This town is really one big sound stage.
Here you see a screen shot from the 1955 "I Love Lucy" where Lucy and Ethel get off a tour bus to pick a piece of fruit from Richard Widmark's yard. In a rare exterior shot for this sitcom, you see Lucy and Ethel approaching the infamous wall around his property. From the long shot, it might not even be Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance but their doubles.
You want to see what this looks like today?
Dinner last night: Grilled bratwurst.
Happy Halloween eve! Call your exterminator.
Forty-eight years ago....Celebrating the birth of widescreen movies....70 years ago this month.
Here's another luscious recipe from Valerie Bertinelli and the main selling point, besides the deliciousness of the food, is the fact that you just use one sheet pan to make it. Ultimately, I used two things. A sheet pan and a small bowl. Talk about easy clean-up.
Double winner winner, chicken dinner.
Yes, this is chicken thighs with olives, onions, and tomatoes in vinegar.
Start by preheating your oven for 425 degrees.
Slice up one red onion.
In a bowl, combine a pint of cherry tomatoes, a jar (drained) of Castlevetrano olives, three cloves of sliced garlic, and some rosemary. Drizzle some EVO over this and mix it up. Put aside.
On the aforementioned sheet pan, drizzle some more EVO. Take four to six bone-in chicken thighs, Let the oil coat both sides and then salt and pepper both sides. Place on the sheet pan, skin-side up. Place the onion pieces all around.
Without pouring on top of the chicken, add 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sherry vinegar to the pain. Place in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and place the olive/tomato mixture all around. Put back in the oven for another twenty minutes.
Let it cool for ten minutes and then serve. And no worries about the clean-up. If you serve on paper plates, even better!
Dinner last night: Leftover SPO.
I'm actually going to miss this guy when he's out of office. Very dependable comedy.
Dinner last night: Chicken in vinegar with olives, tomatoes, and onions.
And the story continues about my college sitcom which premiered....well...multiple decades ago this month.
Back then, it was exciting times for Diploma City in its second season.
We graduated from mimeographed scripts to actual Xerox copies. That, of course, didn't stop the typos and the on-the-fly rewritten lines as shown above. But, press on, we did.
I used the summer after the first season to ascertain what this radio situation comedy had achieved in its initial episodes. The writing? A little too obvious and pedestrian. The production values? Way too sloppy. Both fell into my side of the ledger issued by the Blame Department. But, there was one other area that needed to be fixed. Immediately.
The acting.
Diploma City's first shows are a great example of what happens when mediocre scripts are read by bad actors. Admittedly, I wasn't working with graduates of the Actors Studio as taught by Lee Strasberg. I wasn't even working with graduates of Fordham University. Most were sophomores and juniors. Except for three regulars who stood a fighting chance, I decided to replace most of the folks on the show. I would do what most soap operas do. This week, the role is played by X and, the following week, it is played by Y. No questions asked or answered. At least I wasn't changing the ages of the characters. On soaps, you can see a character at the age of 5 on Friday and, suddenly on Monday, the same character is now played by a 16-year-old.
The biggest recast I faced was the role of the "white bread" freshman now sophomore, Steve Marshall. Not only was it tough for any actor to give life to this dullard (my fault), but the guy who did it the first year was a pain to deal with. He had delusions of mediocrity with this role and quickly fancied himself in the ranks of Sir John Gielgud. Over the hot weather months, I started to think of ways in which Steve Marshall could leave the series.
"He goes home for the summer and is killed by an air conditioner that falls out of a window."
"His boss at the ice cream stand goes postal and Steve is found dead alongside some Carvel Lollapaloozas in a freezer."
"Steve drops his dad off at the airport and suddenly finds himself employed as a Hare Krishna greeter in Terminal 4."
By the end of August, I simply opted to do a straight replace and hope I could breathe some life into the character on the written page. The guy who would play the role in the second season was not materially better as an actor. But he was a nice guy and fun to be with. That's all we wanted.
Plotlines for Season 2 came easier and easier to me. I simply borrowed from everybody's life. It's not hard to fashion stories for some kids on a college campus when you're actually a kid on a college campus. The guy who played our Bronx-grown student (he made the cut) had gotten himself into a cafeteria scrape with some lummox over an errant look at the asshole's girlfriend. We transferred it to a script. If you started dating somebody, that wound up in the show. If you broke up with somebody, that wound up in the show. If you were having a fight with somebody, that wound up in the show. If you made up with somebody, that wasn't so funny. This would not wind up in the show. Nevertheless, art imitated life so much that the rallying cry around our studio was "have something happen in your life and three weeks later, it's on Dip City."
