Speaker 1: Still the Place with Laura Layton, Courtney Thorn Smith.
Speaker 2: And Daphne's Aniga an iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 3: Hello ladies, Hi, so good to say. Very excited today.
Speaker 3: We're so excited. It's a very special guest, Chuck.
Speaker 4: Have you heard that from the girls of Melrose before?
Speaker 4: We're so excited we have Pratt on the show today.
Speaker 4: I's a writer on Melroe's Place.
Speaker 1: Also, what were you saying, daph And you had a
Speaker 1: beautiful introduction.
Speaker 3: How hot I am for him?
Speaker 2: We've got Chuck's been around in this industry for so long,
Speaker 2: and there should be like a game three degrees of
Speaker 2: separation from Chuck because you've written for so many shows
Speaker 2: and produced since you were probably a child.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if he doesn't know somebody from work, he
Speaker 1: went to school with them, or his kids went to
Speaker 1: school with them.
Speaker 3: You know everybody.
Speaker 5: No I don't, but he don't.
Speaker 2: Beautiful woman, you've written General Hospital, Young and the Restless,
Speaker 2: All My Children. Oh yeah, Melrose Place nine O two one, Oh,
Speaker 2: keep going.
Speaker 3: Then we did that little spinoff, Models Inc. Model But anyway,
Speaker 3: you've done so many soaps.
Speaker 6: So that's the pilot of Desperate Housewives.
Speaker 2: Desperate Housewives can I just ask a question before they
Speaker 2: get into all the juicy questions, because I was, as
Speaker 2: I told you, looking up some info on you. You
Speaker 2: you grew up in the business because your dad worked
Speaker 2: in the business. Correct, Okay, did your dad produce The
Speaker 2: Great Santini?
Speaker 5: Yes, it's so great that you guys actually know where
Speaker 5: the next generation has come along. And you say, yeah,
Speaker 5: my father is a producer. His last film was The
Speaker 5: Great Santini. And they go, oh, is it about a circus?
Speaker 3: I go, wow, yeah, I know, Michael.
Speaker 2: Blake, Danner, Oscars all nominated.
Speaker 5: It was an amazing movie.
Speaker 2: As a young actor coming up, I just was like that,
Speaker 2: wait what, I know, you've done a ton of stuff,
Speaker 2: but I'm like, dad produced a great thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but your dad, Yeah, Well I got I got
Speaker 5: to go to the premiere of it. I was just
Speaker 5: out of college or about to be out of college
Speaker 5: film school, and you know, met Robert Duval, Luke Carlino,
Speaker 5: who wrote and directed the film. And but I got
Speaker 5: to meet Pat Conray, you know, who wrote the book
Speaker 5: it was based on. And I got to sit and
Speaker 5: talk with him because I said, you know, you wrote
Speaker 5: this book. My father is kind of the great sant
Speaker 5: I know the minute, you know, he had to make it.
Speaker 5: I was one of the first people who read it.
Speaker 5: My dad used to you know, I was working in
Speaker 5: the mailroom at Paramount and he would throw me books
Speaker 5: and go read this. Tell me what you think you know?
Speaker 5: And I read. I remember reading Sounder and thinking, oh
Speaker 5: my god, this would be such a great film. I said,
Speaker 5: this would be a great film. He goes, yeah, for
Speaker 5: somebody else to make it. Go OK, So I read
Speaker 5: the great Santini and I and I went. I went
Speaker 5: into his office and I said, Dad, this is uh,
Speaker 5: this is sort of your story. And he goes, I
Speaker 5: never hit your mother, no, no, But I said, you know,
Speaker 5: we grew up with horses and they had names like
Speaker 5: Trooper and sergeant, you know, and he was a veteran
Speaker 5: and he got a good laugh on it. I said,
Speaker 5: you have, I mean, you have to make this movie.
Speaker 5: And he goes, We're going to make this movie. It
Speaker 5: took a lot of it took it basically ended his
Speaker 5: career because it took so long, really yeah, to get
Speaker 5: the money Ryan and then united artists and uh, then
Speaker 5: he couldn't find a director. That's that's a whole story.
Speaker 5: I mean, Ulu gros Bar started it, but because of
Speaker 5: the basketball scene where he bounces the basketball off his
Speaker 5: kid's head, he backed u. Ulu gross Bar said he
Speaker 5: wouldn't do it, and my father said, we won't cut
Speaker 5: the scene. It's Past's favorite scene the book and that's
Speaker 5: the way it goes. So they had, uh, okay, this
Speaker 5: is a good start. My father was on a first
Speaker 5: class flight to New York to go and talk to
Speaker 5: U A about money for the picture, and Paul Newman
Speaker 5: is on the same flight reading the script because they've
Speaker 5: got it. He was the first person they went out
Speaker 5: to and he was probably a little too old for
Speaker 5: the part, but you know, they could. They figured they
Speaker 5: could make it work. And uh, my father just saw him,
Speaker 5: watched him read the script. I mean, what an opportunity.
Speaker 5: I thought, never in my life if I had that opportunity.
Speaker 5: And yeah, and so he went up to UH as
Speaker 5: the flight was coming in. He looked over and Paul
Speaker 5: new was going, you know, wiping a tiro and he goes, Okay,
Speaker 5: the script did get to you. You know, it was
Speaker 5: one of those and my father went up and he said,
Speaker 5: you got to do this movie. You know, I just
Speaker 5: saw you reading the script. I'm the guy, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm the producer and uh and he said, you know,
Speaker 5: it would be probably one of the greatest roles of
Speaker 5: my life. He said, but I have a I have
Speaker 5: a kid, and we have problems. Get had drug problems
Speaker 5: and died actually I think of an overdose. And he said,
Speaker 5: you know, he's made claims that I'm an abusive father
Speaker 5: and stuff. He said, I can't, I can't do this.
Speaker 5: My father said, so it's the basketball scene. He goes,
Speaker 5: it's the whole thing. It's not just about so so
Speaker 5: they lost him. And then they went to Gene Hackman,
Speaker 5: Burt Reynolds and you know, and my father goes, you know,
Speaker 5: and this went on and on and on, and I
Speaker 5: thought other movies on the Orion schedule got moved up
Speaker 5: in front of it, and it looked like it might not,
Speaker 5: you know, get made. And I think it was Pat
Speaker 5: Conroy h lived in the South, and so did Robert Devall.
Speaker 5: So pat Conroy said it was his suggestion. How about
Speaker 5: Robert Devall's perfect? Deval was perfect? And you know.
Speaker 1: The next logical step, which is Melrose Place. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: there's so much, there's so much in common.
Speaker 5: It was only a few years later.
Speaker 6: The same genre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're so we've been watching it. We're only
Speaker 1: in episode twenty three. I feels when doing it a
Speaker 1: long time. And first it's like eight kids trying to
Speaker 1: make it eight kids. And now it's starting to get
Speaker 1: exciting and sexy and stuff is happening. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that transition? Do you remember that? Do you was there
Speaker 1: in the writer's room, people going, it's not working. Nobody
Speaker 1: cares about these kids. We need to spice it up.
