Yeah, my industry spect made. Let's go. All right, let's go.
No, I got laid off when they close that as Bestis factory.
Now, wouldn't you know it? The Army cuts my disability pension because I
said that the plate in my head wasn't big enough. Eddie Clark and Ellen
don't want to hear about our troubles. No, no, it's very interesting.
Well, here we are. It's the high holidays. They're over and
it is black culture for the end of September. I am John Pottharts and
New York. Elsewhere in New York, Rob Long, Hi, Rob Hi,
John, Rob And back from a sojourn driving across this great country of
ours, and back again in Washington. Jonah Goldberg, Hi, Jonah,
Hey John, how are you? I am? I am very well.
Johneh. You have turned into Randy Quaid in the vacation you as long as
you're not Randy Quaid towards the tail end of his career having sex with his
wife on on on Twitter. Uh, talking about how that's like what what
Obama is doing to the country. That's fine, But I'm a little bit
like Randy Quaid in the end of a Independence day. But okay, yeah,
less probing, but yeah yeah, uh and so uh you you have
you now your own family RV is what I'm saying. We have a major
family truckster. That's right. It's a it's a the larger of the I
should say largest of the sprinter vans. That's the chassis. But it's a
custom conversion RV thing. It's got lots of cool bells and whistles. It's
it's basically the Nay plus ultra of tailgate technology. So now I'm gonna have
to become one of those people. And you learned some things, you know,
embracing this life. But uh, and we've got a lot more to
learn. But it's really it's a it's a great piece of equipment. I've
learned also that you know, diesel fuel is expensive. That didn't used to
be the case. It used to be cheaper than gas, and now it's
it's not cheap. And but no, it's just you know, we we
saw a great deal of this country very quickly on this trip because we had
to make it back to Iowa for a wedding. Our executive editor of the
Dispatch, Declan Garvey, had just an absolutely lovely wedding in Des Moines,
and we had to get there in time for it. And but no,
I mean the bells and whistles are kind of wild on the thing. And
I had to sell a little trunk of my soul to get starlink from Elon
Musk. But they delivered it. They didn't liver it to the place where
I needed them to deliver it. So now it's all heres have to set
that up. And well, so what what does that mean, star,
I haven't built into my car. It's it's Wi Fi for your car.
So you can get serious exam and Spotify and stuff like. No, no,
no, you can get serious next amim and Spotify. Anyway, this
this lets you have in the middle of the Mojave desert, where there are
no cell signals, you can get home speed uh Internet, so I could
do chool and that kind of thing from anywhere. And I have not set
up the the satellite radio yet. That's a different thing. But this is
like so you can Stawever, I need to interrupt this because you were in
Iowa, and therefore you were on the ground. I didn't get on the
ground in Iowa. And they need some shoe leather reporting, right, what
did the cab driver tell you you talked to voters. I talked to some
shakers in the political world. I was out there that happened to be at
this wedding, and I can record. I was hoping for ordinary. I
talked to some of them as elite cocktail party fancying dey Georgetown. Let me
tell you, some people are angry. People are angry. They don't like
inflation. I found that people don't like inflation. These are kitchen table issues,
I will say, in terms of political avalance, like this is the
fifth time I've driven cross country in the last eight years, tenth time.
I don't know something like that. You see almost no Trump signage except signage
left over from twenty twenty. They're still on the on the interstates, you'll
still see Trump twenty twenty, Trump Pence twenty twenty, Trump Make America Great
Again twenty twenty. I had not. I don't. I think I saw
one handmade Trump twenty twenty twenty four signed the entire time I was out there,
which is interesting to me. And I do think it's interesting that people
don't tear down the old signs. Consensus seems to be from the literally ones
and twos of people I talked to that the santiss moment is over. Maybe
that'll change tomorrow night we're talking to the day before the next debate, that
Nikki really is the only one left poised to sort of be the consolidation,
but that also could change. It's that amazing, So I mean, don't
you have to kind of like that the idea, I mean, it's good
and bad. Right, used to be that you could kind of, you
know, he kind of snooze through the Republican Party primary. You kind of
knew, right. Republican primary vote is pretty much obeyed the rules. They
may flirt a little bit, but they obeyed the rules. The rule of
this year was that rond de Santos is going to be nominated. He had
to and then this all just happened before there's even been an Iowa caucus.
It's either unsettling, which is a little bit, or it's kind of cool
that that they you know, Rob, it's funny. I've learned that a
month is a lifetime in politics. I don't know if you've heard that.
I heard a week. I heard. Let me ask you this that fat
lady singing basically any increment over right now is a lifetime in politics? Is
whatever? Right? And you know what, this is what I always said,
I kind of coined this phrase, is that there's only one pole that
matters, and that's the one that happens. You know that once you include
Trump in any cliche, the cliche is completely invalidated because it's like a day
is a lifetime with Trump. True, but that doesn't mean that anything changes
in that. He's like that, that's that's what she said. And then
it's just like it's Nietzsche's eternal return with Trump. It's like every day is
the same day. He calls for Mark Milly to be assassinated. He called,
He says, he's gonna punish assassinated cast He's gonna do this, He's
gonna do that. Then the day ends, and the next day star arts,
and you know, then he's going to call for somebody else to be
assassinated and executed, executed. Excuse me, Yes, she doesn't apply a
certain amount of lawfulness to it, right, but yeah, there would be.
He was. He was in favor of a process, process of execution,
which is when you say, uh, you know, guns up,
Can I tell you my firing squad joke. I'll just quickly tell you my
firing squad joke, because there's two Jews in front of a firing squad and
the commandant of the firing sque says any last requests, and one says,
I would like please a blindfold, and the other says, Sam, don't
make trouble. I've heard of even darker version of that one. I don't
know. It's pretty dark anyway. It's dark about the servility of people in
the face of the face of over I heard a great joke which I feel
like, maybe now that I think about it, Rob may have told here
before, but they had I'm not going to space his name. A long
time writer for SNL was on the guy who sort of gave Conan his start,
and yeah, and it was a pretty good episode, I have to
say. And this is on Flying the Wall, and he says he thinks
it was Checky Green, but it might have been Don Rickles who first told
this joke about how he was in Vegas and and Frank Sinatra was in the
room, and Checky Green says, Frank Sinatra once saved my life. And
he says, I was being beaten up in an alley by two thugs,
and Sinatra saw it and came over and said, okay, that's enough,
fellas. Hey, now, okay, there's a better version of that.
