January 15, 2024 • 60 mins
When they first saw his name in the credits, Will may have been the only host who remembered Kevin Kelton, but now they’ll never forget his City Slackers script as their Season 3 favorite.
The gang explores Kevin’s journey from SNL to BMW and learn all about his unused big idea for Eric after graduation. From writing for Eddie Murphy to being called out by William Daniels, Kevin definitely has a story to tell.
Plus, Kevin reveals his favorite cast member to write for and why he thinks his exit from the show may have ruffled some feathers.
It’s time to learn all about another brilliant mind who shaped your favorite sitcom…on a brand new Pod Meets World!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
My My new favorite lunch that I make for myself
is the Jennifer Aniston salad.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Has heard about this?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, you make a salad Jennifer and cucumber mint parsley.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
It's feta. It's delicious.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Oh you've lost will forever at feta.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So anyway, you know, I ran and we stumbled across this.
I actually it was from when we went on our
rafting trip. They they made this for lunch on one
of our stops and or made a version of this,
and so I was like looking up like quenwa chickpea
feta salad, and then it came up as the Jennifer
Aniston salad. I was like what and so I you
(00:57):
what they say is that she ate this every day
when she was on the set of Friends or whatever.
But I just thought it was so weird, like of
all the things to have named after you, like as
an actor, to have a salad named after you. So
I was wondering, if you guys could be could have
anything named after you, what would it be?
Speaker 5 (01:14):
The Jennifer Aniston salad, the wild.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Salad, the Wilfred no no chick beas just steak.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
It's it's just it's it's just actually of Iceberg Lattice.
That's all. It is, just after that of Iceberg Lattice.
I don't know what would you want named after you, Danielle, Oh,
I think I got one?
Speaker 4 (01:37):
What go for you?
Speaker 6 (01:38):
Well, if you hit a certain number of miles on
an airplane like on and they name a plane after you,
like a new plane is named after you, something like
that would be cool.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So you want like a big like an actual odd yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
Like a thing named after like like that would be cool.
Speaker 6 (01:53):
Ship and the ocean on the high side, Yes, exactly, Like,
Oh that'd be of course everyone would get it wrong
and be like, oh man, are you flying on the Friedle?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Like no one would get it right ever, Yeah, it
would just they didn't even spell it wrong.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Exactly. It would invariably become the Freedle. But yeah, like it.
I think I take a plane. I think that'd be
really cool.
Speaker 7 (02:13):
Oh man, I don't know it mine would probably, I'd
probably want it'd probably be a food relate if I
think about all my favorite things. It would be a
food related thing or it would be a nat related thing, right.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I would live official are the official Oreo?
Speaker 5 (02:37):
I love that.
Speaker 7 (02:38):
I would really like that yeah, that that that would
be mine. I would have to but it would yeah,
because it wouldn't be.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Something healthy like a solid.
Speaker 7 (02:44):
It would have to be something like a like an
oreo to Pangorreo, or like.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
You said, a McDonald's meal. Would you say to Pangorreo,
that's a pretty good one. We should we should pitch that.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
We should Uh yeah, no, I think a McDonald's. Oh
if we could do a McDonald's meal too.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Oh man, if we could do a Pod meets World
McDonald's meal.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
And like I want my Pod meets Yes, Oh, that'd
be awesome.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
That sounds good. I could do McDonald's today.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
I can do McDonald's every day.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I could do McDonald's right now, let's get it delivered
while we're while recorded.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Uber eats McDonald Welcome to Pod Meets World. I'm Daniel Fischel,
I'm writer Strong, and I'm Wilfredell.
Speaker 7 (03:27):
When I innocently asked the guys, hey, either of you
two remember the writer of this episode. On a recent recap,
it was Will who jumped in and said, yeah, Kevin Kelton,
I like that guy. And then in classic Pod meets World,
Fashion Rider and I remembered absolutely nothing about him, but
we were thrilled when Kevin did reach out to Will
after the podcast episode aired to thank him for having
(03:49):
a working memory and now here he is about to
talk to us about what he remembers. As a writer
and producer on Boy Meets World, Kevin technically had one
of the more impressed of pre Boy Meets World resumes
on staff. He had already worked on the Variety show
Fridays with a young Green coworker named Larry David. He
had a story by credit on The Jeffersons, and spent
(04:12):
nineteen eighty three through nineteen eighty five as part of
the Fraternity of writers working at New York's thirty Rockefeller
Center on Saturday Night Live, where he was Emmy nominated
throw in three episodes of a Different World and five
episodes of Night Court, and by the time he had
his first script with Boy Meets World in nineteen ninety five,
(04:32):
this guy was killing it. He wrote season two's Pop Quiz,
the episode where Sean and Corey Steele an upcoming assignment
for mister Turner's apartment, and in season three he penned
Are Beloved and Possible Rewatch Favorite City slackers. The heart
is a lonely hunter, and I never sang for my
legal guardian, and for good reason. With all this experience,
(04:55):
he'd go on to write the book The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook,
and also three novels, and now, almost thirty years later,
he will join three of the child stars he once
worked with and not focus on his time with Steve Martin,
Jay Leno or Lorne Michaels. Nope, Yeah, he's going to
talk about the time he wrote the episode where Will
(05:15):
somehow nailed an impossibly.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Cool pool trick on his first try. So welcome to
Pod meets World.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
Someone writer, and I will never forget a second time writer.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Kevin Kelton.
Speaker 8 (05:32):
Hi, I'm Kate.
Speaker 9 (05:33):
Hudson and I'm Oliver Hudson. And at last I checked for.
Speaker 8 (05:37):
Siblings and this is sibling revelry.
Speaker 9 (05:40):
We're full blood siblings, the only full blood.
Speaker 8 (05:43):
Sibling and our family well not in the world, I mean.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
No, in the whole world.
Speaker 9 (05:47):
This is it, like no one anyway, We're back with
season four. I can't believe his.
Speaker 8 (05:52):
Guys, I'm so excited, bigger and better than ever. You
might be asking yourself, what is bling revelry?
Speaker 9 (06:01):
Yeah, well we just made it up. There is no
sibling revelry. It's reveling in your sibling and.
Speaker 8 (06:06):
It's fun because we've decided to open it up, you know,
to really like all kinds of different siblings. And it's
going to be an awesome season.
Speaker 9 (06:17):
So listen to Sibling Revelry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or.
Speaker 8 (06:21):
Wherever you listen to pop.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
God, Danielle, you're like intermittently skipping and freezing around for me.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, that's you, because I'm on I'm on Ethernet. You
it's you. I'm hardwire.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
You interrupted a site about whose Internet is failing?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I love it because I do a podcast too, and
we have this argument every week. Oh yeah, and I
thought it was only because we were such a low
scale podcast. So the national podcast also have the same discussion.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Oh yeah, whose internet is failing?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Now I'm just messing up.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
So first of all, Kevin Wrighter and I would like
to apologize for not remembering you.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yes, I'm so glad you said that picture though, because
the second I saw the picture, I was like, oh yes.
Speaker 7 (07:20):
When you send the picture and I saw your face,
I was like, of course there is so yeah, we
were totally blown away by the City Slackers episode it is.
I mean, not only are maybe our favorite episode of
season three, but if I had to guess, like, of
all the season one, two and three episodes, city Slackers
(07:43):
might be my favorite.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I don't disagree.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
It was a great as it was going around the
B story, good a story, Feenie being Feoenie.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
I mean, that was a great episode.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
What do you remember about that week?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Well, you know, I have memories of the episodes. I
actually went back and rewatched them. I don't have a
lot of specific memories from production, but I do remember
one Bill Daniels story that I thought I would tell.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
When I first came on the show.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
And you guys are writers, so you know this. Actors
generally don't like parentheticals, yep, because they think that you
are telling them what to do, how to do their job.
And I was warned early on in my tenure there
not to do that for Bill Daniels because he'll call
you on it. Well, somehow I let a parenthetical slip
into one of his speeches. I think it was in
(08:35):
City Slackers, and sure enough we get to the reading
on whether it was whatever our Monday morning was. I
forget what day we did the readings Friday, and he
calls me over. And I never really talked much to Bill,
and he calls me over. He says, I have a
question for you about the script. And he turns to
a page and he reads like one of your lines,
and then he reads his follow up or he gets
(08:56):
to his follow up line with the parenthetical in it,
and he goes, oh, parenthetical, And without looking up, he's
looking right at the script just as he would do
as if he was mister Feeni. He goes, I see
you're doing my job now, and behold me and everyone
around like gasp.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Oh, there was nothing quite like that.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, when you when Bill calls you on the carpet,
you have been called on the carpet.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
Yeah, there was nothing quite like getting Uh.
Speaker 6 (09:27):
They were always they were rare, and they were always
intelligent little cutdowns from Bill that would occasionally happen. It's
just he would he would just kind of every once
in a while, give you a little bit of a job.
But they were jabs that were beautifully timed, wonderfully thought out.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
But it was like, oh, yes, I see you're doing
my job now.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
What's so interesting about hearing that story? For me is like,
is that when I think about it, And of course
this is obvious, he had more experience than anybody else
on the set. Well, you know, and that's that's as
a kid, I obviously he felt like he had more
experience than me.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
But for you writers too, he had years of experiencing.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Oh yeah, but you know, so interesting the cast. First
of all, I can't say enough about the cast. You
guys were all wonderful on and off the set. But
we could give you guys anything, and you delivered on it.
It was really a pleasure.
Speaker 7 (10:20):
That's so kind When you rewatched the episodes and what
kind of emotions came up for you? How did you
feel rewatching your work this many years later.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Well, first of all, I'm a sucker for my SAP scenes.
So in that last scene in City Slackers or in
the Heart is a Lonely Hunter when writer's character when
Sean is on the picnic with his girlfriend, you know,
I choke up, even though I wrote your stuff. Yeah,
but looking back on it, it's hard. Yeah. I mean you
(10:51):
guys again, you know what it's like to watch your
own work, your your own worst self critic, So a
lot of it. Yeah, it's not the most fun to
go back and watch it, but I do appreciate the
quality of the episodes absolutely.
Speaker 7 (11:07):
We also I really loved I never sang for My
Legal Guardian, which we just recently watched and recapped.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
So you saying that you are a sucker for your sappy.
Speaker 7 (11:19):
Scenes, you did write some of the more emotionally charged
episodes of our show.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, well, first of all, I think that that's the
direction that Michael was taking us in that third season.
But also I came in. I mean, you guys know
my background. I have a very broad background, eclectic background
in television writing. So when I came onto the show,
I really didn't have a TGIF sensibility, and I was
(11:50):
hired off of a Fraser spec to give you an example. Interesting,
and so you know, my goal, like everybody in the nineties,
my goal was to work on a must TV show.
And yeah, the shows I liked were the obvious ones.
Larry Sanders, which wasn't must see TV, but f Frasier, Yeah,
(12:10):
Mad About You. I just absolutely adored. So my particular
kind of push in that third season because everybody was
talking about aging up the show. How can we age
up the characters age up the show, and we all
had that goal, but we had different ideas of how
to get there. And my idea was to play to
(12:34):
the characters that weren't as well utilized or weren't as
much of a focus, which is why I like to
write stories about mister Feenie with the boys out of school. Yeah,
you know, take Sean's relationships to a different level, putting
Will at a job at an internship. I really liked
writing for you characters and taking you to new places
(12:57):
and trying to write a little bit more of that
kind of like musty tvous sensibility. Now, I'm not so
egocentric as to think that I totally succeeded, but I
tried to push.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Those those muscles you absolutely did.
Speaker 7 (13:11):
So I want to go back to some of your
your jobs that you had before you joined us on
Boymet's World, and one of your first jobs was on
the variety show Fridays.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
That was my first comedy writing job. Yeah. I had
a job in television before that on a game show
called Face the Music, and then I got the Friday's job.
Speaker 6 (13:27):
And so wait, I have I have a Friday's question, Danielle. Yes,
if you mind if I pop in. So this was
this was the Michael Michael Richards was on Fridays? Was not?
Speaker 5 (13:34):
Yeah, were you there for the famous uh scene that.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
Happened with it was with Andy Kaufman? With Andy Kaufman?
Were you there when that?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
I had left the show a couple of weeks before that,
my contract had run out for that season. But I
have some strong opinions on that. I don't think any
of that was real.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
And really, yeah, do you guys know what I'm talking about?
Danielle and Ryder?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
What's the story?
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Okay, well, okay, this is so this is one of
the arguably one of the most famous stories in television history.
At this point, can you tell us what it was, Kevin?
Since you were there, I mean, on the show, can
you tell us what went down?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Sure? So Andy Kaufman was known for put ons, so
he came on to Fridays and in his monologue he
was talking about how he could do anything. You know,
it's live, there's nothing they could do, and he would
do act like Andy making crazy faces, and during the
course of all of the sketches, he would kind of
break the fourth wall here and there. So finally we
(14:31):
get to the last sketch of the episode, and as
it plays out, Andy started going totally off camera and saying,
I can't do this anymore, started cracking up. This sketch
is too silly, I can't do this. And it builds
into an argument that builds into a fight with Michael Richards,
that builds into a fist fight with Jack Burns, who
(14:54):
was one of the producers and the host of the show,
or the MC of the show. It was all a
put on. Now, I wasn't there, and I have heard
a lot of people say a lot of things, but
I know Andy. I saw Andy Kaufman in the early seventies.
