Speaker 1: I definitely, um, I ruined sixth cents for everybody I
Speaker 1: went to the movie theater with, Really did you? I
Speaker 1: called it? I called it? Called it too, but I
Speaker 1: called it. But I also be like, well, I think
Speaker 1: I remember we were on the set of Boy in
Speaker 1: Metore when that movie came out, like we were working.
Speaker 1: I remember we were all talking about it. We were
Speaker 1: all like, oh, let's you know, And so I think
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a twist, Like I think
Speaker 1: I went into the theater knowing that, you know, something
Speaker 1: big is going to have or be revealed. But I
Speaker 1: just leaned over and I was like, why aren't they
Speaker 1: talking about the fact that he's dead? Like why has
Speaker 1: nobody talked about that? Because it actually happens. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you watch the movie, he died in the opening,
Speaker 1: he gets shot and then it like cuts to him
Speaker 1: later and I was like, Oh, he's dead and now
Speaker 1: he's he hasn't talked to it, and I was like,
Speaker 1: why are they acknowledging that. I was like, Oh, that
Speaker 1: that's that's a twist. I remember it, I think not
Speaker 1: even thinking it was a twist because what happened was
Speaker 1: the first trailer I ever saw for that movie was
Speaker 1: the little kid going I see dead people and then
Speaker 1: cutting right to Bruce Willis. So I went, okay, so
Speaker 1: Bruce Wellis is dad Like, that's I thought they wanted
Speaker 1: you to know that. It wasn't like to me they
Speaker 1: were hiding anything. And that was the only time I
Speaker 1: ever saw that trailer. Then they changed that trailer because
Speaker 1: obviously other people were like, all right to Brucellis's dead.
Speaker 1: So to me, it wasn't a twist. Oh man, you
Speaker 1: guys seem like fun people to go to the movies.
Speaker 1: You know who was really big at ruining movies was Ben.
Speaker 1: Ben would ruin movies left and right, because he would
Speaker 1: you would be talking about a film that just came out,
Speaker 1: like I remember Wag the Dog just came out and
Speaker 1: I really wanted to see Wag the Dog. Great, you know,
Speaker 1: cool concept, amazing cast. And I said to Ben, He's like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing this weekend? I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go see Wag the Dog. He just went
Speaker 1: I can't believe they killed him at the end, and
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, are you kidding me? Like what
Speaker 1: do you do? And he would do that all and
Speaker 1: it was it wasn't. He wasn't being malicious. He was
Speaker 1: just being like talking about it, like, yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: I can't believe that they killed him. At the end,
Speaker 1: I was like, I just told you, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: I just said that. So he did that several times.
Speaker 1: I remember where he just ruined a movie to where
Speaker 1: you just couldn't talk to about films anymore. Okay, I
Speaker 1: have to talk to him about movies after I've seen them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what are your Here's a good question, since
Speaker 1: we've talked about concerts and all that kind of stuff, Danielle,
Speaker 1: what are your favorite movies that you were brought backstage
Speaker 1: at hang out with you? To hang out with? Your
Speaker 1: favorite sets of the were the dinosaurs behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: to dress apart where they next house? Your favorite movies
Speaker 1: of all time? Um? Man, my favorite movies of all time.
Speaker 1: I feel a lot of sentimental attachment to the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz because I knew growing up it was my
Speaker 1: mom's favorite movie, and so I think, um that has
Speaker 1: as I've gotten older, has become sentimental to me that
Speaker 1: it's my mom's favorite movie. Uh. I mean, honestly, I
Speaker 1: think my favorite movie is Good Fellas, So great you
Speaker 1: have to watch it every time. It's on kind of movie. Yes.
Speaker 1: I think we've talked about this before and Writer has
Speaker 1: commented that, like, most of your favorite movies are the
Speaker 1: movies you saw during that like really pivotal teenage time
Speaker 1: of your life. I think Good Fellas is my favorite
Speaker 1: movie because it was the first maybe it was the
Speaker 1: first like adult movie I watched as I was becoming
Speaker 1: an adult, and I was like, oh, I understand cinema.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk Italian neo realism. Let's do it. So
Speaker 1: I think that's fine, that's fine. Oh my god, what
Speaker 1: do you got? Writer? You have so many favorite movies.
Speaker 1: But I would say I stand by me is like
Speaker 1: up there, Spirited Away. It's probably one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1: Jason Marston, film of your favorite Jason Marston. That's right, Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's it's that's still top movie for me. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. The more obscure one that um, I
Speaker 1: should maybe mentioned this movie called Margaret. Uh. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful film. It's been like re released actually as a
Speaker 1: director's cut. I like both versions. It's it's a kind
Speaker 1: of a famously disastrous film, and that they couldn't. The
Speaker 1: studio wouldn't release it. They kept re editing it, uh,
Speaker 1: and they finally released. There's two versions out there. I
Speaker 1: would say both of them are unbelievable, um and a pack.
Speaker 1: One is the Star. It's like, yeah, it came out late.
Speaker 1: It came out. It was made actually like right after
Speaker 1: September eleventh, I want to say, like two thousand five
Speaker 1: ish or six, But then it didn't come out for years. Um,
Speaker 1: and so then it just kind of flew under the radar.
Speaker 1: But I'm I just think it's a brilliant film. So
Speaker 1: that's my my recommendation for people looking. Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: of another one that I love. That's something I saw
Speaker 1: as an adult, Defending your Life. It's one of the
Speaker 1: best movies. I did not see that movie until I
Speaker 1: was in my late thirties. Are you kidding? Yeah, pivotal
Speaker 1: childhood movie. Man, did I love that movie? So Good
Speaker 1: Fellow isn't Defending your Life. They're like, right, they're about
Speaker 1: the same same type of Well, do you have an
Speaker 1: easy answer? I I do. I have a couple of
Speaker 1: Defending your Life is definitely on my list. I come
Speaker 1: to my hotel sometime, will paint it um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just one of the best movies ever. But my I
Speaker 1: mean my knee jerk reaction will always be the original
Speaker 1: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which is odd because
Speaker 1: we were just talking about how I don't like musicals,
Speaker 1: and I don't think you do either, Danielle. It just
Speaker 1: takes me, takes me out of the thing when everybody
Speaker 1: starts singing um. But also the movie that I showed writer,
Speaker 1: and I think you made it about twenty minutes before
Speaker 1: you fell asleep, but you liked the first twenty manages Ishtar,
Speaker 1: which is a pivotal, pivotal film. Oh it's so good.
Speaker 1: It is talk about Hollywood legendary disasters. It's considered one
Speaker 1: of the worst movies of all time, and it's just
Speaker 1: not it's it's been reevaluated. A lot of people think
Speaker 1: it's actually a classic. Yeah, and so everybody, my brothers
Speaker 1: and I always joked that everything we liked as young
Speaker 1: adults has now become hips. So we would sit bourban
Speaker 1: and watch Istar. Before anybody liked bourbon or Ishtar, and
Speaker 1: now everyone's like, I'm going to the bourbon Ishtar night.
Speaker 1: We're like, come on. So we were we were hipster
Speaker 1: and cool before any of that happened. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so though, I mean those films are up. The Defending
Speaker 1: Your Life is one of the best movies just ever made.
Speaker 1: And the thing that was funny is right when I
Speaker 1: moved to l A, the person who played um uh
Speaker 1: Meryl Streeps lawyer like her defender uh was sold me
Speaker 1: a car. He was He was working at the local
Speaker 1: BMW dealership for my first little tiny car, which is
Speaker 1: actually how how Defending Your Life starts. It's him buying
Speaker 1: his first BMW and it was that was so he
Speaker 1: I sat down across room and I went, you were
Speaker 1: in Defending Your Life and you went, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: It was the first it was a good taste of
Speaker 1: l A where it was like, hey, we're actors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome to Hollywood. Yeah, you know, you do what you
Speaker 1: can now a lot of actors are real estate agents. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You kind of got to perform, right, Yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: have your head shot out there. Yeah. And also it's like,
Speaker 1: you know you can. Your schedule is like dependent on
Speaker 1: how many clients you have. So if you're like in
Speaker 1: a really busy season of auditioning, or if you're currently
Speaker 1: on a job, you just don't take clients. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: won't say his name, but the real estate agent that's
Speaker 1: sold Danielle his house sold you your house. Danielle is
Speaker 1: like one of He's a local legend. The guy like
Speaker 1: I know he's on. Every time I have to write
Speaker 1: a grocery list, I write it over his face because
Speaker 1: he drops it off at your house the little notebooks,
Speaker 1: and we always joke like there he is, there he
Speaker 1: is so yeah. Yeah, And having name recognition helps you
Speaker 1: know as as a real estate agent. Well, welcome to
Speaker 1: Pod Meets World. I'm Danielle Fischel, come right or strong?
