Living On Air (14 page)

“Winning Streak” was taped at NBC Rockefeller Center, in the heart of the city. Fred got us there early enough to get good
seats for the taping. When they let us into the studio, I walked straight down to the first row, right in front of the podium where the microphone was set up. Ten minutes before the show was supposed to start, out walked Don Pardo. Immediately, I could see in his eyes just how much he loved his job. I wanted that exact same feeling. He faced an audience filled with happy people, all wide-eyed, and excited to hear what he had to say.

First off Don said hello and welcomed everyone to the show. Then he went through a quick rundown of how a taping worked. He pointed out the applause signs above our heads and ran through a couple of rehearsals. Every time the applause sign blinked, he urged us to clap and yell louder and louder. Each time he called out, “I can’t hear YOOOO!” encouraging us to make more noise. All around us the studio came alive. Cameramen took their positions, other men pulled cables across the stage, checked the lighting, someone else sorted out index cards for the host of the show, Bill Cullen. Game sounds were tested, buzzers and bells, the game board flashed on and off, there was nonstop action as the director got ready to count down to the open of the show. While all this went on, Don Pardo continued to talk to the audience in a friendly, casual manner. He sipped on his coffee, made jokes with the script people and producers, and confided in all of us in the audience little inside stories about the show.

“One minute to go,” the stage manager called out. I looked over at a huge clock on the wall that ticked down to when the show would begin. Most game shows are taped as if they were live broadcasts. It helps the pace of the show and keeps the audience involved. As the clock ticked down to 45 seconds, Don looked at me, sitting right in front of him, and noticed I was craning my
neck, trying to get a look at his script.

Speaking into his microphone so the audience could hear, he said, “Hey, what’s your name, kid?”

“Uh, Dave Cipriano.”

“Thirty seconds to go,” yelled the stage manager.

“Cipriano huh? D’you run that restaurant Cipriani’s on 5th Avenue?”

The audience laughed. Twenty seconds.

I said, “No, I missed out on being a millionaire by having an ‘o’ on the end of my name instead of an ‘i.’”

“Ten seconds,” from the stage manager.

Don turned to the audience and said, “Quick, kid. So what do you wanna do when you grow up, kid?”

“Five seconds!”

I had to answer honestly.

“Well, I’d really like to have your job, Mister Pardo.” The audience laughed.

“Good luck with that, kid. I ain’t givin’ it up for a long while.” The audience howled at that.

“Three, two, one.” A moment of absolute silence.

The music started and Don winked at me as he turned to his microphone and bellowed out in that unmistakable voice that has since launched a thousand “Saturday Night Live” broadcasts…

“The stakes get higher as the words get longer in ‘Winnnning Streak.’ And now here’s your host…Bill Cullen.” [
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APPLAUSE – APPLAUSE the sign blinked madly. The crowd clapped, cheered, even whistled with excitement. People were up on their feet, smiling. For most of us it was the first time we had ever been to a game show. I might have been a seasoned deejay back home in Connecticut, but this was New York City. NBC. Rockefeller Plaza. Don Pardo. It was like taking a peek behind the curtain at the great Wizard of Oz. And I was hooked.

I’M GAME FOR GAME SHOWS

Ever since I saw Don Pardo charm a studio audience on “Winning Streak,” I wanted to work on a game show. It was 1997 when I got a job on “Pictionary,” based on the board game of the same name. You always remember your first and I have some indelible memories from doing over 110 episodes of that show.

“Pictionary” turned out to be just the beginning. After that, I was hired to be the announcer for “Deal or No Deal,” “Amnesia,” “Identity,” “Superstars of Dance,” “Thank God You’re Here,” and “One vs. 100” hosted by Bob Saget. I first met Bob when our kids went to grammar school together in Pacific Palisades. We were drop-off and pick-up dads for a number of years and participated in fund-raisers for the school. When I started on “One vs. 100,” Bob was at the post studio for a couple of audio pickups as I walked in. “You’re kidding me,” he said. “You’re the announcer!? This is great, it’s like family.”