You know, my brother is a stand up comedian. That's
how I got into comedy. And so when I was
(15:14):
in college. When I was home from college, I would
hang out with him at the New York comedy clubs
because what would be more fun for a twenty year
old kid than going to comedy clubs and hanging out
with the comedians. And I saw Andy Kaufman pulling this
stuff back in nineteen seventy five, so it's all you know,
it's all a put on. He was great at it.
(15:35):
It was a lot of fun I'm just surprised so
many people really believed it was real.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Oh well, there's probably a level of like, there's probably
only like, like, even if it was a put on,
there were probably still crew.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Members who didn't know what was happening, right, A.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Genius, Right, yeah, that's what it was. Genius.
Speaker 6 (15:50):
He would some people would be on on the joke,
other people wouldn't, so then the rumors themselves would become
part of the lore where it's like, wait, no, I
heard it was a rumor. I heard it was a
put out. No no, no, I was on that crew.
It wasn't a putt like that was part of his genius.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I kind of respect that. I kind of respect that,
but I also would hate to work with that. Oh yeah,
you know what I mean, but tolerate that, Like I
totally get it from like a distant like cultural perspective,
but being a professional in the industry, like I want
to rely on my fellow professionals, do you know what
I mean? Like, yeah, the point is that you don't
(16:24):
do those kinds of things to each other or.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Story. And I didn't work on this show, but when
he was on Taxi in the second or third season,
he wanted to bring on Tony Clifton as a character,
and he made them create a separate contract for Tony Clifton.
So they write this episode. Tony Clifton shows up and
during the course of the first two or three days,
he shows up with a couple of hookers on his arms.
(16:49):
I hope it's I can say that on the podcast.
Speaker 9 (16:51):
You can.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Of course you can, of course you can.
Speaker 10 (16:52):
And he seems the biggest jerk and I'm using a
kind word that one can be, to the point where
he got so bad they actually had to fire him.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Midweek, they fired Andy Kaufman as Tony Clifton, and that
next week there's there or that weekend they're trying to
figure out what are we going to do now we
we you know, we're down one cast member and Ed
Weinberger gets a call from Andy Kaufman saying, Hi, I
hear there was a problem with Tony last week. What happened?
Speaker 5 (17:25):
And he was he was he would never break the character.
Speaker 6 (17:28):
It was him and Bob Zamuda, right, Bob's they were
always in on the jokes, and he would he would
sit there and say like he's apparently in his dressing
room dressed like Tony Clifton at one point getting a
call as Andy Kaufman saying Andy, we have to fire
Tony and him going, oh geez, that's so he's not
gonna take it well and tell and then he like
bashed up the set. I mean, yeah, it was one
(17:50):
of those things where he either thought it was brilliant
or you couldn't stand him, and there was kind of
no in between, right, But yeah, that was I mean,
we were when Danielle was reading your credits. This is
another one of those times where I wish I could
when we build the time machine we've talked about, I
could go back and talk.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
To you on the set about being I mean, what
years were you on snl.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Oh eighty eighty three to eighty five, two seasons, the
ninth to tenth season, so that was the last year.
It was the last year that Eddie Murphy was in
the cast. And then the season with the Marty Short
Billy Crystal Christopher.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
Gets my god, So you did you you were there
with with with Hey you I see you with it.
Speaker 5 (18:31):
With the swimming, I don't I'm not a snchronized swimmer.
Speaker 6 (18:34):
Swimmers one of the one of the best skits of all.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Time unbelievable sketch. Yeah, yeah, written I think by those
three guys, Marty, Chris and Harry. Sure.
Speaker 7 (18:44):
What are some of your favorite memories from SNL Oh, gosh.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
So many of them? Right? You know? I wrote a
sketch that was a film piece about a high school
chess coach that acts like Bobby Knight on the sidelines,
growing as antrum every time a kid moves a rook
or something. And that piece got a lot of critical acclaim.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
And yes, my husband loves that sketch.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
When he throws the chair, He's like chucking the chair
and all this. It was hysterical.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
So that, yeah, so I wrote that. That was one
of the fun pieces.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
That second year for me was was just great. I
was working with a couple of other writers. We kind
of formed an informal three person writing team. Got a
lot of material on and Yeah, the great thing about
SNEL was it taught you how to produce, because when
I was there, Dick Ebersol was the executive producer. I
never worked for Lord Michaels, but Dick let you kind
(19:43):
of produce your own sketches, so you learned how to
problem solve on the set as well as how to write.
I'll tell another story. I hope you don't mind me
telling these stories. I wrote a mister Robinson's neighborhood. I
didn't create the character, but you were allowed to write
for Eddie's character. So I wrote the sketch. And if
you recall mister Robinson, there was a second there was
(20:04):
a franchise where he always went to a board, a
board that had the word of the day on it. Yes,
he would introduce the word of the day. And the
sketch that I wrote was that mister Robinson comes in
carrying a picnic basket and he explains that he found
a basket on his doorsteps and it was his bastard baby.
(20:26):
So the word of the day was bastard.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
It was bastard, bastard.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
And remember here's what happened. I wrote a sketch. The
word of the day was bastard, and mister Robinson always
went to the board and said, here's the word of
the day. And then he would say the word and
say can you say this, boys and girls. Well, we're
rehearsing the sketch, and you know it's going to be
on the show. We're rehearsing the sketch and Dick comes
(20:50):
up to me and says, we've got a problem. Bill Clotworthy,
who was the censor at the time, the Standards and
Practices guy, says, we can't do bad. You got to
change it. So I said, okay. So I go back
to my office. I come up with six alternatives. I
run them all by Eddie. He rejects everyone. He says,
I want bastard. It's the only funny one. So I
(21:12):
tell Dick that Eddie doesn't want any of the ones.
He said, well, you created this problem, you fix it.
I'm twenty seven years old, it's my first year on SNL.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
I don't know what to do. So I think it
over and I go to the censor, Bill clott Worthy,
and I say, hey, Bill, what if the word of
the day is bastard? But Eddie doesn't say it out loud,
He just points to it, and we have a cover line.
And Bill says, but Eddie always says to the word
of the day. I said, what if he doesn't say
(21:46):
it this week? He says, if you could promise me
that he won't say it on air, I'll up that.
And so I wrote a cover line which was Eddie
going to the board pointing to that word and saying,
here's the word of the day, boys and girls. Can
you use this word in a sentence? Cab drivers can?
And that got a big laugh and that covered it.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
So wow, unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
I love these I love all these stories.
Speaker 11 (22:12):
Oh my gosh, how now?
Speaker 5 (22:26):
What got you into television work?
Speaker 6 (22:29):
What made you want to join the beautiful, wonderful, amazing
world of TV?
Speaker 3 (22:34):
So I had never grown up thinking about being in entertainment.
I loved comedy. I have three older brothers. We would
watch comedians on TV, we would listen to comedy albums,
but it never occurred to me that this was a career.
My older brother Bobby became a stand up comedian in
the mid seventies. I mentioned that, and I was hanging
(22:54):
out with him, going to the clubs and then hanging
out afterwards with all of his friends. His best friend
and was Larry David. So I was around Larry all
the time before Larry David was famous. But I also
hung around with Leno and a little bit with Seinfeld.
So I was hanging around with these guys and I
just learned how to write comedy, helping my brother write
(23:15):
his act and then watching them all, you know, shoot
lines at each other and punch up each other's acts.
And I would, you know, go back to college and
send material to my brother and he would use some
of it and told me why some of it wouldn't work,
and we would have brotherly arguments. I'd say, you've got
to try this, and go no, it'll never work. So
then I said, well, if you're not going to use
this material, I'll do it and stand up. And I
(23:37):
started doing some stand up, and one thing led to another,
and after college, I just drove across country and said,
I'm going to try this writing thing and if it
doesn't work out, I'll go home and this will be
my gap year or wear my bridge year, whatever you
want to call it, and I'll go home and get
a real job. And I was there for another forty years,
so I guess it worked out.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
And so you started in New York, then.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Well, I grew up on Long Island, New York, went
to school in upstate New York. But as soon as
I got out of college, I realized that to be
a comedy writer had to be in LA. So I
need to La.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Where I'm just curious where in Long Island were you?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Rockville Center on the south Shore.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
That's exactly where my dad's from. My dad graduated from
Rockville High.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
You mean Southside High School?
Speaker 5 (24:17):
A Southide High school?
Speaker 6 (24:18):
Yes, correct, he went to Southside High and my my
wife is from Hicksville.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
Oh my so yeah, so.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
We're big Long We're big Long Island people. I always
like to check where people are from.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
It's possible that your dad and I were in the
same class, are close to it, because I'm about twenty
years older than you.
Speaker 6 (24:33):
Yeah, no, my dad is eighty five, so I'm guessing.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
A different high school class.
Speaker 7 (24:40):
Wait, so how did you go from working with all
of these like comedic geniuses to working with a bunch
of goober kids on boy Meet's work for yourself?
Speaker 4 (24:49):
I mean, sure, sure I could for me.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
First of all, of course, I disagree with that qualitization.
Just made up a word qualitization.
Speaker 8 (24:58):
I like it.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
I disagree with that characterization of you guys. You know,
my first several years were all in sketch comedy, to
the point where I was having trouble breaking into sitcoms.
But I knew that I was cut out for sitcoms.
It was just that my agents couldn't break me in.
So finally, in the late eighties, I started getting sitcom jobs,
and I did a couple of very short lived shows,
(25:21):
one on Fox, another one on NBC. Then I got
onto a different world and did some time there, than
I did Night Court for a few seasons, get a
few other shows, and you know, every season if the
show you were on ended, you had to come up
with a new gig. And my agent put me into
(25:41):
Boy Meets World, and Michael liked my stuff, and here
we are.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
So Kevin, what I love hearing about is like, how
I mean's so much? It seems like so much of
being a writer is about being a part of a community.
You know, Like, yes, all of these experiences you're describing
are like groups of writers getting around making each other laugh.
What what was the community of the writing staff of
a Boy Meets World? Like, how did it compare it
to like the other communities of writers that you were
(26:06):
parts of?
Speaker 3 (26:07):
It was very close. Now, like every job there's going
to be in there's going to be bad days and
internal bickering and what have you. But it was a
really good staff, especially well the staffs that I worked
on I really enjoyed a lot of funny people. We
had some great times. But yes, you get into a
(26:27):
writer's room and it's you know, it's it's Dorwindian. You
have to produce, you have to get stuff in, and
you're competing against your fellow your friends because that you know,
you spend eight ten hours a day with that group
of people, they become your closest friends. So but I
really loved it. I mean, bus Gang and Blutman were great,
(26:48):
and Jeff, as you know, it's just such a great guy,
both Jeffs, Jeff Manel and Jeff Shearman. David was fun
to work for. Matt Nelson, Oh god, what a talented
guy he was. And we had some other writers there
who you may not remember because, like me, they weren't
on for a long time, but Judy Tole and Susan
(27:10):
Sherman and Dona Trueho, they were all just great to
hang out with.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
Yeah, so much fun.
Speaker 7 (27:16):
Do you remember any stories you may have pitched or
things that you may have, you know, suggested in the
writer's room that didn't end up making it.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
I don't remember specific episodes, but I do remember in
that second season again, as we were talking about trying
to age up the show. My angle that I kind
of pitched to I don't know whether it ever made
its way to Michael, but I pitched it a lot
in the writer's room and probably mentioned it to David
and to Jeff McCracken was that I thought it would
be interesting to keep Sean at Turner's house but also
(27:51):
have Will graduate high school and move in with them,
and have that become more of an equal home base
to the Kitchen. So, you know, great, First of all,
I listen, I think all three of you are fabulously talented.
So I hope you don't mind my saying Will, I
was a particular, a particular fan of your work. I
(28:14):
loved writing for all of you, but will you you,
I mean, you always all delivered. But I really thought
it would be fun to get Will in that environment
with Turner, with Sean obviously, having Tapanga and Corey coming over,
having Alex's character being there as well. You know again,
I was thinking Seinfeld friends, Fraser.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And a group of young guys sort of living together,
and like, oh, that makes so much sense. I mean,
it's kind of what ended up happening with Jack, with
Jack and Sean in the season five and six.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Oh yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Oh we could have done so it would have kept
Alex around, and.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
It wuld have kept thinking of Alex.
Speaker 7 (28:54):
Do you do you remember Kevin there being a lot
of conversation about ways that they could involve that you guys,
could involve Alex Dsayer's character, mister Williams into the show,
because that's one of our real only criticisms of season
three is that.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
He felt like it was he was so wasted.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
He was such a talent, and yet we knew they
wanted to age up the show, but it didn't really
seem like they knew how to do it.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah. Well, first of all, we were all tremendous fans
of Alex's. He always delivered. He was a great guy.
