- Wait, you have a TV? - No, I just like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide, you don't need a TV. ♪ Cover this planet ♪ ♪ Cover this planet ♪ ♪ Cover this planet ♪ ♪ Ah ♪ (rock music) - Happy Friday, everybody. Welcome to TV Guidance Counselor. This is a special edition of the show. These are two episodes that are recorded at the Northeast Comic-Con. You may remember with the last time I recorded some live episodes at Northeast Comic-Con back in November 2014, I talked to Evan Michelson from Obscura Antiques and Audities, and Paris Thiemann, who was Mike TV and Willy Wonk in the Chocolate Factory. Northeast Comic-Con is a great event that's run by Gary Summers, who you probably know from the Antiques Road Show. And we've discussed him on the show as well. He will hopefully be a future guest of the show, just trying to line up our schedules. But it's an event he does twice a year. It's really fun, fun kind of pop culture, Comic-Con type event. It's a little more family-friendly than some of them are. It's a good time. And he asked me to do some live TV Guidance Counselors, and I was absolutely delighted to do so. So we did two episodes on the Saturday. I've put them together here. The first one is with writer-producer, Jeff Klein. And Jeff is a guy I had never met before, but I really, really enjoyed talking to. Really smart guy, fun guy. Knows a ton about television is clearly a huge fan of this stuff. And also a local guy. Anyone I can talk Leechmere with is A-O-K in my book. So to start off this episode, first up we have Jeff Klein, and then we'll be talking to Julie McCullough. So let's kick it off from Northeast Comic-Con. Here is Jeff. [MUSIC PLAYING] Jeff Klein, everybody. Please welcome Jeff. Hello. Thank you for coming to the show. Thank you very much. I'm thumbing through your TV Guidance. Yeah, yeah. That's perfectly fine. So you produce cartoons, exclusively or? No, actually. I've done about 20 animated series between pilots and live action series, probably another 10-- OK. So why animated stuff was the majority of it, but what drew you to that specifically? I actually was exclusively live action for a long time. And then I had a writer-producer deal at Sony when they were just starting a kid's division, a family division. And they wanted to adapt Jumanji as a TV series. And I think I was around. So it landed on you. And I had expressed an interest in the past. I actually grew up on cartoons and loved animations. So I did it. Really, I thought I was just doing it as a favor. I was just going to write up an adaptation. I put the guy who was running the division's name on the pages, faxed them to him, and didn't think about it because I was actually flying to Atlanta to produce a pilot for Fox down there. And when I came back a month later, I read in the trades variety and reported that Jumanji was ordered and I was producing it. Oh, that's a nice, good way to find out. So a good way to find out. And I really didn't know if I would want to do an animated series. I didn't really know what to expect. And then within a couple of weeks of being involved with Jumanji, I loved it. Right. And that was-- That animation might be OK. 20 series, I guess. So that was probably what, like 1995? Oh, god. I'm trying to think of when the movie Jumanji came out. I think it was '93 and '94. Yeah, it's somewhere between 16, 17 years here. So like that. Because that was the tail end of Saturday morning cartoons. They officially died last year. The idea of network television cartoons. But in the mid '90s, it started to shift. So Fox was doing more. The WB kind of came in and started doing so. Kids WB had Fox Kids. It was big. UPN, which was open. Right. That was kind of the last hurrah was when all the networks had the set. If you're a kid today, you don't realize it used to be. It was the only time you could watch. Yes, Saturday morning. And you'd commit to one network. And you'd just stay with them. Fun Shine Saturday on ABC or whatever. I used to-- I had a portable TV and my regular TV. And I would flip-- I would have them all on at once. Which I realized is not normal for people to do. But I'm not normal. So what was the first show that you produced live action? Is this series for ABC years back called That Was Then? OK. Which was a series about a 30-year-old who gets to be 16 again, basically? Oh, did that go? The same year-- I did a one-hour version for ABC, the same year that Warner Bros. had a show called Do Over, which wasn't Tim Daly, but it was also about a 30-year-old who gets to be 16 again. It was right after September 11th. It was like the next year. And I think there was a lot of wishing you could do things over again. Ah, this is the one we're going to go in. I think so only because I saw Starland vocal band add in there. It's been in vocal band. And I remember that variety series very well. I grew up in Boston. I'm from Boston. My dad was actually in the record business, which was a really fun thing to grow up in. I lived in upstate New York, and then I moved to California and lived there for about 25 years. And then just moved my wife and daughter back to Maine about seven years ago. So when you were growing up in Boston, then you must have been watching WLVI, TV38, all that stuff. Channel 38, Channel 56. And Channel 56 had the creature double feature. And then also, '56 had the monkeys reruns after school, which was a big deal. Well into the '90s, they were doing monkeys reruns. And I assume that show was one of-- for almost everyone I know that's gone into the television business or entertainment business, the monkey's TV show was just seminal because it was crazy. It was crazy, but somehow approachable. And then actually, I have a whole point of view that the banana splits is just a redo of the monkeys, that they literally just-- those characters, Mickey Dolan's is Bingo the gorilla. You can go character by character. David Jones, the cute one. Which banana split do you think is cute? Well, Snorky is definitely Peter Torque, who's a quiet one. And Mike Nesmith is definitely a drooper, the lion. And even you know, he's kind of a southern drawl. It's got that funky kind of southern. So it has to be-- the one we all had on a locker poster in our high school. Fleego, the people. Fleego, it's Fleego. All right, Fleego, yes. Fleego is David Jones, no question. And weirdly, the banana splits is like a less strange version of the monkeys. I think it's equally strange, actually, with the singing-- remember the singing "Twin Girls" and the weird grapes, the talks, so it's pretty strange. But I also grew up on "Sid and Marty Croft." Right, so strange was part of my childhood. Were you terrified by any "Sid and Marty Croft?" Or were you OK with it? Yeah, I don't remember being terrified. I remember being involved at the beginning of-- the beginning of "Lidsville" is pretty-- Were you get sucked in the hair? Yeah, that's pretty scary. I think falling into a bottomless pit that used to be a magician's hat is a common fear of most children. What's amazing if you go back and watch any of those "Sid and Marty Croft" shows, the opening titles are like a minute or more long. And it gets really dark in those titles. The kids getting captured onto islands. It's all about orphans and being whisked away. It's like very Victorian sensibility on that. I don't think anyone's ever accused "Sid and Marty Croft" of being Victorian. But it's, I think, it stands. So you picked an issue here. This is from 19-- let's see, where are we here? We're in 1978, March 18. It has Johnny Carson on the show, talk shows, "The Battle to Overtake Carson." And this was when Carson was at the top of the heap, people were trying to knock him down before the "Thick of the Night" though, before Alan Thiks, "Thick of the Night." Do you remember when that show came on, how they advertised it? They were like, look out, Carson. You're going down. It was like-- Is that how they advertised every late night's show? The kick of the watch, yeah. That was trying to get Carson out. So let me feel free to flip through and see what you would watch during the week there. Was there like a family show that you guys all watched together? So "TV Guide Week" starts on Saturday night. It's an odd thing, although they did change it in 2005 to be more of a Monday through Sunday, which is kind of a cruel twist. But I love the legend of Cougar Canyon. LA premiere. This is the KTLS. This is an LA edition of "TV Guide." Yes, this is an LA edition of "TV Guide." Well, I'll actually start at seven, because with my grandma, I'd watch Lawrence Welk. No question. Well, I enjoyed Lawrence Welk. It was a good show, and it's fun. I have to be honest, still, I was in Branson years ago, and I went to Lawrence Welk Theater. Did you blow bubbles? They did have a bubble machine. Yeah, you got to have a bubble machine. So you got to have us in the music business. What kind of music was he generally doing? He was the buyer for a chain of stores that used to be out here called Leechmere. Oh, yeah, Leechmere. I'm very familiar with Leechmere. Leechmere was taken over by Best Buy, more or less in the late 2000s when it went bankrupt. But Leechmere train station in Boston is named for Leechmere, the electronics store. Exactly. Yes, I bought many things at Leechmere over the years. And then 7.30, I would have watched the Andy Williams show. All right, so you're going full on family. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, in this episode, Whalen Flowers and Madam were on. Very creepy. Did that creep you out? Whalen Flowers was my favorite example of a clearly gay gentleman that people didn't know was-- Or didn't want to admit. But didn't want to admit. Yeah, like Liberace. Yeah, like Liberace, Paul Lind. All these guys were flamboyantly gay. But in the '60s and '70s, they're like, that guy. He's a bachelor. What's a big deal? Like, it didn't even-- Honey, I was a puppet. Why is that weird? And clearly, the madam-- if people don't know Whalen Jennings and Madam, Whalen Jennings had this puppet that was like a queen-y old lady who would be like a-- like a B. Arthur puppet, essentially. And it was clearly actually him. Like, he just used this puppet. Like, now he would be on TV just doing that without the puppet. We had a TV. Do you remember there was a sitcom? Yeah, there was a syndicated sitcom that he-- Yes, it was a first run syndication show. And it was much-- so he became very popular in the late '70s. And it was on solid gold all the time into the '80s. And then got his own show around '87, I'm thinking, for one season probably. It was a very, very weird show. Can you imagine today a flamboyantly gay man with a queen-y bitchy puppet having their own syndicated sitcom? Like, that was kind of an only in 1988 thing that you could have, I think. So you're watching that just for Whalen Jennings. Yeah, no question. Would you ask your grandmother, like, what is this? Or did you just kind of took everything as it came at the time? Yeah, I think because we had fewer choices that we didn't just take everything it came, we sort of worshiped everything as it came. Yeah, absolutely. You appreciated what you got. You know, exposed to a lot of things you wouldn't normally get exposed to. Especially, I find there's a phenomenon where people will go, I love the show at 7. I loved the show at 8. I hated the show at 7.30, but watched it every week anyway because the only other option was not watching anything. And you can't do that. But I'm looking ahead to Saturday night. Saturday night's a tough one because actually 8 o'clock was three shows I would have watched. But you can only watch one because we couldn't tape. Because we had them back before tape. And you had to get up and change the channel. And if you change the channel, your reception may not be very good on one channel versus another. And that was the thing, too, I think that people forget. Once you dialed in a station, you did not want to touch the television because you might not get the station back. Like, if you switch to another station, you can't just easily switch back. Like, no, it was perfect. Did you just stand at a certain place in front of me because if you held the antenna, you'd get the reception. I meant you stood and watched the TV for the next three hours. I suspect that this is a conspiracy theory I have. Go with me on this one. That the manufacturers of aluminum foil have actually encouraged conspiracy theories because their sales went down as cable rows. Because most aluminum foil in the world was used for television reception. So now they get the tin foil hat crowd. Boom, new market. So I think that all of the conspiracy theories, UFOs, government, surveillance-- Reynolds is behind all of this. That's my theory. Interesting. A wonderful conspiracy theory. Did you have siblings growing up? I have a younger brother, three years younger. OK, so you were making all the TV decisions I assume if he was three years younger. Assuming I was the one making those decisions between the two of us, I mean, my parents may have had to say-- Any non-corrhythmic. Actually, parents were usually out. So "Saturday Night" was a TV night because the parents were out. And traditionally, that would be on it. "8 to 10" was more sort of kids programming on Saturday night. Although, in this book from '77, we've got Mary Tyler Moore right into Bob Newhart, which is a little bit unusual in "8 o'clock" shows. I think it is now in retrospect. It's more of a 9 o'clock show. But in the late '70s, it was sort of the tail end of both of those shows as well. But the other two, "Wonder Woman" and "Emergency" were definitely wheelhouse shows. Those are the kids' shows. So "Wonder Woman" is an odd phenomenon, too, because that's the first hour-long show I can think of that swift switch networks. So the first season, it was a period show. It was set in World War II. And I believe it was on ABC. And then it got canceled, and then CBS bought it and made it like the '70s show that everybody remembers today. And it's sort of an icon of '70s television. But if you watch the first season, it's all in World War II. Well, and I remember the show was Linda Carter, obviously. But the original pilot was Kathy Lee Crosby. Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think Sid and Marty Croft had a hand in some of that stuff, too. Maybe. Who was "Electro Woman"? Electro Woman, the original one was Deidre Hall. Deidre Hall was "Electro Woman." And I actually wrote the "Electro Woman" redo 10 years ago for WB with Marki Post. Which was Marki Post from-- And who played Dona Girl on that one? Anne Steadman. Yes. Marki Post from "Night Court" is in-- Who's fantastic. Who I then cast years later in "Transformers' Prime" just because I love her so much. Yeah, I mean, that was-- did you purposely want to do it because you liked "Electro Girl" or-- Yeah, you know, I said I grew up on Sid and Marty. So one of the nice things about living in Los Angeles and working in television, you can actually go back and meet those people who did the shows you loved. And actually, I did a couple of different things with Sid and Marty over there. What else did you do with-- Do I have to puff and stuff feature? Oh, yeah, yeah. They didn't end up happening. And they're still around. They just got to pick up on a pilot for Sid and-- for a signal to the sea monsters. They produce some-- everyone knows the kids' shows they produced, but they also produced a lot of variety shows. Yeah, the Donnie and Marie kind of shows. The Donnie and Marie, they did the Brady-- The Brady Hour. The Brady Hour. Pink Lady and Jeff. Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters. The Mandrell Sisters. They produced-- Pink Lady and Jeff, by the way, if you've ever seen. Jeff Altman, the comedian, stand up with two with a Japanese singing group who couldn't speak English. And her twins. Gorgeous. And the end of the show was always 10 minutes in the hot tub. Yeah, because it was the only time that the girls could actually do anything. Yeah. And it was just Jeff Altman being like, hey, guys, how about America and then them giggling? And that was on TV for a whole year before anyone-- I missed that. Yeah, that was the strange times. Because that's when you would get where they're like, look, we have under contract-- these two Japanese women who can't speak English. We have a comedian under contract. What are we going to do? It'll be like, we just bought a hot tub. And when we owe Sid and Marty Croft a series, so let's go. Yeah, and then we can get a greenlet. The saddest thing to me about Sid and Marty Croft is that they never made the Sid and Marty Croft amusement park that they had designed. No, they did make it. Did they make it? They make it, and then it shut down. OK, I did not know that it was actually-- People have been there? Yes, oh, no, there's actually kids. King's Island, one of the King's Island parks. And you can actually get-- you can find souvenirs-- Really? --from the world of Sid and Marty Croft. Oh, man, I would have liked-- because there was a proposed-- I don't know if they built it then-- like, a giant pinball machine you went through and all these crazy things. If you go online, there's salutes to it, obviously. I may have to, man. Definitely, this is-- And then, for those of you, I don't know, they actually ended up also winning a big lawsuit. We got McDonald's. Yes, the McDonald's Land stuff was a flat-out rip-off of all of the Sid and Marty Croft stuff. And once they won the lawsuit in the '80s, it got a lot less Sid and Marty Croft. Like, he'd stop seeing grimace so much. Birdie came in when they started doing breakfast, who was very un-Sid and Marty Croft-like. So they really had a huge influence on pop culture that I think not everybody quite understands today. Completely. What did you think of the '90s Land of the Lost? Did you ever watch that? I did, actually, thought the TV show was pretty good. Yeah, I enjoyed it as well. It was a good job with it. A lot of people forget about Land of the Lost is that that was a pretty seminal sci-fi series and some big sci-fi-- Like Star Trek writers. Yeah, writers wrote on that show. And it had a lot of weird sci-fi elements like time loops and dark, dark storylines on this-- The Sea Stacks were very-- The Sea Stacks are terrifying. Bill Lambier played one of the Sea Stacks, NBA basketball player. And just to bring it back around, so Sid and Marty designed the Banana Splits costumes for Hanna-Barbera. Oh, yes, that would make sense. They're very Hanna-Barbera-like. So that was the first one. And I actually did the Banana Splits redo about 10 years ago for Cartoon Network. My favorite thing-- I used to work at Cartoon Network in London. My favorite thing that notates Hanna-Barbera animals is they have ties. That seems to be-- It's like you can tell it's Hanna-Barbera. Yeah, if they have a collar and a tie, it's Hanna-Barbera. That's how you know. And I always made me wonder if Hanna-Barbera was like-- like they should have a Hanna-Barbera restaurant where you had to just wear a tie, but you could go without pants. What did you think? When I think about pictures of Joe and Bill Hanna-Barbera, they're often in-- Just the tie. Just the often in the same tie. The suit and tie, guys. That's how it used to be. They're very, very conservatively dressed, and they're translated to bears. So you're watching this. No, you said you'd watched it with your grandmother. Was that like she would watch you on a Saturday while your parents went out. And I go over to her house, would stay over her place. My grandparents lived just, you know, walks away as you all did at that time. Exactly. And we'd stay with her for maybe the Saturday night because my parents would be out. And then would you have a strict bedtime, or was that like I can stay up late on a Saturday? I could go back and watch TV after my brother fell asleep before the meal. So I'd literally be there every two minutes. Are you asleep? Are you asleep? Drink this. And sometimes he'd eat it. Because he's kind of a jerk, he would just pretend. And then as I got up, he'd go, ha! And I'd go, what a cruel to it. So he knew, because that would be like, if he didn't find out till 30 years later that it was like every time he went to sleep, I went watch. No, he knew and he would torture me as a result. Is he in the entertainment industry at all these days? He is, he's in the record business. OK, so he went into the family business. He went into the family business, yeah. So how come you gravitated towards television and media instead of in the visual stuff instead of music? You know what? It's just one of those-- I was really lucky. I was one of those kids who had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do from a very young age. I didn't know exactly what it would mean to write stories and tell them, but I was fortunate if my middle school had a TV student, my high school had a TV studio. You got it early. So I really got. And the super-ray camera and all the rest of it. So I was really fortunate and just Los Angeles would have to college. What was the first sort of person from shows that you watched growing up that you got to work with later? I mean, Sid and Marty Croft, obviously. I mean, were you starstruck by anyone that you got to work with in a professional capacity? I could starstruck pretty regularly now, quite honestly. I mean, it's still-- everyone's a while. You have to remind yourself. Because you get stuck. Whatever you're working on takes over your life. And you're dealing with all the politics of it or whatever else, all the production challenges. And sometimes it really helps to just step back and go, I just told Dwayne Johnson and The Rock to make dead zombie voices. Right, right, right. Kind of fun. You're like, oh, these voices aren't-- wait a minute. It's the rock, and I'm saying, no, sound more dead. Yeah, I mean, you constantly have to remind yourself. Look at the cool stuff I get to do on a daily basis that if someone got to do one of these things, that would be their story for the rest of their life. And I get to do this on a daily basis. So what was the first thing you worked on? Well, I was an executive for about five years at Columbia. So what would an executive do? So I actually came up on the drama series side. So writers would pitch ideas for drama series. And I'd try to help them put them together and sell them to networks. And then supervise the beginning of the shows until they got up and running. So the one show I worked on, in that capacity, that actually survived for a while is called "Party of Five." Oh, yeah. The Fox. Very popular show. Jennifer Love Hewitt. Jennifer Love Hewitt. At the height of her powers. And at the Fox, but at the Fox. Jennifer Love Hewitt put out an album at that time, called "Let's Go Bang." Yes. She claims that the producer told her it was a dance, and she didn't know. It's a pretty good album. She's all about love. Yes, but that was-- she was on "Kids Incorporated" earlier than that, as Love Hewitt. And that was '95, '96, probably. So you did a lot of stuff for Fox? You were saying-- Oh, I did a lot. So we did a bunch of stuff when I was at Columbia. And then when I went to the writer-producer world, there was a writer named Frank Lupo, who had created Wise Guy and 18 and Stingray. And "Wherewolf." And "Wherewolf." Yeah. The flagship show for Fox initially, that was supposed to be Fox's big show. It actually was a very successful series, for a while. We only did the one season, I think, or two seasons. Two seasons. Yeah. I think another show, the way they changed concept a little bit in season two. Yes. Yeah. It was essentially the incredible Hulk with the "Wherewolf." Yeah. Chuck Connors. Yeah. But Frank Lupo was a writer that Columbia had a deal with. I had gotten very friendly with him. And at one point, he came to me and said, if you'll-- why don't we partner? I'll teach you how to write and produce for TV if you'll help me sell him. It was a great deal. So I think it was good it was worth. So for the next couple of years, we did work together. Anything that got made or that went to series that you do with it? No, because I was writing him. So at that point in my career-- This is your apprenticeship. Yeah, nothing. Anything you wished had made it? I did a-- he wrote a version of "Matt Helm" for NBC. And then I wrote a version a couple of years later for HBO. I would have loved "Matt Helm" the "D. Martin" movies. "Matt Helm" was sort of like a spy series with Dean Martin. Yeah. There's a series of books which are much more hard-boiled-- Right. --post World War II. But then when Dean Martin was cast as lead in the Columbia movies, they became much more about a drunken photographer with a secret pass through. Yeah, I think like American Austin Powers almost. Completely. That's literally in "Matt Helm" movies. He has a round bed that rises and slides him into a pool where his assistant, Lovey Craves, is waiting for him. Yeah, it's very inconspicuous. Clearly, Dean Martin would just blend into a crowd in the capacity of-- He's got a bar in his car. Yeah. It's sort of the two American movies that I series that were like, was in like Flint as well with James Coburn, which Austin Powers reused the phone ring in that movie that is in everything. And that's from "Enlight Flint." So you're doing some cool stuff. Like, you're getting to reimagine a lot of the stuff that sounds like you're working on-- A lot of what I do. --of reinventing stuff that you watch growing up. Yeah, and I think once in television, you do tend to get pigeonholed potentially. So once I've done that a couple of times, I definitely know I'm one of those guys who gets the call when you want to redo transformers, or when you want to redo GI Joe or whatever, which is great because this is the stuff I grew up loving. So I have no problem. So that's easier for you, because I'd say you'd probably go one or two ways. It would be, I love this show. I can't wait to redo it, or like, I love this show. I can't touch it. It's perfect. Or, I mean, for other people, there's the I don't want to do something that's already got a whole legacy behind it. I want something completely new. But I don't have-- I'm fine. Give me GI Joe, as long as I have a little bit of rope to reimagine it. I love the challenge. I love the challenge I have to try to modernize. Still be true to what it was, but find a way to try to-- So try to make everybody-- I mean, because that with the sort of-- the way the fan culture is today, I think that the stakes are probably ridiculously high for you, because you know everything you do, you're