Speaker 1: My My new favorite lunch that I make for myself
Speaker 1: is the Jennifer Aniston salad.
Speaker 2: Has heard about this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you make a salad Jennifer and cucumber mint parsley.
Speaker 3: It's feta. It's delicious.
Speaker 4: Oh you've lost will forever at feta.
Speaker 1: So anyway, you know, I ran and we stumbled across this.
Speaker 1: I actually it was from when we went on our
Speaker 1: rafting trip. They they made this for lunch on one
Speaker 1: of our stops and or made a version of this,
Speaker 1: and so I was like looking up like quenwa chickpea
Speaker 1: feta salad, and then it came up as the Jennifer
Speaker 1: Aniston salad. I was like what and so I you
Speaker 1: what they say is that she ate this every day
Speaker 1: when she was on the set of Friends or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I just thought it was so weird, like of
Speaker 1: all the things to have named after you, like as
Speaker 1: an actor, to have a salad named after you. So
Speaker 1: I was wondering, if you guys could be could have
Speaker 1: anything named after you, what would it be?
Speaker 5: The Jennifer Aniston salad, the wild.
Speaker 2: Salad, the Wilfred no no chick beas just steak.
Speaker 5: It's it's just it's it's just actually of Iceberg Lattice.
Speaker 5: That's all. It is, just after that of Iceberg Lattice.
Speaker 5: I don't know what would you want named after you, Danielle, Oh,
Speaker 5: I think I got one?
Speaker 4: What go for you?
Speaker 6: Well, if you hit a certain number of miles on
Speaker 6: an airplane like on and they name a plane after you,
Speaker 6: like a new plane is named after you, something like
Speaker 6: that would be cool.
Speaker 2: So you want like a big like an actual odd yeah.
Speaker 5: Like a thing named after like like that would be cool.
Speaker 6: Ship and the ocean on the high side, Yes, exactly, Like,
Speaker 6: Oh that'd be of course everyone would get it wrong
Speaker 6: and be like, oh man, are you flying on the Friedle?
Speaker 1: Like no one would get it right ever, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would just they didn't even spell it wrong.
Speaker 5: Exactly. It would invariably become the Freedle. But yeah, like it.
Speaker 5: I think I take a plane. I think that'd be
Speaker 5: really cool.
Speaker 7: Oh man, I don't know it mine would probably, I'd
Speaker 7: probably want it'd probably be a food relate if I
Speaker 7: think about all my favorite things. It would be a
Speaker 7: food related thing or it would be a nat related thing, right.
Speaker 4: I would live official are the official Oreo?
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 7: I would really like that yeah, that that that would
Speaker 7: be mine. I would have to but it would yeah,
Speaker 7: because it wouldn't be.
Speaker 4: Something healthy like a solid.
Speaker 7: It would have to be something like a like an
Speaker 7: oreo to Pangorreo, or like.
Speaker 4: You said, a McDonald's meal. Would you say to Pangorreo,
Speaker 4: that's a pretty good one. We should we should pitch that.
Speaker 5: We should Uh yeah, no, I think a McDonald's. Oh
Speaker 5: if we could do a McDonald's meal too.
Speaker 4: Oh man, if we could do a Pod meets World
Speaker 4: McDonald's meal.
Speaker 5: And like I want my Pod meets Yes, Oh, that'd
Speaker 5: be awesome.
Speaker 4: That sounds good. I could do McDonald's today.
Speaker 5: I can do McDonald's every day.
Speaker 1: I could do McDonald's right now, let's get it delivered
Speaker 1: while we're while recorded.
Speaker 4: Uber eats McDonald Welcome to Pod Meets World. I'm Daniel Fischel,
Speaker 4: I'm writer Strong, and I'm Wilfredell.
Speaker 7: When I innocently asked the guys, hey, either of you
Speaker 7: two remember the writer of this episode. On a recent recap,
Speaker 7: it was Will who jumped in and said, yeah, Kevin Kelton,
Speaker 7: I like that guy. And then in classic Pod meets World,
Speaker 7: Fashion Rider and I remembered absolutely nothing about him, but
Speaker 7: we were thrilled when Kevin did reach out to Will
Speaker 7: after the podcast episode aired to thank him for having
Speaker 7: a working memory and now here he is about to
Speaker 7: talk to us about what he remembers. As a writer
Speaker 7: and producer on Boy Meets World, Kevin technically had one
Speaker 7: of the more impressed of pre Boy Meets World resumes
Speaker 7: on staff. He had already worked on the Variety show
Speaker 7: Fridays with a young Green coworker named Larry David. He
Speaker 7: had a story by credit on The Jeffersons, and spent
Speaker 7: nineteen eighty three through nineteen eighty five as part of
Speaker 7: the Fraternity of writers working at New York's thirty Rockefeller
Speaker 7: Center on Saturday Night Live, where he was Emmy nominated
Speaker 7: throw in three episodes of a Different World and five
Speaker 7: episodes of Night Court, and by the time he had
Speaker 7: his first script with Boy Meets World in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 7: this guy was killing it. He wrote season two's Pop Quiz,
Speaker 7: the episode where Sean and Corey Steele an upcoming assignment
Speaker 7: for mister Turner's apartment, and in season three he penned
Speaker 7: Are Beloved and Possible Rewatch Favorite City slackers. The heart
Speaker 7: is a lonely hunter, and I never sang for my
Speaker 7: legal guardian, and for good reason. With all this experience,
Speaker 7: he'd go on to write the book The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook,
Speaker 7: and also three novels, and now, almost thirty years later,
Speaker 7: he will join three of the child stars he once
Speaker 7: worked with and not focus on his time with Steve Martin,
Speaker 7: Jay Leno or Lorne Michaels. Nope, Yeah, he's going to
Speaker 7: talk about the time he wrote the episode where Will
Speaker 7: somehow nailed an impossibly.
Speaker 4: Cool pool trick on his first try. So welcome to
Speaker 4: Pod meets World.
Speaker 7: Someone writer, and I will never forget a second time writer.
Speaker 4: Kevin Kelton.
Speaker 8: Hi, I'm Kate.
Speaker 9: Hudson and I'm Oliver Hudson. And at last I checked for.
Speaker 8: Siblings and this is sibling revelry.
Speaker 9: We're full blood siblings, the only full blood.
Speaker 8: Sibling and our family well not in the world, I mean.
Speaker 5: No, in the whole world.
Speaker 9: This is it, like no one anyway, We're back with
Speaker 9: season four. I can't believe his.
Speaker 8: Guys, I'm so excited, bigger and better than ever. You
Speaker 8: might be asking yourself, what is bling revelry?
Speaker 9: Yeah, well we just made it up. There is no
Speaker 9: sibling revelry. It's reveling in your sibling and.
Speaker 8: It's fun because we've decided to open it up, you know,
Speaker 8: to really like all kinds of different siblings. And it's
Speaker 8: going to be an awesome season.
Speaker 9: So listen to Sibling Revelry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or.
Speaker 8: Wherever you listen to pop.
Speaker 1: God, Danielle, you're like intermittently skipping and freezing around for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's you, because I'm on I'm on Ethernet. You
Speaker 4: it's you. I'm hardwire.
Speaker 7: You interrupted a site about whose Internet is failing?
Speaker 3: I love it because I do a podcast too, and
Speaker 3: we have this argument every week. Oh yeah, and I
Speaker 3: thought it was only because we were such a low
Speaker 3: scale podcast. So the national podcast also have the same discussion.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, whose internet is failing?
Speaker 3: Now I'm just messing up.
Speaker 7: So first of all, Kevin Wrighter and I would like
Speaker 7: to apologize for not remembering you.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm so glad you said that picture though, because
Speaker 1: the second I saw the picture, I was like, oh yes.
Speaker 7: When you send the picture and I saw your face,
Speaker 7: I was like, of course there is so yeah, we
Speaker 7: were totally blown away by the City Slackers episode it is.
Speaker 7: I mean, not only are maybe our favorite episode of
Speaker 7: season three, but if I had to guess, like, of
Speaker 7: all the season one, two and three episodes, city Slackers
Speaker 7: might be my favorite.
Speaker 3: I don't disagree.
Speaker 6: It was a great as it was going around the
Speaker 6: B story, good a story, Feenie being Feoenie.
