Creating Television: Conversations With the People Behind 50 Years of American TV (A Volume in LEA's Communication Series) (Lea's Communication Series)

524 Pages·2003·33.13 MB·English

by  Robert Kubey

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
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or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
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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