S2XTRA1 - Interview with Janet Meshad-Wells

Send a note to Allen & Donna…WELCOME BACK!
Settle in kids, and prepare for a thrilling tale of yesteryear!! Okay, so maybe it's not quite THAT old...but this is going back a bit.  In Atlanta in the early 1970s, an advertising executive was dealing with a demon. It was the Demon of Creativity, and it was forcing him to write and to create. This ad exec's name, of course, was Hugh Wilson. The thing he was driven to create all the way back in 1971 had a name: "The Bagel Report."  The Bagel Report, or TBR as we've started calling it, was a full-length movie. It was a comedy...a sex-comedy, actually...in the style of Woody Allen. TBR skewered modern sexual research and attitudes...even the name was a jab at "The Kinsey Report." TBR was baudy enough to get an "X" rating...but nobody was having sex. Hugh even said, if there'd been MORE sex it probably would have been a better movie. Every aspect of TBR was Hugh's baby from inception to production. He wrote, directed, produced, financed, cast and even got the coffee for "The Bagel Report."

VERY little is known about TBR. Only a handful have ever seen it. We were lucky enough to find someone who was IN THE BAGEL REPORT!! Janet Meshad-Wells is the wife of WKRP Music Director Tom Wells (1941-2012), an actress, and was a personal friend of Hugh Wilson. Janet was not only a part of the TBR cast, she did two scenes WITH Hugh Wilson. Janet mixed up a cocktail and got down to details with us. She talked Bagel Report, Hugh Wilson, Bill Dial, Hollywood, Atlanta and a WHOLE lot more! Our conversation is fast-paced, full of great details and, towards the end, possibly a bit tipsy. Yes, those are ice cubes you hear clinking in a glass. You should probably choose your own libation if you are so inclined before you hit 'play'...as Janet says, if we're talking about Hugh Wilson, we should really be drinking.

WATCH ALONG DETAILS...
[Want to watch along with us? It's a blast!! We highly recommend the 'Shout Factory' boxed DVD set of the entire WKRP series. For reasons you'll have to listen to in the "Prolog"  episode, all streaming versions of the original "WKRP in Cincinnati" have had the original music cues removed. Generic music beds and stings were used in place of the original music for the syndicated version of the series. 'Shout Factory' has been able to restore an estimated 85% of all WKRP music cues to the original "as-aired" content for their DVD release. They've also restored scenes that had been cut to shorten episodes for syndication. The original eps ran 25 minutes. The syndication eps were shortened to 22 minutes. Over 88 episodes that's more than four hours of lost content, including the performance by "Detective" at the end of "Hoodlum Rock." Get the COMPLETE series...get the Shout Factory DVDs. The Shout Factory complete series box has a release date of 2014. All individual seasons of Shout Factory disks were released starting in 2015.]

The WKRP-Cast is a weekly re-watch podcast spending time with the original "WKRP in Cincinnati" which aired from 1978-82. New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Hey Fellow Babies!! We talked to Gary Sandy. Don't miss our exclusive interview with Andy Travis now available from the WKRP-Cast. Wherever you get your podcasts.
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