From left to right: Jim Stafford, me, John Hadley, Mason Williams, Bob Arnott. Just because the guys were older, didn’t mean they were mature. Note Bob Arnott still at the making “bunny ears” stage.
Courtesy Comedic Productions
A man steps into an elevator and sees a beautiful woman inside. As the doors close, he turns to her and says, “Excuse me, can I smell your pussy?”
She recoils in disgust. “You most certainly cannot!”
“Oh,” he says, “then it must be your feet.”
—Joke told to me by Eddie Gorodetsky
I LOVE THIS JOKE. IT STARTS WITH A SENSE OF MENACE then pivots to stinky feet—even babies laugh at stinky feet. When I’m directing, this is one of my go-to jokes to tell the crew to break the ice. It’s short, a little shocking, and ultimately harmless. It lets crew members, who are still mostly male, know they can swear around me. Also, for the rest of the shoot, prop guys and gaffers are pulling me aside to tell me their favorite dirty joke.
Comedy surprises you. Often the surprise comes from a shift of perception and reveals a surprising motivation. It’s the twist you never saw coming, but once it arrives, it makes total sense. Like most great jokes, this chapter has a big twist at the end. You’ll never guess what happens. Even with me telling you that you’ll never guess, you’ll still never guess. But when we get there, it will make total sense.
Fresh off Wilton North’s cancellation, I returned to the east coast in early 1988, eager to find another TV job. My top choice was Late Night with David Letterman and I asked my agent about the hiring process. He said I would need to write a submission that included ideas for desk pieces (pieces Dave would do at the desk) and remotes (pieces shot outside the studio). In a couple of weeks, I pulled together enough material for what is today referred to as a “packet.” The trick was to match Late Night’s mischievous tone. I included one gag where Dave gets a song stuck in his head and throughout the hour the song intrudes on the show at random times through the set’s speakers, distracting Dave, the audience, and the guests.
Gavin passed the packet along to the show’s head writer. A few weeks later, he called with a “happy agent” hello. My Letterman material had gotten me a meeting . . . just not with Letterman. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, a relaunch of the once-popular prime-time sixties variety series, was looking for writers. Gavin had given my material to producer (and former Dick Van Dyke Show writer) Ernie Chambers. Ernie was in New York City for one day and wanted to meet me. Could I have breakfast with him the next morning? Yes! And did I know the Smothers Brothers? Are you kidding?
Actually, I barely knew them at all. The Smothers Brothers’ original show aired from 1967 to 1969 and I wasn’t that into political humor at age seven. I knew the brothers were named Tom and Dick, and that one played the bass and the other the guitar, but I couldn’t have told you which played which. Today, Google would have gotten me up to speed, but Sergey Brin and Larry Page were still in high school. I ran to the only place where you could watch old television episodes: a museum.
Sitting in a cubicle at the midtown Museum of Broadcasting and Radio, I watched three episodes of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, laughing loudly enough to disturb others. Dick played the bass and the straight man. Tom played the guitar and the fool. The template for these sketches was ingenious: the brothers would start singing a song until Tom interrupted. Dick would react annoyed as Tom launched into a bit about something topical. That bit would build to a punchline and then the brothers would return to the song. So often comedy sketches don’t know how to end so going back to a catchy song created a natural and satisfying finish.
Tom and Dick started their careers as clean cut, All-American folksingers and their variety series was promoted as a hip alternative to The Ed Sullivan Show. The show’s tone changed as the country grew divided in the late sixties. Tom started to give airtime to “radical” voices who opposed the Vietnam War and promoted civil rights.
Despite network warnings, the Smothers Brothers remained political, openly promoting peace. In the second season, the brothers committed an even worse sin: they grew facial hair. By the third season, sponsors complained and in April 1969, CBS abruptly pulled the plug. Months later, the writing staff—which included Steve Martin, Lorenzo “Carlton the doorman” Music, Mason “Classical Gas” Williams, and Carl “Jaws” Gottlieb—won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music.
Slowly, the country evolved toward Tom’s way of thinking. Watergate took down Nixon and everyone now agrees that the Vietnam War was a colossal clusterfuck. Two decades after the original series was cancelled, CBS invited the Smothers Brothers back for an hourlong special. The old writing staff returned and ratings soared. Variety shows had been declared dead, but CBS sensed a faint pulse. The network ordered five additional episodes. The only problem was that the program couldn’t secure the all-star writing staff beyond the reunion. That’s where I came in.
