Sitcom Creation: Center and Eccentrics

One way of creating a sitcom that works is to have a "Center & Eccentrics" show. The first example of this I can think of is the ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. Small-town sheriff Andy Taylor was the anchor character. He was the normal / eyes of the audience character and we entered the show through him. Griffith told home spun stories and the writers faced the problem that he's just not that funny a guy. By the way, folks that worked with him said, "Don't confuse Andy Griffith with Andy Taylor." His FACE IN THE CROWD character may have been more accurate than his fans would like to admit.

Back to the series creation, facing a fairly dull lead they surrounded Andy Taylor with a list of oddballs. Each of them had a defining characteristic. Don Knotts at the deputy was overeager. Otis was the town drunk. Jim Nabors played the dense mechanic. Floyd the barber was.... deliberate. Think of Andy in the center of this solar system of characters with the loons orbiting. And Aunt Bee was the sun.

Mary Tyler Moore was a talented comedic actress but she likewise was a "normie." So for the MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW they surrounded her with very sharply defined characters. The dense Ted Baxter was one of the all-time great sitcom characters, played wonderfully by Ted Knight, and again the formula worked. Lou Grant was the gruff boss. Murray the friend who loved to insult Ted. Rhoda the perpetually single. Phyllis provided a mirror character to Mary as she was married to a dentist and miserable.

TAXI had Alex Reiger in the anchor role surrounded by not one but two of the all-time great eccentric characters: Andy Kaufman at Latka and Christopher Lloyd as Reverand Jim. The crazies basically took over that series and account for the best episodes of the series.

CHEERS had Sam Malone as the center character. Around him were the "dumb guy" characters of Coach and later Woody. Cliff Claven was Mr. Factoid, most of which were inaccurate. Norm was the bar guy everyone liked. Frasier the intellectual. Diane the love interest who aspired to be an intellectual but found herself attracted to Sam in a HIS GIRL FRIDAY-style romance. Great series.

This is one approach if you're creating series pilot. Create a layered main character and then toss in the supporting characters to provide the laughs.

Fiverr for Script Coverage

I've got a link that gives both me and the person that uses it a discount for Fiverr. Great providers (just look for the top rated) for script coverage, editing, etc. etc.

Check it out. Thanks.

http://www.fiverr.com/s2/3c0776a4ca

Rare Veronica Lake Photo

SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS is one of my top 5 films and I came across this unique autographed photo of Veronica Lake on eBay last month - way out of my price range but I saved the image.

It must have been to someone she knew (family or a friend pre-stardom) as she signed "Connie" (her real name was Constance Ockelman) under her stage name.

Sadly, Lake would die young at 51 after struggling for years with alcoholism.

NORTH HOLLYWOOD: Unaired Judd Apatow TV Pilot

Posted on YouTube (and likely soon to be removed) is an unaired pilot for a Judd Apatow-created series. Get this cast: Jason Segel, Amy Poehler, Kevin Hart, and January Jones!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTS6fGiYCL0

WATCH ABOVE FIRST AS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Okay. Now that you're back. Judd has a great eye for talent. His series FREAKS & GEEKS launched a generation of comic performers and likewise this is a stellar cast. Traditionally, it's said to be a bad idea to do a show or film about the industry. Whereas a show like ENTOURAGE engaged in wish fulfillment, NORTH HOLLYWOOD is about the lower-level wannabe side. There's real chemistry among the characters, especially in a scene ten minutes in where Amy and Kevin encourage Jason to try out for a film role.

The premise of NORTH HOLLYWOOD is a struggling group of actors and comics form a friendship while searching for their big break. Opening with the struggling actor Segel playing Frankenstein at a kids' park is funny but I'm sure the network objected to the main character being a loser or unlikeable (ugh) because he scares a kid. And, yes, he should be referred to as Frankenstein's monster and screw you for reading books.

Poehler plays an assistant to actor Judge Reinhold. Judge does a good-natured turn playing off his film roles and working out a plot to BEVERY HILLS COP 4 with Kevin Hart's character. A laughable suggestion that Kevin (who smartly uses his own name on the show) takeover the lead to the series as Eddie Murphy's cousin doesn't seem so absurd in 2020.