Speaker 1: And I'm will Fredell. So today we have another guest,
Speaker 1: a very exciting guest. Uh. We are going to be
Speaker 1: talking to Jeffrey C. Sherman. He was a writer and
Speaker 1: a producer from Boy Meets World who wrote a total
Speaker 1: of fourteen episodes and was a producer on sixty six episodes.
Speaker 1: He was also a story editor for twenty four episodes. Again,
Speaker 1: we've talked about these writing credits that that you just
Speaker 1: what are they going to mean? Yeah? What do they mean?
Speaker 1: Are you? It's a pay bump. It's like a certain
Speaker 1: a certain a new authority over the other writers. I
Speaker 1: guess will do Do you have news for us? What? Well?
Speaker 1: Are you wearing a shirt? This is best grandpa, best
Speaker 1: grandpa ever? Do you something you'd like to share with us? No?
Speaker 1: I just imagine that would be the best grandpa ever.
Speaker 1: So I bought myself the teacher. He's caused playing grandpa.
Speaker 1: Their problem with I don't understand, bizarre, you just never
Speaker 1: I just that weekend was intense for me. I went
Speaker 1: backpacking and when I came home here he had this
Speaker 1: shirt for me. That's awesome, that's so cute. I didn't
Speaker 1: think so. Thank goodness, you're not um. And so in
Speaker 1: season one, Jeff Sherman wrote on the Fence and the Fugitive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's please welcome Jeff Sherman. Hi, it's Bethany Frankel.
Speaker 1: My time on the Wheelhousewives of New York is a
Speaker 1: few years behind me, and now I'm ready to put
Speaker 1: the wheel back into the real Housewives. That's where my
Speaker 1: new podcast Rewives comes in. This isn't your typical rewatch podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm watching only the most iconic episodes from all cities.
Speaker 1: I'm sharing never before heard stories of what happened behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. And I'm not just pulling in cast members
Speaker 1: for postgame and now lissis, I'm doing something a little
Speaker 1: bit more interesting. If you've ever seen an episode of
Speaker 1: The wheelhouse Wives, and you know the drill, But beyond
Speaker 1: throwing drinks and leg there are lessons about marriage, divorced friendship, money, parenting,
Speaker 1: and fame if you have the right minds, analyze and
Speaker 1: dig deeper. So I'm bringing on unexpected thought leaders and
Speaker 1: celebrities to get their take on the chaos this season.
Speaker 1: I sit down with Elizabeth Moss, Kevin Neal and Jusie Orman,
Speaker 1: Griffin Johnson and more. You think that there isn't much
Speaker 1: to learn from flipping tables and yanking wigs, but that's
Speaker 1: where you're wrong. Listen to Rewives with Bethany Frankel on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your favorite podcasts. How are you good? So good
Speaker 1: to see you guys, So good to see you. Look great?
Speaker 1: Oh thank you? Thanks? Yeah you too. Jeff. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of your time on Boy Meets World.
Speaker 1: How did you become a writer on the show. Well,
Speaker 1: I had been a screenwriter. I had written a couple
Speaker 1: of movies. I wrote some of the Creek for Ryan Pictures.
Speaker 1: I wrote another movie I didn't get credit on but
Speaker 1: thankfully because it sucked. But it was called The Soldier. Uh,
Speaker 1: that was my first kid. I did both of those
Speaker 1: with an old writing partner named Doug Grossman. Anyway, so
Speaker 1: I went along and as writer will tell you, I've
Speaker 1: been listening and I know you've had the same frustrations
Speaker 1: and Will and Will and I have gone through this
Speaker 1: together too. You write a lot of screenplays and maybe
Speaker 1: went out of ten goes. So I was writing a
Speaker 1: lot of screenplays that were, you know, we're for studios
Speaker 1: and different things, and I get eight drafts in or
Speaker 1: twelve chefs in, and then they go, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we've moved on from that of the studio had the change.
Speaker 1: So I had a friend named Anne Johnson, a J.
Speaker 1: If you remember a J, of course I remember a J.
Speaker 1: She was awesome and she was the girlfriend of a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine, John mcmure at the time. And
Speaker 1: she said she wrote a script of mine called Oh Pere.
Speaker 1: I have three of them behind mere um. And she said,
Speaker 1: you know, I worked for this guy, Michael Jacobs, And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't really watch TV anymore, and she said, well,
Speaker 1: you should watch some of the stuff he did my
Speaker 1: two dads. He does dinosaurs right now, but he's got
Speaker 1: this new show and I'd like to show him the
Speaker 1: script of yours, oh pair, to see if, if you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it was interested. It wasn't totally interested in television
Speaker 1: at the time, so um anyway, so I gave it
Speaker 1: to Mike. She gave it to Michael. Michael loved it,
Speaker 1: tried to get it set up at Disney and they
Speaker 1: didn't buy it. So he called me and he said, listen,
Speaker 1: I've got this new project that's called you know Fred
Speaker 1: Savage from from the Wonder Years. I said yeah. They said, well,
Speaker 1: his younger brother Ben is a sort of a rising
Speaker 1: star and he's got a deal. So I developed the
Speaker 1: show around him, called the Ben Savage Show, which I
Speaker 1: thought was a Ben Savage pilot. I thought that was
Speaker 1: very aptly named and U So I watched it and
Speaker 1: it kind of fit my sensibilities because I've done a
Speaker 1: lot of youth comedy movies and things like that, screenplays,
Speaker 1: and and the character kind of reminded me of me
Speaker 1: as a kid, a little bit um the Jewish kid
Speaker 1: in a non Jewish family. Oh, by the way, will
Speaker 1: I've heard the part of Jewish. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, very honored. So so Michael said. He called
Speaker 1: me and he said, would you like to maybe work
Speaker 1: on this? And I said, well, I don't know. He
Speaker 1: showed me the pilot it was good, and read the script,
Speaker 1: so I said, yeah, yeah, maybe. He said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if I bring you in, I have to bring you
Speaker 1: in at the lowest um level of staff, which is
Speaker 1: something called the term writer. And the term writer means
Speaker 1: you don't get credit on the show. Every show, even
Speaker 1: though you're sitting in the room and pitching, you're doing
Speaker 1: everything everybody else. Now, I had gone to us L
Speaker 1: a film school. I was an English major prior to
Speaker 1: that at Berkeley, I was a writer. I've worked with Madonna,
Speaker 1: I've worked with I've done all this stuff, and I
Speaker 1: come in on the lowest writer on the total room, right,
Speaker 1: and I've never worked on staff. I think I'm about
Speaker 1: mid thirties at this time. So I had all this
Speaker 1: experience and I knew how to do basically all the
Speaker 1: stuff that you do on the show. Um. So Michael
Speaker 1: liked that about me. He said, I if you're good
Speaker 1: on the staff, I'll move you up quickly. Anyway. The
Speaker 1: first day I'm walking in, it's at Disney Studios. Now,
Speaker 1: I grew up on that lot. As I mentioned, my
Speaker 1: my father and uncle are the Sherman brothers who wrote
Speaker 1: a lot of the scores for Disney Murry Poppins, Jungle Book.
Speaker 1: Um Winning to play Bang Bang elsewhere anyway, So I
Speaker 1: lived on this lot. I grew up there. So I'm
Speaker 1: walking across and I see this buddy of my works
Speaker 1: and TVs right ry and sarcastic, and his name is
Speaker 1: Richard Dave. We used to be poker players together, play
Speaker 1: in the game. And we're walking up and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous about this because I've never really
Speaker 1: written on staff. What should I expect because it can
Speaker 1: be brutal. He's walking up to the thing because it
Speaker 1: just started. Depends on the people that are in the
Speaker 1: room and if it's gonna be nice. And so we
Speaker 1: walk into the animation building, which is where we all
Speaker 1: began working on that show. And we're walking up the
Speaker 1: stair and he keeps going on all this stuff. And
Speaker 1: if you remember, there are glass stories in the hallway
Speaker 1: that looked into Michael's but we looking at all the
Speaker 1: writers are kind of gathered there and we got that.