I headed to my breakfast meeting with Ernie and immediately a slight misunderstanding arose. Based on my material, Ernie thought I was currently on staff at Letterman. I had to explain that he had read my submission, but I had never worked there. It was awkward, but it secretly pleased me that someone thought my pitches sounded like they could have aired on Letterman. Ernie kept an open mind and hired me. Two weeks later, I was flying to LA for a few months of work. I had no plan on where to sleep or how to get around. I was twenty-seven and didn’t care about logistics. Besides, a rental car could solve both problems.
My first night in LA, I joined my new boss for dinner. Tom Smothers plays an idiot on TV, but in real life he’s brilliant, thoughtful, and unpretentious. We talked about comedy partnerships and his admiration for Laurel and Hardy. At the end of the dinner, Tom asked where I was staying.
“At a hotel for the moment,” I said. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”
“If you want, you could stay with me,” he said. “CBS rented me a huge place. There’s a maid’s room you could sleep in.”
Tom described the West Hollywood apartment: a stately brick building just down the road from the Chateau Marmont, huge living room, big fireplace. Movie stars Clark Gable and Myrna Loy once resided there. Bette Davis and Christopher Guest still did.
“And we could drive to work together,” Tom added.
I was taken aback. How do you respond to an offer like that?
Apparently, you say, “Yes.”
It was probably inappropriate for me to move in with my boss. Still, it made some sense. I was the help so why not live in the maid’s room? I didn’t worry about Tom crossing any lines. He was famous. He had hung out with the coolest people on the planet and smoked pot with Harry Nilsson and John Lennon. He had hot-tubbed with Tuesday Weld. He was twenty years older than me.
Okay, I was new to Hollywood.
My first night in the maid’s room, I was in bed wearing just a t-shirt and reading a book when I heard a knock on my door.
“Nell, you still up?”
My heart started beating faster. Maybe I’d been wrong and the situation was about to get uncomfortable. I pulled on pants and opened the door. Tom was holding a book.
“I wanted you to have this,” he said.
He handed me a copy of Shadow Dancing in the USA, a book of essays by journalist Michael Ventura. Tom said good night and walked away. A twist! I slipped back into bed and flipped open the cover. Tom had inscribed the first page with a simple message: “I hope you enjoy the book.”
Tom turned out to be a superb roommate. Each morning, we’d drive to the office in his white Mercedes and talk about books and politics. The commute became my favorite part of the day—the only time that’s ever been true for me in LA. Maybe the only time that’s ever been true for anyone in LA.
The first day of work, I met the rest of the writing staff who all had twenty years on me. Head writer Mason Williams was soft-spoken and cerebral, apt to quote George Bernard Shaw. He was openly disdainful of Hollywood and yet he had three Grammys and an Emmy. Mason didn’t like showbiz, but showbiz sure liked Mason. The room also included Jim Stafford, a novelty singer who’d scored a hit in the mid-seventies with a song cowritten with David Bellamy. “Spiders & Snakes” made it to number three on the charts when I was fourteen. The premise was a boy and girl go for a walk and he keeps harassing her by shaking frogs in her face and looking for critters to drop down her shirt. She, however, is interested in a more mature relationship and informs him, “I don’t like spiders and snakes.”
Stafford parlayed his folksy appeal and boyish good looks into a summer variety replacement series in 1976. It didn’t last long. Nor did his 1978 marriage to country music legend Bobbie Gentry, who wrote and sang the mega-hit “Ode to Billie Joe.” Gentry’s song relates the Gothic tale of a Mississippi teenage couple spotted throwing something mysterious off a bridge. The lyrics never make clear what the couple tossed or why Billie Joe McAllister went back later and jumped into the murky waters himself. The reason for his suicide was a pop culture riddle and when someone asked Stafford about living with his famous ex-wife, he archly replied, “Let’s just say, I know why Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
It was a great joke. Unfortunately, Stafford’s dim view of women extended beyond ex-wives. He preferred hanging with the guys, smoking cigarettes, and playing guitar. As far as he was concerned, I didn’t belong. To a certain extent, he was right. If you were singing “one of these things is not like the others,” I was the obvious answer. I was also the only one who was young enough to have grown up on Sesame Street and get that reference.
