If I wrote DOWNTON ABBEY

DOWNTON ABBEY had become a sleeper hit. Who knew this Edwardian ITV costume drama would attract such a following across the pond? Season 4 begins here in the states tonight. I thought last season was very disappointing.  They killed off two of my favorite characters and made the patriarch of the family a buffoon.  So I will watch tonight, but with a more jaundiced eye.  And this is its last chance.   Still, when the show was good it was very good, and hopefully it will be very good again.  To get you back in the mood or to introduce you to the series I am re-posting this humor piece. 

If you already watch Downton Abbey you can just skim the next paragraph.  

To get you up to speed: Early 20th Century. Downton Abbey is Hearst’s Castle but in England owned by this one family. The series focuses on the five family members and eight or nine of their thirty servants. The family is concerned because a distant cousin (Matthew) is due to inherit the whole schemer (it’s a long story why). The family looks down on Matthew. He’s not an aristocrat. He actually works for a living. He’s a lawyer. To them that's like Joe the Plumber inheriting the Trump Tower. But Matthew proposes to the oldest daughter (Mary). The family stands to keep the estate if this marriage takes place. But due to complications not worth spelling out, Mary is hesitant. She asks for the summer to think about it. And when Matthew finally confronts her in the fall she is still on the fence. That’s where my scene would begin.  

(Note: for those unfamiliar with the show, they killed off Matthew in maybe the cheesiest auto accident since an Ed Wood production.)

EXT. GARDEN -- DAY

MATTHEW: So Lady Mary, the absolute love of my life, the angel that makes life itself worth living -- have you made your decision? Will you make me the happiest man on earth?

MARY: I’m afraid I have not. Not yet. If you would be so good as to grant me another month, I will surely tell you then.

MATTHEW: Another month? You had the entire summer, my precious.

MARY: Yes, but I was pre-occupied with so many activities.

MATTHEW: What activities?

MARY: Dear sir, are you questioning my integrity?

MATTHEW: No. Seriously. I want to know what you do all day. You don’t work. You don’t cook. All of your meals are prepared. Have you ever once made a bed? You don’t even dress yourself. What do you do?

MARY: Well… I ride.

MATTHEW: You ride. Once every few months for three or four hours you ride. The one activity the entire family participates in is killing innocent animals. Bully! What about the rest of the time?

MARY: I sit on benches in the garden a lot.

MATTHEW: Wow! I hope you take the weekends off.

MARY: Are you mocking me, good sir?

MATTHEW: Do you have a friend? Do you ever sneak off and sit with her on her bench?

MARY: I don’t need friends. I have two sisters. Oh wait. That’s something else I do. I scheme against them. Yes, that takes up time. And for your information, the servants are my friends.

MATTHEW: They’re paid to be your friends.

MARY: Some are nice to me on their days off.

MATTHEW: Can you even name the servants?

MARY: I can name about eight of them. The others don’t speak – they’re more in the background -- so I don’t know. The cook is… Mrs. somebody. Begins with a P.

MATTHEW: Yes, and about that – don’t you ever get tired of big fancy meals? Aren’t there nights when you want to say, can we just order a pizza? Or here’s a crazy thought – Sloppy Joes?

MARY: What pray tell is a Sloppy Joe?

MATTHEW: And why aren’t all of you girls 300 pounds? I’ve never seen you exercise.

MARY: We have servants who exercise for us.

MATTHEW: What if you don’t like stuffed pheasant and that’s what they’re serving? Are you allowed to ask for a tongue sandwich?

MARY: Of course. What’s tongue?  Where do you eat?

MATTHEW: Do the servants always have to preside over every meal? Can the cook ever say, “Hey, we got a smorgy tonight! Grab a plate and help yourselves!

MARY: What’s a smorgy? Matthew, you’re beginning to scare me.

MATTHEW: Speaking of the servants, I’ve seen their quarters. They’re tiny and two to a room. This house is bigger than Luxemburg. There must be a hundred rooms. You can’t toss six or seven guest rooms their way? There are five people who live in this fortress. Unless you’re having the entire population of Ireland over for the weekend, you’re not going to run out of room.

