Memoirs of a Muppets Writer: (You mean somebody actually writes that stuff?) (3 page)

HELP!

Talented young man needs position in advertising or public relations.

(Phone Number)

A wonderfully adventurous man by the name of Edwin F. Hall, who ran a one-man P.R. and advertising agency, took a gamble and hired me for the princely sum of $50.00 a week. Ed ran the business from the attic of his home in Sharon, Massachusetts. Since Sharon was some 35 miles distant from my home, with no public transportation, I used the job as an excuse to buy my first motorcycle. My parents were less than enthusiastic.

Chapter 3

Mad Man

E
d Hall’s clientele were among the industrial research and development firms located along Route 128. The route was an electronics girdle around greater Boston that sprang up because of the close proximity to M.I.T. My first assignment was to write a short speech for an executive of an electronics firm.

Now that I had landed a job as a professional writer, and gotten my first assignment, I immediately came down with my first case of writers’ block. I sat frozen at the typewriter.

After an hour or so, Ed, a very patient man, told me to write the Lord’s Prayer.

“Sorry, I’m not very religious.”, I told him.

“Write it anyway.”

So, I began to type, “Our Father, Who art in heaven …”

When I finished, Ed said to me, “Is that what you want to say?”

“No.”, I told him. “Instead of ‘Our Father’, I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a great pleasure to be here tonight.”

“Well, scratch out the first line and write that in its place.”

I did.

“What about, ‘Who art in heaven’”?, Ed asked.

“I think, ‘I want to speak to you about something very important to our industry.’ might be more appropriate?”

“See?”. Ed told me. Now you’re re-writing. Re-writing is always easier than writing.”

And so, I had my first lesson in big-time, professional writing: All writing is re-writing.

Under Ed’s tutelage, I wrote space ads, brochures, press releases and magazine articles for his industrial and corporate clients.

But, after six months or so, Ed lost a major account and could no longer afford my $50 a week. So, he had to lay me off with a glowing letter of recommendation. Getting laid off, I was soon to find out, was an occupational hazard in the advertising business.

My next job was writing for the catalog division of a large engineering firm. I spent my days singing the praises of industrial fire alarm systems and hospital nurse call systems - heady stuff.

The owner of the firm was a big aficionado of World Class Yacht Racing. He spent millions building a racing boat for that year’s America’s Cup Race. When the boat failed to qualify, most of my division got laid off. Hands down, that’s the classiest reason I’ve ever gotten for being canned - So
sorry. The yacht didn’t make it to the America’s Cup. Have to let you go. Thanks much. Ta.

For the next ten years, I worked as an advertising copywriter in Boston, Massachusetts, Providence, Rhode Island and finally, New York City. I wrote for Radio Shack when they boasted of having 14 stores. I wrote for E.J. Korvettes; and J.C. Penney’s.

I wrote industrial copy: for high vacuum chamber equipment, vacuum coatings, grinding machinery, cryogenics, plastics extrusion, construction materials, textile chemicals and commercial paint.

I created consumer advertising for cameras, sports equipment, stereos, household appliances, tires, motor oil, linens, lawn furniture, power tools, men’s fashion, camping equipment, televisions, toys, lawn tractors, lighting, school supplies and home furnishings.

Eventually, I moved on to Madison Avenue and got to write my share of the glamour stuff like SAAB automobiles, Beefeater Gin, SAS Air Lines and Heineken Beer.

In advertising I learned the mechanics of writing. For ten years I earned a living by putting words down on paper, or creating scenarios for industrial films or television commercials. I learned which words are more effective; which words are more persuasive; how to keep my copy lively; how to think in pictures, and how to cut my work to fit time and space constraints.

I’ve always felt there were two major elements of writing: inspiration and mechanics. Inspiration is something you’re born with (or without). There’s no way to make Stephen King scary or Dave Barry funny. They just are. But both of them have learned the mechanics of writing. Basically, it’s called, English Comp. So, when inspiration comes along, these guys can get it down on paper.

Journalists, novelists, playwrights, copywriters, poets and screen writers all essentially do the same thing: fact or fiction, they tell a story. It’s no mystery why many novelists and playwrights started off as journalists.

