TV Guidance Counselor
TV Guidance Counselor Episode 23: Laraine Newman
You have a TV? No. I just like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide. Don't need a TV. Hello. Happy Wednesday, everybody. It's TV Guidance Counselor Day. I'm Ken Reed, your TV Guidance Counselor, and you guys are in for a real treat this week. I was out in LA last month, and I recorded a ton of episodes with some people that I absolutely love, and this is another one from that series. I am amazed that I got her to do an episode. This episode is with my guest Lorraine Newman. Lorraine Newman needs no introduction, but she's been on Saturday Night Live in a ton of things. Some of my favorite movies, The Invatives for Mars remake, which we talk about. She's on a great show that I used to watch all the time called The Canned Film Festival, which is a little bit like Mystery Science Theater 3000, if you have the means, try and check it out. She does a ton of stuff today. There's a lot of voiceover work. She's very funny. She's a great writer and comedian, and I think you're going to enjoy this episode. So please enjoy this week's episode of TV Guidance Counselor with my guest Lorraine Newman. TV movies made for TV. TV movies made for TV. How do you do? Good. Thank you so much for doing the show. I appreciate it. I am so excited. This is such a great idea, and I'm a real TV watcher. Yes, excellent. I had a wide variety of TV guides that we thumbed through here to see what you would watch, and we had a couple different theories on which way to go, but we ended up in the 90s, which surprised me. Yeah, it's a, well, my memory is shot. It's the most recent stuff I can remember. I looked at the covers of the ones from when I watched TV as a child, like from the days. A while ago. A little while ago. And it actually jogged my memory visually, but I couldn't remember the content. Right. You know, at all. Which is probably what TV was designed for at that point. I think a lot less people have movies last in their brains, but for some reason, the TV was sort of just there. Yeah, I mean, there were shows like Armas Brooks with Evarden, and she was a big influence on me in terms of style. But then there were shows I did an interview for Television Academy archives, and I remember talking about the show I'm Dickens. He's fenced with John Aston, which was, I thought at the time, very clever, but I was nine. Right. You know, and as a gift, they got me a copy of it. It doesn't hold up. It does not hold up. It doesn't at all. I tried to watch that. I'm a huge fan of a lot of different early 60s shows in Car 54 are you is probably my all time favorite sitcom. And so I had re-watched the two seasons of Car 54 were are you and I'm Dickens. He's fenced or came out, and like, maybe this is another hidden gem. I love John Aston. He's always fine. It just it's so broad. Well, the thing that stuck in my mind about that show was there was an episode where their boss, he laid down on the ground and said, "Go ahead. Step on me." Because that's what you're really doing. Right. You know, which I thought was hysterical. Oh, if you're nine years old, that's perfect. It was like, you know, therapy was a big thing, psychoanalysis. So, you know, that just made me laugh so hard and it stayed in my mind. And it's an adult acting like very child-like. Exactly. In a sitcom, which is probably really engaging as a kid. Of course. Yeah. I think that many people don't remember weekly shows for a time because you almost took them for granted that you would see them again next week. And it's not so much of an event. If you go out to a movie, you have to leave your house and you go out and it's a public event. Whereas a TV series is, in some ways, more intimate because it's in your house and it's just kind of there with you, almost like your family. Well, I think you're invested. I mean, you know, shows like, well, when I was really little, it was cartoons. But eventually, you know, Star Trek and Mission Impossible shows like that, you'd be really invested in those. Oh, absolutely. And they seem to take those Star Trek specifically took sci-fi a little more seriously than you got previous to that, where you have, like, Land of the Giants and Lost in Space and this sort of stuff, which was much sillier and cartoonish, which are entertaining as well but didn't have sort of the more hefty moral issues and things that Star Trek took on. So it would definitely be more memorable, I imagine. Absolutely. So we went with the 90s and you remember this time the most, because this is when you had just had your kids. You were watching a lot more TV. Right. I was at home. I was stuck. I was exhausted. Yes. You had no choice but to watch television at this point. And you weren't watching a lot of shows with them, I imagine, but they were just their infants. Yeah. I mean, I was consigned to Barney, I think, at some point. But I actually did discover Sesame Street because I never saw it as a kid and was amazed at how clever it was. It is really smart. And it's one of those shows that never talked down to kids or did a thing where they said, hey, this is how we think kids learn or kids are dumb, so we'll talk to them like they're dumb to make them smarter, which is never a good approach. Yeah. I really think it influenced my kid's sense of humor for the better. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think Jim Henson really subtly affected a whole generations of people between Sesame Street and actually even the show Dinosaurs, which he did around 1991, which I don't know if you remember or not, was the most subversive ABC show that ever aired. Oh, I would have seen that. It's a great show. All three seasons are on DVD and it was the last thing Jim Henson did before he died. And it's basically, it's an excuse to talk about 20th century human beings being awful. And it's about the environment, how we're destroying the earth and how we're just consumers and just awful people. In the last episode, they all die. They all freeze to death because they created a new ice age because of pollution. And they've got a ton of complaints from parents who said, my kid just watched your show or a baby dinosaur froze to death. And they're like, it's dinosaurs. What do you think happened? It's like Titanic. We all know they died. Right. And so I imagine that there, you know, a lot of it's a very left-wing show. You could never air that sort of thing now where you would have, you know, Rush Limbaugh on the air