“One vs. 100” had a pretty good run and Bob was a very funny host, but they were all eclipsed by “Deal or No Deal.”

Working on “Deal” was high energy and pure fun. I got that job back in 2005 when I was doing the drama promos for NBC. Hosted by Howie Mandel, “Deal” had a limited run in December where it did very well. I was hired to do a couple of promos for the
show, when NBC decided to stay with it and put it on the regular primetime schedule. The executive producer, Scott St. John, had heard me on a couple of the promos and told his show runner to get that voice guy at the network to be the announcer on “Deal.”

I did all my work in post-production, when they packaged the final product. Howie Mandel came to the post studio as well to pick up audio for some of his lines that needed to be recorded for audio problems or copy changes. Whenever I watched the show on TV, or saw Howie at the post studio, he looked like he was in heaven. The show was a huge hit, a cultural phenomenon, and it seemed to me that he loved every minute of it. In fact, I think everyone enjoyed being a part of the “Deal” experience, even the producers. They put on some extravagant holiday parties each year, as a big thank you to the cast and crew. I know I sure had a blast.

In December of 2007, I got a call from the production office saying, “Howie has a Christmas gift for you and we would like to come deliver it.” I couldn’t imagine what it was. About an hour later, our doorbell rang and there was a guy outside holding up a beautiful, shiny new bicycle. He wheeled it into our living room, flipped down the kickstand and off he went to the next delivery. It was a glossy black-and-yellow Beach Cruiser, decorated with logos all over it, Howie Mandel’s face, the iconic NBC logo, and decals with “Deal or No Deal” plastered everywhere. Howie must have bought scores of those bikes and gave them out to everyone who worked on the show. I love mine and if you’re ever at Santa Monica or Venice Beach on a warm Sunday morning and see a “Deal or No Deal” bike dashing by, take a closer look. That’s me.

Even though I don’t get to see Howie these days, I’m the announcer on another show he does called “America’s Got Talent.” My part for “AGT” was just the intro of the show and I actually recorded the whole season in one session. Most recently I was the announcer for “Hollywood Game Night,” hosted by Jane
Lynch, on NBC. I look at each one of those shows as another adventure and always learn something new from the people I meet. But without a doubt, the most memorable game show of all was my very first one, “Pictionary.”

The host was Alan Thicke. He played the dad on the TV sitcom “Growing Pains,” and in real life he’s the dad of singer Robin Thicke. We taped every other weekend, five shows on Saturday and five more on Sunday, at CBS Television City, in Hollywood, the same place I did promos for the CBS network. It was a thrill to finally have a shot at doing a game show. The studio where we taped was legendary Stage 33, the same one used for “The Price is Right,” so that put a big check mark in the box I have for Hollywood tradition. I loved exploring backstage and talking to the crew, hearing stories of past glories in that studio.

Not only was I doing the announcing for “Pictionary,” I was also hired to do the warm-up before the show. When I saw Don Pardo do it back at NBC in New York, it looked kind of easy, very natural. He came out to his microphone about five minutes before the show started, said a few funny lines to the audience, bantered with the staff, made a few more jokes and then introduced the beginning of the show. That’s not how we did it at “Pictionary.”

My daily routine went something like this. I arrived at CBS on Saturday and Sunday mornings at about nine o’clock. The first thing I did was head to the stage and pop my head into Alan Thicke’s dressing room. I never knew what I was going to get on any given morning with Alan. Sometimes he was charming, other times if something wasn’t going right, it seemed to me he’d be in a mood. One time I popped in and the makeup artist was working on him, she looked at me and rolled her eyes. I took that as a sign, something was up. Alan caught sight of me in his makeup mirror and I remember him asking how I was doing, in a kind of gloomy voice. “I’m great, Alan, everything’s great,” I
chirped back. I saw him narrow his gaze at my reflection in the mirror as he told me I obviously didn’t know what the hell was going on because the fucking place was falling apart. I’d chuckle at his remarks. I found his idiosyncrasies entertaining and truth be told, he’s known for a rather cynical, wry sense of humor. I never took any of it personally.