I’ll admit it. Being a Mad Man on Madison Avenue in the 1960s was fun. There are many stories from that era. But, as my wife says, that’s another book. Advertising was challenging, creative, glamorous, sexy and lucrative.

But, alas! The whole thing came to a crashing halt one Monday morning. I arrived at my Madison Avenue office to discover that the front door was padlocked. It was my employers’ unique method of informing the staff that the agency had gone out of business.

Chapter 4

TV Writer

I
n the early 1970s, the advertising business was in a slump and copywriting jobs were scarce. Fortunately, I had a lot of friends in the New York film industry. So, I paid my rent by working as a freelance carpenter, stage hand, truck driver, “whatever,” on television commercials and film shoots around the city. I even acted in one or two. I also worked as a swing bartender in an East Side singles bar.

I free-lanced fairly steadily for Radio Audizioni Italiane (R.A.I.), the national Italian television network. The R.A.I. (pronounced, “rye”) had a bureau in New York. It was set up to provide American film crews for Italian producers on assignment in the states from Rome.

So, I traveled the country with the R.A.I. We covered a Barbie factory in Los Angeles. We profiled an out-of-work Boeing aircraft engineer in Seattle. We chased the Mafia from the bar at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue to Arthur Avenue in the Italian Bronx. I interviewed John Kenneth Calbraith - twice.

On weekends, I had a second job working as a projectionist for an attache’ from the Italian Delegation to the United Nations. He had a side line showing the film of the R.A.I.’s Soccer Game of the Week in Italian soccer clubs around New York.

I supported myself like this from roughly 1970 to 1972.
(Bailey: The Lost Years).
I was paying my $165 a month rent. Life was interesting. Life was fun, if a little aimless.

Then one day, I received a call from Gail Frank, a woman I knew from my New York film crowd. (In the spirit of disclosure, I should mention that Gail and I have now been happily married for several decades.)

Because of her background producing and directing children’s theatre, Gail was producing a new children’s television show in Boston called,
Jabberwocky.
When the show got rolling, she found herself desperately short of writers. Knowing I was some kind of writer, she called and asked me to do a sample script. At the time, I didn’t even know what a script looked like.

This was 1972, the heyday of new, educational children’s television, led by
Sesame Street
and other shows like Zoom! and
The Electric Company.
Instead of just distracting and entertaining kids, these shows were actually trying to
teach
them something.

Jabberwocky,
designed for six-to-ten-year-olds, dealt with affective childhood problems like sibling rivalry, fear, competition, and disappointment, as well as some straight educational goals.

The show was situated in a television studio, with the characters working in various studio capacities. It had a puppet character, Dirty Frank, who lived in a chimney and served as our resident “kid”. The show also included remote location pieces and creative animation. Among the cast was the well-known character actor, Robert Prosky, and a very young Jobeth Williams.

I sweated my way through the script. I used to write 30-second commercials. Now, I had to fill 30 minutes! Somehow I did, and
Jabberwocky
liked my material. Over the course of production, I wrote about 50 scripts for the show, a valuable learning experience in the craft of television writing.

It was
Jabberwocky
that first led me to
Sesame Street
and the Muppets. When I started on the show, I knew nothing about writing children’s television. I relied on my advertising experience to keep the
Jabberwocky
scripts bright and interesting. But except for a few ad campaigns I had never really written comedy.

So, I began every work day with a dose of
Sesame Street. I
analyzed its content, and its presentation. I studied the humor. And, since
Jabberwocky
had a puppet character, I absorbed whatever I could about puppets on television.

Jabberwocky
was fortunate enough to win several television awards for local children’s programming, including a citation from Action for Children’s Television, the first ever given to a commercial television program. But, after several seasons, the show ran its course and went out of production. And, I was out of work, again.

Chapter 5

Let me tell you how I got … how I got to Sesame Street

I
t was February 1973 and I was back in New York, contemplating my next career move, otherwise known as looking for a job. I considered returning to advertising. Now that I was an “award winning” children’s television writer, I figured I could get a copy job at an advertising agency working on a toy or cereal account. But somehow, after making a positive contribution to children through television, the idea of seducing them into wanting the newest battery-operated plaything or demanding sugar coated breakfast food left me cold.