like, I can't wait to get a million internet posts about how I'm the worst person on earth for ruining the childhood of all these people. I assume you just don't read them. You don't read them-- actually, there's seven stages of fandom, and I won't bore anybody with all seven. But the first one is, this is horrendous. It's going to be the worst idea I've ever heard. And then usually, by the end of it, the seven stages. That was really good. How could they cancel it? So in between, there's five other stages. But I wait for at least like stage four or five. Then you start checking out. Yeah, that seems more accurate where you go there. So what would you watch the rest of the week? Now, Carson's on the cover there. Would you ever stay up and watch Carson? It was a treat, but yes, absolutely. I mean, by that time, I was 12, 13 or so. So yeah, I would watch Carson. But also, Star Trek would run-- by this time, we moved upstate New York, and Star Trek would run at 11 o'clock, I think it was. Or maybe no, Star Trek was 12. So at 11, I'd watch the New York City channels to watch Twilight Zone. Yes. Two episodes of Twilight Zone? T-I-X, I'm guessing. W-P-I-X, yup. And then into, again, it may have been only in Albany Station, but an upstate New York station had Star Trek at midnight. That's a pretty good two-hour block. But those-- I mean, between the Sid and Marty Croft and the Monkeys into twide zone and Star Trek, I would say that those are absolutely 95% of my influences. Right. That's the foundation. A very weird, very moral allegorical, all of them. Even the Monkeys, to a degree. And the thing about the Monkeys, as well, was that, obviously, being involved in the music, because it's probably interesting on that level. But that show sort of taught you how television got made. In a lot of ways, that was one of the first sort of fourth wall-breaking shows. And they would reference that it was a television show. And they would show you behind the scenes and reference their own show, was very, very ahead of its time. Well, actually, when they ran short on an episode, they would actually just do an interview section. Yeah. So years later, I did a Jackie Chan animated series. And we wanted to find a way to work live action Jackie Chan into this animated series. Why don't we do the Monkeys? Why don't we do interview questions? At the end, so we shot over the five seasons. We shot a couple hundred of those and worked them into the episode. That's pretty amazing. I remember they would have like Tim Buckley on. Yeah, Frank Zappa. We have five minutes. Here's Tim Buckley, for, yeah, in Frank Zappa. So the Jackie Chan series was Jackie Chan Adventures. Was John Rogers' work on that? Yeah, yeah, John Rogers was one of the original creators between Capissi and myself. Yeah, so John Rogers is actually a former Boston stand-up comedian, who used to work at WZLX and a bunch of other things. He created the new Blue Beetle that people know of now and works on, I think, the librarians is his current show. But Jackie Chan Adventures was one of the first few shows I think that he worked on that. Yeah, maybe the first animated series he did, absolutely. Now that's a strange thing where you're taking a live action thing and a live action persona. And you have to build a series around them. Which the only, I think the only show, non-monkeys, non-Jackson five that I can think of before that would be like the Mr. T in the series. Oh, there's actually been a ton of, from the Osmons who had an animated series, to Chuck Norris and Rambo. Chuck Norris and the Karate Commandant, yes, I forgot. Rambo? No, that was kind of a staple. But we're talking about an actor who may not be that well known by the demographic that's going to watch a cartoon. But the beauty was that in his movies, he's almost a live-action cartoon character. So it was-- and John did the bulk of this heavy lifting. It was really about kind of taking the stuff that he had done already and just bring it into Saturday morning. The weird phenomenon of things like Rambo and Chuck Norris is those guys only made R-rated movies. Like, they're very violent R-rated movies and they're like kids cartoon, perfect. And Toyline, that's the-- in some ways, the crazier thing was that, oh, you know what kids would love to buy? It's Rambo theme product. I always wanted to see the opposite way, which we're kind of seeing now, but if you saw like a really violent R-rated Care Bears movie, it would be pretty much the same thing as getting a Rambo cartoon just in the other direction. Was there anything you've been asked to work on that's a reimagining of something that you were like, I don't even know what this is. I probably have a moment on every show I've been asked to work on where I have that. Transformers, for example, when I first got asked to do Transformers Prime, they dropped like a 600-page Bible on me, which was the history of the 30 years of the brand and all the different rules that contradict each other and histories that contradict each other. And this prime was supposed to kind of be the new beginning of whatever comes next. So they went fix this. Yeah, pretty much. So that one was intimidating, but ultimately really satisfying as well. Transformer, people may know this history already, but that started as a series of toys that were from unrelated toy lines. So it was like five different companies in Japan made toys that transform. Hasbro, I think, or Mattel. Tell me what it's. Tell me bot. The Japanese company. That hasbro, yeah. That hasbro, and then said, now make a series out of these things that don't make any sense together, which is why some of them are a truck, some of them are a gun, some of them are tapes. So they would just have these weird, unrelated things. And then in Japan, they picked up off the US series and had series that went on after the US series, like Edmasters, and Beast Wars, and all this stuff. So you had to kind of take all of that? In theory. In theory, and then make that make sense. In theory, yes. That sounds like it may have been the hardest thing that you got thrown on your desk. This is a guy named Dwayne Capizi, and I worked on that together with Kurtzmann on RC who had written the first two movies, actually. It was a-- and we had a deadline. We had-- usually you want at least a year for development, and then in a production cycle you want at least a year and a half, maybe, in all CG series. We had a year from beginning to end, getting on the air. So it was pretty crazy. And that's one of the first all CG series I remember. It was kind of early. Reboot happened in '97, which was one of the early movies. There was one or two other. There was a syndicated one about trucks, I think. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And you had short-- like the Beetlejuice cartoon when it first started in '91, like one of their gimmicks was every week they had a one-minute computer-animated segment, and that kind of stuff. But that show was like the first sort of widely known that I was thinking of. I think the Washington Cold War is probably-- Oh, yes, around the same time. Yeah. So what else were you watching during that time you're watching Star Trek? So you're always gravitated towards sci-fi and stuff. I mean, in the '60s, in the '70s, it was also mainstream, hugely mainstream sci-fi stuff. Yeah, I mean, literally, I'm still on Saturday night because I'm going, oh, look, it's so-- there's Starsky and Hutch. I would absolutely watch that. There's Alice. There's Switch with the Green Acres and Rubber Wagner. Eddie Albert. Eddie Albert's my favorite angry guy. Like, no one yells at people like Eddie Albert. Love American style at 11, which must have been a repeat. Love American style is very strange. That was an anthology series of comedy, which you don't see now. Yes, which actually was where the Happy Days spun out of. Right, exactly. It was basically love American style. You remember who sang the original theme song for Love American? No, I don't. Who are the cow sills? Oh, the cow sills who were from Rhode Island. Yes, the cow sills were back when you had families all doing music together, which seems to us-- I think the Jets was the last one I can think of. And the Hardest Family was actually based on the cow sills. The cow sills, right. I think they actually looked at hiring the cow sills to do this. And they were like, no, we're just going to hire people. They didn't have their own Ruben Kincaid. So here's the ad for Starland Vocal Band, which was probably a summer replacement series, right? And they did "Afternoon Delight." Yes. So that was, you may know the song "Afternoon Delight," which is the nicest song about a disgusting thing. Let's make it not disgusting. I learned a little about your host. That's true. Let me tell you now what's wrong with America. Let's say a non-family-friendly topic. OK. A song many people who bought the single of probably did not know what the song was about. And I can't think of another song they had. But they had us there one. But it only took that one song to give them a summer replacement series. They got a whole series. Which is what happens when, in the summer, Andy Williams would go on hiatus or Glen Campbell would go on hiatus. And somebody would get a run to see if they could break into a series. You're stuck with the Starland Vocal. Hey, everybody, it's the Bay City Rollers. Yes. Who had their own show. And then went to Saturday morning. Yes. Or it was in front of them and then went to Saturday morning. So did you-- were you excited about the song? I probably was actually really excited about it. Anything I had to do with music because of my upbringing, I was probably pretty. So Bobby Goldsboro's show was a big deal. Even later, I don't know if it was a Saturday morning show called "The Kids from Kaper." Oh, yes. Which was kind of a-- which was "The Monkeys." Yes. One more time. It didn't last very long on NBC. But anything they had to do with-- and Don Kirschner, also the music for that. Don Kirschner's World concert. Who had done "The Monkeys" originally till he got-- They were constantly trying to recapture the magic of "The Monkeys" in the late '70s into the '90s. So in 1987, you had "The New Monkeys," which I actually really loved. It was pretty good. And the record is fantastic. It's really good. And so if you like sort of '80s power pop, it's a great record. And it came out in '87. It was one season. Sony Pictures and Coca-Cola Company produced it. Right. It's part of that checkerboard tradition. Yeah. And it's more like the young ones than "The Monkeys," really. It's a little more surreal. And then NBC had a show in 1990 called "The Guy's Next Store." That was another attempt to do "A Monkeys," but mixed with new kids on the block. Didn't they do a reality show, too, to try to cast the Monkeys? Yes. And they also do a part-to-channel. I think they did a reality show. "The New Partridge Family." Very, very odd. So you love all these sort of music variety shows. Would your dad watch them with you and be like, this is garbage? Did he have, like, was he snobby about it? No, actually, the beauty of my parents, they had no snobby about music. OK. So he'd be just as likely to bring home a chipmunks record as he would to bring home a rock and roll, right? Excellent. I still have the chipmunks punk LP. I'm looking at an ad right now because I remember the ad campaign. I don't think I ever watched a show. But do you remember how to pronounce that? Sliznik? It was Ziznik. Ziznik. It's like Mr. Mitzel Pitlic. Yes, and it was Ned Beatty, ex-marine sergeant, tries drilling scents into tough teenagers. He'll call him every name, but his own. Say it, Ziznik. And all I remember about that is that the whole ad campaign was based around his funny name. You can't pronounce this. You can't pronounce the name. That was the whole point. Also, it was a comedy, I think. It was only a half hour, so. Presumably someone went into a network and did this pitch. Look, Ned Beatty, tough guy. And they're like, green lit. But funny. Ned Beatty isn't thought of as a TV actor, really. It's interesting there was that crossover in the late '70s, early '80s, you started getting people who were in a lot of big '70s movies on television shows, all of a sudden. George C. Scott had several failed series. On Fox Day, Mr. President? Mr. President. Two series that was produced by Ed Weinberger, who had a huge track record from-- How's Fox Day in America, Amalia? It had a huge pedigree. I mean, you had Conrad Bain in it, and it just was a huge failure. That was, again, Fox, I think, was like, look, werewolf and Mr. President are going to be the shows. And it turned out to be-- Mary Wood Children in America's Most Wanted, the shows that were, like, after thoughts at Fox, were the biggest hits. So you can't predict that stuff, I think, sometimes. Again, so here's a show called The Cali Cacks, which I actually do not remember, even though I consider myself a historian. The Cali Cacks? Loathsome, lying and lazy. And those are their good points. No, no, no, no, no. So this is a comedy. It looks like a white version of Samford and Son. But you think of, like, Mary Wood Children as the first one that broke the world as being anti-- But apparently, the Cali Cacks were trying. We haven't talked about Cole Shack. We should