Speaker 5: I mean, that was a great episode.
Speaker 4: What do you remember about that week?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I have memories of the episodes. I
Speaker 3: actually went back and rewatched them. I don't have a
Speaker 3: lot of specific memories from production, but I do remember
Speaker 3: one Bill Daniels story that I thought I would tell.
Speaker 5: When I first came on the show.
Speaker 3: And you guys are writers, so you know this. Actors
Speaker 3: generally don't like parentheticals, yep, because they think that you
Speaker 3: are telling them what to do, how to do their job.
Speaker 3: And I was warned early on in my tenure there
Speaker 3: not to do that for Bill Daniels because he'll call
Speaker 3: you on it. Well, somehow I let a parenthetical slip
Speaker 3: into one of his speeches. I think it was in
Speaker 3: City Slackers, and sure enough we get to the reading
Speaker 3: on whether it was whatever our Monday morning was. I
Speaker 3: forget what day we did the readings Friday, and he
Speaker 3: calls me over. And I never really talked much to Bill,
Speaker 3: and he calls me over. He says, I have a
Speaker 3: question for you about the script. And he turns to
Speaker 3: a page and he reads like one of your lines,
Speaker 3: and then he reads his follow up or he gets
Speaker 3: to his follow up line with the parenthetical in it,
Speaker 3: and he goes, oh, parenthetical, And without looking up, he's
Speaker 3: looking right at the script just as he would do
Speaker 3: as if he was mister Feeni. He goes, I see
Speaker 3: you're doing my job now, and behold me and everyone
Speaker 3: around like gasp.
Speaker 5: Oh, there was nothing quite like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you when Bill calls you on the carpet,
Speaker 3: you have been called on the carpet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there was nothing quite like getting Uh.
Speaker 6: They were always they were rare, and they were always
Speaker 6: intelligent little cutdowns from Bill that would occasionally happen. It's
Speaker 6: just he would he would just kind of every once
Speaker 6: in a while, give you a little bit of a job.
Speaker 6: But they were jabs that were beautifully timed, wonderfully thought out.
Speaker 5: But it was like, oh, yes, I see you're doing
Speaker 5: my job now.
Speaker 1: What's so interesting about hearing that story? For me is like,
Speaker 1: is that when I think about it, And of course
Speaker 1: this is obvious, he had more experience than anybody else
Speaker 1: on the set. Well, you know, and that's that's as
Speaker 1: a kid, I obviously he felt like he had more
Speaker 1: experience than me.
Speaker 2: But for you writers too, he had years of experiencing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but you know, so interesting the cast. First
Speaker 3: of all, I can't say enough about the cast. You
Speaker 3: guys were all wonderful on and off the set. But
Speaker 3: we could give you guys anything, and you delivered on it.
Speaker 3: It was really a pleasure.
Speaker 7: That's so kind When you rewatched the episodes and what
Speaker 7: kind of emotions came up for you? How did you
Speaker 7: feel rewatching your work this many years later.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I'm a sucker for my SAP scenes.
Speaker 3: So in that last scene in City Slackers or in
Speaker 3: the Heart is a Lonely Hunter when writer's character when
Speaker 3: Sean is on the picnic with his girlfriend, you know,
Speaker 3: I choke up, even though I wrote your stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but looking back on it, it's hard. Yeah. I mean you
Speaker 3: guys again, you know what it's like to watch your
Speaker 3: own work, your your own worst self critic, So a
Speaker 3: lot of it. Yeah, it's not the most fun to
Speaker 3: go back and watch it, but I do appreciate the
Speaker 3: quality of the episodes absolutely.
Speaker 7: We also I really loved I never sang for My
Speaker 7: Legal Guardian, which we just recently watched and recapped.
Speaker 4: So you saying that you are a sucker for your sappy.
Speaker 7: Scenes, you did write some of the more emotionally charged
Speaker 7: episodes of our show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first of all, I think that that's the
Speaker 3: direction that Michael was taking us in that third season.
Speaker 3: But also I came in. I mean, you guys know
Speaker 3: my background. I have a very broad background, eclectic background
Speaker 3: in television writing. So when I came onto the show,
Speaker 3: I really didn't have a TGIF sensibility, and I was
Speaker 3: hired off of a Fraser spec to give you an example. Interesting,
Speaker 3: and so you know, my goal, like everybody in the nineties,
Speaker 3: my goal was to work on a must TV show.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the shows I liked were the obvious ones.
Speaker 3: Larry Sanders, which wasn't must see TV, but f Frasier, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Mad About You. I just absolutely adored. So my particular
Speaker 3: kind of push in that third season because everybody was
Speaker 3: talking about aging up the show. How can we age
Speaker 3: up the characters age up the show, and we all
Speaker 3: had that goal, but we had different ideas of how
Speaker 3: to get there. And my idea was to play to
Speaker 3: the characters that weren't as well utilized or weren't as
Speaker 3: much of a focus, which is why I like to
Speaker 3: write stories about mister Feenie with the boys out of school. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, take Sean's relationships to a different level, putting
Speaker 3: Will at a job at an internship. I really liked
Speaker 3: writing for you characters and taking you to new places
Speaker 3: and trying to write a little bit more of that
Speaker 3: kind of like musty tvous sensibility. Now, I'm not so
Speaker 3: egocentric as to think that I totally succeeded, but I
Speaker 3: tried to push.
Speaker 4: Those those muscles you absolutely did.
Speaker 7: So I want to go back to some of your
Speaker 7: your jobs that you had before you joined us on
Speaker 7: Boymet's World, and one of your first jobs was on
Speaker 7: the variety show Fridays.
Speaker 3: That was my first comedy writing job. Yeah. I had
Speaker 3: a job in television before that on a game show
Speaker 3: called Face the Music, and then I got the Friday's job.
Speaker 6: And so wait, I have I have a Friday's question, Danielle. Yes,
Speaker 6: if you mind if I pop in. So this was
Speaker 6: this was the Michael Michael Richards was on Fridays? Was not?
Speaker 5: Yeah, were you there for the famous uh scene that.
Speaker 6: Happened with it was with Andy Kaufman? With Andy Kaufman?
Speaker 6: Were you there when that?
Speaker 3: I had left the show a couple of weeks before that,
Speaker 3: my contract had run out for that season. But I
Speaker 3: have some strong opinions on that. I don't think any
Speaker 3: of that was real.
Speaker 5: And really, yeah, do you guys know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 5: Danielle and Ryder?
Speaker 2: What's the story?
Speaker 6: Okay, well, okay, this is so this is one of
Speaker 6: the arguably one of the most famous stories in television history.
Speaker 6: At this point, can you tell us what it was, Kevin?
Speaker 6: Since you were there, I mean, on the show, can
Speaker 6: you tell us what went down?
Speaker 3: Sure? So Andy Kaufman was known for put ons, so
Speaker 3: he came on to Fridays and in his monologue he
Speaker 3: was talking about how he could do anything. You know,
Speaker 3: it's live, there's nothing they could do, and he would
Speaker 3: do act like Andy making crazy faces, and during the
Speaker 3: course of all of the sketches, he would kind of
Speaker 3: break the fourth wall here and there. So finally we
Speaker 3: get to the last sketch of the episode, and as
Speaker 3: it plays out, Andy started going totally off camera and saying,
Speaker 3: I can't do this anymore, started cracking up. This sketch
Speaker 3: is too silly, I can't do this. And it builds
Speaker 3: into an argument that builds into a fight with Michael Richards,
Speaker 3: that builds into a fist fight with Jack Burns, who
Speaker 3: was one of the producers and the host of the show,
Speaker 3: or the MC of the show. It was all a
Speaker 3: put on. Now, I wasn't there, and I have heard
Speaker 3: a lot of people say a lot of things, but
Speaker 3: I know Andy. I saw Andy Kaufman in the early seventies.
Speaker 3: You know, my brother is a stand up comedian. That's
Speaker 3: how I got into comedy. And so when I was
Speaker 3: in college. When I was home from college, I would
Speaker 3: hang out with him at the New York comedy clubs
Speaker 3: because what would be more fun for a twenty year
Speaker 3: old kid than going to comedy clubs and hanging out
Speaker 3: with the comedians. And I saw Andy Kaufman pulling this
Speaker 3: stuff back in nineteen seventy five, so it's all you know,
Speaker 3: it's all a put on. He was great at it.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of fun I'm just surprised so
Speaker 3: many people really believed it was real.