From left to right: Jim Stafford, me, John Hadley, Mason Williams, Bob Arnott. Just because the guys were older, didn’t mean they were mature. Note Bob Arnott still at the making “bunny ears” stage.
Courtesy Comedic Productions
At SPY and Wilton North, our humor was snarky and nothing was sacred. One day at Smothers, we were headed to the stage when someone brought up the late Mamas and Papas lead singer Mama Cass Elliot. The rumor at the time—now debunked—was that Mama Cass had choked to death on a ham sandwich. I was walking behind Tom and made some wisecrack like, “She should’ve had the soup.” Tom wheeled around with a stern look.
“Cass was amazing,” he scolded me. “And I loved her.”
Tom’s reprimand has stayed with me ever since. I felt so mean and small. He was right to scold and remind me that an important rule of comedy is: know your audience. I should have known they were friends. Truly one of the sweetest clips on the Internet is Mama Cass singing “Dream a Little Dream of Me” to a sleepy Tom in 1968. I apologized at the time, but the moment still eats at me, much like—(Nell, don’t!).
Each week, the five writers had to generate a cold open, two musical bits for the brothers, and intros for their guests. I got assigned a lot of intros, which often meant meeting the artists. Once, Tom sent me to interview singer-songwriter John Hartford who wrote “Gentle on My Mind,” the only song I ever learned to play on the guitar. John turned down a dressing room, preferring to relax in his tour bus that was parked in the studio lot. When I boarded, half a dozen card-playing band members whipped their heads in my direction.
“Hi,” I said. “Tom wanted me to talk to John.”
Without a word, the band members threw down their cards and hustled off the bus. It struck me as odd until someone later explained that one of the “rules of the road” is when a lady gets on the bus looking for the boss, the crew disappears. Fast.
Intros tended to be more clever than funny and I was desperate to come up with a solid bit for Tom and Dick. I sat in my tiny office and churned out sketches. In one, I had Tom tell Dick that he had an idea for a movie. Dick asks what kind.
In a sketch designed to lead in to “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” I had Tom confess to Dick that he’s dating a much younger woman.
Tom kind of liked that last one and personally edited it, penciling notes in his neat cursive. Tom’s comments included a lot of “Not right yet” and “This gives the wrong impression.” It was hard to capture the brothers’ complicated onstage relationship and make Tom just the right shade of stupid. It was also important that the bits be socially relevant. Sketch after sketch of mine fell short.
For the second episode, the brothers were looking for a bit to pair with the song, “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” I started working on an idea about Cain and Abel.
“They were brothers just like us,” Dick would say, “only they got along better.”
I filled out the sketch. Tom liked the broad strokes as well as the final punchline. He and Mason did a pass and “Cain and Abel” went into the script. Even more amazing, it stayed in.
Standing in the wings during the taping, I felt like Steve Martin in The Jerk when he sees his name in the phonebook. Tom and Dick launched into the song, then Tom interrupted to talk about his favorite Bible stories like “Joseph and his coat of many collars.” The jokes were landing. The audience was laughing. As the bit neared the end, Tom went off-script. He often ad-libbed to make his performance edgier, which was fine so long as he landed on, “And that’s why Abel was killed.” He needed to use that exact wording to properly set up Dick’s final zinger. But Tom wasn’t going near the line. Dick tried to prompt him. Tom kept spinning. The energy in the room dipped and my grin dropped. Tom had forgotten what he needed to say. I started to panic. Then, suddenly, he pivoted.
“And that’s why Abel was killed,” Tom said.
“No,” Dick responded. “Abel was killed for interrupting his brother.”
The audience roared as the brothers launched back into singing, “Give me that old time religion.” People applauded at the end. My heart swelled. When Tom came offstage, he spotted me in the wings and approached. He leaned in close with a twinkle in his eye.
“I had to make Dickie sweat up there,” he confided.
A twist! Tom hadn’t forgotten the line. He knew exactly what he was doing. And in that moment, I realized that it wasn’t just Dick; we all play straight man to Tom Smothers.