being like, "They're in Dr. Howard Jones." How dare you tell the truth. Exactly. And so I think Sesame Street, not as extreme, but definitely helped create that sort of inclusive, interesting worldly thing that the generation of kids that grew up after Sesame Street had. And they still do it now. So it was probably refreshing in the wake of Barney. Yeah. I remember one thing that they did Rapunzel. Right. And, you know, the idea of the guy calling up to the high tower and she was going, "Why do you say it? I can't hear you." And my kid thought that was the funniest thing, first that the beautiful Rapunzel would have a voice like that. Right. And the possibility that could you just repeat that? Because I'm so high up here, I can't hear you. Right. Which logically makes sense. And it's sort of poking holes in these fairy tales that you guys are a kid where, you know, that may occur to a kid, but they don't, haven't learned that you can question things yet. Exactly. And that just stretches the imagination. Right. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. And so I, I love Sesame Street as well. And it's one of those things that you probably didn't mind watching as the, as well as a man. Absolutely. It was just thank you, God. Because Barney was a death camp. It is the worst. I don't know what possible reason that became a hit. It didn't make... I don't remember any kids that even liked it. It was kind of just that... I just did. My younger daughter did. Did she sign a llama? It is. She, I don't remember her singing along with it. I just remember it capturing her attention. And you know, when we had a birthday party in the backyard with the jump jump, we had, you know, the character come to the house and it was actually, and it was a new one too, which was thrilling. It wasn't like a smelly raggedy, it was a brand new one. And, you know, God bless the person inside of it. He went inside the jump jump house with the kids. Oh, he was awful. Yeah. He was, he was a saint. When I was three years old, my parents decided I liked the Incredible Hulk a lot because I was actually terrified of the Incredible Hulk TV show. So for some reason, they misinterpreted this as me to love it. I liked the comic, but the Lou Ferrigno show terrified me. And they hired a guy, a body builder guy, to paint himself green and come to my third birthday party and bust through a wall. And I was terrified. I ran out and hid under a bed. And they were just like, "You're so ungrateful, I'm going to hell out of trouble to get this hair." And I'm like, "How did you admit to misinterpret terrorism?" I bet there were probably similar situations with some children in Barney. I bet. You grew up in Los Angeles. Yes, I did. So that must have been very strange where this is the major business around here. Yeah. I mean, my parents were not in the business. My dad was a quilt manufacturer, but we moved to Beverly Hills from Westwood, which is where we are right now, when my brother and I were 11. We lived next door to one of the Bowery boys. Really? And across the street from Groucho Marks and around the corner from Kurt Douglas. Wow. And when you went like, you know, Christmas shopping, you'd see Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, and there was a fencing school in Little Santa Monica at Cannon Drive. And you could see Tony Curtis in there with his shirt off. Just hanging out. Fencing, you know. And you were old enough that you had some perspective on how strange that was when you were going to hell. Yeah. I recognized that that was an unusual suburb. Right. Absolutely. And one of the things that fascinates me is one of the things we talk about a lot is those things people watch as they were kids because I think it's easier to lose yourself in the stories and the characters. And people tend to trail off a little bit when they realize that there's artifice and people are actors and people write things and that sort of thing. So I always wonder, someone who grew up in Los Angeles, you probably realize that at a much earlier age, that these things were created. Yeah. And you would see, we would see people like character actors that had been on series and even lead actors that had been on series that were no longer on series. And you kind of see them walking around, you know. I remember one time I realized now that the person was an alcoholic, it was an actor and his face was really red. You know, and I remember asking my mom, what's the matter with him? And she said, well, he wore too much makeup all the time. That's a good one. He was from scrubbing it off too hard. What a good save that your mother had there. Yeah. Oh, geez. Wow. I remember my, my father had a similar save. There was a, there was a friend of my uncle's named Rowley. Rowley. Who was arrested for attempting to murder a cop via a car. It was on the news one day where we had a TV on our kitchen table because we had, instead of talking to each other, we had to have the TV there. And he was on the news being arrested and he had a t-shirt on and the court said, eat me raw. And my, I said, what does that mean? My father said, well, it's a sushi place. I was like, in hindsight, I'm like, that's, she gets some points for that one. Oh, God. That's kind of hip. It was a little hip. I was surprised that he was able to pull that out of there because my dad is not that, not that quick. Your mother told you he was scrubbing makeup off. And did you have an issue where you thought the person was the character or were you that young or you said, why was it so young? I knew he was an actor. What was the first TV set that you were ever on? Well, when my brother and I were, I think, God, well, I was on the art link letter show when I was four. Really? But I don't remember if that was televised or if it was radio. I was to God, I don't remember. But then we were on a show called Engineer Bill, which I know was in black and white. And it was a wrap around. It was an interstitial for cartoons. And there was like a railroad, you know, scene in front of us. And there was a game he played called Red Light Green Light, where he drank milk to the green light. And then it was an all aboard before the cartoon. And one of the kids, you know, he, it was either me or my brother who would yell all aboard. Well, he had no idea how loud my brother's voice could be. So when he yelled all aboard, it was just shocked him. Huge. Yeah. That was the last appearance of the new ones. Yeah, that was it. But yeah, I mean, it's