Speaker 1: Oh well, there's probably a level of like, there's probably
Speaker 1: only like, like, even if it was a put on,
Speaker 1: there were probably still crew.
Speaker 2: Members who didn't know what was happening, right, A.
Speaker 5: Genius, Right, yeah, that's what it was. Genius.
Speaker 6: He would some people would be on on the joke,
Speaker 6: other people wouldn't, so then the rumors themselves would become
Speaker 6: part of the lore where it's like, wait, no, I
Speaker 6: heard it was a rumor. I heard it was a
Speaker 6: put out. No no, no, I was on that crew.
Speaker 6: It wasn't a putt like that was part of his genius.
Speaker 1: I kind of respect that. I kind of respect that,
Speaker 1: but I also would hate to work with that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, but tolerate that, Like I
Speaker 1: totally get it from like a distant like cultural perspective,
Speaker 1: but being a professional in the industry, like I want
Speaker 1: to rely on my fellow professionals, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like, yeah, the point is that you don't
Speaker 1: do those kinds of things to each other or.
Speaker 3: Story. And I didn't work on this show, but when
Speaker 3: he was on Taxi in the second or third season,
Speaker 3: he wanted to bring on Tony Clifton as a character,
Speaker 3: and he made them create a separate contract for Tony Clifton.
Speaker 3: So they write this episode. Tony Clifton shows up and
Speaker 3: during the course of the first two or three days,
Speaker 3: he shows up with a couple of hookers on his arms.
Speaker 3: I hope it's I can say that on the podcast.
Speaker 9: You can.
Speaker 5: Of course you can, of course you can.
Speaker 10: And he seems the biggest jerk and I'm using a
Speaker 10: kind word that one can be, to the point where
Speaker 10: he got so bad they actually had to fire him.
Speaker 3: Midweek, they fired Andy Kaufman as Tony Clifton, and that
Speaker 3: next week there's there or that weekend they're trying to
Speaker 3: figure out what are we going to do now we
Speaker 3: we you know, we're down one cast member and Ed
Speaker 3: Weinberger gets a call from Andy Kaufman saying, Hi, I
Speaker 3: hear there was a problem with Tony last week. What happened?
Speaker 5: And he was he was he would never break the character.
Speaker 6: It was him and Bob Zamuda, right, Bob's they were
Speaker 6: always in on the jokes, and he would he would
Speaker 6: sit there and say like he's apparently in his dressing
Speaker 6: room dressed like Tony Clifton at one point getting a
Speaker 6: call as Andy Kaufman saying Andy, we have to fire
Speaker 6: Tony and him going, oh geez, that's so he's not
Speaker 6: gonna take it well and tell and then he like
Speaker 6: bashed up the set. I mean, yeah, it was one
Speaker 6: of those things where he either thought it was brilliant
Speaker 6: or you couldn't stand him, and there was kind of
Speaker 6: no in between, right, But yeah, that was I mean,
Speaker 6: we were when Danielle was reading your credits. This is
Speaker 6: another one of those times where I wish I could
Speaker 6: when we build the time machine we've talked about, I
Speaker 6: could go back and talk.
Speaker 5: To you on the set about being I mean, what
Speaker 5: years were you on snl.
Speaker 3: Oh eighty eighty three to eighty five, two seasons, the
Speaker 3: ninth to tenth season, so that was the last year.
Speaker 3: It was the last year that Eddie Murphy was in
Speaker 3: the cast. And then the season with the Marty Short
Speaker 3: Billy Crystal Christopher.
Speaker 6: Gets my god, So you did you you were there
Speaker 6: with with with Hey you I see you with it.
Speaker 5: With the swimming, I don't I'm not a snchronized swimmer.
Speaker 6: Swimmers one of the one of the best skits of all.
Speaker 3: Time unbelievable sketch. Yeah, yeah, written I think by those
Speaker 3: three guys, Marty, Chris and Harry. Sure.
Speaker 7: What are some of your favorite memories from SNL Oh, gosh.
Speaker 3: So many of them? Right? You know? I wrote a
Speaker 3: sketch that was a film piece about a high school
Speaker 3: chess coach that acts like Bobby Knight on the sidelines,
Speaker 3: growing as antrum every time a kid moves a rook
Speaker 3: or something. And that piece got a lot of critical acclaim.
Speaker 7: And yes, my husband loves that sketch.
Speaker 5: When he throws the chair, He's like chucking the chair
Speaker 5: and all this. It was hysterical.
Speaker 3: So that, yeah, so I wrote that. That was one
Speaker 3: of the fun pieces.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: That second year for me was was just great. I
Speaker 3: was working with a couple of other writers. We kind
Speaker 3: of formed an informal three person writing team. Got a
Speaker 3: lot of material on and Yeah, the great thing about
Speaker 3: SNEL was it taught you how to produce, because when
Speaker 3: I was there, Dick Ebersol was the executive producer. I
Speaker 3: never worked for Lord Michaels, but Dick let you kind
Speaker 3: of produce your own sketches, so you learned how to
Speaker 3: problem solve on the set as well as how to write.
Speaker 3: I'll tell another story. I hope you don't mind me
Speaker 3: telling these stories. I wrote a mister Robinson's neighborhood. I
Speaker 3: didn't create the character, but you were allowed to write
Speaker 3: for Eddie's character. So I wrote the sketch. And if
Speaker 3: you recall mister Robinson, there was a second there was
Speaker 3: a franchise where he always went to a board, a
Speaker 3: board that had the word of the day on it. Yes,
Speaker 3: he would introduce the word of the day. And the
Speaker 3: sketch that I wrote was that mister Robinson comes in
Speaker 3: carrying a picnic basket and he explains that he found
Speaker 3: a basket on his doorsteps and it was his bastard baby.
Speaker 3: So the word of the day was bastard.
Speaker 5: It was bastard, bastard.
Speaker 3: And remember here's what happened. I wrote a sketch. The
Speaker 3: word of the day was bastard, and mister Robinson always
Speaker 3: went to the board and said, here's the word of
Speaker 3: the day. And then he would say the word and
Speaker 3: say can you say this, boys and girls. Well, we're
Speaker 3: rehearsing the sketch, and you know it's going to be
Speaker 3: on the show. We're rehearsing the sketch and Dick comes
Speaker 3: up to me and says, we've got a problem. Bill Clotworthy,
Speaker 3: who was the censor at the time, the Standards and
Speaker 3: Practices guy, says, we can't do bad. You got to
Speaker 3: change it. So I said, okay. So I go back
Speaker 3: to my office. I come up with six alternatives. I
Speaker 3: run them all by Eddie. He rejects everyone. He says,
Speaker 3: I want bastard. It's the only funny one. So I
Speaker 3: tell Dick that Eddie doesn't want any of the ones.
Speaker 3: He said, well, you created this problem, you fix it.
Speaker 3: I'm twenty seven years old, it's my first year on SNL.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do. So I think it
Speaker 3: over and I go to the censor, Bill clott Worthy,
Speaker 3: and I say, hey, Bill, what if the word of
Speaker 3: the day is bastard? But Eddie doesn't say it out loud,
Speaker 3: He just points to it, and we have a cover line.
Speaker 3: And Bill says, but Eddie always says to the word
Speaker 3: of the day. I said, what if he doesn't say
Speaker 3: it this week? He says, if you could promise me
Speaker 3: that he won't say it on air, I'll up that.
Speaker 3: And so I wrote a cover line which was Eddie
Speaker 3: going to the board pointing to that word and saying,
Speaker 3: here's the word of the day, boys and girls. Can
Speaker 3: you use this word in a sentence? Cab drivers can?
Speaker 3: And that got a big laugh and that covered it.
Speaker 4: So wow, unbelievable.
Speaker 5: I love these I love all these stories.
Speaker 11: Oh my gosh, how now?
Speaker 5: What got you into television work?
Speaker 6: What made you want to join the beautiful, wonderful, amazing
Speaker 6: world of TV?
Speaker 3: So I had never grown up thinking about being in entertainment.