Speaker 1: Were you brought in there? Were you there from the beginning?
Speaker 5: This part? I remember so well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I'll say, God, yes, do I remember this? I mean,
Speaker 5: it was it was a it was a number of things.
Speaker 5: You know, ratings are always a big deal. And uh,
Speaker 5: we had we'd been doing we were on like shooting
Speaker 5: episode six or seven, and Darren pulls me into his office.
Speaker 5: I was co producer, I think then I was supervising.
Speaker 5: Yet Eddie goes and he goes, Juck, I have something
Speaker 5: to tell you what Let's walk to the elevator together.
Speaker 5: So we walked the elevator. I thought, oh, I'm getting fired,
Speaker 5: you know, and I think i'd written, you know, a
Speaker 5: number of episodes. When people liked my episode, I thought, wow,
Speaker 5: this has never happened. This is scary. And Darren goes,
Speaker 5: when we come back it was a Friday goes when
Speaker 5: we come back on Monday, goes, none of the people
Speaker 5: out there are going to be here. I go, what
Speaker 5: do you mean the assistance? I thought, what the assistants
Speaker 5: were getting rid of?
Speaker 1: This?
Speaker 5: Says they're great, Eddie goes. He goes, No, we're firing
Speaker 5: three writers, you know, including the supervising. Uh, pretty sure,
Speaker 5: and we have another guy's coming in. It was Frank South.
Speaker 3: Did Frank have a history of soaps and dramas?
Speaker 5: He was an episodic guy. I was, you know, I
Speaker 5: was the soap guy riding up episodes in the beginning.
Speaker 5: You know a lot of people have given, you know,
Speaker 5: given me credits saying I was the reason it turned
Speaker 5: to a soap. No, it was. It was as a
Speaker 5: combination of people. But I sure as hell knew how
Speaker 5: to do it.
Speaker 2: You know, but in the beginning, you were writing your
Speaker 2: soap style, but without the melrose esqueness of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, no, it was uh, you know, I'd come
Speaker 5: off shows like Santa Barbara where where you know, if
Speaker 5: you know the history of the show, anything went. We
Speaker 5: were insane. We just our ratings were so low and
Speaker 5: the network was stopped caring about us. So we had
Speaker 5: alien episodes we did. We turned daytime on it. You know,
Speaker 5: we didn't care. And we won every you know, we'd
Speaker 5: win twenty three Emmys, you know, each season, and you
Speaker 5: know I would win Emmys, and it was it was
Speaker 5: a great freedom. But then I moved to primetime. It
Speaker 5: did Gabriel's Fire and Life Goes On, which were more
Speaker 5: traditional shows, and learned the one camera you know world,
Speaker 5: which I already knew.
Speaker 1: But you know, so when when Darren said we have
Speaker 1: to change it up, did you go, oh great, I
Speaker 1: know how to do this and excited.
Speaker 5: Actually it wasn't Darren that that said it the way
Speaker 5: the way it happened, As I recall Wash, we were
Speaker 5: called in uh by UH and I think I think
Speaker 5: uh the former writers sumed and fired. Right before they
Speaker 5: were fired. We were called in for big meeting. Aaron
Speaker 5: was there. I remember writing a note to I think
Speaker 5: to Darren, I said, I know why Fox likes I know,
Speaker 5: I know why Fox likes Aaron Spelling so much. And
Speaker 5: I said he looks like Bart Simpson. And I remember
Speaker 5: thinking if Darren shows up to Aaron beyond that elevator.
Speaker 3: And this is around episode six.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was around six, and and it was all
Speaker 5: the network executives, all who became at some point or
Speaker 5: another president of the network. There was Bob green Blatt,
Speaker 5: you know, who went on to run NBC and Showtime. Uh.
Speaker 5: There was Sandy Grushaw who ended up being president of Fox.
Speaker 5: There was Jonathan litt Men who went on and did
Speaker 5: all the Bruckheimer shows and hired Carol mendelsoid not me
Speaker 5: not better to this day does he ever? Litman He
Speaker 5: owns O HI, I think, and Carol does too. They
Speaker 5: were all there and Peter Chernan, who is the head
Speaker 5: he was Fox, you know, and we were all called
Speaker 5: in and they said, we love these episodes. Uh, you
Speaker 5: guys are doing a great job, Darren. You know, you've
Speaker 5: created great characters. Production Wise, I don't think ship was there,
Speaker 5: but production wise it's looking really good. Uh, you know,
Speaker 5: but we're a little concerned about the ratings. I thought
Speaker 5: you should be, because I think we just had you know,
Speaker 5: episode five, you know, five or six, and you know,
Speaker 5: the scripts for seven, eight, nine and ten were in.
Speaker 5: I know that we're sitting there and you could, you
Speaker 5: could sense it. And afterwards, I said, what was that
Speaker 5: meeting about? And Darren goes, I don't know, but they're
Speaker 5: they're worried, you know, they were. They were telling Aaron
Speaker 5: the only way they could because he was so powerful,
Speaker 5: that we're a little worried about the show. So, you know,
Speaker 5: everybody got fired and and we kind of reassembled and
Speaker 5: then and I remember at the end of that meeting,
Speaker 5: Sandy Grushaw was head of marketing, who I just had
Speaker 5: an email from and he recalled this moment. I had
Speaker 5: written the where Jane loses a baby, where Michael and
Speaker 5: Jane had a miscarriage and my wife had just had
Speaker 5: a miscarriage. And so it was really an episode, you know,
Speaker 5: a very special episode that I got to write about
Speaker 5: something I experienced. You know. Of course, I had a
Speaker 5: Golden Retriever puppy in it, which I always had a
Speaker 5: Golden Retriever puppy and everything I still do. And I
Speaker 5: remember the puppy story about you very well. I told
Speaker 5: you to everybody. Oh my god, you know, he said, Hi,
Speaker 5: Robert Chavez, Ah.
Speaker 1: Guys golf together I'm guessing, yeah, yes, so sweet.
Speaker 5: He's so funny. He just he just had nothing but
Speaker 5: wonderful things. Anyway, that I am really digressing now, Robert.
Speaker 3: In my very early twenty gosh, it sounded like it
Speaker 3: was the turn.
Speaker 2: You know, you guys were all panicking about these numbers.
Speaker 2: But we were only like a few episodes in. We've
Speaker 2: noticed because we're on twenty three.
Speaker 5: You know, it was it was, you know. Then we
Speaker 5: had the famous meeting on a Saturday when the ratings
Speaker 5: like for ten came out and I think they were
Speaker 5: that was the miscarriage episode. They were the lowest of
Speaker 5: the season. I thought, well, I liked it, and and
Speaker 5: they called us on a Saturday into Into Fox. Chip
Speaker 5: was not there for that either.
Speaker 1: I know, because Chip was saying, oh no, they were worried.
Speaker 1: We were fine with the ratings.
Speaker 5: Missed, almost failed. It was exactly she says, we were losing.
Speaker 5: We almost. Chip said, well, I think we had a
Speaker 5: twenty two shor order. Oh no, we didn't, do.