The pilot clocks in at 35 minutes. Most TV shows on network at the time were 22 minutes. These days the show could have found a home on streaming and all ten episodes dropped at once online. But it was a difficult sell with the network. The now stars were relative unknowns and it may have been viewed as too 'insider' to appeal to a mass audience.

Interestingly the four members of the ensemble met at an acting class. BARRY successfully set a series at a Hollywood acting class decades later. Another show exploring the wannabe side of stardom is the amusing PARTY DOWN.

Give it a watch while it's available as the show is an important step in Apatow's development before he would dominate comedy in the 2000s. The exploration of outcasts, wannabes, losers, and comedy based on real life painful events were all part of this pilot.

Distinctive MTM Laugh

If you watch MTM produced shows (MTMS, TAXI, etc.) you'll hear a distinctive "Haw!" laugh. Ken Levine's blog (Hollywood & Levine) verifies that the laugh is that of James L. Brooks. One of the times I had an opportunity to speak to Brooks I asked about it and his friends laughed knowing it was him. Brooks said, "What crazy laugh?!"

I'd read they had brought in a guy to TAXI who had a distinctive laugh or it might be Lorenzo Music (another producer). (See below.) Why do that? We know the "laugh tracks" that television shows use to tell the audience: Laugh here! Cavett discusses a man who did this who brought in a 'magic box' and played the laughs like keys on a piano -- a guffaw here, tittle there, and large laugh there.

The psychology is this: People are embarrassed by their laughs. Laughing is something we give into and people have distinct laughs. Some are high pitched, strange, and everyone has a bit of self-conscious about laughing. With one person in an audience giving in to enjoying a laugh. The signal is: "Enjoy this. No matter how crazy you think your laugh is I got ya beat." Even the laugh itself is a reason to laugh if it's very distinct.

A truly funny movie (Marx Brothers at their best) will make me laugh even if I'm alone. But there's an effect of an audience enjoying a comedy as a group that's especially enjoyable. The largest laughs I've been a part of in the movie theater were screenings of BLAZING SADDLES, AIRPLANE! and SOMETHING AOBUT MARY. All three had my audience (and me) falling out of their chairs laughing.


Sources for more info:

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2009/08/who-is-that-guy-with-weird-laugh.html

https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/archive/index.php/t-244727.html

The Associates -- Television Series

A few episodes from THE ASSOCIATES are on YouTube. The 1979-1980 series from the illustrious team behind TAXI is set at a Wall Street law firm. The ensemble cast includes a young Martin Short. Despite the thirteen-episode order, only nine ever aired.

Despite the constant parade of legal drams on television, there haven't been many law office-set series. I co-wrote a comedy pilot and we opted to set it in a low rent, one-horse law firm because... write what you know.

Back to THE ASSOCIATES. Martin Short is one of our great sketch comedians and has created some iconic characters. However, playing a normal town "real world" person he seems ill at ease. Here he plays Tucker Kerwin a fresh out of Harvard Law associate. Several other great comedians struggled in this manner: Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters. Short gets better as the episodes go on but he's a bit 'hot' in the cool medium of television.

Jim Brooks, Stan Daniels, Ed. Weinberger, and Charlie Hauck are credited as creators. James Burrows directed the pilot. David Lloyd, perhaps the greatest of all sitcom writers, wrote seven of the thirteen episodes. Two episodes received Emmy nominations and the complete 13 ran on the BBC and Comedy Central in the 1990s. (Thanks Wiki.) B.B. King performed the theme, "Wall Street Blues" and it gives you a hint of the problem to come, "You're young. You've got money..." Not the blues and not indicative of comedy.

Why doesn't the show work? Making the lead character (Short) a Harvard-grad at a prestigious Wall Street firm was an error. The average American hates lawyers and hates Wall Street and a rich, well-heeled firm servicing the 1%-ers creates instant hostility. Why are we rooting for these people? It'd be like setting MTMS in a top-dollar Los Angeles market with a super-competent news staff. It doesn't work. We root for underdogs; these are overdogs.