Speaker 1: He said, so anyway, it'll probably fine. He looks in
Speaker 1: the door, my friend Richard. He goes, oh, they look horrible, man,
Speaker 1: good luck, And so I went in, not knowing him
Speaker 1: really what to expect. But it was it was like
Speaker 1: walking into probably one of the best parts of my life.
Speaker 1: And uh um, it was weird because I think I had,
Speaker 1: you know, such a TV addict as a kid. I
Speaker 1: watched every night my childhood watching family shows is like
Speaker 1: and it kind of shows him. What I wrote was
Speaker 1: Dennis the Menace leave it to Beaver, you know the
Speaker 1: Donna Reich show, Father knows Best those That was my
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit older than you go. So when
Speaker 1: when I saw there was a fence and there was
Speaker 1: the annoyed guy over the fence and then there's this
Speaker 1: young kid, I kept thinking Dennis the Menace. And if
Speaker 1: you ever saw Dennis meth he always rocking, go hey.
Speaker 1: Mr Wilson startled him all the time. So I tried
Speaker 1: to do that with Feenie and Ben. In that first
Speaker 1: episode I wrote, which was the The Squirre Gun Show,
Speaker 1: that on the fence, and I have a couple of
Speaker 1: answers for you guys before we go anything else. I've
Speaker 1: been listening. I have something straight where you. I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna solve a lot of your tanks. Okay, first
Speaker 1: of all, it's a side it's a side patio. The
Speaker 1: problem is we you know, when you shoot a show,
Speaker 1: basically what you do is you build a set and
Speaker 1: then you send out a crew to find a location
Speaker 1: house that you shoot for the exteriors. Now, that exterior
Speaker 1: house was right across from Radford as you used used
Speaker 1: to pass it every day on my walks. So the
Speaker 1: house was a really perfect kind of looking house, but
Speaker 1: it didn't configure with what we built on the set,
Speaker 1: so there was never the backyard was supposed to be
Speaker 1: behind that window in the living room. That was the backyard.
Speaker 1: It's an esser house. There's no real way to explain it.
Speaker 1: But that's a sideyard, all right, Why then, why was
Speaker 1: it written in the script as a backyard, and why
Speaker 1: does why does it? Why is it opposite the front door?
Speaker 1: Because it's it's a sickcom Listen, you know mr teacher,
Speaker 1: he was an English teacher. I'm sure he probably taught
Speaker 1: ballet at some point in the show, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: watching anymore. But it's just kind of, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it things. It's an abstract it's like jazz music. Just
Speaker 1: kind of it's, you know, this week, we need a
Speaker 1: little history and fusion of something, or we need to
Speaker 1: starlet litter, we need to grow over. So I'm not saying,
Speaker 1: did you guys actually just say anything. I didn't say
Speaker 1: anything about the side yard backyard debate. That was just
Speaker 1: answered correctly, by the way. I'm just pased. I'm sure
Speaker 1: the sideyard backyard never actually came up. But did the
Speaker 1: question of like what feeny is teaching actually come up?
Speaker 1: And did you just say that you said, like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, We're just going to focus. Yeah, okay, But
Speaker 1: it was that they were they were in we were
Speaker 1: in a grade where we were supposed to have multiple teachers, right,
Speaker 1: or was the idea that he was a one Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you would have had multiple teachers, but we also a
Speaker 1: both the matter class or something. So it's like there's
Speaker 1: sort of a it's you know, it's it's like sitcoms
Speaker 1: are closer to a play than there are to a movie. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know, in a play, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have you're not having planning shots. You know, kind of
Speaker 1: accept that that's what the the concede is is that
Speaker 1: you know, there's a few people and and uh and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and and it's a side. It's a cy patty.
Speaker 1: The other thing I'm gonna stream for you right now, Daniel,
Speaker 1: here's the real story of how Tapanga came to be.
Speaker 1: It's it's so much to do about nothing, but anyway,
Speaker 1: so it's it's it's not a simple answer, but the
Speaker 1: answer was Michael was not in his car drive and
Speaker 1: he remembers things sort of the way he likes to
Speaker 1: remember things. Um, But we were all sitting in the
Speaker 1: room and we pitched that it would be funny because
Speaker 1: Ben was sort of a square kid to have sort
Speaker 1: of the hippie girl come in and be spiritual and
Speaker 1: do all this. So that was brought up, and so
Speaker 1: we all were talking and we finally came up on
Speaker 1: this character, and everybody's going, well, what should we name?
Speaker 1: We should name her star String, Moon Pilot or you know,
Speaker 1: he's stupid name. And I was just going nuts because
Speaker 1: that was my era, you know, I grew up in
Speaker 1: that I grew up and I was the writer that
Speaker 1: grew up in l a of the people in the room.
Speaker 1: So I thought, who did I know that was cool?
Speaker 1: And I thought with three girls that I knew that
Speaker 1: lived into Panga Canyon. So I went, you know, growing
Speaker 1: up out here, you know, everybody that was cool was
Speaker 1: you know, grew up into Pangan. Michael goes to Panga.
Speaker 1: April Kelly, who was the other creator of the show.
Speaker 1: She she didn't like it at all, but Michael was
Speaker 1: set on it. He loved to I was just I
Speaker 1: think I also pitched to Mescal and to pangalos Peka Canyon.
Speaker 1: It could have been and the water cold cold water
Speaker 1: has been a little too on the head um, but
Speaker 1: so we uh, we went around and then April wanted
Speaker 1: to stand in her ground. That day had been pitching
Speaker 1: us an outside writer named Bill Lawrence, So she said,
Speaker 1: how about Lawrence because it's such a funny thing to
Speaker 1: go from Topega to normally and like Lawrence Okay had
Speaker 1: two more components added into Topango Okay. The first one
Speaker 1: was Susan Jansen, who was on staff and who was
Speaker 1: a brilliant writer. You know, she just wonderful and she
Speaker 1: was a very strong voice, very smart, very she was
Speaker 1: very much the voice of Topanga in that room, and
Speaker 1: we would pitch things out, and then the biggest component
Speaker 1: of all was Danielle, because Danielle came in and I
Speaker 1: remember I heard your thing about the horrible experience you had,
Speaker 1: and I get it, and I feel horrible about that.
Speaker 1: I remember it vividly, and I felt bad for you.
Speaker 1: But you came in and you were so kind of
Speaker 1: nervous that you were kind of just zipping through everything
Speaker 1: about in the audition. For us, it was sort of
Speaker 1: the nurse were getting to you. And Michael, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard for a guy who's doing if you
Speaker 1: you ever run a show, I've come, I've been in
Speaker 1: a coeke on the show I've run, and I ran
Speaker 1: another show called Family Rules when my boss was a
Speaker 1: way in Connecticut. And it's hard because you're not just
Speaker 1: working on the script. You're working on the last project
Speaker 1: of the last episode, the next episode. You work on casting,
Speaker 1: you're working on mix, and you work on cutting, You're
Speaker 1: working on all this stuff, and the pressures of all
Speaker 1: that got to Michael sometimes and sometimes he would he
Speaker 1: did it with everybody I explained Michael as a a
Speaker 1: guy that liked to scream because it was funny. I
Speaker 1: never was scared of him. He would, you know, he
Speaker 1: would screw. You would hear him gerally, you know, down
Speaker 1: the hall in the office, and you would hear him.
Speaker 1: But it was just a guy running a ship and
Speaker 1: trying to trying to get a buddy of mine. Philip Rosenthal,
Speaker 1: who created and ran everybody of those Raymond at as saying,
Speaker 1: it's not summer camp. And unfortunately, when you come onto
Speaker 1: a show, you know, you might get there's no time
Speaker 1: to really worry about it. You might get replaced, like
Speaker 1: get you know, more lines. What amazed me about this?
Speaker 1: I know I'm jumping around for you guys, but we
Speaker 1: would change things for you. And I have the worst memory.
Speaker 1: I can't remember anything. We would give you blocking and
Speaker 1: lone changes on the set on taking and did it perfectly.