MARY:  What is a "weekend?"

MATTHEW:  Dear God!

MARY: We’d be happy to give the servants bigger quarters but they spend so little time in them. We work them twenty hours a day.

MATTHEW: How considerate of you.

MARY: They have to polish all the bannisters and wash the paintings. 

MATTHEW: Uh huh. Well, let me ask you, my spoiled goddess – how do you heat this place in the winter?

MARY: What?

MATTHEW: It’s a train station with chandeliers. How do you heat it? I see maybe three fireplaces.

MARY: I don’t know. It always seems to be summer.

MATTHEW: And you must have thirty acres here.  Who mows the lawn?   You have four footmen to dish out soup and not a single gardener.  

MARY:  I'm sure we have them.   They must mow at night. 

MATTHEW:  Well, dear lady of entitlement, I'm afraid I must take my leave. I’m due in court in an hour. I’m guessing whatever school you went to didn’t have a Career Day.

MARY:  We had tutors.  Mrs. Doubtfire taught me the essentials -- posturing, dramatic exits, and celibacy.

MATTHEW:  What did you take for shop class? (beat)  Well, I'm off.

MARY: Matthew, wait. I’ve made my decision. I do want to marry you.

MATTHEW: Yes, well, now that I know a little bit more about you and your life I need some more time.

MARY: What? How much time?

MATTHEW: Can I get back to you in thirty years?   Or when you put away your own shoes -- whichever comes first. 

MARY: Oh my God! You’re rescinding your proposal?

MATTHEW: I’m terribly sorry but yes. I’m running screaming as we common people say. I’m afraid I require someone a little more… interesting.

MARY: Ha! In this town? You’ll never find one. I’m still the best you can do.

MATTHEW: Oh, I’ll find a girl more interesting.

MARY: Really? Where?

MATTHEW: The Jewish mixer! Good day, m’lady.

MATTHEW runs screaming. On MARY’S reaction, we:

FADE OUT.

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Out-takes of my favorite album cover

Thanks to reader Matthew for tipping me to this. From the site STUFF NOBODY CARES ABOUT comes a couple of out-takes from the famous whipped cream cover.  As always, this blog uncovers the truly important stories of the day.

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My favorite album cover

Here’s what I miss most about vinyl records – album covers. Often the album cover design and artwork would be far better than the contents of the album. I worked in a record store in high school and saw thousands of them. Many people contend that SGT. PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND was the best album cover ever. I disagree. It was pretty great but this is the one that knocked me out. I can’t pass a can of Reddi-Whip without thinking of it. The model, by the way, was Delores Erickson – now a successful artist living in Seattle. God, I wish I were the costumer on this photo shoot.

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Friday Questions

Wow. The first Friday Questions of the year.

Longtime reader and Sitcom Room vet, Johnny Walker starts us off from England:

In Sam Simon's amazing Emmy TV Legends interview, he talks about a character that was cut out of the Cheers pilot: A racist woman in a wheelchair. She was supposed to be a regular character, but apparently the Charles Bros/Burrows agreed that her harshness didn't gel with the rest of the show.

Do you know anything about this?

Yes. The character was named Mrs. Littlefield.  She was an opinionated old broad from the D.A.R. She was in the pilot and the decision to drop the character was made after it was filmed. Politics just didn't fit with the mix.  So they cut out her part, but there are a few shots here and there where she is still in the background. Just look for a sweet white-haired little old lady who used to have lines.


Since several back-up scripts were in the works before the pilot was filmed, we also had to go back and write her out of those episodes as well.

Again, it was a case of an actor being let go not because they gave a bad performance or did anything wrong. It’s just that the character didn’t mesh with the others.

From RG:

Here is a fun and creative exercise question for you if you wish to indulge: Which character on a comedy show today would you like to spin-off and create a show around (like Frasier from Cheers) and why?