only once. But yeah, that was, that was our first time. I guess we were about eight or nine. And did you remember thinking this doesn't look like it? Was it a show that you watched? Yeah, it was a show we watched. So yeah, it was completely a shock, first of all, it was freezing. I remember just, and that was how I felt about being on our link letter, too. It was just, oh man, am I uncomfortable? So old. But also, you know, God, the sets are so weird. They look so much different. Everything is smaller. And you know, I thought this was a real place. Look, there is just a flat. There's nothing behind it. That effect, did you still watch the show after you were on? Yeah. And it wasn't, was it harder for you to get into it? Because you knew, well, they're just going to the side of the screen and there's just a cardboard there. Honestly, I don't remember. Well, yeah, you may not. But that's a long time ago. It was a little while ago, I understand. Then you were working and after that on TV for years and years, you probably weren't watching a lot then, right? Because that's, I always sometimes have difficulty when my friends are on a show. It's hard for me to, I'm like, that's not that character. That's, I know that guy. That's fate. Yeah. So, it makes it, even if it's not conscious, it's difficult to sometimes get into it. So, by the 90s, you'd kind of come full circle and could now sit down and actually enjoy some things again. And so, the first thing you wrote down was ER. Yes. And so you watch this every week? Yeah. We watched it me and my husband. It was very captivating. I think one of the first episodes, Juliana Margolis' character attempts suicide. Yes. And that was a very arresting event. And all of the characters were, you know, because I never watched soap operas at all, I, except for Knots Landing, which was an evening soap opera. I really wasn't used to that template. So, even though now I recognize it from what it is, you know, at the time, all the, you know, inter-hospital romance and drama. And the stakes were so high and sort of, yeah. It could happen. Anyone could just be killed at any time. Yeah. It was Chicago Hope and ER came out the same season, and everyone, it was kind of like which camp were you in, which one did you like. And I remember thinking at the time that Chicago Hope was the show that was going to end up going on forever, and then it was very wrong. But ER was a show that appealed to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. I knew people that watched it because it was really gruesome. They sort of enjoyed the grew of it, which was weird kids. Yeah. You know, because I can't watch an area of horror movie, but I can see this guy get his throat ripped out on ER and break room. It broke with someone's intestines. Exactly. And then there were the people watched for the soap opera aspects of it as well. But the thing that I really liked about ER, that a lot of, even the other nighttime soap didn't seem to capture, was that the characters seemed to exist before we started watching them, which is something that's very difficult to capture. Yeah. Many shows in the first episode, you get a feeling that this is the first time these characters existed at all. Yeah, they had no life before in my life, but they just popped up. Where ZR and the suicide was a good example of that, because I believe it happened before the first episode, it was sort of just talked about. And part of the reason was she had a relationship with George Clooney, but it was, you kind of didn't see that part of it. I think the relationship happened before we saw it, but the attempted suicide, I believe, happened on the show. But even that is a history to it, but these relationships that these people had, and it wasn't just an episode where they've all made each other for the first time, and we're there, which was unusual. I think I don't think we got that in many things, which is interesting to me on people complaining about the superhero movies that come out that they want them to be all origin stories. And that bothers me, because if you're watching a romantic comedy about a bellhop, people aren't like, well, how did he get that bellhop job? I don't want to know. I don't want to see the job interview. I don't want to see how long you worked there before this happened. It's like, Pat and Oswald's bit about George Lucas going back and doing the beginnings and just like, Jay, you know, it's like, you're going to tell me how you make ice cream. Do you like Angelina and Jolie? Well, let's just look at John Voigt's ball sack. We need this order. We won't buy it when I'm going to get it. And I think it shows it moved more towards the ER model now, where the serialization has come back again, which is a very good thing I think we got from soap operas. And then you have things like walking dead and madmen and all these things that really adapt to maybe the one good aspect of soap operas. But also, I think the main thing I liked about ER was the precipice of death. Just whatever inventive thing they came up with medically that pulled the situation through. You know, the seat of your pants, inventiveness of the doctors. That was always really fascinating to me. It's almost a MacGyver thing. Yes, exactly, medical MacGyver. Which actually, I saw them cheer someone with a pen on you at once. Yes, exactly. Tricks, yeah, exactly. So did you, did you ever, you're a big horror fan? Yes. And do you never watch Dark Shadows? Again, that was a daytime soap. Yeah, yeah. And I just couldn't, I watched a little of it and you would think because it's vampires and stuff. Right. But I just, it wasn't the kind of vampire stuff, it wasn't scary. Right. You know, it was more like sexy romance. Right. Is there a TV show that you think got horror, right? Well, Twilight, so Alfred Hitchcock. But you did an episode. Yeah, they're reimagining of it. That was a Tim Burton directed one. Oh, really? I didn't know you did that one. Yeah. It was a remake of The Jar, which was written by Jim Bridges. Right. Who wrote a movie I did called Perfect. But the original one of that was with this great character actor Albert Salmi. They reimagined it kind of in an art museum setting. I think that they got horror right with that one. Also Chiller. And there was another one, Way Way Out. Oh, I never heard of it. In fact, I have, I got copies of them at a horror convention. And they were really interesting too. This was a 60s show? Yeah. Way Way Out. It's all that horror seems