I learned how to engineer my own tapings and also edit them. I frequently found myself in an editing bay for several hours on Saturday, cutting that week's show. So, besides writing and directing every episode, I pretty much controlled all other aspects of the series as well. It was a labor, but one of love. And I came to enjoy the fact that my actors could never seem to say a line or do a scene in one take.
Part of the reason why the acting was so tough to improve is that we were rushed to complete a taping in the course of one hour every Tuesday during Student Activity Hour. As I surveyed the station, I realized that production studios were available at all hours of the night. If we could tape at a leisurely pace in the evening, the production would sound a whole lot better.
I was right.
Once we transferred our taping to a two or three hour period every Tuesday night, Diploma City started to sound professional. As I really learned the voices of my cast, my writing improved. And so, gasp, did the acting. If a line was read with the wrong inflection, we had the luxury of doing it until the actor got it right. It might take twenty minutes, but, eventually, the line was read correctly. As a matter of fact, we got so bitchin' with those nighttime tape sessions, we sometimes taped two episodes in one evening. This allowed us to stockpile some shows and we could actually take a week or two off.
There was also another delicious by-product of our nighttime tapings. We came together as the ubiquitous family that lots of TV show casts turn into. Our tapings soon became a weekly party. And it showed on the air as well. Friends started to beg to come aboard. This resulted in our creation of some wonderful recurring characters. The ego-bloated Top 40 disc jockey at the college radio station. A good looking hockey player who considered himself God's gift to women. And a new kid in the dorm who may or may not have been gay. This was years before homosexual characters got, pardon the expression, hot on TV. I realized just recently how ahead of the times Diploma City was.
Late in Season 2, one of my newer actors, also known now in Blog World as "Djinn from the Bronx,"came to me with a script idea. Actually, it was more than a notion. It was a full blown radio play for an episode. Up to this point, Yours Truly had written every single word uttered on Diploma City. But, Djinn had taken a disastrous spring break vacation and turned it into a wonderfully funny episode that would feature our female characters. Moreover, it was something that I could not have even tried to write from a female perspective. While the Bermuda adventures were certainly not "Girls Gone Wild" material, it was still funny and organic. Sex-less in the City, but hilarious still. Djinn's script also afforded me my first opportunity at script editing, a creative process which I still now prefer to this very day.
During Season 2, WFUV had their annual fundraising marathon much akin to those silly pledge drives that are done by your local PBS TV station. Every WFUV show had to do something special for the marathon and Diploma City was no exception. What resulted was a story I've told here before, but it certainly bears repeating.
Recalling my show's ties to the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I hit on a 150 watt light bulb of an idea to promote our show during the fundraising. What if I got somebody from the MTM Show to be on our show and make a pitch for WFUV? I called MTM's publicist in Hollywood and this was surprisingly easy to set up. Per my specific request, I was given the appropriate time and phone number so I could engage Ted Knight for the task.
We awaited the appointed day and time as if it were Christmas morning.
In advance, I fashioned a scene of dialogue that would break the fourth wall between one of our cast members and Ted. Then, Ted would go into his plug for listeners to send dough to WFUV. At the hour of our reckoning, I called Ted and he was incredibly gracious. I essentially explained to him what we were doing and I recited the dialogue so he could copy it over the phone. We rolled tape and it went well. For about a minute. Suddenly, Ted's mind veered off the road as if he was trying to avoid hitting a deer with his car. He started to ramble about WFUV and Fordham, which made virtually no sense in the context of the show. Amazingly, my actor followed Ted down into Confusionville and what resulted was a hilariously funny but impromptu conversation that I ran virtually unedited. Besides, I felt I had no creative license to ask Ted Knight for a second take.Ted Knight's cameo appearance was just one highlight of what was a pivotal season in the radio life span of Diploma City. In the first season, we did 26 episodes. But, with our vast improvement in Season Two, we managed to do 30 installments. All was good.
But there was a new wrinkle. I was graduating. Yet, most of my cast would still have one year left in their college career. Figuring I had nothing better to do except get turned down for jobs, I opted to keep the show going for one last year.
And, for the conclusion of our story, you'll have to come back here one more Sunday.
Dinner last night: Beef rouladen at Red Lion Tavern.
Honoring the late great David Jacobs with one of three openings to the terrific "Knots Landing."
These days, our local cinemas are more tricks than treats. You know the monthly drill, gang. I'll drift through the movie listings and give you my knee-jerk, gut reaction to what is polluting our neighborhood screens.
