I'm Not Dead... Yet! (36 page)

When the offer came to direct
the complete 1995-96 season of
Ellen
(25 episodes), Karla and I knew we had no choice but to.move back to L.A. We kept our home in Park City for family getaways and rented a house in Burbank near the Disney studios. Again, our priorities never shifted—it was always love and family first. It always will be…

I was devoted to
Ellen
and to Ellen DeGeneres, one of the hardest-working and funniest comedians in the business. Despite the show’s success, she was never satisfied and never stopped trying to make it better—my type of actor.

Ellen was also struggling with the question of ‘coming out’ (which happened the following season), at a time when the outcome was far from certain. We had many deep private conversations after everyone else had left the set, and I always went to bat for her.

Knowing that ageism is endemic in the business, I tried to deflect problems from being blamed on an older producer, thinking of him as I would my father. Then, in an ‘executive meeting’ held in the Disney Studios cafeteria (to prevent us from losing our temper in public), I found out he had been lying to both me and the show runners—creating huge problems between us that ‘only he could fix.’ It was the classic syndrome of making yourself invaluable and irreplaceable when in truth, you added no value to the process to begin with. (I had seen this behavior many times before in the film industry; when managers took over the role of what agents used to do, managers became necessary. The same with publicists.) After directing twenty-four shows in a row I was truly blindsided by a guy I had tried to protect. Talk about
heart
-breaking.

Ellen and the beautiful Joely Fisher were an amazing comedy team—Lucy and Ethel for a new generation. (Joely has remained our true family friend, not a ‘Hollywood’ friend, ever since.) We also had some memorable guests, including Mary Tyler Moore, Martha Stewart and Kathy Griffin. I adored the entire cast—Jeremy Piven, Clea Lewis, and Dave Higgins. We all worked our asses off, and shooting the third season of
Ellen
was a high point in my TV career.

Marta
Kauffman, David Crane and
Kevin
Bright
became one of the best creative, writing/producing teams in television. They gave me a shot early on, in 1993, when I directed Peter Scolari in their first network series,
Family Album.
I worked for them again in 1995 on the cutting edge HBO comedy series
Dream On
—and got a Cable Ace nomination for the episode: “Try Not To Remember,” starring Brian Benben, which featured our friend Cliff Bemis, and Louise Fletcher.

When
Bright/Kauffman/Crane
was casting a show about a group of twenty-somethings in New York, I was happy to recommend two talented actors I had directed: Jennifer Aniston, in
Muddling Through;
and David Schwimmer, in the Henry Winkler series,
Monty.

After a frantic call from Kevin Bright, I went so far as to page Schwimmer—who was at the airport planning to leave after his audition—and convince him to stay on.

I enjoyed directing an episode of
Friends
in 1995. A year and a half later, when the show had become a smash, I returned.

There was a lot of talent on that show, and I have great admiration for talent. We did some good work together. But with talent comes responsibility, and when I found it wasn’t the place for discipline, it wasn’t for me.

I shot so many episodes of television,
it’s hard for me to remember when it happened or which show—but one night in front of a live audience, an actor kicked a writer in the ass.

Not ‘kicked his ass’—kicked him in the ass. (I never understood the phrase ‘I’m gonna kick your ass’ until that night.) All hell broke loose, but I made them ‘take it outside’ while I finished the show, and the audience had no clue what was going on. Television was becoming… insane!

As every new sitcom week was shot and aired, the actor in me could hide my frustrations, but how could I allow a baby-producer/writer/egomaniac to fire a man named Joe Marquette on the ‘A’ Camera?

Joe Marquette was the camera operator on
Raging Bull!

He even has a credit as the Camera Operator in the opening title sequence. That is unheard of in today’s world. Now, in all of the multiplexes, it seems like everyone has left the movie theater before the credits roll for all of the talented crew members who really make the film. It’s pitiful. Sad. To see the empty movie theater as all of the hard working, skilled crew members get their credit and the movie theater is empty. But Martin Scorsese understood Joe’s talent (and the D.P. Michael Chapman) and gave him his deserved credit.

Yet one day, on a sitcom not to be mentioned, some little punk who didn’t understand framing (or film) was about to fire a man who had decades of experience and more skill and talent than anyone in the writer’s room. I told him and the studio and the network that if they fired Joe, they could find themselves another director.

Luckily, this happened when I still had ‘cache.’ So, defending my crew, my actors—that suddenly took me from ‘savior director-guy’ (in the eyes of executives and the networks) to the new title of ‘trouble-maker director-guy.’

Because of Karla and the kids,
I still had perspective and managed to take work in stride. Lyric and Zephyr were a delight to me and there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for them.

An example with a funny twist: Zephyr wanted to ‘be like Mike‘—and he wanted to look like Michael Jordan too. He had been asking Karla for months if he could get his head shaved, “just like Michael Jordan.” Finally Karla said, “Go ask your dad.”

And of course, when that little face asked me if I would shave his head to look like Michael Jordan, I immediately said, “Sure. Why not.”

“Now, Daddy?”

“Now? Well, um—okay—but is it cool with you that I do it? If you’re gonna have your head shaved like Michael Jordan, I think I can do it as well as any barber—or… whatever they call barbers—hairstylists… for kids.”

“Sure Daddy. Let’s do it. I just wanna look like Michael Jordan.” And to think that some athletes don’t believe they are ‘role models.’

“Sure big guy. Let’s do it!”

I got all of the ‘tools’ ready and put the barber cape around him and we laughed and laughed and told Karla she couldn’t come in until we called her. It was too cool.

“Um… hold real still, okay?”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah!”