to only work in anthology formats, unlike any other genre. For TV. For TV. Yeah. So we don't necessarily get anthology comedy series, although we did George Burns had one in the 80s. Yeah. That was- I was in one of those videos. I really enjoyed those. Or we've known the 90s. Yeah. He did it a few times. It would be like a summer replacement series, I think. Some of them were great, but for some reason more than horror anthology, comedy anthology always seems like a series of unsold pilots. Yeah. It never seems to do that. I don't know why. Yeah. And you're right about like walking dead being the first kind of serialized horror. That I can think of. I can't- Yeah, I can't either. We talked about fringe earlier, which you haven't seen, which I think you would very much like, but they're more of a sci-fi series, but there are some truly terrifying things in that show. Very Croninburg type stuff. Oh, I love David Croninburg. Oh, you definitely should see. Love it. The biggest influences they set on fringe is the movie Real Genius, which is one of my favorites, and David Croninburg. Oh, great. Those are the two, and Altered States. Those are the three points of reference for that show. Excellent. But yeah, I'd like to see in the wake of Walking Dead some more sort of horror, not anthology horror, not that I don't love horror anthologies, but just the sea characters. It could be two that horror is more about a moment than maybe it loses its impact if it's week after week after week. Well, it depends. I mean, you know, cat and mouse is always going to work, and that's what Walking Dead is. But maybe that's why I show like ER, although I haven't really thought about it until we just started talking about it, does sort of incorporate horror. It's death. It's fear of death, which is what so much horror is about. And it's gore. I mean, if you just looked at on paper these ER episodes, there is, if we did a body count on the yard, it would probably be much higher than most horror shows. And it also presents the, you know, myriad of ways that you can die. Oh, absolutely. In a gory way. Oh, absolutely. And they got much sillier later as that series when I remember like a helicopter crash through the hospital. I don't remember that one. I mean, you know what, it comes to mind is house. Yes. I mean, house presented an even more sophisticated and diabolical way that you could die. Right. I mean, it became silly too. Yeah, I think maybe that's... How does he know? Run out of things. Yeah. Maybe with comedic situations, it's easier to continue to keep them going or to reuse them in a new way, but with horror once you've used the particular trick, you can't do it again. Right, right. It could be something like that. Because most things that have those hard elements that go on a long time do end up silly. Yeah. And I wonder if that's because we just, they peter out or because the longer you're familiar with part of horror is it's unfamiliar. I don't know. And the more familiar you are with it, the less scary it is. Yeah. So it could be that as well. I never thought about that too much. But you are. Great show. When did you stop watching it? Did you just kind of peter out? I watched the very end. To the very end. Yeah. Absolutely. So you were there for Anthony Edwards, brain tumor. I was all his haircuts. Oh, that Caesar cut. I remember when everyone was getting that. Oh, god. It was just we had Caesar. And a disservice. That the world was a was not a great place to do that. It was all people with Jennifer Aniston's hair and George Clooney Caesar cuts for like three or four years. They all coupled off. That's how you could. Yeah. Jesus. It was good at bars. Those people would just pair off and then no one had to bother with them. And just go, I get this easier. You have the Rachel. We'll just go over here. The Darwin Awards. Yes, absolutely. So and not landing was something I watched. So I never watched that show. You know, I never watched any nighttime soap operas. But for some reason, I watched not not landing from the beginning to the very end. So it wasn't something you stumbled on in the middle. You know, consciously when that looks good, I'm going to watch it. I didn't even do that. I accidentally watched the first episode and then continued. And I mean, when you think about the cast, Julie Harris, and whatever you may say about people like Michelle Lee and Joan Van Ark, they're really good actors. Oh, yes. They were great on that. Those shows. They were perfect for those kind of roles. Yeah. And everybody on the show was terrific. And the people that came through it. I mean, Alec Baldwin, well, actually, I'm at a loss to think of who else. But I mean, they were really great people on that show. And that show was created if my memory serves as sort of a rival to Dallas, which was a spinoff. It was a spinoff. Yeah. And Donna Mills. Yes, Donna Mills. What was the other? Was it the Colby's? Was the other spinoff with Charlton Heston? I don't know enough. I don't know enough about Dallas to know what other spinoff would be. I think there was another spinoff with Charlton Heston, which is very hot. And you don't get spinoffs from dramas very often. That's one of the few I can think of. There was drama spinoffs that have come from comedy series where you had Lou Grant, which came from Aaron Tyler Moore, which was very strange. Oh, hello. Which was very weird because you had an hour-long drama that came out of Dallas. That's right. That's one of a kind, isn't it? It's very strange. I can't think of many other instances like that. And I can't think of a lot of dramas that have had other spinoffs other than the Dallas one. Falcon Crest was its own thing. Remember that was always on. And it was its own thing, Falcon Crest. So not signing was on for probably six or seven seasons, I think, right? Did you think it's longer than that? Yeah. And was that a kind of thing where it was a guilty pleasure? Or you were like, no, this is a great show. I didn't judge myself for watching it, can I? That's the best. I didn't. I just, you know, took it for what it was. And I thought it was great. Was there ever a show that you were embarrassed that you were really into or? Models Inc. Models Inc. I was embarrassed that I watched Models Inc. And I saw every one of those. And what was great about it was that the actresses that were supposed to be models, clearly some of them were five foot two. Oh, yeah. Because actresses and models are very different. Oh, God. I don't