Speaker 1: You remember Andrew with the ratings, like waiting for the
Speaker 1: ratings to come in and following Lisa.
Speaker 5: Andrew, Oh my god, you could do an hour on
Speaker 5: Andrew Andrew who what he got the part. We all
Speaker 5: went out to the set to see him and meet him,
Speaker 5: and we'd seen his pilot golf stream or Golf something
Speaker 5: or other golf where he had a gun and you go, oh, no,
Speaker 5: he's really handsome. But in one scene he goes down
Speaker 5: and he fixes a woman's pipe in the pipes in
Speaker 5: the cellar, you know, and he has I know, you
Speaker 5: could tell the writers that's what they were thinking. And
Speaker 5: the woman looks at him and she's extremely attracted to him,
Speaker 5: and h and we all looked and we said he
Speaker 5: could be billy, just don't open your mouth, and we're okay.
Speaker 5: But we met him and he comes up and he goes, you, well,
Speaker 5: it's nice to meet you guys. You know, you know
Speaker 5: this Saturday me I wasn't in the Saturday meeting at
Speaker 5: Spelling's house, but Darren called me right after. But he goes,
Speaker 5: he goes, he said, look, you know I'm doing this show,
Speaker 5: but you know what about Golf Springs. I mean, you
Speaker 5: know I did that first, and I got I'm just
Speaker 5: study liquing. But I go, I don't think that show's
Speaker 5: going forward. He goes, really, oh, I just thought, oh
Speaker 5: my god. I have had times in my career where
Speaker 5: the show I was working on, or that I had
Speaker 5: been one case created, was canceled and they called and
Speaker 5: gave me the bad news. And then the next day
Speaker 5: they called and said, we want to hire you on
Speaker 5: another show that we're doing. And you go, okay, can
Speaker 5: I take all the writers? I go yeah, I go,
Speaker 5: all right, well we're all still working. That's great, different show.
Speaker 2: But so when you fired some of those initial writers
Speaker 2: that were hired to write a certain kind of TV
Speaker 2: show that wasn't working, and you got other ones in,
Speaker 2: like Franky.
Speaker 5: They brought Frank in. He was not comfortable with the
Speaker 5: whole show. He was you know, he was working and
Speaker 5: had written a pilot for Brand Follisy. I mean, he
Speaker 5: was kind of you know, in a tier where we
Speaker 5: worked and you know of you know not, you know not.
Speaker 5: I never I never used the word camp and we
Speaker 5: never used the word soap opera. But we were.
Speaker 1: Doing you never did the wig thing happen?
Speaker 5: No, No, we had certain we had rules. We had rules,
Speaker 5: rules that have followed me to other shows that I've done.
Speaker 1: So when Marsha takes off the wig, the scar that
Speaker 1: was Shakespeare the words May Shakespeare.
Speaker 5: You're really looking for a word, and you're a writer
Speaker 5: and you want to save face. You can see there's
Speaker 5: two Actually, you say melodrama. It was mellow. Melrose was
Speaker 5: great melodrama or Melrose was great.
Speaker 6: And noir and that so melodrama is better than camp
Speaker 6: or so.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, oh okay, did we descend in the
Speaker 1: last years.
Speaker 5: I mean, luckily you didn't have to be there.
Speaker 1: And you're thinking guys were doing soap opera. I know
Speaker 1: we're not saying it, but I know what we're doing
Speaker 1: because you knew.
Speaker 5: But I knew, but we had certain thing ways and
Speaker 5: I mean this was okay, I'll go back to we
Speaker 5: have the meeting with the Fox meeting, and they were
Speaker 5: all wearing really short tennis shorts and they looked ridiculous.
Speaker 5: I mean they look I mean, if you can imagine
Speaker 5: these guys without tennis shorts, they're kind of let's not
Speaker 5: let's not imagine that the shorts because they had been
Speaker 5: playing tennis at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club or whatever.
Speaker 5: But so they they called us in and they said,
Speaker 5: and before the meeting, Darren looks at me, he goes,
Speaker 5: you know what, this is about I bet you figured
Speaker 5: it out. And I go, no, these people don't talk
Speaker 5: to me, you know. I mean, Aaron barely you know,
Speaker 5: knows Aaron knew I was. But he goes taking to
Speaker 5: tell us to turn it into a soap. I know
Speaker 5: they are, and I looked at I said, well, you know,
Speaker 5: it'd be really easy to do, and we are kind
Speaker 5: of tiptoeing into it a little bit, and and certainly
Speaker 5: with the introduction of Marsha's character, but and.
Speaker 3: You're like, I'm here, and I look at him on
Speaker 3: my sad.
Speaker 5: I said, well, let's just go listen to what they say.
Speaker 5: And he goes, I don't want to do a soap,
Speaker 5: and I go, oh, it's such a soap and I
Speaker 5: went okay, I said. I said, okay, well, you know
Speaker 5: there's no way we're going to make it one hundred
Speaker 5: percent of soap, you know. And I said, so let's
Speaker 5: not worry about it. So we went in and they said,
Speaker 5: like right out of Bob Greenlet's mouth, we wanted to
Speaker 5: turn it into a soap. What would you do? And
Speaker 5: Aaron wasn't there, you know, And I said, they've talked
Speaker 5: to Aaron for sure, because they used words like Dynas,
Speaker 5: Steve Dallas and you know and everything, and we said okay,
Speaker 5: and they sort of said it as an ultimatum, you know.
Speaker 5: As we left, I said that was an ultimatum. And
Speaker 5: Frank was was on at that point, and uh, and.
Speaker 2: So who said, don't worry Darren, it'll be a melodrama.
Speaker 5: That came later, but no. And then we went out
Speaker 5: and I said, uh, let's give it a try, Darren.
Speaker 5: You know, I think it'll be fun, you know, and
Speaker 5: he goes, well, you know all the you know Chip used.
Speaker 5: I listened to him and he used the you know, tropes.
Speaker 5: It's not a word I love, but uh, you know,
Speaker 5: there are certain conventions and soap operas and we introduced them,
Speaker 5: which is why, you know, when you guys think about it,
Speaker 5: why did Keith come in? You know, you had the
Speaker 5: ex husband. Did he ever show up? I don't even yes,
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I love Linda. He would show up
Speaker 5: to he would show up to work with his surf
Speaker 5: board and b m W convertible audience, you know, and oh,
Speaker 5: there's there's Heather in her Porsche. A good story about
Speaker 5: Heather's Porsche. I'm jumping around, I was.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 5: I had written and directed an episode. It was really
Speaker 5: late late in the in the run of the show,
Speaker 5: and we were out at the beach House and we
Speaker 5: were on and we were shooting a scene where she's
Speaker 5: at a door and she says something and then she
Speaker 5: goes out the you know whatever that front door was
Speaker 5: and Lee's and uh, I have noise in my head,
Speaker 5: sat under what that is? And Forrest calls over and
Speaker 5: he goes, it's her car. I go, it's her car
Speaker 5: and they go. He goes, somebody turned off Heather's car
Speaker 5: and they turned it off. And so she set her line,
Speaker 5: went out the door, closed the door, and then she's
Speaker 5: standing out there and I say print and I hear
Speaker 5: in the headseto. They backed it up right almost to
Speaker 5: the door. So she got in the car and boom,
Speaker 5: she was gone. I thought, it's really come to this.