Around the third and fourth episode, the mood shifted at work. We’d burned through the material we stockpiled during preproduction and no longer had time to hone new sketches. Tom and my carpooling days were over. Before production started, I’d moved out of his maid’s room and onto the couch of Marcy Carriker, the show’s Associate Producer. Marcy and I were both short, brunette, and in our twenties and she became the life preserver that kept me from drowning in a sea of middle-aged men. A bond often naturally develops between the female employees on predominantly male shows. Even if the two women are as different as humans can be, there’ll be times when they huddle and whisper, “Did that just happen?” At one job, I regularly stopped by another woman’s office to ask, “Am I corporeal? You can see and hear me, right?”
Marcy was an exceptional roommate: kind, generous, and a remarkable storyteller. Back then she was obsessed with true crime and would recount the horrific details of her favorite homicides. Sometimes a grisly murder-suicide was just the thing to take my mind off the increasingly tense writers’ room.
Heading into the fourth out of six episodes, the network was still weighing a pickup. Tom was on edge. One way to increase the possibility of more episodes is to make changes in your creative team, which signals to the network that the production is still trying to find the right formula. In a sad twist, Mason was demoted abruptly and Jim Stafford was elevated to head writer. This made me nervous. Stafford favored sketches that ended with Tom calling his brother a “butt brain.” He also didn’t seem to value, or even want, my input. The first Friday after the personnel shakeup, Tom sent all the writers off to come up with ideas for a cold open over the weekend. I arrived on Monday morning with a page of pitches. I stopped by Stafford’s office to hand them in.
“Thanks, Nell,” he said. “But you know some of the boys and I got together by the pool yesterday and we worked it all out.”
My fears were coming true. You can’t succeed when you’re not even allowed to participate.
As Stafford got more powerful, he got bolder. Guitar great Chet Atkins was booked on the show and I walked from the offices to the stage to sit in the empty audience and watch him rehearse. Stafford was waiting to rehearse, too—he was now appearing on every episode—and sat next to me. We listened as Atkins sang a gorgeous tribute to his deceased father.
When the song ended, I gushed about Atkins which gave Stafford an idea. “If you like him, Nell, here’s what you should do,” he said. Then he suggested that I go offer Atkins “a blowjob.” This comment came out of nowhere. One second my mind was on Atkins singing about his father and death and the next Stafford was suggesting something you don’t associate with either of those. A twist!
I decided it was best to treat this as a joke and laughed. Every woman knows that forced “huh-huh-huh.” Still, something about Stafford’s comment threw me. It wasn’t the crudeness. Maybe it was the setting. Stafford and I were isolated and that made the moment creepy. Coincidentally, a photographer was on the set that same day and asked to snap our photo. The result captured our dynamic for all of time. Stafford tossed his arm around my shoulders and leaned his head against mine, invading my space. I reacted politely to his overfamiliarity, as women in the workplace are expected to do, but my smile is not my usual toothy grin. It’s tight-lipped and restrained. My body is curled up in a ball and my right hand is visibly clenched.
With Jim Stafford
Courtesy Comedic Productions
Detail of my clenched hand
Courtesy Comedic Productions
The sense of desperation was mounting as we started our final week of production. Would this episode be the last? Finally, word came in: CBS wanted six more episodes. We all cheered, although my status was unclear. My contract was only for the initial order and now Stafford was in charge. I asked my agent to see where I stood. Stafford told Gavin that no decisions had been made on the writers. He’d be figuring it out over the break.
I would have been more freaked out by the uncertainty except something distracted me. The day before we taped our last episode, another writer pitched a last-minute cold open that parodied a recent spate of tell-all memoirs. The bit involved three Smothers’ employees stepping forward to hawk their books. The parts were cast at the last minute. Tom cast Ken Kragen, his actual manager, to play his fake manager. He hired Steve Martin’s old roommate Gary Mule Deer to play a gossipy beekeeper. The third employee was described in the script like this:
(NELL, DRESSED AS A FRENCH MAID, ENTERS AND STANDS BESIDE KEN. SHE ALSO CARRIES A BOOK.)
