So what did you do last night? I co-produced a tribute to one of my heroes and I don't mind telling you: Jeez, was that a lot of work! I did not do all of it. I was one of three producers — the others were Howard Green and Arthur Greenwald — and I'm not sure I even did a third but I was still exhausted.
Arthur, along with his creative duties, was in charge of a lot of the physical requirements — making sure additional lighting was brought into the theater, making sure a stage was constructed and made properly safe, etc. As I have learned in television, you need someone who anticipates everything that could possibly go wrong and who has the devotion to make certain it doesn't. Howard did a lot of that throughout the project. Arthur did an insane amount of that the last few days.
If I'd known how much of my life it would consume for several weeks…well, I probably still would have done it. Stan Freberg has been that important to me. And I will say this: The job would have been even more difficult if Stan hadn't been so important to so many other people. Everyone, when they heard we were doing a Stan Freberg Tribute, was eager to help. There was total cooperation everywhere we turned.
One of the great things about the evening was that the audience was filled with bright, successful people, mostly engaged in creative enterprises. There were actors, writers, producers…a lot of Stan's peers and co-workers. I probably need to apologize to many friends to whom I did not say the right things because I was pretty busy at times.
We brought the show in at about 2 hours and 14 minutes. Approximately 1:15 of that was clips of Stan's past work. We had a lot of things you'd expect like the Lone Ranger commercial, the Ann Miller commercial, excerpts from his major records, etc. I was pleased that we also had some things no one in the house (Stan included) had seen — like Stan, Daws Butler and June Foray performing the entirety of "St. George and the Dragonet" live on Ed Sullivan's TV show in 1953.
Jerry Beck and Eric Goldberg put together a great 12-minute reel of Stan's voicework in animation that caused a lot of folks in the house to exclaim, "I didn't know he did that!" We also had taped "wish I could be there" videos from Matthew Weiner, Dr. Demento, Penn Jillette, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
About 45 minutes of the evening was our guest speakers and hosts. Harry Shearer was a terrific Master of Ceremonies…and he turned out to be the biggest Freberg fan in the place. I was seated next to him for purposes of last-minute briefing and he was laughing, quoting from memory and singing along with most of the video we showed. "Weird Al" Yankovic, Micky Dolenz, Jerry and Eric, Leonard Maltin and animation producer Bob Kurtz introduced segments and I was delighted with what everyone did.
Finally, we had some moments with Stan and his wife/partner Hunter talking a little about his work, followed by the third or fourth standing ovation of the evening (I lost count) and a lot of happy milling after the show.
I should have some photos of the evening soon but you can see a gallery over at Wireimage.