would interview all the “stars” as they passed. How do you ask Gypsy Boots what his upcoming project was with a straight face? Gypsy Boots was a local health nut who was part Grizzly Adams/part Bozo the Clown. His upcoming project??? Appear in next year’s parade. Back in the ’50s, Natalie Wood or Bing Crosby would be the grand marshal. Now it was Iron Eyes Cody.

***

I couldn’t fathom why anyone would watch the Andy Williams variety show on NBC if they didn’t own a color TV. It was so wholesome your teeth ached. Whatever “edge” the show had was provided by the Osmond Family. But it was in color and production numbers always featured grinning All-American kids in brightly colored sweaters holding brightly colored balloons. Not having a color TV and not being gay I never watched The Andy Williams Show… except…

When it was time for the annual Christmas special.

Andy would always have his beautiful family on the show. Mrs. Williams & Andy and the adorable towheads would sing Carols, exchange presents, and their message of love and holiday good cheer would melt even the coldest heart. That’s not why I watched it, of course. I wanted to screw Andy’s wife.

Claudine Longet (Mrs. W.) was a willowy brunette with exquisite doe eyes and luscious lips. Laura Petrie but French. She was also a successful recording artist but believe me, if she looked like Charles De Gaulle she couldn’t give away one record. But I found her incredibly sexy, even when she was singing Silent Night in front of a crucifix. She and Andy divorced in the ’70s and two years later she shot her boyfriend, Olympic skier Spider Sabich to death. I stopped wanting to screw her then.

I’ll be on parole for Christmas.

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When Annie met Sandy

Readers of this blog know that I file travelogues whenever I return home from trips.  I even compiled the funniest of them in a book, WHERE THE HELL AM I?  TRIPS I HAVE SURVIVED, which you could (and should) order here.   But these travelogues have now become a Levine family tradition.  I haven't been anywhere in awhile, but my lovely daughter Annie spent last weekend in New York.  And she files this report:

In a stunning victory for nonrefundable plane tickets, my mother and I recently took a weekend trip to New York. In fairness to us, we were attending the wedding of a family member and visiting my grandmother. Still, it does seem risky to visit a city that just changed its motto from “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” to “If you can make it here, please bring canned goods.”

Landing at JFK, you never would have known the city had changed. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and there wasn’t one damn cab in sight. Luckily, a FEMA boat passed by and I was able to barter passage.

A quick note to Times Square: When Queens looks like the set of NBC’s Revolution, it’s probably not fair to keep pumping so much electricity into your McDonald’s that you can see the arches from space.

My mother and I got tickets to see “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” the reusical of George and Ira Gershwin songs starring Kelli O’Hara and Matthew Broderick. Kelli O’Hara (the Susan Lucci of the Tony Awards) is fantastic. Matthew Broderick really can do it all. His delivery is spot on. His singing is great fun. His dancing… Did I mention his delivery?

Dinner the next night was Dallas BBQ in Times Square. The kind of “restaurant” where tourists are packed in and treated like cattle. It didn’t help that they literally had us waiting for our table in a pen. Not exactly the imagery you want before sitting down to dine on spare ribs. I kept picturing Charlton Heston showing up to read us the specials. “It’s people! The soup of the day is people!”

We had dinner with my aunt and eleven year-old cousin, Michelle. A popular menu item at Dallas BBQ? “The Bulldog,” a carafe of pina colada with an overturned Corona bottle inside. I stuck with Diet Coke, but Michelle said hers was delicious.

A friend of mine was doing sound design for an off-Broadway production of Grand Hotel, a show that follows a variety of guests at an upscale hotel in pre-World War 2 Berlin. The show was… Well, let’s just say it was the first time in my life I was dying for Hitler to arrive and put an end to things. One of the stars of the show was a dead ringer for Taylor Hicks. I think the actual Taylor Hicks was his understudy.