After that quick check-in I’d head up to my dressing room to prepare for the day’s taping. At about ten thirty, my favorite part of the day, I went down to the set and walked onto that stage while the crew was setting lights and moving cameras. The chairs in the audience were still empty. I liked that “WOW” feeling of “this is television.” I’d walk over to my podium and microphone, which was right on the stage. It was positioned to the left of the set where I was able to talk directly to the audience sitting below me and also to Alan Thicke, the producers, and the contestants.

I learned very quickly that warm-up is an art and can be very difficult to master — especially when a show is run like “Pictionary” was. I stayed on stage during the taping of the show and remained on stage after each one, while the rest of the cast left to go back to their dressing rooms to relax and change their wardrobe. I was still out there talking and talking and talking to the audience, before the next taping began. I was there for the next show and continued to entertain the audience until after the following show. That was five shows a day, five warm-ups, warm-downs, warm-arounds and five shows to announce. I never left the stage. I had to keep that audience entertained, because if anyone got bored that was trouble. Producers do not want a bored audience. If they weren’t amped up to laugh at the jokes or applaud for the game, we would end up with a flat show. There was one audience for the first three shows of the day, then those folks would be released and the cast and crew took a lunch break. While we ate something quick, the next audience filed in for the last two shows of the day.

In between each show, I had 30 minutes to chat up the crowd of about 125 people. I did trivia contests, interviews, guessing games, impersonations, and then I’d look at my watch and realize I still had 20 more minutes to fill. Good God, what the hell do I do to keep these people engaged, happy, entertained? I started doing a talent show with audience members and that got me through a lot of those long waits between shows. People came up on stage, I’d interview them, find out what their talent was, they’d perform in front of everyone, and then at the end we’d have the audience applaud to pick the winner. The prize was usually a T-shirt or a mug from the show.

At the end of the day I was worn out. My voice was practically gone and I could barely get through dinner without doing a face-plant into my soup. I think warm-up is a great job for an up-and-coming comedian. I’m pretty sure if I only had to do two or three shows a day, I would have been all right. But being on the set performing all day, nonstop, and filling so much time by myself was challenging.

One of the producers of the show took pity on me. Mark Maxwell Smith is funny as the day is long, a real student of game shows and before he became a producer, Mark had been a warm-up guy. In my mind, he embodied the sensibility of a Borscht Belt comedian, someone who could have performed in those Catskills resorts. You know the style of humor, right? “Take my wife, please!” His delivery, his jokes, and the technique, all of it was great. Our stage manager was a man named Seth Mellman. Mark used to run all over the stage doing a perfect Jerry Lewis impersonation, stepping over footstools and onto sofas, yelling a la the famous comedian, “Seth MELL-MANNN with the oy and the vey and hello laydieeee.”

Every once in a while, Mark did the 30-minute routine for me between shows, so I could sit down. But he was so good,
I never even went back to my dressing room. I watched him from the side of the stage while I snacked on an apple. He had it down. Jokes that he used over and over again and that was one of the tricks of the trade. You can do the same stuff every tape day because there’s always a new audience and he had a good 30 minutes of comedy bits. He had a sketch where he would say that the producers are so thankful for all of the audience members for taking the time from their day to be here with us. Then he said, “The producers have gifts for each and every one of you.” The audience would hoot and applaud. He told everyone, “We’ve taped your prize to the bottom of your chair and if you would just reach under your seat…” One hundred twenty five people would bend over and reach under their theater chairs and Mark would say, “Under there you will find…” People would use their fingers to explore the underside of their chairs for their surprise and Mark would say, “You’ll find an old chewed-up piece of gum.” The audience reacted by jerking their hands back and with a chorus of “YUCKS,” they all laughed and loved the trick played on them.

