Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (23 page)

I put that note and tape into a padded envelope, but was still a little nervous. Even though I had checked it seven times, I was worried I might have put a porno tape by accident in with a cover letter cursing her out. Of course that was impossible because at the time I didn’t own any porno films. I was nervous, but no, I would fight my OCD and not reopen the envelope. I’d be brave and trust my feelings that I checked it well enough.

At the post office, I put the envelope through the bulletproof case enclosure and told them I wanted to send it first class. The postal worker then, to my horror, stamped it “First Class.” Well, actually in my scared mind she came down full force on the package smashing it as if she were killing a bug.

I went home and called my friend asking him whether stamping the package breaks the video. He said probably not, but I should have sent it in a cardboard box instead of just a paper envelope. Now I really was nervous.

“But it wasn’t just paper. It was lined with that bubble protective stuff.”

“It probably will be fine. But I’m just saying that when you ship a video out, it’s better to put it in those cardboard boxes because they throw things around from the bin to the truck and you want the best protection.”

Now I was picturing her getting the package, opening it up, and either seeing it in little bits or finding out it didn’t work. I would feel so stupid. I’d probably never get a second chance to send another tape. My friend said it wasn’t a long trip so chances were it wouldn’t get tossed around that much in the truck. But I had to hang up and reassure myself.

I took another demo reel I had and put it into another identical envelope and sealed it. Then I smashed down on it pretending I was the postal worker stamping it first class. I even stamped it a little harder. Then I threw it aside on my floor in my imaginary bin and then around my room as if that’s what it might have gone through on its tumultuous one-day journey from Los Angeles to Beverly Hills.

I then opened the package, put the CD in my machine, and then the moment of reassurance
—
it worked! A week later I got a call from Amy Heckerling saying thanks for the tape and that she and her family enjoyed it. To this day, nothing has happened for my career as a result of that, but at least she didn’t put something in that didn’t work because of a stupid envelope.

29

LOOKING FOR MY
TV DHARMA

T
he producers for the ABC show
Dharma & Greg
were great to work with, but a little bizarre to audition for. Dharma and Greg were a mismatched couple who got married on their first date. Greg was an uptight conservative lawyer and Dharma was a free-spirited new-age yoga instructor.

Dharma had a pirate radio station in her apartment and I was reading for an off-camera role of a nut calling her show. I was ranting that there was a conspiracy in Major League Baseball because of all the home runs being hit all of a sudden.

As the casting woman walked me to the room for my reading, she was courteous enough to warn me that the producers wouldn’t be looking at me. She said that they’d be sitting there with their heads down trying to imagine how the lines would sound in context.

I pictured them sitting there with their heads down and politely sticking their arms up so we could shake hands when we were introduced. But they greeted me warmly and then dropped their heads and closed their eyes. I looked at them only briefly sitting there with their heads down, almost like they were in shame. I felt as though I were auditioning for my mother.

I got the part and found myself at another table reading where the staff was all so upbeat. They talked about how they felt that their last two episodes were right back on track to the way they all gelled the first few seasons. I didn’t know what that meant, but I clapped along with some others who applauded with enthusiasm. It was infectious seeing how they enjoyed their work and how they felt they were recapturing some of their old magic.

I also might’ve been applauding a little out of automatic pilot. I decided somewhere along the line that it would be best for me to always appear excited and supportive for whatever show I was on. I thought if someone important should look over at me, I wanted to appear to be a positive factor. Basically I smiled as wide as I could, applauded, and tried my best to do a fake chuckle when everyone else was cracking up, though many times I didn’t know why they were.

I never suspected that this fifth season of
Dharma & Greg
would be their last. It all seemed to be going so strong when I joined them at the beginning of that season. But the network was anxious to push an hour-long game show hosted by former tennis star John McEnroe called
The Chair
. For six weeks they were preempted by this show where contestants would sit in a chair that registered their heart pressure.

In fact, in the last few seasons, sitcom opportunities had greatly diminished due to the explosion of game, magazine, reality, and hidden camera shows. In my last two pilot seasons, I had only a fraction of the auditions I had the years before that. Every network wanted the next big unscripted show. They were cost-effective since there are no expenses for union writing staff, actors, or elaborate sets.

I had mixed feelings when the current scary trend of game shows and reality TV began. I had seen and appeared on so many bland and repetitive shows, so I sort of understood the over-saturation of their tired format. Yes, I was concerned. But I was almost used to concern. I never had a mid-life crisis. I didn’t need mid-life for it. I was almost always in one. Perhaps those lulls would propel me to some unforeseen path, I had hoped. But I realized I couldn’t do what Joel Murray was smart and passionate enough to do. He was directing the episode I was on as well as playing Dharma and Greg’s old-time friend, Pete. Directing would not be an option for me. I have no technical or mechanical skills whatsoever. I have to admit I haven’t amassed any other possible vocation while observing all the goings-on on all my guest star visits. The only other skill I have is maybe being the guy that answers the stage phone. I have gotten good at talking on the phone on the side without everyone going, “Shush, we’re working here!” Yes, I am proud that on all the sets I have been on only a few times have the assistant directors run over to me telling me I am disturbing the show and costing the production and the economy millions of dollars.

Many TV sitcom directors are from shows and films from years past. Like Murray, being a regular on a show, they have the luxury of observing and learning the process. But more important than just the on-the-job schooling, they also have the strong contacts of getting a shot to break in. Many actors actually have it in their contracts to direct a show.

I’ve crossed paths with Joe Regalbuto from
Murphy Brown
when he was directing an episode of Norm Macdonald’s show. I was directed on
Murphy Brown
by Peter Bonerz who I had first seen playing Jerry, the dentist, on
The Bob Newhart Show
. Ted Wass, formerly of
Soap
and
Blossom
, directed the
Jenny
episode I worked on. And former teen heartthrob turned director Robby Benson directed me on
The Naked Truth
.