even know the name of the actress, but she was like all breasts and a short torso and probably five foot two. Yeah. And I think it was her hair that made her a model because it's very long down to her butt or something. I watched that show every week as well. For some reason, there was in the 90s, a weird fascination with shows about models. There was three or four different shows. Oh, there were. There was. There was also VIP, which was a bottle of models who were also spies. Excellent. Which was pretty amazing. And then there was a spinoff of who's the boss with models. And Holly Berry, it was her first thing she ever did. Well, Garcel Bovey was in Models Inc. Oh, really? That was I think the first show she ever did. And she was breathtaking. Yeah. I don't know what, but that didn't really do very well. I think it was only one season. Yes, it was only one season. It had to. I think it had to be because he was on a roll. But I just love, you know, television's conceit about things like that, about, you know, rock stars and models. They all hang out in this one place. Or, you know, but they're version of a model and they're version of a rock star. I've been watching The Good Wife. Okay. The Good Wife has her watching some, I don't know if you watch The Good Wife, but there's some TV show that she watches that's a cop drama. And they show it. And it's hysterical. It's like every cliche you can possibly imagine. And there's like music videos on it too. And it's, it's, it's a dental, you know, but they do, they do such a good job with it, you know. Well, Twin Peaks did that is, I don't know if you ever watched. Oh, yeah, I absolutely. But they had that soap opera that they watched on Twin Peaks. That was always remier. It was like a very, very silly, uh, all the cliches you can think of of a nighttime soap. And everyone in the Twin Peaks universe watched the show. Oh, that's great. But the action always sort of mirrored what was going on in Twin Peaks. But it's almost like what, you know, that show would have been if Aaron's probably had produced it. Oh, that's beautiful. It looked like this thing that they watched, which sounds very similar to that. I've heard nothing but great things about The Good Wife. The Good Wife is superb. I always like her and everything. I mean, it's speaking VR. It's so well written. That show is, is on my list of things I need to watch. Oh, that's a Netflix weekend. That's a lost weekend. We'll add your recommendation to the list to, to give that even more weight. Ellie, what also you had on the list? Yes, boy. Um, and you know what, I have to say, I do not like David Kelly's writing. No, there's something very self-congratulatory and precious about it. I would agree. But I did like the characters. I, I liked that show. I like the situations. I like the actors. And that's what kept me coming back. I, I, you know, Should you ever see Dr. Giggles, the horror movie with? Yes. Yes. With the guy, Lenny. Yes, yes. I played Lenny on the show. Did some Dr. Giggles around the same time. Oh, god. That movie. So that wasn't sort of the pre-screen post-slasher phase of horror in the late 80s, early 90s. And they kind of didn't know what to do. And the Hellraiser was sort of the, the model. Uh-huh. But you know, like Stephen King's sleepwalkers tried to do something, but Dr. Giggles was just an attempt to do a franchise with him. And I couldn't, because I watched Ellie a lot too. And I'm like, I'm not, this is not. Yeah. And I was trying, I was thinking, oh, they're going to go for a Mr. Sordonicus kind of thing. But no, no. I do remember that did have a great tagline that movie. It said the doctor is insane, which was very classic throwback. Yeah, that's great. One of my other favorite taglines is From Revenge of the Nards, which is The Odd Get Even, which is a very beautiful, we don't get a lot of good time with the stuff. Are you eating it? Or is it eating you? I love that movie. That's one of my favorites. Larry Cohen. Yeah, Larry Cohen. I'll watch him you absolutely anything. Any movie. Cue the wings. It was great. God told me to. With Andy Kaufman. And my dad, we went and saw the stuff in the theater. My dad. What a good dad. Yes. I saw every horror film ever in the, in hindsight. Right dad. I think they just didn't want to get a babysitter. But yeah, say it was a good dad. He bought some vanilla yogurt and at his work had the people draw up a stuff label and put it in our refrigerator, which was terrifying at the time. Oh my God. That's the stir. Is he an advertising? No, he worked at Raytheon. I know that name. They are a civil defense company that made the Patriot missiles and they had some sort of designers there. So they just printed up this stuff label. Uh-huh. He enjoys a practical joke. He also, when we saw the invaders from Mars remake, which you were in, the band-aids on the back of the neck, he put a band-aid on the back of his neck and was all talking robotically. Oh my God. For several weeks after. A lot of pranks. Yes, but it's not that hard to prank a six-year-old. I don't think that's a good thing. He did that too when you're sick. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But the invaders from Mars is great. I love that movie. I love the original. Did you watch that on TV for the first time? Because that played on TV for the first time. Yes, I saw it on TV for the first time. When you were going to have the juicy vampire, because that would have aired on LA over the time. It was, it was no. Vampira, I don't remember seeing her on TV. Okay. Was there any horror hosts that you watched? I think that there was, but I don't remember. Was it weird for you to be in the remake when you really enjoyed the original? It was. I mean, it was the kind of thing. I was friends with Toby Hooper and I said, "You're doing that. I want to be in it. Please." You know, and it was, I don't even know how I got that part, but I was thrilled to be in it. Oh, you're very good in it. It's very, and I don't know why you wouldn't be in it. Thank you. But I mean, you know, they, they could have had a more famous person in the role, but I really love doing it. That's one of the better remakes than the 80s, where we, it was odd that we did a lot of looking back to the 50s movies in the 80s for whatever reason and there were many, many remakes. Oh, no kidding. There was the blob remake in '88 that Chuck Russell did, and then 'The Fly,' 'Coronavirus Fly,' which I think is better. Oh, that was superb. That movie