I would take Nancy Travis from LAST MAN STANDING, have her divorce Tim Allen, and then create a show around her. She is so talented and such a wonderful person. She deserves more than just making salads. Having had the pleasure of co-creating another show for her (ALMOST PERFECT in the ‘90s) I would jump at the chance to do it again.

Hamid asks:

I've not seen Mannequin 1 or 2 but I just read your hilarious post from a few years back about you and David doing rewrites on both (the bit about the 'swell guys' wanting to pay you in TVs was priceless). My question is how much of your writing ended up on screen?

It’s hard to say. There’s a lot of our stuff sprinkled in both movies, but it’s not like they just used whole scenes or sections. There are many times they kept a joke but changed the set-up (which killed the joke) or kept the set-up but just cut the punchline.

In the original MANNEQUIN draft, the department store was set in LA. So we tried to give it a real history and character. We mentioned that the first escalator was introduced at their store. (The first escalator was actually introduced at the May Co., a Los Angeles department store.) We also said that Greta Garbo bought her make-up there.

Then they changed the location to Philadelphia but kept a lot of that stuff. So Greta Garbo went to a department store in Philadelphia to get her make-up?

But along the way there are jokes that work and moments that play that are ours, which is gratifying. We tried to give both movies a little more heart as well laughs. Those are the moments I like the best.

And finally, Albert Giesbrecht wants to know:

I have been to stage plays, so I know that actors project their voices, but I wondered if they did that on TV, or just talked in their normal conversational voices? What I mean is,I used to attend tapings of Canadian talk shows in the 80's ( The Allan Thicke show was one of the shows), and the audience members had to strain to hear the host and his guests, while watching it on TV, the hosts and guests were quite loud. I sometimes wonder if the audience doesn't laugh, because they can't hear the actor. I heard that was the case on WKRP, with Jan Smithers, who played Bailey Quarters.

Yes, on multi-camera shows they have to talk conversationally but loud enough that the studio audience can hear them. And even with microphones, some actors speak so softly that they’re hard to hear. We are very vigilant on this issue, and will re-do scenes if the actors speak too softly because you’re right, if they mumble or speak in a whisper or are too rapid-fire they don’t get the laugh.

I notice that a lot on single-camera shows. Jokes are lost because the actors swallow them. I'm always surprised that more producers don't put a stop to that. 

What's your Friday Question?  God, when is this year going to end?

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Jobs I Wish I Had

Starting a new feature I’ll do from time to time. “Jobs I Wish I Had.” We all have them. We grow out of most of them, but not all. Secretly, don’t you still wish you could be a ballerina or Navy Seal?

And then there are the jobs you’d love to have but no longer exist. Big band crooner, flapper, Czar of Russia.

Lately the GSN has been showing old black-and-white episodes of I’VE GOT A SECRET and WHAT’S MY LINE? in the middle of the night. (I think contractually they have to play them for so many days a year.) These were old musty game shows from the ‘50s and ‘60s. By today’s standard they are positively archaic. A panel of four personalities must guess the contestants’ job or secret.  That's it.  There was zero production value and if a contestant stumped the panel they won the whopping sum of $50. The shows were aired live (for the east coast anyway). Today they're great fun to watch.

WHAT’S MY LINE? was originally on CBS at (I believe) 10:30 p.m. The panelists all wore tuxedos and formal gowns. The host, John Daly was the most erudite emcee in the history of television. If there are 500,000 words in the English language, he knew and used 469,000 of them – each week. Everyone was very formal. Ms. Francis. Mr. Cerf. Ms. Kilgallen.

When little kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up they’ll often say fireman, or actress, or cowboy, or fashion model. I wanted to be a panelist. And you know what? I still do. Too bad those gigs have gone the way of the 8-Track tape.

Think about it. Sunday night. You go out and have a nice dinner in Manhattan. Roll into CBS at 10:00. Don your tuxedo and get made up. There’s nothing to prepare. You’re not supposed to know what will be on the show. You do the show live at 10:30. You play this parlor game and (in my case) say a few witty lines and get a couple of laughs. At 11:00 you’re done. No pick ups. No alternate takes.   By 11:15 you’re in a bar. For this you are handsomely paid, you’re famous, and these shows lasted upwards of fifteen years. You have job security.