With that in mind, the word "boo" has two definitions.
Taylor Swift - The Eras Tour: For those who didn't want to spend five thousand dollars for a concert ticket.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The latest from Martin Scorsese and the trailers look grim. Plus can he make a movie without Robert DeNiro?
The Exorcist - Believer: Reviewed here the other day. Much better than I expected.
Paw Patrol - The Mighty Movie: Curb your cartoon.
Saw X: Was there Saw I through IX?
Five Nights at Freddy's: The trailers tell me it's a horror movie. In more ways than one.
The Creator: I don't think this is biblical.
A Haunting in Venice: Reviewed here previously. You can never go wrong with Agatha Christie.
Dumb Money: No such thing.
The Nun II: Does she sing? Asking for a friend.
The Blind: Leading the...
Expendables 4: Hey, Stallone keeps working. You gotta give him credit.
Anatomy of a Fall: A documentary about the Dodgers in October?
The Holdovers: Paul Giamatti as a college professor babysitting students over Christmas break. From director Alexander Payne who I once met at a hair salon.
Malibu Horror Story: Oxymoron.
Nyad: Annette Bening as the famous swimmer. Also starring Jodie Foster.
Hayride to Hell: A farmer goes on a rampage. With rising grain prices, who can blame him?
Butcher's Crossing: Nicolas Cage is in the aid, so count on nobody understanding a word he says.
Dinner last night: Hamburger.
That's how I feel about the new reboot of the always welcome "Frasier." Recently premiering on Paramount Plus (with the first two episodes also showcased on CBS), this is more of a third act than a reboot. More importantly, it marks clear evidence that it is possible to produce a smart and funny sitcom in front of a live studio audience. In my book, that's the only way sitcoms should be shot. With that live energy you get only from 200 folks sitting in the bleachers.
As a fan of the original, I was very skeptical when news came out about the planning of a return, especially since reboots of "Murphy Brown" and "Will and Grace" had gotten it all wrong.
About six months ago, I somehow got my hands on the reboot pilot script and I was astounded just how good it was. Could this transfer successfully to the sound stage?
You bet it did.
Now much has been made of the fact that Frasier Crane is the only holdover character. But that, in its own way, is part of the charm. After all this time, Frasier is moving on. Dad has just passed away. His last romance has ended after twenty years. And he senses it's time to finally be a father to son Freddy, who just happens to live in Frasier's old haunt of Boston.
The reboot builds on the character and allows him to breathe in this new setting organically. Freddy has quit Harvard to become a fire fighter, much to Dad's chagrin. And he has a life of his own in which Frasier will now attempt to fit in.
This show has all the laughs and feels and energy of the original, but, in its own retro style, feels brand new. Or like one of the best sitcoms of the 80s and 90s that we sorely miss and need in 2023.
The cast is superlative, especially Jack Cutmore-Scott as Freddy and the wonderful Anders Keith as the son of Niles and Daphne, complete with his father's many eccentricities. When I read the pilot, I sensed these characters were strong on paper. The actors bring them even more life.
And that's another thing about this "Frasier." In recent years when sitcoms would film in front of a live audience, the sound mixers would be reluctant to let the audience reaction be heard as if they were ashamed of it. Not on this one. They let you hear the audience in all its raucous response. This adds to the theatricality of it all as every episode of "Frasier" is like a one act play on Broadway.
There is hope in the world. Thanks to all behind this welcome breath of fresh air.
Through a window that is now wide open.
Dinner last night: Sandwich and salad.
A major hit, the movie spawned a whole bunch of satanic knock-offs as well as a plethora of awful sequels. So, in its fiftieth year since the original opening, out comes a new version of "the Devil made me do it." I chalked it up to Hollywood trying to make a fast buck but then I saw that Ellen Burstyn was reprising her original role as Chris McNeil from a half-century ago.
Hmmm. I was intrigued.
And, while not perfect, "The Exorcist: Believer" turns out to be the best sequel of the original yet and that's largely due to the presence of Burstyn even in a relatively small role. It largely takes the story from 1973 and extends it to the next logical chapter.
As the film opens, Leslie Odom Jr. is traveling in Haiti with his pregnant wife about 13 years ago. A devastating earthquake topples a building on her and Odom is presented with a decision. The doctors can save only one. Either the wife or the fetus.
Flash forward and Dad is living with his daughter in Georgia. It's a normal life until the day when she and a school mate wander into the woods and disappear for three days. When they are found, they have no recollection of what happened.
The Devil, you say.