There's a better version. There were two, which is Frank Sinat just saved
my life. Five guys were in a jumped me in a parking lot in
Vegas and beat me up. And then I heard Frank's voice saying, okay,
boys, that's enough. That's the other version. I'm sure there's a
lot of versions of that. But yeah. I was recently watching Ocean's Thirteen,
as one does from time to time, Yes, and the half life
of seriousness of those movies is kind of impressive. But the thing that drives
me crazy in that is it's just sort of taken as an obvious like this
makes sense that anyone who shook Frank Sinatra's hand wouldn't do anything underhanded or dishonest,
Like there's this code among them. Shook his hand. Oh yeah,
he shook his hand. Oh my's literal. We've ended up here because yesterday
he's got a piece of a true cross. Yesterday I was changing channels and
Casino, the Martin Scorsese movie on which I haven't seen really since it was
released, and man, that is a strange movie. It is, you
know, which was made right, you know, a couple of years after
Goodfellas and has a out of the visual flash of good Fellas, and it
has a narrator like good Fellas, so that actually has two narrators, so
it's like a sequel, so it does twice as much. Movie has no
plot, and it's basically a kind of visual essay on how to run a
casino and what happened, how people is great, and how people try to
fleece it, and how they're watching each other and who what happens where,
and then what happens if the gangsters get involved and all that. It really
doesn't have a story. It's like a documentary that costs fifty million dollars with
some actors in the Yeah, very good. It's very mean. It's like
it's one of those movies that if you're flipping around and it's on for me
anyway, I have to watch the whole thing and and it's it's also kind
of a crazy morality tale, I mean, and the scene where Joe Pesh
and his brother get waxed, it's kind of horrifying but incredibly satisfying anyway,
it's wacheraful, but I don't think necessarily good. I'm going to split the
difference. Every time it's on. I want to watch it, Yeah,
for at least a little bit. But their problem with it it just doesn't
have So here's my question. There's no story. It's a real story.
That's the Point's a true story. Yeah, so it's like that's why sometimes
life doesn't have a plot. But my question was, like, has Joe
Peschi in a movie ever died or been physically attacked and assaulted with his character
did not deserve it. I was gonna say, right up until the end
home Alone, but you know he has a coming and home alone. No.
In in Raging Bull, which is where he you know, emerged,
de Niro, who plays his brother, beats him up out of psychotic jealousy
over his wife that his brother Joe Peschi did not deserve, you know,
was not responsible for. So there is in his first movie he has beaten
up, buying Robert de Niro for no good reason. So after that he
was always beating Yes, yes, but he's kind of always I mean,
he's it's like always a version of the same guy, like I'm just like
Denier kind of has that too. I just im trying to like think about
there are actors that, uh like like, well, you know the famous
old you know one Fred McMurray who basically played heavies and like kind of sinister
characters until he was suddenly My Three Sons. It's like when you take the
the actor from the big screen and you put him a little screen, suddenly
he's a dad like and if you're flipping around like, well, he's also
a psych guy. I know that those are those are great. Listen.
By the way, Yeah, let you mentioned Fred McMurray, who I think
it would be fair to say did not give a particularly memorable performance as Steve
Douglas on on My Three Sons. If his name was Steve. I think
his name was Steve. Well, you know, did I tell you my
Frederick Burrister? You have told him? Bit I think you should tell Yeah,
Well, because he was this is when he was so rich. He
was incredibly rich guy and very because he bought a bell Air property. There
are a few people like that who bought a lot of property of bell Air
and but he didn't want to do the show or near the end he was
just tired of doing it. So he just said, look, shoot me
out at the beginning of the season. I'll give you two weeks. And
so they wrote all the scripts ahead of time, which you can kind of
tell, and they shot him out, meaning they shot all of his all
of his coverage, so all of his close ups and his wide shots,
everything they shot for every episode for the entire season. They shot everybody else's
stuff. So it's like there's huge mismatches in the show. And he is
because he didn't want to do it. He's like, I don't want to
do this, and he's a big enough star they that, okay, we'll
do that. But my favorite fe McMurray stories I told type you can cut
the city you haven't heard is he is at the bell Air Country Club and
I heard this story from Bob Newhart and you know, McMurray was one of
the richest guys in town, right, And he comes at to Bob and
he says, Bob, you won't believe what just happened to me. In
our home up there in bell Air. There was the powder room, gasterers,
pader room, there was a leaky toilet, toilet kip running so I
called the plumber, Bob, and the plumber arrives and he goes in and
he turns it and then he charged me. Don't he charge me fifty dollars
for ten minutes? Bob? You and I are in the wrong business.
Uh. You know, it's interesting who got really rich in Hollywood and the
gold in the Golden days, because it's not who you would think. It's
not you, it's table. Yeah, it was Joel McCray. Joel McCray
who could have been a great star. He could have been Jimmy Stewart.
I mean, he wasn't as good actress Jimmy Stewart. But it's all about
role selection or whether you get the parts that you need over the course of
your right of your career. Because Joe mccraye was in four or five really
great movies, but they were kind of spaced out and he didn't have a
like a killer. Mean, he was in Foreign Correspondence, which is a
which is a great Hitchcock movie. He was in Sullivan's Travel Beach Story by
by Preston Sturgis. He was very, very very attractive, very good looking,
could do comedy, could do drama, was a wet start in Western's
but he owned like, I don't know, like half of the San Fernando
Valley or something like. He owned an enormous amount of real estate, and
I think when he died he was worth now what would be the equivalent of
several billion dollars. And so it was guys like him who made these killings
and the big famous guys. Once told me, maybe you guys know this
is true. I've never been able to really look it up and find much
success, so maybe I have this wrong. I'm not trying to traffic and
on misinformation here, but someone told me that Bruce Springsteen owns a vast amount
of real estate in downtown LA and is actually much much richer than people realized.
I mean, I don't think anyone thought he was poor, but like
much much people realize. Have you guys ever heard that? I haven't.
