Creating Television Conversations with the People Behind 50 Years of American TV LEA's Communication Series Jennings Bryant/Dolf Zillmann, General Editors Selected titles in the series include: Butler • Television: Critical Methods and Applications, Second Edition Bryant/Bryant • Television and the American Family, Second Edition Eastman • Research in Media Promotion Fisch/Truglio • "G" is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street Kubey/Csikszentmihalyi • Television and the Quality of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday Experience Sterling/Kittross • Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting, Third Edition For a complete list of titles in LEA's Communication Series, please contact Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, at www.erlbaum.com. Creating Television Conversations with the People Behind 50 Years of American TV Robert Kubey Rutgers University LawrenceErlbaumAssociates,Publishers 2004 Mahwah, New Jersey London Senior Acquisitions Editor: Linda Bathgate Editorial Assistant: Karin Wittig Bates Cover Design: Robert Kubey Cover Layout: Marino Belich Textbook Production Manager: Paul Smolenski Full-Service & Composition: UG / GGS Information Services, Inc. Text and Cover Printer: Hamilton Printing Company Cover Photo Credits: Photo of Steve Allen, courtesy of Meadowlane Enterprises, Inc. & steveallen.com; Jay Sandrich with Bill Cosby, courtesy of Jay Sandrich; the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, courtesy of Ed Asner; Bart Simpson, courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox/Photofest; the cast of Seinfeld, Ron Howard with Henry Winkler, and Aida Turturro with James Gandolfini all courtesy of Photofest. This book was typeset in 11/13 pt. Minion. The heads were typeset in ITC Symbol Bold and Minion Bold. Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microfilm, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, New Jersey 07430 www.erlbaum.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Creating television : conversations with the people behind 50 years of American TV' / Robert Kubey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-1076-5 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8058-1077-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Television broadcasting—United States. 2. Television producers and directors—United States—Interviews. 3. Television actors and actresses—United States— Interviews. 4. Television writers—United States—Interviews. I. Kubey, Robert William, 1952- PN1992.3.U5C742004 2003060386 Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 Contents Preface vtt Chapter 1 Introduction: Bringing Television Creators to Life Chapter 2 Individual Creativity in a Collaborative Medium 9 Chapter 3 The Pioneers: Creating the First Decade 23 Sid Caesar 27 Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf 33 Leonard Stern 41 Steve Allen 53 Fred deCordova 59 Agnes Nixon 69 David Levy 77 Grant Tinker 91 Lee Rich 101 Carroll Pratt 113 Chapter 4 Writer-Producers: Creating Breakthrough Television 121 Susan Harris 125 Matt Groening 137 Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz 153 Larry David 165 Allan Burns 173 VI Contents Chapters A Different Kind of Writer 187 Aria Sorkin Manson 189 T. S. Cook 203 Jean Rouverol 215 Bob Ellison 227 Chapter 6 A Different Kind of Producer 231 Gary Smith 233 Marty Pasetta 245 Dave Bell 253 Bruce Sallan 265 Chapter 7 Two Directors 283 Jay Sandrich 285 Walter Grauman 297 Chapter 8 The Actors 307 Ed Asner 311 Betty White 321 Henry Winkler 331 Jason Alexander 341 Aida Turturro 359 Paul Petersen 373 Chapter 9 The Agents 395 Jeremy Zimmer 397 Bill Haber 409 Jay Bernstein 415 Ray Solley 427 Chapter 10 A Different Kind of Executive 445 Frank Dawson 447 Gerry Laybourne 463 Chris Albrecht 475 References 481 Photo Credits 485 Index 487 Preface I began research for this book in 1987 as a fellow of the newly-founded Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers University. My intent was to explore how television creators did their work and how creators' life histories, and their youthful experiences, influenced the work they did. I was curious to know how individual creativity survived in a col- laborative, commercial medium like television. In reviewing what is said in these interviews, it's notable that a fair num- ber of interviewees talk about "going with their gut" or their "instinct." Chris Albrecht, the CEO of HBO, reports that a defining moment in his career occurred when veteran agent and producer Jack Rollins told him, "Listen to the gut of the performer. What's right for them, what they think is right for them, because nine out of ten times it will be right." Actor Henry Winkler made an unusual demand when first asked to play The Fonz, a de- mand that could have cost him the role. Asked how he had the nerve to do what he did, he says, "I went with my instinct. When I speak to young peo- ple, I say 'Your instinct is more powerful than you will ever know and when your instinct comes clear, do not second guess yourself, no matter what.'" Asked what makes his musical specials unique, Gary Smith says, "The show comes from here. I'm pointing to my stomach. I'm not pointing to my eye or my brain. If it doesn't work here, it doesn't work. This part, eyes and brain, are relatively easy. You can work at this, this is craft, this is technique. I am now pointing at eyes and brain. This can be learned. I don't think things in the gut can be learned. I think this is intuitive." In the process of creating television, there are so many other people working on programs, and so many pressures—especially in a place like Hollywood—that it is easy to lose sight of what one is trying to create, and to let others redefine what you started out to do. One can quickly lose control, vision, and voice in a project. VII viii Preface One of the things that studying the interviews has taught me is how important it is to be clear in your mind (and your gut) what