I never felt that there was an issue with his
character other than well, first of all, I think they
only you know, contracted him for a handful of episodes, right,
and and that was probably a budgetary thing. Now I
could be wrong about that, but that's that's my vague memory.
(29:42):
I don't remember that we struggled. We liked writing for him,
but we had, you know, the major characters were you guys,
so we had to really focus the stories on you,
and he would come. You know, he was there to
be Turner's kind of mouthpiece or you know, his confidant.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
Right, Do you remember Will's pool shot in the episode
that you wrote where he nails that pool shot.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
I just rewatched it again for this, and you know,
I heard you guys talking about those pool scenes. When
you talked about that episode, Will, I didn't recall that
you had worked with a professional pool shark, and I
didn't realize that you had done some of those shots.
Or maybe I realized it and didn't remember. But yeah,
(30:28):
that last shot of the show, which was the final
shot of the pool game, was really cool when you
sank every ball.
Speaker 6 (30:36):
Yes, chef Chef Anton who now does underwater scuba magic
where we're still trying to figure out exactly what.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
That is and how we can get involved.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (30:46):
Yeah, So where did you go after you left Boy
Meets World?
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Where did you go and why did you leave us?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
I anticipated this question so as I think I made
very clear so far. I had this image of myself
as a musty TV writer, and I got offered a
new NBC show that was going to be part of
the so called Musty TV Family. It was going to
be on and did go on on NBC on Tuesday
(31:16):
nights between Matt about You and Fraser. It was hammocked
in between him. It was called something So Right, and
it starred Jerry Burns and Mel Harris. Yes, I remember
this as two divorcees each have kids of their own
and they get married and it's about a blended family.
And there too their exes coming in because they were
(31:39):
still the fathers and the mothers of the kids. So
I got offered that and I really wanted to do it. So,
you know, my agent said, you know, Michael's not going
to like it if you if you leave the show,
I said, can I can I just run it by
them and see what they say. So I went to
McCracken and I discussed it and he said, well, well,
(32:00):
you know, I don't think Michael's going to react to
well to this. You guys know Michael, you know.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And I was always a little intimidated by Michael, who,
by the way, maybe the best showrunner I ever worked for,
certainly up in the top three.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
But you know, Michael could be intimidating. So I went
and sat down with him and you know, he already
knew what I was coming in for. Quis McCracken had
laid the groundwork and I told him, and you know,
he was cool about it. He said, listen, if that's
what you want to do, that's what you want to do.
You know, godspeed. But I always felt that maybe there
(32:35):
was a little bit of hard feelings there and I
kind of I kind of feel bad about how I
handled it. But you know, that's a career, right, you
moved on.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
You you got to go from job to job or
you know, you got to pursue your It's just a bummer.
The show didn't didn't last. You know, That's that's the
problem about show business. It's like you got to work
just as hard and give it your all, and then
the show can get canceled or you're not right and grace.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Shows with great writing staffs are great casts get canceled,
and shows that maybe aren't as deserving go on for
many years. But What Boy Meets World, You know, as
I look back on it, and you guys have talked
about this on the podcast, which by the way, I
listen to almost every week, thank you, it's grown so
much in status and as an iconic series. And I
(33:22):
think we're all so much, you know, so proud of
the work now that we did because it's it stood
the test of time.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 7 (33:31):
I want to ask you, because you mentioned that Michael
was one of the best showrunners you ever worked for.
What was it like to work for Michael? What were
some of your favorite parts of working with him? Tell
us more about your experience with that.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Okay, Well, my favorite thing is the way he handled
a network. You know, as as you guys know, in television,
there's a lot of fancy titles. You know, you're a
consulting producer, a story editor, a co executive producer, but
the reality is it's there's the showrunner and there's everyone else. Yeah,
and Michael was the showrunner, as you know, and so
(34:02):
he was the one that dealt with the networks, and
he didn't take any guff from the networks. They gave
his They gave him their notes, and he pretty much
ignored them where he took the ones that he wanted.
But he knew how to manage the network as well
as any showrunner I've ever seen, because some just crumble
under network notes. The other thing that was amazing about
(34:25):
Michael is he didn't stay in the room because he
was busy running the show. So David Kendall ran the
room the seasons that I was there. But if we were,
you know, struggling with a script at eleven pm twelve
pm at night, Michael would come in and Michael could
just he'd say, what's the problem, and David would kind
(34:46):
of explain it, and Michael would start riffing and he
would just add lib a scene. He would just riff
a scene. We're all just sitting there doing nothing except
laughing at his lines. But he could write when when
I'd say eighty percent of the episodes of those two seasons,
if you got to the second act scene that was
(35:07):
the heartfelt scene and there was a long monologue for
one of the characters, there's a very good chance that
Michael wrote that in some form or fashion.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, he did have that. We heard that
from a number of people.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
Jeff McCracken, two who knew him the longest, would say
that he would be with him an improv class and
he was always the funniest guy there.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
He's just I was going to say he had that
a bill of an acting background too, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Like he came.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
He started as an actor, and so I think he
always thought of writing primarily as a sort of an
acting exercise.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
So it's interesting to hear that he.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Would so fast.
Speaker 6 (35:39):
I mean, when you work with Michael, I mean, he
was his mind. The way his mind worked comedically was
unlike almost anybody I've ever met in my life, so fast,
and he at times you could tell, and I saw
this more on Girlmy's World. He would block everything out,
including at times too I think a detriment, but block
out almost everybody else in the room or anything going on,
and would just be typing and you're kind of watching
(36:01):
it happen on the screen and it's hysterical.
Speaker 5 (36:03):
I mean. He was just really really good at us. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean, and.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
He knew the show as most showrunners do. He knew
it so well, and he just had a sense for
what was right for Topanger, or what was right for Sean,
or what was right for Eric.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Yeah, and so other people.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
I have to ask you about because we noticed just
how many episodes they wrote in season three.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
What do you remember about Blutman and bus Gang.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Well, first of all, very funny guys, had a lot
of fun with them. How is Howard bust Gang is
one of the funnier writers that I've worked with. He
was a joke machine. Yeah, he just came up with
line after line after line. Blutman was also very funny,
maybe a little bit more of a story guy. And
they turned out a lot of material, and they knew
(36:51):
the show so well. They really felt a personal connection
to the show, maybe even deeper than anyone else on
the staff. They really were boy meets world writers to
their core, and that's why they stayed with the show
as long as they did.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
Yeah, do you keep in touch with anybody from the show?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
A little bit? On Facebook? I keep in touch with Mark,
I keep in touch with Jeff, and very occasionally David.
Like during the writer's strike, I would see him post
photos of him picketing, and I would like it make
a comment. Because I'm no longer in Los Angeles, I
would have been there picketing if I had been in LA,
but I wasn't going to fly into town just to picket.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
Where are you?
Speaker 3 (37:35):
I live outside of Austin, Texas now.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
I moved here.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Oh nice, almost four years ago.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Wonderful.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
I have one more question about the people you worked
with because she was kind of one of the unsung heroes.
She's not here anymore, and she went on to do
some pretty amazing things. Can you talk a little bit
about Judy tole Yes, Judy.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Actually I knew Judy from our comedy days together. We
started in stand up around the same time and we
were quite friendly. Judy was just such a lovely person,
very funny, very brash in a good way, and she
was great to have in the room because she kept
things lively. One of the things that happens in a
(38:17):
writer's room, especially when you get to twelve o'clock, one o'clock,
two o'clock in the morning, is people start to run
out of energy and it could become really problematic. But
you need someone there like a Judy Toll and a
Mark Blutman frankly, who can keep the energy up when
everybody else is kind of fading. And Judy was great
at that. We lost her at a very young age,
(38:40):
as you know, thirty nine years old. I believe I
know it was to cancer, and yeah, we were Actually
we knew each other before she came on the show,
and probably the person that I knew best.
Speaker 6 (38:53):
Yeah, because she also went off into the whole Larry
David World after Boy Meet's World, and was also on
camera and some of the stuff that they were doing there,
and she was just so talented.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Yeah, in the original Curb Your Enthusiasm movie, yeah, they
shot for HBO, she played one of the network executives.
Speaker 5 (39:10):
And she was great. She was so good in it.
Speaker 6 (39:12):
And I remember seeing her and I know she was
good friends with Kathy Griffin, and I ran into her
in a movie theater and.
Speaker 5 (39:18):
We got to talk as adults a little bit.
Speaker 6 (39:21):
It was after she had left the show, and then
hearing she had passed was just Yeah, she was super,
super talented.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
And one last thing that I'll share with you guys is,
as you can imagine, just as it was kind of
weird for you to be fifteen years old and Will
you were just a little bit older, I think, and
working in television, it was a little weird for us
to be working with teenagers. And one of the reasons
that you didn't know me that well was I felt
a little awkward around you, guys, because I thought you
(39:50):
were so freaking cool. I thought I thought you were
the coolest fifteen year old in the world.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
He really was. He was I was.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
I mean, first of all, you you were all heart
throbs in your own way. You know that the audiences
would treat you like the Beatles, you know that. And
one day I was walking from the parking lot into
the building and I see a parking space with a
really cool car in it and said, Riders Strong on it.
And I went into the office and I asked somebody,
(40:20):
I said, is that for writer's parents so they could
drive him to the set. He said, oh no, he
has his driver's license already. He drives himself. Here. You
were like sixteen years old, and I thought he stars
on a television show. He's like a sex symbol and
he drives at sixteen, Who is this kid?
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Yeah, yeah, he's Rider Strong. And that Z three looked
like a small version of the Batmobile.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
It was sockery.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
It's all downhill. Since it's all I just got older.
Speaker 5 (41:01):
That's funny, Kevin.
Speaker 7 (41:02):
I want to give a shout out to your brother,
who you mentioned was a stand up comedian. He did
Carson like something like nine times in the eighties, which.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
To be exactly wow, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
That's unbelievable.
Speaker 7 (41:14):
Please tell us his name, I mean, and give us
tell us a little bit about him.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
So his professional name is Bobby Kelton. He started in
the mid seventies. His contemporaries were Jay Leno, Larry David,
David Letterman. They all started around the same time. And
of course those guys went on to be a lot
more famous than Bobby did. But he still performs in Florida,
not as much as he used to. But yeah, he
(41:40):
did all those shows in the eighties. He was on
Carson and Griffin and Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore, and
he worked you know, in Vegas and other places like that.
And again that's how I learned the business, was by
us Moses, through him and through his friends. So if
it hadn't been for Bobby, I don't know where I
would have ended up. I would have been an accountant
or a lawyer or something.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
You must have had a like a funny childhood home, though,
I mean, like did well at dinner tables.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Must have been jokes after jokes, right, like it was.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
And again I was the youngest of four boys. And
when we were young, like I said, we loved comedy
and we had we would play games. Now, when I
say games, you're probably thinking of softball or stickball, or
or some board game. Our games were actually something that
a word now that we know as improvisation. We had
(42:34):
running characters and we would just add lib scenes with
these running characters over and over and over again and again.
We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know
that improvisation existed. We had never heard of Second City. Yeah,
but we would just make up these scenes, like, for instance,
one of them was Uncle Jack, and the storyline was
(42:58):
it was sort of like a wily coyote kind of
a thing where my oldest brother Bruce played Uncle Jack
and I was the young Master, and the storyline or
the backstory was that my parents had died in a
car crash and I had inherited millions of dollars and
so my uncle was now taking care of me and
constantly trying to kill me off for the money, and
(43:20):
it would always backfire, and it's great. We even had
an opening that we did it at the beginning of
every game where my other brother Mike played like the
butler and he would get the call where he was
being told that my parents were killed in a car crash,
and they would go hello, uh huh, I see okay,
(43:41):
thank you very much, and that was how the show,
and that was how the game began.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
Wow, so much fun.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
So yeah, we didn't know that we were training ourselves
for careers in comedy. And two of my brothers, Bruce
and Mike, are now attorneys. Bruce is actually a judge,
a federal judge in California, and he was the funniest
of the four of us, and he's now a federal judge.
So go figure out, well, did you go up?
Speaker 5 (44:07):
Did you grow up watching?
Speaker 6 (44:08):
I mean, at the time, sketch comedy was essentially in
its infancy, unless you go back to things like the
movies like Hell's of Poppin' and things that are old
school stuff.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
There wasn't a whole ton of sketch comedy around at
the time.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Well there was, it was in a different form. Of course.
Your show of shows was long before I was television.
But there was Carol Burnett, there was Las Sunny and Cherr,
which actually did some decent sketches.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
I guess they did a few.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Things like that. So and I would watch those shows again,
not thinking that I was trading myself for anything, but
I would watch those with my dad or with my brothers,
and it just sunk in and I remember watching SNL
that first season and I would watch the credit roll
because I was already starting to be kind of like
(44:57):
aware of writers, hyper focusing on it. And one week
there was a new name in the credits, the name
James Downey. Now I don't know whether you guys know
who Jim Downey is, but he ended up being probably
the greatest writer on Saturday Night Live. He worked there
for some forty years on and off. But I remember
(45:19):
seeing his name new to the credit roll and going,
who is this guy? How did he get that job?