I have not heard that, but I believe hold on us. I got
to look this up because I think another like crazy rich guy who owned a
lot of LA was morey amster, really hold on where is this morning?
Well, back day it was easy because like nobody, nobody knew what that,
nobody knew how it was going to grow. If you started early,
early enough. Yeah, that was if you started early enough and bought stuff
like Bob Hope, you buy the valve of San Fernando Valley, it's like
Chinatown. Suddenly you're we're going to corporate the valley into the city, and
then before you know it, you're you're a zillionaire. The I worked with
a direct photography. The first one is the second DP of Cheers. But
he had been in Paramount for a long time. This really super old guy
when when he worked with us named John Finger, and John Finger came out
to LA from somewhere in the twenties, maybe he's even before that, to
work in pictures, and I think he wanted to be an actor in nineteen
nineteen or nineteen twenty two, but eventually he just became a kep. And
but he was from farming stock, so he and his wife bought a farm
in Los Angeles in the twenties on like X Yeah, I think like five
or ten flat acres in bel Air. So he drove this little BW rabbit
and he once he brought us his paycheck from famous Laskey players. He got
fifteen hundred dollars. I think it was like a year and then he had
they had a little farm. Uh, and he was one of the richest
guys on the set just because of you. My daughter went to this wonderful
camp in Maine called Camp Walden, which, according to lore, was the
camp that the Parent Trap, the original Parent Trap, was based on,
And and every time I would drive up there, it would really hammer home
the fact that the single best time to buy real estate and Maine is one
hundred years ago, because you can get some amazing bargain. Yeah, if
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we were talking about Fred McMurray, and as I said, I don't think
anybody looks back on Fred McMurray's thirteen years or fifteen years or nineteen years on
my three sons and says that he did much of anything good as a performer.
But I have this weird experience over the last couple of days. Uh,
these smart TVs now come, all of them. I have a Samsung
in my office and they have this kind of preset weird non cable, non
streaming free channel. They have this this thing called Samsung TV Plus, and
there are like four or five hundred stations you don't pay for right, and
it's just like there's they have all these weird you know, there's a free
CNN, there's a free CBS News now ABC, there's sort of news channels,
and then they have all this stuff where they play things twenty four hours
a day, like That Girl. There's like a That Girl channel that just
shows episodes of That Girl. And there's a channel that shows episodes of like
Ike Carly or something like that, and there was a channel that shows episodes
of family Ties, so I put on the channel of Family Ties. There
were some completely nondescript episode of Family Ties. I think one of the ones
that did not revolve around Michael J. Fox's Alex Pekeaton but was about one
of his sisters, which when you were watching the show in real time in
the nineteen eighties and you realize that they were doing an episode about Mallory,
you were like, oh, no, it's an episode about Mallory. Water
to us, can't we just go back to the episodes about Alex. But
by the way, I don't know this for a fact, but my guess
is that the Pete, the writer assigned to do the first draft of that
episode, was the most the youngest one on step right, so and most
recent higher has to be the Mallory episode. So, even on those episodes,
because I watched four or five of them over the course of the last
week, Michael J. Fox pops up on screen for you know, ten
minutes, he's in the kitchen. You know, they say something like,
oh, Alex, and then he delivers some line and he just pops through
the screen, that that merger of that guy and the character but really him.
That is like if you go back, if you weren't say it's a
hundred years really of you know, like movies and television stuff like that.
Right about now, if you were like going to say, who were the
twenty five most memorable characters over those hundred years, you might end up putting
Michael J. Fox's Alex P. Keaton in there. It's that indelible,
remarkable performance. And maybe because it's not the centerpiece of the show, maybe
because he is a supporting player and supporting character in his own way and doesn't
really have to change or whatever, and he's just a the timing, the
precision, you know, so much better than everybody that he was working with.
All of that, and then I was just thinking, like, this
is a thing on television. People create these characters, and they are they'll
be around as long as we have this, as long as people want to
watch things like this. And I was wondering if you guys had some ideas
about other perform performances like that that sort of transcend their show or trans just
are like moment, you know, just kind of memorials to what TV what
popular entertainment can be in this medium where you know, you make, if
you have a success, you make hundreds of episodes, and someone's got to
sort of like keep delivering over and over and over again. Well, obviously
Jamie Farr and then didn't mention yes, yes, yes, yes, others.
Yeah, A lot of people would say Jim nick Natowski from Taxi,
but I would actually say Louis de Palma or or Danny DeVito and Taxi.
He really did own any scene he was in. And it's weird. It's
like Taxi's a little bit like Barney Miller in this way, and that the
main character is kind of a placeholder. No one really cares about Judd Hirsch
and Taxi. No one really cares about how Lyndon and Barney Miller, right,
But every scene that they're in, I mean everything that like the Danny
DeVito's and the the Danny DeVito. The episode of Taxi where Danny DeVito has
to figure out how much money to ask Jim Nick. I think it's Jim
mckatowski's dad for and his mental process figuring out just the right number is one
of the great scenes and all of sitcoms and and there's really no other role
that like Louis de Palma was really right for matter that that that that that
that Danny DeVito was right for in that way, so that when Ted Baxter
and Mary Tyler Moore, you know, sure, sure, but there's a
difference, right because I mean, you're right, it's that it's a supporting
character. But it can't be I don't know Rob will know the right term
for it. It can't be like that. The purely comedic by Jimmy Nartowski's
just is a or or Coach in Cheers was on, but he was too
one to mention, you know, it wasn't a broad enough personality. You
need someone with a full personality who kind of owns that space. Well,
usually you're overstaffed, right, you're overmanned when you do a show like that.
