On the air with Burgess Meredith

This week happens to be Celebrity Week over at Rich Siegel's Round Seventeen. Being a Hollywood kid I was thinking, "Hey, I've worked with celebrities. I can write about that too." I'm not the kind of person who steals ideas, and especially since he's my friend I don't like to steal them from Rich (except those ABC ads he did at Chiat - man, they look great in my book). But in this instance, I have his blessing. So here we go.

Burgess Meredith has always been one of my acting heroes. An actor's actor, he made his most lasting impact during the golden era of television, including several classic Twilight Zone episodes, and later in his career in movies - particularly the Rocky films.

Years ago when I was freelancing at BBDO, Coldwell Banker was going through different voice overs to see who they wanted to use in their national campaign. I wasn't on the business, but on the day they were going to record Burgess Meredith, the writer who was happened to be out sick. So I was asked to fill in for him.

That autograph on the picture above reads, "Good Luck! from Burgess Meredith" I was terrified. I was going to need it.

I drove out to L.A. Studios early, just to make sure I didn't get held up in traffic. Even though I didn't know him yet, I had the distinct impression Meredith didn't like to be kept waiting.

When he arrived, it was in a black town car. Out of the car first was his beautiful, young - really young - blonde companion. She helped him out of the car and brought him in the studio. Then she simply disappeared. Never saw her again inside or outside the studio.

When we were introduced, I told him I was a huge fan of his work, to which he replied, pointing at the booth, "You want me in there?"

Two memories come to mind. First is I'm sure the last thing Burgess Meredith was looking for at that point in his career was some lowly agency copywriter telling him how to read a line. But what I found out was he actually appreciated it. Throughout the session, he wanted to know if I was getting what I wanted and if I had any direction for him. I don't know whether he meant it or was just being nice. Either way, it put me more at ease and made me feel as if I had some modicum of control over the session.

The second thing I remember is he had a spittoon. Right there on the floor, next to the music stand holding the copy he was reading.

Here's how it went: read, spit. Read, spit. Read, work up a good one, work it a little more, then spit. Suffice it to say there was a lot of throat-clearing, followed by a lot of hocking up some extremely colorful juju into the spittoon. Since we were in a recording studio, and he was in front of a microphone, all of us in the booth heard every take-off and landing in crystal clear, stereophonic Dolby™ sound.

I'm sure the clean-up crew was grateful he was a good aim.

If you've never worked in a recording studio, the thing to know is the engineers are like traffic court judges. They've heard it all. And the one I was working with did a masterful job editing out Meredith's long breaths between lines, as well as, shall we say, the more, um, rattle-y parts of his read.

By the end of the session I was finally comfortable giving him direction, and we were actually talking about some of his work. I only got to spend a little over an hour listening to that voice, seeing him work and giving him direction. It's still one of the high points of my, for lack of a better word, career.

It didn't go nearly that well with Hector Elizondo. I pissed him off something fierce. Another time.

A cautionary tail

I worked with this art director once. He'd been a friend for years, but was also the most ambitious person I'd ever known. At the expense of anyone and anything - including his friends - he put his ambition above everything else.

And while usually anything starting with "naked" is something you want to see, when the next word is ambition it isn't very pretty. It doesn't always work in your favor.

For example, not too long ago I was in an interesting position. For several reasons, a leadership vacuum had been created where I was working. In spite of it, the team pulled together to make sure everything got done and nothing fell between the cracks. Everyone on the team was freelance, including the last person in who was a junior art director of debatable talent.

The debate wasn't how much, it was if he had any at all.

But even though he was a junior, he had big plans. He taught us all that apparently there is an "I" in team, because one Friday he scurried in to the head of marketing's office, and without telling the rest of the team who'd been there considerably longer, and worked considerably harder, presented a plan for a huge project that the team was supposed to meet about and work on together. He said he wanted to be the point person on it, and in what can only be described as a complete lack of judgment, if not consciousness, the head of marketing said okay.

I suppose there are two ways to look at the situation. One is you could admire the fact this junior art director saw an opportunity to advance and took it, consequences be damned.

The other way - the way I see it - is that this under-qualified, universally disliked and obnoxious little twerp basically betrayed everyone he worked with for his personal gain, without having thought through the fact no one else on the team would lift a finger to execute whatever alleged vision he had for the project.

When the team refused to work with him, it reminded me of that scene in The Right Stuff. He wanted to do it by himself. We were happy to oblige.