Courtesy Comedic Productions
It was part of the show’s DNA to have writers double as performers so when Tom asked me to pitch in, I was pleased. Still, the costume gave me pause. After months of wearing baggy jeans and Agnes b. striped shirts, I now had to dress like a fifties sexual fantasy. Also, I’d been sitting on my butt for two months eating junk food and was worried my thighs weren’t exactly “camera ready.” The costumer fitted me that morning and, hours later, I wriggled into fishnet stockings, patent leather pumps, an off-the-shoulder black bodice, and a short black skirt with stiff crinoline. A stylist piled my hair in an up-do and stuck on a stupid doily hat. Fake eyelashes. Lipstick. Eh, voilà.
My writers’ room colleagues approved of the look. “Now that’s more like it!” one said.
I didn’t get terribly nervous because my one line was spoken in unison with Gary and Ken so there was little to screw up. The bit was over in a flash. The director shot us from the waist up so the fishnets and skirt were completely unnecessary. I was back in my civvies before Harry Belafonte sang the season’s last number.
The wrap party was held onstage. I didn’t know whether I was saying goodbye to people for a month or forever. As it turned out, I had one more chance to see some of the writers when Stafford decided to throw a small pool party that weekend. Part of me wanted to skip seeing the pool where he and “the boys” worked, but I worried that if I didn’t stop by, it would look like I didn’t want to be a member of the team. I came up with the perfect solution: I’d arrive late and take off early.
It was getting toward evening when I stopped by. The crowd was thin—no Marcy, no Tom, no Mason. Stafford greeted me enthusiastically. I tried to be as cheerful as possible. (Last impressions and all that.) I made small talk with some guests and then, per my plan: “Would you look at the time!”
I found my host to say thanks.
“I’ll walk you out,” Stafford said.
We were passing through his house to the front door when he offered to show me around. The last stop was his bedroom. He ushered me in, shut the door, and immediately started kissing me up against the wall. It was so weird. Why was he kissing me and, even weirder, why wasn’t I pulling back? My brain was churning, but my body seemed frozen in shock. For weeks, I’d been so desperate to get Stafford’s approval. Ha, I was getting it now! But what did it mean? Had I been wrong? Did he actually like me? You don’t kiss someone unless you like them, right? Maybe that’s why I wasn’t pulling back. If making out meant he liked me, I didn’t want to do anything to make him not like me. He held my future in his hands. And then, ohmigod.
He started maneuvering us to the bed. We fell on top of his covers, fully clothed, and continued making out. At one point, I ran my fingers through his hair.
“Careful!” he snapped. “I have a piece.”
I peered closer and saw a thin molded piece of plastic glued to the front of his scalp with fake hair coming out. I’d never noticed it before.
“Wow,” I thought. “That’s a good piece.” But before I could contemplate his hair further, Stafford made his next move. He unzipped his pants and used his hand to guide my head down. This is so, so hard to admit but . . .
Reader, I blew him.
A twist! You didn’t see that coming, did you? I sure as hell didn’t.
And then it was over—one and done. The entire incident took less than ten minutes. There was no reciprocity. My clothes never came off. He had a party to get back to and I had to be, you know, anywhere else on the planet.
Racing to my car, I thought, “What an interesting turn of events just happened to someone who looks a lot like me.”
Reality rushed back in before I made it home. I knew what had happened and my heart sank. During the act, I had felt a false sense of pride that so many women feel, that smug feeling that Stafford wanted something from me which meant I was the one in control. The truth was not so flattering. I had been manipulated.
Oscar Wilde is credited with the quote: “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” Stafford had just reminded me of a woman’s true purpose and it wasn’t writing jokes. He had gotten what he wanted or maybe even what he thought he deserved—the same tribute he suggested I offer Atkins.
When Stafford started kissing me, I worried that if I rejected him, he’d retaliate by not hiring me. Later, it struck me that the reverse outcome was just as undesirable. If Stafford hadn’t taken me seriously as a writer before, this would not make things better. And if I did return to the room, would I feel like I’d gotten the job for abilities other than my writing? Would more be expected?
I never had the chance to find out. I was back in NYC when Gavin called with a “sad agent” hello. Stafford wasn’t bringing me back on staff. I imagine he never intended to.
After I hung up the phone, I replayed the beats in my head: I feared that Stafford would penalize me . . . so I submitted to him . . . and he still penalized me. In a way it was funny. This “joke” provided a classic shift in perception which reveals a surprising motivation: I saw myself as a determined, hardworking writer and Stafford saw me as a way to get off.
