I won't be posting this 'til I get home but right now, it's 11 AM and I'm in Room 302 on the 11th floor of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in picturesque Downtown Los Angeles. That's right: Mark has jury duty.
The summons said I had to be here at 7:45 AM which for a night person like I am sounds like greater punishment than is likely to be handed out in any courtroom in this building today. Fortunately, I discovered that if one takes an online orientation course, one can report a little later. Last night, I watched the videos and answered questions...and as my reward, I got to be here at 9:30. So I drove down in a light rain, parked where they tell you to park and hiked several blocks to this imposing structure. The route between the lot and here is quite long and by some distortion of science that otherwise exists only in M.C. Escher prints, it's uphill in both directions.
I am here under the assumption that I will not get on a jury...not that I will try not to, but it's hereditary. My father had jury duty many times. Never got on. My mother was once an extra playing a juror on L.A. Law...and remind me to tell you that story some day. She had an interesting encounter with Jimmy Smits. But the folks who pick real jurors wouldn't cast her. The last time I had jury duty, I sat there all day talking comics with one of my best friends, Scott Shaw!, who by coincidence had jury duty the same day I did. I didn't even get called to go off to a courtroom and be considered for an actual jury.
I got here on time...and don't think that's easy. The hard part was fighting my way onto an elevator amidst a horde of people who didn't seem to understand that when a car full of people arrives, you have to wait until they get off before you can get on. I finally boarded a car thanks to a lawyer (I guess he was a lawyer) who was directing traffic while he negotiated a plea bargain for some client on his cell phone.
One disadvantage of reporting late was that all the good seats in the jury waiting room were taken before I arrived. This included the dozen-or-so seats where I could have had a little table on which to use the laptop I hauled here along with me. Some were occupied by folks who had not brought laptops or work to do and who didn't seem to notice (or maybe care) that some of us had. I was about to go over to one and propose a seat swap but before I could, someone else with a laptop did and got rebuffed. And rather rudely at that. So I had to wait until a number of folks were called away to courtrooms before I could pounce on my present workspace.
The way this works is that we sit here and every so often, they call out names picked at random and those folks report to other locales in the building where they will be interrogated on their suitability and availability to serve for the particular trial. If they don't get selected, they come back here and their names are put back in the pool. The first such pick was for a trial which we could refuse because it will last an estimated ninety days.
When the lady who calls the names said that, there was a loud "Whoa" from the room and it sounded like everyone would be declining. But a surprising, perhaps encouraging number of folks said yes, they'd be willing to serve on a jury that lasted that long. These people have either a stirring sense of civic duty or an employer who pays full wages when you're on a jury. I have neither so I'd have declined if they'd called my name which, of course, they didn't. Two more groups of prospective jurors have since been called and my name was not among those the lady mispronounced.
So what do I do instead? Well, now that I have a little desk space, I can sit here and work and write stuff for the blog. It's 11:16.
For reasons I shall explain when I return, I may be gone from this weblog for a day or two. Nothing serious. In fact, it may turn out to be kind of funny. Anyway, I'll be back soon and I'll try to get (reasonably) caught up on e-mail when I do.
Here's another blast from my past. The other day here, I mentioned writing for a situation comedy that was produced by Monty Hall's company. It was The McLean Stevenson Show and it was one of those shows — there are always a couple in production — that everyone knows will be stillborn. Even before this one went on the air, the network was unhappy with it, the producers were unhappy with it..and Mr. Stevenson was wishing he really had been in that helicopter that got shot down on the way home from Korea.
Several episodes were taped and everyone involved knew the thing wasn't working so new producers and writers were brought in. My then-partner Dennis Palumbo and I were among the new arrivals, working with producers who'd been there a day or two longer than us and who admittedly weren't sure what, if anything, the show was now about. A decision had been made to try and "bury" the shows already taped...meaning that they'd reinvent the series and try to come up with something better, and the new episodes would air first. Then if those shows drew any kind of audience, they'd follow them with the ones which everyone thought were so unairable. It sounded rather lemming-like to us but we were new in the business. What did we know?
Dennis and I came up with a plot idea everyone liked...and right now, if you offered me every cent that the Federal Bailout will cost, I couldn't tell you what it was about. We then wrote the outline and everyone hated it — and I do recall that while they all thought it wouldn't do they all had different, mutually-irreconcilable reasons as to why it wouldn't do. But then they all had different ideas about how to fix the show anyway. One that I heard and liked was that they should ditch the whole premise of the home life of a guy who ran a hardware store and just videotape the meetings where McLean and Monty yelled at each other over which of them knew more about comedy.
The same week everyone hated our outline, Dennis and I were offered a staff job at Welcome Back, Kotter so we got the heck outta The McLean Stevenson Show...and as I recall, McLean wasn't far behind us. An experienced TV writer named Lloyd Garver, who I never met, turned the vaguest aspects of our premise into the script that was taped and it was chillingly selected as the first McLean Stevenson Show to be broadcast.
Since it was the first episode aired of a new series, a lot of folks wrongly assumed it was the pilot. And since we received screen credit and were mentioned in many reviews, a few of those people also wrongly assumed that Evanier and Palumbo had been involved in the show's creation. Not at all the case. It was the sixth or seventh installment taped (of thirteen) and almost nothing of our outline made it to air. Still, that was our first credit, which is kind of like your first kiss. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to happen. Then the night after, we got our second screen credit on an episode of Kotter. It was a good week for family members who like to see a relative's name on the screen.
I do not have a copy of that installment of The McLean Stevenson Show but someone who does posted an edited version of it to YouTube...and they did something which probably improved it an awful lot. They cut out the episode. It's just the opening titles, commercials and closing titles, totalling about five minutes. I have no idea why they did this but I'm grateful because I get to see my first screen credit for the first time since 1976 and don't have to watch the show it adorned. If you click below (and I'm not suggesting you do), forget that and enjoy the too-bouncy theme song by Paul Williams, plus somewhere in there, there's a pretty good Doritos commercial with Avery Schreiber. The series should have been half that funny.
Congrats to my pal Larry DiTillio, who received the Morgan Cox Award last evening at the Writers Guild's gala award ceremony. The Morgan Cox Award is given for tireless, vital volunteer work for the guild and I can't think of anyone who's done more of that than Larry. Whoever made this choice knew what they were doing.
February 10, 2009