When you think of Mary Tyler Moore or tax Here, I mean,
I mean all the great ones where you have this incredible cast and they really
they don't they don't get that much to do. Really, they're they they
get an episode once or twice. There's there's some great coach episode where he
where Ernie Pantuoso, who's played the part, is really fantastic and it's it's
called Coach's Daughter. Oh my God, and it's a it's a great,
great episode, and he's terrific in it, but like he just you know,
that's part of it is that he just didn't stand behind the bar and
say funny things. That was So that's what's so transcendent about Michael is that
so Alex Alex Keaton was designed as a caricature, and the show was supposed
to be about Gary David Goldberg, the creator, and his wife and how
and how terrible it was to have these eighties kids, you know, the
daughter who was materialistic, a son who like is swear and likes Reagan and
their hippies, and they, you know, oh poor that. And then
this thing happens where the show hits the air and this kid out of nowhere
blows America away, and then the show has to be retooled, slowly,
rejiggered. Yeah, not even that slowly. I mean it would happened like
it was happening in the chet episode when they when they wanted to put when
they wanted to cast Michael Jay Fox, and it was scariest first choice.
The story that everyone tells is that he goes to you know, get you
get your casting approved by the network president and Brandon tartikof as the president at
the time, and he says to him, look, look that's what you
want to play this part? Fine, but I don't see this kid on
a lunchbox. And I'm like, really, Within a year, Michael J.
Fox as Alex Reeger Alex Keaton was on a lunchbox. But also,
the show was just supposed to be sixties kids, sixties parents, eighties kids,
but it almost because of their weird they needing to like sand off the
edges, right, So hippie parents eighties kids. The parents couldn't really be
hippies. They had to be sort of uh, completely tame, middlewestern public
TV progressives kind of. And the kid couldn't love Reagan. He had to
love Nixon, right, so so Dox Pikes he loved Nixon, which was
every conservatives like, that's not that guy's not even a conservative. But like
TV Land, they had to say so they actually created their own problem with
it because once you take all of the interesting stuff off of the parents,
right, they're not really hippie anymore. They're not. They weren't the weren't
meat heead it wasn't meathead. Also, like you end up with nothing.
Yeah, you can really see where they were trying to go in the opening
credit music thing where it's you know what we do baby without us, right,
it's it's it's self absorbed. Baby Boomer were the center of our own
story. These kids are part of our story, you know, like and
and you're right, they turn into they're not the real sort of tune in,
turn on, dropout, sort of acid free kippy parents. No right,
no, that mister and missus c there's no years earlier, but they're
the nine kippy parents who yell at people at the Whole Foods to keep wearing
their mask at the end of the pandemic, you know, which is just
different, right, yeah, right, yeah, But I do think that
one of the things that happens, and Rob you actually wrote a piece for
commentary about this like three or four years ago, is that Alex is a
runaway character, like he was not the compret to be. He's a breakout
character. And and what's interesting about him is that they created a character for
whom the creators had contempt right the Gary David Goldbert sort of had contempt for
and then this unbelievably lovable, awkward, witty, clever, physically dynamic actor
comes in and sculpts this character that hijacks his show and completely changes its meaning
because you just couldn't get enough of him. And like, the same thing
kind of happened with Archie Bunker, right, Archie Bunker is slightly slightly and
then and then later with Ron Swanson on Parks and rec who was supposed to
be this psycho libertarian prepper lunatic who then by the end of the show is
the most completely admirable example of selflessness and caring and uh, you know,
self sacrifice and all of that, because these characters established them. So that's
one of it. Nick Offerman is definitely, Yeah, I think that definitely
that's true. Right, well in a way, which show, right,
I mean that's a thing. Yeah, but the Frasier of the Frasier is
not the same characters cheers right, Well, I mean there's some major differences.
For one, we made him an orphan. For two, he grew
up in Boston. Yeah, and his dad was a professor. Yeah.
I mean, like I think he was an only child too. Like they
did, they didn't even they did not they wisely did not retcon it,
which I think was the right thing to do. Just just march forward,
explain it all in the first episode, and then you're done. You never
go back. The wording about actually Keaton, though, was that he was
fun and funny and and it was like you and it was about Nixon,
so he didn't you didn't have to like he wasn't taking his side on a
current issue, and and he was like ambitious and wanted to be in business,
and he was wearing a tie all the time. So he was likable
and people liked him that he was funny, and he had a he had
a drive, he had a reason to be, he had you know,
he was striving for something. And those characters always more attractive, right,
Archie Bunker was something different. I think Archie Bunker was the hero of the
show because he was the one who had two jobs and he and his daughter
worked. His daughter worked to support her lay about husband who we never even
know what he was studying, because he's like a graduate student, graduate student,
and he was like he taught a class or something, and he said
he was a graduate dream was never mentioned he was a graduate student because he
was dodging the draft. But they would never have made that point because they
had friends who were Yeah, but everybody knew that this guy was a loser,
Like everybody knew what the people buying the show he thought, meathead is
like, he's he's the future, Shaggy Harry graduate students carrying man persons.
That's the future. Not a guy who fought for his country and drives a
cab and is a longshoreman. And every single morsel of food on that table,
yea, he bought. And so if he's a little bit cranky,
hey cut him from slack. Yeah but yeah, so but they again,
Norman Lear did not want Archie Bunker to become a hero. But Carol O'Connor
did something al chemical with that character. You know, he infused him with
these qualities that made him hard to dismiss and and made you not only is
root for him, but feel for him, like feel for his troubles.
Like that was one of those shows that dealt with what it was like to
live through the stagflation wage and price controls and then the stagflation of the nineteen
seventies. This is like a working class family that was really suffering. I'll
give you another I'll give you another character that you got to put in the
transcends everything and maybe you could say too, but I would say I would
say Jim Kirk. Maybe Kirk and Spock. Spot was a real breakout character,
right, he was the guy that kind of a minor character that everyone
loved. Spot. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's got a funny
idea, like if that show. I remember we were sitting on one day
we had the beginning of every season of Cheers. We would like, you
know, to beat this moment where somebody from the network would want to,
you know, have a meeting and they couldn't do much. They didn't have
any input at all. They never gave us notes on anything, but they
just kind of want to have like a general chit chat. And the Cheers
at that point was so powerful, not that I knew about it. I
just was like, I assume this is the way it always works, But
here's such a powerful show, so important that the network president would come to
us. He'd say, can I come to you guys around ten thirty on
Tuesday just to talk about the season. Make sure, and he would show
up at ten thirty and we'd have like little bagels out or something for him,
but like he would come to us and I remember he's the president at
the time, said listen, I just everything's great. We love the show.