Speaker 3: I loved comedy. I have three older brothers. We would
Speaker 3: watch comedians on TV, we would listen to comedy albums,
Speaker 3: but it never occurred to me that this was a career.
Speaker 3: My older brother Bobby became a stand up comedian in
Speaker 3: the mid seventies. I mentioned that, and I was hanging
Speaker 3: out with him, going to the clubs and then hanging
Speaker 3: out afterwards with all of his friends. His best friend
Speaker 3: and was Larry David. So I was around Larry all
Speaker 3: the time before Larry David was famous. But I also
Speaker 3: hung around with Leno and a little bit with Seinfeld.
Speaker 3: So I was hanging around with these guys and I
Speaker 3: just learned how to write comedy, helping my brother write
Speaker 3: his act and then watching them all, you know, shoot
Speaker 3: lines at each other and punch up each other's acts.
Speaker 3: And I would, you know, go back to college and
Speaker 3: send material to my brother and he would use some
Speaker 3: of it and told me why some of it wouldn't work,
Speaker 3: and we would have brotherly arguments. I'd say, you've got
Speaker 3: to try this, and go no, it'll never work. So
Speaker 3: then I said, well, if you're not going to use
Speaker 3: this material, I'll do it and stand up. And I
Speaker 3: started doing some stand up, and one thing led to another,
Speaker 3: and after college, I just drove across country and said,
Speaker 3: I'm going to try this writing thing and if it
Speaker 3: doesn't work out, I'll go home and this will be
Speaker 3: my gap year or wear my bridge year, whatever you
Speaker 3: want to call it, and I'll go home and get
Speaker 3: a real job. And I was there for another forty years,
Speaker 3: so I guess it worked out.
Speaker 5: And so you started in New York, then.
Speaker 3: Well, I grew up on Long Island, New York, went
Speaker 3: to school in upstate New York. But as soon as
Speaker 3: I got out of college, I realized that to be
Speaker 3: a comedy writer had to be in LA. So I
Speaker 3: need to La.
Speaker 5: Where I'm just curious where in Long Island were you?
Speaker 3: Rockville Center on the south Shore.
Speaker 6: That's exactly where my dad's from. My dad graduated from
Speaker 6: Rockville High.
Speaker 3: You mean Southside High School?
Speaker 5: A Southide High school?
Speaker 6: Yes, correct, he went to Southside High and my my
Speaker 6: wife is from Hicksville.
Speaker 5: Oh my so yeah, so.
Speaker 6: We're big Long We're big Long Island people. I always
Speaker 6: like to check where people are from.
Speaker 3: It's possible that your dad and I were in the
Speaker 3: same class, are close to it, because I'm about twenty
Speaker 3: years older than you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, my dad is eighty five, so I'm guessing.
Speaker 5: A different high school class.
Speaker 7: Wait, so how did you go from working with all
Speaker 7: of these like comedic geniuses to working with a bunch
Speaker 7: of goober kids on boy Meet's work for yourself?
Speaker 4: I mean, sure, sure I could for me.
Speaker 3: First of all, of course, I disagree with that qualitization.
Speaker 3: Just made up a word qualitization.
Speaker 8: I like it.
Speaker 3: I disagree with that characterization of you guys. You know,
Speaker 3: my first several years were all in sketch comedy, to
Speaker 3: the point where I was having trouble breaking into sitcoms.
Speaker 3: But I knew that I was cut out for sitcoms.
Speaker 3: It was just that my agents couldn't break me in.
Speaker 3: So finally, in the late eighties, I started getting sitcom jobs,
Speaker 3: and I did a couple of very short lived shows,
Speaker 3: one on Fox, another one on NBC. Then I got
Speaker 3: onto a different world and did some time there, than
Speaker 3: I did Night Court for a few seasons, get a
Speaker 3: few other shows, and you know, every season if the
Speaker 3: show you were on ended, you had to come up
Speaker 3: with a new gig. And my agent put me into
Speaker 3: Boy Meets World, and Michael liked my stuff, and here
Speaker 3: we are.
Speaker 1: So Kevin, what I love hearing about is like, how
Speaker 1: I mean's so much? It seems like so much of
Speaker 1: being a writer is about being a part of a community.
Speaker 1: You know, Like, yes, all of these experiences you're describing
Speaker 1: are like groups of writers getting around making each other laugh.
Speaker 1: What what was the community of the writing staff of
Speaker 1: a Boy Meets World? Like, how did it compare it
Speaker 1: to like the other communities of writers that you were
Speaker 1: parts of?
Speaker 3: It was very close. Now, like every job there's going
Speaker 3: to be in there's going to be bad days and
Speaker 3: internal bickering and what have you. But it was a
Speaker 3: really good staff, especially well the staffs that I worked
Speaker 3: on I really enjoyed a lot of funny people. We
Speaker 3: had some great times. But yes, you get into a
Speaker 3: writer's room and it's you know, it's it's Dorwindian. You
Speaker 3: have to produce, you have to get stuff in, and
Speaker 3: you're competing against your fellow your friends because that you know,
Speaker 3: you spend eight ten hours a day with that group
Speaker 3: of people, they become your closest friends. So but I
Speaker 3: really loved it. I mean, bus Gang and Blutman were great,
Speaker 3: and Jeff, as you know, it's just such a great guy,
Speaker 3: both Jeffs, Jeff Manel and Jeff Shearman. David was fun
Speaker 3: to work for. Matt Nelson, Oh god, what a talented
Speaker 3: guy he was. And we had some other writers there
Speaker 3: who you may not remember because, like me, they weren't
Speaker 3: on for a long time, but Judy Tole and Susan
Speaker 3: Sherman and Dona Trueho, they were all just great to
Speaker 3: hang out with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so much fun.
Speaker 7: Do you remember any stories you may have pitched or
Speaker 7: things that you may have, you know, suggested in the
Speaker 7: writer's room that didn't end up making it.
Speaker 3: I don't remember specific episodes, but I do remember in
Speaker 3: that second season again, as we were talking about trying
Speaker 3: to age up the show. My angle that I kind
Speaker 3: of pitched to I don't know whether it ever made
Speaker 3: its way to Michael, but I pitched it a lot
Speaker 3: in the writer's room and probably mentioned it to David
Speaker 3: and to Jeff McCracken was that I thought it would
Speaker 3: be interesting to keep Sean at Turner's house but also
Speaker 3: have Will graduate high school and move in with them,
Speaker 3: and have that become more of an equal home base
Speaker 3: to the Kitchen. So, you know, great, First of all,
Speaker 3: I listen, I think all three of you are fabulously talented.
Speaker 3: So I hope you don't mind my saying Will, I
Speaker 3: was a particular, a particular fan of your work. I
Speaker 3: loved writing for all of you, but will you you,
Speaker 3: I mean, you always all delivered. But I really thought
Speaker 3: it would be fun to get Will in that environment
Speaker 3: with Turner, with Sean obviously, having Tapanga and Corey coming over,
Speaker 3: having Alex's character being there as well. You know again,
Speaker 3: I was thinking Seinfeld friends, Fraser.
Speaker 1: And a group of young guys sort of living together,
Speaker 1: and like, oh, that makes so much sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of what ended up happening with Jack, with
Speaker 1: Jack and Sean in the season five and six.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: Oh we could have done so it would have kept
Speaker 1: Alex around, and.
Speaker 2: It wuld have kept thinking of Alex.
Speaker 7: Do you do you remember Kevin there being a lot
Speaker 7: of conversation about ways that they could involve that you guys,
Speaker 7: could involve Alex Dsayer's character, mister Williams into the show,
Speaker 7: because that's one of our real only criticisms of season
Speaker 7: three is that.
Speaker 4: He felt like it was he was so wasted.
Speaker 7: He was such a talent, and yet we knew they
Speaker 7: wanted to age up the show, but it didn't really
Speaker 7: seem like they knew how to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, first of all, we were all tremendous fans
Speaker 3: of Alex's. He always delivered. He was a great guy.
