40 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK – A SHORT LIVED TV CAREER

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

I’ve talked many times about the events of 1979 and 1980 that eventually led to my move to Los Angeles at the beginning of 1981. Various factions had been hinting over that time that if we were in LA, we’d have a better chance of getting the national acclaim we were hoping for. We made the move, but not without some things already happening. There were two things, to be exact, both of which still pay residuals (usually about $6 after taxes) 40 years later. One was The Pee Wee Herman Show, which gave us something to do every Saturday night, and eventually led to an HBO special later in the summer. More immediate was an episode of the sitcom “Mork & Mindy,” written especially for us around the fact that Ruby, my stage partner, was six months pregnant. The producers had seen us touring with Robin Williams in 1979 and had been looking for a premise to build an episode around.

The episode wrote itself, as flimsy as the premise was. For that matter, the episode was titled “Mork & Mindy Meet Rick & Ruby,” not exactly a title that the writers wracked their brains to create. The plot centered around two singers that were fired from the local club due to the female singer being pregnant, and the pub’s owner, Remo (played by the late Jay Thomas in one of the more substantial parts that he got in the year he was on the show), facing the wrath of Mindy for what she perceived was sexism. But then, our band’s name was The Stupids, and we supposedly played songs no one wanted to hear. There’s that small detail of who would hire a band with that sort of repertoire, but that detail was sort of cast aside for the sake of continuity, I guess.

What really dawned on me was I had never really acted before, that my strong suit was live performing, plus I was uncomfortable without a guitar strapped on. So it became a week-long acting lesson, having to work with a script that I wasn’t comfortable with. Ruby was able to throw some of her stage lines in, and it also had become more evident with the exposure we had been getting over the previous couple years, that critics understood what she was about, but had difficulty figuring out who my stage persona was. My extreme shyness created additional problems in that I couldn’t seem to deliver the scripted lines in much more than a stiff monotone. At one point Pam Dawber (“Mindy”) tried to help by saying, “It’s just talking,” to which I said “I know, but I’m boring when I talk, too,” which generated my biggest laugh of the week.

The producers and directors had bigger problems than my lack of acting prowess, as Robin was really getting annoyed with the show. Mork & Mindy was in its third season (of four), and while he got along very well with the other performers, he was hating pretty much everything else about it, except his salary, which was over $50000 a week (In contrast, we received $1500 each for that week). We needed to be on the set at 7:00 each morning, and when we broke around 5:00 each day, Robin needed to wind down from the restrictions that a TV series imposed, even one which allowed him to improvise, something no sitcom did before, and few have done since. He would hit up the two main comedy clubs in LA, The Improv and The Comedy Store, and manage his way on to both club stages for 30-45 minutes, and hopefully get to jam with some improv group, then live the “Hollywood Dream” until the clubs closed. There was one day where he showed up two hours late on set, with little slits for eyes, and at one point fell asleep while the director was giving him instructions.

It was also a shame he was so distracted, for he was the reason we were guesting on the show. Sadly, we hardly saw him off the set that week, as he had to meet with his attorneys every lunch hour. He was being sued by some comics that claimed he stole material, something which would dog him for most of his career. In his defense, if you’re sitting on the panel on the Tonight Show, and your mind has been absorbing material from all sources, something hits you in the moment, and you blurt it out, not taking the time to check what the source was. I almost felt honoured that he used a bit of mine (Elmer Fudd as a Rock Star) on one of his albums.

I think the only time I was loose that whole week was on the day of recording the episode to a live audience. From the time the audience gets seated until the actual recording starts can be somewhere around an hour. Fortunately for me, we were using a backing band of our keyboardist Raoul (Joshua Brody), plus a bass and drums, and we were set up as the audience was waiting. We did close to a half hour of some good and bad songs, plus Robin sat in with us on harmonica doing his blues parody. That was fun for him, fun for us, and especially fun for the audience.

Thankfully, I did better as an actor on The Pee Wee Herman Show, but that was because I had a hand in writing my lines, plus we continued to make improvements as the show evolved. My TV career didn’t evolve beyond those two shows. It’s interesting that for both Pee Wee and Mork, I continue to get residual payments from the shows 40 years later. If either show airs anywhere in the world in reruns, I get paid. When the shows were put in box sets, or DVDs, or any other form of airplay, I would also get paid. I remember one Comedy Store comic had a great line about residuals. He asked, “What other job would that happen? If you were working in a warehouse, is there any employer that would say, ‘I really like the way you moved those boxes a year ago, I’m gonna pay you again!'” Exactly!

February 19th, 2021



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