Shortly thereafter, the rest of us also went into the head of marketing's office and gave our point of view on the art director, his vision, and his lack of ability and talent to execute it - and made sure he was clear on the fact that the art director would not be receiving any help from us.

Interestingly enough, the following day was this art director's last. And the team carried out the project - with our original idea of how it should work as well as a brutal deadline - without a hitch.

I'll be the very first to admit I've always had a healthy disdain for the phrase "team player."

Imagine my surprise to find out I've been one the whole time.

Guilty pleasures Part 6: Peggy Sue Got Married

Welcome to the sixth installment of my Guilty Pleasures series. I don't know if you happened to catch posts 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. But if not, now's the perfect time to hop on board. Go ahead and read them. I'll wait.

Done? Okay. Good. Let's light this candle.

As an only child of older Jewish parents, a blog series called Guilty Pleasures could apply to a wide variety of things. Anything from a grilled ham and cheese sandwich to a Phillip Roth novel. But this series is about movies.

And the movie this post is about is Peggy Sue Got Married.

It's the story of a girl named Peggy Sue who goes back in time to when she was in high school. She gets the chance to map out a different course for her life, speak to long-departed relatives and change the future for people she likes. For example, she advises one friend, the nerdy Richard Norvik played by Barry Miller, to buy Apple stock in the future (later on in the movie, Richard is the one friend she confides to about her time travel).

Nic Cage plays her husband Charlie, and he's also the reason many people hated the movie. One acting choice he made was to play the character in a really high, nasally, whiny voice. Like Chandler's girlfriend on Friends except without the accent. Another was to wear fake teeth that were gigantic and white like Mr. Ed's.

In high school, Charlie has dreams of being a singer like Dion, even auditioning for a musical agent without telling anyone. But since Peggy comes from the future, she knows his destiny is to be the "Crazy Eddie" of his time, famous not for his singing but for his loud, corny and sad television commercials.

While back in time, Peggy meets Michael Fitzsimmons, played by Kevin J. O'Connor, a kind of beat poet character who represents all the wildness and freedom her life hasn't given her. But during her time in the past, even though there are problems, she remembers what it first was about Charlie that made her fall in love with him.

The premise of the movie - going back - is something I'm strongly drawn to. There's a point in the film where Peggy answers a phone, and it's her grandmother. It takes her breath away, because her grandma has been gone for years. It resonates (apologies for using a marketing word) strongly with me. It's not hard to figure out why. There are a lot of people - my parents, my grandparents and too many friends - that I'd give anything to talk to one more time.

Whether it's a film called Creator with Peter O'Toole where he played a college professor trying to clone his departed wife, or the departed Jor-el telling Superman what he'll mean to the people of Earth, the idea of going back, having one more chance to say what needs to be said, is a powerful one for me.

If you look closely, you'll see Peggy Sue Got Married also has more than a few recognizable faces in supporting roles, including Jim Carrey, Catherine Hicks, Joan Allen, Maureen O' Sullivan, Helen Hunt, Marshall Crenshaw and Sofia Coppola.

The movie was directed by Francis Ford Coppola long after The Godfather, Rumble Fish and The Conversation. It's fair to say Peggy Sue Got Married is considered one of his most inconsequential efforts.

Unless you've ever had a dream, lost a loved one or wanted a second chance.

In the midnight hour

There was a time, back in the day, when midnight shows were special. Not just the time slot, but the films themselves. It was the witching hour, a twilight time reserved for something you couldn't get during the day. Something that would scare you. Make you think. Make you laugh. Or, in the case of Pink Flamingos, completely gross you out.

Long before the word interactive applied to a screen, it applied to a bigger screen. The midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show were the first genuine interactive movie theater experience.

People would come to the theater dressed in costume, yell back lines at the screen and act out scenes in the aisles. During the wedding scene, the audience threw rice at the screen. When they proposed a toast, the audience threw toast. During the storm, they sprayed water in the theater.

If you've never seen the movie, it stars a very young Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon. Tim Curry, in the role that made him, plays Dr. Frank N. Furter. He's the one in fishnets.

Sadly, today the studios have turned the midnight show into a money-making time slot the night before the official opening of a movie. Any and every movie. It bumps up the box office, and lets them brag about it in bigger type Monday morning.

But if you can find a midnight show of Rocky Horror - and there are still a few - it's an interactive experience you'll never forget.

And if you don't know the Time Warp, it's just a jump to the left, and then a step to the r-i-i-i-i-ght.