Speaker 3: I never felt that there was an issue with his
Speaker 3: character other than well, first of all, I think they
Speaker 3: only you know, contracted him for a handful of episodes, right,
Speaker 3: and and that was probably a budgetary thing. Now I
Speaker 3: could be wrong about that, but that's that's my vague memory.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that we struggled. We liked writing for him,
Speaker 3: but we had, you know, the major characters were you guys,
Speaker 3: so we had to really focus the stories on you,
Speaker 3: and he would come. You know, he was there to
Speaker 3: be Turner's kind of mouthpiece or you know, his confidant.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Right, Do you remember Will's pool shot in the episode
Speaker 7: that you wrote where he nails that pool shot.
Speaker 3: I just rewatched it again for this, and you know,
Speaker 3: I heard you guys talking about those pool scenes. When
Speaker 3: you talked about that episode, Will, I didn't recall that
Speaker 3: you had worked with a professional pool shark, and I
Speaker 3: didn't realize that you had done some of those shots.
Speaker 3: Or maybe I realized it and didn't remember. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that last shot of the show, which was the final
Speaker 3: shot of the pool game, was really cool when you
Speaker 3: sank every ball.
Speaker 6: Yes, chef Chef Anton who now does underwater scuba magic
Speaker 6: where we're still trying to figure out exactly what.
Speaker 5: That is and how we can get involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So where did you go after you left Boy
Speaker 7: Meets World?
Speaker 4: Where did you go and why did you leave us?
Speaker 3: I anticipated this question so as I think I made
Speaker 3: very clear so far. I had this image of myself
Speaker 3: as a musty TV writer, and I got offered a
Speaker 3: new NBC show that was going to be part of
Speaker 3: the so called Musty TV Family. It was going to
Speaker 3: be on and did go on on NBC on Tuesday
Speaker 3: nights between Matt about You and Fraser. It was hammocked
Speaker 3: in between him. It was called something So Right, and
Speaker 3: it starred Jerry Burns and Mel Harris. Yes, I remember
Speaker 3: this as two divorcees each have kids of their own
Speaker 3: and they get married and it's about a blended family.
Speaker 3: And there too their exes coming in because they were
Speaker 3: still the fathers and the mothers of the kids. So
Speaker 3: I got offered that and I really wanted to do it. So,
Speaker 3: you know, my agent said, you know, Michael's not going
Speaker 3: to like it if you if you leave the show,
Speaker 3: I said, can I can I just run it by
Speaker 3: them and see what they say. So I went to
Speaker 3: McCracken and I discussed it and he said, well, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't think Michael's going to react to
Speaker 3: well to this. You guys know Michael, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I was always a little intimidated by Michael, who,
Speaker 3: by the way, maybe the best showrunner I ever worked for,
Speaker 3: certainly up in the top three.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: But you know, Michael could be intimidating. So I went
Speaker 3: and sat down with him and you know, he already
Speaker 3: knew what I was coming in for. Quis McCracken had
Speaker 3: laid the groundwork and I told him, and you know,
Speaker 3: he was cool about it. He said, listen, if that's
Speaker 3: what you want to do, that's what you want to do.
Speaker 3: You know, godspeed. But I always felt that maybe there
Speaker 3: was a little bit of hard feelings there and I
Speaker 3: kind of I kind of feel bad about how I
Speaker 3: handled it. But you know, that's a career, right, you
Speaker 3: moved on.
Speaker 1: You you got to go from job to job or
Speaker 1: you know, you got to pursue your It's just a bummer.
Speaker 1: The show didn't didn't last. You know, That's that's the
Speaker 1: problem about show business. It's like you got to work
Speaker 1: just as hard and give it your all, and then
Speaker 1: the show can get canceled or you're not right and grace.
Speaker 3: Shows with great writing staffs are great casts get canceled,
Speaker 3: and shows that maybe aren't as deserving go on for
Speaker 3: many years. But What Boy Meets World, You know, as
Speaker 3: I look back on it, and you guys have talked
Speaker 3: about this on the podcast, which by the way, I
Speaker 3: listen to almost every week, thank you, it's grown so
Speaker 3: much in status and as an iconic series. And I
Speaker 3: think we're all so much, you know, so proud of
Speaker 3: the work now that we did because it's it stood
Speaker 3: the test of time.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 7: I want to ask you, because you mentioned that Michael
Speaker 7: was one of the best showrunners you ever worked for.
Speaker 7: What was it like to work for Michael? What were
Speaker 7: some of your favorite parts of working with him? Tell
Speaker 7: us more about your experience with that.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, my favorite thing is the way he handled
Speaker 3: a network. You know, as as you guys know, in television,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of fancy titles. You know, you're a
Speaker 3: consulting producer, a story editor, a co executive producer, but
Speaker 3: the reality is it's there's the showrunner and there's everyone else. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and Michael was the showrunner, as you know, and so
Speaker 3: he was the one that dealt with the networks, and
Speaker 3: he didn't take any guff from the networks. They gave
Speaker 3: his They gave him their notes, and he pretty much
Speaker 3: ignored them where he took the ones that he wanted.
Speaker 3: But he knew how to manage the network as well
Speaker 3: as any showrunner I've ever seen, because some just crumble
Speaker 3: under network notes. The other thing that was amazing about
Speaker 3: Michael is he didn't stay in the room because he
Speaker 3: was busy running the show. So David Kendall ran the
Speaker 3: room the seasons that I was there. But if we were,
Speaker 3: you know, struggling with a script at eleven pm twelve
Speaker 3: pm at night, Michael would come in and Michael could
Speaker 3: just he'd say, what's the problem, and David would kind
Speaker 3: of explain it, and Michael would start riffing and he
Speaker 3: would just add lib a scene. He would just riff
Speaker 3: a scene. We're all just sitting there doing nothing except
Speaker 3: laughing at his lines. But he could write when when
Speaker 3: I'd say eighty percent of the episodes of those two seasons,
Speaker 3: if you got to the second act scene that was
Speaker 3: the heartfelt scene and there was a long monologue for
Speaker 3: one of the characters, there's a very good chance that
Speaker 3: Michael wrote that in some form or fashion.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, Yeah, he did have that. We heard that
Speaker 5: from a number of people.
Speaker 6: Jeff McCracken, two who knew him the longest, would say
Speaker 6: that he would be with him an improv class and
Speaker 6: he was always the funniest guy there.
Speaker 1: He's just I was going to say he had that
Speaker 1: a bill of an acting background too, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 2: Like he came.
Speaker 1: He started as an actor, and so I think he
Speaker 1: always thought of writing primarily as a sort of an
Speaker 1: acting exercise.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting to hear that he.
Speaker 5: Would so fast.
Speaker 6: I mean, when you work with Michael, I mean, he
Speaker 6: was his mind. The way his mind worked comedically was
Speaker 6: unlike almost anybody I've ever met in my life, so fast,
Speaker 6: and he at times you could tell, and I saw
Speaker 6: this more on Girlmy's World. He would block everything out,
Speaker 6: including at times too I think a detriment, but block
Speaker 6: out almost everybody else in the room or anything going on,
Speaker 6: and would just be typing and you're kind of watching
Speaker 6: it happen on the screen and it's hysterical.
Speaker 5: I mean. He was just really really good at us. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, and.
Speaker 3: He knew the show as most showrunners do. He knew
Speaker 3: it so well, and he just had a sense for
Speaker 3: what was right for Topanger, or what was right for Sean,
Speaker 3: or what was right for Eric.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so other people.
Speaker 7: I have to ask you about because we noticed just
Speaker 7: how many episodes they wrote in season three.
Speaker 4: What do you remember about Blutman and bus Gang.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, very funny guys, had a lot
Speaker 3: of fun with them. How is Howard bust Gang is
Speaker 3: one of the funnier writers that I've worked with. He
Speaker 3: was a joke machine. Yeah, he just came up with
Speaker 3: line after line after line. Blutman was also very funny,
Speaker 3: maybe a little bit more of a story guy. And
Speaker 3: they turned out a lot of material, and they knew
Speaker 3: the show so well. They really felt a personal connection
Speaker 3: to the show, maybe even deeper than anyone else on
Speaker 3: the staff. They really were boy meets world writers to
Speaker 3: their core, and that's why they stayed with the show
Speaker 3: as long as they did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, do you keep in touch with anybody from the show?
Speaker 3: A little bit? On Facebook? I keep in touch with Mark,
Speaker 3: I keep in touch with Jeff, and very occasionally David.