Mark also did a bit where he’d find a cute kid from the audience and bring him up on stage to interview him. It was always a sweet little interview where Mark would ask him about his family, his siblings, his mommy and daddy, and Mark would make some jokes about what the kid said. One time this kid didn’t like the jokes Mark was making at his expense and this little eight-year-old boy hauled off and belted Mark right in the face with the biggest roundhouse punch you’ve ever seen. Mark was crouched down at the kid’s level and was knocked right off his feet, onto his ass. Mark was surprised, everyone was, and it looked as if Mark was gonna grab this snotty-nosed kid by the collar and smack him right back. But he caught himself and brushed off some imaginary dust from the front of the kid’s shirt, then sent him back to his parents in the audience. He got up and tossed the
mic to me to take over. Mark wasn’t so eager to help out with my warm-ups after that.

I witnessed a few tussles between Alan and the producers and even the wardrobe staff. He once barged out of his dressing room with a handful of shirts, slacks, and sweaters, and started throwing them all over the set with the wardrobe staff scurrying after him, scooping it all up while he complained that it was all crap, and he was unable to wear any of it. It seemed to me he wanted Armani and apparently that wasn’t in the budget. As he stormed off the set, one of the staff muttered, “Will someone let Alan know we’re a game show, not the fucking Academy Awards.”

As a fan of Alan Thicke, I felt I knew where he was coming from with the “edge” he had to him. Even so, I thought he could be a little demanding. And let’s face it, to do what he does, you gotta have a pretty healthy ego as well. He was the host, the spotlight was on him and as far as I was concerned, he was “the man” and as the star, entitled to that position. I was just the announcer, but I was hoping for a little camaraderie, a little fun, only that wasn’t going to happen with him.

Eventually it was my turn to take the heat. Mark Maxwell Smith wrote all the opening lines for the show. It was fun for me because Mark is smart and he wrote some great material for me to use when I introduced the contestants. The show always started cold, with the two contestants at the drawing board. The bouncy “Pictionary” music started playing and I’d have a funny line to say for each person [
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] as they drew something on the board. After the joke, I’d give their name and they would turn around to wave to the camera. Cute opening. I can’t remember the line that ended it all, but it was particularly funny. The audience roared and then I introduced Alan as always with, “And here’s yourrrr host of ‘Pictionary’…Alllllllan Thicke!!” Everyone applauded when Alan walked out and the first thing he said was something about the
announcer, Joe Cipriano, getting the funny line. He glanced over to the producer’s table to ask why no one was writing the funny for him? I didn’t think much of it at the time, in fact I was glad Alan thought I delivered a funny line, but after that taping my job definitely changed. My comedy days were over. From then on we had a new intro to the show that went like this:

Bouncy “Pictionary” Music starts:

Joe: “Welcome to ‘Pictionary.’ And now here’s your host Alannnn Thicke.”

Then Alan came out and said a funny line. [
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After “Pictionary” wrapped I’m guessing Alan Thicke went on to bewilder different producers, production assistants, and wardrobe people on other shows. Still, he was so darn charming on the air. Plus, Alan treated all of the guest stars with respect. And considering that there was a very mixed bag of celebrities, it showed me that Alan was a true performer. [
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The list of celebrity guest stars on “Pictionary” [
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] included Rosie O’Donnell, Weird Al Yankovic, Melba Moore, Ben Stein, Geraldo Rivera, and many more, but the most memorable show of all featured Erik Estrada and Bill Maher. It happened on October 3, 1997. First of all, when would you ever expect to see those two men on stage together, let alone on the same team on a game show? My impression of Bill was that he must have been wondering how in the world he landed on that show. To me he seemed somewhat annoyed to be there, but I have to tell you, he was a trouper. He was already gaining respect as the host of “Politically Incorrect.” An intellectual with humor and here he was on “Pictionary” with Erik Estrada, not exactly known as an intellectual humorist or as a comedian. On the other hand, my impression of Erik Estrada was that he was thrilled to be on a game show, which is exactly the kind of personality you want
for that kind of program. So, with that in mind, the dynamic was: Erik is very amped, Bill is somewhat dragging his feet.