Speaker 1: I never remember you guys missing anything up. Well, we
Speaker 1: were really blessed having you guys. Yeah, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: I get I get the thing about about yelling, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of yelling to be funny, but you take
Speaker 1: it different at thirteen than you do with thirty. You know,
Speaker 1: it's that's that's the thing that that where you get thrown.
Speaker 1: You hear an adult yelling and it means something's bad,
Speaker 1: you know, So we I think we we did not
Speaker 1: yet have the subtlety to realize that it was all
Speaker 1: bark and no bite. Um you just heard the loud bark,
Speaker 1: so it was yeah. So I I know, I have
Speaker 1: a couple of questions about going back even farther, because
Speaker 1: you know, you know, we've been friends for years and
Speaker 1: years and years, and some of the most interesting stories
Speaker 1: you told me because you have a different perspective. We
Speaker 1: talked about being child actors and growing up in the
Speaker 1: industry and that kind of thing. But you grew up
Speaker 1: old school Hollywood in Beverly Hills, So I mean, tell
Speaker 1: us some of the stories about I mean, what was
Speaker 1: that like growing up in the seventies, sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: in old school Hollywood, Beverly Hills. I mean, what is
Speaker 1: that like? So you know, I wasn't actually born and
Speaker 1: my dad got hired by Walt Disney himself in about
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nineteen sixty, and we were like the Hillbillies.
Speaker 1: We went over the hill where the grass crew and
Speaker 1: we went to Beverly Hill. My dad, actually, my dad
Speaker 1: brought us all over without telling us anything, and it
Speaker 1: was just me and my older sister at that point. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think my little sister might have been going
Speaker 1: tochoose a baby. And my dad drove us into this
Speaker 1: in front of this house and there was a for
Speaker 1: sales sign was sold over it, and he held up
Speaker 1: keys and he said, if we lived here, we'd be
Speaker 1: home out. And my mom looked at him, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's a house in Beverly Hill. Is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: You bought a house without asking me. That's how. That's how.
Speaker 1: But on our street, for instance, I you know, I
Speaker 1: grew up around kids of actors, kids of directors. You know.
Speaker 1: Vincent Minnelli lived two houses up for me, Shirley Jones
Speaker 1: on another house. We lived and lived up the street.
Speaker 1: I was in the band with Shawn Cassidy and Jamie
Speaker 1: Lee Curtis. I mean, those were kind that was my world. Wow.
Speaker 1: And you know we had the best PTA shows, I
Speaker 1: gotta say, because I would write songs for them. They
Speaker 1: had the big director. They have Arnie Rosen who was
Speaker 1: writing the Carol Burnett Show, and he'd write them and
Speaker 1: then we have like Donna read Mary Tyler Moore and
Speaker 1: you need that was our cat. So it was like
Speaker 1: standing room only just to come to PTA shows, but
Speaker 1: it was you know what it did for me? I
Speaker 1: think also my grandfather, Al Sherman was and penn Alley
Speaker 1: songwriter back East. He wrote, he was one of the
Speaker 1: top ten tin Pan Alley songwriters. He teamed up the
Speaker 1: Gershwin Brothers. There's a lot to all that stuff, but
Speaker 1: I grew up in this world that was sort of
Speaker 1: second nature. I grew up going to sound stages and
Speaker 1: recording studios. In fact, stage two I heard Chris Kyer
Speaker 1: talking about it. Stage two where we shot Who's the World?
Speaker 1: The first two years that was Cherry Tree Lane for
Speaker 1: Mary Poppins. So I think, isn't that the Julie Andrews
Speaker 1: stage now or something? I think they did the name
Speaker 1: at that did they makes sense? Makes sense? And they
Speaker 1: dedicated another stage a couple of years ago to my
Speaker 1: dad and uncle. It's called the Sherman Brothers stage there
Speaker 1: that's one of the commissary So I kind of grew
Speaker 1: up in all that and what it did was movie
Speaker 1: stars and directors and I just looked at them as people.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by them, and so there I always looked
Speaker 1: at them, not not that I'm a grantizing myself at
Speaker 1: his peers, like I wanted to know more about them,
Speaker 1: which is probably why in a sense of the writers
Speaker 1: on staff, I probably got to know all you guys
Speaker 1: better than a lot of the people because I'm just
Speaker 1: more comfortable swimming those waters. So that's really what it
Speaker 1: afforded me. And and watching my dad have his ups
Speaker 1: and downs, um, which he had very big ups and
Speaker 1: accounts he was bipolar. Um. But uh, it also trained
Speaker 1: me to have a little bit more fortitude in the business,
Speaker 1: which you definitely need, as we all know. You just
Speaker 1: have to. You know, I saw my dad get shot down.
Speaker 1: He had a in his office. He had a poster
Speaker 1: and it said the great corpse of our work and
Speaker 1: they were never a project would die. They added onto this.
Speaker 1: It was this long list of things. So I kind
Speaker 1: of learned that don't worry about the negative things, lift
Speaker 1: up the positive things. Go for that, which is why
Speaker 1: I look at Boy Meets World now still it's like
Speaker 1: we all have our beechs about different aspects of the
Speaker 1: show and people that were there, but you know at
Speaker 1: sixty five years old now I look back and to me,
Speaker 1: it opened the store to television and to hold beautiful
Speaker 1: cool way of of having immediate gratification after writing screenplays
Speaker 1: for four years, and they talked I would write the script.
Speaker 1: I'd walked down three days later and they built the
Speaker 1: swing set, you know, whenever that new set was going
Speaker 1: to be such a beautiful thing. And and the person
Speaker 1: who let me in was Michael So okay, wait, so
Speaker 1: I have to ask, and I know you've told this
Speaker 1: story before, but it's one of my favorite stories ever,
Speaker 1: and it just shows the magic of the world that
Speaker 1: you grew up in. You said you grew up around
Speaker 1: Walt Disney. Can you tell the story about Disney taking
Speaker 1: you around himself. Yeah, so Dad, you know, working for Disney,
Speaker 1: he would sort of test stuff out on me and
Speaker 1: my older sister. And so he came home. He'd gotten
Speaker 1: if you if you see the documentary my cousin, and
Speaker 1: they called the Voice of the Sherman Brothers story about
Speaker 1: our dad's about the Sherman Brothers. Um Disney on their
Speaker 1: like third meeting, handed them the Red Mary Poppins book.
Speaker 1: So Dad came home and he read it and my
Speaker 1: uncle Dick read it, and my ad read us the
Speaker 1: story and had our responses to it. So we told
Speaker 1: them what we thought. Each night we'd read another chapter
Speaker 1: and then um so he came back and you know,
Speaker 1: the movie started going after a couple of years, and
Speaker 1: I heard all the demos and all that. I'd see
Speaker 1: drawings and I'd see all this kind of stuff. My
Speaker 1: dad would talk about it, and I was a dumb kid.
Speaker 1: So my dad said, we have wizards and magicians working
Speaker 1: all night and day at the studio getting this all together.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be all this magic. So I begged and
Speaker 1: I said, to night, please come see this. So one day,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm like five years old, he takes me
Speaker 1: out of class and I don't go to school. I
Speaker 1: just go with him to the work. And take your
Speaker 1: kid to work. Then and we go to Disney Studios
Speaker 1: where we shot for the first two years, and every
Speaker 1: sound stage on that studio at the time was devoted
Speaker 1: to Mary Pobbins. Averybody thinks that Mary Pobbins was shot
Speaker 1: in England, was all shot in Burbank, California, and sounds
Speaker 1: so one snage you'd walk into like stage two was
Speaker 1: Cherry Tree Lane, which was actually it was we only
Speaker 1: used half stage. It was the full stage and it
Speaker 1: was amazing. They built the steamship for for Disneyland there
Speaker 1: in that room. And then but another stage would be
Speaker 1: the Merry Go Round horses against the yellow at least
Speaker 1: to shoot against the yellow screen. And so I've seen
Speaker 1: all this, but I'm a little kid five years on.
Speaker 1: I've heard about magicians and wizards and then I'll only
Speaker 1: see guys with their pants are halfway down there but
Speaker 1: dust and and so like it's it's a you know.
Speaker 1: So I walked around with my dad and the main
Speaker 1: thing at the studio was in the commissary. I used
Speaker 1: to have an executive dining room. They're called the Coral Room.