Speaker 3: Like during the writer's strike, I would see him post
Speaker 3: photos of him picketing, and I would like it make
Speaker 3: a comment. Because I'm no longer in Los Angeles, I
Speaker 3: would have been there picketing if I had been in LA,
Speaker 3: but I wasn't going to fly into town just to picket.
Speaker 5: Where are you?
Speaker 3: I live outside of Austin, Texas now.
Speaker 5: I moved here.
Speaker 3: Oh nice, almost four years ago.
Speaker 4: Wonderful.
Speaker 6: I have one more question about the people you worked
Speaker 6: with because she was kind of one of the unsung heroes.
Speaker 6: She's not here anymore, and she went on to do
Speaker 6: some pretty amazing things. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 6: about Judy tole Yes, Judy.
Speaker 3: Actually I knew Judy from our comedy days together. We
Speaker 3: started in stand up around the same time and we
Speaker 3: were quite friendly. Judy was just such a lovely person,
Speaker 3: very funny, very brash in a good way, and she
Speaker 3: was great to have in the room because she kept
Speaker 3: things lively. One of the things that happens in a
Speaker 3: writer's room, especially when you get to twelve o'clock, one o'clock,
Speaker 3: two o'clock in the morning, is people start to run
Speaker 3: out of energy and it could become really problematic. But
Speaker 3: you need someone there like a Judy Toll and a
Speaker 3: Mark Blutman frankly, who can keep the energy up when
Speaker 3: everybody else is kind of fading. And Judy was great
Speaker 3: at that. We lost her at a very young age,
Speaker 3: as you know, thirty nine years old. I believe I
Speaker 3: know it was to cancer, and yeah, we were Actually
Speaker 3: we knew each other before she came on the show,
Speaker 3: and probably the person that I knew best.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because she also went off into the whole Larry
Speaker 6: David World after Boy Meet's World, and was also on
Speaker 6: camera and some of the stuff that they were doing there,
Speaker 6: and she was just so talented.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the original Curb Your Enthusiasm movie, yeah, they
Speaker 3: shot for HBO, she played one of the network executives.
Speaker 5: And she was great. She was so good in it.
Speaker 6: And I remember seeing her and I know she was
Speaker 6: good friends with Kathy Griffin, and I ran into her
Speaker 6: in a movie theater and.
Speaker 5: We got to talk as adults a little bit.
Speaker 6: It was after she had left the show, and then
Speaker 6: hearing she had passed was just Yeah, she was super,
Speaker 6: super talented.
Speaker 3: And one last thing that I'll share with you guys is,
Speaker 3: as you can imagine, just as it was kind of
Speaker 3: weird for you to be fifteen years old and Will
Speaker 3: you were just a little bit older, I think, and
Speaker 3: working in television, it was a little weird for us
Speaker 3: to be working with teenagers. And one of the reasons
Speaker 3: that you didn't know me that well was I felt
Speaker 3: a little awkward around you, guys, because I thought you
Speaker 3: were so freaking cool. I thought I thought you were
Speaker 3: the coolest fifteen year old in the world.
Speaker 4: He really was. He was I was.
Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, you you were all heart
Speaker 3: throbs in your own way. You know that the audiences
Speaker 3: would treat you like the Beatles, you know that. And
Speaker 3: one day I was walking from the parking lot into
Speaker 3: the building and I see a parking space with a
Speaker 3: really cool car in it and said, Riders Strong on it.
Speaker 3: And I went into the office and I asked somebody,
Speaker 3: I said, is that for writer's parents so they could
Speaker 3: drive him to the set. He said, oh no, he
Speaker 3: has his driver's license already. He drives himself. Here. You
Speaker 3: were like sixteen years old, and I thought he stars
Speaker 3: on a television show. He's like a sex symbol and
Speaker 3: he drives at sixteen, Who is this kid?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, he's Rider Strong. And that Z three looked
Speaker 6: like a small version of the Batmobile.
Speaker 4: It was sockery.
Speaker 2: It's all downhill. Since it's all I just got older.
Speaker 5: That's funny, Kevin.
Speaker 7: I want to give a shout out to your brother,
Speaker 7: who you mentioned was a stand up comedian. He did
Speaker 7: Carson like something like nine times in the eighties, which.
Speaker 3: To be exactly wow, Yeah.
Speaker 4: That's unbelievable.
Speaker 7: Please tell us his name, I mean, and give us
Speaker 7: tell us a little bit about him.
Speaker 3: So his professional name is Bobby Kelton. He started in
Speaker 3: the mid seventies. His contemporaries were Jay Leno, Larry David,
Speaker 3: David Letterman. They all started around the same time. And
Speaker 3: of course those guys went on to be a lot
Speaker 3: more famous than Bobby did. But he still performs in Florida,
Speaker 3: not as much as he used to. But yeah, he
Speaker 3: did all those shows in the eighties. He was on
Speaker 3: Carson and Griffin and Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore, and
Speaker 3: he worked you know, in Vegas and other places like that.
Speaker 3: And again that's how I learned the business, was by
Speaker 3: us Moses, through him and through his friends. So if
Speaker 3: it hadn't been for Bobby, I don't know where I
Speaker 3: would have ended up. I would have been an accountant
Speaker 3: or a lawyer or something.
Speaker 1: You must have had a like a funny childhood home, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, like did well at dinner tables.
Speaker 2: Must have been jokes after jokes, right, like it was.
Speaker 3: And again I was the youngest of four boys. And
Speaker 3: when we were young, like I said, we loved comedy
Speaker 3: and we had we would play games. Now, when I
Speaker 3: say games, you're probably thinking of softball or stickball, or
Speaker 3: or some board game. Our games were actually something that
Speaker 3: a word now that we know as improvisation. We had
Speaker 3: running characters and we would just add lib scenes with
Speaker 3: these running characters over and over and over again and again.
Speaker 3: We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know
Speaker 3: that improvisation existed. We had never heard of Second City. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but we would just make up these scenes, like, for instance,
Speaker 3: one of them was Uncle Jack, and the storyline was
Speaker 3: it was sort of like a wily coyote kind of
Speaker 3: a thing where my oldest brother Bruce played Uncle Jack
Speaker 3: and I was the young Master, and the storyline or
Speaker 3: the backstory was that my parents had died in a
Speaker 3: car crash and I had inherited millions of dollars and
Speaker 3: so my uncle was now taking care of me and
Speaker 3: constantly trying to kill me off for the money, and
Speaker 3: it would always backfire, and it's great. We even had
Speaker 3: an opening that we did it at the beginning of
Speaker 3: every game where my other brother Mike played like the
Speaker 3: butler and he would get the call where he was
Speaker 3: being told that my parents were killed in a car crash,
Speaker 3: and they would go hello, uh huh, I see okay,
Speaker 3: thank you very much, and that was how the show,
Speaker 3: and that was how the game began.
Speaker 4: Wow, so much fun.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we didn't know that we were training ourselves
Speaker 3: for careers in comedy. And two of my brothers, Bruce
Speaker 3: and Mike, are now attorneys. Bruce is actually a judge,
Speaker 3: a federal judge in California, and he was the funniest
Speaker 3: of the four of us, and he's now a federal judge.
Speaker 3: So go figure out, well, did you go up?
Speaker 5: Did you grow up watching?
Speaker 6: I mean, at the time, sketch comedy was essentially in
Speaker 6: its infancy, unless you go back to things like the
Speaker 6: movies like Hell's of Poppin' and things that are old
Speaker 6: school stuff.
Speaker 5: There wasn't a whole ton of sketch comedy around at
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 3: Well there was, it was in a different form. Of course.
Speaker 3: Your show of shows was long before I was television.
Speaker 3: But there was Carol Burnett, there was Las Sunny and Cherr,
Speaker 3: which actually did some decent sketches.
Speaker 5: I guess they did a few.
