Somewhere below in this post, you'll find a photo of me with my friend, the late Lorenzo Music. I don't know why I have such an unhappy look on my face because I always had a good time when I was with Lorenzo. The last few times I saw him, it was in a hospital room and if you could somehow overlook the fact that he was dying, it was still kinda fun to be around him.
In his career, Lorenzo went from being a writer to being a writer-producer to being one of the top voiceover performers in the business. He began the unlikely segue into his final career while he was working on the TV sitcom Rhoda, which he developed with this then-partner, David Davis. For it, they created the role of a hapless, hopeless doorman named Carlton, who would be heard (usually over an intercom) but never seen. Carlton was not the swiftest exemplar of his profession or the soberest…and his voice was provided by Lorenzo.
The show became popular and so did its tipsy doorman. Lorenzo began looking for ways to expand the character's fame and his own fortune. At one point, he recorded a record which someone has made into a little music video. Here it is if you care to stop for a brief musical interlude…
Rhoda went off the air in 1978. One day in 1979, the phone rang in my old apartment and the following exchange occurred. I swear to you, this is exactly how it went…
ME: Hello!
CALLER: Yes, I'd like to speak to Mark Evanier.
ME: Hello, Lorenzo Music.
CALLER: (after a long pause) Wow. That's the fastest anyone's ever recognized my voice.
That was my introduction to Lorenzo. He explained to me why he was calling. He was working on a pilot for an animated, prime-time TV show called Carlton, Your Doorman for the MTM company. In '79, way after The Flintstones and way before The Simpsons, that was a pretty daring/different thing to attempt.
He and his new partner Barton Dean were writing it and Lorenzo, of course, was voicing the lead role. He explained he was looking for a writer with prime-time credentials (which I had) and also some understanding of animation (ditto, I'd like to think) to write a back-up script for the show and to become part of its staff if and when the show went to series. He was then pretty confident that it would.
I should explain what a back-up script is. Often, when a network commissions a pilot for a series, they will also have scripts written for two or three more episodes. This is so that when they judge the worthiness of buying that pilot as a series, they will also have those scripts to consider…some idea of where the show will go after the first week. Also, if they suddenly want to rush the series into production, A.S.A.P., they have the first few episodes already written.
Lorenzo mentioned another producer he knew who had recommended he talk to me. I did not recognize the name of this other producer at the time and do not recall it now. What I do recall is that this person (a) had read and liked a sample Maude script I'd written when I was up for a job on that show and (b) knew that I was writing cartoon shows for Hanna-Barbera and other studios. Lorenzo asked if I would come in and meet with him and Barton — and, oh yes, bring him a copy of that Maude script to read.
A few days later, I went in, gave them the script and they put me in a little room to watch a very rough cut of the Carlton pilot. It was missing music (not to be confused with Music), sound effects and some video but I thought it was pretty good. There was a sense in which the character was diminished by being seen. Before this, one of the most interesting things about him was that we, like Rhoda Morgenstern and other characters in the Rhoda show, had to guess what he looked like.
Now, we no longer had the intrigue of guessing. He looked like Zonker in the Doonesbury strip, which is not what I imagined. Still, if that's what his creator and voice said he looked like, who was I to argue? After the viewing, I joined them and we discussed the show for a while. Then I went home. and a few days later, this phone exchange occurred. Again, this is exactly how it went…
ME: Hello!
CALLER WHO SOUNDED NOTHING LIKE LORENZO MUSIC: Is this Mark Evanier?
ME: Hello, Lorenzo Music trying to fool me with a phony voice.
SAME CALLER WHO NOW SOUNDED LIKE LORENZO MUSIC: Shit.
He told me my Maude script went over well with him and whoever else had read it there and they wanted me to write one of the two back-up scripts they were preparing. They also wanted me to help with some revisions on the pilot. I was fine with all that. My agent made the appropriate deal and we went to work.
[IMPORTANT SIDEBAR: In 1979, all animation writing was either totally non-union or it was covered by the Animation Union, Local 839. Almost all cartoon writers felt that 839 did a miserable job of representing our interests and I was part of several legal attempts to get us out of that union and into the Writers Guild of America. Those attempts all failed but in later years, some progress was made. Many cartoon writing jobs (but not all) are now done under the aegis of the WGA. The Carlton, Your Doorman scripts were done under a WGA contract and no one noticed at the time.]
