Thoughts about TV sitcom directing while watching

[AllenLowe]

"I've been to the prison psychologist - he's figured out my problem."

"What is it?"

"I like to steal."

[Larry Kart]

"I've been to the prison psychologist - he's figured out my problem."

"What is it?"

"I like to steal."

That's it! Rickles was quite good and in character throughout, especially in the first episode. One heck of a Garry Marshall-Jerry Belson script that was.

[AllenLowe]

his name was Lyle, as I recall - before he was a star I liked Rickles better - he was not "on" all the time - he was very good, BTW, in the movie "Kelly's Heroes."

Edited February 10, 2009 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

his name was Lyle, as I recall - before he was a star I liked Rickles better - he was not "on" all the time - he was very good, BTW, in the movie "Kelly's Heroes."

Lyle Delp.

[ejp626]

his name was Lyle, as I recall - before he was a star I liked Rickles better - he was not "on" all the time - he was very good, BTW, in the movie "Kelly's Heroes."

Don't recall the name of it, but Newhart has a fairly recent autobiography where he talks at some length about his friendship with Don Rickles ... and the first time his wife saw Rickles doing his act (180 from the man in private).

I was starting to meander a bit and just deleted the last bit, but I would agree with Larry, the DVD Show had some of the purest physical comedy and was one of the great expressions of the sitcom (maybe precisely because it was so early in the history of the medium). If only more TV had lived up to the legacy of I Love Lucy, DVD Show and MTM Show. Not to say there hasn't been good to great tv afterwards, but the hit to miss ratio is often pretty low.

[Dave James]

The three camera technique was pioneered by Karl Freund working in conjuction with Desi Arnaz on I Love Lucy. Fruend's resume dates back many, many years, well before sit coms and even television. He was the cinematographer for Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis in 1927.

Also, director Jerry Paris played next door neighbor Jerry Helper on the original Dick Van Dyke Show.

Up over and out.

[Larry Kart]

I interviewed Newhart once, over lunch at I think the Bel Air Country Club in connection with that movie ("The First Family"?) in which he played a befuddled, Jimmy Carter-like president, with Madeline Kahn as his wife and Gilda Radner as his daughter. The movie was not so hot, but Newhart's account of it (I hadn't seen it yet) was hilarious. What a nice guy. One thing I loved in particular -- and this comes through in much of his work -- is that if he thinks something funny is up, he can (even if it's his own doing) step back from it a bit and find it genuinely funny himself. It's as though his sense of the multi-faceted absurdities of life is never-ending.

[paul secor]

There was a PBS documentary where people involved with The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart said that Bob Newhart knew exactly what he wanted, and set up the timing for the bits to his perfection.

[Larry Kart]

Holy cow -- without knowing about it in advance, just tuning it in, I saw the very first episode of the MTM Show on local TV tonight. Magic. It's the one with Ed Asner's famous line: "Mary -- you've got spunk [beat...beat]. I hate spunk." Also, the episode's final scene, in which Mary dumps her old visiting boyfriend, is beautifully written and played -- very emotionally true, I think, to what a lot of real-world analogues to Mary Richards were doing and feeling at the time. Finally, kudos to the writers for making it perfectly clear that the old boyfriend is there only because he thinks he can ball Mary that night.

[Dave Garrett]

Lord, was Van Dyke a brilliant physical comic when things called for that, as these two episodes do -- very Keaton-like.

Van Dyke was a big fan of Keaton, and in fact played a fictional silent-film comedian that was partly based on Keaton in the 1969 film The Comic.