So, in the 2023 edition of the Exorcist, you get not one but two possessions. And it's not long before we are off to the races with head turning, vomit spewing, and blood curdling. Both kids' parents are hard pressed to deal with this. The other girl's folks turn to their holy roller minister for answer. Odom's character seeks out Chris McNeil who has used the last fifty years writing definitive books on exorcisms.
The last third of the film gets a bit goofy as, in lieu of seeking out priests, all concerned try some home remedies for getting the Devil out of the house. But, still, it holds your interest and there are worse choices at the multiplex. Plus audiences are treated at the end to a surprise appearance by...
Never mind.
The original's director William Friedkin just died and I wonder what he would think of this. My hope is that he would have seen some merit even if it doesn't come close to the classic.
LEN'S RATING: Three stars.
Dinner last night: Grilled bratwurst.
I can never get enough of Oliver the Beagle.
I had a better typewriter than this one in college. But, the picture alone propels me back to some great times in my life.
It was a radio show called "Diploma City."
I had spent my freshman and sophomore years at Fordham University's WFUV. Doing a little of everything and a lot of nothing. Not gifted with the voice of Don Pardo, my airwork was limited. I did some news writing and reporting for the evening news report. I attempted sports play-by-play and quickly gave up when I realized that, during a football game, I could never tell which player had the ball.
I developed a little bit of niche when I became the station's official "television reporter." I got to do some celebrity interviews with folks like Tony Randall, Alan Alda, Paul Lynde, and Karen Valentine. But, still, there was something that seemed a little off reporting on the medium of television while on the radio.
A bit directionless, I might have given the 50,000 watt antenna and its surroundings a huge heave ho, except that I had made a lot of good friends there. So, for the sake of my wonderful comrades, I stuck it out. A supporting player, but clearly not a star.
But I still wanted more.
I was a sitcom junkie. Most particularly, I was in love at the time with the comedy stylings of such classics as "All in the Family" and "Mary Tyler Moore." I fantasized about working in the writers room at MTM Enterprises, even if it was just to take orders for late night pastrami sandwiches. So, I thought, how do I start myself on that esteemed path while playing the flunky at WFUV?
How about a sitcom on the radio? It's not like it was an innovative idea. After all, the sitcom was born on the AM band in the 30s and 40s, thanks to people like Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Fibber McGee & Molly. Gee, I could do that on WFUV. So, I told the station program director. His reaction was not what I expected.
"Huh?"
He was more used to fielding program ideas from would-be rock disk jockeys who wanted to devote two hours of airtime to the "Best of Foghat" with such ridiculous show titles like "Vaheavela," "Anybody's Guess" or "As Time Goes By." Nobody had ever showed up with this notion before. And, as I did my research, nobody had done such a show at WFUV for a long time. The last guy who had mounted a comedy show on the station? Alan Alda.
I was even more determined to pick up the gauntlet that the vintage WFUV program guides had hoisted at me. Now was the time to bring a situation comedy back to WFUV, Mr. Program Director.
"Huh?"
Probably to get rid of me, he gave me a half-hour every Sunday night starting in October. 1030PM. Bedtime for most, primetime for me. It was my junior year and I finally mattered at WFUV. The coach had given me the ball.
Now what do I do?
I got hold of some old Jack Benny radio scripts and studied the format. You have to be more descriptive in the dialogue and rely more heavily on sound effects. Instead of simply walking across the room, you have to actually say, "I'm walking to the other side of the room." Well, there are more creative ways to do that, but you get the idea. I decided to devote my summer months to writing scripts for my production.
Except I still didn't have a concept. Being uncommonly devoted to "Mary Tyler Moore," I decided to use that as a model for my show. Well, more than a model. I blatantly copied them. As I typed away, I was convinced that MTM lawyers with full briefcases would be showing up at my door any minute. I countered to myself that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. It was also a great shortcut for an idea-less writer.
Since we were in college, I adapted the MTM show to a university setting. Two male freshmen roommates at a fictitious Philadelphia campus called Taft College. AKA Diploma City, or, as it became affectionately to most of us, Dip City. Steve Marshall and Allen Siegel were Mary and Rhoda. Steve worked at the campus newspaper with Kathryn Engel (Lou Grant), Cindy Wellington (Murray Slaughter), and Milton Harper (Ted Baxter). I was so tuned in to Mary's show that my characters' last names were culled from the last names of the actors on that program. I was a complete nut.