probably talk about Cole Shack. The Night Stalker is one of my favorite shows of all time. It was sort of the precursor to the X-Files. Actually, Chris Carter specifically stated it was a huge influence. It's Darren McGavin, who you probably know is the dad from a Christmas story. Most people-- Another guy that deals with it. Yes, fantastic. Do you watch that all the time? All the time. Because by the time it was rerunning in late night-- what is it? Friday, Thursday, Saturday night on ABC. See what Eric late night. I love Cole Shack the Night Stalker. It was a series-- it was two TV movies for it. Yep. Night Strangler and the Night Stalker. Night Stalker. They were written by Richard Matheson, who wrote the majority of the Twilight Zone episodes. He probably wrote-- I think he-- the only one who wrote more episodes than him was Rod Serling. And he also wrote "I Am Legend," which really-- every zombie thing you like now is "I Am Legend." It was the direct George Romero influence, and it's all from Richard Matheson. His son, actually-- Richard Christian. Matheson wrote most of the hour-long action shows. He actually worked with Frank Lupo quite a bit. Yes, on the '18 and a lot of those shows that he worked on, which is very-- he wrote a great movie called "3 o'clock high." Yeah, it's not one of my favorite comedies. Cole Shack the Night Stalker was legitimately scary. There's some terrifying things in that show. And it was the first show that I remember seeing where-- because it was essentially those formula of Colombo or any of those kind of shows. But were you terrified of that? Like, did it scare you? No, it would-- in a good way. Yeah. It was good, kind of scary. It was kind of scary you want. The one that I remember the clearest is the skeleton zombie-- skeleton on the motorcycle. Yes, yes. It's basically Ghost Rider. Yeah. Yeah. That one is one of the more ridiculous ones. Yeah, like I said, if I went back and watched, I probably would think nothing special, but visuals of him flying through the air on the motorcycle before I really knew that much about Ghost Rider. It's amazing. He sticks with you. I also really love the one about the demon that kills old people with Phil Silvers is in the episode. It's the last thing he did and is a good legacy because prior to that, it was Love Boat where he played Captain Stubing's dad. And maybe my favorite-- so Night Stalker episodes, I think, fall into two categories, the really good terrifying ones and the ones that are so silly. They're just you watch them all the time. And my favorite one, Sandra Curry is in it and Erika Strada is in it and it's about an evil Aztec mummy who's trying to get Erika Strada to self-sacrifice so we can come back to life and Erika Strada's a jiggle. That's a really good one. Since we're doing favorite episode, Outer Limits. Oh, yes. By far, my favorite is the one. And again, it's basically the dust mite that comes out of the-- Oh, yes. Yeah. That one is something misfits. I can't think of the name, but there's something-- I remember the beginning woman is vacuuming. And she vacuums up this, what ends up being like an energy ball that sucks you dry. My two favorite Outer Limits are probably the two that became Terminator. It was demon with a glass hand in soldier, which those-- if you take those two episodes of Outer Limits, add them together. You get the Terminator to the point where Harlan Ellison successfully sued James Cameron for stealing the ideas for the Terminator. What's interesting-- and I hadn't thought about it before-- as much as I love being scared by coal chains, I was talking about the horror episodes of Outer Limits. My favorite Twilight Zone's for some reason are the most nostalgic ones. The Top of Willoughby, the gig-young one, Walking Distance. Yes. I don't know why. The Game of Pool or Night of the Meek? Yes, exactly, the Santa Claus one. Which is the Santa Claus one with Art Carney, who-- weirdly, Art Carney's played Santa Claus on television more than any other actor. He was Santa Claus in four different TV movies. He was Santa Claus in Night of the Meek. And you wouldn't think of Art Carney as Santa Claus. Somebody did. Somebody did. He was-- there was a made-for-TV movie called The Night They Saved Christmas. Oh, sure. And basically what happens is evil oil drillers are going to blow up Santa Claus in the North Pole so that they can drill oil. And Art Carney is Santa Claus again. No one thinks of him as Santa Claus. Sure job, but so I'm looking at that for a year at the top, which was Paul Shafer from David Letterman and Greg Ebbigen from BJ and the Bear, or My Two Dads. Yes, my two dads. In this particular episode, Satan's son turns two unknowns into Rock's hottest group, but there's the Devil the Pay. This is a one-hour premiere. And that sounds like you would watch that now on Adult Swim. Actually, probably still starring Paul Shafer and Greg Ebbigen. And music supervised by Don Kirschner. Don Kirschner of the Arches and the Monkeys and the Kids from Cape Town. There's a famous story when Mike Nesmith quit the Monkeys. He punched a hole in the wall until Don Kirschner, that should have been your face. And then stormed out. And actually Don Kirschner got pushed off of producing the music and they produced themselves on the front forward. And Don Kirschner has a quote that I love. He goes, "Michael wanted to play country in western songs." And they're like, yeah, but those are good. But he's almost vomiting when he says it. And then he started doing the Arches because his quote was, "I didn't want to have to worry about having to control real people." So I did a band that was just cartoons. But Don Kirschner was a huge force to the point where he had a name above title on Don Kirschner's rock concert, which was a late night music show that the name on the title was a music producer. He was not a musician. I couldn't imagine what you would possibly have today. But didn't Kurt Schugerman get a credit on top of midnight special two? Yeah, I think Kurt Schugerman was on midnight special two. Which makes even-- But he was still-- I mean, Wolfman Jack was still the-- The host. --with people were going to for that. But you have Paul Schaeffer at that time, pre-letterman. He was the bandleader on-- was in the "Saturday Night Live" band with Howard Schor, I think, for a while. And people forget Howard Schor was the "Saturday Night Live" band leader, but has gone on to do all the music for every David Cronenberg movie from "Saturday Night Live to David Cronenberg." It makes perfect sense to me. So all the summer time was the time for Variety Series. They didn't do reruns that much. It was like more stunt stuff and one-off sort of things. Have you ever wanted to work on a Variety Series or one of the things? I've actually tried to sell them-- I tried to do a couple of kids' Variety Series over the years. Growing up in Boston in the late '60s and '70s, you had so much local production from Rex Traylor to Rompa Room, Jabber Walkie Zoom. Jabber Walkie with Joe Beth Williams was the first one. Yeah, exactly right. But again, growing up here, I lucky enough to go to a TV station and see the behind-the-scenes when I was a kid. Did you go to Channel 7 or-- Go to Channel 5, I remember going to. Yes. And so that idea of those and Bozo, there's a local Bozo, of course. I've tried to bring back Bozo. I've tried to do another Variety Series with a southern actor named Buck Howdy. It's really hard to sell a kid's Variety Show today. And selling a locally produced kid's show is almost impossible. And it's really hard to just sell a Variety Show, I think, like we very rarely get them. I think Maya Rudolph was the last one that tried to do a sort of Variety issue. I remember when Dolly Parton's "Dolly" was prepared. Yeah, in 1988, that was going to be the proof that, OK, if you get a big enough name, people will come to Variety. And when that didn't stick, it kind of killed the genre. But it kind of killed the genre. So that was '87, '88. But they marketed it strangely. So it was on Sunday nights on ABC. And the two-hour block was "Dolly," which is a Variety Show at "Dolly Parton." And then Spencer for hire. It was like, the audience is not crossing over there. And Dolly was an interesting show. Like, she came out and introduced herself. She would be in a hot tub at the beginning of the show, actually, to go with the classic Variety Show and eat a hot tub. And Dolly Parton would do songs. She would have guests. But then in the middle of the show, there was a dramatic sitcom about a waitress in a truck stop diner played by Dolly Parton. And then we'd go back into the Variety Show and dance it with Miss Piggy. I think it was a little bit of the Carol Burnett mama's family thing, trying to-- Right, exactly. And I loved it, but it definitely didn't hit. Do you think that they don't exist anymore because people aren't willing to sit through the acts they don't care about anymore to get to the stuff they do? Because now you can just go to YouTube and get whatever you want. You don't have to watch it. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I think that you don't need broadcasting anymore, which is why you see things like USA Network, which used to play all kinds of crazy, different things, is like just law and order, or just shows like burn notice type shows, because now people specialize. And so they're not saying, we want to keep you here all day, so we want to give you a variety of things. Yeah, and people go, I don't want to be exposed to it. But don't you think that-- Because I think you're right. There's no question that the TV audience is so fragmented. And that's why you have 1,000 channels. And that's how they survive is by having a very specific narrow demographic. Shouldn't there be more variety shows for each of those little narrow demographics? I would think so. I mean-- But there doesn't seem to be. There doesn't seem to be. And even stuff like-- there were sort of targeted variety shows in the '70s as well. Like, I always think of the magic shows. So like, Doug Henning, he would have a variety show, but it was magic variety. But he would have Ricky Jay out and all these sorts of things. I would even think more like that, where it was almost like a targeted variety. Like, a kid show would be perfect. I think kids are generally a little more open to seeing all kinds of different things. And look, Peewee's Playhouse is some ways there's a variety show. Yeah. You'll get a gaba. Yeah, that's true. That's probably one of the best, better things. Better examples, I can think of the last sort of post-Peewee's Playhouse non-Peewee version of that, I think, was "Riders in the Sky." That was, if people remember, CBS did a sort of a-- so it was sort of like Rekstra. Yeah, country western. Yeah. But that was the last one that I remember that did anything that lasted over any right now. Out of the Weird Al had a Saturday morning show. It was less than a season. It was great. Really good. It was really good. Hey, Vern, it's Ernest. Hey, Vern, it's Ernest was very good. But it was more of a sketch comedy show, too. People, I think, write off Jim Varney a little bit, but he was a really versatile sketch actor. And I love "Scared Stupid," watch it every Halloween. And every summer I watch Ernest goes to camp. I have to watch that's one of my summer movies. Not Ernest saves Christmas at the holidays? I love Ernest saves Christmas. Although I do overlook the fact that Art Carney does not play Santa Claus. I think it would have been a little better. My wife still quotes Ernest saves Christmas every year, because Santa Claus basically gets arrested. And he says his name is Santa Claus. And they're like, OK, Mr. Santos. So that's our code for not understanding somebody, or thinking someone's crazy, as we call them Mr. Santos. I'll completely go off on a tangent. Do you remember Christmas that almost wasn't? Yes. Paul Tripp, who was in TV series. Yes. They were one of the weirdest Christmas movies ever made. It's an incredibly bizarre Christmas. Italian American-- it has to be a coproduction, because half the cast you can't understand what they're saying. But there was a lot of weird-- that's another thing. You don't see Christmas specials anymore, or holiday specials. And again, I'll take it all the way back full circle. So the Friday night before the Saturday premieres of the new Saturday morning schedule, there used to be a hosted show-- A prime to all the networks, where they would introduce the see your Saturday morning shows. And that's when you would flip from-- because they're all on exactly 8 to 9 o'clock, or whatever, 8 to 30, all at the same time, all the three channels you can get between. And that was actually-- you'd pull your hair out, trying to go from NBC to ABC. Well, I think people forget that now when a show is-- when someone thinks about a show, it's on the internet. Like, do you have a client thought of a show? And it might get made-- like, people know from day one through the whole production. But then literally, you didn't know what the new Saturday morning cartoons were going to be until the night before they started. You really had no idea. And then-- Unless you were a comic book reader, and then you'd see the ad to join the fan club for that network Saturday morning shows-- Which was