Bryce Zabel's FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

Smalls Steps & Giant Leaps: Moonwalk Memories

Bryce Zabel is the editor of "For What It's Worth" and "Movie Smackdown," a Hollywood writer-producer, former chairman of the TV Academy and ex-frycook.

Although nothing can probably touch the media frenzy over the death of Michael Jackson this year, we are still about to experience the mass coverage of the 40th anniversary of the original moonwalkers. Back on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin kicked up their own moon dust when they became the first human beings ever to walk (or bounce) on the Earth's Moon. The world is probably evenly divided now between those who were alive when the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility and those who weren't. I was. It was unforgettable, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. As with 9/11, JFK's assassination, and the deaths of John Lennon and now Jackson, our memories of these super-events are colored by where we were when they happened, what was going on in our own lives, and how we felt about the actual events. 

Where were you?

For me, July 20 remains an important day -- not solely for the awe and accomplishment of the technological and spiritual acheivement of the moon landing -- but equally for the extreme personal impact it had on my young life. 

Let's roll the time machine back four decades. It was 40-years-ago that Neil Armstrong made that little jump off the ladder from the lunar lander: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."  The ghostly TV transmission had people glued to their sets around the world, blowing past barriers of nationalism and politics. And, up in the Pacific Northwest, it was also exactly 40-years-ago that I was fired from my first job. I have since been fired again, laid off, cancelled, and otherwise unemployed in a variety of ways, shapes and sizes and, as someone with great depth of experience in this area, I can tell you that Cat Stevens was correct when he wrote that oft-recorded song, "The First Cut Is the Deepest."

If you remember The Wonder Years (that great TV series set in the 1960s starring Fred Savage), it'll help you appreciate the tone of what will follow. If you're too young to recall the 60s (when the series was set) or the 80s (when the series was filmed), then you'll have to settle for this shorthand. The series told the story of Kevin, a kid growing up during the time of Vietnam, hippies, civil rights and moon walks, all told with a gentle sense of humor. So, in this story, I'm Kevin. And Kevin's dad (Dan Lauria) had a gruff son-of-a-bitch exterior, always was pissed off, and never connected with his kids. Like my dad, Harvey, who was a high school teacher in Hillsboro, Oregon at the time. It had something to do with his being a part of the "Greatest Generation," having lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Like a lot of guys who had that experience, he was changed by it. It seems so much more understandable to me now than it did when I was a kid.

Anyway, back then, I was the youngest fry-cook in all of Washington County, having scammed my way into a job at the Arctic Circle Drive-In before I was strictly employment legal, I think, based on the fact that my older brother Alan had paved the way. It was a sweet deal -- I was making a full $1.35 an hour, up from my starting wage of $1.10 a year before. Do the math, that added up to a whole $10.80 a day and, if overtime was involved, man, that was serious bread. Of course, those burgers only cost nineteen cents, a quarter for a cheeseburger.

The boss was a tough immigrant -- a Basque from Spain -- named Mariano Bilbao and he was living (or working) the American dream.  Work, work, work and, if you did that, life would be easier for your kids.  His kid was just a baby, and Mariano was in full pay-the-dues mode to get ahead in time for his kid to have the good life he dreamed of.

When the schedule for the week of July 20 got posted, I got a sinking feeling because I had the night shift and, if all went according to plan, Neil Armstrong was going to be moon-walking while I was slinging burgers.  At the time, I was very into the whole moon landing, even more (if possible) than the rest of the country.  I'd actually tried to mimick a Gemini capsule with a refrigerator box a few years earlier in our basement until my mom made me come up and eat dinner. Plus, Harvey, being an American history teacher, made sure we all knew that history didn't come in any bigger size than this.

So I asked Mariano if I could trade shifts with someone.   No.  Maybe we could have a TV in the kitchen so we could watch with every other person within ten miles of a TV?  No.  A radio then, just to listen to hear in real time how it went?  No.

Resigned to missing it all, I accepted my fate, strapped on my apron, and went to work.  Being the boss, even Mariano was at home, of course, watching the moon-walk with his wife.  Back at the grill, I was going insane because there was almost no business because everyone else in town was home watching TV.  About thirty minutes before Armstrong was scheduled to set foot on the lunar surface, I snapped.  I called my dad and told him I wanted to come home to see the moon walk.  Would he come pick me up?

There was a long pause.  I waited on the other end of the phone, knowing that The Lecture was coming. About responsibility, about sticking with your decisions, about not screwing up.  Instead, he said, "You know you'll be fired?" 

I said I knew. I waited again. Surely The Lecture was coming now. Another beat. "I'll be right down."

So my Dad drove down to the Arctic Circle Drive-In on Baseline Street in a moment of high drama in my young life.  We went back home, gathered with the rest of the family around the TV set, held our breath with everyone else and watched Armstrong's ghostly image from the moon.  It was the most exciting TV I had ever seen.  Better than the Beatles on Ed Sullivan kind of TV, if you want to know the truth.  Part of the attraction was the danger.  These guys might die on live TV.  Or they might sink into moon dust and never be heard from again.  You never knew.  