Where did he come from? And years later I got
to work with him, so that was kind of a
thrill for me.
Speaker 5 (45:30):
Jim Downey, Yeah, you're right. Carol Burnett was amazing. I mean, yeah,
oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
I would argue that that was the best sketch comedy
show ever I could.
Speaker 6 (45:39):
It'd be hard to disagree with that. But they also
kept in the breaking and all the lat I mean,
it was oh yeah, yeah, Kevin.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I want to ask you about your novel. So you've
written you've moved into writing fiction now.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Yeah. So when I retired from television and then I
had a couple of other jobs that were writing related,
in the corporate field. Then I retired and moved to
uh A, excuse me, to Arizona, to Texas and uh
I just started writing novels, and uh I don't know
whether I'm good at it, but I've written five of
them in the last two to three years. I've also
(46:14):
written a book about television writing. I teach television television
writing through UCLA Extension, and I decided to take all
of my lessons and turn them into a how to
book about TV writing. So, yeah, I've written five novels there.
They were really like novella's. They're really short novels, and
I'm kind.
Speaker 5 (46:34):
Of the comedy or yeah, what's the genre.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
So they're all different. The first one that I wrote
was a dark satire, a dystopian satire on marriage and divorce.
It's called super Vows and it's about a world. Do
you guys know what covenant marriages? Have you heard about? Okay?
Covenant marriage is kind of this rule. It's legal in
(46:58):
a couple of states Louisia and Arizona and maybe one
other state. But it's basically a religious based marriage where
you're agreeing to live together for life and you agree
not to divorce. Now, it is possible to get divorced
in a covenant marriage, but you have to go through
a lot more hoops than you would in a regular marriage.
So these things are meant to last a lifetime. And
(47:21):
I read an article about this at some point in
the early two thousands, and I thought, well, if that
catches on and people start marrying for life, that's going
to have a lot of bad consequences and a lot
of ramification to the society. Yeah, exactly, So there you go.
(47:42):
So if you read super Vows, you might find a
little bit of that in that book, because it's essentially
about a world where covenant marriages become the new in thing.
A couple that's a very hot kind of The main
characters are three young actors that are sort of like
(48:02):
Ben Affleck and Mini Driver and Matt Damon.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
Just like this.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, I was thinking about this early this morning. Guys
in your twenties. I would have cast you in a
minute in the movie version of this book. You guys,
you three would have been great. You would have been perfect.
If they had come to me and said we want
to cast the use three, I would have said yes
and a heartbeat.
Speaker 6 (48:22):
Which one of us is married to Danielle for life.
I'm just curious.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Your character is married to Danielle for life. I won't
say what. Will's excuse me, what writer's character does?
Speaker 4 (48:35):
Yeah, I need to read this.
Speaker 5 (48:38):
I need to read this.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
So that was my first novel. I hope you don't
mind me talking about the books. My second one is
based actually on my life, very loosely. I married a
woman who's a former ballerina. She danced across Europe in
her twenties and danced all over She even danced with
Nouriev at one point.
Speaker 5 (48:59):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
And of course she no longer does that. She's now
a plates instructor. And we each had our first marriages,
we had our kids, we got divorced. We met in
our fifties. So I wrote a book about a couple
loosely based on that, what would happen if a ballerina
meets a comedy writer and their worlds collide. So that
(49:21):
one is called pat de Deux And you can find
that one on Amazon. And if you look at the cover,
you'll see a ballerina on it, and it's a picture
of my young wife's cool.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
There you go, so sweet.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
And then the last book it's really a trilogy of
novellas that are a little bit more adult oriented, maybe
not for some of your younger listeners. And this is
about it's three stories, one about a woman in her twenties,
one about a woman in her thirties, and what about
a woman in her forties, And it's about how their
(49:56):
romantic lives are different, how a woman's romantic lives are
different from her twenties to her thirties to her forties.
And what I found was, you know, you write a
book and then you design a cover or two. And
I used to put my covers into Facebook groups for
other writers, saying, Hey, which one do you like better?
And they'd say, well, what's your book about? And I'd
(50:17):
give them the pitch, And then I was surprised to
find about thirty percent of the woman got really hostile
because they didn't like the idea of a man writing
a novel about women. And the pushback I got was incredible.
So I got some intimidated that I released those that book,
or those three novellas. You could buy them individually on Kindle,
(50:41):
or if you buy the paperback of the hardcover all
three or in one book. But I released them under
the name KB Kelton. I used my initials. I figured
maybe if they don't know who wrote it, Yeah, yep,
that's interesting.
Speaker 7 (50:56):
So do you like writing for TV or do you
like writing books better?
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Oh, writing for books so much more. I get so
much more out of it because the only person I
have to answer to is me, And as you well know,
in television, it's never really your work. You know, you
have to take network notes, you have to take executive
producer notes, and then you have to make changes during
(51:20):
the week, and there's a writing stuff that's punching up
your work. These novels reflect my sensibility, and frankly, I'm
more proud of them. I once added up because you know,
I worked on some hit shows, and I once added
up how many people have seen shows that I have
a credit on, not necessarily written by but as a producer,
(51:43):
as a staff writer. And I think that the audience
for my work. I know this is going to sound egotistical.
I think it's close to a billion people. Wow, But
and that includes you know, two years of Boy Beats World.
But my books have been read by few hundred people.
But I'm so much prouder of that work. Because it's
(52:06):
it's lasting. You know, I could point to that and
say this is purely me, It's not filtered through anybody
else's sensibility.
Speaker 6 (52:13):
Yeah, very very briefly, taking Boy Meets World out of
the equation because we know, obviously that's my my favorite
show you've ever done in your favorite show ever? Obviously,
what television project are you most proud of without you know, yeah,
Boy Me's World not in the mix.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Well, it's Saturday Night Live obviously. You know, it's such
an iconic show, and there's so much creative freedom there
that certainly was pretty high on the Mark Night Court.
You know, people remember fondly. Frankly, all of them were jobs,
more or less. That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy them.
That doesn't mean that I don't think I'm the luckiest
guy in the world to have been there. But they
(52:52):
were all you know, you know, they I never got
to work on my sein film, my Frasier, so uh.
I enjoyed all of my jobs, but those two stand
out because they seem to have been so so appreciated
over the years by other people. M and Boy Meets World. No,
(53:14):
I'm very proud of the Boy Meets world. I went
back and again. You know, when I watch some of
those scenes, Danielle, just watching you in that truck stop
with the women, I think her character was named I
forget Luanne was with the character's name, but you know,
Danielle did some great work in that scene. In so
(53:34):
many other scenes, I think about will you as Eric
at the at the TV station, as the in Jurne writer,
you know, you in City Slackers, in you know, reading
Phoene's diary. Uh, just really proud to have worked with
you guys and seen you guys bring my words to life.
Speaker 5 (53:54):
Oh man, so cool.
Speaker 6 (53:55):
And then we're going to do the marriage vow. We're
going to have to get that. We're going to lose
twenty years. Yeah, forties. It's gone to be in our
forties and.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Twenty year olds in our forties.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
You guys may not know this. The new House speaker
Mike Johnson, he is in a covenant marriage.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
That makes sense.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
So when I heard that, you know, he's not necessarily
my taste in politics. But when I heard that, I said,
right on, because people are going to be googling covenant
marriage and they're going to come us to my book.
Speaker 7 (54:24):
I love that, so final question for you, looking back
thirty years later, with so many incredible shows on your
IMDb page, what are your overall feelings of Boy Meets
World And did you ever think you would still be
talking about it three decades later?
Speaker 3 (54:41):
No, No, I did not realize if you would ask me,
which of the shows that I worked on would become
iconic hits that would stand the test of time. It
didn't occur to me that a TGIF show would do that,
but it happens. You know, watching the shows again, you
know there are there were jokes that maybe I would
(55:02):
have done differently, Like every writer you know has second
thoughts when they watched their their material after it's been produced.
But I'm so proud, especially of the dramatic scenes, the
scenes with Sean and Turner, the scenes where mister Feeney
wasn't just being you know, a teacher, but was making
(55:25):
a life lesson point and you know, I was just
reading this morning. I'm sure you guys know this. There's
a couple of episodes that Disney doesn't want to show
anymore because they deal with adult themes. But you know,
Disney is going to be Disney. But we should be
so proud to have worked on a show that did
deal with those themes, dealt with them honestly and tried
(55:47):
to tried to influence people for the better.
Speaker 4 (55:49):
Absolutely couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 7 (55:52):
Well, Kevin, thank you so much for being here with
us today and for remind I mean, I can't believe we,
for even half a second, had forgotten you. You have
such an incredible mind, and just getting to talk to
you and getting to know you a little bit better
has been such a joy this morning.
Speaker 3 (56:07):
You guys are so kind and I really enjoyed it.
I was a little nervous coming in, but you were
very pleasant and I really had a great time.
Speaker 6 (56:14):
You also mentioned so not just your novels, which everybody
should go out and look at, but you also mentioned
that you do a podcast as well.
Speaker 5 (56:19):
What's it called?
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Oh, I do a podcast called The More Perfect Union.
I co host it with three or four other people
depending on the week, and we talk about politics and
pop culture, mostly about politics, and we've been doing that
for eight years now. Actually I think we're on nine sees.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Oh, I got to check the cheese.
Speaker 5 (56:40):
So you were the first podcast we were early on.
Speaker 3 (56:43):
And here's a very quick story. So we come up
with this name, The more Perfect Union, and we start
our podcast and at first we have like fifty sixty
people listening a week. It's our friends, right, And then
one week, all of a sudden, we had eight thousand listeners,
and then the next week we had ten thousand downloads.
We got up to sixteen thousand downloads at one point,
and I couldn't figure out what happened. So I do
(57:06):
a little googling, and I find out that there's another
podcast produced by Radio Labs called The more Perfect Podcast.
It was a short year getting slickover. We got people
were googling for that, and they found us and they
stuck with us. We still don't have that many listeners,
but we have a decent size audience for a small podcasts.
(57:26):
And yeah, we talk about the news of the week.
It's it leads a little left, so it may not
be for everybody's taste, but we try to be fair
and we have a lot of fun doing it. Our
slogan is real debate without the hate.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Totally checking it out. That's totally.
Speaker 4 (57:43):
Thank you, Kevin, It's great to see you.
Speaker 3 (57:44):
Thanks Ken, thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (57:46):
Bye bye.
Speaker 7 (57:48):
What a sweetheart, gosh and what an interesting cool brain.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Interesting cool brain is exactly the right way to put it.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
It's a comedic like I just love when somebody has
like trained themselves how to do this skill set and
then did it like so well. But then I also
love that he's like admits that it was a job,
like he figured out how to do the job. He
mastered the skill of comedy. But he likes writing novels more.
You know, it seems like he's got a lot of
interest and a lot of I don't.
Speaker 5 (58:14):
Know, it's just so cool cool. I just wish I could.
Speaker 6 (58:16):
I should have talked to her about the day and
you could talk to him back in the day where
I could have talked about SNL and Night Court and all.
Speaker 5 (58:23):
These incredible shows that these people have. I know exactly
what's your own head, It doesn't matter, you know.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
Well, I know exactly what he's talking about about being
intimidated too, because I remember feeling that Girl's world too, Like, yeah,
you know, you reach this point you're like, these kids
are these kids are into stuff that make no sense
to me. I'm not even going to try and like
hang out with them too much. Yeah, the kids from
Girlmy's World as much as like pretty well actually, but
it takes you have to like sort of like do it.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
You have to, you know.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
Yeah, and if you're on the writing staff, you're already
to slightly removed from a lot of production.
Speaker 2 (58:54):
So yeah, Ah should have talked to him more back then.
Speaker 5 (58:57):
I know you wish you wish you could go back
and talk to all these people.
Speaker 7 (59:00):
Great guy, Well, thank you all for joining us for
this episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can
follow us on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can
also send us your emails Podmeets World Show at gmail
dot com.
Speaker 4 (59:11):
And we have merch.
Speaker 5 (59:16):
Oh boy, that too much? That too much?
Speaker 4 (59:18):
It is gutturall.
Speaker 5 (59:19):
I felt that too much? You like that?
Speaker 4 (59:20):
I like you that.
Speaker 5 (59:21):
I feel it in your shoes your shoes, Pod.
Speaker 4 (59:23):
Meets Worldshow dot com.
Speaker 7 (59:26):
And if you want to pick up Kevin's how to
book on television writing called The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook with
some tips on how you can write your own version
of Boy Meets World or SNL. It is available now
on Amazon again. It is called The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook
by Kevin Kelton and writer Send us out.
Speaker 2 (59:43):
We love you all.
Speaker 3 (59:44):
Pod dismissed.