I worked a little with Lorenzo and Barton on funnying-up the pilot but I don't think any of my input ever made it into the finished product. I also wrote a script called "A Kiss is Just a Kiss." It revolved around a tenant in Carlton's building — an elderly Italian gent who talks and acts like a former Mafia Don. Carlton believes the man very much is one. In his bumbling way, the doorman accidentally destroys much of the man's apartment and the man, weeping over the damages, grabs Carlton and gives him a kiss.
Carlton, horrified, believes he has been given a "kiss of death" — a signal that he has been marked for a mob hit and will soon be seen no longer. He grabs up his cat and flees for his life, hiding out for weeks in flophouses and wearing disguises, super-paranoid that everyone he sees is the assassin sent to wipe him out.
In the end, he finds out that he has not been marked to be killed; that the old Italian gent actually likes him and gave him the kiss because he thinks Carlton is cute and would like to date him. We had a discussion if in the end, Carlton could say something about how the old guy was a Fairy Godfather but since the script was never produced, we never got around to deciding if it was a good thing to say. A very gay Production Assistant in the office thought it was hysterical and we had to keep it in.
We also, of course, never cast the role of the elderly Italian gent but Lorenzo knew just who he'd get to play the part. "Marlon Brando's a friend of mine," he remarked. "I'll get him to come in and do it." I was ready to bet serious money that that would not happen but again, since the script was never produced, we never found out. In later years as I got to know Lorenzo better, I was not quite as willing to wager money on him being unable to bag Mr. Brando. If anyone could have, he could have.
The Carlton, Your Doorman pilot was finished and I was invited to a screening of it for the MTM brass. This led to the never-live-it-down moment when I stepped on the feet on Mary Tyler Moore. I wrote about that here.
Everyone at the screening loved the finished pilot or at least they laughed a lot and seemed fairly positive it would be picked up as a series in a matter of moments. It was not but it did air as a special the following year and it won the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour), beating out a Dr. Seuss special, a Pink Panther special and She's A Good Skate, Charlie Brown.
In the meantime, Lorenzo's experiences dealing with the animation studio (Murakami-Wolf) on Carlton had led him to start drawing up plans a live-action situation comedy set in a place that made cartoons. This was also for the MTM company. He wanted me involved in that and we had several meetings about it, plus I took him on a tour of Hanna-Barbera and while there, introduced him to Gordon Hunt, who was then the voice director. This led to him auditioning for several of their shows and eventually being cast in a role on the Pac-Man series. He also briefly worked there as a writer helping develop a Saturday morning series called The Snorks. I don't think anything he did wound up in the eventual series.
I also don't think he did anything for The Duck Factory, an MTM sitcom set in a place that made cartoons, which debuted in 1984. That show was created by Allan Burns, a top comedy writer-producer who had once-upon-a-time written cartoons for Jay Ward. Lorenzo's take on the arena never went very far and I have no idea if or how one project led to the other, though I was asked to come in and write one. Before that could happen, the show was canceled as is often the case with shows where someone thinks of hiring Evanier.
By that point, Lorenzo's writing/producing career had been largely displaced by a busy voiceover career. He signed with a good agent, assembled a great "demo" tape and suddenly (and surprisingly) wound up doing hundreds, if not thousands of commercials as well as a number of other cartoons. The biggie, of course, was that in 1984 he was cast in the role of Garfield the Cat. His unique sound was heard in a dozen or so prime-time specials and beginning in 1988, in the Saturday morning Garfield and Friends show, which I wrote and voice-directed.
Contrary to what others have assumed, I had nothing to do with him getting his Garfield job and he had nothing to do with me getting mine. Just a coincidence. It was great working with him again and getting to know him well. He really was a smart, talented and funny man…and if you think I know everyone in the world, I'm a veritable hermit compared to Lorenzo.
Okay, so that's the story and it's run so long that I think I'd better put up one of those warning signs that it's a long post. If you've got another 23 minutes to spend on this topic, someone has uploaded the entire Carlton, Your Doorman pilot to the 'net and here it is. I really liked it and I can say that because I don't think anything I suggested made it into the show.
I don't know why it didn't sell. I asked Lorenzo once and he said, "I think the network just plain wasn't interested in doing an animated series then. MTM had the clout to get them to fund the pilot but I don't think MTM had the clout to get them to make it a series." That's as good an explanation as any. In Hollywood, projects go forward or get killed for far stupider reasons than that. See what you think…