ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN
CROSSFIRE #17 – March, 1986
I was on my way to a meeting at Twentieth-Century Fox one day when I got an idea for a new TV show. All of a sudden, justlikethat, it came to me. And no, I'm not going to tell you what it was but trust me: It was a terrific idea.
My meeting was with a friend/business associate who had just taken over a development job with a big production company. I walked into his office, exchanged libelous industry gossip and then laid The Idea on him.
Now, most of the time in Show Biz, you present an idea to someone and they don't do cartwheels. I mean, if I walked into your office and said, "Let's do a picture about a kid named Luke Skywalker and he has wars in space," you'd probably yawn and go, "What else you got?" It is usually necessary to sell the idea which explains the sometimes success of some very bad writers. They may be bad writers but they're great salespeople. Often, in order to reach the kind of non-creative folks who invariably wind up in the jobs where they say yea or nay to your creative ideas, you have to tap dance. You explain your idea in terms of something they've seen, something that's a proven success. That way, they at least have a reference point…a precedent of some security.
But in this case, I didn't need any of those tricks. The Idea was too good. It involved taking a certain old movie that Fox (I assumed) owned, changing the gender of the lead roles and converting it into a situation comedy. My friend loved The Idea.
I said, "The first step, I would imagine, is to check on the rights to the movie and then I'll start mapping out an outline of who the characters are…then we'll be ready to go to the networks with it."
He said, "We don't even have to wait for that." And before I could stop him, he had his secretary ring up the Vice-President of Comedy Development at CBS.
"Wait!" I said as the phone rang on their end. "You don't even know if you have the rights to the movie."
He gave me a wave that meant Don't Worry. So I sat back and I didn't worry. He went ahead with the call…
"Andy? Yeah, listen, I've got Mark Evanier here in my office…that's right — Mark. Yeah, he's fine. I'll tell him hello for you. Listen, Andy…why I called is, Mark just brought me an idea for a sitcom. Well, it was so good, I couldn't wait. I had to call you. Can you spare two minutes? Okay, listen…" He told The Idea in twenty-five words or more…but not much more. And after about thirty seconds, CBS agreed to option the series. My friend hung up.
"He loves it! Positively flipped!"
"Okay," I said, obviously delighted. "Why don't you get your lawyers on making sure you have the rights to the movie locked up?"
"That reminds me," he said, apropos of nothing either of us had just said. "NBC is really hungry for a show like this. They might even give us a guaranteed pilot."
"I thought you just committed it to CBS."
"I can get out of it. Let me call NBC." And with that, he shouted to his secretary to get the Vice-President of Comedy Development over at NBC and I lapsed into a sudden bout of déjà vu.
— because the next five minutes was an exact replay of the previous five minutes, almost verbatim. He told NBC the idea, NBC flipped and they agreed to option the idea and maybe guarantee us a pilot.
"Great," I said, fretting only a mite over the fact that we had now sold one show to two networks. "Now, about the rights…"
"Wait," he said. "What's the matter with me? I talked to some people over at ABC the other day and they told me they had a big hole in their schedule, Thursday night at eight. This show's perfect. We've got a better chance of getting on the air at ABC…"
You can figure out what happened next. Our meeting had begun at 4:00. At 4:35, I walked out of his office and The Idea had been sort of accepted by all three networks. Got to be some sort of record.
But we still weren't sure we had the rights to the movie on which it was based. And if we didn't have the rights, we didn't have anything. My friend walked me to my car and promised to run right back to his office and get the lawyers on it.
I'd been expecting our meeting to last a lot longer than that. I was due at my parents' house, just a few blocks from Fox Studios, at six-thirty, so I now had time to kill.
I walked down the Hello, Dolly street which was still in place (and largely still is). When they made that movie, they re-created old New York and built most of its buildings as facades on existing Fox studio and office buildings. The movie lost around eight million dollars. It would have lost nine but they decided not to spend the one million dollars (estimated) that it would have cost to tear down Old New York and restore the studio to its former state. So they just left it all up there and, every so often, part of it falls down or burns down.
I walked over to an exterior locale where Charlie's Angels was filming. It was a pretty dull shoot so, just as quickly, I ambled away.
I went up in the main office building, past Mel Brooks' office. A few years earlier, there had been a period during which every single magazine published in the United States and Canada was apparently required to publish a Mel Brooks interview. They were all done in his office here at Fox. Secretaries would run all over the lot and yell, "Mel's giving an interview! Come and listen!" Mr. Brooks, it seemed, craved an audience before he could respond to any journalist's questions. One time I was in a script meeting at Fox; or at least, it was supposed to be a script meeting. I wound up in Mel's office along with everyone else on the lot, all of us cramped together on the rug with Mel holding court. It was very funny but all I remember was that he kept comparing Blazing Saddles to a Degas painting and I kept trying to remember if Degas ever painted a bunch of old guys eating beans around a campfire.