Speaker 1 (59:47):
Pod meets World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by
Danielle Fischel, Wilfordell and writer Straw. Executive producers Jensen Karp
and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo,
producer and editor, TaRaSu Bosch, producer, Maddam engineer and Boy
Meets World Superman Easton Allen. Our theme song is by
Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at Podmets
(01:00:07):
World Show or email us at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com.
Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
M
My My new favorite lunch that I make for myself
is the Jennifer Aniston salad.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Has heard about this?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, you make a salad Jennifer and cucumber mint parsley.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
It's feta. It's delicious.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Oh you've lost will forever at feta.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So anyway, you know, I ran and we stumbled across this.
I actually it was from when we went on our
rafting trip. They they made this for lunch on one
of our stops and or made a version of this,
and so I was like looking up like quenwa chickpea
feta salad, and then it came up as the Jennifer
Aniston salad. I was like what and so I you
(00:57):
what they say is that she ate this every day
when she was on the set of Friends or whatever.
But I just thought it was so weird, like of
all the things to have named after you, like as
an actor, to have a salad named after you. So
I was wondering, if you guys could be could have
anything named after you, what would it be?
Speaker 5 (01:14):
The Jennifer Aniston salad, the wild.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Salad, the Wilfred no no chick beas just steak.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
It's it's just it's it's just actually of Iceberg Lattice.
That's all. It is, just after that of Iceberg Lattice.
I don't know what would you want named after you, Danielle, Oh,
I think I got one?
Speaker 4 (01:37):
What go for you?
Speaker 6 (01:38):
Well, if you hit a certain number of miles on
an airplane like on and they name a plane after you,
like a new plane is named after you, something like
that would be cool.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So you want like a big like an actual odd yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
Like a thing named after like like that would be cool.
Speaker 6 (01:53):
Ship and the ocean on the high side, Yes, exactly, Like,
Oh that'd be of course everyone would get it wrong
and be like, oh man, are you flying on the Friedle?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Like no one would get it right ever, Yeah, it
would just they didn't even spell it wrong.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Exactly. It would invariably become the Freedle. But yeah, like it.
I think I take a plane. I think that'd be
really cool.
Speaker 7 (02:13):
Oh man, I don't know it mine would probably, I'd
probably want it'd probably be a food relate if I
think about all my favorite things. It would be a
food related thing or it would be a nat related thing, right.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I would live official are the official Oreo?
Speaker 5 (02:37):
I love that.
Speaker 7 (02:38):
I would really like that yeah, that that that would
be mine. I would have to but it would yeah,
because it wouldn't be.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Something healthy like a solid.
Speaker 7 (02:44):
It would have to be something like a like an
oreo to Pangorreo, or like.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
You said, a McDonald's meal. Would you say to Pangorreo,
that's a pretty good one. We should we should pitch that.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
We should Uh yeah, no, I think a McDonald's. Oh
if we could do a McDonald's meal too.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Oh man, if we could do a Pod meets World
McDonald's meal.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
And like I want my Pod meets Yes, Oh, that'd
be awesome.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
That sounds good. I could do McDonald's today.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
I can do McDonald's every day.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I could do McDonald's right now, let's get it delivered
while we're while recorded.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Uber eats McDonald Welcome to Pod Meets World. I'm Daniel Fischel,
I'm writer Strong, and I'm Wilfredell.
Speaker 7 (03:27):
When I innocently asked the guys, hey, either of you
two remember the writer of this episode. On a recent recap,
it was Will who jumped in and said, yeah, Kevin Kelton,
I like that guy. And then in classic Pod meets World,
Fashion Rider and I remembered absolutely nothing about him, but
we were thrilled when Kevin did reach out to Will
after the podcast episode aired to thank him for having
(03:49):
a working memory and now here he is about to
talk to us about what he remembers. As a writer
and producer on Boy Meets World, Kevin technically had one
of the more impressed of pre Boy Meets World resumes
on staff. He had already worked on the Variety show
Fridays with a young Green coworker named Larry David. He
had a story by credit on The Jeffersons, and spent
(04:12):
nineteen eighty three through nineteen eighty five as part of
the Fraternity of writers working at New York's thirty Rockefeller
Center on Saturday Night Live, where he was Emmy nominated
throw in three episodes of a Different World and five
episodes of Night Court, and by the time he had
his first script with Boy Meets World in nineteen ninety five,
(04:32):
this guy was killing it. He wrote season two's Pop Quiz,
the episode where Sean and Corey Steele an upcoming assignment
for mister Turner's apartment, and in season three he penned
Are Beloved and Possible Rewatch Favorite City slackers. The heart
is a lonely hunter, and I never sang for my
legal guardian, and for good reason. With all this experience,
(04:55):
he'd go on to write the book The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook,
and also three novels, and now, almost thirty years later,
he will join three of the child stars he once
worked with and not focus on his time with Steve Martin,
Jay Leno or Lorne Michaels. Nope, Yeah, he's going to
talk about the time he wrote the episode where Will
(05:15):
somehow nailed an impossibly.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Cool pool trick on his first try. So welcome to
Pod meets World.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
Someone writer, and I will never forget a second time writer.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Kevin Kelton.
Speaker 8 (05:32):
Hi, I'm Kate.
Speaker 9 (05:33):
Hudson and I'm Oliver Hudson. And at last I checked for.
Speaker 8 (05:37):
Siblings and this is sibling revelry.
Speaker 9 (05:40):
We're full blood siblings, the only full blood.
Speaker 8 (05:43):
Sibling and our family well not in the world, I mean.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
No, in the whole world.
Speaker 9 (05:47):
This is it, like no one anyway, We're back with
season four. I can't believe his.
Speaker 8 (05:52):
Guys, I'm so excited, bigger and better than ever. You
might be asking yourself, what is bling revelry?
Speaker 9 (06:01):
Yeah, well we just made it up. There is no
sibling revelry. It's reveling in your sibling and.
Speaker 8 (06:06):
It's fun because we've decided to open it up, you know,
to really like all kinds of different siblings. And it's
going to be an awesome season.
Speaker 9 (06:17):
So listen to Sibling Revelry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or.
Speaker 8 (06:21):
Wherever you listen to pop.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
God, Danielle, you're like intermittently skipping and freezing around for me.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, that's you, because I'm on I'm on Ethernet. You
it's you. I'm hardwire.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
You interrupted a site about whose Internet is failing?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I love it because I do a podcast too, and
we have this argument every week. Oh yeah, and I
thought it was only because we were such a low
scale podcast. So the national podcast also have the same discussion.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Oh yeah, whose internet is failing?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Now I'm just messing up.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
So first of all, Kevin Wrighter and I would like
to apologize for not remembering you.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yes, I'm so glad you said that picture though, because
the second I saw the picture, I was like, oh yes.
Speaker 7 (07:20):
When you send the picture and I saw your face,
I was like, of course there is so yeah, we
were totally blown away by the City Slackers episode it is.
I mean, not only are maybe our favorite episode of
season three, but if I had to guess, like, of
all the season one, two and three episodes, city Slackers
(07:43):
might be my favorite.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I don't disagree.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
It was a great as it was going around the
B story, good a story, Feenie being Feoenie.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
I mean, that was a great episode.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
What do you remember about that week?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Well, you know, I have memories of the episodes. I
actually went back and rewatched them. I don't have a
lot of specific memories from production, but I do remember
one Bill Daniels story that I thought I would tell.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
When I first came on the show.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
And you guys are writers, so you know this. Actors
generally don't like parentheticals, yep, because they think that you
are telling them what to do, how to do their job.
And I was warned early on in my tenure there
not to do that for Bill Daniels because he'll call
you on it. Well, somehow I let a parenthetical slip
into one of his speeches. I think it was in
(08:35):
City Slackers, and sure enough we get to the reading
on whether it was whatever our Monday morning was. I
forget what day we did the readings Friday, and he
calls me over. And I never really talked much to Bill,
and he calls me over. He says, I have a
question for you about the script. And he turns to
a page and he reads like one of your lines,
and then he reads his follow up or he gets
(08:56):
to his follow up line with the parenthetical in it,
and he goes, oh, parenthetical, And without looking up, he's
looking right at the script just as he would do
as if he was mister Feeni. He goes, I see
you're doing my job now, and behold me and everyone
around like gasp.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Oh, there was nothing quite like that.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, when you when Bill calls you on the carpet,
you have been called on the carpet.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
Yeah, there was nothing quite like getting Uh.
Speaker 6 (09:27):
They were always they were rare, and they were always
intelligent little cutdowns from Bill that would occasionally happen. It's
just he would he would just kind of every once
in a while, give you a little bit of a job.
But they were jabs that were beautifully timed, wonderfully thought out.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
But it was like, oh, yes, I see you're doing
my job now.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
What's so interesting about hearing that story? For me is like,
is that when I think about it, And of course
this is obvious, he had more experience than anybody else
on the set. Well, you know, and that's that's as
a kid, I obviously he felt like he had more
experience than me.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
But for you writers too, he had years of experiencing.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Oh yeah, but you know, so interesting the cast. First
of all, I can't say enough about the cast. You
guys were all wonderful on and off the set. But
we could give you guys anything, and you delivered on it.
It was really a pleasure.
Speaker 7 (10:20):
That's so kind When you rewatched the episodes and what
kind of emotions came up for you? How did you
feel rewatching your work this many years later.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Well, first of all, I'm a sucker for my SAP scenes.
So in that last scene in City Slackers or in
the Heart is a Lonely Hunter when writer's character when
Sean is on the picnic with his girlfriend, you know,
I choke up, even though I wrote your stuff. Yeah,
but looking back on it, it's hard. Yeah. I mean you
(10:51):
guys again, you know what it's like to watch your
own work, your your own worst self critic, So a
lot of it. Yeah, it's not the most fun to
go back and watch it, but I do appreciate the
quality of the episodes absolutely.
Speaker 7 (11:07):
We also I really loved I never sang for My
Legal Guardian, which we just recently watched and recapped.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
So you saying that you are a sucker for your sappy.
Speaker 7 (11:19):
Scenes, you did write some of the more emotionally charged
episodes of our show.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, well, first of all, I think that that's the
direction that Michael was taking us in that third season.
But also I came in. I mean, you guys know
my background. I have a very broad background, eclectic background
in television writing. So when I came onto the show,
I really didn't have a TGIF sensibility, and I was
(11:50):
hired off of a Fraser spec to give you an example. Interesting,
and so you know, my goal, like everybody in the nineties,
my goal was to work on a must TV show.
And yeah, the shows I liked were the obvious ones.
Larry Sanders, which wasn't must see TV, but f Frasier, Yeah,
(12:10):
Mad About You. I just absolutely adored. So my particular
kind of push in that third season because everybody was
talking about aging up the show. How can we age
up the characters age up the show, and we all
had that goal, but we had different ideas of how
to get there. And my idea was to play to
(12:34):
the characters that weren't as well utilized or weren't as
much of a focus, which is why I like to
write stories about mister Feenie with the boys out of school. Yeah,
you know, take Sean's relationships to a different level, putting
Will at a job at an internship. I really liked
writing for you characters and taking you to new places
(12:57):
and trying to write a little bit more of that
kind of like musty tvous sensibility. Now, I'm not so
egocentric as to think that I totally succeeded, but I
tried to push.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Those those muscles you absolutely did.
Speaker 7 (13:11):
So I want to go back to some of your
your jobs that you had before you joined us on
Boymet's World, and one of your first jobs was on
the variety show Fridays.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
That was my first comedy writing job. Yeah. I had
a job in television before that on a game show
called Face the Music, and then I got the Friday's job.
Speaker 6 (13:27):
And so wait, I have I have a Friday's question, Danielle. Yes,
if you mind if I pop in. So this was
this was the Michael Michael Richards was on Fridays? Was not?
Speaker 5 (13:34):
Yeah, were you there for the famous uh scene that.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
Happened with it was with Andy Kaufman? With Andy Kaufman?
Were you there when that?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
I had left the show a couple of weeks before that,
my contract had run out for that season. But I
have some strong opinions on that. I don't think any
of that was real.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
And really, yeah, do you guys know what I'm talking about?
Danielle and Ryder?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
What's the story?
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Okay, well, okay, this is so this is one of
the arguably one of the most famous stories in television history.
At this point, can you tell us what it was, Kevin?
Since you were there, I mean, on the show, can
you tell us what went down?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Sure? So Andy Kaufman was known for put ons, so
he came on to Fridays and in his monologue he
was talking about how he could do anything. You know,
it's live, there's nothing they could do, and he would
do act like Andy making crazy faces, and during the
course of all of the sketches, he would kind of
break the fourth wall here and there. So finally we
(14:31):
get to the last sketch of the episode, and as
it plays out, Andy started going totally off camera and saying,
I can't do this anymore, started cracking up. This sketch
is too silly, I can't do this. And it builds
into an argument that builds into a fight with Michael Richards,
that builds into a fist fight with Jack Burns, who
(14:54):
was one of the producers and the host of the show,
or the MC of the show. It was all a
put on. Now, I wasn't there, and I have heard
a lot of people say a lot of things, but
I know Andy. I saw Andy Kaufman in the early seventies.