you want to accomplish. In any large endeavor, whether it's a television series or most anything else, you're going to work very hard and devote great effort. If you don't believe in the work, how will you possibly apply the necessary ener- gies? If it somehow succeeds despite your ambivalence, you won't be happy or proud of the final product. If it is hardly seen or is never made, you might even be relieved. Any way you cut it, you'll be working at cross purposes with yourself. But finding out what you want to do isn't always easy. For some, it may be the single hardest thing to do in life—finding one's path. I should say paths. The interviews also exemplify the different and circuitous routes peo- ple take in the development of a career, and a life. Many of the interviews in the pages ahead are odysseys of becoming, of gradual self-actualization. Understanding how lives and careers unfold is among the valuable lessons that can be taken from the stories told in these interviews. The interviews also remind us that there are many forces in life that will interfere with and teach us not to listen to ourselves, our feelings, and our passion about something. Another important lesson is that if the work matters, money isn't so cru- cially important. When wealth is discussed, creators who once didn't have much money and now have a great deal tell us that they've come to the con- clusion that money isn't all it's cracked up to be. Neither fame nor money will buy happiness. Doing work that one likes and feels good about can bring happiness. Freud was well on the mark when he observed that work and love are the two elements of life critical to happiness. It's an idea worth repeating. After all, our culture is awash in messages that tell us hour after hour that the good life is one spent being acquisitive and self-indulgent. Ultimately, these things go together: learning to go with what makes one happy, what feels artistically and creatively right, and the lesson that the greater rewards in life come from work (and love), not from material objects. Having thought a lot about the life themes of the creators presented in this book, and the many others whom I've interviewed, I've had occasion to think of my own career path, and doing so helps me understand why I began this work and have stuck with it over the years. Some of the formative expe- riences in my early life occurred in community theater. In my childhood, theater taught many lessons about performance, about the teamwork and constant rehearsal involved in putting a show together, and also how the audience changed every night and how no two performances were ever the same. Later, as a teenager, I taught myself to make films. In my first year of college, I began to formally study psychology. My first paper applied psycho- analytic theory to understanding the filmgoing experience. I had no idea as a freshman that many years later my doctoral dissertation and first book, Tele- vision and the Quality of Life, would similarly explore how people experience television in the course of everyday life. P r efa c e ix One of the findings from that research was how television viewing could inculcate and reinforce passivity in the viewer. Among the solutions pro- posed in the book, and in much of my subsequent work, is media education. In Media Literacy in the Information Age, my next book, each contributor focused on how media education was being developed in schools in their country as a way to foster more critical, active, and empowering use of the media (Kubey, 1997/2001). Creating Television is a third, related contribu- tion insofar as rewarding use of media is brought about by understanding how media are created. I've tried in the interviews, and in their editing, to bring each person alive on the page, so that you might get to know these creators of television as I have. I believe the book will be helpful to those interested in how televi- sion is created, and I hope it will contribute to more informed criticism and appreciation of the medium. (There might even be a reciprocal effect. As Walt Whitman wrote, "To have great poets there must be great audiences, too.") I also hope readers will see how people themselves are made, how peo- ple create themselves through their work. These individuals have brought television alive for me. I hope they do for you as well. Acknowledgments It was upon learning of the recent death of my college advisor, creativity psy- chologist Frank X. Barron, that I began to think of more than 30 years of personal connection to the psychology of creativity. Barron was already an eminent figure in the field when I first encountered him in the fall of 1970 at College V, the arts college, at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Barron wasn't the only psychologist interested in art and creativity at College V. Another was Pavel Machotka, with whom I worked, and from whom I also learned a great deal. One unforgettable psychology professor at Santa Cruz was Michael Kahn. It was in his class that I wrote "Psychoanaly- sis of the Filmgoer." In addition to providing a superb introduction to psy- chology and to Freud, Kahn had once been a television actor, especially in Westerns. I saw in Kahn that psychology and the performing arts could be related. In 1976, as a doctoral student in the Committee on Human Develop- ment at the University of Chicago, I took a class in adolescent psychology with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in which I first learned about his newly emerging concept of flow (1975), became familiar with his studies in creativ- ity, and that same year began to use the Experience Sampling Method to study audience experience and behavior. Mike chaired my dissertation work, and wrote Television and the Quality of Life with me. We have continued to publish together all these years later. These were my key mentors in the psychology of creativity. For cen- turies, people have known that creative work is fostered by periods of