A highlight of the trip, as always, was visiting my grandmother in Brooklyn. I figured while we were there, we might as well do a little sight seeing, so mom pointed out Neil Sedaka’s sister’s house. I referred to it as “The House that Oh Carol Built.” And then realized -- I was hundred years old.

We arrived at the wedding on Sunday with our luggage in hand. It was fine during the ceremony, but the duffel bag did prove problematic on the dance floor.

It was a wonderful ceremony and I wish the happy couple all the luck in the world. We were going to tie cans to the back of the car, but we didn’t want them to get mugged for cream corn on the way to their honeymoon.

I was worried about being able to fly out of the city, but luckily everything went off without a hitch. I even got to see Aziz Ansari on my flight! I was dying to tell him how great he is, but he still seemed shaken by the TSA cavity search. I had to settle for watching an episode of Parks and Recreation on the in-flight entertainment. But, hey, at least I can claim he talked to me on the plane.

All in all, the trip was a great success. It was wonderful to see some old friends, catch up with family, and pretend to use the first class passenger bathroom five or six times just to catch a glimpse of Aziz.

I can’t wait to go back. See you next apocalypse, New York!

Thanks, Annie!  Stop being funnier than your father.  

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In network cancellation news...

A number of shows have been cancelled over the last few days. None of them are a surprise. CBS axed PARTNERS (the blatant rip off of the 1995 series, PARTNERS). This series comes from the same writer/producers who created WILL & GRACE. So which was a fluke? W&G or PARTNERS?

Other series produced by this team: $#*! MY DAD SAYS, FOUR KINGS, TWINS, THE STONES, GOOD MORNING MIAMI, and BOSTON COMMONS.

LAST RESORT was dropped by ABC. This was the show about the nuclear submarine that docks on the LOST island. I must say I loved the pilot. My one question when it was over was how are they going to keep this going week after week? By week three when the sub was sneaking through a government blockade to get drugs for the island drug lord who had kidnapped three crew members I stopped asking.

Interestingly, ABC has not officially cancelled LAST RESORT. There’s a slim chance they could bring it back next season. Yeah, right. It’s not good enough to get a back nine but it is good enough to return for a second season? Mayday, captain!!!

My suggestion: take the pilot, slap a real ending on it and sell it as a movie.

666 PARK AVENUE was also yanked off the schedule by ABC, and like LAST RESORT is a candidate to return next season. So start that letter writing campaign now, 666 fanboys!

Not cancelled but premiering with a resounding thud this week was WHITNEY. Why NBC loves this show I do not know. Ms. Cummings must have compromising photos of the peacock in bed with 4-star generals. 

And of course, a few weeks ago NBC cancelled NEXT CALLER before it had even aired. Stephen Falk, the creator of that show wrote a cool article about what it’s like to be in that situation. You can read it here.

It used to be that networks would order 13 episodes of a new Fall series from the studio producing the show. If it got okay numbers they ordered a back nine. Networks eventually tried to hedge their bets, ordered only six episodes. The studios balked. Six episodes were not enough to establish an audience and if there were overages in production costs the studios would never recoup them. Networks backed off. They needed the studios to continue feeding them product.

But now that the networks own the studios they can do any damn thing they want. And we’re seeing that. They’re adding two episodes to an order. They’re shaving one or two episodes off an order. They’re ordering four script but not episodes. So anything is possible these days including putting a nuclear submarine in dry dock for a year.

Maybe the strangest example of this new practice was last season when ABC cancelled PAN AM but ordered one additional episode. Huh???  Hey, don't ask me.  I’m still trying to figure out WHITNEY.

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Who pays for stunt casting?

Last Friday Questions before Thanksgiving.

Derek (in Calgary) starts us off:

My question relates to stunt-casting and the fee paid to the stunt-casted actors.

Suppose you are running Modern Family and for whatever reason you decide to offer a small one-episode cameo role to (say) a well-known baseball player. How is it determined how much the baseball player is paid? Is it the same rate as any other guest actor would get for comparable screen-time? Is this the "scale" rate we sometimes hear about?