Speaker 1: Only Disney and the main you know, executives and my
Speaker 1: dad and the writers would eat in that room. I
Speaker 1: love that place because they had the best tuna sandwiches
Speaker 1: in the world. So um, I couldn't That's all I
Speaker 1: could think about was the tuna sandwich. And I walked
Speaker 1: in with my dad. I'm hold in his hand and
Speaker 1: Disney's they're not met him about five times and so
Speaker 1: he sees me and Disney had an amazing knack of
Speaker 1: remembering not only every employee's name, but their kids if
Speaker 1: you do them well enough. So he so he sees
Speaker 1: me so two guys that look like bankers, and he says,
Speaker 1: so Jeffrey, he says, I hear you take a look
Speaker 1: at our sets today for Mary Poppins. What do you think?
Speaker 1: And I'm holding my dad's hand and I said, they're okay,
Speaker 1: I guess And I feel my dad's hand go limp
Speaker 1: and I look up at him. It's like he's like
Speaker 1: just and Disney looks at me, like what and the
Speaker 1: two guys with it. So Disney says, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know. He goes, do you come
Speaker 1: with me? He ditched his guys. He took my hand
Speaker 1: and he walked me over to the closest sound stage,
Speaker 1: which was the rooftops of London where they shot Step
Speaker 1: in Time. Did you so? I'm looking? And there he
Speaker 1: turns on Work Life and the guy's hammering. He says,
Speaker 1: hold the work and he says, so, what do you so?
Speaker 1: What's wrong with this? I said, I I'm sorry, Mrs.
Speaker 1: I just don't think anybody's gonna believe it. And I
Speaker 1: see his physical I think I'm never getting invited to Disneyland.
Speaker 1: And he's like, I had the greatest artists go to
Speaker 1: England and draw pictures, and this is exactly what a
Speaker 1: rooftop looks like. And I said, but Mr Disney, it's
Speaker 1: right here on the ground and it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: on the roof. And he looked at me like I
Speaker 1: was the dumbest child he'd ever in a contact with.
Speaker 1: And he smiled, and he got down on his knees
Speaker 1: and put his hands like that. He said, this is
Speaker 1: what a camera scene. This is called movie magic. No
Speaker 1: one's ever gonna know that. That's not that that's on
Speaker 1: the ground. This is all they're going to see. And
Speaker 1: uh so that's moving magic and you can never tell
Speaker 1: your friends. So he takes me back and I'm going like,
Speaker 1: my mind's that's why he's one of my heroes. My
Speaker 1: mind starts going like, oh my gosh, you can like
Speaker 1: fake stuff and makes it just opened some big doork.
Speaker 1: He walks me back. My dad's having a scotch like
Speaker 1: this at the table with the writers. He thinks he's
Speaker 1: getting fired, and Disney whispers to my dad. He starts laughing,
Speaker 1: they taught it goes around the table. So I'm the
Speaker 1: idiot at the table with a great tune of Sandwich
Speaker 1: Disney taking me around story, But I got my dad
Speaker 1: fired that story. Yeah my hey everyone. I'm Wilford l
Speaker 1: also known as a voice behind Ron Stoppaball Hey, and
Speaker 1: I'm Christy Carlson or Model, also known as the voice
Speaker 1: behind Kim Possible. And we have teamed up again, but
Speaker 1: this time as the host of I Hear Voices. Have
Speaker 1: you ever wanted to go behind the scenes of your
Speaker 1: favorite cartoons, video games, and animated movies. If so, we
Speaker 1: have the podcast for you. Every week, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking to the biggest stars of voice over like Alan Tutick,
Speaker 1: Vette Nicole Brown, Steve Downs, Dietrich Bader, and even reuniting
Speaker 1: with our Kim Possible co star Taj Maury. They tell
Speaker 1: us everything from how they got started two things we
Speaker 1: didn't even know about some of our favorite animated characters.
Speaker 1: You're also going to hear about new shows, games, and
Speaker 1: movies from all of these actors who bring them to life.
Speaker 1: So if you want to laugh, learn, and here's someone
Speaker 1: launch into characters like Bugs, Bunny, and Batman, all in
Speaker 1: the same episode. Then this is the podcast for you.
Speaker 1: Download the free I Heart Radio app and check out
Speaker 1: the I Hear Voices podcast today. It's free and you
Speaker 1: can even listen offline. Discover music radio and podcast you'll love,
Speaker 1: especially ours. Going back to your time on Boy Meets World,
Speaker 1: what was it like writing for Bill Daniels Man that
Speaker 1: that voice is just so magical and and his history
Speaker 1: in the business is so great that I just always
Speaker 1: wanted to build. I have a lot of Bill scenes,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of things that The funny
Speaker 1: one was that we did that one on school vandalism.
Speaker 1: Remember that. Yeah, And so this is about third or
Speaker 1: fourth year name third year I was on and uh
Speaker 1: so I do this, and I decided, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write Bill the greatest monologue. I just want to you know,
Speaker 1: he always gets a little scene and then he's off
Speaker 1: to Mona Cito, you know, and I said, but I
Speaker 1: want to see him do really, I want to get
Speaker 1: a Bill daniels monologue. It. So we're at the table
Speaker 1: read and Bill's all excited. This is so cool. So
Speaker 1: he reads this this like it's like a page long.
Speaker 1: And afterward, I'm so, I think he's gonna come up
Speaker 1: and give me a hug, and he walks up to
Speaker 1: Nigo Sherman to damn any words that works. I have
Speaker 1: a question for you. You said that, so Susan is
Speaker 1: still Jansen was kind of the voice of Topango. Who
Speaker 1: was the voice of Bill in the room. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: you guys don't know. It was so funny because one
Speaker 1: time you guys came up to the room and it's
Speaker 1: like it's like looking at the sun when your actors
Speaker 1: come up. Because we have stuff on the board. Give
Speaker 1: more to Sean, you know, make the funny scene for
Speaker 1: Will with you know, with you know, we have all
Speaker 1: this stuff. We don't want you really to know what
Speaker 1: our little thing is, but you know you would come
Speaker 1: up there. Yeah, but Jeff, I gotta be honest. If
Speaker 1: you get down on one knee and you look at
Speaker 1: the writers like this, it's just movie magic and no
Speaker 1: one believes it anyway, So you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about it. You're good speaking of memory. What was your
Speaker 1: question again? Who was the voice of Bill in the right? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So what we would do is we would the writers.
Speaker 1: You would I can go through the whole process of
Speaker 1: the writing. You pitch stories and then sometimes I would
Speaker 1: pitch stories other writers would get. It was just it's
Speaker 1: all just a pool of ideas. And I would usually
Speaker 1: be writer and Bill because we wouldn't have as many
Speaker 1: people in the room, so I was kind of the
Speaker 1: voice of Sean in that spot. But I would I
Speaker 1: would do Bill de energies and I would I would
Speaker 1: kind of doing a little bit they're going to get
Speaker 1: the rhythms. But you know, Bill was an amalgam of
Speaker 1: a lot of things. You know, ultimately, anything that comes
Speaker 1: through on The Boy Meets World came through the pencil
Speaker 1: of Michael Jacobs. Whatever it was, he filtered. So really
Speaker 1: he is responsible for everything. Um you know that went
Speaker 1: up there, but um uh, you know it was it
Speaker 1: was things that would always give I was scared at first,
Speaker 1: you know, you become proprietorial as a writer. I got
Speaker 1: and and I was so used to just writing things
Speaker 1: and they would make them where they wouldn't make them.
Speaker 1: But now I'm coming in and they go, that's great.
Speaker 1: Michael goes, this is a great script. I'm not changing word.
Speaker 1: Flip it over and start writing in pencil on the
Speaker 1: back page online just kind of you check her. You
Speaker 1: go at the door and you learned that. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a wonderful process being on staff, because first of all,
Speaker 1: it's really fun if it's not too political every now.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was on it four and a
Speaker 1: half years. On boy, um some years it was great.
Speaker 1: April made it very political. The first year she was
Speaker 1: very political because she was having sort of a silent
Speaker 1: world with Michael about the power of the show. I think,
Speaker 1: and I was on the Michael camp um so uh um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She wanted that guy, Bill Lawrence. I wonder what he
Speaker 1: ever went on to do. I went up, I went
Speaker 1: to a writer's skill. Um, poor Bill. Uh. He came in.