You parlay this into appearing on other panels. Ka-ching!! You trade on your fame and write books (or have others ghost write them for you), speak at events for absurd fees, score lucrative commercial endorsements (“Hi, this is Ken Levine for Studerbaker!”), and be invited to all the A-list society parties. Judy Garland could pass out in my lap. 

I was always amused when one of these panelists missed a show because he was on vacation. Vacation from WHAT? A half-hour a week?

There are very few panelist opportunities today. The Red Eye overnight show on FOX NEWS and I’d love to do that program. Bill Maher’s HBO show, Chelsea Handler’s E! show – these are two others. But slim pickings for sure. What few celebrity game shows there are require you must be a has-been from some ‘70s sitcom. Rarely does the casting call go out for never-beens. So I’m at a distinct disadvantage there.

But that’s one of the jobs I wish I had had. What about you? What’s Your Fantasy Line?

p.s.

Another perk of being a panelist is you can plug your book. Available on Kindle for $2.99. Without that forum how will I ever plug mine?

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I'm on the radio one more night

I'll be hosting again tonight on 790 KABC from 9-midnight PST.  You can hear it online here.  After New Years Day all the regular talent returns and we fill-in guys go back to parking cars and slinging hash. 

But tonight I've got a fun show.  We'll be talking movies a lot, what with the Oscars coming up (oh yeah, and the Golden Globes).  Glenn Whipp from the LA TIMES and David Polland from MovieCityNews.com will join me.  Also, comedian/author/interesting person Elizabeth Imus-Zero will be on.  For a little baseball talk I have the great Henry Schulman from the San Francisco Chronicle.  I'll be trying to talk him out of voting for Barry Bonds for the Hall of Fame.

Goofy topics, surprise guests, and my take on the issues whether I know anything about them or not.  Join me tonight.   It's either that or the tenth bowl game they're televising. 

And feel free to call in.  1-800-222-5222. 

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Happy New Year

May 2014 be for you what 2013 was for...

ARGO, Adele, Steven Soderbergh, THE COLBERT REPORT, Jeff Daniels, Daniel-Day Lewis, Big Papi, Big Little Town, Tracy Letts, AUBURN TIGERS, Michael Douglas, Mumford & Sons, Joe Torre, Ang Lee, PIPPIN, Jennifer Lawrence, Bruno Mars, SCANDAL, Fun, Judith Light, James Cromwell, Larry Allen, Tom Mison, BREAKING BAD, Christoph Waltz, Beyonce, Billy Porter, Eric Nadel, MODERN FAMILY, Taylor Swift, Kevin Spacey, Usher, Lupita Nyongo’o, David Fincher, MIAMI HEAT, Tessanne Chin, Miguel Cabrera, VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE, Cris Carter, Kanye West, Andy Samberg, Patina Miller, Andrea Martin, Anna Gunn, Anne Hathaway, Annie Levine & Jonathan Emerson, LeBron James, Lorde, Netflix, LOUISVILLE CARDINALS, Tyson Apostol, Max Scherzer, ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, The Black Keys, Kevin Burkhardt, AMERICAN HORROR STORY, Cyndi Lauper, Kelly Clarkson, THE VOICE, back up singers,Laura Linney, KINKY BOOTS, Rainbow Rowell, Superman, Andrew McCutchen, Jim Parsons, Carrie “Maria” Underwood, BALTIMORE RAVENS, Cicely Tyson, BOSTON RED SOX, Bill Parcells, Gail Mancuso, ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tony Hale, Merritt Wever, “Babel,” James Spader, Gotye, Tina Fey & Amy Poehler, Jay Z & Robinson Cano, Janis Ian, Adrian Peterson, Jimmy Fallon, Candice Glover, MATILDA: THE MUSICAL, Clayton Kershaw, Allison Janney, Miley Cyrus, Amy Adams, THE GOOD WIFE, Haim, Kate Atkinson, the other Ken Levine, and me for having readers like you.

Happy New Year!

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