is, I think that's my favorite 'Coronavirus' movie. It's, it's such a sad movie. It's so, it's so sad. It is. Well, the brood is. The brood is, yeah. The brood is so amazing. Well, he always says it's his Kramer vs. Kramer is. He's got a quote about the brood, and he was writing it while he was going through his divorce, and he was filming it as he was writing it, so he didn't even know where he's going with it, which kind of makes sense when you watch it, but it's almost sadder. When you see the sky is going through. Oh, God. Yeah. And you also put on there, not planning, and living color. And living color. Yeah, that was, boy, Jim Carrey on that show, and also, I really, I had seen 'I'm Gonna Get You Sucka,' and it was one of my all-time favorite movies, so I was really excited, excited to see what they were gonna do. Yeah, I had the same motivation for originally watching 'Living Color,' because when he made 'I'm Gonna Get You Sucka,' nobody talked about black exploitation movies, it was very odd for someone to sort of do anything about that world, let alone a really sort of loving parody of it, clearly by people who'd seen a million of these things. Right. And then in 'Living Color,' I watched, but I was slightly disappointed with sometimes, because I mean, you obviously come from an amazing sketch comedy pedigree, and did you watch a lot of sketch shows after? I never got a chance to see mad TV, and I don't know why, because a lot of groundlings were on that show, but I think it was because it was on when my kids were young, and we didn't really have DVRs at that time. Had they, I would have absolutely watched it, because as I said, a lot of my friends were on it, and I would have watched SNL, too. I mean, now I'm seeing all the stuff that I missed, because like, there's some Dick Bradsky or something like that. Bill Bradsky. Bill Bradsky. I saw that sketch for the first time, because someone had posted it on Facebook. John Goodman. I love that sketch, and it just made me realize there's so much great stuff that I never got to see. It was always started as the last sketch of the night, weird sketch. Oh my god, it was so great. So when you watch something like 'Living Color,' are you watching it as a civilian, or are you watching it with a critical eye towards having been that important? Absolutely, but the critical eye, and I was also disappointed in the sense that I know that, you know, Damon Waynes and Marlon, he's so much more sophisticated than what you saw. Yeah, some of their stuff would be very sort of hateful or easy. Except, you know, David Alan Greer, I think, is so genius, and I love the movie critics. Oh, that's his name, so yeah. Oh god, that just killed me, that was really great. Dude, such Greer is very well used in a lot of the stuff Bonnie Hunt has done. He was in the show, and he was in the movie 'Return to Me,' which I love. Yes. And he was very good in that. Yeah, and 'Blank Man.' Yes, 'Blank Man.' 'Blank Man' is another great movie. I always wondered why Robert Townsend never had a sketch show, because he did Hollywood shuffle around the same time as 'I'm Gonna Get You Sucka,' and he had sort of a similar sensibility. I don't know, I mean, I think he was probably more of a long-form guy. True. How long did you watch 'Living Color,' did you watch by the time I got shot off? I didn't see it regularly at all, so I didn't even know Chris Rock had been on that. Yeah, it was the very last season, I think he was on. After he left SNL, he had done new 'Living Color,' which was although Damon Wiens was on SNL too for one season in '85. Oh, for Christ's sake. Yeah, he was on the 'Dallard Michaels' return season with Robert Downey Jr.' Oh my god. Yeah, I don't think he made it through the whole season, but a lot of the characters he did in SNL on that time, he brought to and live in color, like the hustler guys, the, you know, the selling, stolen goods kind of guys. Oh, yes. Yeah, and that homeless guy that always had like a weird bag of liquid with him at all times. And he used, was that the one that used big words and made up big words? Made up big words are completely and correctly big words. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's right. I think the reason I was disappointed with it was because, almost your point, it could have been so much better. Yeah. I think they took an easy way out sometimes, and you know, some of that might have been Fox at the time. It was sort of in line with Fox's sensibilities. Yeah, I mean, who knows how constrained they might have been by Fox, too. Right, so it might be amazing that they got what they even got on at all. Exactly. That's hard to say. Yeah, that's interesting. And what was, what did you get for your other show? Let's see. I have Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes on A&E, which was so great. I've never seen the his Sherlock Holmes. Those were amazing, and at the time, I actually read all of the original Sherlock Holmes as they appeared in Strand. Right, right. Oh, wow. Is it the first time you had read them or were you really? It was the first time I had read them, and what was so amazing was that Jeremy Brett really embodied what I would see visually as I read the stories. Right, so he's very literary. His behavior, his even visual, was very much, like, I think, what? Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle was envisioning as he wrote. Is there any other Sherlock Holmes that you could argue? Well, now, of course, I'm totally in love with Benedict Cumberbatch, and I really think that the adaptation is fantastic. Yeah, I think the writing is so great. Yeah, I think that we've seen these, like, reinterpretations of Shakespeare all the time, where they do it in the modern age and that sort of stuff. But for some reason, you don't see it in other sort of classic works, and obviously, Conan Doyle stuff's more modern, but it's a really, really great version of doing that for a contemporary audience, where instead of just, well, it's set in 1920, or something. Yeah, and I think the way Dr. Watson has written this is so interesting. He's not a sidekick. He's not a sidekick. Yeah, he's not a sidekick. He's a real character. He's not, is fascinating. And again, to sort of what we're talking about E.R., I think the way that the new Sherlock Holmes is done is done that similarly, where these characters existed before we met them. It's not an origin story. They've had this whole history. It's a weight to it that makes it so much