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Don’t you find yourself at the beginning of every month saying “I can’t believe it’s ______________ already?” I do. Insert: December. Here are this week’s Friday Questions.

Poochie gets us started.

You talk a lot about plays on your blog. You talk a lot about Cheers (obviously). So maybe I missed it, but have you ever discussed Cheers: Live on Stage. It sounds like it came straight out of Diane Chamber's guest stint on Frasier. My mind is blown that such a thing exists. I'd love to see it, but apparently they canceled plans for a national tour and the reviews were mediocre, putting it kindly.

Can you comment on this? Had you seen it or read a script? What did you think about the show itself or even just the concept of a bunch of look a likes recreating snippets from Cheers? Were there royalties?

I thought it was a terrible idea.  Just a Paramount money-grab.  The TV characters are so ingrained in your mind that the best these actors could do would be to mimic their TV counterparts. I felt bad for the actors. They were in a complete no-win situation.

And none of the CHEERS writers were involved. What I understand they did was cobble together a story using sections from actual scripts from the first season. Now this really pissed me off. If they were using any of my dialogue or my storylines I should have been paid and given credit. I wasn't.

Understandably, when my agent asked for a copy of the script Paramount would not provide it.

I am not brokenhearted it's not going forward.  If you want to see CHEERS at its best, watch the TV show.

Edward asks:

You mentioned on one of your podcasts that while on MASH staff, you and David replicated an episode that already aired years earlier (unnecessary surgery). As a writer, I am sure you felt horrible from a creative perspective (and maybe there were WGA/plagiarism issues), but if you are the Exec Producer, is repeating a similar storyline that bad if its 4-5 seasons later and it involves different characters? There are many new viewers to the show that likely missed a few seasons or long-time viewers that missed a few episodes for whatever reason.

I feel it is bad to knowingly repeat yourself. And with the way people binge-watch today, it’s not five seasons later it’s two days later.

That said, I’m way more forgiving for shows that turned out 39 episodes a year instead of 22. We're talking the '50s and '60s.  And shows weren’t quickly in syndication back then so four or five years could go by before an early episode was ever shown again. Look at the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW. There are a couple of episodes in its final season that are direct copies from episodes in their first. But like I said, they made almost twice as many episodes a year as we do now. I don’t know how they did it – especially the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW which was so well-written and smart.

From angel:

My question is in regard to the helicopter story lines on M*A*S*H. I have heard that it cost a lot of money to call in a helicopter. Were you restricted as to how many stories could involve the helicopter each season?

I never dealt with the budget. Our showrunner, Burt Metcalfe handled that. But we knew if there was an episode with a lot of production one week we needed a “bottle” show the next. A “bottle” show is one that is generally very contained and under budget. An example might be an episode that centers around a poker game in the Swamp or an all-night OR session.

But I don’t recall Burt ever telling us we couldn’t do something. He and the production staff were great at making things happen. And we did our part by balancing the expensive episodes with the inexpensive ones.

Terry has another MASH production question.

I'm watching the MASH episode "Point of View" right now and I was wondering if the way it was shot required the construction of any additional sets (e.g. putting walls where the 4th wall would normally be) or was it all done with camera angles?

Camera angles although mounting a camera in a helicopter was no easy feat and orchestrating that great shot where the patient sees everyone running up to the chopper pad and landing was pretty spectacular. I can never mention the POV episode without giving a lion’s share of the credit to director Charles Dubin. These were the days before hand-held cameras. He did a remarkable job of pulling off a potential technical nightmare.

What’s your Friday Question?

from By Ken Levine http://ift.tt/2ALw31H
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