Tread lightly

Is it wrong to love a tire?

Here's the thing. I used to drive a performance car. In fact, I've written about it here before. If I may quote myself, and really, who's going to stop me:

"I used to drive an Audi A6. Of all the cars I've owned, it was my favorite (my least favorite was my first - a 1965 Plymouth Fury, don't get me started). I'd get behind the wheel of my A6 and hit the curved freeway onramp by my house at 70 mph. It stuck like glue. After all, it was a car built for the autobahn. I’ve since tried it with my Lexus ES350. Come to find out it's not exactly the same experience."

Well, after I pulled the onramp stunt with the Lexus, I decided when the time came to replace the Bridgestones that came with the car - and it couldn't come fast enough - I was going to get performance tires and see if it made any difference on a car built for luxury.

SPOILER ALERT: The answer is "Hell yeah!"

When the Bridgestones finally wore down, I went to America's Tire Store for replacements thinking I'd get something like the sporty Michelins. I'd never really considered Yoko's because they were expensive, low profile, the tread wore fast, yada yada yada. But then the tire guy helping me said the magic word: Grip.

From that point on, money was no object. I can't remember which model Yoko's I got, but he wasn't lying.

The minute the car was done, even on the slow roll out of the parking lot I could feel the difference. When I hit that onramp again at 70mph - and if my kids are reading this you should never, ever do that - it was amazing. Like I was Krazy glued to the road.

After that Lexus was totaled (read all about it), I got another one. And I once again find myself playing a waiting game until the tires wear down, or until I have a few hundred to spare for new Yoko's.

I've always liked tire stores. I love the smell of new tires, the pressurized air, the way you can bounce and roll the tires from one end of the shop to the other. I am easily entertained.

I've discovered that, besides new wiper blades, tires are the cheapest investment you can make in your car that offer the most tangible difference.

I was going to end this post with "something something, because that's how I roll."

But I think we both know I'm better than that.

Hoskins in Hollywoodland

A great, great actor died yesterday. Bob Hoskins was 71, and he leaves us one remarkable performance after another. It's hard to know where to start - Roger Rabbit, The Long Good Friday, Brazil, Nixon - when you talk about his films.

To me, like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Hoskins was similar to Gene Hackman in the sense that he was brilliant no matter how good or bad the film. His was the performance you looked forward to.

One that sadly not a lot of people saw was in a small film called Hollywoodland (originally called Truth, Justice and the American Way). It was about the suicide and alleged murder of George Reeves (Ben Affleck) who played Superman on the television series. Hoskins played Eddie Mannix, a studio executive whose wife (Diane Lane) had a years-long affair with Reeves. It is by turns a frightening, tender, poignant and powerful performance.

And never anything less than riveting.

I'm really going to miss Bob Hoskins. I wish there were some way I could thank him for the honor of watching him work, and the joy he's brought me over the years.

Maybe the best way is to keep watching his movies and enjoying them.

Wrapper wisdom

As many of you know, and as I've written about here, I've been battling the cough from hell for about three weeks now. In that time, I've consumed my fair share of Chestal homeopathic (not that there's anything wrong with that) cough syrup, prescription hydrocodone cough syrup, hot tea, cups of lemon and honey, and bags and bags of Hall's Cough Drops.

Now, the cough drops are supposed to sooth the cough. But upon closer examination, they actually do so much more.

While I've been hacking up a lung, I've had time to read the inspirational messages found on each Hall's wrapper. They're so proud of the good these messages are doing, they've printed "A PEP TALK IN EVERY DROP™" right there on the wrapper. And yes, they trademarked the line.

Now, if you happened to catch this post, you know I've always been one who believes that inspiration is where you find it. But after reading the lines on the Hall's wrapper, I may have to re-evaluate that opinion.

In addition to the lines shown here, additional lines like "Turn 'can do' into can did!'", "Hi-five yourself.", and the ever popular, "Don't wait to get started." are also waiting to inspire the sick and hacking masses.

Somewhere a fortune cookie company is laughing and saying things like, "Damn, we're a lot better than I thought!"

The truly scary thing to me about these lines is that I know a copywriter wrote them. Either a $25 an hr. junior writer they found on Creative Circle, or, even sadder, a $25 an hr. ex-group creative director who couldn't get hired at McCann an is willing to write cough drop wrappers. It's a cautionary tale either way.

I think I've probably seen all the lines I need to see from Hall's.

It's time to stop being so inspired, and start thinking deeper thoughts.