Not knowing what else to do, I called up the Children’s Television Workshop, the company that produced
Sesame Street
. I talked my way past the switchboard and contacted someone on the
Sesame Street
production staff.

“It appears that I’m an award-winning children’s television writer. Maybe we should talk.”, I announced. Amazingly, they agreed.

So one freezing cold February morning, I went to the
Sesame Street
production offices, which are located directly across Broadway from Lincoln Center. I had an appointment with Bob Cunniff, who was the show’s producer.

After exchanging a few pleasantries about our shared Irish ancestry, Bob pointed to the Bert and Ernie puppets behind his desk and asked me how I’d like to try writing for these two guys. And so, I agreed to write four audition pieces for Se
same Street
, for which I was paid $250.

During my
Jabberwocky
days, I quickly realized that
Sesame Street
was using many of the same techniques I had used in advertising to teach their curriculum - repetition, catchy jingles, demonstration and humor. In fact, it was young children’s easy ability to absorb and repeat television commercials that influenced Joan Ganz Cooney’s decisions about the format of
Sesame Street
when she originally conceived the show.

Having that insight to
the show’s
teaching methods was extremely helpful in writing the audition pieces. In one, I used Big Bird and his imaginary friend, the mammoth-like Snuffle-upagus, to demonstrate the difference between “wet” and “dry”, which was then part of the
Sesame Street
curriculum.

The piece started with Susan, one of
Sesame Street’s
adults, and Big Bird just finishing taking laundry off a clothes line. The phone rings, and Susan goes inside to answer it. She calls down from a window and asks Big Bird to take care of the laundry.

It starts to rain and Big Bird starts to take the laundry inside when along comes Mr. Snuffle-upagus, Big Bird’s elephantine friend whom the adults believe is imaginary. Big Bird tries to keep Snuffy from getting wet and catching cold.

Forgetting about the laundry, Big Bird tries to get Snuffy out of the rain under a shed.

The problem is, Snuffy is so big that when his front end is under the shed and dry, his rear end is outside and wet. After coaxing Snuffy to turn around, Big Bird discovers that now that Snuffy’s rear end is dry under the roof, his front end is wet!

This process repeats itself several times until the rain stops and with an enormous sneeze, Mr. Snuffle-upagus goes home. Susan comes out to discover her laundry is soaking wet, leaving Big Bird to explain that he was trying to keep Mr. Snuffle-upagus from catching cold.

Another Muppet piece involved Goldilocks and the three bears to explain the word, “bus”. After discovering their house had been invaded, the three bears catch Goldilocks raiding their refrigerator. When they demand to know what she is doing, she claims to be waiting for a cross-town bus. There is some general discussion about what a bus is, and how there can’t possibly be any buses way out here in the country.

At the appropriate moment, a New York City bus, with Muppet driver and passengers drives into the bears’ living room. It stops, and Goldilocks boards.

Amid discussions of having the correct change, the bus drives out of the scene.

I sent the four audition pieces to Bob Cunniff and commenced to wait and worry.

Several weeks later, I received a phone call from Brenda Shapiro, Jon Stone’s assistant. Jon, I knew from the
Sesame Street
credits, was the show’s Executive Producer. The great man wanted to meet me. So, an appointment was set up for the following week.

Wanting to make a good impression on the big boss, I went into my advertising wardrobe and picked out a double breasted, pin striped suit, Gucci loafers, a monogrammed French cuffed shirt and an Italian silk tie.

Jon had also dressed rather formally for the occasion. He was wearing the cardigan sweater with only one elbow gone and his “good” bib overalls. Here was this bear of a man with this Roman nose, halo of white hair and matching beard, who could play Moses, or God for that matter, in any ‘50s Bible epic. But Moses was dressed in all the satirical splendor of a flannel-shirted Vermont farmer, which he was on weekends. Jon looked like a cross between Zeus and Yogi Bear.