When it was over, dad said we had to go back to the restaurant and I had to face the music.  I had done the crime, now I had to do the time.  As I returned, it was clear that my co-workers had given me up to Mariano, who was there waiting for me and, man, was he pissed.  He was a short guy with a fiery temper and his face was as red as I'd ever seen it.

Mariano fired me that night, as predicted.  My dad told him he was missing a great worker and he was a small-minded man to not understand the importance of what was happening, and how this event had changed the world for everyone.  Even teenage fry-cooks.

All I know is that my dad had never stood up for me quite like that before and never quite like that after.  I remember July 20, 1969 as clearly today for turning in my greasy apron as I do for Armstrong and Aldrin doing the moonwalk.  And I remember July 20 because it was also the day that my dad passed away back in 2001.

So -- that giant leap for mankind -- for me, it isn't about where I was when it happened -- but all about where I wasn't.

For those of you who experienced your own "Moonwalk Memory," please do leave your own personal stories in our comment section. Thanks!

Jan Rubes: The End of an "Incredible Journey"

Brad Markowitz is a Hollywood writer/producer with extensive TV credits. This is his first contribution to "For What It's Worth."

The older you get, the more friends you lose. I haven’t spoken to Jan Rubes in years, but when I heard that the venerable actor had passed away at the age of 89, it certainly felt like a death in the family, as it did when the ultimate pro, actor Lane Smith passed on a couple of years ago.  Lane and Jan were both part of the cast of my first television series, “Kay O’Brien,” a medical show about a young female surgeon, which had a short but distinguished run on CBS back in the late eighties.

Jan may not be a household name, but millions would instantly recognize his stern visage and distinctive, accented voice lecturing Harrison Ford about “the gun of the hand” in his portrayal of the Amish patriarch in Peter Weir’s film “Witness.”  Jan in fact had a long and distinguished performing career, both as an actor and an opera singer.

A native of Czechoslovakia, Jan emigrated to Canada as a young man and got his first film credit in 1963 for “The Incredible Journey.”  It was a full 25 years later that I first met him as one of the candidates to play the wise, senior teaching surgeon on “Kay O’Brien.”  Our executive producer, (the inimitable Bill Asher) and everyone else agreed he was perfect for the part.  As myself and my then writing partner Bryce Zabel were absolute neophytes at writing and producing network TV shows, Jan’s authoritative voice and demeanor made it seem as if he were patiently teaching us, even when he was reading words we’d written for him.

Whither Newspapers?

L.A.-based entertainment journalist Kate O'Hare also blogs regularly on Hot Cuppa TV and The Accidental Futurist

As a journalist (that's the day job), every day I hear the question, "What is the future of newspapers?"

My answer is, "There isn't one, if you expect the industry to look like it does today."

One can wander far into the weeds of monetizing online content, micropayments, content cannibalization, etc., etc. Far cleverer folks than me, and those that have actually worked in a major-newspaper newsroom (I've always been either a freelancer or a wire-service staff writer), have tackled these questions and no doubt do a better job of discussing these topics than I can.

Some recent sources for views on the subject are linked at the bottom of this post. But, as a newspaper outsider who is also a journalistic insider -- and vested in the outcome of this debate -- I'll default to what I do best, ask questions.

I'll offer a couple of answers for each, but you may have a very different perspective, and I hope you'll share it with me. Here we go...

What is a newspaper?

Literally speaking, it's a pile of inky newsprint, a delivery system for information, advertising and photographs. But when people say "newspaper," they usually refer to what I call the newsgathering infrastructure, the people and technology that produce what winds up on the inky newsprint.

For the record -- not fond of inky newsprint. I went more than a decade without a newspaper subscription, because I just detest dealing with inky newsprint. I get a Sunday paper now...for the coupons. The inky newsprint generally gets tossed.

But, I consume vast quantities of news, both on screen and online, much of it newspaper and magazine content. That's partly because it's free but mostly because it's convenient. If I had to pay, I probably would, but hardly anybody asks me to. Which leads me to another question...

Why do people buy a newspaper?

'Round, 'Round, I'll Still Get Around

L.A.-based entertainment journalist Kate O'Hare also blogs regularly on Hot Cuppa TV and The Accidental Futurist

I'm sitting here watching the 1996 movie "Twister," as storm chasers zip around the backroads of the Midwest, dogging tornados and hashing out their romantic and professional differences.

One the one side are the good guys, driving a motley caravan composed of pickup trucks (including a red one that executes some fairly sweet maneuvers, including driving through a house) and a battered station wagon. On the other side are the "corporate kiss-butts," piloting a sleek convoy of big black SUVs.