I just we're worried about maybe, you know, said's not going to
do another season. To turn out he did. He ended up doing two
more seasons. But it's just we just think about a little bit. You
know, everybody loves Norm. The Norm shows did really really well, and
maybe we could just lay it in a little bit, like there's a family
down the street from Norm and Vera, and that family down the street they
have you know, six or eight kids, a lot of kids, and
then there's like a horrible car act or something. Then both parents die,
and so Norman Vera were just laid in are thinking about adopting the six kids,
and then me, maybe that sets us up for like a spinoff.
Just it keeps just bip bip bip just throughout the season. Bit bit bit
what But he was pitching a spin he was like trying to prepare. He's
like doing what he's supposed to do, which is the thing. Okay,
I've got this character. Everybody loves Norm. You do a Norm episode,
people love it. Why don't we just have the Norman Vera show when they
adopt kids, which is what they did with the Fish, the plot of
the Fish Fish. Can you imagine? Right? Can you imagine though?
Being the network president during Star Trek, like everybody loves Spock, So what
if Spocking to just Spock? What if spoken to to put Pang or whatever
his volt? Yeah, what if after they run amok adopt three and one's
acclaim on it was like all emotions three three humans? Right, yeah,
please Spock, do me a favor and don't say it's fascinating, no,
but it is interesting. Yeah, and then you know and then they you
know, they're gonna have their own you know. It's like wait till your
Father gets home starring Leonard bean Boy and to Pring mm hmm. It's just
people would watch it or just like or like like those were like from a
sixties movie title, be like my teenager is a logical so but David it
is David Niven movies where he's like the dad teenage daughters. They had a
stuff a wild bikini or other that was. I just love those movies.
But it's always possibly madness, it possibly is. Well, then listening to
all the Bings and bangs music and just at the noise, like you know,
like David Niven wasn't chasing that girl around the set. You're anything like
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my column for Commentary magazine until the very wells'll actually pass the last minute,
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for sponsoring the Glop podcast. So these are great spinoff ideas that were There
was a spinoff episode if you may remember, on Star Trek that didn't work
was the spinoff episode where there was the Guy from the Future comes in nineteen
sixty eight and Cook Terry Gar Yeah, and Kookie Terry Gar. You know,
he reveals himself to her. Then they're going to go off and have
adventures together. I mean, the spinoffs themselves are all there's a whole separate
thing to do it. Beverly Hills bunts that was. That was a good
one to remember that from Hill Street Blues when bunts the becomes a like a
p I or something and with his with his sidekick informant, they both moved
out, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that was. That was really a winner. Yeah. I mean, I
think the spinoff things are interesting because I mean you know that they thought about
it with like family ties, like Okay, there's a planning session where they
thought, like, you know, Mallory's not really doing it for us,
and Tina. We love Tina. Tina's great. We love Tina. But
I'm just thinking, go with me here, it's Michael J. Fox in
college or out of college or work. It's it's Alex Pekeaton his life.
I guarant I mean, this is impossible. That wasn't There's not I bet
you was never going to do it. He had already become one of the
two How many of you play play Norman Lear shows were legit spinoffs versus the
sort of like we're gonna do this show anyway, let's introduce the character on
a popular show, right, because there's Maud, there's Jefferson's missing a couple
Good Times, Good Times, Good Times, which is a spinoff of Maud.
That's right, Maud as the role was was most he made her made
right somehow ends up in Chicago, even though Maude lives in Westchester. Uh.
Yeah, the Jefferson's then, Uh, I feel like there's another's Archie
Bunker, which is the is the mothership? Right? That's probably more one
day. At the time, Archie didn't have spinoffs going through all the names.
Yeah, I'm trying to think. No. Gary Marshall was the king
of the spinoff, right, so he had Yeah, Vernon Shirley, Happy
Days spins off la Vernon Shirley and Mark and Mind. Well, that's that's
what I had in choc also a spinoff of Happy Days. I think when
we're at Joni Loves Choccy, we can stop. But so, what was
there any idea of doing a Mark TV show before, Like, did the
idea for doing a More TV show come from the Mark versus fawns? Yes,
yes, yes, okay, yes, yeah. The story. The
story was that Mark that Gary Marshall claims that his kid said, I want
you to do a show about a character called Mark from Orc. So he's
like, yeah, all right, I'll do it. Yeah, let fin'll
make by you know, so that somebody right, and then somebody says you
gotta cast this this crazy guy, Robin Williams, and then the rest is
sort of history, a total happenstance. I mean, the Fillings obviously was
the biggest breakout character ever, right, and he was not supposed to be
like what the show, who the show was about? I mean they actually
killed poor Rickie Cunningham's brother just to make more room for the funds. But
yeah, yeah, but he went upstairs, Yeah, went upstairs. No,
But the comedy of the funds it's you create this kind of like wanna
be Marlon Brando in the Wild, one tough character and you cast this five
foot seven inch tall jew from West Dady fourth Street, the other jew from
West Dady fourth Street. John, I didn't know he was from my block.