a good way to get kids to read comics. And that's why when you go to buy your classic comics, so they have the coupon cut out of them, because they send in. I need to know what's on these shows. But that's how you would find out if your favorite show got canceled. You would just go to tune in, and it was gone. And it was replaced with Fufa. But Sid and Marty Croft produced a lot of those previous specials. I remember they did one with Scott Bayo, who sang three songs. When he was trying to go with his musical career post-chachie. And they were fun, though. I mean, they would usually have Alph hosted one, the NBC Kids, who did a bunch of stuff with Andy Williams, Christmas specials, and these specials. And I think there would be more appointment television now, or more spectacle TV, like one-off specials now, based on the narrow casting stuff. Because I feel like the way movies have gone, where now movies all have to be an event. And I think that's true to-- I mean, all those limited series that you're seeing now on the networks are event television. But I think the idea of doing a two-hour spectacle, you can't compete with a sports event. You can't compete with something on a movie. And any movie you want is accessible at any time you want it. So I think that's probably part of the reason that you don't-- And I love Christmas specials. I will still watch any Christmas special every year. Every year. What are some of your favorites? Oh, God. I mean, between the Perry combos and the Andy Williams, Tennessee or any Fords used to be great. Yep. It's just like the variety show format. King family? Yeah, no, that's the stuff that I would-- If you ever seen, there's an animated Christmas special. It's my favorite worst Christmas special of all time. It was an Australian US production called Candy Claws. I have not seen Candy Claws. It's-- I have to get you a DVD of Candy Claws. Because it's unbelievable. I mean, the Rankin Bass stuff, obviously. Yes, right. Before they went animated, I like the Mad Monster Party. Yeah. My favorite. But the animated Rankin Bass, a little bit too 60s for me. But the Pupimation stuff for me. Oh, yeah, amazing. They, a woman who lived in Rhode Island, worked for Rankin Bass on the Rudolph special and had all the puppets in her attic. But they were shot in Japan, actually. They would build them and shoot them in Japan. She had them all-- because after they shot it, they just gave them to her. Kids used to play with them and they'd have melted and stuff. And she actually brought them on the Antiques Road Show. Gary Summers runs this show, has looked at them and they were like, yeah, we used to play with them. And this person was like, these are the actual puppets from Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer. Oh, really? They were at the Ton of Moneys like-- It was animagic. Yeah. He's like, we left some of these on a radiator before. We had more of these. They were like, oh, well, no one kept things then. I mean, it was-- You know, you know, cells, animation cells, which are the things you would paint on, actually. They would actually wash them off. Yeah, and re-use. At the end of the session, reuse them because it was cheaper to reuse the plastic. But it'll keep the cell and warehouse somewhere. A lot of TV shows were lost that way, too. I mean, the BBC and Dr. Who's probably the most famous example. Video tapes were very expensive. Record right over it. They were to cord right over it. It was not-- they were like, no one's going to want to see this. Again, it's already aired. Why would they want to watch this more than once? Getting back to your Christmas question. So in addition to the rank and best stuff, which is fantastic. Emmed Otters. Joe Bingham. Joe Bingham. Chris Manson one is fantastic. Muppet Family Christmas is another favorite. Very good. And there's a John Denver-- Yes, John Denver in the Christmas special. Have you ever tried to produce a holiday special? Or-- I imagine that's a really small audience to sell for. Yeah, it's the kind of thing where if someone came to me, I would do it in the heartbeat. And I've done Christmas episodes of almost every animated series I've done because I can. Yeah. But no one yet has come to me about a Christmas like a variety Christmas special. I imagine that they frown upon doing a holiday episode in the animated series because it would screw up the syndication. You know, yes or no? I mean, yes, except that if you can figure it, you can usually figure out your production schedule. So at least the first time it runs, it's going to run close enough. And then after that, they kind of like it because they can release this as a separate DVD, just that one episode. Or collect the two or three Christmas episodes you do. And just have a Christmas cell through piece. What's your favorite one that you've done? Well, the one-- I did one for Men in Black where North Pole, New York, having gone to high school upstate New York, there is a North Pole, New York. It's actually where there's a Santa's Museum park, Santa's Village workshop, Santa's Workshop. So we use that conceit that there actually is a North Pole. Yeah. And I remember getting a lot of, probably letters as opposed to emails that I'm going, you know, well, there is-- what are you talking about? No, there actually is. It's not New York? Like, yeah, it is. Yeah, go there. You'll find out. So that's pretty cool. But I've tried to do a Christmas episode of almost every series I've ever done. And is that your all-time favorite? Have you ever tried any other holiday specials? Because I'm like a big Halloween special guy as well. We tend-- I mean, when I was doing extreme Ghostbusters, we did perfect. Halloween, obviously. Christmas and Halloween are the two holidays you tend to service when you're doing Valentine's Day, depending on the kind of show every once in a while. But I've not the kind of shows I've done. I've never seen a good Easter special. No, although there are-- There's a lot of them, but I've never seen one I like. Peter Cottontail is not bad. It's OK. It's Easter Beagle. I just think that the story is not-- I mean, Easter's sort of a B holiday for most kids, because it's like, eh. The next thing is there have actually been a decent number of really good holiday animated specials in the last few years. Yes. The Toy Story ones, I think, are really, really good. It's really good. It's really good. What's the other? The Pixar one, Ratchet and Clanker. I can't think of the other one. I think those are really good. There's actually been a bit of a resurgence, because I think in how Murray saved Christmas last year. And then there was the one that Drew Barrymore worked on. Oh, all of the other rings here. And I think, literally, that is because those of us who grew up with those specials are now of an age where we can actually-- we have enough power-- not me, but Drew Barrymore does-- just say, I want to do this and get it made. Drew Barrymore goes, I want a new holiday special. Boom, it's done. Although in the '90s, you got a few. I mean, the Tick did a great animated holiday episode. Eat the Cat. Actually, a lot of the Fox cartoons did a lot of great animated holiday episodes. So what are some of the other things you watched in there? Well, I don't want to take too much of a tornado. Well, we got homes in Yo-Yo. Homes in Yo-Yo, about the robot partner. Yes. Yes, which people forget was a real show. There was Man and Machine later in the '90s. With two M's. Yes, M-A-N-N. It stood for mechanical, automatic, not a nerd or something. I don't know what the two N stood for. But there was a lot of those, which was almost-- was it almost human last year? Yeah. It's homes in Yo-Yo. It's just a remake of Homes in Yo-Yo. Well, almost human is the British series with the vampire, the-- That's being human. No, the British version, I think, is called-- Is it almost human? Oh, maybe it is. It was the one, the cyphone with John Larrichet, was the villain, right? Is that almost human? Yeah, on Fox, right? Yeah. That's some of the guys from "Fringe" working. Yeah. So I watched, which was my all-time favorite sci-fi show. "Little House in the Prairie" was on on Monday night. Did you watch that? Not really. My wife did. That's-- I feel like every woman who's currently between age 30 and 50 watched, "Little House in the Prairie" and is seeing Greece at least five times. Yeah, I can't think of those claims. She's not even a chair. "Street to San Francisco." Great show. "Co-Jack." Bruce Lee on "Street to San Francisco" in one episode. Wow. So then, OK, so Tuesday, "Happy Days." But actually, I'd go back and forth. Because for some reason, I had a bit of a Bob Conrad obsession for no reason. Probably from "Wild Wild West." So I actually watched-- first, it was called Bob, Bob, actually, then it became a bunch of squadron. Yeah, which is a good action show. And then he made a series of other series for NBC, because Tardikoff apparently loved him. None of which a man called Sloan wasn't that-- Yes, a man called Sloan. Where he's got like a prosthetic arm with all kinds of weapons and stuff in it, and a boxing one that he did. Brendan Tardikoff greenlit some really weird high-concept stuff. I mean, "Manimals" is probably the biggest example. But which I think they're making a movie of, by the way. Imagine Atlantis. Imagine Atlantis. Everybody's favorite Patrick Duffy vehicle more than step-by-step. If you look closely and step-by-step, he still has gills on that show. A lot of people don't know that it was very subtly done. Well, mash into one day at a time. On the same network. Can you imagine-- like now, networks, they sort of program a show of all similar kind of shows, or all one production company, or I'll have the same flavor. But you've just watched mash, which is a funny show, but kind of a bum out. And then you're watching one day at a time. Where Schneider comes in with this rappy mustache, and he's hitting on Bonnie Franklin after you've just seen the horrors of the Korean War. Schneider's more offensive. I will give a shout out to the police woman, because my dad really liked Angie Dickinson. Angie Dickinson? Everyone's dad really loved Angie. Did your dad go see Body Double the day it came out in theaters? Probably. Yeah. Probably, and I will, but I'll take you back to-- there's a great Gene Roddenberry movie, Pretty Made's All in a Row-- Yes. --with Angie Dickinson. Yep. Right? Yep. And Rock Hudson, very weird mix of sex, and murder, and comedy. It's a bizarre movie. It's very ungeatin' Roddberry. Like, speaking of Christmas episodes, there's a great one of police women. Do you remember that one? I don't. There's a Santa Claus, not Art Carney, who goes on a series of-- Rob's a bunch of banks dressed as Santa Claus. And then they find out he's an elderly gentleman that's not getting social security benefits, and is eating cat food, and living in this flop house apartment, so that's why he's robbing these banks. And it turns into a whole thing about taking care of the elderly. It starts off with Santa robbing a bank, and it ends with, like, we need to help the elderly. Donnie and Marie, Grizzly Adams, and actually Dan Hagerty. Dan Hagerty. Yeah, Dan Hagerty. He had a sandwich shop in the valley in Los Angeles. Do you really? I bet they were hardy. They were very hardy. I remember going there. Dan Hagerty was on Battle of the Network Stars, like, almost every year. Why don't they do those anyway? I was always wondering-- the last one they did was 1987. And it was-- they just didn't go well. Then circus of the stars as well. Why don't they bring that back? I'd rather watch-- I don't know if you remember Battle of the Stars, but basically, each network would compete against each other. And typically, at some point, either Gabe Kaplan or Bob Conner would be furious and screaming again. Yeah. That's why they pitched the show. They were like, look, Gabe Kaplan and Bob Conner are furious at some point every day. Anyway, let's just make it a show. But I remember Dan Hagerty would always be in it and would be, like, way too into the games. Like, you would always be a team captain and be, like, really angry about it. I had Melanie chart off on the show, and she was in one of the Battle of the Network Stars. And there's a great clip online of her dunking Tom Selleck in a dunk tank. And I'm like, these are the moments that we're missing in television now. Where is today's Tom Selleck being dunked at? All right, so I'm going to do two more, and then we'll get out of it. So because there's a show on Wednesday nights that I actually used to watch that no one remembers, called Busting Loose. Busting Loose. Which was Alan Arkan's son, Adam. Yes, who was on Northern Exposure later. Yes, and went on to do a bunch of other stuff. But actually, for some reason, loved that show. And the only thing I remember about it, or the clearest thing, is there was some running gag about the fact that there were ducks on the wallpaper. Oh, yes, I do remember that, yes. Like, he couldn't change the wallpaper or something like that. And then, C.P.O. Sharkey was also on Wednesday nights. Which was Don Rickles? Yes. Don Rickles is an interesting case. Which just came out on DVD. And is worth watching. The season one, it's Don Rickles trying to fit into kind of a TV thing. It doesn't work. He's a