more engaging. Right. And I wonder if, as viewers, we're more sophisticated now, where we respond more to that sort of thing than sort of shows in the past, Dickens's Fenster. It's just people demanding or getting smarter or having been raised on these things. Yeah, I think TV audiences are educated along and brought along. Absolutely. Because one thing I've noticed, too, is that one, to the point on sketch shows, that they don't reference old things that much anymore. Like, even on SNL and SCTV and these things, they used to reference the previous 30 years of television. And there would be a sort of working knowledge of everything that came before it, or I don't know if people under 25 doing comedy are really anything now, even though they can watch all that stuff on their phone whenever they want. I don't know if they do or they reference that sort of thing. That's a really sweeping statement. You know, I've actually been aware of watching SNL and seeing them reference things that I thought, "Boy, do you really think that audience would know that?" Oh, really? Yeah. Because I'm acutely aware of what their demographic may or may not be. Right, right, right. I do also think that, unfortunately, most audiences and this applies to stand up as well. I think that they know they're part, you know? They know when they're supposed to go, "Woo!" You know? Right. My other point I guess I'm trying to make is that, you know, Twilight Zone is an example. Twilight Zone aired in the early 60s, but there's a whole general, more than one generation. There's three or four generations that watched every single episode of that because it aired in syndications so much. Absolutely. And it now doesn't-- So it's ubiquitous. Yeah, it's ubiquitous. Everybody knows those things that they can be referenced on the Simpsons 40 years after the show has made. Right. That's a good point. And people know them. And I don't know if there are shows that have built that way since. So I don't know if there are things from the 80s or the 90s of it that would be equivalent that sort of become part of the lexicon as much. Yeah, the interesting to try and parse which shows. Just everybody knows. Or part of the fabric in which art. I wonder if part of that is-- Obviously those are quality shows and things like I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners also fall into those categories, but I wonder if part of that is they just happen to have kinescopes of them. You know? It could have been-- Those are the ones that just aired all the time. There might be some great show that none of us ever saw. That's possible. Because it aired all the time. Yeah. You know, I watch a show like Sgt. Belko, which I love. Oh, it was great. Phil Silvers is so great on that. So funny. And that hankin was such a modern writer that when I look at Curver Enthusiasm or even Seinfeld, those could very easily be Car 54 or Phil Silvers episodes. You know what's interesting? I spoke at college in Oxford, Mississippi, and I got a private tour of William Faulkner's house at Rowanoke. And although he eschewed television, he loved Car 54. What are you? That's amazing. And would walk down to his neighbor's house, which was like a mile away. Just to watch it. Just to watch it. Wow. Wow. I mean, but that also speaks to the times when not everyone had a TV. Yeah. You would have whole neighborhoods that gather around the one person's TV in the neighborhood. And you know, that might be why shows like Twilight Zone and stuff stick with people more because it was more of an event. We didn't take these things for granted that you could always watch them whenever. So it's sort of a double-edged sword where it's good and bad. I think particularly in this instance, it was the show itself that fascinated him. And so someone speculated that one of his books had a lot of elements of Car 54. Really? Oh, I would love to check that out. I wish I could remember which title it was. Does that show? Does that show fit? Yeah, I'd absolutely love to check that out. That's amazing. I couldn't imagine how that would even work to what you're talking about before with Felt. Not for I can crest that. Not standing. Not landing. You just happened to see the first episode of that and got hooked. Yeah. And I don't think that happens as much anymore. Yeah. And that's a really great way to come to a show. I'm trying to think of other shows. Well, you know, Downton Abbey, I knew nothing about it. It was an Emmy submission. I watched the first show from the submission. That was it. Yeah. Totally. People don't seem to stumble on things much anymore. There's so much hype before they come out. People kind of want to know everything about the show before they even watch the show. Yeah. That I want to know exactly if I'll like this before I see it. And I mean, so many things that I watched going up and things that I love now and especially hard because that was always in the fringe hours of the night. Right. There were movies that are my favorite movies that I just had insomnia one night and it was just on. Yeah. And I'm a fan for life. Yeah. And I don't know if we'll have that going forward because people, if they're looking for something to watch, can just search something they already know. Well, I know that on Apple TV, I will troll for horror because you can search genres. Right. And it recommends things. I have found things that I would never have seen that were great. So it's not going away. It's just changing. Yeah. The way to find things is changing. And it's sort of maybe it's better in some ways because those algorithms they use for recommending stuff might give you something that you would like, even better than what you look for more. These were recommendations. These were things that were available on Apple TV in a genre. Right. And I mean, yes, if you like this, people, people who watch this also watch this, but these weren't in those categories, although I will drop down and see things in there too. Right. But no, these were in the regular genre category. There were things I hadn't seen. That makes me happy because that's almost, that's the video store that let me store the horror section and walk down and see what cover strikes me. That's good to know. You've made my day with getting out of information. There were a couple more shows on it. Just one more, which is the Cosby show. There was something a bit precious about that. I mean, everybody was so well dressed. Right. And a doctor and a lawyer. Yeah. And I