Robert W. Morgan

I’m often asked (just last week actually) who were my comic influences? Aside from the usual – Nat Hiken, Joan Davis, and Pinky Lee – I’d have to put at the top of my list Robert W. Morgan. For almost thirty years Morgan ruled the morning airwaves in Los Angeles (and briefly in Chicago).

He passed away twelve years ago today.

I still miss him. I still look at something I’ve written and wonder, “what would Robert W. think?” He was never shy in telling me. We worked together briefly in 1974 at a station called K100. (I say briefly because I was fired long before he was.) Robert W. could be a tough critic on you (if you call threatening to come down to the station and beat the shit out of you tough). But he also could inspire you to new heights if he believed you had it in you. There was no middle ground in his eyes. You had the potential to be great or you were Judy Tenuta.

Morgan himself on the air was truly amazing. Hilariously funny, wickedly subversive, a master of comic timing, and ALWAYS spontaneous. In the moment. One “morgan” (you never said “morning”, you said “morgan” . If I pronounced my name Le-Veen and did a night time shift I'd be on from 6-10 in the E-veeng. Fortunately for all concerned, I'm not ) when he was on KMPC he had to do a live phone interview with Ray Malavasi, the head coach of the Rams. He asked his first question and Malavasi fell asleep. Instead of trying to wake him, and without missing a beat, Morgan just kept asking him questions and pausing while Malavasi snored.

There is a Robert W. Morgan tribute website well worth checking out containing this and many other classic bits. Comedy on the radio is a lost art. Robert W. Morgan was one of its great artists. Morgan also was blessed with a gorgeous voice. Rich, mellow, and warm (as if I wasn’t envious enough of his talent). In 1969 while at KHJ he narrated a 48 hour radio special – THE HISTORY OF ROCK N’ ROLL. This epic work painstakingly traced the roots and trends of rock music and to this day is considered a masterpiece. (back in the days when the only hits Phil Spector was known for were records)

Over the years it has been revised and redone but the original, voiced by Robert W. Morgan, only aired once and none of the subsequent versions even came close.

Robert W. was only 61 when he passed away. Way too young. Lung cancer. DON'T SMOKE!! He should still be around, probably writing biting comments in this blog.

Behaving abnormally

Here's another extended snippet from my "growing up in the 60s" book. I'm a student at UCLA and it just turned 1969.

By now the “Generation Gap” had been trivialized to where ABC had a prime time game show with that theme. ABC also had THE MOD SQUAD, a group of hippie crime fighters.

1969 meant a new year, new quarter, and new language. Obviously I couldn’t make it through two more sessions of Hebrew. Even non-Jews got better grades. And no one said I had to take three quarters of the same language. So I switched to Italian.

I had heard it was easy. And it was… until the scandal broke out the second week.

Apparently several teachers’ assistants had been sleeping with female students and giving them A’s. Their justification that it was a romance language didn’t wash. The result: Outrage by the department with a vow to make Italian the hardest language in the history of academia. By week three I would have slept with the TA’s for even just a passing grade.

I also took “Abnormal Psychology”, which proved helpful years later in dealing with actors. One of the assignments was to do some inappropriate behavior in public and study everyone’s reaction. I went to the Corbin Bowl, a place that held so many wistful memories for me. Ann Jillian and I had had a couple of bowling dates there in the 8th grade. Don’t laugh. I got to see her with her shoes off.

My abnormal behavior was this: I’d step to the line, ready to roll, and then at the last second I would move laterally a few feet and bowl in the next person’s lane. At first they were very nice. The experiment ended after four times when they tried to wedge my head in the ball return.

One classmate chose to urinate on the front steps of the administration building. He said people just walked by as if it were normal. I always thought as a snapshot of campus life in the late 60s that was the perfect image.

BOBblehead HOPE

On Tuesday night's Dodger Talk on 790 KABC (and KABC.COM on the net) we got into a discussion on what's the most unusual Dodger bobblehead anyone has? It was a nice break from "when are we going to trade for a new starting pitcher?"

This is mine and I had to post it because my partner Josh Suchon and most of the listeners didn't believe me. But as you can see, it's for real. For some utterly inexplicable reason the club made a Bob Hope Dodger Bobblehead. I happened to be walking by a gift shop in the stadium and saw it in a display case. And of course I had to have it.

You know why he's so happy? They never made one for Crosby.

Impressive but useless talents

There’s a guy who imitates baseball players’ batting stances. I saw him at Dodger Stadium last night. He’s uncanny at it but it got me thinking – how the hell do you make a living imitating Nomar Garciaparra’s batting stance?

And then I starting wondering – how many other gifted people are blessed with a talent that ultimately does them no good?

There’s a guy in San Francisco I once saw who did amazing reproductions of great works of art in chalk on sidewalks. Very impressive but THAT’S his calling? Of all mediums why select chalk?

A few years ago at the Hollywood Bowl an incredible mimic did the Danny Kaye Dodger song and you could swear it was Danny Kaye. How do you support your family as a Danny Kaye impersonator?

Here are a few other artists that only Broadway Danny Rose would consider representing:

There’s a guy who can snap his fingers the fastest. I guess he's the world's fastest hipster. Another can hold the most eggs in his hand. Who’s going to pay good money in Vegas to see that?

