ABOUT THAT TITLE....

Okay, I bet your wondering about the title of this cockamamie thing. Well, 'The Bad Pitch" is a sitcom writer's term. Basically, when a bunch of writers are in "THE ROOM" working on, or 'BREAKING" a story, we'll often use what's called "THE BAD PITCH" to proffer a story idea or "JOKE". It means, 'here's the obvious, not terribly original, probably not too funny version of what I'm thinking of and if you guys think it's a road we want to go down, then we'll come up with "THE GOOD VERSION".

A sample Bad Pitch: "So, what if Rerun says to the trampy girl, and here's the bad pitch, 'Hey, you're really trashy." And then she makes a fat joke about how he eats out of the trash." Which, after hours of work turns into this piece of comic dialogue:

RERUN: Girl, you're like a HIgh School on Sundays... no class.

SMART ALECK GIRL: Gee, Rerun that's so smart, they might accept you into Yale.

RERUN: Really? Yale in Connecticut?

SMART ALECK GIRL: No I mean Yale, in New Yersey.


That exchange took seven hours to perfect. But perfect it we did. And Fred Berry made that scene just sing. I miss him every day.

"HOW ARE YOU?!"

If, like me, you didn't spend the past 90 years in a cave somewhere crazy, you'll recognize those words as the etetrnal catchprhase of the great Phil Silvers, the inspiration, if you will, for my nom de mouse... get it? If you do, then you have a sense of humor, unlike the morons running TV networks and studios and Hollywood talent agencies these days. Those people are the least funny, least "with it" human beings on the face of this earth. "But how do you really feel?"

Remember that line? Sure you do, it's funny is why. Think it wrote itself? Think it just sprang wholly from the lips of the actor who first uttered it on a little show called "Carter Country"? Think again, O Great Nimcompoop from the East. A writer wrote that line. A writer fought like hell to get that line broadcast on the American Broadcasting Company. Did that writer realize at the time he had discovered a whole new vein of comedy gold? That writer would be lying if he told you he did. But he did know it was FRESH. And FRESH is what the comedy writer's life is all about. What's new? What's now? What hasn't been done before? And once the writer finds that mysterious something FRESH, then he's free to use it all he wants. That's the beauty of this game that I've been proud to practice for these past 30 plus years.

So welcome to my blog. Here's where you'll get the straight dope from a straight dope. You'll get the true stories behind some of TVs greatest sitcoms and the abosolute pricks who produced and starred in these shows ("But how do you really feel?") You'll learn about the writer's life... and the life's writer. By which I mean LOVE. Love of a good woman, love of children and grandchildren. But mostly, and let's be honest, love of a nice fat paycheck.

To finish this first post with the words of a character I once created in a pilot (don't ask the name, it never got on -- the pricks killed it)... "Daddy, that looks like a WHOLE LOT of meatballs." A whole lot of meatballs indeed. And I'm gonna share them all with you.

ENJOY!