Well, dear readers, there I was, sitting like so much fish in the 1980s, when I got a call from a man named David Jablin. David had seen my work – just can’t remember what he’d seen exactly – and he was putting together a cable show for Showtime called Likely Stories, a series of short films to be directed by up-and-coming filmmakers. I guess maybe he’d seen Nudie Musical or something. He asked if I had any ideas for something I could write and direct, and I sent him over a print of a 16mm film I’d just finished – a faux coming attractions for my annual movie marathon that I did every Christmas. It was something I made for my friends who came to that event year in and year out and for a little joke it was fairly elaborate – about ten minutes long, shot in scope, and professionally edited with really good sound. My friend Dave Strohmaier shot and edited it, I directed and starred, and the idea was that I, BK, sitting in my faux office, am telling the audience about the film festival and all the exciting films they’re going to see. We then have several faux coming attractions and/or scenes from those films – a western in the Leone mode (with me as Clint and Alan Abelew as the villain), a noir with me as the fated hero and Candy Clark as the femme fatale, a musical with a complete musical number, also with Candy and I, and a horror/slasher film with Candy, Alan, and I. It was really fun and the marathon crowd loved it. So did David Jablin who immediately put me in a little box he would never let me out of, i.e. someone who could only do little short spoofs. So, while others got to make films of ten-minute or twenty-minute or thirty-minute lengths, I made little faux coming attractions. Even though I didn’t know him at the time, David Wechter directed a wonderful piece called School, Girls, and You, and Danny De Vito made his directorial debut on the show.
My contributions were a faux coming attraction for Broadway on Cable for a new musical version of The Elephant Man, called Elephant. Sound familiar? Of course it does, because years later the film The Tall Guy would do exactly the same bit, right down to calling it Elephant – only using Lloyd Webber as the musical style rather than Jerry Herman. Ours was pretty funny – our faux Elephant musical starred Anthony Newley (“in the role he was born to play” – in fact, played by me), Sammy Davis, Jr. as Dr. Treves (played by a Sammy look-a-like), and Carol Channing as The Actress (played by a female impersonator). The voices for Sammy and Carol were done by a wonderful impressionist named Roy Firestone (no one does a better Newley than I). There were several snippets of musical numbers, including the opening –
Who, who, who, who, WHO
Is the Elephant Man?
Why does he wear a hood?
Is he a bad elephant
Or is he good?
Who, who, who, who, WHO
Is the elephant man?
– a song for Sammy as Dr. Treves –
He’s wild, he’s cool
He ain’t nobody’s fool
This cat is like no other
He ain’t heavy, no, he’s my brother
– a song for Newley as the Elephant Man –
I have a deformity
Of some enormity
They call me the Elephant Man
I don’t look like Paul Newman
Or any other human
You’ve seen
I’m the Elephant Man
I’m the Elephant Man
And I’m happy to be
The Elephant Man
– and a little snippet for Carol. We had choreography, and the bit became something of a minor cult thing because the show was repeated endlessly. I also did a spoof of adult soap operas on cable, called The Lays Of Our Lives. It starred Debralee Scott, Gerritt Graham, and, as a gynecologist, Timothy Carey (don’t ask – it was frightening and hilarious). We did a really short coming attraction for Young Comics Night on cable – featuring an eight-year-old. We did two others in that initial batch, but each of the first two shows ran long, so they never got past the rough edit phase (I think). One was a made for cable sequel to Tess, again with Debralee and Gerritt (I recall not thinking it came out very well), and a re-shot version of the Leone western spoof from my faux trailer – this time with me as Clint and Timothy Carey as the villain. I wish that had gotten on the air – it was pretty funny. I have a rough cut of it on some Beta tape – maybe I’ll try to find it and have it transferred.
They brought me back for the third show – for that I wrote a James Bond song spoof for the title sequence, called Heartbreaker, a piece David Jablin directed. I directed and wrote a coming attraction for a live concert on cable called Barry In Concert, a spoof of Mr. Manilow, with me as Barry, and my backup gals, Penny Peyser, Marsha Kramer, and an LACC grad who’d been in Together Again, Gracie Moore. That bit was comprised of four different Barry song spoofs – it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. I can’t remember if there was one more beyond that. But when David Jablin produced a cable movie called The Ratings Game, which Danny De Vito starred in and directed, he again called me, this time to write a LOT of music – the film was about a mythical TV network and I had to create the theme music for all its shows, as well as a song for the affiliates dinner. I had so much fun doing that and the stuff is so accurate that it’s really scary – any one of those themes could have been on any number of series – some were title songs, some were just music. I remember they wanted a musical theme for a faux Saturday morning cartoon show called The Goombas – just something really short, as it was just going to be a title card and some narration behind it. But I had an idea, and I wrote a song instead. When they heard it, they flipped, and they decided to animate the whole thing, and it’s one of the highlights of the film. Someday I’m going to put all that stuff on a CD and get it out there.
A decade went by, and I finally heard from David again – he was producing and directing some cable thing called The Execution of Frank Musso, with Joe Mantegna in the lead. David wanted a song for either Tony Bennett or someone like him, to be sung at this execution – a big, TV special-style real execution. He had some dummy lyrics, all of which I pretty much changed, and then I wrote kind of a My Way kind of song. Because they hadn’t booked Mr. Bennett yet, I kept asking if they were sure they were getting him or at least someone like him because once we set the key and recorded it, there was no going back without having to redo the entire session. They assured me it would be Mr. Bennett or another singer like him. So, we set a key I thought would be good, I did the scratch vocal, and we had a big chorus and a full orchestra, with a chart by Lanny Meyers, who also conducted. It was a great session and the song came out really well and sounded like a million bucks. They were thrilled with it. Filming began. They didn’t get Tony Bennett. They didn’t get another singer like him. They got Pia Zadora. That’s right, they got Pia Zadora. They called to ask what to do about the key, which, in her voice, made her sound like a basso profundo. I told them that I’d told them there was nothing that could be done. She sounded like a basso profundo and that was that. Funny stuff.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because frankly I am zonked large and need to get my beauty sleep.
Yesterday, Sunday, a day of rest, I got up at eight. I really wanted to do the long jog, but it was slate gray out and really chilly, and I was just too nervous about it raining, so I didn’t do it. I did work on the Illya Darling liner notes for a while, and then I went over to Grant Geissman’s home environment to mix the Nudie Musical demo. We began at eleven and didn’t finish until six-thirty. Even though there wasn’t much to mix, it still took a really long time, what with eighteen songs and all (there are twenty in the show, but two of them weren’t necessary for the demo – and I don’t include any of the little audition songs or the Dick Davis bits). We took a break to have a late lunch at the Hamburger Hamlet – it was really quite yummilicious. The Hamlet is a really hit or miss kind of jernt – sometimes great, sometimes horrible. Today was great. After finishing the mix, I came home, finished the Illya Darling liner notes (leaving one paragraph unfinished because I’m waiting for one more piece of information), did some Nudie revising of a couple of new bits David and I came up with (we’re trying to lock in the script now for our upcoming reading), and I began a motion picture on DVD, but had no patience and had more work to do. Some day of rest.
Today, I have to go listen to some master tapes at one, but other than that I have no plans and I intend to keep it that way. Tonight, I’m sitting on my couch like so much fish and I’ll finish the movie I started.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog (no matter what), I must listen to master tapes and make a decision on whether to do the project, I must write an Illya blurb and send it and mp3s to my webgal, and I must get back to proofing the new novel. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite made for cable shows? What was the first original made for cable show you remember seeing? Did you like it? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and let’s have many likely stories.