Speaker 3: Things like that. So and I would watch those shows again,
Speaker 3: not thinking that I was trading myself for anything, but
Speaker 3: I would watch those with my dad or with my brothers,
Speaker 3: and it just sunk in and I remember watching SNL
Speaker 3: that first season and I would watch the credit roll
Speaker 3: because I was already starting to be kind of like
Speaker 3: aware of writers, hyper focusing on it. And one week
Speaker 3: there was a new name in the credits, the name
Speaker 3: James Downey. Now I don't know whether you guys know
Speaker 3: who Jim Downey is, but he ended up being probably
Speaker 3: the greatest writer on Saturday Night Live. He worked there
Speaker 3: for some forty years on and off. But I remember
Speaker 3: seeing his name new to the credit roll and going,
Speaker 3: who is this guy? How did he get that job?
Speaker 3: Where did he come from? And years later I got
Speaker 3: to work with him, so that was kind of a
Speaker 3: thrill for me.
Speaker 5: Jim Downey, Yeah, you're right. Carol Burnett was amazing. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 5: oh yeah.
Speaker 3: I would argue that that was the best sketch comedy
Speaker 3: show ever I could.
Speaker 6: It'd be hard to disagree with that. But they also
Speaker 6: kept in the breaking and all the lat I mean,
Speaker 6: it was oh yeah, yeah, Kevin.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about your novel. So you've
Speaker 1: written you've moved into writing fiction now.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So when I retired from television and then I
Speaker 3: had a couple of other jobs that were writing related,
Speaker 3: in the corporate field. Then I retired and moved to
Speaker 3: uh A, excuse me, to Arizona, to Texas and uh
Speaker 3: I just started writing novels, and uh I don't know
Speaker 3: whether I'm good at it, but I've written five of
Speaker 3: them in the last two to three years. I've also
Speaker 3: written a book about television writing. I teach television television
Speaker 3: writing through UCLA Extension, and I decided to take all
Speaker 3: of my lessons and turn them into a how to
Speaker 3: book about TV writing. So, yeah, I've written five novels there.
Speaker 3: They were really like novella's. They're really short novels, and
Speaker 3: I'm kind.
Speaker 5: Of the comedy or yeah, what's the genre.
Speaker 3: So they're all different. The first one that I wrote
Speaker 3: was a dark satire, a dystopian satire on marriage and divorce.
Speaker 3: It's called super Vows and it's about a world. Do
Speaker 3: you guys know what covenant marriages? Have you heard about? Okay?
Speaker 3: Covenant marriage is kind of this rule. It's legal in
Speaker 3: a couple of states Louisia and Arizona and maybe one
Speaker 3: other state. But it's basically a religious based marriage where
Speaker 3: you're agreeing to live together for life and you agree
Speaker 3: not to divorce. Now, it is possible to get divorced
Speaker 3: in a covenant marriage, but you have to go through
Speaker 3: a lot more hoops than you would in a regular marriage.
Speaker 3: So these things are meant to last a lifetime. And
Speaker 3: I read an article about this at some point in
Speaker 3: the early two thousands, and I thought, well, if that
Speaker 3: catches on and people start marrying for life, that's going
Speaker 3: to have a lot of bad consequences and a lot
Speaker 3: of ramification to the society. Yeah, exactly, So there you go.
Speaker 3: So if you read super Vows, you might find a
Speaker 3: little bit of that in that book, because it's essentially
Speaker 3: about a world where covenant marriages become the new in thing.
Speaker 3: A couple that's a very hot kind of The main
Speaker 3: characters are three young actors that are sort of like
Speaker 3: Ben Affleck and Mini Driver and Matt Damon.
Speaker 4: Just like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was thinking about this early this morning. Guys
Speaker 3: in your twenties. I would have cast you in a
Speaker 3: minute in the movie version of this book. You guys,
Speaker 3: you three would have been great. You would have been perfect.
Speaker 3: If they had come to me and said we want
Speaker 3: to cast the use three, I would have said yes
Speaker 3: and a heartbeat.
Speaker 6: Which one of us is married to Danielle for life.
Speaker 6: I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: Your character is married to Danielle for life. I won't
Speaker 3: say what. Will's excuse me, what writer's character does?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I need to read this.
Speaker 5: I need to read this.
Speaker 3: So that was my first novel. I hope you don't
Speaker 3: mind me talking about the books. My second one is
Speaker 3: based actually on my life, very loosely. I married a
Speaker 3: woman who's a former ballerina. She danced across Europe in
Speaker 3: her twenties and danced all over She even danced with
Speaker 3: Nouriev at one point.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: And of course she no longer does that. She's now
Speaker 3: a plates instructor. And we each had our first marriages,
Speaker 3: we had our kids, we got divorced. We met in
Speaker 3: our fifties. So I wrote a book about a couple
Speaker 3: loosely based on that, what would happen if a ballerina
Speaker 3: meets a comedy writer and their worlds collide. So that
Speaker 3: one is called pat de Deux And you can find
Speaker 3: that one on Amazon. And if you look at the cover,
Speaker 3: you'll see a ballerina on it, and it's a picture
Speaker 3: of my young wife's cool.
Speaker 4: There you go, so sweet.
Speaker 3: And then the last book it's really a trilogy of
Speaker 3: novellas that are a little bit more adult oriented, maybe
Speaker 3: not for some of your younger listeners. And this is
Speaker 3: about it's three stories, one about a woman in her twenties,
Speaker 3: one about a woman in her thirties, and what about
Speaker 3: a woman in her forties, And it's about how their
Speaker 3: romantic lives are different, how a woman's romantic lives are
Speaker 3: different from her twenties to her thirties to her forties.
Speaker 3: And what I found was, you know, you write a
Speaker 3: book and then you design a cover or two. And
Speaker 3: I used to put my covers into Facebook groups for
Speaker 3: other writers, saying, Hey, which one do you like better?
Speaker 3: And they'd say, well, what's your book about? And I'd
Speaker 3: give them the pitch, And then I was surprised to
Speaker 3: find about thirty percent of the woman got really hostile
Speaker 3: because they didn't like the idea of a man writing
Speaker 3: a novel about women. And the pushback I got was incredible.
Speaker 3: So I got some intimidated that I released those that book,
Speaker 3: or those three novellas. You could buy them individually on Kindle,
Speaker 3: or if you buy the paperback of the hardcover all
Speaker 3: three or in one book. But I released them under
Speaker 3: the name KB Kelton. I used my initials. I figured
Speaker 3: maybe if they don't know who wrote it, Yeah, yep,
Speaker 3: that's interesting.
Speaker 7: So do you like writing for TV or do you
Speaker 7: like writing books better?
Speaker 3: Oh, writing for books so much more. I get so
Speaker 3: much more out of it because the only person I
Speaker 3: have to answer to is me, And as you well know,
Speaker 3: in television, it's never really your work. You know, you
Speaker 3: have to take network notes, you have to take executive
Speaker 3: producer notes, and then you have to make changes during
Speaker 3: the week, and there's a writing stuff that's punching up
Speaker 3: your work. These novels reflect my sensibility, and frankly, I'm
Speaker 3: more proud of them. I once added up because you know,
Speaker 3: I worked on some hit shows, and I once added
Speaker 3: up how many people have seen shows that I have
Speaker 3: a credit on, not necessarily written by but as a producer,
Speaker 3: as a staff writer. And I think that the audience
Speaker 3: for my work. I know this is going to sound egotistical.
Speaker 3: I think it's close to a billion people. Wow, But
Speaker 3: and that includes you know, two years of Boy Beats World.
Speaker 3: But my books have been read by few hundred people.
Speaker 3: But I'm so much prouder of that work. Because it's
Speaker 3: it's lasting. You know, I could point to that and
Speaker 3: say this is purely me, It's not filtered through anybody
Speaker 3: else's sensibility.
Speaker 6: Yeah, very very briefly, taking Boy Meets World out of
Speaker 6: the equation because we know, obviously that's my my favorite
Speaker 6: show you've ever done in your favorite show ever? Obviously,
Speaker 6: what television project are you most proud of without you know, yeah,
Speaker 6: Boy Me's World not in the mix.
Speaker 3: Well, it's Saturday Night Live obviously. You know, it's such
Speaker 3: an iconic show, and there's so much creative freedom there
Speaker 3: that certainly was pretty high on the Mark Night Court.