So, looking for something to occupy the next hour and a half, I wandered up past Mel's office and — wouldn't you know it? — for the first time in the last three years, Mel Brooks was not (repeat: not) giving an interview!
I cruised through the M*A*S*H stage but they were all out on location. And I had just about given up when I heard my name called out. There, standing in the doorway of a trailer/dressing room parked alongside a soundstage, was an actress I knew named Susan Buckner, whom some of you may remember from the movie Grease and umpteen other venues. That particular day, she was filming a big guest role on Love Boat, filming just inside the stage we were standing outside.
She introduced me to her co-star, James MacArthur of Hawaii Five-O fame and I helped them run their lines. Their episode — scenes from which would be filmed momentarily — had them as newlyweds aboard the ship, running into his ex-wife, played by Joanna Pettet. You can figure out the storyline from there. I read Joanna Pettet's lines for them (she was off in make-up) so they could rehearse. Standing there, telling James MacArthur that I used to love waking up next to him in the morning was surely one of the stranger moments of my life.
A bit later, Susan showed me around. The set being used was the swimming pool; dozens of bikinied extras lurked about a pool that was, in this soundstage, maybe a foot and a half deep. They were filming a scene for one of that episode's other vignettes starring "Skipper" Alan Hale and Milton Berle. When it was done, Susan introduced me to Milton and I think I actually said something like, "Nice to see you in men's clothes," thereby violating Rule Number One about being around Milton Berle: Never be funnier than Milton Berle.
Susan told him, "Mark knows everything in the world about old comedians," to which Berle replied a skeptical, "Yeah?" I was then subjected to a quiz about obscure comics — the first one he mentioned was Richy Craig — and I guess I passed. He suddenly became very friendly, in a fatherly fashion, especially after I mentioned a few details of his own career and ticked off a few trivial facts about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
"You know," Mr. Television said, "this isn't my show. When I did my show, I ran everything. Writing, directing, staging, writing music…I did it all. I ran the show. No one dared hiccup without my permission." (Actually, he used a word other than hiccup — a word that relates strongly to the scene in Blazing Saddles that Degas didn't paint.) Berle went on: "But this isn't my show. I just come in, do my lines and go home. Much easier, much simpler. Now, don't get me wrong. They're paying me. I give 100%. I do the best job I can. But this isn't my show and I don't feel I should interfere."
I nodded. "Well, that's because you're a pro…"
"Never forget that, son. That's what a professional is. A man who does his job 100% and then goes home."
Just then, the Stage Manager trotted over. "Ready for you, Mr. Berle."
Berle shook my hand good-bye and strode over in front of the cameras. And I just watched the filming in fascination —
— because, over the next half-hour, Milton Berle told every single person in that soundstage how to do his or her job. He told the director how to stage the action. He told the cameraman how to line up the shot. He told each of the other actors in the scene how to deliver their lines. He told the make-up lady the name and catalogue number of a certain Max Factor base that would accentuate his eyes. At one side, two men were pushing a crate. Berle stepped away from the rehearsal a moment to show these men the proper way to push a crate. Finally, they shot the scene. Then Berle told them how to reshoot the scene. They reshot the scene. Then Berle restaged all the action. Then they shot the scene again. Finally, the director called, "Cut! That's a buy!" And he turned to Berle and asked, "Is it?" Berle gave him the O.K. sign and they moved on to the next set-up.
On my way out, I passed Uncle Miltie and heard him telling someone else, "You know, this is not my show. I just show up, do my lines and go home…on my old show, I used to run things…"
I wandered back to the office of my friend, the Development Person. I found him outside, just getting into his car. "Any word from the lawyers yet?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah! They're closing with Aaron Spelling," he said, happily.
Aaron Spelling was and is an independent producer of great import. I asked what he had to do with any of this.
"Oh, I sold him the idea."
I gasped. "You mean, The Idea?"
"Yeah. Turns out, it'll cost money to free up the rights. We're tight on cash right now so I called up Aaron and sold it to him. That way, we got a guaranteed profit and a piece of the show if he sells it to a network."
"Great," I said with zero enthusiasm. "Where does this leave me?"
"Oh, Aaron's got a guy he wants to have write it. Too bad he doesn't know you. You'd have been perfect for it. But look, we appreciate everything. We're going to send you a check for your help. Hey, catch you later. We'll do a lunch or something."
And before I could get a "But I…" out, he was tooling off in a Corvette and that, by God, was the last time I ever saw him. We never did lunch or nothing…but, sure enough, ten days later, I received a rather disappointing check which, on the instruction of my agent, I did not cash. We'd decided we would sue, if and when the thing went on the air so, for months after, waited for Aaron Spelling to sell The Idea. He never did and, eventually, the agent said, "Aw, go ahead and cash the check." A few years later when I met Mr. Spelling and asked about the project, he had no recollection of even being approached about the property.
But getting back to that day at Fox: I just stood there for a while, then I drove over to my parents' house for dinner.
"Anything new, dear?" my Mother asked me.
I just kind of sighed in bewilderment and said, "I met Milton Berle today…"