One of the series creators was John Jay Osborn, Jr. author of THE PAPERCHASE. Likely how we started with Harvard and Wall Street. That's the world the writer knew.

Characters on the show include:

Shelly Smith as Sara James. A fellow associate with supermodel looks. Indeed, the actress had earlier appeared on national magazine covers as part of her modeling career. Short's character strikes out with her in the second episode.

Alley Mills as Leslie Dunn. A fellow associate who plays the smart girl the boys ignore. She'd later play the mom on WONDER YEARS.

Wilfrid Hyde-White (to movie fans: Colonel Pickering from MY FAIR LADY) as Emerson Marshall. Elderly law firm founder who has some funny moments in the episodes.

Joe Regalbuto as Eliot Streeter a young partner in the firm. Joe would later win an Emmy for a recurring role on MURPHY BROWN.

Tim Thomerson as Johnny Danko the mailroom guy clueless male model-type.

Who is the center of the series? The formula as old as THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW is to have a normal dude or dudette and surround them with crazies. This works on TAXI with Alex Reiger who gets the occasional laugh but is the reasonable (audience) entry into the world of zanies. The zanies (Jim and Latka) took over that series as it went on providing the best episodes.

There's no true center in THE ASSOCIATES. There's no Alex. They can't do humor from the incompetence of the lawyers as these are the highest paid in the country from the most prestigious schools. Had it been a play the show would have closed in Philadelphia. Despite the all-star team behind THE ASSOCIATES it was dead in the water from the pilot.

NIGHT COURT was a low-rent legal series that was amusing and lasted for years. It had Harry Anderson as the center. John Laroquette won many Emmys for his supporting role. Markie Post played a memorable public defender. Richard Moll and Selma Diamond as bailiffs. Low rent, late night zany cases and defendants, and a talented cast. This was far from Wall Street and it worked.

Following cancellation, THE ASSOCIATES was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Comedy Series of 1980. Must've been an off year.

Footnote: Decades ago we did laugh at young rich people in the amusing world of Screwball Comedies. See, for example, THE LADY EVE. Submit your paper as to why we don't do so now.

Second Footnote: A joke from my co-penned though never produced legal set pilot (which I'll resurrect one day perhaps): "Yes, your word is good enough for me. I just want your word in writing."

Talk Show Hosts

Letterman on NBC in the '80s was the greatest late-night show -- as far as comedy is concerned. He watched Steve Allen, Kovacs, Bob & Ray, etc and took notes.

But he had a Sid Caesar-like neurosis when it came to interviewing. Did he not want to be seen as getting personal with someone on TV? Whatever the reason, his interviews come off as "I HAVE to be here, even though I have better things to do." Steve Allen liked to claim anyone could host a talk show since everyone has conversations.

Letterman seemed to challenge that belief.

Carson's greatest gift was that he let the guest define the segment. With Brooks or Rickles he could sit back, feed an occasional straight line, but let them carry the load. (Ever see him "interview" Rodney Dangerfield? Just an occasional straight line: "Yes, as long as you've got your health..." He'd barely get a word in edgewise) But with others, he'd go Paar and carry on a conversation.

Carson fans should check out the Carson Podcast, which features a number of enjoyable interviews:

https://carsonpodcast.com


And now a brief commercial interlude:

I'm a user of this grammar checker: GRAMMARLY. There's a free version for browsers and one you can also purchase with more features. (Note and disclosure: I get a small amount of cash deposited into a Swiss account if you happen to purchase it using the link provided below.)

The World's Best Grammar Checker

Natalie Wood's Injury

The only two pics I've ever seen of Natalie Wood's unadorned left
wrist, which she always tried to hide w/a bracelet or band:






This resulted from an accident when she was ten, on a movie set where
she was on a bridge that collapsed and she fell into the rushing water
below (cue Twilight Zone theme). Her injury wasn't treated -- stage
mother didn't want to rock the boat w/the H'wood studios -- and it
didn't heal properly.

The movie she was making was produced by Glenn McCarthy, the Texas oil
wildcatter and real-life inspiration for the character of Jett Rink,
played by... Jim Stark.

The film was THE GREEN PROMISE.