guy that was so famous. They put him in so many pilots. Nothing hit my favorite one he did with Pam Alden, who does a lot of stuff with Louis C.K. now. A lot of voice over cartoon stuff, King of the Hills. She's Bobby. Just to be Pam Seagull. Pam Seagull, when she was on Facts of Life. They did a backdoor pilot during Give Me a Break. Do you remember this with Don Rickles? And he played like a cantankerous store owner. And Pam Seagull steals something from him because she's an orphan and he adopts her. And they had tried to make this a series where it was like, Don Rickles running a store. And she was like, hey, yeah, get out of here. She was like a tough street kid. And he was like, I hate everybody. Aw, it made it one episode after the backdoor pilot and just didn't work. If you get a chance, go online and look at the trailer that they cut together for the C.P.O. Sharkey season one. Because they're giving you the highlights as if these are the most hilarious moments. And they're cringe-worthy. Which of course meant they had to buy it immediately. Yeah, you need it. It's just him yelling at the tall guy. What are you, a hockey pocket? Like that, just over and over again. There's some famous footage of the shot C.P.O. Sharkey to bring it back to where we started to wrap up here because we have Johnny Carson on the cover. Carson was kind of a jerk. He was like an infamous jerk. And Don Rickles would have kind of a prank war. But it wasn't really that good in nature. And they were shooting C.P.O. Sharkey. And during a taping of The Tonight Show, they just busted in to the studio next door. And he basically just goes in there and starts ridiculing Don Rickles in front of the entire cast and crew of C.P.O. Sharkey. And Don Rickles legitimately is like upset about it. And there's footage of it online. It's fantastic. It's not even really that funny. It's just like this is awkward. It's like seeing someone's parents fight while you're over there for dinner. It's well worth watching. Well, Jeff Klein, thank you so much for your show. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you guys for coming out. (upbeat music) There you go, Jeff Klein. Man after my own heart. We're very similar in many ways, except he is far, far more successful than I will ever be. And he got to work with Frank Lupo. That's pretty exciting. Just one minor correction. Jeff emailed me to correct the mistake he made about Sid and Marty Croft's World of Adventure. Sid and Marty Croft did have the world of Sid and Marty Croft which did open, it was actually opened in 1976, but it was in Atlanta, Georgia, not Ohio. The banana splits were walk around costume characters at King's Island amusement park in Cincinnati. So there was his honest mistake. Honest mistake anyone could make. And I believe now the Sid and Marty Croft land is the CNN building. So there you go. My second guest on the Saturday was the one and only Miss Julie McCullough. Now I obviously know Julie mostly from Growing Pains. If you're a regular listener of the show, you know that I'm an enormous Growing Pains fan. She came in season four as Julie Costello, the nanny and Mike's love interest. She was really funny on that show, really great, but she's done tons and tons of other stuff. And we talk about that all here, up to an including circus of the stars. It was a really fun conversation. I was very glad to speak with her. And so that is the second half of our episode. So please enjoy the second half of TV Gaddens Councilor Live at Northeast Comic-Con with Julie McCullough. ♪ TV movies made for TV ♪ ♪ Remaps me ♪ - Welcome Julie McCullough, everybody. - I feel like I should be on Game of Thrones right now. - You don't, you don't know that you're not on Game of Thrones right now. - I know, that's true. - That would be a very bad prank show, like surprise you're on Game of Thrones. - Surprise you on Game of Thrones, you settle in the throne, now you bust out. - Yeah, then they bed you. So I have a selection of TV guides for you if you would like to flip through any of these, just to kind of spark your memories. I kind of picked, most people sort of picked between ages eight and 12 is sort of the prime viewing time or television for most people 'cause you're old enough that you don't want to hang out with your parents but not old enough to do anything about it, I think is that. - That's so very true. I don't even know, you just randomly picked. - Oh yeah, that's fine. How about, I will go with this one. It looks like we got Grizzly Adams there. - Love Grizzly Adams. So did you, you watched a lot of TV growing up? - I watched a lot of TV. I grew up watching TV because you know, it was really cool when we got a black and white TV like not many people in our neighborhood had a TV back then. - Right, right. - And then my grandparents got a color TV and that was even bigger so then I wanted to spend all my time at my grandparents also, I could watch TV. - Right, just check the mic one second, check the mic one second. No, that's fine. So do you move around a lot when you were growing up? - My, daddy was the Marine Corps. - Okay. - And we moved around a lot. We moved, I lived in West Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, taxes. - We had the whole South sewer. - I did Nevada, California, I was born in Hawaii. - Okay. - And my grandparents went back and forth between Hawaii and North Carolina my entire life. - Okay. - My dad that raised me was from West Virginia and my birth dad was from right here in Boston. - Oh nice, there you go. So I imagine, and I bring it up because moving around a lot, like the thing that's always consistent is what's on television in most places. - Absolutely. - So at least in prime time, so. - When I was very young, hands down, my number one favorite show was "Dark Shadows". - Okay, did you watch it every single day? - I watched it every single morning with my grandma. That was our favorite show was "Dark Shadows". It was early in the morning. - Yeah, odd grandma, child, or show to watch. - And then in the 70s, in the mid 70s, it came on late afternoon. So I would rush home from school and to turn on the TV so that I could get there in time to watch "Dark Shadows". It was my favorite show. - I wonder if "Dark Shadows" kept a lot of kids out of trouble 'cause they had to rush right home and watch it. They weren't getting a run. - It could be, it could be. - But I loved it. I loved the mystique of vampires and werewolves and ghosts and the witches and Angelique was the witch. - And that show was so ahead of its time because. - So ahead of its time that way. - It's exactly what's popular now. - Absolutely. - It's a soap opera with vampires and werewolves, which is exactly what kids like now. - And being a young girl, Sarah was the little bitty girl on the show and she was a ghost. And she was Barnabas Collins' little sister. And I loved every time because they would play this music and you could hear her singing and she'd be singing, you know, ♪ Dondin' bridges falling down ♪ ♪ Falling down ♪ - Classic ghost song. - You know that? - Or she'd be, you know, singing ring around there. It was always like those creepy little. So now I associate all those. - Black death songs. - You know that? - Yes. - And when I was older at the Playaway Ranch and they did a big haunted house on their tennis court and they had this room, it was like a kid's bedroom and I was helping decorate that. And so I painted on the walls like, you know, with my hand, you know, now they made me down to sleep. I prayed the Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I... And then it was like, just all the way down, like they fall under. - And so I told them, I'm like, we need to layer music. We need to layer the, you know. - We need to talk shadows tribute room. - I pray the Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I win, I pray the Lord, my soul to take. I want to layer that with ♪ Dondin' bridges falling down ♪ And then layered it with, you know, ♪ Ring around the road ♪ - Did they actually do that? - Yes. - Was anyone like... - So we layered all three of those things, it was freaking creepy, y'all. - Oh yeah, I think any one of those things. - Very soft, spoken, and because of the sounds that creeped me out. - Yeah, okay, so sound stuff is the thing that creeps you. - Sounds always. - Well, that makes sense. I mean, dark shadows was a creepy show, but it was a soap opera, on a soap opera budget, and they left flubs in. I mean, they shot it basically live. - Absolutely, you see it now, you see the boom, which is the sound like coming in. You see the fuzz on everything. - People forget lines. - They bump in a table. - I saw grips walking in the background, outside of the windows. - The good thing is you could write them off as ghosts in dark shadows at least. If it's general hospital, you're like, there's a grip, but on dark shadows, you're like, he was a handyman that died in Collinwood, and it makes perfect sense. - Absolutely, so that was hands down my favorite show. And still to this day, it kind of marks the things that I like in TV. I like anything that looks old with like... - These chairs, these chairs are very dark shadows. We're at the Shriners Hall for people to just listen. - The Shriners getting the, but anything with the gothic type of furniture, anything that was old. - So did you like the Addams family and the monsters? - Love the Addams family, love the monsters, and got to appear in the new monsters. - The new monsters, I was gonna bring that up. - The monsters today, which in the mid '80s, there was a nostalgia kind of started in the '70s. In the first sort of decade, people were nostalgic for, it was the '50s, which is where you get happy days and all that stuff. But in the '80s, we started getting a phenomenon of the new fill in the blank show. So there was a new leave it to Beaver, a new Gidget, a new monsters, there was a ton of these shows. And the new monsters today was actually a very good show, I really enjoyed that show. - I got to kiss Eddie Munster. - Yes. - I got to be the first girl to kiss Eddie Munster, but on the monsters today. - Yes, and he was played by, he does a lot of voiceover now. He was also in Erie, Indiana. - Oh, I know, I can't think of his name. - I can't think of his name. - Is that? - It's Jean, something. Ow, think of it later. - Mars, Mars, Mars, Marsden. - Marsden, Marsden, thank you. - Yes, it was excellent in Erie, Indiana. Yes, he was Eddie on that show, yes. So that must have been crazy to be on that set. - It was fun, because those are the kinds of things I liked watching growing up. I loved Adam's family, I loved the monsters. - And the monsters today, their set was pretty traditional, it was pretty, it heared pretty well to the original set, except in color. So were you like, oh my God, I need to see spot and go look at this or the AS. - And then there was also, a lot of the shows I liked when I was a kid, I liked Gidget. - Yep, wish they had a new Gidget. - I loved the flying nun. - Let's talk about the flying nun for a moment here. Are people aware of the show, The Flying Nun, because the premise of this show was literally a nun that flew, that was, and it was Sally Field. - Yes. - Speaking of Gidget. - And she is my favorite actress, it's still to this day. - Yeah. - And she is one of my hands down, my favorite actresses. I loved everything she's ever done. - She's one of those. - And it's because I was, as a child, like she, I loved her. - Is the flying nun? - Yes, I loved her as a flying nun, I loved her as Gidget. She was awesome. - She's one of the first actresses that I can think of too that really got written off in the beginning of her career 'cause she was in the flying nun and Gidget, and then sort of transitioned into literally an Oscar winning actress later. - Amazing. - Which people forget. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Normal Ray. - All that sort of stuff. - Normal Ray was the flying nun. One of Sibyl's personalities was a nun that flew. - Yes, exactly, exactly. She was most excellent as Sibyl. - Yes, absolutely. Just one of the, just an amazing performance. - Which you would never, I mean, she was great on the flying nun. - Yes. - Which you would never be like, "This person is a real acting powerhouse." So it's interesting. - And so you saw Sibyl. - Right, exactly. - I think Sibyl really put her on the map 'cause being able to play absolutely crackers. - Yes. - So you could see the depths of everything she did in that. - Which made sense when she played a stand-up comedian in Punchline. - Mm-hmm. - We're all absolutely crackers. - Yes. (laughing) - So you're getting to, are you growing up? You're watching these things. Do you have siblings? - I have a brother and his name is Joey. And we liked a lot of the same things. I liked a lot of the Saturday morning type shows that we, you know, we watch. - Banana splits and the Sibyl Mardi Croft. - Banana splits, I love the monkeys. I loved "Sigma and the Sea Monsters" when that came out. - Okay, yep. - I love Lidsville. - Very terrifying. - I loved HR, Puff and Stuff. HR, Puff and Stuff. Where to go when things get rough? HR, Puff and Stuff. - So all the psychedelic Sibyl Mardi Croft. - I loved "Land of the Lost Terrifying Things." - Yes, loved "Land of the Lost." - Yes. - Watched that regularly. - Did you ever see the remake of "Dark Shadows" in the late '80s? - Yes, I did. But you know what I was ticked off about? I wanted to audition for that. - Yeah. - By the time I found out, they'd already cast that. I was so bummed. - What are you doing? - I had done that show for freaking free. - But I only made it four episodes, so you won out. - No. I still would have been part of the "Dark Shadows" franchise. Somehow. - That's true. - That would have been awesome. - "Dark Track." Wasn't this crazy about the movie? - Nah, I had it in the movie. - I wanted it to be darker. I wanted it to be more sinister. - It was a little too whimsical. - And it was. It was too cartoony for me, honestly. - Yeah, it was a little too sickening to see monsters. - Yes. (laughing) - It was more like a remake of that. But "Star Trek" you watch all the time? - It was a huge "Star Trek" fan. And "Star Trek," they did like a documentary and his son, Eugene, decided to do this documentary about different entertainers who were fans of "Star Trek." And I actually am interviewed for that. I haven't seen it, so. - You don't know how you do it? - No, but I mean, that was another thing. I used to, you know, race homes, I could watch "Star Trek." That was my other, Eugene Kirk. - Well, the kids grew up with watching it too. - What's that? - Well, the kids you grew up with watching it too, like were these things that you talk to kids about? 