Speaker 5: It's like, I'm only going to work to the very
Speaker 5: last second.
Speaker 3: They were a long hours.
Speaker 5: Oh I know, I know. Look when I started to direct,
Speaker 5: I realized really how awful it was for you guys.
Speaker 5: The doing scenes on the on the beach and during
Speaker 5: El Nino with Heather, and she wore she wore ugs,
Speaker 5: you know, and they showed up in like a key
Speaker 5: shot and we go, oh, she's supposed to be barefoot
Speaker 5: in the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 2: Speaking, because that's all the last part of Melrose. Do
Speaker 2: you feel like it was really different two different shows.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of people on the writer stuff
Speaker 2: had gone, a lot of actors.
Speaker 5: You know, we did so many episodes, as you guys know,
Speaker 5: I know you've talked about double ups, and for us,
Speaker 5: we had to write them that fast. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 5: of inexperienced writers and very little rewriting more rewrite on
Speaker 5: every show I've ever worked on, you know, just just
Speaker 5: notes and you know, inner workings with the writers. But
Speaker 5: you know, we would have to rewrite and hold the
Speaker 5: hands of young writers just to get the scripts, you know,
Speaker 5: get enough scripts ready to go. Uh. And we plotted
Speaker 5: them one after the other, and we got to the
Speaker 5: point where we could plot a show, you know, for
Speaker 5: an outline, in a day, day and a half. We
Speaker 5: we would then take a few days off to write
Speaker 5: and take a breath, but then we would jump in,
Speaker 5: you know, and my everyone said I was really good
Speaker 5: in the room. But you know, and I've always kind
Speaker 5: of had that reputation and I, and I thought, what
Speaker 5: do I tell young writers now, because you know, I've
Speaker 5: mentored a number of them now, And I said, well,
Speaker 5: when the day ends at you know, seven or whatever
Speaker 5: the writer's room, we're all exhausted, we're going home. There's
Speaker 5: going to be some question about like, well, what's Sydney
Speaker 5: going to do tomorrow? And you know, you know she's
Speaker 5: trapped in this tunnel and how are we going to
Speaker 5: get her out? What does this mean? You know? And
Speaker 5: all the writers would come back, think, get their coffee
Speaker 5: and say, okay, now what were you going to do?
Speaker 5: I would go home and sit, you know, blank stare
Speaker 5: you know, my wife always going he's writing again, you know,
Speaker 5: and and sit and think and then I would have
Speaker 5: the solution. So we start the meeting. I go how
Speaker 5: about this? And I would go, oh my god, where
Speaker 5: did you get that? I go, well, you know, it
Speaker 5: took a little while when I was alone, and I
Speaker 5: did it, but yeah, it might have been so priting.
Speaker 3: But how far ahead were you plotting?
Speaker 1: Because we talked about, you know, when Marcia came in
Speaker 1: and she's got the early scenes with Thomas, or when
Speaker 1: Laura came on, would you see someone who was like
Speaker 1: a shorter arc and you'd see something and go oh
Speaker 1: and get a storia.
Speaker 5: And then we would and then we would change. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's when did.
Speaker 1: You know that you were going to bring Laura back?
Speaker 1: Because she was so adorable on the show, But did
Speaker 1: you know right then?
Speaker 5: It was you know, I can't think specific episodes, but
Speaker 5: I remember that you had been in in Michael's It
Speaker 5: was you were hired on a short run, as I recall,
Speaker 5: I don't know how many episodes.
Speaker 6: Two episodes as a guest in the first season, and
Speaker 6: that was it, and.
Speaker 5: That was it? Was it the first season or the
Speaker 5: second season where you were walking away from the house,
Speaker 5: you know, you walk away from the beach house and
Speaker 5: Michael was looking out the window and you were kind
Speaker 5: of dancing. Yeah, okay, so its being in the second season,
Speaker 5: and you know, we used to play tricks in the
Speaker 5: mixing booth, which is something Chipped and talked about because
Speaker 5: he wasn't there, but we would, you know, we put
Speaker 5: farts in you know, I mean the sound guys would
Speaker 5: put farts into the most the first one. The first
Speaker 5: one came really early because they knew that I loved it,
Speaker 5: you know, and Frank two that we would laugh and Darren,
Speaker 5: I mean we all just.
Speaker 6: You think that Sydney was dancing down the beach and
Speaker 6: she was making sarting.
Speaker 5: But the first one we did was was Andrew and
Speaker 5: he bent over and he opened refrigerator. I think it
Speaker 5: ended up in the putting credits to get some orange
Speaker 5: juice or something and he bends over and to get
Speaker 5: the orgins and they just put a little you know literally,
Speaker 5: you know, farts make people laugh. So we would just
Speaker 5: sit there and laugh and laugh and laugh.
Speaker 3: You can't leave it.
Speaker 5: We take it out.
Speaker 6: You have the they.
Speaker 5: Have it on a stema and they pull it out.
Speaker 1: But you know, I will say this, having worked on
Speaker 1: two and a half men, they do put them in
Speaker 1: and they keep them in.
Speaker 3: They just they just add them.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, could you not please not? Yeah, like
Speaker 1: they that's what they do and keep it in.
Speaker 5: That's just But they did one with you. It was
Speaker 5: the first one that we called it a talking you know,
Speaker 5: goof and it's that as you were walking off the beat,
Speaker 5: walking down the beach, you were going you would recorded
Speaker 5: during you know, during when you were looping, you'd recorded
Speaker 5: this whole thing about I'm going down the beach. Here,
Speaker 5: I go down the beach. Darren Starr is going to
Speaker 5: really put me in a lot of episodes. Now, you know, boy,
Speaker 5: I mean you just.
Speaker 3: Talked and you did that.
Speaker 6: Somebody asked me to do that, and looping and I
Speaker 6: did it.
Speaker 5: Yeah you don't remember.
Speaker 6: I mean it sounds possible, it sounds good for you,
Speaker 6: and somebody asked me to do it and Granted.
Speaker 1: Now did you because we noticed in watching it that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's like eight nice kids trying
Speaker 1: to make it and all of a sudden, there's an
Speaker 1: episode where it's just I think it was me and
Speaker 1: Andrew and you and Grant, Right, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's just these romances against each other.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because like carrying through they were.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like they were like there were just two sexy.
Speaker 1: It's just everybody. It was me and Keith, So it's
Speaker 1: just it's just make out to make up everything. Did
Speaker 1: we do anything but make out these No?
Speaker 5: Well, you know what what happened at the end once
Speaker 5: we turned into a sob the triangles start to Crisco.
Speaker 5: We'll give Jane sister. We need this marriage is so boring.
