I know I have written about my early ambitions and days in Los Angeles. Though I had announced myself (inexplicably, even unto today) to the profession of attorney when I was fourteen, once I was in college, and introduced to college radio and the idea of becoming a television script writer, my commitment to being a lawyer wavered. I had always loved movies and television. But this period of my life had introduced me to the possibility of being part of the making of the product. Just before I attended law school (knowing how success in creative work is truly elusive), I partnered with my college/WFUV friend Len to seek fame and fortune in sitcom writing. There was a potential agent, at William Morris in New York, no less, but it seemed that our purpose was to be bodies coming in and out of his office showing traffic rather than getting any real headway. He didn't last there, and thus, neither did we. We made several visits to "the Coast" with tantalizing moments of "maybe this time something will happen". We became friends with a truly successful television writer/producer, also a Fordham alum. He showed us around the set of MASH, and we met the stars of the show, including a famous Fordham alum, Alan Alda. We had speculation scripts for MASH, for One Day at a Time, and such, and even had created our own sitcom.
I finished law school and got a license in New York, just in case, and then when I moved to Los Angeles in 1981, I knew I had better get a license there as well, just in case. I was a dutiful follower of "just in case" which, as it turned out was probably wise. When you are young though, you feel like a slug, never launching into real life. My partner couldn't move then, but I hoped that once I was here, which I loved anyway because of the weather, and because it was so unlike New York, I would continue to write while passing the Bar and holding a job. I sort of did. At the time, one of my favorite shows was Remington Steele, and I wrote, at least partially, a speculation script for them, but then the show was cancelled. Len and I talked the future of our writing, if memory serves and there remained hopes. But life takes over, and passing the Bar and having a decent salary and getting a new job at the State Bar as a prosecutor, accounted for most of my time. In 1997, some fourteen years after me, Len did move to California as did his new writing partner. I had been working at the State Bar by then for eleven years. I still dabbled on my own, and without any connection to get inside. You don't just send scripts. There are often in house writers, and those jobs are understandably jealousy guarded. I worked as an attorney for 30 years, 25 of them at the State Bar. After I was retired, I still dabbled. Even within the last couple of years, I "created" a sitcom about the last renter in an otherwise all condo building and his adventures. But now, with the internet and web series, and how you get noticed, it all seems harder than it was before, and it was harder, and I guess my energy for such things has diminished considerably. Also, I find myself thinking more of final things, sorry to be so dramatic, but when you get to my age, it is pretty dramatic, thus much of my thoughts are about Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. It's not really as morbid as it might sound. This life is incredibly short as our parents warned us, and if you believe in eternity, which I do, there is something and Someone more important to prepare for. But still, I am in this world, though working to be less of it, and certain things just tug from time to time.
And so it was when Len, my old college friend, who still lives here and has produced a web series, Here to There, with his partner, Chris, suggested that we go to a taping of the reboot of Frasier. We both loved the original series, and both of us thought that though reboots are often unsuccessful, that this one was defying the odds. If the desire to be part of the studio audience is any measure, then Frasier is certainly a success in its new incarnation. The second season has promised to bring back more of the characters from the original series, and we wondered if one of them, Bebe Glazer, Frazier's unhinged agent, engagingly played by Harriet Harris, would be one of them. It was on Stage 18 of the Paramount Lot. Just stepping, or in our case, carried in a Golf cart by one of the young tour guide/staff onto the lot had me peering down the Road Not Taken. The particular stage, was built in 1941, and among the art produced there was Rear Window, with James Stewart and Grace Kelly. That incredible set, the one with the garden, the apartments with their unique residents, the fire escapes, the brick buildings so like the ones I grew up in in the Bronx, that evokes my childhood every time I see the film, that set was on this stage. It is at the door of this stage that Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, meets up with Cecil B. DeMille. Oh, and lots of television shows, including Star Trek DS9 and Voyager were filmed here, tantalizing facts for a fan. When you looked up, there was the original catwalk all around the building.
Watching the actors, the director, the make up artists, the rest of the production staff at work amid the beautifully crafted multiple sets, made me happy and wistful. I love it when the actors try a bit, and even when they make mistakes. Kelsey Grammar would say "What's the line?" and then quickly moved back into character. People do not realize what an effort it is to deliver the lines because they are often changed while filming is going on. There is a moment, that if you see the episode, ought to make you laugh as hard as it did me, when Ms. Harris as Bebe Glazer emphasizes a line with a lick of a swizzle stick. As I sat there, I thought, "I could write for this show" especially as some of the lines seemed to fit in with my particular style. Well, at least I thought so. The whimsy of what if. Studio lots feel like college campuses. I was really comfortable at my college campus, at that little radio station WFUV in Keating Hall, doing classical music, editing tapes (the really old way), a rock show or two, a poetry show and a radio sitcom. I could have been real comfortable at a studio and a stage like Stage 18.
The theme song of Frasier, which I only recently heard discussed by Grammar and the theme writer, Bruce Miller, really speaks to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPj-pNBfOJQ
It really is about life, Frasier's life (though not specifically mentioned) as a psychiatrist and human being trying to mosey his way through in optimism when so much is not optimistic, and our own, and on this occasion, mine. Life is mixed up. It's full of all sorts of things.
Hey baby, I hear the blues a-callin',
Tossed salad and scrambled eggs
Oh My
Mercy
And maybe I seem a bit confused,
Yeah maybe, but I got you pegged!
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha!
But I don't know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs.
They're callin' again.
Scrambled eggs all over my face. What is a boy to do.
Goodnight, everybody.
Credit to Quora for the above
Even though I was a lawyer for 30 plus years (if you count the time in New York), I have always felt a little confused and uncertain about the choice that I did make. From a practical perspective, it was the best approach. I have a good life in retirement because of that choice, mostly, as often I say, guided by my late Depression era father. And I suppose that now I indulge some of those creative urges, writing this blog, doing a little podcast ( Ordinary Old Catholic Me, though I know you didn't ask), and still occasionally noodling with script ideas that will never get through the studio walls largely because of my erstwhile profession who make everything a potential lawsuit. There's always a chance something I write might make it past the parapets of Hollywood, if I have enough energy to assail the towers--but truthfully I don't. And those things that called again when I sat in that studio audience, with my former writing partner, is a different and more sober experience, than when they first called when I was a 25 year old just considering a move to Hollywood and everything was possible.
But of course, life itself keeps calling until the last breath. There is hope in that.
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