In those early days, I really didn't know what the hell I was doing. Luckily, one of the station engineers took a liking to the idea and fashioned a whole bunch of sound effects that would set the scene for wherever my characters were. Rock music would be background in the dorm room. A teletype would denote that you were in the school newspaper office. And a college juke box, mixed with crowd noises, would tell us that our characters were hoisting a cold one at the college bar, the Chem Lab. Of course, I hadn't researched well enough to know that the drinking age in Pennsylvania was still 21. Oh, well. Perhaps my very first use of the "creative license" rule.
When it was time for me to play Louis B. Mayer and start casting, I probably should have sought out Fordham's acting troup. Instead, I decided to troll those already working at WFUV for some diamonds in the rough.
Rough indeed.
I found one guy on the air butchering an intro to a classical concert. He was horrible. For me, he was perfect to be my freshman from the Bronx.
I culled other "actors" from the ranks about me. "Hey, you wanna be on a radio situation comedy?" Most shrugged and said "sure." They had no idea what they were getting into. As I went about my casting calls, I started to make up characters as I went along. One guy could do an Irish accent. He became the bartender of the Chem Lab. I discovered another girl could do an Irish accent as well. She became the bartender's sister. And so on and so on. Before long, all my friends wanted their 15 minutes in front of the microphones.
And friends of friends got worked in. One of the leads started dating another girl at the station. She soon became his girlfriend on the show. Of course, the faux relationship would last only as long as the real one did. There was one young lady who I had a crush on. She didn't even work at the station. I created another new character to get her involved. With the show and then maybe with me. This was all easy to manage, as I wasn't paying any of these folks a dime. The only acting expense I had to endure was a specific request from one of the potential regulars. He needed to be supplied with a can of Diet 7Up for every taping.
During the first season of Diploma City, we did all our rehearsing or taping in a single midday hour. The so-called student activity hour as designated by the campus. This was the equivalent of trying to stage Ben-Hur's chariot race during a coffee break. Eventually, rehearsing gave way to virtually no rehearsing. Most of the time, the cast hadn't even read the script before we hit the mikes. Between my typos and their lack of preparation, you had bloopers like this.
"Gee, this coffee is too string."
"Uh oh, I'm going to be late for my clash."
"Hey, bartender, I'll have a cold pint of male."
You get the idea. Complicating the legibility of scripts was the fact that I did them that first season on mimeograph paper courtesy of the bursar's office downstairs. Not only were words misspelled and tough to read, my cast usually got completely high on the fumes. An already tough situation turned into the Hindenburg.
Editing all of their and my mistakes was a challenge, especially since I had no clue how to work a tape editing machine. I figured it out pretty darn fast and soon became a whiz. With the razor blade cuts on my fingertips to prove it.
In that first year, we were making up this shit as we went along. And, since we didn't know what we were doing, we were usually taping during the week for airing the following Sunday. With that tight a schedule, I started to lose cast members to homework, pop quizzes, etc.. Schooling was getting in the way of my craft. Fast rewrites were done all the time. Lines that were to read by a girl were switched to a guy. Sometimes we didn't catch all those nuances and some guy on the hockey team would be talking about shaving his legs.
One week, I completely forgot to book studio time to tape the show. Faced with no new taped episode for Sunday, we jimmied together the strangest taping ever. We lugged a boom microphone and tape equipment to somebody's dorm apartment and did the show in his living room. It was "fly by the seat of your pants" radio. And it certainly sounded like a radio show that was taped in somebody's living room.
For the most part, that first year of Diploma City was innovative, exciting, and pretty terrible. It took me a long while to find the character voices and then match them to the actors' style of speech. The writing was juvenile. The acting, except for two players, was uniformly awful.
But we had tons of fun.
Except we found ourselves with another nemesis. This one on the air. The program that followed Diploma City was a live discussion group conducted by some assholes from Student Government. Instead of focusing on the lack of parking spaces or cockroaches in the dorms, they preferred to use their air time to rip the show that preceded theirs. Ours. The anchor of these diatribes was some blowhard named Rich Conaty who was particularly cruel to us in his role as God's gift to broadcasting. Eventually, his cohorts got tired of staying out late on Sunday nights and left his show, which Rich turned into a big band music program. The scratchiest Bing Crosby records played ad nauseum week after week. But, ultimately, we all had the last laugh.
Years later, Rich Conaty passed away too young. I felt bad, but also recalled how thoroughly and unnecessarily mean he was to us.
As for our little radio sitcom, we had such a delightful time during the first season that we couldn't wait to do it for a second year. Luckily, the program director didn't care either.
"Here's your half-hour. Don't break anything."
We would press on. With some significant changes. And that story comes next Sunday at this same blog site and the same blog time.
Dinner last night: Buttered popcorn at the movies.