Speaker 5: We need to do something. They've had a miscarriage. We're
Speaker 5: out of story, so I just want to read the
Speaker 5: paper everywhere. So so so we were, you know, we
Speaker 5: started experimenting with it, and Marcia was one and you
Speaker 5: were the other. Marcia came in two show arc and
Speaker 5: it was just supposed to be a slight flirtation and
Speaker 5: it was I think it was Nancy Malone. And I
Speaker 5: did the casting, so she had a co producer and
Speaker 5: the director of the casting. You know, there weren't the
Speaker 5: line of executive producers. No one was there. And she
Speaker 5: walked in and I went, oh my god, she's Nicole Kidman,
Speaker 5: only I think she's actually more beautiful and I and
Speaker 5: then she gave this really good performance and we go great,
Speaker 5: you know. So she did her scenes and I'm telling everybody,
Speaker 5: look at dailies, look at this person. So right away,
Speaker 5: you know a few of us went, oh my god,
Speaker 5: lightning in a bottle. This is great. And we thought,
Speaker 5: and this is what we used to mess with originally
Speaker 5: to yeah to the the couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we've seen her on and it's so small.
Speaker 2: I mean we saw her two different episodes.
Speaker 5: She's in an elevator, there's a scene where she's literally
Speaker 5: in an elevator and she just looks at him and
Speaker 5: he looks at her. I mean, and I remember thinking,
Speaker 5: oh my god, it was all subtext.
Speaker 3: It was possibility, was there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's disappeared, so yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 5: And she disappeared, and it took a while for us
Speaker 5: to get her to come back, I mean, or to
Speaker 5: get people to say, yeah, there's really something here, and
Speaker 5: then you know the rest, and then we killed her
Speaker 5: off and.
Speaker 6: Then you need the whole started the whole Melrose, and
Speaker 6: then why not Sydney and Kimberly?
Speaker 3: Why not both crazy? Still waiting who did you have
Speaker 3: an affair with? First? I don't remember, you know, that's
Speaker 3: I think Michael didn't.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was I think it was you.
Speaker 5: And then after you, I don't remember.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I feel like I feel.
Speaker 5: Like somebody in this room is not on top of.
Speaker 6: Things, watching in real time, and we're just not there yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So getting back to what you said, because it's really interesting.
Speaker 5: So we have the meaning tonative. So so we said, okay, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, and the first thing you do is you
Speaker 5: create triangles, quadrangles, you bring in the bedroom so to speak.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to be when do we even get rid
Speaker 5: of the bedroom. It's I know, well, once we started,
Speaker 5: we never did. And you know, the the initial concept was,
Speaker 5: you know, a platonic relationship between you know, and Darren
Speaker 5: always told me it was the platonic relationship he had
Speaker 5: with you when you were roommates, that that was the
Speaker 5: influence of the show.
Speaker 2: Remember, well, do you remember I remember him saying he
Speaker 2: based Allison on me.
Speaker 5: We did.
Speaker 3: We lived in a tiny little apartment. He had a
Speaker 3: guy roommate. I have a girl roommate.
Speaker 2: We shared one bathroom, I believe, in this tiny little
Speaker 2: right off UCLA because we're uc together.
Speaker 3: And uh, I mean, but I don't see how it
Speaker 3: was me because it wasn't He wasn't. I not his type, Billy.
Speaker 3: Those two kind of moon for each other. But that's
Speaker 3: not it obviously.
Speaker 1: But was that always the plan or was it just
Speaker 1: that Andrew and I fell into bed so quickly.
Speaker 5: They so interesting I thought it took forever to get
Speaker 5: you to a bit I remember.
Speaker 6: I mean, and you're talking about on camera the show
Speaker 6: in real life, it was like we wanted to bring
Speaker 6: the show to.
Speaker 3: For a long time. And I'm a professional, I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, it was episode two.
Speaker 5: Well it was. It was like two, I go, we
Speaker 5: can't keep these guys platonic for long, I mean on
Speaker 5: the show as characters, I mean, and so we thought, okay,
Speaker 5: and you know, well, well we'll build to it. So
Speaker 5: we put every kind of a you know, soap impediment
Speaker 5: between the two of you, and it really it really worked.
Speaker 5: I mean it really worked.
Speaker 1: Heather.
Speaker 5: Heather was you know, no different than Marsha Cross. I mean, yes,
Speaker 5: she was the great Heather Locklayer. And there was you know,
Speaker 5: I mean the casting of Heather. The writers were really
Speaker 5: had nothing to do with it, including Darren for a while.
Speaker 5: He might you know, correct me, and I just don't know.
Speaker 5: But it was like we created the character first. We didn't. Wow,
Speaker 5: somebody didn't come to us and say create a character
Speaker 5: for Heather Locklayer. No, because you we said okay, well
Speaker 5: and then I guarantee this was me. But you were
Speaker 5: working you know, in an ad agency and with Lucy.
Speaker 6: Every year.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Deborah, and you know that was good. But it
Speaker 5: was good on an episodic basis. It was she's a
Speaker 5: small part. You two, you don't get along. She's an
Speaker 5: evil boss, a Devilwar's product. Uh, you know, and that
Speaker 5: that's a you know, episodic kind of a relationship. And
Speaker 5: so when we turned it into a soap, we said,
Speaker 5: we should get rid of Lucy and we should bring
Speaker 5: somebody in who wants you know, who tortures you, but
Speaker 5: wants your guy, you know, and that will slow down
Speaker 5: Billy and Allison is if we bring somebody between him
Speaker 5: who's beautiful, who he falls in love with and makes
Speaker 5: all that stupid mistake and then it sends you to
Speaker 5: the keys of the world and all of that. So
Speaker 5: it kind of it happened that way. And then we
Speaker 5: started casting and we actually did read some actresses I remember,
Speaker 5: and then you know, with just you know, the lowly
Speaker 5: producers and uh and then Aaron calls up and says,
Speaker 5: how about Heather Lockleyar, I mean, he really, I'm doing
Speaker 5: my errand imitation have we've done it years respect for
Speaker 5: the you know, the dearly departed. But he said, guys,
Speaker 5: you know Heather, she's she's great, she's magic, you know,
Speaker 5: those eyes, and you know she's been real good for me.
Speaker 5: She's my lucky penny, you know. And we had this
Speaker 5: like conference call where we're all listening to this and
Speaker 5: going oh okay, all right, uh, you know, and then
Speaker 5: hung up the phone. We go, you know, she's going
Speaker 5: to take over the show, you know, thank god, you know,
Speaker 5: yea over things. Yeah, no, and uh and then we
Speaker 5: all calmed down and then uh, Aaron had sent down,
Speaker 5: you know, a VHS of a movie. She'd just done
Speaker 5: something up in you know, movie of the week up
Speaker 5: in Canada, and she she had done it. And we
Speaker 5: looked at her and she looked fabulous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she didn't look any older.
Speaker 5: I thought, oh my god, yeah, she looks amazing, amazing.
Speaker 5: So so you know, we hired her. And then she
Speaker 5: didn't want to be a bitch, and you know, so
Speaker 5: we did some last minute rewriting which we weren't used
Speaker 5: to make her not a bitch. And then you know,
Speaker 5: we're looking at the cuts, going, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 5: we wrote, it's coming out out. You know. The subtext
Speaker 5: she she just she knew how to put. She was
Speaker 5: the rival, you know, she was going to be a
Speaker 5: little troublemaker, and you know it was I.