'Cause I imagine like a teenage girl or a preteen girl probably isn't having a lot of conversations about "Star Trek" at school. - No, no, I liked sci-fi things, even the books that I read were mostly sci-fi or ghost stories. I was very big into ghost stories. - What's your favorite? - The movie "The Others" is one of my favorite movies I don't know if you guys see it. - The "Cool Kidman" is in the movie movie. - Did you watch things like "Cold Shack" and "Twilight Zone" and "The Mints" and all of a sudden? - I watched "Co-Jack," I watched "Twilight Zone," the "Night Gallery." - Oh yeah. - I liked any of that scary kind of stuff, but that stems from childhood. I think you're stimulated from childhood as to what you like when you go into your dogies. - Oh yeah, I think all your interests are set by age 10. - Yes. - And essentially, everything new that you like after that is just 'cause it's like the things you like to that, or trigger something like that. - Absolutely. - 'Cause the first thing I remember seeing you in was a sci-fi show. I think Max Hedger, you did it earlier from Max Hedger, right? - Yep, the small little part in Max Hedger, and it's just a fantasy sequence of Chris Young, the actor, and in a flashback scene, I'm like his fantasy girl, and it's me and a bikini running down the beach, and I'm his dream girl in Max Hedger. - So Max Hedger was a very dark dystopian sci-fi series that actually, sadly, was pretty prescient in predicting a lot of the things that are on television now. It was a very running man. And is an unusual story to begin with because it started as a very dark channel for the UK TV movie, and then became a pitchman for Coke and a talk show host, and then they made a US TV series, which was very good. But being a sci-fi fan, you got to be in it, but in probably the least, you probably didn't get to see any of the sci-fi elements 'cause you just shot it on a beach or something. - Yes, shot it on a beach in a flashback scene. - Did you watch the episode when it aired? - Of course. - Yeah. - And then I just got to do like weird strange things. I was on Super Boy, I got to kiss Super Boy. - Which Super Boy was it? - The first Super Boy. - The first Super Boy. - Which John Hamm's Newton, which he was the most handsome guy. Kind of look like you, you look like a Superman kind of guy. - Thank you. - I know like that slick tear, the light, it was so handsome. And hands down probably the most handsome man I ever got to co-star to kiss on screen. And I've kissed a lot of guys on screen. - True, and I've seen them, they're handsome. - And was that Universal Studios Florida? - Yes, we shot that in Florida. So that was great fun. I got to do all these strange shows. - I also did an episode of The Relic Hunter. I play Erika, The Evil Magician on that show. - It was like 95ish, probably. - Yeah, that was in the 90s. - That was a first-run syndication show that was sort of before the UPN network became a network. They tried to sort of backdoor into a network by selling these series into first-run syndication. Relic Hunter, Renegade. - Yes. - With Lorenz Alamus and the Highlander series and all those sorts of things were produced by the same companies. - Exactly. With Relic Hunter, I got that show because I had in real life, I was a magician's assistant for almost 20 years. And so by doing the magic stuff, Tia Carrera, who was the main star of Relic Hunter, who has now since been, she's a Grammy award-winning music artist, and if y'all know that, she's won a couple Grammys. - Long way from zombie nightmare without a wester. - Well, she was originally, she was my roommate. - Okay. - But when she did Wayne's World, and I'd just come off of growing pains, she was actually my roommate. And she, you know, we come to my magic shows at the Magic Castle, and I did like Dick Clark live doing the magic comedy trio. I did, which I was a huge frickin' Dick Clark fan, so that was just like, ugh. - Did you watch American Bandstand going out yet? - I watched American Bandstand all growing up. So to actually get to be on the show with Dick Clark was just, I was in such, it's hard to work with somebody that you're so struck over. - Was he the first one that you were really star struck by? - Absolutely. Of all the people I worked with, they had hands down to him, and on the same episode of Dick Clark live, we had Tony Orlando and Don doing a reunion. - Wow, we're tellin' the options and everything. - It was the first time that those had all, those as a group had been together, Tony Orlando and Don. So I was also very star struck because I watched Tony Orlando and Don, which was a variety show. I watched lots of variety shows in the '70s. - Yeah, I mean, the '70s was the hey day of variety shows. - Hey day of variety shows. - And did you watch a lot of the magic shows as well, like Doug Henning or-- - I watched them all. - Yeah, so that, it all was inspiring for what I wound up doing later in my life. And with the magic, Tia knew that I had done all the magic stuff that had been in my shows, and she saw that there was gonna be a magician, an evil magician on the show. - Is there any other kind? - She said, you know, she said, my friend Julie is actually a magician assistant. She knows how all this magic stuff works, and she called me up. She said, "Can you do magic?" I was like, "I can't do magic, but I am the magic." - Right, right, right. - I appear and disappear. - So that's how I got that job. So they gave me the job based on the fact that I had done all the stage actually doing magic stuff. - You have the skill set. You can be an evil magician. That's better than her going, do I know anyone who's evil, Julie'd be good? Oh, what is a magician? She can probably do that too. So the magician part's the right thing that you want her to think of. - So definitely through the '70s, the variety shows. There was Donia and Marie Alsmond, Tony or Lando and Don. Of course, you know, all those types of, he-hall even, he-hall. My folks loved he-hall. - You were in the right region of the country for he-hall. - B-R-549, and it's funny how you can remember lines from a show when you were a child. - Oh yeah, if someone hired me to act in something now, and was like, you have to memorize these four lines, I was like, "I cannot do that." But I can recite the whole monologue from any episode of "Grog Face." - That's crazy. - I didn't try to do it, yeah. - The "Caribornette Show," the "Caribornette Show," the entertainment that provided, even into adult life. I can look back at any "Caribornette Show," just genius. - And did you watch that stuff with your family? Like these shows? - Yeah, my parents were, they were cool parents. They, you know, they liked the variety shows, and it was good for, it was good family television. We don't really have a lot of that now. - No, I mean, everything's so narrow-casted now. - Yes. - It's, you know, a kid can watch exactly what they want to see on their phone in their closet at home. They don't need to sit down and watch it with their parents and hope that something they like is coming on. - But back then, none of those zombie stuff would have been on TV. - No, well, they don't live in dead, dead air a lot. - Yes, but not living dead was huge in the drive-ins, because I grew up going to the drive-in theaters. I don't know if anybody else grew up going to the drive-in theaters, but that was like our big thing. We didn't have indoor theaters. I lived mostly out in the country. We didn't have an indoor theater. - Would it be all horror and exploitation movies? - It was mostly horror and exploitation movies. I watched all the dark shadow movies at the drive-ins. - Both of them were right. - Did you see the original Big Bad Mama in the drive-in? - No, no, but I wound up, of course. - You were in part two, right? - I was in Big Bad Mama two, and we have been in discussions about doing a Big Bad Mama three. - Is Wenorsky involved as well? - Yes, with him directing and me playing my same character, Pauli McClatchy, and Mama. I will be the new Mama in the Big Bad Mama movie. - And she's dick-and-sin, right? - If we do, if it does come to fruition. - Yes, and Roger Corman said yes, apparently, so far. - Oh, right. - To it, as long as we come up with a strong storyline, and it'll probably be set in the 1950s, because the original-- - The '30s and then the '40s, and yeah. - So we're set during the Depression. So, slash forward to maybe in an older broad now, and older-ish, I should say. - There are worse rules to step into than Angie Dickinson's. - Right? But playing my same character is the daughter, but grown up now with kids. So hopefully, if it comes to pass, I will be-- - That would be very cool. We may have got a scoop here, everybody. Did you watch her in "Police Woman" when you were growing up? 'Cause that was a 1970s show. - Of course, and she was my daddy's favorite, and-- - Did he make you get an autograph when you were in the movie? - No, you know, she looked so much like my real Mama. Angie Dickinson, really, and my mother, they really look a lot alike. - I could see that. - So my dad was a huge Angie Dickinson fan, and I learned so much from her. - Yeah. - She lost a lot of her hearing during the "Police Woman" TV series from the guns all shooting off. So there was a scene in "Big Bad Mama" too, where somebody shoots off a gun, and it was right by my head, and it was so loud, it hurt my ear, and almost burst my ear drum. I hit the floor. I hit the floor, I couldn't hear. It was that, and it was very poor choice on the behalf of the-- - It's a low budget movie, they're not doing all the safety hits. - That's a cheap hit off, and-- - I watched Angie Dickinson go from being the sweetest woman who was passing out candy every day on the set, to shooting fire and spit words out-- - Oh, yeah. - To everybody, and yelling at all of them, because she lost part of her hearing from "Police Woman" from people, the neglect of shooting off guns next year. - Yeah, I mean, in the '70s, they're shooting these action series, and they don't have stunt people unless you're falling off-- unless you're literally doing the things detailed in the theme song to "The Fall Guy," they are not having a stuntman. So you don't remember a lyric where I'll stand next to a gun going off, like it's just fall from a building, or something like they would get a guy, but they're trying to shoot these stuff on one or two takes, and the TV shows, they would shoot like a low budget movie, so they're trying to get 'em quick. So I'm not surprised. - There wasn't a lot of stunts at all, even way back in the day, there was an actress. One of the very first actresses to die from injury she sustained, her name was Lillian Webb, and way back, going back, she was jumping from one car to another or something, and she got severely injured, and she died months later from complications of the injuries that she sustained during that, because back in the old days they didn't have any stunts. They didn't have earplugs in your ears for those things. Even up through the '60s and the '70s, they weren't doing any of that. - They couldn't fake that stuff. - Yeah, they were just like, yeah, just do it. And even up to the '70s and '80s, and the Philippines and stuff, where they would shoot stuff, the stuntman, they would be like, yeah, just have him jump off the building onto the train. It's like, yeah, but don't we do it so it looks like that? No, we have a guy who will just do that. - Yes. - And it's like, you can't do that. - They had a show they started called Circus of the Stars, and I got to do one of the Circus of the Stars, '90, around '90. - Okay, you're in the same season as Heather Lane camp. Did she do it the same year you did? - For my season, it was Mario Lopez. - Okay, he did the trapeze. - He did the trapeze, Maureen Flanagan, you know. - From out of this world, yup. - She did the trapeze, and Ginny Garth