Speaker 1: He was a really young writer. He came in. He
Speaker 1: was very good. But it's impossible to walk into a
Speaker 1: writer's room and know what we've been talking about for months.
Speaker 1: We've pitched that. I knew, we've we've had this. No,
Speaker 1: you can't do that because we've already set up this rule.
Speaker 1: He came in with the script that was good, and
Speaker 1: he was a sweetheart. He was really nice. I was
Speaker 1: there when he pitched, you know. I would do in
Speaker 1: the in the pitches for the outside writers. And the
Speaker 1: night of the show came the taping and Bill comes
Speaker 1: in and I see him. I said, hey, congratulations, this
Speaker 1: is great. You know, you got one of the two
Speaker 1: outside scripts this year. And he's with a couple of friends.
Speaker 1: He goes, hey, man, could I could I possibly get
Speaker 1: a copy of the script? I'd like to see what's
Speaker 1: going on. I said sure. Now, he had not been
Speaker 1: involved in the writer's room, and Michael out of policy
Speaker 1: not to bring outside writers in to the room because
Speaker 1: it would stop things and you never know if they're
Speaker 1: gonna get you know, stop the flow of thing. So
Speaker 1: I got to get one of the stage scripts and
Speaker 1: I handed to Bill and I see Bill, He sees
Speaker 1: his name. He shows it to his friends and then
Speaker 1: he opens the first page and he looks at it
Speaker 1: like he's looking at Chinese. And he goes to the
Speaker 1: second page, and he goes to the third page, and
Speaker 1: it's like we changed everything. I mean, you know, and
Speaker 1: that happened to all of us, you know, but he
Speaker 1: didn't because he wasn't in the room. I mean, thanks
Speaker 1: to change a lot um. And I felt so sorry
Speaker 1: from because I just saw him. He brought his friends.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it's like you come to a
Speaker 1: movie premiere and you're gonna want to show him your
Speaker 1: scene that you've been cut out. That's kind of so.
Speaker 1: I was at the writer Skilled thing and he was
Speaker 1: speaking and I walked up and said, I have to explain.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, and I watched your face and I
Speaker 1: felt terrible and I didn't see you afterwards. I just
Speaker 1: want you know. You know this now because you run shows.
Speaker 1: This happens to everybody. I know it now. He goes,
Speaker 1: but bitch or heard back then, I thought, but you know,
Speaker 1: but he's he's okay for himself. Yeah, he's He's easily
Speaker 1: the most successful person to ever have their name attached
Speaker 1: to Boy Meets World. So kudos to him. Um so, um,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the fugitive. Oh yes, this we have
Speaker 1: to give you credit because we talked about the episode,
Speaker 1: we watched it, we talked about it, and it is
Speaker 1: among like all seven seasons, it is one of the
Speaker 1: most important episodes of Boy Meets World. Just ever. It
Speaker 1: is so good. It's such a great writer showcase. Um.
Speaker 1: It cement Sean. It totally cements the character of Sean,
Speaker 1: I mean from that moment on. But it also really
Speaker 1: is the perfect episode to represent what Boy Meets World
Speaker 1: was so good at, which is such a like a
Speaker 1: true great lesson about the bent, like what friends and
Speaker 1: family are supposed to do for each other. And yet
Speaker 1: for of the episode it feels like hijinks and then
Speaker 1: when you walk away from it, you get this very
Speaker 1: important lesson um. And so that's one of the things
Speaker 1: Boy Meets World was best at, and I would dare
Speaker 1: I say this episode is maybe the best representation of that.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about the process of the fugitive
Speaker 1: so fugitive, you know, I become really friendly with with writer,
Speaker 1: partly because he did something wonderful which he didn't even
Speaker 1: know if he did. We've talked to that it since.
Speaker 1: But I'm loman on the totem pole, the streamer line
Speaker 1: on twelve writers, and Michael's the boss, and April's hates
Speaker 1: me and and all these things. All this stuff's going on,
Speaker 1: And one day Writer comes up to our writer's room
Speaker 1: and he said, Hey, I got to write a paper
Speaker 1: and uh for my class here, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: get one of the writers. And Michael starts standing up
Speaker 1: and Writer goes, I'd like to talk to Jeff Sherman
Speaker 1: if I could pull him up a little bit. I
Speaker 1: was hated from that moment on in the room because
Speaker 1: you know, it's collective, and I loved it, you know,
Speaker 1: because writer and I would talk about writing a lot,
Speaker 1: so that's why you wanted to talk to me. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so I got to know writer, and I kept thinking,
Speaker 1: we've got this actor on the show, and well, hysterical
Speaker 1: Daniel's amazing. Ben is just incredible every man. And here's
Speaker 1: this this James Dean on our on our show, who
Speaker 1: people aren't capitalizing. You know, if he's given a couple
Speaker 1: of lines, he's the fun I said, I wanted to
Speaker 1: do something. Are changes so um And I've had a
Speaker 1: sister who ran away from oh so I got into
Speaker 1: drugs and all that stuff. So I thought, here's this
Speaker 1: important show, and what can we do? Their little kids
Speaker 1: kids run away. I ran away once when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. I got to the door. I packed a
Speaker 1: big lunch and I stood by the front door. And
Speaker 1: my mom used to tell us all the time at
Speaker 1: dinner partiesn't even embarrassed me. And I'm standing by the
Speaker 1: door and my mom says, I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to run away. I said, well, I need somebody to
Speaker 1: drive me. Kid logic which I heard about until she
Speaker 1: passed away. So um, but uh, anyway, so I thought
Speaker 1: I would do this, and yeah, so I write the show,
Speaker 1: and that's compounded because this is my last guaranteed show.
Speaker 1: I was guaranteed two episodes, and April was gunning for me.
Speaker 1: She wanted me to be kicked off the staff. She
Speaker 1: wanted to bring in either Bill Lawrence or Jeanette I
Speaker 1: think her name was hers Sistant and the writer systant
Speaker 1: Jenelle or so. Um, I'm writing and I'm doing all
Speaker 1: this and I'm all nighters getting this thing right. And
Speaker 1: I told Michael, I said, he said, don't make it
Speaker 1: serious all the way through. It's got to be fun
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and then we'll get real heavy
Speaker 1: three quarters of the way through. You can do that
Speaker 1: if you want to do these kind of shows. We
Speaker 1: can't turn the audience off. And the beginning we got
Speaker 1: to hook them in and then get there. So that's
Speaker 1: not probing. So I write this thing. I'm writing and
Speaker 1: it's the I'm doing a last draft of it, and
Speaker 1: it's about I don't know, three thirty in the morning
Speaker 1: and my house explodes and the earthquake kit all right,
Speaker 1: and this was my episode. Thank you. Um you were
Speaker 1: actually writing when they think was like four am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something in the morning. We're printing my last script out,
Speaker 1: which the writer's assistant was going to come get and
Speaker 1: make copies, and it was going on, so uhh, and
Speaker 1: like everything's out and I don't know what's going I
Speaker 1: think it's I'm in then eyes, I'm like right near
Speaker 1: the epicenter. And so the only light on in my
Speaker 1: house because I was printing the script out. I had
Speaker 1: a backup battery on my computer and my monitor was
Speaker 1: swinging like this. So I just seemed light like this,
Speaker 1: And for some reason, the phone's worked, and about half
Speaker 1: an hour later, my phone rings and it's Arlene Grace
Speaker 1: and are wonderful? Yes, rest in peace, Arlene. We've talked
Speaker 1: about her, and uh sorry, we feel the same way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said, Sherman, are you alive? I said, yeah, she
Speaker 1: was great. Did you finish your script? And I said that.
Speaker 1: She goes, I'm sending the writer's assistant over. I said,
Speaker 1: is there are the streets? I mean, it really felt
Speaker 1: like a bomb fell. Remember it was a loud earthquake. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had. It was kind of all over my floor
Speaker 1: and I picked it up and put it in order.
Speaker 1: She's there'll be something there in about twenty minutes to
Speaker 1: pick it up. I said, are we working shows? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're having the table read and you know, come I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. So he just like we got to
Speaker 1: show it. I mean, this is show. Show must go on.