Speaker 1: Thought it was her natural sweetness that sort of shone
Speaker 1: through because you wanted to hate her, but you couldn't
Speaker 1: fight because she was saying to Alison, is it okay?
Speaker 1: There something going on? And Allison kept stumbling over herself. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting that you wrote it that way. But then
Speaker 1: has there such a good bitch later?
Speaker 5: So yeah, but yeah, I mean she developed that way
Speaker 5: once the you know, once the blinders are off. I mean,
Speaker 5: when she slept with Billy, you know, it was like, okay,
Speaker 5: you can't.
Speaker 6: Keep playing it, and she kept throwing it in your
Speaker 6: face and yeah.
Speaker 5: And you'll have the proverbial wish that she'd never been born.
Speaker 5: I wrote that line, that's right, it's a it's a
Speaker 5: line that I taught writing at Chapman College for two
Speaker 5: years a while back, while I was doing the Secrets
Speaker 5: of Self Springs. But I would show them clips of Melrose.
Speaker 5: You know, uh, you know these are young, you know,
Speaker 5: they all are all gonna be great screenwriters in their minds,
Speaker 5: you know, and uh, and I show them the line.
Speaker 5: But I would show I'd show clips from YouTube because
Speaker 5: there's no way that they would you know, read, or
Speaker 5: that I could be able to find the script. And
Speaker 5: the one I would do is is Heather backs you
Speaker 5: into a corner at D and D. There were like
Speaker 5: five of them after I wrote mine. Everybody started to
Speaker 5: write it, and it's the thing. She goes, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: make I'm gonna make your life so miserable, and then
Speaker 5: you'll have that proverbial wish you'd never been born? Do
Speaker 5: you remember? Was great?
Speaker 3: I don't like And we said.
Speaker 5: It was the you know, there were certain you know
Speaker 5: moments we call them. You know, Uh, that's Melrose, we
Speaker 5: would say, and we go that scene, we go, that's Melrose.
Speaker 5: We're just sitting in the editing room. We go, that's
Speaker 5: me and what's his name on Channel five? Who just
Speaker 5: passed away? Yeah, yeah, he did his quote of the week. Uh,
Speaker 5: you know, so we would all, you know, the competition,
Speaker 5: you know, like that line.
Speaker 6: Didn't Sydney say to her own mother, get back on
Speaker 6: your broomstick and fly back.
Speaker 5: That famous life life? I think Darren wrote that, I
Speaker 5: don't remember. Yeah, it wasn't Frank. Frank. Frank was so
Speaker 5: in the beginning uncomfortable with all of it. There was
Speaker 5: a great, a great moment. Frank, he's not gonna be listening,
Speaker 5: but if he is, he'll go, I'm gonna call Chuck.
Speaker 5: But we were. It was his first episode. I think
Speaker 5: that he wrote that's like episode eight, I want to say, uh,
Speaker 5: and he had jake probably your door or it might
Speaker 5: have been your door. I don't know whose doory was that,
Speaker 5: but he was saying and he recited poetry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were all like, oh Cashmire lyrics, cashmre.
Speaker 3: Sweater and he does the thing.
Speaker 5: But anyhow, it was so not what we've been doing
Speaker 5: up until then. It was. It was well written. Frank.
Speaker 5: That was his first script. And so we're in we're
Speaker 5: in the editing room looking at it and going cut it, Frank,
Speaker 5: cut it, cut it, cut it. Just having walk up,
Speaker 5: We'll just you know, cut all the dialogue and just
Speaker 5: a look and then we'll be out. You know, I
Speaker 5: mean it was, it was. It was fine, but Frank's going, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: it's the whole crux. It's the whole thing. It's the
Speaker 5: whole theme that poem. I love that poem. I've read
Speaker 5: read that poem to my wife and she said yes
Speaker 5: when we got married. Anyway, he was passionate about.
Speaker 2: It so well, the girls loved it, and.
Speaker 5: I had bike liked it. You know, I think, you know,
Speaker 5: I think it was it was you know, I don't
Speaker 5: remember other people's reaction to it, except Darren was a
Speaker 5: little like there was always a little like this with Frank.
Speaker 2: And uh, how long did it take for Frank to
Speaker 2: come around?
Speaker 5: Well, no, this is this is a story. So you know,
Speaker 5: we would all we would march up, you know, got
Speaker 5: in the gutter, you guys. It was almost every week,
Speaker 5: but we would be taking a producer's cut up to
Speaker 5: Aaron for him to do his cut. Uh, you know,
Speaker 5: and and I mean I have a lot of stories
Speaker 5: about those. We'd all sit on the long couch and uh,
Speaker 5: the editors would be there and all of us chip
Speaker 5: for a while. But then I think year two he
Speaker 5: stopped coming. But we'd all be sitting on the couch
Speaker 5: and Duke would be there. I mean, it was it
Speaker 5: was the brain trust and we would turn down the
Speaker 5: lights and then Kenny his his his post guy would
Speaker 5: run the thing, you know, and you go and stop,
Speaker 5: don't go for me there, you know, and you go
Speaker 5: and then you'd watch it and then you know, you
Speaker 5: kind of watch it by act and he'd sometimes stop
Speaker 5: twice in the whole episode and go a great episode guy.
Speaker 5: Sometimes he'd you know, twenty times he was having a
Speaker 5: bad day. We were screening Frank's episode, you know, and
Speaker 5: it was going along fine, and it came to that
Speaker 5: scene and the big log speech at Grant given it
Speaker 5: us all and doing the poem, and in the in
Speaker 5: Aaron's office, you had a different feeling for the show.
Speaker 5: It wasn't necessarily you know, it's like, what is he
Speaker 5: going to think of it? Because he didn't you know,
Speaker 5: he loved the show, but he saw it in context
Speaker 5: of nine to two, one zero and other shows that
Speaker 5: were really very different, and we wanted to be very different.
Speaker 5: And so Frank he just I could demonstrate, but it's radio,
Speaker 5: but he just lowered his head and put his head
Speaker 5: in his hands. Because Aaron stopped afterwards.
Speaker 3: Oh and you just feel it.
Speaker 5: He goes, guys, guys, and Frank just goes down like this.
Speaker 5: Aaron looks looks at Frank, and you know, he hadn't
Speaker 5: known him for very long, you know, none of us,
Speaker 5: and we're all looking at Frank, and I thought, oh
Speaker 5: my god, he's having like a nervous breakdown, or he's
Speaker 5: he's going to start crying. I don't know what he's
Speaker 5: gonna do. And and Aaron goes looks at me, and
Speaker 5: I go, I don't know, I don't know what's wrong,
Speaker 5: you know, and everybody, and I remember Darren. Darren would
Speaker 5: just get so amused by these things. Nothing really bothered him,
Speaker 5: and he would just sit there certain things. Bother memore
Speaker 5: when he took out a phone one day about something
Speaker 5: or other. I don't remember what early on, but we're
Speaker 5: sitting there and then Frank just gets I go I
Speaker 5: was the one who said, Frank like a father to
Speaker 5: a kid. Frank, and he put his head up and
Speaker 5: he goes, cut it, just cut it, and goes, well,
Speaker 5: we agree on that. But it stayed. It stayed. I
Speaker 5: think that Aaron had a change of mind. It stayed.