Do things change for higher-profile stunt casting? Suppose you now learn than Mick Jagger will do a small role on your show, for two or three episodes. And suppose you are keen to have him. Is it a written or unwritten rule that he would have to be paid scale? Or, if he and his agent demand a high fee, could he potentially be paid whatever amount the network and his agent can agree upon?

Stunt cast guest stars usually receive what’s called “top of the show” (the highest salary a studio is willing to go). Often these guest stars are friends of one of the cast members or someone on the production staff so they do the appearance for “top of the show” as a favor although it’s way less than they usually get.   Or if the show if super hot and they want the prestige or exposure. 

Many stars, however, want more than “top of the show.” In those cases the producer usually goes to the network and says, “How much do you want this clown? And if he’s that important, will you pick up the difference?” If the star is big enough and promotable enough the network will sometimes give in.

Lisa Muldrin has a question about multi-camera shows:

How can you, as a director, can keep track of four cameras at once? and how many takes you usually make on average?

I have what’s known as a quad-split – four monitors – and I can see what every camera is shooting. Generally, I do two passes of each scene and often modify the camera assignments in the second pass. In other words, if in the first pass I have Camera A give me a two-shot, in the second pass I might have him open up and give me a three-shot.

When two characters are talking to each other you often see the back of one of their heads in the shot. This ties the two actors together. It’s called an “over” (for over-the shoulder). So in one pass I’ll ask for the “over” and in the other I’ll ask for the “single” which is just a close up of the actor speaking. When cut together this gives me a little variety.

So for every scene there are four cameras so eight possible angles. And still there may be shots you don’t get – generally reaction shots. In those cases we do “pick-ups”.

Think Rubix Cube.

Now those are just passes for cameras. Producers sometimes want additional takes if they’re not satisfied with the performances. Or if they want to substitute jokes for lines that didn’t get a laugh.

So to answer your question on the number of takes:  generally two, but as high as seven or eight.

YEKIMI asks:

How often do personal matters of an actor derail a show, maybe something the general public doesn't know about. I'm thinking more along the lines if a popular actor came to you and said "I'm gay and I'm thinking of announcing it publicly". Would you say "For the love of all the TV gods in history, don't do it, you'll destroy the show!"

No. Never. I personally feel very strongly that people should come out and be who they are. Were that to happen on one of my shows I would just deal with it. Today there seems to be less of a stigma attached (thank goodness) to someone declaring he’s gay, but regardless – it’s not my place to tell an actor (or anyone for that matter) how to conduct his personal life.

Andrew Kamphey wonders:

In retrospect the names of characters are very unique. For any of your shows, have you had any interesting battles over names?

When we were doing the pilot for MARY (Mary Tyler Moore’s third failed comeback attempt (3 of 5), the co-star was James Farentino. He played an editor of a tabloid newspaper in Chicago. His name was printed on his frosted office door. For whatever reason, we couldn’t clear a last name. Everyday we’d come up with something new. Everyday they would paint a new door, and everyday the name would get kicked back. This went on for about a week until we finally landed on DeMarco. But there must’ve been five wasted doors. It was like Groundhog Day for those poor painters. And I'm sure they were thinking, "These idiot producers can't make up their fucking minds!"

I’ve spoken on this topic before but I’ve used the names of former girlfriends from time to time in scripts. Yes, it is a nerdy thing to do.

What’s your question? Leave it the comments section. Thanks and gobble gobble.

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My most surprising role model

I was at lunch recently with a writer friend and we got onto the topic of role models. We each had writers, parents, other individuals we admired, and then another name occurred to me – one he found surprising. And I imagine you will too.

Those of you who have even heard of this person.

Okay. Ready? One of my role models was Shari Lewis.

So who’s Shari Lewis? Younger readers will have no idea I’m sure.