Yeah, he lived. He grew up between on eighty four between uh
Central Park West and Columbus. Interesting. His father was a German Jewish refugee,
was a doctor, apparently very very mean to him. So, by
the way, you also have as you may or may not know, Robert
Evans. Robert Evans grew up in Jonah's building. That's interesting. I was
just gonna go back to the Fons for a minute, because there's a very
it's it's a small not a small window, but it was the window was
closing on the ability and willingness of audiences to accept that a kind of a
nasally voiced, ready unprepossessing Jewish boy was going to be the Fons like that,
that's like peak network TV casting. And I happen to know the person
that he tested against for that role, and you think, well, needed
one of those people should be playing that part. Uh and and and you
you so it's like you could see, like Henry Winkler, who was a
wonderful actor and an incredibly nice person, where we go, hey, Richie,
I want to and then be caught and were like, I wonder if
I could go and just get another belly like he was completely not right for
that part, but he did. But audiences would accept that. Audiences would
accept like, uh, handsome men that the character like okay, oh,
he's a handsome guy and he's like, you know, a little heavy and
balding and like it's very strange. Just the willingness of people in show business
and in any audience presumably to accept just all right. Well, Henry Winkler,
he kind of attested it in the Lords of Flatbush though, right,
he played like a yeah, yeah, that was yeah, so Lord's So
Lord's a Flatbush was made a cheap uh movie released in like seventy three something
like that was made on the heels of American Graffiti. Ran Graffiti's existence is
what is deemed responsible for Happy Days, although Happy Days was actually originated as
a pilot before American Graffiti was made with Ron Howard, and it was because
Ron Howardward pilot. No it was. It ended up airing on Love American
style. It was a but I mean I mean that, I mean that
the the it was internally called the Ron Howard Show. Okay, because so
Ronnie had Ronnie Howard, So he's in this pilot that doesn't becomes an unsold
pilot and has put on Love American style, and George Lucas has shown the
pilot and casts him an American graffiti. American Graffiti then reignites the existence of
Happy Days. This busted Ron Howard Pilot, which then is turned into a
show for network television. In the meantime, somebody makes the Lords of Flatbush
and Henry Winkler and Silester Stallone and an actor named Perry King or three of
the Lords of Flatbush. The fourth Lord of Flatbush, as I just read,
was going to be Richard Gear, but Richard Gere Sylvester Stallone got into
a fist fight like the first couple of days that they were on set together,
and Stallone said either he goes or I go, and Gear was the
one who went. And yet Richard Gear became Richard Gear because Stallone had been
in the Lord's a Flatbush with Henry Winkler when he wrote Rocky. He said
to Henry Winkler, can you help me sell this? Actually it was a
script before Rocky that he ends up making as a movie called Paradise Alley,
and Henry Winkler gave him fifteen thousand dollars and brought him out of la here's
lying. I'm gonna give you fifteen thousand dollars because you're you're a wonderful man.
Yeah, this is a wonderful script. So he brought him out,
he let him live in his garage or something like that, and then stallone
became stallone. So Henry Winkler is not only response for his own pretty remarkable
career that has had this latent life resurgence on Barry where I guess he's won
two emmis or something like. He was also great in Parks and rac He
was a minor character, but he was very good. He's great in everything,
right, but he But but it's very rare to have a guy have
this like moment in the Sun and the Lates and then sort of come back
as a critics darling like forty years later, which is what happened with Barry.
But Henry Winkler is responsible for still less balloone's career. And now I
will I tell you my Henry Winkler's story that I also heard Gary Marshall Henry
Winkler's story. Please think that because it's impossible to understand, I think,
to really get what that level of TV fame did to a person, like
in the number of people, the millions of people that saw you, and
then the craze about you, and you went from being it's an actor and
a pilot or an actor as an ensemble player, to suddenly being everywhere.
It did did a number on you, I think. And so there's there's
a moment I think in the first season of Happy Days when uh, he's
Gary Marshall and Henry Winkler walking down the path Paramount I think it was stage
twenty four to where they were twenty three to where they shot Happy Days,
and there's a tour group going by, and the tour group sees him in
the distance and they start to freak out because it's the most famous person in
America and uh, and there's the tour group passes. The tour guide says,
hi, Henry, would you like to say hello to the to the
tour And he turns to the guy and he says, no, no,
I can't right now, I'm talking to my producer. And they kept walking,
and then the tour went up by, and then Henry and then then
Gary Marshall turned to Henry and said to come here and pulled him into an
alcove in one of the office buildings and threw him up against the wall and
said, I put your fin face on TV. I'll take your face off.
You go say you go be nice to those people. And Henry Winkler
was like, oh, yeah, of course, of course of yes,
and he ran up to the to the to the tour And apparently it was
the one and only time that Henry Winkler, early in his career, probably
the first month of his superstardom, kind of like that, oh okay,
well this is what this is now you people, everybody's got some unfinished business
with you, and you just got to be nice. And that's kind of
what he was from then that moment on, you know. And speaking of
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haven't talked about women, so I think we should talk about indelible women on
television, the first probably being Lucy from I Love Lucy, a show that
I am alone in the universe and actually actively disliking. But you can't argue
with seventy five years of success or whatever it's been, and and and you
know, immortality. But there are two or three women that I would I
would mention in this regard. Mary Tyler Moore, maybe the only person in
uh Jonah's category, right, which when he said, look, no one
really cares about Barney Miller, no one really cares about Alex Reeg or no
one really cares about the this character that I guess they used to call the
hub, right, sort of the character the person who's at the center of
a show. And then all the supporting players are like spokes and they and
they're they get to be crazy, and she's supposed to be kind of the
hub that's supposed to be normal. It's everybody who everybody I work with crazy,
Yeah, Dean Jones character, right, you guys are insane, except
I can't do that, that would be lying all that stuff. Yeah,
except that Mary telling More really was a like an astoundingly good comedian and in
a remarkable kind of she was she could generate laughs and be the still center
almost at the same time. And of course she was also you know,
the kind of portrait of the neurotic young American wife, uh, you know,
right before the feminine mystique on the Dick Van Dyke show. That's two
parts that It's very rare that anybody two central roles on two of the greatest
shows ever, and she was one, and the other is Julia Louis Dreyfuss,
who has had also arguably too right. So Selena Meyer on Veep,
who is in a out in character, and Anne Lane on Seinfeld. And
then she had a show in the middle, the Old Christine, which which
is fine, it's just not as as great as the others. But I
mean, you know, that's just like an incredible thing. And I would
add Elizabeth Montgomery because not only was she my first love, but if you
sort of think about it, that show was like that ran for ten years
and it was all her. It was a show. There was nothing else
to that show. I mean, there was Paul Lynde Well, I mean
in this Morehead, but like I would say, yeah, she that was
I mean, but that character, I mean it was the whole point of
that character was that she's supposed to be normal, so she was like she
was normal all the time, and she was definitely surrounded by crazies. Right.
Yeah. The weird thing of that show is that probably the least attractive,
least appealing, most reprehensible character in all of American literature is Darren.
Darren Stevens. Yes, her horrible, horrible husband who is just reprehensible on
every level. He marries her. She I mean, this is like a
feminist anily because he marries this woman with enormous powers. And he says,
I still want you to vacuum. I want you to clean. I want
you to clean that toilet. I want you to get down your hands and
knees or that scrub brush. I want you to clean my toilet. And
she's like, okay, I want you to make Andrew Tato sitcom stars.