mean, everybody was so well dressed. And that that was a little annoying to me in the sense that it was a little undermining. It gave a superficiality to the characters and the culture of this family and this world. You know, I would have liked to have seen some people that just didn't have very good taste. It's a more realistic vision of a family. Yeah. But I'll tell you that, that one episode where they lip sank to that Ray Charles song and had the youngest one coming down. Yeah. God. Oh, it's great. That's just fantastic. And it's very funny. It is really funny. The thing about Cosby when people talk about episodes they remember, it's almost never a plot thing. That's the thing they remember. It's a character thing. Which is really the root of his comedy. Yes. And what makes it so great is that it's truth. And very unusual for a sitcom. Yeah. Because it's usually, if you go with, say, the Lucy model, which is show like, you know, perfect strangers was very much based on Lucy. It's like antics and physical stuff, which has its own charm to it. Well, but still, the thing is that all these antics are in character. Right. They've established that Lucy wants to be in show business. We have the motivation. You know, and so all of these are derived from what she would, what would Lucy do? What would Lucy do when she wants such and such? So it really is character driven. And I think most of the sitcoms that are really successful and memorable come from, you know, truthful character situations. Modern family is a great example of that. It is beautifully structured, but they've got real characters and the situations come from what those characters would do if this happened. Right. And that adds to the rewatchability because we haven't already seen what the payoff was. And it's not going to be a shock or surprise now. We already enjoy how they're talking. I guess with Cosby, it felt to me, they felt like a real family, which was not something that most sitcoms are able to pull off. You know, the Brady Bunch didn't feel like a real family to me. It seemed like people who had, you know, part of it was probably that, you know, just the mixture of the chemistry of these kids on the show, but they seem like siblings and they interacted like siblings. And the parents, you know, seemed like real parents in their interactions with the kids. Yeah. And that was refreshing. Yeah. I mean, that is what Cosby's whole act is, is real family stuff. And we didn't have these kids who are so precocious that they're talking like a 30 year old copyright, or they are acting like kids and talking like kids. Exactly. And the scenes that Cosby would do with the younger kids just felt like he's just talking, which he probably was. I don't think those were scripted. It's just him talking to some kids. Didn't he eventually do a version of "Kids to the Darnest Thing?" He did in the 90s. So he did all he, people always forget how many shows he tried to do in the 90s. There was the, which one he looked at in one of the TV guys was the Cosby mysteries. Oh, that's right. And he had Cosby. God. And he did a remake of the British show "One Foot in the Grave" was his, was Cosby, was that he purchased the US remake rights of that show. What was the premise of that show? "One Foot in the Grave" was a really surreal show about a retired miserable man, and living with his wife. They're empty nesters, basically. And the British one's great. The British one's great. It's always in the top five funniest British shows of all time, but it never really made it over here the same way like faulty towers did, or even like the young ones, which has a big cult audience, but one foot in the grave. The young ones is, I moved to England in 2001 because of the young ones. I think seeing that show growing up was like why I got into punk rock and comedy, and I was like, I need to, I think England seems all right. Just because there was nothing like that on TV here, where it was a sitcom, but it was a sketch show, and he would have the damned play in the middle of the scene. I don't think we could do anything like that here. Oh, God. And who's that little guy in "Folly Esther"? What was he doing here? How very strange, and you know, and it would be cartoonish, but also, yeah, that, that was way ahead of us. Did you see the episode where they went on the game show? Yes. Emma Thompson and you Laurie? Yes. All the Footlights people. Yeah, that one's called "Bambi." Yeah, in that episode, there's a heading, and there's just a pig for no reason. It's so weird. Yeah, the people that showed up in the Jorabi Coltrane. Oh, yeah. Well, the same with like the IT crowd, if you're so down, and I can never, I don't know. I want it, which I want to ask. He directed some great movies, some marine, and he's fantastic. And he's directed, he's been directing some US TV lately, do a couple of episodes. That's what I saw, yeah. Yeah, so they, I mean, I think their model is so very different than here, that it's easier to have those sorts of things, but yeah, so that's a great pig. And that was the last thing you had on the house. No, that's it. That's my TV week. Fair enough. You were very busy raising children. Yes. And doing a good job at it by teaching them that Barney is... Is evil. If you showed your daughter Barney now, would she come around, or would she have nostalgic feelings of... She would deny. Okay, she'd be full denial. She would deny. Fair enough. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate you doing the show. I'm thrilled to be on it. Thank you. It was so much fun. There you go. That was Lorraine Newman. I had a lot of fun talking to her. She's amazing. It was a really great episode for me, and I assume you as well, because you listened to it, and enjoyed it, no doubt. I want to tell you guys again, please continue to email me at kennedikenread.com. I love hearing from you. Let me know what you think of the episodes. Let me know of episodes you'd like to hear in the future, or a guest you'd like me to try to get. I really appreciate all that feedback. Please, please, please continue to review the show, rate the show, subscribe on iTunes, and Stitcher, and SoundCloud, and anywhere else you listen to the show. Every single time you spread the word about the show, it's incredibly helpful. I do this on myself. I don't really get to advertise or try and push the show on anyone, so I appreciate anyone who tells anyone this is a good show. 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