Shari Lewis was a kids’ show host in the ‘50s-‘70s. She was also a ventriloquist. Remember the puppets Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse? Those were Shari Lewis’. They weren’t particularly hilarious but they were endearing.

And some other things about Shari Lewis: she won twelve Emmys, was a magician, juggler, singer, dancer, and was considered one of the finest ventriloquists in the world. Oh, and she co-wrote an episode of STAR TREK.

So why is she a role model?

In 1974 I was a disc jockey in San Diego. (See my annual post about being fired just before Christmas.) A friend was visiting and we went to Belmont Park, which is an old-time amusement park, complete with rickety roller coaster, a boardwalk, etc. It’s still open. Neither Sea World nor Legoland could kill it. 

Well this was an afternoon in the middle of the week during August. Crowded it wasn’t. How it’s still open today I don’t know.

Oh wait.  Wrong lamb chop

We walked by an auditorium and saw that Shari Lewis was performing. Next show in ten minutes. What the hell? A little nostalgia. And it’s not like there were a thousand other great things to see or do at Belmont Park. So we went in. The auditorium seated probably 200. There was one person sitting there. We figured, well when it gets closer to showtime people are going to stream in. So we took a seat right up front. I had heard she was a great ventriloquist so I wanted to be close enough to see her lips. (How many people go to a show because they want to see the star’s lips?).

You see where this is going, don't you?

When it was time for the show to begin there were literally three people in the audience. Now remember, Shari Lewis at the time was a big name. She had done network shows for over a decade. She gave not one but two command performances for the Queen. And here she was, on a hot August afternoon in an amusement park performing for three idiots. Oh, and it was free admission.  How much could she have been paid?  I picture some supervisor handing her a big bag of quarters from the Whack-a-mole game. 

I would not have blamed her if she had come out and said, “Sorry guys. I never do shows for audiences smaller than the number of puppets I have.”

Redd Fox essentially did just that once.  He was a long-time nightclub comic who became the star of SANFORD & SON.  As the story goes, he was playing in some Vegas showroom.  It's the midnight show.  There are four people in the house.  The band plays the SANFORD & SON theme, he walks out on stage, surveys the audience, says something to the effect of "Four fucking people?  I ain't plain' for four fucking people."  He then walks off.  The band again plays the SANFORD & SON theme, lights up in the auditorium.  End of show, goodnight.  

But that’s not what Shari Lewis did.

She came out and started her show.

At first, I have to admit, I was really uncomfortable. I felt so self-conscious. She was essentially doing her act just for me. And it’s not like I could leave.

But as her show continued my discomfort slowly gave way to admiration. Even though there were just three audience members, she was performing her heart out. It would have been so easy to just go at half-speed, drop a bunch of bits. But Shari went through her material with energy and class. (She probably did drop some of the jokes geared for kids but that's all the more reason to thank her.)  There could have been 10,000 in the venue. I was in awe.

And the show itself was great. She was a phenomenal ventriloquist. I remember a bit she did with an auctioneer, puppets talking a mile a minute, she chiming in -- it was amazing. Another time she had her puppets sing and even yodel. How do you yodel without moving your lips?

When the show was over – and it was about 45 minutes. We stood up and gave her a standing ovation. And since it was just the three of us, my friend and I approached the stage, shook her hand, and told her how knocked out we were by her performance. I also joked that she should consider changing agents. She laughed.

But if ever there was the definition of a trouper; that was it. Over the years I’ve been on the radio in the middle of the night knowing no one was listening (a 15 inning Syracuse Chiefs game from Denver on a station that covered less territory than your Wifi router), been in an improv group that would occasionally play to audiences of seven, and wrote everyday for a blog that when I started out was being read by maybe ten people a week. But I always thought back to Shari Lewis. I learned from her that day what it means to be a consummate pro and I have emulated her ever since.  Sadly, she left us way too soon.  She was only 65 when she passed.   But I'm proud to say she's one of my role models. 

Do you have a surprising role model?  If so, who and why?  And can she yodel?

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