Don't blink it, make it like that's just bananas. He totally like that.
It's so bizarre. I tell you that I dream of Jeanie thing I
wanted to do years ago, when I guess what, Sony owned it.
They were talking about making a movie about it, and I told my agent,
look, I just gonna get in the room. I need to pitch
my version. I don't want to write it. I just want to pitch
my version, which is I dream of Jeanie. I think it was a
pretty good movie, like a pretty good show. I wanted to expand their
entire relationship, not just in the early sixties of the Space program, but
then the late sixties and the women's movement, and they get, they're married,
have children, they get divorced because she goes through this women's thing,
she realizes, my god, you kept me in a bottle. I had
to walk around in a little bikini. You made me call you master.
And he's like, no, no, no, no, no no.
That was your thing. That's what you that's your thing, that's your baggage
you brought to this relation. So they have so I thought it like,
just did the whole their whole relationship. Of course, they end up falling
in love again because they can do that now. They didn't bring all their
weird cultural stuff. Her need to call him master, his embarrassment of her
like he was embarrassed by her. Uh, it's just so incredibly rich.
The other interesting thing about bo which I think we may have talked about this
once before, we talked about a lot, but which was very large in
the cannon of this podcast. I was wondering them. So, so she
is the normal one and everyone's crazy, right, and all her relatives are
great, right, they're also all gay and I'm not just in real life
oh the witch. Yeah, not only are they, they're all there,
they were all gay in real life. That there's anything wrong with that at
all. So Morris Evans, who played her father, who was a Shakespearean
actor, the America's most successful Shakespearean actor, was a homosexual. Agnes Moorehead
was a closet and lesbian. Paul Lynde was Paul Lynde all of her.
Any time there was a relative, Lynde was Paul. Yes, anytime there
was a relative, the relative was So it was as though she was from
this gay world, and she was. She emerged from the SKay world as
a straight, as a as a heterosexual woman. And the man that she
chooses for herself is this domineering, bigot, horrible person and and acts as
though her world is repulsive and frightening and evil, right right. And you
know that's where if you were going to remake The Witch, you would have
to sort of remake it as a kind of radical Parst way, because because
you know, what did they? What did they? What was so terrible?
Now I understand the whole idea was that Darren didn't want to live.
It's as though he married a very rich woman and he didn't want to live
off of her money. That's that's fine, right, But Denny's yelling at
her and he like scolds her and he contest and yeah, and I just
feel to me, like, first of all, I was thought that mad
Men, the tea show Madman was basically the drama version of which because you
know this silver haired account executive and the guy with the little blonde wife at
home in Connecticut. The weirdest thing about it to me was like it worked
on two two levels. Right. What he didn't like about her was not
just her circumstances, but what her her intrinsic identity. YEA, Like he
didn't like her being. He didn't like not who her personality. It was
that he didn't like who she was and he and that to me or he
was bizarre or he was scared of who she was or whatever or whatever like,
but but it's still like he didn't like there's nothing about her he really
truly found appealing. And then the question you have to ask yourself is like,
because now you can like really psychotherapize these characters, is like what was
her problem? Like how low was her self esteem? How much did she
hate herself? That this was that she she was with Durwood, Like what
was going on? Yeah? And then they have a kid, right,
they have a baby, and the baby grow it is two years older cattle
and then has magical powers herself and what does he make her do? She
has to say, you're not allowed, don't do it, you can't use
your magic, don't be yourself, don't be yourself, hide yourself away.
It's very interesting and it was totally uncontroversial and that it was like considered Anna
Dyne and Banal and they moved into Dakota and all the Jewish neighbors, you
know, hail Satan when they see the baby. I mean there you go,
like, I don't quite I've been meaning to ask this. Now we've
been doing this for like a decade or something, this podcast, and like
I hold my personal obsessions about pop culture somewhat in restraint here. Yeah,
really like fortun you guys to talk about the Star Trek, all that watch,
any of these kinds of things that I was, you guys, the
gravitational poll of Bewitched for you guys so profound I suspect that there was not
a shoeshine guy on the Eastern seaboard where Rob hasn't informed the guy. And
another thing about Darren, I mean it's like, oh yeah, I mean
the thing about it is that I just what I can't believe is that there
was a time when this stuff nobody remarked on it. Yeah, when when
it was so bald, the it's the analog to be a Paul Lynde or
Liberacci at the time when people just thought, oh, just he's just he's
just a guy in sequin hot pants, that's all. Yeah, right,
Well, and like no, like this's like this is a direct crazy Freudian
projection that that's so obvious that you think was anybody writing about this at the
time? Yet nobody was. And it is interesting because it's like some of
those cultural products like you mentioned David Niven, you and the generation gap as
seeing through the eyes of David Niven. You know, it's like he's what
matters, you know, is the I don't understand what her hair is long,
and she's not wearing shoes, my daughter. But something must be done
about this. This is crazy, you know, like that, all of
which is of course a code for being sexually active, right, that's right,
Okay, So, but there was this stutter step in in sort of
like square popular culture where it could still be the case that on a show
like Bewitched, there could be an episode where like she doesn't have a bank
account because her husband is the one with the bank account or something. She's
a lady. Yeah, and so and this is we're talking about like nineteen
seven, you know, like by this point, it's nineteen seventy. It's
not like nineteen sixty, you know. And and it takes no account except
for the your favorite Bob Hope and a hippie wig, you know, some
episode where somebody's a hippie and I, you know, groovy, I dig
it, I dig it too. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, So so
it's just interesting because then once that stuff kind of cleared through the system or
the people who produced it or made it or something like that. We're all
kind of shunted to one side because, you know, you could spend four
hundred thousand dollars making Easy Rider and then make seventy five million dollars off Easy
Rider, where you were Norman Lear making these shows that got these enormous audiences.
Then that then that was all dead like that, that stuff just like
disappeared as though it had never existed before, right, and that The Witch
was like the tail end of that three sixties thing. You know. But
I just want all of those people. I just don't. I just think
I'm just I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna probably I don't know, I'm speculating,
but all those people who wrote those shows, who created them, who wrote
them, who supervised every episode, all of those people were you know what.