You know, my brother is a stand up comedian. That's
how I got into comedy. And so when I was
(15:14):
in college. When I was home from college, I would
hang out with him at the New York comedy clubs
because what would be more fun for a twenty year
old kid than going to comedy clubs and hanging out
with the comedians. And I saw Andy Kaufman pulling this
stuff back in nineteen seventy five, so it's all you know,
it's all a put on. He was great at it.
(15:35):
It was a lot of fun I'm just surprised so
many people really believed it was real.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Oh well, there's probably a level of like, there's probably
only like, like, even if it was a put on,
there were probably still crew.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Members who didn't know what was happening, right, A.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Genius, Right, yeah, that's what it was. Genius.
Speaker 6 (15:50):
He would some people would be on on the joke,
other people wouldn't, so then the rumors themselves would become
part of the lore where it's like, wait, no, I
heard it was a rumor. I heard it was a
put out. No no, no, I was on that crew.
It wasn't a putt like that was part of his genius.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I kind of respect that. I kind of respect that,
but I also would hate to work with that. Oh yeah,
you know what I mean, but tolerate that, Like I
totally get it from like a distant like cultural perspective,
but being a professional in the industry, like I want
to rely on my fellow professionals, do you know what
I mean? Like, yeah, the point is that you don't
(16:24):
do those kinds of things to each other or.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Story. And I didn't work on this show, but when
he was on Taxi in the second or third season,
he wanted to bring on Tony Clifton as a character,
and he made them create a separate contract for Tony Clifton.
So they write this episode. Tony Clifton shows up and
during the course of the first two or three days,
he shows up with a couple of hookers on his arms.
(16:49):
I hope it's I can say that on the podcast.
Speaker 9 (16:51):
You can.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Of course you can, of course you can.
Speaker 10 (16:52):
And he seems the biggest jerk and I'm using a
kind word that one can be, to the point where
he got so bad they actually had to fire him.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Midweek, they fired Andy Kaufman as Tony Clifton, and that
next week there's there or that weekend they're trying to
figure out what are we going to do now we
we you know, we're down one cast member and Ed
Weinberger gets a call from Andy Kaufman saying, Hi, I
hear there was a problem with Tony last week. What happened?
Speaker 5 (17:25):
And he was he was he would never break the character.
Speaker 6 (17:28):
It was him and Bob Zamuda, right, Bob's they were
always in on the jokes, and he would he would
sit there and say like he's apparently in his dressing
room dressed like Tony Clifton at one point getting a
call as Andy Kaufman saying Andy, we have to fire
Tony and him going, oh geez, that's so he's not
gonna take it well and tell and then he like
bashed up the set. I mean, yeah, it was one
(17:50):
of those things where he either thought it was brilliant
or you couldn't stand him, and there was kind of
no in between, right, But yeah, that was I mean,
we were when Danielle was reading your credits. This is
another one of those times where I wish I could
when we build the time machine we've talked about, I
could go back and talk.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
To you on the set about being I mean, what
years were you on snl.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Oh eighty eighty three to eighty five, two seasons, the
ninth to tenth season, so that was the last year.
It was the last year that Eddie Murphy was in
the cast. And then the season with the Marty Short
Billy Crystal Christopher.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
Gets my god, So you did you you were there
with with with Hey you I see you with it.
Speaker 5 (18:31):
With the swimming, I don't I'm not a snchronized swimmer.
Speaker 6 (18:34):
Swimmers one of the one of the best skits of all.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Time unbelievable sketch. Yeah, yeah, written I think by those
three guys, Marty, Chris and Harry. Sure.
Speaker 7 (18:44):
What are some of your favorite memories from SNL Oh, gosh.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
So many of them? Right? You know? I wrote a
sketch that was a film piece about a high school
chess coach that acts like Bobby Knight on the sidelines,
growing as antrum every time a kid moves a rook
or something. And that piece got a lot of critical acclaim.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
And yes, my husband loves that sketch.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
When he throws the chair, He's like chucking the chair
and all this. It was hysterical.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
So that, yeah, so I wrote that. That was one
of the fun pieces.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
That second year for me was was just great. I
was working with a couple of other writers. We kind
of formed an informal three person writing team. Got a
lot of material on and Yeah, the great thing about
SNEL was it taught you how to produce, because when
I was there, Dick Ebersol was the executive producer. I
never worked for Lord Michaels, but Dick let you kind
(19:43):
of produce your own sketches, so you learned how to
problem solve on the set as well as how to write.
I'll tell another story. I hope you don't mind me
telling these stories. I wrote a mister Robinson's neighborhood. I
didn't create the character, but you were allowed to write
for Eddie's character. So I wrote the sketch. And if
you recall mister Robinson, there was a second there was
(20:04):
a franchise where he always went to a board, a
board that had the word of the day on it. Yes,
he would introduce the word of the day. And the
sketch that I wrote was that mister Robinson comes in
carrying a picnic basket and he explains that he found
a basket on his doorsteps and it was his bastard baby.
(20:26):
So the word of the day was bastard.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
It was bastard, bastard.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
And remember here's what happened. I wrote a sketch. The
word of the day was bastard, and mister Robinson always
went to the board and said, here's the word of
the day. And then he would say the word and
say can you say this, boys and girls. Well, we're
rehearsing the sketch, and you know it's going to be
on the show. We're rehearsing the sketch and Dick comes
(20:50):
up to me and says, we've got a problem. Bill Clotworthy,
who was the censor at the time, the Standards and
Practices guy, says, we can't do bad. You got to
change it. So I said, okay. So I go back
to my office. I come up with six alternatives. I
run them all by Eddie. He rejects everyone. He says,
I want bastard. It's the only funny one. So I
(21:12):
tell Dick that Eddie doesn't want any of the ones.
He said, well, you created this problem, you fix it.
I'm twenty seven years old, it's my first year on SNL.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
I don't know what to do. So I think it
over and I go to the censor, Bill clott Worthy,
and I say, hey, Bill, what if the word of
the day is bastard? But Eddie doesn't say it out loud,
He just points to it, and we have a cover line.
And Bill says, but Eddie always says to the word
of the day. I said, what if he doesn't say
(21:46):
it this week? He says, if you could promise me
that he won't say it on air, I'll up that.
And so I wrote a cover line which was Eddie
going to the board pointing to that word and saying,
here's the word of the day, boys and girls. Can
you use this word in a sentence? Cab drivers can?
And that got a big laugh and that covered it.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
So wow, unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
I love these I love all these stories.
Speaker 11 (22:12):
Oh my gosh, how now?
Speaker 5 (22:26):
What got you into television work?
Speaker 6 (22:29):
What made you want to join the beautiful, wonderful, amazing
world of TV?
Speaker 3 (22:34):
So I had never grown up thinking about being in entertainment.
I loved comedy. I have three older brothers. We would
watch comedians on TV, we would listen to comedy albums,
but it never occurred to me that this was a career.
My older brother Bobby became a stand up comedian in
the mid seventies. I mentioned that, and I was hanging
(22:54):
out with him, going to the clubs and then hanging
out afterwards with all of his friends. His best friend
and was Larry David. So I was around Larry all
the time before Larry David was famous. But I also
hung around with Leno and a little bit with Seinfeld.
So I was hanging around with these guys and I
just learned how to write comedy, helping my brother write
(23:15):
his act and then watching them all, you know, shoot
lines at each other and punch up each other's acts.
And I would, you know, go back to college and
send material to my brother and he would use some
of it and told me why some of it wouldn't work,
and we would have brotherly arguments. I'd say, you've got
to try this, and go no, it'll never work. So
then I said, well, if you're not going to use
this material, I'll do it and stand up. And I
(23:37):
started doing some stand up, and one thing led to another,
and after college, I just drove across country and said,
I'm going to try this writing thing and if it
doesn't work out, I'll go home and this will be
my gap year or wear my bridge year, whatever you
want to call it, and I'll go home and get
a real job. And I was there for another forty years,
so I guess it worked out.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
And so you started in New York, then.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Well, I grew up on Long Island, New York, went
to school in upstate New York. But as soon as
I got out of college, I realized that to be
a comedy writer had to be in LA. So I
need to La.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Where I'm just curious where in Long Island were you?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Rockville Center on the south Shore.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
That's exactly where my dad's from. My dad graduated from
Rockville High.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
You mean Southside High School?
Speaker 5 (24:17):
A Southide High school?
Speaker 6 (24:18):
Yes, correct, he went to Southside High and my my
wife is from Hicksville.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
Oh my so yeah, so.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
We're big Long We're big Long Island people. I always
like to check where people are from.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
It's possible that your dad and I were in the
same class, are close to it, because I'm about twenty
years older than you.
Speaker 6 (24:33):
Yeah, no, my dad is eighty five, so I'm guessing.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
A different high school class.
Speaker 7 (24:40):
Wait, so how did you go from working with all
of these like comedic geniuses to working with a bunch
of goober kids on boy Meet's work for yourself?
Speaker 4 (24:49):
I mean, sure, sure I could for me.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
First of all, of course, I disagree with that qualitization.
Just made up a word qualitization.
Speaker 8 (24:58):
I like it.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
I disagree with that characterization of you guys. You know,
my first several years were all in sketch comedy, to
the point where I was having trouble breaking into sitcoms.
But I knew that I was cut out for sitcoms.
It was just that my agents couldn't break me in.
So finally, in the late eighties, I started getting sitcom jobs,
and I did a couple of very short lived shows,
(25:21):
one on Fox, another one on NBC. Then I got
onto a different world and did some time there, than
I did Night Court for a few seasons, get a
few other shows, and you know, every season if the
show you were on ended, you had to come up
with a new gig. And my agent put me into
(25:41):
Boy Meets World, and Michael liked my stuff, and here
we are.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
So Kevin, what I love hearing about is like, how
I mean's so much? It seems like so much of
being a writer is about being a part of a community.
You know, Like, yes, all of these experiences you're describing
are like groups of writers getting around making each other laugh.
What what was the community of the writing staff of
a Boy Meets World? Like, how did it compare it
to like the other communities of writers that you were
(26:06):
parts of?
Speaker 3 (26:07):
It was very close. Now, like every job there's going
to be in there's going to be bad days and
internal bickering and what have you. But it was a
really good staff, especially well the staffs that I worked
on I really enjoyed a lot of funny people. We
had some great times. But yes, you get into a
(26:27):
writer's room and it's you know, it's it's Dorwindian. You
have to produce, you have to get stuff in, and
you're competing against your fellow your friends because that you know,
you spend eight ten hours a day with that group
of people, they become your closest friends. So but I
really loved it. I mean, bus Gang and Blutman were great,
(26:48):
and Jeff, as you know, it's just such a great guy,
both Jeffs, Jeff Manel and Jeff Shearman. David was fun
to work for. Matt Nelson, Oh god, what a talented
guy he was. And we had some other writers there
who you may not remember because, like me, they weren't
on for a long time, but Judy Tole and Susan
(27:10):
Sherman and Dona Trueho, they were all just great to
hang out with.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
Yeah, so much fun.
Speaker 7 (27:16):
Do you remember any stories you may have pitched or
things that you may have, you know, suggested in the
writer's room that didn't end up making it.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
I don't remember specific episodes, but I do remember in
that second season again, as we were talking about trying
to age up the show. My angle that I kind
of pitched to I don't know whether it ever made
its way to Michael, but I pitched it a lot
in the writer's room and probably mentioned it to David
and to Jeff McCracken was that I thought it would
be interesting to keep Sean at Turner's house but also
(27:51):
have Will graduate high school and move in with them,
and have that become more of an equal home base
to the Kitchen. So, you know, great, First of all,
I listen, I think all three of you are fabulously talented.
So I hope you don't mind my saying Will, I
was a particular, a particular fan of your work. I
(28:14):
loved writing for all of you, but will you you,
I mean, you always all delivered. But I really thought
it would be fun to get Will in that environment
with Turner, with Sean obviously, having Tapanga and Corey coming over,
having Alex's character being there as well. You know again,
I was thinking Seinfeld friends, Fraser.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And a group of young guys sort of living together,
and like, oh, that makes so much sense. I mean,
it's kind of what ended up happening with Jack, with
Jack and Sean in the season five and six.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Oh yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Oh we could have done so it would have kept
Alex around, and.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
It wuld have kept thinking of Alex.
Speaker 7 (28:54):
Do you do you remember Kevin there being a lot
of conversation about ways that they could involve that you guys,
could involve Alex Dsayer's character, mister Williams into the show,
because that's one of our real only criticisms of season
three is that.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
He felt like it was he was so wasted.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
He was such a talent, and yet we knew they
wanted to age up the show, but it didn't really
seem like they knew how to do it.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah. Well, first of all, we were all tremendous fans
of Alex's. He always delivered. He was a great guy.
I never felt that there was an issue with his
character other than well, first of all, I think they
only you know, contracted him for a handful of episodes, right,
and and that was probably a budgetary thing. Now I
could be wrong about that, but that's that's my vague memory.