Speaker 3: You know, people remember fondly. Frankly, all of them were jobs,
Speaker 3: more or less. That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy them.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that I don't think I'm the luckiest
Speaker 3: guy in the world to have been there. But they
Speaker 3: were all you know, you know, they I never got
Speaker 3: to work on my sein film, my Frasier, so uh.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed all of my jobs, but those two stand
Speaker 3: out because they seem to have been so so appreciated
Speaker 3: over the years by other people. M and Boy Meets World. No,
Speaker 3: I'm very proud of the Boy Meets world. I went
Speaker 3: back and again. You know, when I watch some of
Speaker 3: those scenes, Danielle, just watching you in that truck stop
Speaker 3: with the women, I think her character was named I
Speaker 3: forget Luanne was with the character's name, but you know,
Speaker 3: Danielle did some great work in that scene. In so
Speaker 3: many other scenes, I think about will you as Eric
Speaker 3: at the at the TV station, as the in Jurne writer,
Speaker 3: you know, you in City Slackers, in you know, reading
Speaker 3: Phoene's diary. Uh, just really proud to have worked with
Speaker 3: you guys and seen you guys bring my words to life.
Speaker 5: Oh man, so cool.
Speaker 6: And then we're going to do the marriage vow. We're
Speaker 6: going to have to get that. We're going to lose
Speaker 6: twenty years. Yeah, forties. It's gone to be in our
Speaker 6: forties and.
Speaker 2: Twenty year olds in our forties.
Speaker 3: You guys may not know this. The new House speaker
Speaker 3: Mike Johnson, he is in a covenant marriage.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: So when I heard that, you know, he's not necessarily
Speaker 3: my taste in politics. But when I heard that, I said,
Speaker 3: right on, because people are going to be googling covenant
Speaker 3: marriage and they're going to come us to my book.
Speaker 7: I love that, so final question for you, looking back
Speaker 7: thirty years later, with so many incredible shows on your
Speaker 7: IMDb page, what are your overall feelings of Boy Meets
Speaker 7: World And did you ever think you would still be
Speaker 7: talking about it three decades later?
Speaker 3: No, No, I did not realize if you would ask me,
Speaker 3: which of the shows that I worked on would become
Speaker 3: iconic hits that would stand the test of time. It
Speaker 3: didn't occur to me that a TGIF show would do that,
Speaker 3: but it happens. You know, watching the shows again, you
Speaker 3: know there are there were jokes that maybe I would
Speaker 3: have done differently, Like every writer you know has second
Speaker 3: thoughts when they watched their their material after it's been produced.
Speaker 3: But I'm so proud, especially of the dramatic scenes, the
Speaker 3: scenes with Sean and Turner, the scenes where mister Feeney
Speaker 3: wasn't just being you know, a teacher, but was making
Speaker 3: a life lesson point and you know, I was just
Speaker 3: reading this morning. I'm sure you guys know this. There's
Speaker 3: a couple of episodes that Disney doesn't want to show
Speaker 3: anymore because they deal with adult themes. But you know,
Speaker 3: Disney is going to be Disney. But we should be
Speaker 3: so proud to have worked on a show that did
Speaker 3: deal with those themes, dealt with them honestly and tried
Speaker 3: to tried to influence people for the better.
Speaker 4: Absolutely couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 7: Well, Kevin, thank you so much for being here with
Speaker 7: us today and for remind I mean, I can't believe we,
Speaker 7: for even half a second, had forgotten you. You have
Speaker 7: such an incredible mind, and just getting to talk to
Speaker 7: you and getting to know you a little bit better
Speaker 7: has been such a joy this morning.
Speaker 3: You guys are so kind and I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: I was a little nervous coming in, but you were
Speaker 3: very pleasant and I really had a great time.
Speaker 6: You also mentioned so not just your novels, which everybody
Speaker 6: should go out and look at, but you also mentioned
Speaker 6: that you do a podcast as well.
Speaker 5: What's it called?
Speaker 3: Oh, I do a podcast called The More Perfect Union.
Speaker 3: I co host it with three or four other people
Speaker 3: depending on the week, and we talk about politics and
Speaker 3: pop culture, mostly about politics, and we've been doing that
Speaker 3: for eight years now. Actually I think we're on nine sees.
Speaker 2: Oh, I got to check the cheese.
Speaker 5: So you were the first podcast we were early on.
Speaker 3: And here's a very quick story. So we come up
Speaker 3: with this name, The more Perfect Union, and we start
Speaker 3: our podcast and at first we have like fifty sixty
Speaker 3: people listening a week. It's our friends, right, And then
Speaker 3: one week, all of a sudden, we had eight thousand listeners,
Speaker 3: and then the next week we had ten thousand downloads.
Speaker 3: We got up to sixteen thousand downloads at one point,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't figure out what happened. So I do
Speaker 3: a little googling, and I find out that there's another
Speaker 3: podcast produced by Radio Labs called The more Perfect Podcast.
Speaker 3: It was a short year getting slickover. We got people
Speaker 3: were googling for that, and they found us and they
Speaker 3: stuck with us. We still don't have that many listeners,
Speaker 3: but we have a decent size audience for a small podcasts.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we talk about the news of the week.
Speaker 3: It's it leads a little left, so it may not
Speaker 3: be for everybody's taste, but we try to be fair
Speaker 3: and we have a lot of fun doing it. Our
Speaker 3: slogan is real debate without the hate.
Speaker 2: Totally checking it out. That's totally.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Kevin, It's great to see you.
Speaker 3: Thanks Ken, thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Bye bye.
Speaker 7: What a sweetheart, gosh and what an interesting cool brain.
Speaker 2: Interesting cool brain is exactly the right way to put it.
Speaker 1: It's a comedic like I just love when somebody has
Speaker 1: like trained themselves how to do this skill set and
Speaker 1: then did it like so well. But then I also
Speaker 1: love that he's like admits that it was a job,
Speaker 1: like he figured out how to do the job. He
Speaker 1: mastered the skill of comedy. But he likes writing novels more.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like he's got a lot of
Speaker 1: interest and a lot of I don't.
Speaker 5: Know, it's just so cool cool. I just wish I could.
Speaker 6: I should have talked to her about the day and
Speaker 6: you could talk to him back in the day where
Speaker 6: I could have talked about SNL and Night Court and all.
Speaker 5: These incredible shows that these people have. I know exactly
Speaker 5: what's your own head, It doesn't matter, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, I know exactly what he's talking about about being
Speaker 1: intimidated too, because I remember feeling that Girl's world too, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you reach this point you're like, these kids
Speaker 1: are these kids are into stuff that make no sense
Speaker 1: to me. I'm not even going to try and like
Speaker 1: hang out with them too much. Yeah, the kids from
Speaker 1: Girlmy's World as much as like pretty well actually, but
Speaker 1: it takes you have to like sort of like do it.
Speaker 2: You have to, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you're on the writing staff, you're already
Speaker 1: to slightly removed from a lot of production.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Ah should have talked to him more back then.
Speaker 5: I know you wish you wish you could go back
Speaker 5: and talk to all these people.
Speaker 7: Great guy, Well, thank you all for joining us for
Speaker 7: this episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can
Speaker 7: follow us on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can
Speaker 7: also send us your emails Podmeets World Show at gmail
Speaker 7: dot com.
Speaker 4: And we have merch.
Speaker 5: Oh boy, that too much? That too much?
Speaker 4: It is gutturall.
Speaker 5: I felt that too much? You like that?
Speaker 4: I like you that.
Speaker 5: I feel it in your shoes your shoes, Pod.
Speaker 4: Meets Worldshow dot com.
Speaker 7: And if you want to pick up Kevin's how to
Speaker 7: book on television writing called The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook with
Speaker 7: some tips on how you can write your own version
Speaker 7: of Boy Meets World or SNL. It is available now
Speaker 7: on Amazon again. It is called The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook
Speaker 7: by Kevin Kelton and writer Send us out.
Speaker 2: We love you all.
Speaker 3: Pod dismissed.
Speaker 1: Pod meets World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by
Speaker 1: Danielle Fischel, Wilfordell and writer Straw. Executive producers Jensen Karp
Speaker 1: and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo,
Speaker 1: producer and editor, TaRaSu Bosch, producer, Maddam engineer and Boy
Speaker 1: Meets World Superman Easton Allen. Our theme song is by
Speaker 1: Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at Podmets
Speaker 1: World Show or email us at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com.
Speaker 6: M