They weren't educated necessarily, but they were They were fully, fully aware
of Freudian analysis. They were all like, they're all kind of New York
kind of show business figures. They weren't like guys from Montana. They were
guys from you know, yeah, West eighty sixth Street, and they and
they I'm sure they all went to their analysts the way they always did,
you know, they always you know, I gotta go to my analysts,
always like that. So they were familiar with the idea that you project your
fears and your imagination onto your work. And yet no one ever said that's
this is weird, this is weird. Why why doesn't Darren just let her
you know, Wiggler knows and you know, fix the dishwasher, like,
but there's nobody who said that, Yeah, there's another aspect to that show.
And then I was noticing I was reading I've been reading the spy Washington,
Cloak and Dagger novels of a writer named Ross Thomas who was really fantastic,
very popular in the eighties, Briar Patch, the Cold War swap,
like he was like a Washington novelist, novelist about you know, and like
Bewitched. In these books, these characters stop every five minutes to have a
drink. There's always like and then I had a scotch, and then I
waited by the phone until you know, the until the gangster called, and
then I looked at the bottle, I had another scotch, and Bewitched they're
drinking constantly. This was a culture of kind of primordial alcoholism, like drinking
was so central to the lives of the people. I'm sure Thomas was an
alcoholic. You can't write about a life in which alcohol is so central,
no matter what year you're in or where you are, anything like that.
And I'm sure that was true of the people on Bewitched, because it's like,
pour me a drink, I'll have another drink. Here's a drink,
you know, like a picture, and then at and then and then that
all that's a bottle of gin. Yeah, And then that all went away.
There was some point at which the culture of the isn't this hilarious?
Drinking is so funny and everybody does it and we're all gonna drink now vanished,
right. I mean maybe it was replaced by kind of pot jokes.
It certainly has in more recent years. But you know, it was just
like a whole thing in movies, particularly in comedies, that people sat around
drinking and then had a drunken scene and all of that, and and that
suddenly became something that was uncool. That's more remarkable about that era is not
the they have occasionally right too, because like today, you wouldn't sort of
like Chekhov's gun. Right, you wouldn't write characters starting to drink unless it
was going to lead to one of them doing something drunken. Right, Yeah,
what is remarkable and they would regret and regret it. Right, So
Ross and Rachel draw on each other's face, major point, right, And
because otherwise you just wouldn't introduce it except maybe drinking a beer to watch a
football game. Right. And that's the thing. What is remarkable to me
is like a lot of that that fifties and sixties stuff is how well people
handled their alcohol. Right. It wasn't considered like we have to have them
having a martini so they can get drunk later. It was sort of like
we have to have them having a martini because that's what one does at five
o'clock, you know, And that's amazing. Yeah, it's like breathing.
Wouldn't we show them breathing? We would certainly show. But also, now,
if you show anybody drinking, it's got to be put cautionary. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, like there's got to be It's it's it's
like the new Haze code. Yeah, that's a transgression that must be punished.
You know. Sometimes they'll show on it's weirdly on TikTok, which I
am of course obsessed with, But you're going to TikTok a lot of most
of it, I mean, most of my algorithm anyway, is people cooking
food and movie clips. Yeah, so you know, they'll put a whole
bunch of movies on there and somebody will just upload all these clips. And
even now on TikTok, character smoking bad guy is fuzzed out. No,
no, you can't, it's fuzzed out. Yeah, that is amazing.
All right, Well we we we got to go because we all have hard
outs. So Jonah, are you cnn ing? Uh? This week I
will be on the week's debate. Week we're gonna do with dispatch Live dispatch,
but that I'll be out at that time people listen to this, I'm
gonna go back to working on my memoir hard Out. So that's all I
got. Excellent and Rob Martine any shot of course, every Wednesday, shot
always every week. I assume that you will be writing on your liberation,
your new liberation. Yeah, I mean to the extent that I can.
I mean I'll write about it, but I can't. I mean, there
are no real details of the about the settling of the writer strike. Yes,
yeah, there have been so I don't really know what I mean.
Everyone's talking about what was agreed to and big strides in this or that area,
but you know, it was a very long strike and put a lot
of people in bad shape. So I suspect that a lot of the big
gains are being overstated because at this point, you know there, yeah,
yeah, everyone, I gather that maybe you're going to have some protections against
AI, but that in fact, in writers rooms, most writers will now
be replaced in order to prevent AI by IBM's electrics, So there will be
IM electrics and one one person actually writing all of the scripts while the IBM
s electrics sit there. Uh. Yes, the old like the old exactly.
All right, Well, I'm on the commentary podcast. Uh, you
know, five days a week for my sins and for yours apparently because you
insist on listening, so I insist on continuing to do it. Yeah,
and rob By the Way has a great piece in the current commentary You can
read it a commentary dot org about why Sound of Freedom was such a phenomenon
with actual shoe leather reporting, kind of like Jonah and Iowa. Rob actually
interviews someone in this piece. It's It's land. It's a path breaking Rob
Long column. By the way, I went sideline when you're asking about Iowa.
I just I wanted to let people know in case they're not paying close
attention. I have it from reliable sources that the Iowa Caucuses it's all going
to come down to turn out. Huh really, well, who's gonna who's
gonna shore up the base? So I don't know, Well, you know,
I got ahead the crucial Walkershaw County to find out. It's all question
of who your second choices. That's all, that's all I yeah, yeah,
all right, So we will be back with you in another couple of
weeks. Probably we're just gonna call this the bewitch. I wanted to make
my case Missus Olson from a little house on the prairie, but we got
okay, well we'll turn We'll start with missus Olson. All right, all
right, we're gonna start. And you don't mean you mean a little house.
You don't mean Missus Olson, the coffee lady, remember her. You
mean Nelly Olson or Nelly Olson's mother, Nelly Olson's mother. I think you
can make a whole different case about fantastic villainous characters who own their villainy,
and she was one of the best bad people in the history of television.
There we go. Okay, we're gonna start with good bad people on the
next clop So it's our first preview of coming attractions here at the end rather
than at the beginning. So see it then, hands I come back here?
Do you hear me? All right? Have a cheer weight,