Someone claims to be the fastest texter (besides my daughter). Another is the fastest clapper. I feel sorry for the second fastest clapper because the first fastest has to be starving.

There’s a gentleman who can draw a perfect circle. Other than getting chicks I don’t see the point.

I’m sure there are others. What do baton champions do? What kind of legacy can gingerbread house makers have?

Meanwhile, Gallagher makes a handsome living smashing watermelons and Vanna White is rich from turning over vowels.

My heart goes out to these talented individuals. Oh, I just thought of another talent that yields no discernable profit.

Blogging.

Dodge Neon Mopar drag Car

Another HotWheels in my old collection box. This is Dodge Neon MOPAR Pro FWD '05 drag car from the state. I had it since 2003. Check it out

It's Upfronts week!

This is Upfronts Presentation Week, when each of the networks roll out their new fall schedules. Whether your show gets ordered or not, the response is the same. “Oh shit!”

If you did get a pick-up you realize you’re already behind. And in many cases today, show orders come with tiny addendums like… recast half the parts, reshoot the whole pilot, you must hire this show runner to be over you, or these writers you don’t know to your staff.

And if your show didn’t get picked up you’re now one of those show runners hoping to be forced on someone.

So for the victors I say enjoy the hell out of this week. Go to all the cocktail parties. Collect all the SWAG. If there’s a network dinner order the prime rib. Be at the Upfronts presentation. Kvell as you hear your show touted as the best pilot to come along since ER (although the president of NBC at the time hated the ER pilot and had to be talked into putting the show on the air). You know it’s all bullshit. That guy on stage calling your show groundbreaking will be on the phone to you in two weeks ordering you to make it more mainstream.

Agents will be fawning all over you, asking you questions like “how was your weekend” as they gave a flying shit.

You’ll be getting texts and tweets of congratulation, and some will even be from people who don’t want a job. Okay… maybe three.

Tale the Laker tickets if the actors they offered them to first decline.

Relish it all. You deserve it.

The truth is, getting a show on the air is a Herculean feat (unless you’re Chuck Lorre, J.J. Abrams, Jerry Bruckheimer, or Dick Wolf). Think of all the pitches, all the scripts that came in, all the pilots that were produced – many starring bigger names than you had – and for you to emerge with one of those few coveted spots is nothing short of sensational. You made it through countless script notes, casting battles, testing, and executive screenings. So allow yourself to savor this accomplishment. Believe that your show got on because it’s really good, not cause the other candidates were even worse.

Next week the real work begins. So live it up now.

Congratulations!

Oh shit!

Best screenwriting advice I could give

The hardest screenplay we ever had to write came as a result of the easiest, quickest pitch we ever made. It also taught us a very important lesson about screenwriting.

Fall 1988. I had just finished my first year of minor league play-by-play, calling the action for the mighty Syracuse Chiefs. I had kept a journal but didn’t know what to do with it. My agent suggested instead of submitting it for publication I should pitch it as a movie. TV comedy writer goes off to announce minor league baseball. He reminded me that I’d make a whole lot more money selling it as a movie rather than a book. That appealed to the “artist” in me.

My partner David Isaacs and I had just turned in a movie to Columbia and they loved it. (Not enough to make but still.) We were the “flavors of the month”. So we set up a pitch meeting with them first. The meeting lasted three minutes… and that was including the pleasantries. Here’s how it went:

Me: This is what we want to do – “GOOD MORNING VIET NAM meets BULL DURHAM”.

Them: "Sold!"

And that was it. Ten minutes later we’re in the Smokehouse restaurant toasting each other. And then something occurred to me. I asked the fatal question:

Me: "So, what exactly is the story?"

That was the end of the celebration. What WAS the story? We couldn’t do what really happened. My family moved to Syracuse, I broadcast the games, the team lost more games than they won, and the season ended. Not exactly riveting stuff.

We had to create a whole new scenario. First thing we did was make the writer single so we could concoct a love story. My wife said, “What?! I do all the work, raise two small kids in an unfamiliar city that’s either 100 degrees or pouring rain and I’m not even in the damn movie?!” She had a legitimate beef.

We had to create stakes for the writer, a plotline that was dramatic and funny, and dream up some theme so the movie was about something. I'd tell you what they were but they all changed twenty times. I don't even remember half of them.

Thus began a series of drafts, each different, each a bitch to write. I think we finally got it, but that was after years of dead ends. The writer/announcer saves baseball in the small town and provides it with an identity and hope. He learns lessons, matures as a person, and of course gets the girl.

Ultimately the movie was never made. By the time we solved it the regime that bought it was long gone. The regime that followed them was long gone.

But the moral is this: Always have the story FIRST. Without that you’re just wandering in the wilderness. And breaking the story is the hardest part so your natural inclination is to say, “let’s just sell it first and then deal with that”. Beware!!

Same is true if you’re writing a spec. More so actually because you don’t want to work your ass off for six months only to come to the sad realization once you’re institutionalized that you have nothing.

For us there's a happy ending. We learned our lesson and did not come in a few years later and pitch MY DINNER WITH ANDRE meets BARRY LYNDON.