This story occurred in 1978. I was the Head Writer — I think that was my title — on a Saturday AM TV show and on this program, I'd learned the best way to get the scripts done was to not go in to work.
When I went into work, first of all, I couldn't sit around in my pajamas, unshaven and unshowered, satiating my occasional need for food by walking six yards, making a quick sandwich and taking it back to my desk to eat as I worked. When I went into the studio, I had to shave and shower and get dressed and then drive all the way out to the studio in the valley, which was 45 minutes each way — longer if traffic was bad and traffic was always bad. I had to greet people and make small talk and get dragged into meetings to discuss various aspects of the show and then someone would always say, "Hey, we have things to talk about…let's do it over lunch." Lunch was two hours right there.
I couldn't get anything written if I went to the studio. At home, I could get plenty done so I tried to go in no more than once a week. Twice was sometimes necessary.
A new writer had come on staff and he'd just handed in his first script. I thought it was very good so I fixed a few spelling mistakes and had the Production Assistant copy it and distribute copies to everyone who needed copies. The next day, I planned to not go in so I worked all day and into the evening and didn't stop there. Writing seemed to be flowing out of me at a good clip so I stayed up until around dawn, pounding away on my state-of-the-art (then) typewriter. You can work that late when you don't have to go into an office the next morning.
Or at least I didn't think I did when I went to bed close to 6 AM. At 10 AM, the telephone rousted me with one of those sharp rings that makes you just know something is serious. It was. It was the show's producer calling — a nice, bright lady who was in a state of Utter Panic. I was only about one-third awake as I asked her, "What's wrong?"
"It's this new writer's first script," she said. "I just got it and it's a disaster. An unmitigated disaster. Mark, we have a Major Crisis here."
I told her I thought it was fine. She told me it was not fine. It was a Major Crisis. In fact, it was now two Major Crises. Major Crisis #1 was that the new writer had written this unmitigated disaster. Major Crisis #2 was that the Head Writer did not see it as an unmitigated disaster. Suddenly, I was like a doctor who hadn't noticed that the patient was bleeding from all orifices. "You have to get out here right away," she said. "We have to talk about this."
I said, "I was planning on coming in tomorrow. Can't we discuss it then? This script isn't scheduled to go into production for another week or two. If there's anything wrong with it, we have plenty of time to fix it!"
The panic in her voice grew. "Mark," she said, "I feel the whole show slipping away. We need to fix this now."
I got the message. She was worried they'd not only hired the wrong new writer but the wrong Head One as well. "Okay," I said. "Keep your wrists closed. I'll be there as soon as I can." I had to. After all, it was a Major Crisis.
So I shaved and I showered and I got dressed and I got in my car and I drove to the studio which was way the hell out in the middle of nowhere and I walked into her office and I said, "Okay, I'm here. What's wrong with the script?"
She picked it up and said, "It takes forever to get started. It's dead time. Everyone's just standing around talking."
The writer had started the script with a joke — a good joke, I thought — then commenced introducing the plot around the middle of page two. I took the script from her, crossed out three lines on Page 1 and three more on Page 2 and handed it back to her. She read it over and said, "Oh, that's fine. The story gets started quicker now."
I said, "What else bothers you about it?"
She said, "That's it. I haven't read past the middle of Page 2 yet."
Evanier's Rule of Thumb: Any Major Crisis you can solve in under a minute was never a Major Crisis. It wasn't even a Minor Crisis.
A Major Crisis would be…well, let me give you an example of a Major Crisis. The script we're talking about here was for a Saturday morning series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft Productions. The particular episode revived some characters who had appeared on their 1973-1974 Saturday morn show, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.
In '74, I was working a lot for Western Publishing, makers of Gold Key Comics. One day, I was up meeting with my editor and as I started to leave, I heard the receptionist remind him that Marty Krofft was coming by for an appointment in half an hour. I had not met either Krofft then but I'd admired the output of their operation. I mentioned to the receptionist that I might hang around the office until he got there so I could introduce myself — or better still, be introduced. I just wanted to tell him how much I liked what they did. Western was then doing a few comics and activity books based on H.R. Pufnstuf and other Krofft properties and Marty was coming by to discuss future publishing plans.
I went back to chat with Bernie Zuber, who basically constituted the entire Production Department at Western's offices on Hollywood Boulevard. Bernie was staring out the window at a huge fire — billows of ebony smoke filling the air — about a mile off. We guesstimated it was somewhere around Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea.
And as we were guessing, the receptionist came and found me to say, "If you're still waiting for Marty Krofft, his office just called and he won't be in. That fire you're looking at…that's Goldwyn Studios. The Kroffts are taping a show there."
Goldwyn Studios was an old, venerated facility smack-dab in the middle of Hollywood. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks owned the place when it had a different name. Wuthering Heights was filmed there. So was Some Like It Hot. So was Guys and Dolls. So was West Side Story. So were hundreds of other memorable films and TV shows.
The fire had started on the set of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. Something electrical had sparked near something combustible and within the hour, three of the studio's five soundstages were gone, along with an office building.
That's a Major Crisis.
And that's how I didn't meet Marty Krofft that day. Four years later when I went to work for him, I did and found much to admire about him and his brother, one being Crisis Management. Or maybe I should say "crisis management" with non-capitalized letters because no problem that occurred when I was there rose anywhere near that level. But there were problems. Freightloads of problems. Most of the projects I worked on for them were variety shows and producing a variety show is basically an exercise in dealing with one problem after another after another after another. Sid and Marty and the kind of people they already employed proved to be real good at coping with problems…solving most, working around those that couldn't be solved. The producer lady who had the moment of panic I described above was pretty good at it, too. Just not all the time.
I hope some of that rubbed off on me but I did get a lesson the day she dragged me out to the Valley because one script got off to a slow start. The lesson — and I'm sure you knew this but I can be real dumb at times — is that the first thing you have to do to solve a problem is to accurately and unemotionally gauge its size and scope. Big Problems require Big Solutions. Little Problems need Little Solutions.
If you try to solve a Big Problem with a Little Solution, it won't work. The problem is bigger than the solution. If you try to solve a Little Problem with a Big Solution…well, that might work but it's likely to create other problems because you have Too Much Solution. It's like if you tried to kill a cockroach in your kitchen by rolling in a Sherman Tank. You might crush the cockroach but you might also crush your stove, your refrigerator, your cleaning lady, your box of Rice Chex, your tuna-noodle casserole, etc.
One day, early in my days with Sid 'n' Marty, Sid got to talking about the fire. It was in no way his or the company's fault but he felt bad about the headaches it had caused everyone. No one was injured but many tenants of that office building had lost treasured personal items. But then he got to recalling the funny aspects of that afternoon — like Rip Taylor in the grotesque make-up he wore on the show, carrying Billy Barty in his Sigmund costume to safety. There were also all the technicians and crew members and puppeteers and little people fleeing out onto Santa Monica Boulevard to escape the flames. That he could laugh about it now, just four years later, and smile at how everyone had helped everyone else was a very good sign.
On that first show I did for them, a Fire Marshal came on the stage to make certain our sets were non-flammable, which they were. He had been around for the Sigmund experience, before and after the fire, and he told me he was amazed how well the Kroffts and their entire staff handled matters, valuing people over property…and then, with all of their sets and most of their costumes lost, bouncing back and finishing production on the series so that no air dates were missed. "I've worked a lot of fires," he said. "And the first thing you learn is that the panic often does more damage than the fire."
That's a good thing to remember…and you can minimize that panic if you don't treat the minor crises of life like major ones. Of course, that means being able to tell the difference.