Speaker 1: I got my good I come down. We had been
Speaker 1: doing our table reads. If you remember in that Hyperion
Speaker 1: building that was well this original office, that little bungalow
Speaker 1: that was edge instead now, because that they weren't sure
Speaker 1: if that was safe, they put us for some reason,
Speaker 1: on the sound stage. Arlene walks onto the stage wearing
Speaker 1: a hard hat and commences to give a twenty minute
Speaker 1: felt it felt like four hours. Take the instruction. If
Speaker 1: there's last remember this. Oh my god, she she looks
Speaker 1: at me, because you'll notice the lights are all the
Speaker 1: stage lights were above us, and then she goes okay,
Speaker 1: and the future commenting, oh my god, yeah, what a
Speaker 1: way to kill the room. Oh it was I remember
Speaker 1: just sitting there being so nervous, like shaky, and they
Speaker 1: were in that cavernous room. So every line you're throwing
Speaker 1: out is just being lost in the not as the
Speaker 1: writer with your name on the script even though you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, where did you go when
Speaker 1: you left boy Meat's World? What did you go do?
Speaker 1: And then also I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: what it is you're doing now. Well, the fourth year
Speaker 1: came up. I only was contracted for three years. They
Speaker 1: had three year contracts, and also there will like they
Speaker 1: had to accept me every year. So the first year
Speaker 1: I got two episodes, a second year I got three episodes,
Speaker 1: You're at four, and the last year I was I
Speaker 1: wrote five of the twenty one or twenty two episodes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and so I was known as a good,
Speaker 1: strong draft writer and I could do all that, but
Speaker 1: I still felt, you know, like okay. So what happened
Speaker 1: on that fourth year was Michael was going to do
Speaker 1: a couple of the shows and he said it. Came
Speaker 1: to my office and said, closed the dose at SR
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of having you run the show next year.
Speaker 1: And I said, I'd left to you because you think
Speaker 1: you're ready. I said, yeah, I like to do this.
Speaker 1: So I was all set to do it, and Love
Speaker 1: and bus Gang had gotten another gig on another show,
Speaker 1: and I had tried uh so and they were one
Speaker 1: step above me. On staff, so um, I uh, I
Speaker 1: was all set to do that, and then Michael came
Speaker 1: back and they left that show early. They were only
Speaker 1: on that for a couple and they wanted to come back,
Speaker 1: and Michael said, well, I'm sure, I think I might
Speaker 1: give it to them instead. And I was a little
Speaker 1: piste off, you know, because I was all set to
Speaker 1: do it and I was preparing for it. So I
Speaker 1: was offered a couple of other shows, and um, and
Speaker 1: then Michael said, I've got this other show. One of
Speaker 1: the shows I'm doing is this magic genie show called
Speaker 1: you Wish. That's right, yeah, I'm still tired from that,
Speaker 1: which is the correct answer to the question. Was this
Speaker 1: show awesome? Yeah? You Wish? So we did that and
Speaker 1: for the few people I think that tuned in for
Speaker 1: that show, it was pretty horrible, but I was Michael
Speaker 1: gave me almost double my salary and made me a
Speaker 1: co executive producer on that. So I had kids and
Speaker 1: I went, Okay, I'm taking the money. I don't really
Speaker 1: like the show, but I'll go do it. I can
Speaker 1: make it work. So it was a good opportunity, you
Speaker 1: gotta take it. So uh, no audience deadly We had
Speaker 1: cows on the set that it would crap on the
Speaker 1: set and it sounds great, like you know, you see
Speaker 1: these magic shows and Gene was like that in the
Speaker 1: Cow Appears, that cow stayed for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I remember visiting you on that set
Speaker 1: because you guys shot at a stage like on the
Speaker 1: same lot. I feel like, yeah, remember walking over and
Speaker 1: seeing you and you were just miserable. You were you
Speaker 1: were like telling me at whatever, the age of fifty
Speaker 1: and you're like, this is not fun. You were so
Speaker 1: stressed out. I don't think you were sleeping. It was awful.
Speaker 1: But I just want I just want to say, for
Speaker 1: a writer, the greatest gift is is you hear things
Speaker 1: in your head when you're writing. And you guys have
Speaker 1: all done it, you know, um, and you just hope
Speaker 1: that it will be half as good when you hear
Speaker 1: it like you guys did. So. Thank you very special.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Where can we find you now? What are
Speaker 1: you working on? Tell our audience who wants to know
Speaker 1: what you're up to? Where we can find you doing
Speaker 1: a bunch of things? Um? I I started my cousin
Speaker 1: and I who did the documentary about my dad with
Speaker 1: Greg Um, he and I got together. We've we've started
Speaker 1: a new company with the former head of Disney Music
Speaker 1: um fellow in Mitchell Lead, who you guys may have
Speaker 1: encountered in your journey, so he was there for thirty
Speaker 1: years and Mitchell and Greg and I have teamed up
Speaker 1: to do so I'm sure my brothers related projects. We're
Speaker 1: going to do a concert series around the world. This
Speaker 1: amazing director who does like circus away looking things. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: So that's gonna be one thing. And they think for
Speaker 1: me is like, that's easy. Okay, here, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the song is to do it. I don't
Speaker 1: have to go do too much. We're gonna do a
Speaker 1: biopic about the generations of our families. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like The Godfather too, with the different generations my grandfather's
Speaker 1: time and Tim Panaley and my dad and uncle's time
Speaker 1: rising up on Vine Street and then you know, going
Speaker 1: into the movies and stage all that stuff and you
Speaker 1: know their their lives. So that's one of the things
Speaker 1: I'm doing. Um. I'm also writing a science fiction um
Speaker 1: series with my first best friend in the world, David Titcher.
Speaker 1: David's created a bunch of shows before we've had parallel careers.
Speaker 1: We grew up on the same little street when we're kids,
Speaker 1: before I moved to Beverly Hills and he went to
Speaker 1: use to a film school when I went there. So
Speaker 1: we've touched and we've talked for yours about doing something.
Speaker 1: So we're both working on that. And I've been writing
Speaker 1: a lot of music. Um, I've always written music, so
Speaker 1: now I've been putting out just sort of self putting
Speaker 1: out some some albums because people ask to hear them,
Speaker 1: and I have I have to put on glasses and
Speaker 1: look at my sites. But if people want to find me,
Speaker 1: my Twitter account is j s h e R followed
Speaker 1: by five eighths on Twitter, so it's long story. My
Speaker 1: music is at Jeffrey C. Sherman dot here now dot
Speaker 1: com and my latest album that came out is called Restpit.
Speaker 1: It's not it's just musical compositions. There no lyrics, it's
Speaker 1: just the stuff I've composed that's so cool. And then
Speaker 1: on Facebook, I'm Jeffrey period Sherman period three, So both
Speaker 1: of you who want to find me. But there's there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff where I'm doing aside from that,
Speaker 1: But I'm writing a book a lot of stories about
Speaker 1: my life, these the Disney stories and my own personal
Speaker 1: journeys and something like that. In my book is called
Speaker 1: Spiraling Upward, which will probably come out of here great.
Speaker 1: And listening to your podcast and taking box and just
Speaker 1: enjoying living pack through those days be those. I love
Speaker 1: you all. We love you too. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being here with us, Thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny. We've talked about how we shot
Speaker 1: on Stage two, which is like such a big stage
Speaker 1: because it was a giant, you know, film set, film stage.
Speaker 1: To this day, when I walk onto any normal sized
Speaker 1: sound stage, I'm like, it's really small. The same don't
Speaker 1: you always expect sound stages to be gigantic, to have
Speaker 1: all this empty space, which of course they shouldn't, Like
Speaker 1: you want for for sound for one, you want you
Speaker 1: know better and clothes smaller spaces. But in my mind
Speaker 1: I have been completely programmed to think every sound stage
Speaker 1: is tiny because it's not Stage two at Disney. It's
Speaker 1: so funny, I know, I feel the exact same way.
Speaker 1: I always think, well, it's too bad they have such
Speaker 1: a well they're making it work for such a small stage.
Speaker 1: They're way to make it feel like we're like having
Speaker 1: to hide around quarters, Like, why don't we have more
Speaker 1: space because that's a typical Yeah, why don't. Why don't
Speaker 1: the kids have to walk seventeen minutes to get to school?
Speaker 1: It was such a fun lot though, that it was
Speaker 1: like a college campus. That was a really fun lot
Speaker 1: to me. I know, I do miss the commissary. That
Speaker 1: it's a weird thing, but I mean I always talk
Speaker 1: about food, but I loved that commissary and the squirrels.