was doing the trapeze, and so many different-- - It was lion Jeremy. - Karen Black. - She did the elephants, and she would just come over. And I, 'cause I went over 'cause I was such a fan, I grew up watching "Garen Black." - It was real as you have terror. - It was like a, so I was so excited that she was there, and I became goofy fan. And then she was so genuinely sweet to me. She came over later, and she sat down, and she watched me do in the high wire, and all I kept looking back, it was like, 'cause her eyes get so creepy. - Oh yeah. - 'Cause black has these eyes that just stare through you, and she creep me out too much when it was up in the high wire. - It's not who you want staring at, you want a high wire. - And you just don't. - But I was excited, you didn't even eat her. - I assume you watch "Trilogy of Terror." Yeah, I mean that wasn't made for TV movie with Karen Black. - Yes. - She played three different roles. - And she, her eyes did something about-- - And that was "Stairs at You." - That was written by Dan Curtis, who created "Dark Shadows." - Yes. - She did "Trilogy of Terror" as well. - Exactly. - So "Circus of the Stars" is something that fascinates me, and I've been looking to have a few guests on the show who've done "Circus of the Stars" under Gower, had done it twice, and it's something that I can't believe they haven't brought back. But thinking about it, it's probably because it was really dangerous for you guys, and you had to work for months. - Mark Paul Gossler actually got injured while we were doing it. J. Eddie Peck got injured while we were doing it. J. Eddie Peck was my original "Circus" partner on the high wire, and he got injured, and Mark Paul Gossler got injured. I mean, he had to have surgery on his arm. It was that bad. He got injured doing an aerial act. - It's very difficult. I mean, you were training for probably, what, like six months before you had to do it? - Yeah, you trained for a few months. You're training every day, Monday through Saturday, Sunday, she had off. - It's not like fake it with the celebrity, so they look good. They were like, "No, after work, you train for four hours, so you can do a "Circus" quality high wire act. - There's a crack of dawn every single day, and before you go onto your other set, and then when you get off of your work, and you go back to your work, you're going to train, you have to. It's the only way to do it. - Well, you like, my God, what have I signed up for? Or were you into it? - I was so into it, and I could walk up a wire, I could ride a bicycle on the wire. It was really, and the most physically fit I've ever been in my entire life. - Oh, I imagine, yeah. - During that show. - Were the people teaching you, like a lot of the people teaching these circus acts were literally like fifth-generation circus people. - Yes, Leon Fort was my trainer. It was his name. Leon walked the needle going in Seattle. - Oh, the space thing, yes. - He was very famous for walking down, and he was married to one of the Wal-Linda girls, so I got all the flying Wal-Linda stories, which was pretty spectacular from him. He's since passed away. - Right, but he was old. I mean, he was probably in his 60s or 70s of years. - He was up getting in his years, and what a fabulous. - Oh, yeah. - And you really be trained by real professionals. - Which is a totally lost art. Like, even with a lot of the magic stuff, you probably run into this too. Like, the time that you were learning this stuff, you're getting to work with people at the sort of end of their life that are this direct connection to the 1800s. Like, the guys that they learned from were born in the 19th century. You're learning these circus arts and magic arts and things that have been sort of usurped by TV since then, from the real people. - Yes, well, my family, by the half of a day, actually owns a carnival. So I travel around with a family carnival business in between my own gigs. - Have they always owned a carnival? - They, since I was a baby, they worked in the carnival business. And then one of my cousins, as he got older, as we got older, started buying up carnival rides. We're now known as a big ride company. - Okay. - We have big rides. We have drop towers, you know, that it's like a hundred feet in the air. We have swing that's a hundred feet in the air. - You ever attempted to get back on the wire? - I have tempted to get back on the wire. It's not so good when you're a little older. - It's not so good when you're younger. It's very difficult. - It's definitely more difficult as an older person. Did you see like carnival or any of those shows? - I loved carnival because my family has carnival. - And it's very dark. - It's very, yes, that was a very dark version. Now they're so squeaky clean. Like our family, they're very, they're very different. We don't have all the side shows in the carnival. It's like they did. - Oh, your family's not murdering people and harvesting their organs? - Very, I know, I know, it's up to the pointy. I know, boring. - Did you have the ability to beat any of the rigged games? - No. - Okay. - No. - I'm so bad at that. - Show me some milk bottles. - Sometimes I work at a cotton candy trailer and sometimes I'm wearing a monkey maze, which is little maze that the kids have to run through and they're chased by monkeys. They bounce little faces into windows and mirrors and I just laugh all day long. - I'm surprised. That's not a reality TV series. Just children bumping into walls. - I tried to actually make a carnival reality TV series and believe it or not, it didn't get bought. - See, I would think, I mean, most stuff we watch, - I know. - Well, because you don't have a freak show. That's probably why. - That's probably what it said because we weren't a freak show. - Yeah, most reality TV now is like, freak pointing. - Yeah, the freak shows have really mainly disappeared. I mean, you see it in television and you see it in movies. In real life, there are so few of that type of shows in the business right now. And the reason why is because it's become politically incorrect. A lot of the carnivals are done at churches now and they don't want the freak show there. - I think part of it is too that you have a lot of the people in the freak shows had disabilities and there weren't any support for those people in the first, you know, prior to the 1960s. So these people, yeah, they couldn't get jobs. They weren't getting government assistance. They weren't getting help with their problems. So it was like, I can make a good living if I travel around with this circus, which sounds horrific, but they made a good living a lot of those people. - And some of those folks are in a lot of movies from way back in the day. - Oh, yeah, absolutely. - They're in movies, they're in TV shows, which is sort of primed the idea of what, you know, carnivals are like. - What's the most sensational? - So sensationalizing it. We actually put our carnival in a movie that came out, we have the Millers movie. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - With Jennifer Aniston starting it. That's actually my family's carnival. We own that carnival, and I helped set that up there. - What's your favorite carnival ride of all time? - My favorite was, it's like a scat. It was the roundup. It was called, "We have a scat now." - Oh, it's like a sizzler thing. - And you're standing up against the wall. - Oh, and the floor drops out? - The floor is dropped down, but in the scat, we don't have the one with the floor dropping down. It's just safer to have the one. - Is it called the scat, 'cause it causes problems? - No, there's two, and they, two cages, and they just go round and round, but I loved all of that. - Okay. - I still love all of that. - I never was, never a rides guy. - So we got, so we're trying to progress that into movies and TV a little bit. - It makes sense, I mean. - It got to be, we've set up a, it was supposed to be a carnival that doesn't work anymore, and it's the headless horseman show. - Oh, Sleepy Hollow. - Sleepy Hollow. We're my family set up a carnival for Sleepy Hollow. - Oh, nice. - We shot it in North Carolina. - Oh, yes, yes. - Yeah. - And then the, we are the millers. We shot in North Carolina as well. - And there's a ton of production in North Carolina. - Yes, but it's all gone with North Carolina. - Yeah, but Dawson's Creek was probably the last show that was frequently there. - North Carolina lost its tax incentives, so there's hardly any filming left now in North Carolina. Most of it's gone to Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Mexico. - So I'm getting the signal we got out, we're gonna wrap you up here, sadly. I've enjoyed talking to you. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the growing pains, it's one of my all-time favorite shows. You came in season four as Julie Costello. - Costello. - Very similar character to you. The background was you moved around a lot at a military spot? - Yes, they based a lot of it on my real life. - Yes, yeah. - My character's name was Costello because there was so many characters with the name Abbott in our actual production. - Okay. - So the writer who wrote my character, his name was Kevin Abbott, and his wife was Julie Abbott. So originally my character's name was Julie Abbott, and then there was another kid actor on there whose last name was Abbott, and they're like, there's just too many abbots in the credits, so then as a joke, they said, "Well, Abbott ain't Costello." So they decided to call my character Costello as a joke to Abbott and Costello. - Let's go to the calling you Lou Abbott. - So that was how the character got its name. I wish now that I could be on Game with Thrones. That's my favorite show. Anybody came from Thrones, man? - Yeah. - Everybody dies on it. I wanna be on Game with Thrones. - Have you ever been killed in a thing? - Yeah, I've died in so many things. - I've died in so many things. - No, it didn't die in me but mom and two. But I've been shot on a TV show. I've been shot with an arrow and died on a TV show. I have drowned on a TV show. I've died in a fire on a TV show. I've died by stabbing on a TV show. - You're living the dream. - I've been died by getting shot with a shotgun on it. I have died so many times that my own death can never be as excitable. - It'll just be disappointing to my death. - Unless you're on the scat and it somehow goes wrong. - Oh god, God forbid. (laughing) - Not that I want that to happen to your family. - So I've died many, many ways. I've died even by suicide in movies and TV. I die a lot. - I wanna watch it. - Maybe that's why my characters don't last very long on TV shows. And of course, as of late, I got eaten by a shark coming out of a tornado. One shark dado, so how many people can say they got eaten by a shark coming out of a tornado? That one topped all the deaths. - To take it back to where we started, maybe you can come back as a ghost and live out your dark shadows fantasies. - Yes. - Death is not the end, everybody. Julie McCullough, thank you so much for doing this show. - Thank you so much, Ken, thank you everybody. Thank you, TV God, thanks. (laughing) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) - There we go, we got a real scoop there about Big Bad Mama 3 and Julie's life in the Carney business. That is pretty exciting. I actually, you know, I'd like to do a podcast just of people who work at carnivals. It does that exist? If that doesn't exist, that should exist. I think that would be an excellent, excellent podcast. Really the only vision of a carnival I have is Tobi Hooper's Fun House. And I think most of them probably are not like that. But Julie's very funny, she does stand up. She does shows all around. I will put all her social media links on tvguidescounselor.com. And you can check her out there and I wanna thank her again for talking to me and obviously Jeff Klein as well. And Gary Summers for putting the whole thing together and all the people who came out to the shows. It was great to meet some fans and talk to you guys and have you see the thing live. It's still baffling to me that these things happen. So we have no more live events scheduled in the near future but hopefully we'll have a few more at some point. But if you have an event, a convention, a comedy festival or anything like that in your city or town that you would like me to try to do a tvguidescounselor at. Please email me at tvguidescounselor@gmail.com or you can tweet to me at tvguides or go on our Facebook page just search tvguidescounselor and you can talk to us there. And as always, we will have a brand new episode Wednesday, a non-live episode, which I think you enjoy very much, not 'cause it's non-live just 'cause it's a good episode. And make sure you subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get this show 'cause you never know in special edition episodes like this one will come out. And we'll see you again next time on TVguidescounselor. (upbeat music) So good jumps, a cute one. - I used to, you know, race homes. I could watch Star Trek. - I just told Dwayne Johnson the Rock to make dead zombie voices. - The most handsome guy, kind of look like you, you know. - Oh, thank you. - You look like a Superman kind of guy. - Thank you. - You know, like that slick tear, the light, it was so handsome.