The producers of
Dharma and Greg
told me at the end of the week that they wanted to bring me back for an on-camera part, and they did. A few shows later there was an episode where Dharma decides to stay true to her free-spirit roots and live in an art exhibit. An old boyfriend of hers sets up a bedroom set in a museum and the two of them live there on exhibit as a performing art piece. I played a guy who tries to pick up women by commenting on the brilliance and significance of the exhibit. That episode was directed by Ted Lange, who played Isaac, the bartender, on
The Love Boat
for a “whole decade,” as he referred to it.

I have found that all these actors-turned-directors still love talking about the shows everyone knew them from. On a break, I could ask them any trivial question about their old show and they’d joyfully reminisce about it and then some. None of them ever copped an attitude and said, “Look, I’m a director now. That acting thing is over!” Some former actors-turned-directors still have a little bit of an ego and love to hold court. You can tell it’s very important for them to crack up the crew with their jokes and their long-winded theories about life and the business. They still needed some of the attention they used to get.

On tape night for my second
Dharma and Greg
appearance, the studio warm-up announcer introduced Ted Lange as the director of that episode and the crowd gave him a big excited round of applause. You could see Lange beaming as he waved to the crowd. He knew they still loved and remembered him.

But once in a while, I have to bear the brunt of an annoying director who has less power than the show’s stars and takes out his frustrations on guests like me. Most sitcom directors I have worked with have been more than pleasant. It just gets a bit wearisome when we guests feel the director is picking on us a little because the big stars of the show might not be taking him so seriously, and the director needs to muscle someone. He’d perhaps keep giving us the same direction over and over, even if we were actually doing what we were being told.

I suppose for the directors to not be a pain, they have to push their egos aside. I could understand how it must be frustrating. On four-camera sitcoms at least, the director doesn’t have the same vision and control as the director of a feature-length film. Sitcoms are mostly a writer’s medium. Almost always, the one calling the shots is the showrunner—the writer or creator of the show. Sometimes the executive producer at a run-through will give a different way to go than what the director was instructing. It makes it easier when I can approach the director with my dilemma without him caring that he might be undermined. I need to be able to say that yes, he had a certain direction, but the executive producer was telling me something else.

I heard about a conference after a run-through where the producer wanted to fire a guest star actor because he was playing his part way too big. The director wouldn’t admit he was the one who told the guest to be so over-the-top. Luckily the star of the show had seen that the guest was only doing what he’d been told and stopped the unnecessary firing.

I once had a guest star booking on a sitcom pilot, which meant my part wasn’t considered big enough for the network to pay money to hold me exclusively if the show got picked up by the network. The cast was mostly all unknowns. The director was a good man, but he had a set of rules I had never seen the likes of before or since.

It was at first interesting that every cast member had to sit in a circle and tell a little bit about themselves. Then we got a lesson in stage terminology. We were drilled with “upstage,” “downstage,” “center stage,” and other terms I have hardly ever heard muttered on a set. Usually they just tell you where to stand and then put a little piece of tape where you’re supposed to be. Pointing or saying, “Go by that prop over there” has worked fine for ages in television.

But this director thought those terms were so important, we had to stand on the stage and walk in each direction when he called them out in a nerve-wracking final exam. He had a rule that every actor, when they weren’t in a scene, had to have their script and a pen in hand in case he had an important note for another actor, so you’d be ready to write that in while you were observing. Every time an actor was late or didn’t have a pen or their script with them, he said that penalty was the loss of one of their lines. I don’t recall any actor losing a line because of this, nor do I think he had the ability to enforce it if that rule had been broken.

No matter how small your part, you had to do improvisational exercises before the first time you rehearsed your scene. I played a henpecked husband of an overbearing relative. I only had five lines where I was cowering at my demanding wife. Before we rehearsed, we had to improvise the whole chronology of our relationship. We had to “reenact” our first date. We had to act out our honeymoon, followed by our first anniversary, all the way up to the present. I remember standing there so uncomfortably in front of all the crew meandering about on the set watching this.

“Clear the set! Fred is embarrassed!” he commanded.

After everyone cleared the set I had to establish this relationship where all I did was essentially nod my head and say, “Okay, don’t be mad at me.”

One day we had to come to work three hours early to do a whole array of improvisational exercises. He even brought in Ryan Stiles from
The Drew Carey Show
and
Whose Line Is It Anyway?
to oversee the drills. I’m glad some of the actors actually enjoyed some of the games. I myself didn’t get it at all. I knew this director had worked on
Everybody Loves Raymond
a few times and I knew there was no way he’d get that hardened veteran cast on the set a second before they had to be there to partake in any such games or exercises. I could just imagine Peter Boyle being told to pretend he was on a camping trip while the person next to him made buzzing sounds like they were a bee.

But I had a lot of empathy for a newer director the time he had to work on Bob Saget’s short-lived sitcom
Raising Dad
, which I was guesting on. During rehearsals the director only could look on passively as Saget not only decided what he was going to do, but also what he and everyone else were going to say. When a star who had the enormous past sitcom success as he had gets another show, usually he gets a lot of power. He’d continually throw out the written lines and come up with his rewrites right there on the spot. I was nervous when, right before our big producers’ run-through, he had given me a whole different line to present. Would they think I was so brazen to change their lines? I hoped they knew that he was throwing out random lines when he pleased. When the line bombed, he commented, “I can hear the air-conditioning.” As a matter of fact, most of his rewrites bombed. Saget claimed the writers weren’t being fair and wouldn’t laugh because they resented being undermined.