Speaker 3: It did seem I mean, it worked for us.
Speaker 5: It wasn't the show. I mean, it wasn't what we'd
Speaker 5: been doing up until then. No, it was very.
Speaker 6: They're also looking at it thirty years later, going oh
Speaker 6: that's so sweet and that works. But maybe at the time, yeah,
Speaker 6: we know, I think everybody may have been watching it differently.
Speaker 3: So it was like, what was.
Speaker 5: That screaming guitars? I mean we were we were more
Speaker 5: screaming guitars now seen over two pages. That was my rule.
Speaker 5: I said, you know, this audience they're going to lose interest.
Speaker 6: And it was the whole poem. It wasn't just like,
Speaker 6: oh yeah, a couple of a lot of it.
Speaker 2: You know, he was this like literate writer, this you know,
Speaker 2: fancy writer that comes in and.
Speaker 5: Deals with you guys.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm just trying to get some freaking poetry
Speaker 2: in the show.
Speaker 5: And you're like, no, he got down in the mud
Speaker 5: with us pretty quick.
Speaker 1: But we're coming to the end of our time, so
Speaker 1: we want to get some really important questions, like what
Speaker 1: was you remember the craziest storyline that you liked the
Speaker 1: most or hated the most, Like what do you remember as.
Speaker 5: A thing that you couldn't get in?
Speaker 1: Maybe, Oh, that's a great question. So that's like nine
Speaker 1: questions in one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll start with I couldn't get in And it's
Speaker 5: the very last episode of Melrose and we wanted Courtney
Speaker 5: to come back. Yeah, did they offer you money? Did
Speaker 5: it ever?
Speaker 3: Get to the know they wanted me to come back.
Speaker 1: I was working on Alan mcbill at the time, and
Speaker 1: that schedule was crazy and we just couldn't make it work.
Speaker 1: And I remember trying to like, if I could get
Speaker 1: there by the end, I could do something and we
Speaker 1: were we were like eighteen hour days on the show.
Speaker 3: So I'm so bummed.
Speaker 5: I have the scene and we were going to bring
Speaker 5: Billy back to We were going to bring them both
Speaker 5: and Marcia uh and and sorry, well you could have
Speaker 5: brought she was dead one three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was so we couldn't get I couldn't get off.
Speaker 5: Set literally, So so I wrote and directed the episode.
Speaker 5: And there was a scene in a bar, yes, and
Speaker 5: and and I had something. No, there was just an
Speaker 5: empty stool, and I had the camera moves by and
Speaker 5: stops and there's a bar with it just one stool,
Speaker 5: you know, there are no other stools or there were
Speaker 5: two stools, and it was going to be a Billy
Speaker 5: and Alison moment. And I just had it. And I thought,
Speaker 5: I'll always know that you know what that means. But
Speaker 5: you know, so favorite favorite storyline was memorable. There were so.
Speaker 1: Many that you like, people like that were that you
Speaker 1: were that were the most fun.
Speaker 3: Like I think of the building blowing up.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, I mean the building. Everybody's made a big
Speaker 5: deal of it, and it was you know it was
Speaker 5: during the Oklahoma bombing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did except
Speaker 5: the uh certainly on the production side, but uh that
Speaker 5: we were going to do it at the end of
Speaker 5: the season, but because of the Oklahoma bombing, we just
Speaker 5: had her go it gets worse, which is my favorite
Speaker 5: line on the show ever. I don't even know.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 5: You know, it goes this is ah, this is very bad.
Speaker 5: She goes, No, it gets worse. That's great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who did Joe's baby? Let's give her a baby?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was get Let's have her.
Speaker 5: That's when I went on Models Inc. But I was
Speaker 5: part of I was part of that. Yeah. Yeah, that
Speaker 5: was a lot of Carol Mendelssohn. I think she came on,
Speaker 5: you know, she had no experience and so but I'd
Speaker 5: worked on Gabriel's Fire with her and I had suggested her.
Speaker 5: I said, you're going to need someone to replace me.
Speaker 5: I go. She has taped every episode of General Hospital.
Speaker 5: She is a total soap fan, even though she writes
Speaker 5: crime shows. And so they brought her in and you
Speaker 5: know she was.
Speaker 2: So you left as a writer producer for a while
Speaker 2: to go do Models Inc.
Speaker 5: Off the season. Then I came back season later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and did you stay till the end the last
Speaker 1: of the seven seasons?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And how did it feel for you when it shifted,
Speaker 1: because we talk a lot about you know, we left,
Speaker 1: you left after four, we left after five, Like what
Speaker 1: did that?
Speaker 5: It was? Yeah, it did?
Speaker 1: Which your real question to ask questions? My question was
Speaker 1: where the three of us are very favorite.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, we get down to like why did
Speaker 5: you leave? And stuff? I know Chip talked to you
Speaker 5: about that, and you know, sometimes it's money. Sometimes it's
Speaker 5: some creative decision. And I honestly, with you, I don't remember,
Speaker 5: and with you I kind of remember. I remember being
Speaker 5: completely against it, but there were powers that be that
Speaker 5: were I don't know if it was money or what
Speaker 5: it was, but they were, you know, and and you
Speaker 5: know Grant leaving, Uh, you know it. You know as writers,
Speaker 5: you're just for writers. It's an opportunity to bring in
Speaker 5: new characters that you know, you guys, we ran you
Speaker 5: through a soap mill like unbelievable. You know, marriages and
Speaker 5: you know deaths and crime and you know, god knows what,
Speaker 5: going crazy and stuff. And you get to a point where, wow,
Speaker 5: what did we do with the next You know, we
Speaker 5: can't rehabilitate them or make this past go away and
Speaker 5: ignore it like they do in daytime. So but so
Speaker 5: it was a it was a case of, you know,
Speaker 5: in some cases like we don't have any more story,
Speaker 5: you know, we got to go in a different direction
Speaker 5: of people. We got to give these put the new
Speaker 5: people through new scenary people. But I remember I was
Speaker 5: the one who said I took it like personally every
Speaker 5: time somebody left, because I said, oh my god, you know,
Speaker 5: I was here. I wrote to episode two and you know,
Speaker 5: and and I just remember the whole journey and it's
Speaker 5: like those for initial people walking down the street, you know,
Speaker 5: walking down Melrose room was and it became and it evolved.
Speaker 5: And believe me, I loved every person we brought on,
Speaker 5: and I liked all of their their stories. You know,
Speaker 5: we jumped the shark so many times that you know,
Speaker 5: like when do we first jump the shark? And uh, you.
Speaker 6: Know, I.
Speaker 5: Like and you know, I wrote and directed that last
Speaker 5: episode and uh it was so sad, you know, and
Speaker 5: and uh it was so sad. I made sure the
Speaker 5: last shot was of Heather, you know. And I think
Speaker 5: the feeling was at Fox as long as Heather's on
Speaker 5: the show, it doesn't matter who else is on the show.