(29:42):
I don't remember that we struggled. We liked writing for him,
but we had, you know, the major characters were you guys,
so we had to really focus the stories on you,
and he would come. You know, he was there to
be Turner's kind of mouthpiece or you know, his confidant.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
Right, Do you remember Will's pool shot in the episode
that you wrote where he nails that pool shot.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
I just rewatched it again for this, and you know,
I heard you guys talking about those pool scenes. When
you talked about that episode, Will, I didn't recall that
you had worked with a professional pool shark, and I
didn't realize that you had done some of those shots.
Or maybe I realized it and didn't remember. But yeah,
(30:28):
that last shot of the show, which was the final
shot of the pool game, was really cool when you
sank every ball.
Speaker 6 (30:36):
Yes, chef Chef Anton who now does underwater scuba magic
where we're still trying to figure out exactly what.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
That is and how we can get involved.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (30:46):
Yeah, So where did you go after you left Boy
Meets World?
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Where did you go and why did you leave us?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
I anticipated this question so as I think I made
very clear so far. I had this image of myself
as a musty TV writer, and I got offered a
new NBC show that was going to be part of
the so called Musty TV Family. It was going to
be on and did go on on NBC on Tuesday
(31:16):
nights between Matt about You and Fraser. It was hammocked
in between him. It was called something So Right, and
it starred Jerry Burns and Mel Harris. Yes, I remember
this as two divorcees each have kids of their own
and they get married and it's about a blended family.
And there too their exes coming in because they were
(31:39):
still the fathers and the mothers of the kids. So
I got offered that and I really wanted to do it. So,
you know, my agent said, you know, Michael's not going
to like it if you if you leave the show,
I said, can I can I just run it by
them and see what they say. So I went to
McCracken and I discussed it and he said, well, well,
(32:00):
you know, I don't think Michael's going to react to
well to this. You guys know Michael, you know.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And I was always a little intimidated by Michael, who,
by the way, maybe the best showrunner I ever worked for,
certainly up in the top three.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
But you know, Michael could be intimidating. So I went
and sat down with him and you know, he already
knew what I was coming in for. Quis McCracken had
laid the groundwork and I told him, and you know,
he was cool about it. He said, listen, if that's
what you want to do, that's what you want to do.
You know, godspeed. But I always felt that maybe there
(32:35):
was a little bit of hard feelings there and I
kind of I kind of feel bad about how I
handled it. But you know, that's a career, right, you
moved on.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
You you got to go from job to job or
you know, you got to pursue your It's just a bummer.
The show didn't didn't last. You know, That's that's the
problem about show business. It's like you got to work
just as hard and give it your all, and then
the show can get canceled or you're not right and grace.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Shows with great writing staffs are great casts get canceled,
and shows that maybe aren't as deserving go on for
many years. But What Boy Meets World, You know, as
I look back on it, and you guys have talked
about this on the podcast, which by the way, I
listen to almost every week, thank you, it's grown so
much in status and as an iconic series. And I
(33:22):
think we're all so much, you know, so proud of
the work now that we did because it's it stood
the test of time.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 7 (33:31):
I want to ask you, because you mentioned that Michael
was one of the best showrunners you ever worked for.
What was it like to work for Michael? What were
some of your favorite parts of working with him? Tell
us more about your experience with that.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Okay, Well, my favorite thing is the way he handled
a network. You know, as as you guys know, in television,
there's a lot of fancy titles. You know, you're a
consulting producer, a story editor, a co executive producer, but
the reality is it's there's the showrunner and there's everyone else. Yeah,
and Michael was the showrunner, as you know, and so
(34:02):
he was the one that dealt with the networks, and
he didn't take any guff from the networks. They gave
his They gave him their notes, and he pretty much
ignored them where he took the ones that he wanted.
But he knew how to manage the network as well
as any showrunner I've ever seen, because some just crumble
under network notes. The other thing that was amazing about
(34:25):
Michael is he didn't stay in the room because he
was busy running the show. So David Kendall ran the
room the seasons that I was there. But if we were,
you know, struggling with a script at eleven pm twelve
pm at night, Michael would come in and Michael could
just he'd say, what's the problem, and David would kind
(34:46):
of explain it, and Michael would start riffing and he
would just add lib a scene. He would just riff
a scene. We're all just sitting there doing nothing except
laughing at his lines. But he could write when when
I'd say eighty percent of the episodes of those two seasons,
if you got to the second act scene that was
(35:07):
the heartfelt scene and there was a long monologue for
one of the characters, there's a very good chance that
Michael wrote that in some form or fashion.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, he did have that. We heard that
from a number of people.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
Jeff McCracken, two who knew him the longest, would say
that he would be with him an improv class and
he was always the funniest guy there.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
He's just I was going to say he had that
a bill of an acting background too, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Like he came.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
He started as an actor, and so I think he
always thought of writing primarily as a sort of an
acting exercise.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
So it's interesting to hear that he.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Would so fast.
Speaker 6 (35:39):
I mean, when you work with Michael, I mean, he
was his mind. The way his mind worked comedically was
unlike almost anybody I've ever met in my life, so fast,
and he at times you could tell, and I saw
this more on Girlmy's World. He would block everything out,
including at times too I think a detriment, but block
out almost everybody else in the room or anything going on,
and would just be typing and you're kind of watching
(36:01):
it happen on the screen and it's hysterical.
Speaker 5 (36:03):
I mean. He was just really really good at us. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean, and.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
He knew the show as most showrunners do. He knew
it so well, and he just had a sense for
what was right for Topanger, or what was right for Sean,
or what was right for Eric.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Yeah, and so other people.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
I have to ask you about because we noticed just
how many episodes they wrote in season three.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
What do you remember about Blutman and bus Gang.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Well, first of all, very funny guys, had a lot
of fun with them. How is Howard bust Gang is
one of the funnier writers that I've worked with. He
was a joke machine. Yeah, he just came up with
line after line after line. Blutman was also very funny,
maybe a little bit more of a story guy. And
they turned out a lot of material, and they knew
(36:51):
the show so well. They really felt a personal connection
to the show, maybe even deeper than anyone else on
the staff. They really were boy meets world writers to
their core, and that's why they stayed with the show
as long as they did.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
Yeah, do you keep in touch with anybody from the show?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
A little bit? On Facebook? I keep in touch with Mark,
I keep in touch with Jeff, and very occasionally David.
Like during the writer's strike, I would see him post
photos of him picketing, and I would like it make
a comment. Because I'm no longer in Los Angeles, I
would have been there picketing if I had been in LA,
but I wasn't going to fly into town just to picket.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
Where are you?
Speaker 3 (37:35):
I live outside of Austin, Texas now.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
I moved here.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Oh nice, almost four years ago.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Wonderful.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
I have one more question about the people you worked
with because she was kind of one of the unsung heroes.
She's not here anymore, and she went on to do
some pretty amazing things. Can you talk a little bit
about Judy tole Yes, Judy.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Actually I knew Judy from our comedy days together. We
started in stand up around the same time and we
were quite friendly. Judy was just such a lovely person,
very funny, very brash in a good way, and she
was great to have in the room because she kept
things lively. One of the things that happens in a
(38:17):
writer's room, especially when you get to twelve o'clock, one o'clock,
two o'clock in the morning, is people start to run
out of energy and it could become really problematic. But
you need someone there like a Judy Toll and a
Mark Blutman frankly, who can keep the energy up when
everybody else is kind of fading. And Judy was great
at that. We lost her at a very young age,
(38:40):
as you know, thirty nine years old. I believe I
know it was to cancer, and yeah, we were Actually
we knew each other before she came on the show,
and probably the person that I knew best.
Speaker 6 (38:53):
Yeah, because she also went off into the whole Larry
David World after Boy Meet's World, and was also on
camera and some of the stuff that they were doing there,
and she was just so talented.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Yeah, in the original Curb Your Enthusiasm movie, yeah, they
shot for HBO, she played one of the network executives.
Speaker 5 (39:10):
And she was great. She was so good in it.
Speaker 6 (39:12):
And I remember seeing her and I know she was
good friends with Kathy Griffin, and I ran into her
in a movie theater and.
Speaker 5 (39:18):
We got to talk as adults a little bit.
Speaker 6 (39:21):
It was after she had left the show, and then
hearing she had passed was just Yeah, she was super,
super talented.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
And one last thing that I'll share with you guys is,
as you can imagine, just as it was kind of
weird for you to be fifteen years old and Will
you were just a little bit older, I think, and
working in television, it was a little weird for us
to be working with teenagers. And one of the reasons
that you didn't know me that well was I felt
a little awkward around you, guys, because I thought you
(39:50):
were so freaking cool. I thought I thought you were
the coolest fifteen year old in the world.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
He really was. He was I was.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
I mean, first of all, you you were all heart
throbs in your own way. You know that the audiences
would treat you like the Beatles, you know that. And
one day I was walking from the parking lot into
the building and I see a parking space with a
really cool car in it and said, Riders Strong on it.
And I went into the office and I asked somebody,
(40:20):
I said, is that for writer's parents so they could
drive him to the set. He said, oh no, he
has his driver's license already. He drives himself. Here. You
were like sixteen years old, and I thought he stars
on a television show. He's like a sex symbol and
he drives at sixteen, Who is this kid?
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Yeah, yeah, he's Rider Strong. And that Z three looked
like a small version of the Batmobile.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
It was sockery.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
It's all downhill. Since it's all I just got older.
Speaker 5 (41:01):
That's funny, Kevin.
Speaker 7 (41:02):
I want to give a shout out to your brother,
who you mentioned was a stand up comedian. He did
Carson like something like nine times in the eighties, which.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
To be exactly wow, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
That's unbelievable.
Speaker 7 (41:14):
Please tell us his name, I mean, and give us
tell us a little bit about him.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
So his professional name is Bobby Kelton. He started in
the mid seventies. His contemporaries were Jay Leno, Larry David,
David Letterman. They all started around the same time. And
of course those guys went on to be a lot
more famous than Bobby did. But he still performs in Florida,
not as much as he used to. But yeah, he
(41:40):
did all those shows in the eighties. He was on
Carson and Griffin and Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore, and
he worked you know, in Vegas and other places like that.
And again that's how I learned the business, was by
us Moses, through him and through his friends. So if
it hadn't been for Bobby, I don't know where I
would have ended up. I would have been an accountant
or a lawyer or something.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
You must have had a like a funny childhood home, though,
I mean, like did well at dinner tables.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Must have been jokes after jokes, right, like it was.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
And again I was the youngest of four boys. And
when we were young, like I said, we loved comedy
and we had we would play games. Now, when I
say games, you're probably thinking of softball or stickball, or
or some board game. Our games were actually something that
a word now that we know as improvisation. We had
(42:34):
running characters and we would just add lib scenes with
these running characters over and over and over again and again.
We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know
that improvisation existed. We had never heard of Second City. Yeah,
but we would just make up these scenes, like, for instance,
one of them was Uncle Jack, and the storyline was
(42:58):
it was sort of like a wily coyote kind of
a thing where my oldest brother Bruce played Uncle Jack
and I was the young Master, and the storyline or
the backstory was that my parents had died in a
car crash and I had inherited millions of dollars and
so my uncle was now taking care of me and
constantly trying to kill me off for the money, and
(43:20):
it would always backfire, and it's great. We even had
an opening that we did it at the beginning of
every game where my other brother Mike played like the
butler and he would get the call where he was
being told that my parents were killed in a car crash,
and they would go hello, uh huh, I see okay,
(43:41):
thank you very much, and that was how the show,
and that was how the game began.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
Wow, so much fun.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
So yeah, we didn't know that we were training ourselves
for careers in comedy. And two of my brothers, Bruce
and Mike, are now attorneys. Bruce is actually a judge,
a federal judge in California, and he was the funniest
of the four of us, and he's now a federal judge.
So go figure out, well, did you go up?
Speaker 5 (44:07):
Did you grow up watching?
Speaker 6 (44:08):
I mean, at the time, sketch comedy was essentially in
its infancy, unless you go back to things like the
movies like Hell's of Poppin' and things that are old
school stuff.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
There wasn't a whole ton of sketch comedy around at
the time.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Well there was, it was in a different form. Of course.
Your show of shows was long before I was television.
But there was Carol Burnett, there was Las Sunny and Cherr,
which actually did some decent sketches.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
I guess they did a few.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Things like that. So and I would watch those shows again,
not thinking that I was trading myself for anything, but
I would watch those with my dad or with my brothers,
and it just sunk in and I remember watching SNL
that first season and I would watch the credit roll
because I was already starting to be kind of like
(44:57):
aware of writers, hyper focusing on it. And one week
there was a new name in the credits, the name
James Downey. Now I don't know whether you guys know
who Jim Downey is, but he ended up being probably
the greatest writer on Saturday Night Live. He worked there
for some forty years on and off. But I remember
(45:19):
seeing his name new to the credit roll and going,
who is this guy? How did he get that job?
Where did he come from? And years later I got
to work with him, so that was kind of a
thrill for me.