And that’s when it hit me: I really don’t like spiders and snakes.
Stafford and I never spoke or crossed paths again. It’s unlikely we will since I don’t get to Branson, Missouri much. If we did meet, I don’t know what I’d say to him. But I know what I’d tell my younger self: don’t mistake sexual power for real power. If you think gratifying a colleague or boss will help your career, think again. Gloria Steinem put it perfectly: “If women could sleep their way to the top, there would be a lot more women at the top.”
There’s a tendency for women who wind up in these situations to beat themselves up and declare, “I was such an idiot” or “God, how could I have been so stupid?” I’m glad I never did that. I don’t believe I acted stupidly. Vulnerable and in shock, I’d made a decision out of fear and confusion.
I never considered any recourse, in part because I wanted to move on. Besides, what recourse did I have? If the show or network had a human resources department, I wasn’t aware of it. There were no handbooks on company policy or sensitivity workshops to enlighten employees. It would be three more years until Anita Hill testified against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like so many, I hung on every word of Hill’s courageous testimony. I watched a hero rise in real time.
Twenty-five years later, Hollywood still has a long way to go in changing its casual acceptance of behavior that ranges from inappropriate to criminal. In fact, sexual harassment is so embedded in show business, the industry even has a cutesy name for it: the “casting couch”—which does sound a lot nicer than the “rape sofa.”
Predatory behavior often becomes an open secret. Back in the nineties, female assistants at William Morris would warn one another not to get in an elevator with client Bill Cosby. In 2005, Courtney Love was asked to give advice to “any young girls” planning on moving to Hollywood. She bravely responded, “If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons, don’t go.” So many coworkers, agents, lawyers, and managers looked the other way while the assaults continued. And so many of these same people have behaved inappropriately themselves. I worry that Weinstein actually raises the bar on bad behavior. As long as a producer doesn’t walk into a hotel room naked, clutching a tiny bottle of lotion, he can now consider himself a gentleman.
I understand there’s no greater love in this world than that of an Executive Producer for a vulnerable intern, assistant, or actress. But if you’re a powerful man, control your impulses. Ruling out sex with employees and professional contacts leaves three billion possible partners minus maybe two hundred. And, of course, you can reverse the genders and the same holds true.
Heading into the second season, Stafford also jettisoned Mason and one other writer. New writers were added to replace us—all male. The penis party was in full swing. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour lasted for ten more episodes before getting cancelled.
Since then, I’ve stayed in touch with Tom who ended up marrying Marcy—a twist! Marcy remains one of my closest friends. She and Tom have two great kids and our families have spent many happy days at their vineyard together. I still look back on my time at the show fondly and the good far outweighs the bad. Tom and Mason were patient mentors. I watched world-class musicians perform up close. And I got to work with a hero of mine.
Martin Mull wasn’t the biggest name to appear on the show, but he was the one I was most excited about. At sixteen, I was obsessed with Fernwood 2 Night, a short-lived Norman Lear series that starred Martin as Barth Gimble, a smarmy, leisure-suit-wearing host of a cheesy talk show. Fred Willard played his guffawing sidekick. Fernwood was my introduction to anti-humor. The show fascinated me in part because I didn’t always get the jokes, like when Barth deadpanned lines like: “For those of us who saw the tragedy of Vietnam firsthand on TV . . .”
All the writers gathered when Martin came in to pitch us a possible cold open. He ran through the setup and some dialogue and then hit us with the punchline:
It’s time to lay to rest this entire “brothers” business. They are not brothers. It has all been a big lie. Join me, then, won’t you in accepting and enjoying, Mr. Dick Smothers and his lovely wife, Tommy.
Tom roared. He sent Martin off to an empty office to fill out the monologue. Martin was halfway out the door when Tom suddenly had a thought.
“Nell,” he said. “Why don’t you go help him?”
Like a puppy, I leapt from my chair and scampered after Martin. He sat at a desk and I sat across, smiling as I watched him massage the beats. Occasionally, Martin would ask me about a word choice and I’d offer an opinion. Mostly, I listened and nodded and laughed. About twenty years later, it hit me: Martin Mull didn’t need my help. Tom just wanted to give me the chance to observe a genius hone a bit.
Now that’s a nice twist.
Martin Mull signed my script with some good advice.
Courtesy of the author