Speaker 5: They had they had moved on in their mind, but
Speaker 5: you know, the ratings were starting to go down, you know,
Speaker 5: and then the last year, I know why it was canceled,
Speaker 5: why we didn't get an eighth season, which we really wanted.
Speaker 5: Uh it was the show between the lawsuits and the stuff,
Speaker 5: it was really tainted, and you know, and quite frankly,
Speaker 5: they said, we can't afford to pay Heather.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lawsuit, the pregnancy lawsuit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the pregnancy lawsuit. And then uh the Jerry, remember
Speaker 5: the assistant director Jerry. Yes, yeah, I was. I was
Speaker 5: all a part of that. But luckily, you know, that's
Speaker 5: what sent Frank and Chip and Harry, Oh god, Harry,
Speaker 5: very greatest guy.
Speaker 2: We have to have you back because clearly you have
Speaker 2: like a treasure trope more.
Speaker 5: We could do this.
Speaker 3: I didn't even pick up my questions. I don't know,
Speaker 3: we just do.
Speaker 6: I have one more question, just based on something you
Speaker 6: were describing as just the process of the writer's room,
Speaker 6: the task of writing the episode would rotate amongst the writers.
Speaker 3: Is that correct?
Speaker 6: But like, did you find that you had like a
Speaker 6: character or a voice that were the writers that were
Speaker 6: particularly good at writing this particular voice?
Speaker 5: And you know, did you have to be a writer
Speaker 5: in the show. You had to. You had to be
Speaker 5: able to write everybody. You know. I loved I like writing, Courtney.
Speaker 5: I loved writing uh you know, Amanda, I you know,
Speaker 5: I would say, uh in latter years, I loved Jack
Speaker 5: Wagner because he was just so disgusting, you know. I
Speaker 5: mean I thought, I thought I can just let out
Speaker 5: my ikey icky, you know. But but and and there
Speaker 5: were writers who loved to write certain things, you know. Uh,
Speaker 5: I know, Carol loved writing Daphanie and all the women,
Speaker 5: and uh, Darren, I think the original core group was
Speaker 5: always his favorite. But uh, you know, but you know,
Speaker 5: writing it, well, you had to write every character, you know,
Speaker 5: And and we were going so fast. We'd break these things,
Speaker 5: you know, up on a big board and then send
Speaker 5: the writer off. And I was always writing. I mean
Speaker 5: I was writing an episode, or I was something with
Speaker 5: shooting that I wrote, or you know, and that was
Speaker 5: true of all of us, you know.
Speaker 6: And because you were writing at such a pace, did
Speaker 6: you did you have to adjust and pivot when you go,
Speaker 6: oh my gosh, the storyline that we thought was going
Speaker 6: in this one way, and look at how it's turning.
Speaker 3: Out, did you have to go a pivot?
Speaker 5: And like completely, I mean a lot. And I think
Speaker 5: that was one of the keys to the show's success
Speaker 5: is that we were very fluid. We we didn't get
Speaker 5: locked into stuff, you know, something better came along or
Speaker 5: something didn't work, we would just you know, change gears.
Speaker 5: The Marsha thing, we kill her, you know, in this accident.
Speaker 5: And actually the way that happened was was a little
Speaker 5: like Chip told it, but it was. It was actually
Speaker 5: Darren and I and I think somebody else I don't
Speaker 5: know who had dinner. This was a yeah, it was
Speaker 5: during Frank, but Frank wasn't there. He was home. We
Speaker 5: had we had a really nice you know, you always
Speaker 5: eat well when you're around there. So we went to
Speaker 5: in the valley somewhere, you know. We went to a
Speaker 5: great French French meal and a bottle wine, and then
Speaker 5: we drove out to watch Marsha get killed in this
Speaker 5: in the spectacular car crash that did go beyond it,
Speaker 5: and we just sat and talked to Marsha for the
Speaker 5: longest time, and I never really had talked to her much,
Speaker 5: and you know, and she went back and we shot
Speaker 5: the scene and I looked at Darren. I go, let's
Speaker 5: not kill her, and he goes, Chuck, we just killed
Speaker 5: her on the film. And I said yeah, I said,
Speaker 5: but you know, we we can keep her alive and
Speaker 5: have her come back from the dead. You know, have
Speaker 5: you the favorite it's a favorite story. I don't even
Speaker 5: think they can do it anymore. They've done it so often.
Speaker 5: Nobody really dies, you know. Yeah, and uh, and we
Speaker 5: said our first thought was we were sitting there and
Speaker 5: we go, Okay, we got to sell Aaron on this,
Speaker 5: you know, got to sell the network on this. And
Speaker 5: then I said we got to sell Frank because he
Speaker 5: wrote the next episode where there's an open casket and
Speaker 5: there's a scene in the hospital. Yeah, and and all this,
Speaker 5: all this stuff, and so that we were all scratching
Speaker 5: our ads, going, uh, you know, I mean, Darren and
Speaker 5: I were going, how are we going to sell this?
Speaker 5: How are we going to get this done? And so
Speaker 5: we uh, what we did was we went back and
Speaker 5: talked to Frank and he was very upset, and I said,
Speaker 5: close the casket, put her in a coma, so she's
Speaker 5: in a hospital bed, and then and then she's when
Speaker 5: she's in the hospital bed, you did the scene where
Speaker 5: he comes back and I think, this is the way
Speaker 5: we did it. And we come back and Michael comes
Speaker 5: back and the bed is empty, and they say she
Speaker 5: passed away, and and Frank's going, yeah, and I said, well,
Speaker 5: she didn't pass away. Her mother came and got her.
Speaker 5: And her mother we've never even mentioned her mother. She's
Speaker 5: in the Midwest somewhere, and she hated Michael, and Michael
Speaker 5: did this to her. So so her daughter wasn't going
Speaker 5: to die in front of him, so she took her
Speaker 5: back to die, and then she wakes up in the coma,
Speaker 5: you know, and then the you know, the the you know,
Speaker 5: we wrote the scar but everybody went the set chip
Speaker 5: and all them they were way over the top. We go,
Speaker 5: oh my god, who's going to buy this? And is
Speaker 5: this too much? Yes?
Speaker 3: And the place that's why, that's a perfect place to
Speaker 3: end it.
Speaker 1: That's Chuck, Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Would love We know there's many more stories, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 6: so many season two.
Speaker 3: I mean, we could do a specials.
Speaker 5: We could do a special one on models.
Speaker 2: They really do our listeners really and fans that write
Speaker 2: in or comment really ask about the behind the scenes
Speaker 2: everything that you talked about. So many people are curious about,
Speaker 2: you know, they're like, oh, these guys are cute to
Speaker 2: look at.
Speaker 3: But you know, you're like, we're in the room when
Speaker 3: it happened, so we have more and.
Speaker 5: We make it. We can't have that old
Speaker 2: I was in the room where it a thank you Jack, Thanks,
Speaker 2: thank you