Speaker 1: The squirrels like you're on a Disney lot. The squirrels
Speaker 1: are exactly like you think you would. You'd sit down
Speaker 1: and hold out your hand when they'd run over and
Speaker 1: eat out of your hand. Yeah, they would run up
Speaker 1: my head. Yeah, they crawl up your leg. You know,
Speaker 1: he't sit on the bench, you stick your leg out,
Speaker 1: they crawl up. They still the case? Is that still
Speaker 1: the case? I mean they're still there. I haven't tried
Speaker 1: to have one crawl up my leg as an adult.
Speaker 1: Next time i'm there, I'll try. But there are still
Speaker 1: lots for rid next week By a squirrel squirrel official
Speaker 1: lust three fingers to I can't I love Jeff stories. Man,
Speaker 1: I feel like we just scratched the surface, like we
Speaker 1: didn't even get into uh just a spoonful of sugar.
Speaker 1: Doubt the fact that that was based on him coming
Speaker 1: home from school getting polio vaccine. Yes, and he said
Speaker 1: he has so many stories. Yeah, it's it's it can't
Speaker 1: imagine growing up in Hollywood. It's just such a different
Speaker 1: thing because I feel like, you know, we all came
Speaker 1: to it at the age of ten or whenever. As
Speaker 1: with this sort of like outsider status, you know, coming
Speaker 1: in being like what is you know, to to grow
Speaker 1: up within it, It's just a whole different thing, you know,
Speaker 1: I think he did. I mean, Hollywood in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies is just a whole different ballgame now. So
Speaker 1: I mean, just again, like he said, oh my his
Speaker 1: first garage band was him Sean Cassidy and Jamie Lee Curtis. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean that's your first garage band growing up. You
Speaker 1: also just think of you also just think about like
Speaker 1: from his perspective, you know, because like now if I
Speaker 1: mean I know people that that are on shows or
Speaker 1: that right for shows, and there's there's no but you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like you just don't give and
Speaker 1: they all like, there are there's so many networks, there's
Speaker 1: so many streamers, there's so many shows. But back then
Speaker 1: there were three networks or maybe if it counted Fox
Speaker 1: barely and so uh, the idea of like Boy Meets
Speaker 1: World being a hit and like being on a successful show,
Speaker 1: it's like there were only so many, you know, there
Speaker 1: were only so many and and that's so different than now,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like so many people I know work
Speaker 1: in so many different sides of the industry that the
Speaker 1: industry feels just sprawling and huge. There's so many different aspects.
Speaker 1: But back then, man, if you were on the Disney
Speaker 1: lot making a hit Disney hit show on ABC, that
Speaker 1: must I mean, you just must have felt like you
Speaker 1: won the lotter. I mean, I guess we did as
Speaker 1: a kid, but yeah, we were you know, we did
Speaker 1: win the lottery. It was amazing, It was it was incredible,
Speaker 1: very briefly to touch on something that that Jeff talked about,
Speaker 1: because he talked about kind of looking back at your
Speaker 1: life and and kind of taking it for what it is.
Speaker 1: And I completely understand and that, but I also think
Speaker 1: I think there's this thing that's happening nowadays where people
Speaker 1: think you can't criticize something and still love it, And
Speaker 1: I disagree with that entirely. I think you can absolutely.
Speaker 1: I love boy Mets World. I loved all my time.
Speaker 1: I'm Boy's World, and I have no problem looking back
Speaker 1: and saying there are parts of it that that that
Speaker 1: still stick with me and not always for the best way.
Speaker 1: You can love something and still be critical of it,
Speaker 1: And I think, uh, I think that's how you know
Speaker 1: you love it. Frankly, Yeah, I mean, dare I say
Speaker 1: I think if you love something you should be critical. Absolutely, So,
Speaker 1: I you know, there's this kind of idea that you know,
Speaker 1: I've I've read some things where people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're bashing the show. I don't think we're doing that
Speaker 1: at all. We're looking back at our experiences of something
Speaker 1: that we love, that we took took with us, that's
Speaker 1: a huge part of our life, and now looking back
Speaker 1: at it with older eyes saying, hey, maybe this wasn't
Speaker 1: the best when we were kids. That doesn't any way,
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form change the love that I
Speaker 1: have for the show. So I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: that's stuck with me a little bit where it's like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I should be allowed to criticize something
Speaker 1: that I love. I'm supposed to in my opinion. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: how you treat your parents, you know, it's like you
Speaker 1: worship them all the way up into you know, to
Speaker 1: your teen years, and then you kind of start to
Speaker 1: see them as like flawed humans like all you know,
Speaker 1: That's what I keep reiterating to Indie, like whenever you know,
Speaker 1: we're having this conversation, Yeah, I know we're stressing out
Speaker 1: about being late for school or something, and I was
Speaker 1: find of like, indeed, I don't know how to be
Speaker 1: a dad. He's like, what do you mean. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm figuring this out man like mom and I am
Speaker 1: making this up. We don't know what we're doing. So
Speaker 1: if you have to help us, like what I'm you know,
Speaker 1: when I'm when I'm mad at you, are frustrating with you,
Speaker 1: it's because I don't know what I'm doing. It's not
Speaker 1: like I and it just blew his mind, like he did,
Speaker 1: you know, It's like I think he thought, like I've
Speaker 1: been a dad before, or like I went to dad
Speaker 1: college like that there's some like book that I read
Speaker 1: or something, you know, and it's I just want to
Speaker 1: be honest with it, because you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: I went through the same thing with my parents. You
Speaker 1: have to go, you have to be disillusioned and you
Speaker 1: can still love them, and you can still of course,
Speaker 1: in some ways it helps you appreciate them more because
Speaker 1: you can see like how flawed and how human, and
Speaker 1: how many mistakes were made and why because we all
Speaker 1: make so many of you know, nobody's perfect, and that's
Speaker 1: actually it's the most mature thing you can do and
Speaker 1: probably the best gift you can give somebody is still
Speaker 1: loving them despite seeing their flaws. Um And also for
Speaker 1: other people looking from the outside in, it is helpful
Speaker 1: for other people to know that their experiences of being
Speaker 1: flawed are not unique. If we presented our situation, our
Speaker 1: show and all the wonderful things about it that you love,
Speaker 1: and it was like, well it came to be because
Speaker 1: we're all perfect people who made a perfect thing, who
Speaker 1: did know who made no mistakes, It's like that doesn't
Speaker 1: help other people. And so the idea of being able
Speaker 1: to look at something and tell the truth about it
Speaker 1: and say I'm still proud of it, i still love it,
Speaker 1: I still this uh, and I'm still I still turned
Speaker 1: out okay or even better than okay. UM only just
Speaker 1: helps people and it's it's I mean, that's literally what
Speaker 1: growth is. And I wouldn't want to do it any
Speaker 1: other way, and I wouldn't want to be talking about
Speaker 1: it with any other people. So I love you both,
Speaker 1: very very very much. Like just I think about it
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, I love you. I love you.
Speaker 1: I love you guys. Do and writer. You might not
Speaker 1: if you when when you're when you're raising India. If
Speaker 1: you need help, you're the guy, best grandpa ever, of course,
Speaker 1: best grandpa ever, my friend, that's what you need. You
Speaker 1: need the best grandpa ever, best grandpa ever to help him.
Speaker 1: Forget asking my dad. I gotta go ask. Will you
Speaker 1: gotta ask me? I'll bring my Werther's originals. I know
Speaker 1: how much he loves children. I have enough love for you, guys.
Speaker 1: That's all I need. Oh I'm the child, damnit writer?
Speaker 1: Will you do our out? We love you all. Pod
Speaker 1: dismissed Hood Meats World is an I heart podcast produced
Speaker 1: and hosted by Daniel Fishel Wilford l and Ryder Strong.
Speaker 1: Executive producers Jensen Carpet and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge
Speaker 1: of production Daniel Romo, producer and editor, Tara sup Bucks producer,
Speaker 1: Jackie Rodd, Yes engineer and Boy Meets World super fan
Speaker 1: Eastern Allen. Our theme songs by Kyle Morton of Typhoon
Speaker 1: and You can follow us on Instagram at Pod Meets
Speaker 1: World Show or email us at Pod Meets World Show
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com