Speaker 5 (45:30):
Jim Downey, Yeah, you're right. Carol Burnett was amazing. I mean, yeah,
oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
I would argue that that was the best sketch comedy
show ever I could.
Speaker 6 (45:39):
It'd be hard to disagree with that. But they also
kept in the breaking and all the lat I mean,
it was oh yeah, yeah, Kevin.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I want to ask you about your novel. So you've
written you've moved into writing fiction now.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Yeah. So when I retired from television and then I
had a couple of other jobs that were writing related,
in the corporate field. Then I retired and moved to
uh A, excuse me, to Arizona, to Texas and uh
I just started writing novels, and uh I don't know
whether I'm good at it, but I've written five of
them in the last two to three years. I've also
(46:14):
written a book about television writing. I teach television television
writing through UCLA Extension, and I decided to take all
of my lessons and turn them into a how to
book about TV writing. So, yeah, I've written five novels there.
They were really like novella's. They're really short novels, and
I'm kind.
Speaker 5 (46:34):
Of the comedy or yeah, what's the genre.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
So they're all different. The first one that I wrote
was a dark satire, a dystopian satire on marriage and divorce.
It's called super Vows and it's about a world. Do
you guys know what covenant marriages? Have you heard about? Okay?
Covenant marriage is kind of this rule. It's legal in
(46:58):
a couple of states Louisia and Arizona and maybe one
other state. But it's basically a religious based marriage where
you're agreeing to live together for life and you agree
not to divorce. Now, it is possible to get divorced
in a covenant marriage, but you have to go through
a lot more hoops than you would in a regular marriage.
So these things are meant to last a lifetime. And
(47:21):
I read an article about this at some point in
the early two thousands, and I thought, well, if that
catches on and people start marrying for life, that's going
to have a lot of bad consequences and a lot
of ramification to the society. Yeah, exactly, So there you go.
(47:42):
So if you read super Vows, you might find a
little bit of that in that book, because it's essentially
about a world where covenant marriages become the new in thing.
A couple that's a very hot kind of The main
characters are three young actors that are sort of like
(48:02):
Ben Affleck and Mini Driver and Matt Damon.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
Just like this.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, I was thinking about this early this morning. Guys
in your twenties. I would have cast you in a
minute in the movie version of this book. You guys,
you three would have been great. You would have been perfect.
If they had come to me and said we want
to cast the use three, I would have said yes
and a heartbeat.
Speaker 6 (48:22):
Which one of us is married to Danielle for life.
I'm just curious.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Your character is married to Danielle for life. I won't
say what. Will's excuse me, what writer's character does?
Speaker 4 (48:35):
Yeah, I need to read this.
Speaker 5 (48:38):
I need to read this.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
So that was my first novel. I hope you don't
mind me talking about the books. My second one is
based actually on my life, very loosely. I married a
woman who's a former ballerina. She danced across Europe in
her twenties and danced all over She even danced with
Nouriev at one point.
Speaker 5 (48:59):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
And of course she no longer does that. She's now
a plates instructor. And we each had our first marriages,
we had our kids, we got divorced. We met in
our fifties. So I wrote a book about a couple
loosely based on that, what would happen if a ballerina
meets a comedy writer and their worlds collide. So that
(49:21):
one is called pat de Deux And you can find
that one on Amazon. And if you look at the cover,
you'll see a ballerina on it, and it's a picture
of my young wife's cool.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
There you go, so sweet.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
And then the last book it's really a trilogy of
novellas that are a little bit more adult oriented, maybe
not for some of your younger listeners. And this is
about it's three stories, one about a woman in her twenties,
one about a woman in her thirties, and what about
a woman in her forties, And it's about how their
(49:56):
romantic lives are different, how a woman's romantic lives are
different from her twenties to her thirties to her forties.
And what I found was, you know, you write a
book and then you design a cover or two. And
I used to put my covers into Facebook groups for
other writers, saying, Hey, which one do you like better?
And they'd say, well, what's your book about? And I'd
(50:17):
give them the pitch, And then I was surprised to
find about thirty percent of the woman got really hostile
because they didn't like the idea of a man writing
a novel about women. And the pushback I got was incredible.
So I got some intimidated that I released those that book,
or those three novellas. You could buy them individually on Kindle,
(50:41):
or if you buy the paperback of the hardcover all
three or in one book. But I released them under
the name KB Kelton. I used my initials. I figured
maybe if they don't know who wrote it, Yeah, yep,
that's interesting.
Speaker 7 (50:56):
So do you like writing for TV or do you
like writing books better?
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Oh, writing for books so much more. I get so
much more out of it because the only person I
have to answer to is me, And as you well know,
in television, it's never really your work. You know, you
have to take network notes, you have to take executive
producer notes, and then you have to make changes during
(51:20):
the week, and there's a writing stuff that's punching up
your work. These novels reflect my sensibility, and frankly, I'm
more proud of them. I once added up because you know,
I worked on some hit shows, and I once added
up how many people have seen shows that I have
a credit on, not necessarily written by but as a producer,
(51:43):
as a staff writer. And I think that the audience
for my work. I know this is going to sound egotistical.
I think it's close to a billion people. Wow, But
and that includes you know, two years of Boy Beats World.
But my books have been read by few hundred people.
But I'm so much prouder of that work. Because it's
(52:06):
it's lasting. You know, I could point to that and
say this is purely me, It's not filtered through anybody
else's sensibility.
Speaker 6 (52:13):
Yeah, very very briefly, taking Boy Meets World out of
the equation because we know, obviously that's my my favorite
show you've ever done in your favorite show ever? Obviously,
what television project are you most proud of without you know, yeah,
Boy Me's World not in the mix.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Well, it's Saturday Night Live obviously. You know, it's such
an iconic show, and there's so much creative freedom there
that certainly was pretty high on the Mark Night Court.
You know, people remember fondly. Frankly, all of them were jobs,
more or less. That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy them.
That doesn't mean that I don't think I'm the luckiest
guy in the world to have been there. But they
(52:52):
were all you know, you know, they I never got
to work on my sein film, my Frasier, so uh.
I enjoyed all of my jobs, but those two stand
out because they seem to have been so so appreciated
over the years by other people. M and Boy Meets World. No,
(53:14):
I'm very proud of the Boy Meets world. I went
back and again. You know, when I watch some of
those scenes, Danielle, just watching you in that truck stop
with the women, I think her character was named I
forget Luanne was with the character's name, but you know,
Danielle did some great work in that scene. In so
(53:34):
many other scenes, I think about will you as Eric
at the at the TV station, as the in Jurne writer,
you know, you in City Slackers, in you know, reading
Phoene's diary. Uh, just really proud to have worked with
you guys and seen you guys bring my words to life.
Speaker 5 (53:54):
Oh man, so cool.
Speaker 6 (53:55):
And then we're going to do the marriage vow. We're
going to have to get that. We're going to lose
twenty years. Yeah, forties. It's gone to be in our
forties and.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Twenty year olds in our forties.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
You guys may not know this. The new House speaker
Mike Johnson, he is in a covenant marriage.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
That makes sense.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
So when I heard that, you know, he's not necessarily
my taste in politics. But when I heard that, I said,
right on, because people are going to be googling covenant
marriage and they're going to come us to my book.
Speaker 7 (54:24):
I love that, so final question for you, looking back
thirty years later, with so many incredible shows on your
IMDb page, what are your overall feelings of Boy Meets
World And did you ever think you would still be
talking about it three decades later?
Speaker 3 (54:41):
No, No, I did not realize if you would ask me,
which of the shows that I worked on would become
iconic hits that would stand the test of time. It
didn't occur to me that a TGIF show would do that,
but it happens. You know, watching the shows again, you
know there are there were jokes that maybe I would
(55:02):
have done differently, Like every writer you know has second
thoughts when they watched their their material after it's been produced.
But I'm so proud, especially of the dramatic scenes, the
scenes with Sean and Turner, the scenes where mister Feeney
wasn't just being you know, a teacher, but was making
(55:25):
a life lesson point and you know, I was just
reading this morning. I'm sure you guys know this. There's
a couple of episodes that Disney doesn't want to show
anymore because they deal with adult themes. But you know,
Disney is going to be Disney. But we should be
so proud to have worked on a show that did
deal with those themes, dealt with them honestly and tried
(55:47):
to tried to influence people for the better.
Speaker 4 (55:49):
Absolutely couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 7 (55:52):
Well, Kevin, thank you so much for being here with
us today and for remind I mean, I can't believe we,
for even half a second, had forgotten you. You have
such an incredible mind, and just getting to talk to
you and getting to know you a little bit better
has been such a joy this morning.
Speaker 3 (56:07):
You guys are so kind and I really enjoyed it.
I was a little nervous coming in, but you were
very pleasant and I really had a great time.
Speaker 6 (56:14):
You also mentioned so not just your novels, which everybody
should go out and look at, but you also mentioned
that you do a podcast as well.
Speaker 5 (56:19):
What's it called?
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Oh, I do a podcast called The More Perfect Union.
I co host it with three or four other people
depending on the week, and we talk about politics and
pop culture, mostly about politics, and we've been doing that
for eight years now. Actually I think we're on nine sees.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Oh, I got to check the cheese.
Speaker 5 (56:40):
So you were the first podcast we were early on.
Speaker 3 (56:43):
And here's a very quick story. So we come up
with this name, The more Perfect Union, and we start
our podcast and at first we have like fifty sixty
people listening a week. It's our friends, right, And then
one week, all of a sudden, we had eight thousand listeners,
and then the next week we had ten thousand downloads.
We got up to sixteen thousand downloads at one point,
and I couldn't figure out what happened. So I do
(57:06):
a little googling, and I find out that there's another
podcast produced by Radio Labs called The more Perfect Podcast.
It was a short year getting slickover. We got people
were googling for that, and they found us and they
stuck with us. We still don't have that many listeners,
but we have a decent size audience for a small podcasts.
(57:26):
And yeah, we talk about the news of the week.
It's it leads a little left, so it may not
be for everybody's taste, but we try to be fair
and we have a lot of fun doing it. Our
slogan is real debate without the hate.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Totally checking it out. That's totally.
Speaker 4 (57:43):
Thank you, Kevin, It's great to see you.
Speaker 3 (57:44):
Thanks Ken, thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (57:46):
Bye bye.
Speaker 7 (57:48):
What a sweetheart, gosh and what an interesting cool brain.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Interesting cool brain is exactly the right way to put it.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
It's a comedic like I just love when somebody has
like trained themselves how to do this skill set and
then did it like so well. But then I also
love that he's like admits that it was a job,
like he figured out how to do the job. He
mastered the skill of comedy. But he likes writing novels more.
You know, it seems like he's got a lot of
interest and a lot of I don't.
Speaker 5 (58:14):
Know, it's just so cool cool. I just wish I could.
Speaker 6 (58:16):
I should have talked to her about the day and
you could talk to him back in the day where
I could have talked about SNL and Night Court and all.
Speaker 5 (58:23):
These incredible shows that these people have. I know exactly
what's your own head, It doesn't matter, you know.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
Well, I know exactly what he's talking about about being
intimidated too, because I remember feeling that Girl's world too, Like, yeah,
you know, you reach this point you're like, these kids
are these kids are into stuff that make no sense
to me. I'm not even going to try and like
hang out with them too much. Yeah, the kids from
Girlmy's World as much as like pretty well actually, but
it takes you have to like sort of like do it.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
You have to, you know.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
Yeah, and if you're on the writing staff, you're already
to slightly removed from a lot of production.
Speaker 2 (58:54):
So yeah, Ah should have talked to him more back then.
Speaker 5 (58:57):
I know you wish you wish you could go back
and talk to all these people.
Speaker 7 (59:00):
Great guy, Well, thank you all for joining us for
this episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can
follow us on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can
also send us your emails Podmeets World Show at gmail
dot com.
Speaker 4 (59:11):
And we have merch.
Speaker 5 (59:16):
Oh boy, that too much? That too much?
Speaker 4 (59:18):
It is gutturall.
Speaker 5 (59:19):
I felt that too much? You like that?
Speaker 4 (59:20):
I like you that.
Speaker 5 (59:21):
I feel it in your shoes your shoes, Pod.
Speaker 4 (59:23):
Meets Worldshow dot com.
Speaker 7 (59:26):
And if you want to pick up Kevin's how to
book on television writing called The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook with
some tips on how you can write your own version
of Boy Meets World or SNL. It is available now
on Amazon again. It is called The Sitcom Writer's Cookbook
by Kevin Kelton and writer Send us out.
Speaker 2 (59:43):
We love you all.
Speaker 3 (59:44):
Pod dismissed.
Speaker 1 (59:47):
Pod meets World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by
Danielle Fischel, Wilfordell and writer Straw. Executive producers Jensen Karp
and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo,
producer and editor, TaRaSu Bosch, producer, Maddam engineer and Boy
Meets World Superman Easton Allen. Our theme song is by
Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at Podmets
(01:00:07):
World Show or email us at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com.
Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
M
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