It's car heaven. Can you imagine this movie shot with a Prius, two Smart cars and a vegetable-oil-fueled minivan that smells like a taco stand? But that's where we're headed. If you thought the teeny-car chase in "Demolition Man" was the greatest thing ever, this auto future's for you.

(By the way, if you've never seen "Demolition Man," get it. It's prophetic, only I suspect that in many ways, its future is now.)

Jon & Kate Plus 8 Minus Me

L.A.-based entertainment journalist Kate O'Hare blogs regularly on Hot Cuppa TV

This past Monday, I engaged in an internal debate -- and then threw the question out onTwitter -- as to whether I should watch the season-five premiere of TLC's monster reality hit "Jon & Kate Plus 8."

I had never seen an episode of the show about two parents and their eight small children (including a set of sextuplets), but was well aware of it and had seen the news reports about all the allegations and tabloid headlines swirling around husband Jon Gosselin and his supposed unwise behavior.

But I did have an inkling, through my own sources (didn't try to find this out, it just happened), that Kate Gosselin was challenging to deal with, to say the least -- but then so am I if I don't get a cuppa when I need one.

In the end, for professional reasons, I decided to watch.

Then I pondered whether to write more than a "tweet" about it. Again, my job is to watch TV and talk to you guys afterward, so here's the only post I plan to do on the subject.

What I saw was a sad and unfortunate display of two people who have definitely reached the end of the marital rope and, for at least Jon, reached the end of patience with life in the TV/celebrity bubble.

It's always regrettable, though unfortunately not uncommon, when a marriage hits the rocks, especially when there are children involved. As for the TV thing, if the Gosselins didn't know what they were getting into, they've never stood in a supermarket checkout line. But then, the human capacity for self-deception is considerable, and no one on the outside knows what has happened behind the scenes day to day.

But I did have an inkling, through my own sources (didn't try to find this out, it just happened), that Kate Gosselin was challenging to deal with, to say the least -- but then so am I if I don't get a cuppa when I need one.

In the end, for professional reasons, I decided to watch.

Then I pondered whether to write more than a "tweet" about it. Again, my job is to watch TV and talk to you guys afterward, so here's the only post I plan to do on the subject.

What I saw was a sad and unfortunate display of two people who have definitely reached the end of the marital rope and, for at least Jon, reached the end of patience with life in the TV/celebrity bubble.

It's always regrettable, though unfortunately not uncommon, when a marriage hits the rocks, especially when there are children involved. As for the TV thing, if the Gosselins didn't know what they were getting into, they've never stood in a supermarket checkout line. But then, the human capacity for self-deception is considerable, and no one on the outside knows what has happened behind the scenes day to day.

People Don't Watch Shows That Suck

Lee Goldberg writes regularly on A Writer's Life

People don't watch shows that suck.

You'd think that would be common sense but, apparently it's not. Case in point -- today an Entertainment Weekly article questioned why so many science fiction shows this season are tanking while audiences are still flocking to science fiction movies:

Two weeks ago, Fox aired what was probably the final episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a pretty solid sci-fi show which nevertheless suffered from guttery ratings. Two weeks from now, Terminator Salvation will premiere in theaters -- where it will likely make somewhere in the vicinity of $90 million in its first weekend, regardless of how "good" it is. Two separate extentions of the same franchise: one will be labeled a failure, the other a ginormous hit. Why? Why don't we want science fiction on television anymore?

I think that the EW article is based on a faulty premise. People do watch science fiction TV shows...when they don't suck (good stuff like THE X-FILES, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, the first season of HEROES, etc). 

Unfortunately, most of them suck.  

People didn't reject TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES because it was science fiction...they stopped watching because it was lousy (and I say that as a guy who, inexplicably, didn't miss an episode). People turned away from HEROES for the same reason. The bottom line for science fiction shows is the same as it is for all shows in any genre:  they gotta be good or they'll die. 

"Chasing a Dream" on Hallmark Channel

You know hard it must be to run a four-minute mile?  Now imagine doing it when you're still in high school, nobody supports you doing it and track isn't your sport in the first place.

That's the scenario we've set up for Cam Stiles in our Hallmark Channel film, "Chasing a Dream" which airs this Saturday at 9pm (8pm in Central time).  It's about a high school senior who runs a "sub-four" when nobody thinks he can or should, but he does it anyway.  It stars Treat Williams as the reluctant father/coach and Andrew Lawrence as the obsessed athlete/son.

 

Jackie and I wrote it originally as a project I would direct as an indie film but the WGA strike intervened and we sold it instead.  So, with the caveat that we wrote it, but did not direct, cast or produce it, we still think it came out as a very decent piece of family entertainment.

Here's a great article from Runner's World, written by long-time editor (and Boston Marathon winner) Amby Burfoot.  It includes the text of an interview he conducted this month with both Jackie and me and shows incredible respect for writers.  Go, Amby!

Here's another bit of coverage from Track and Field News.  This has a good bit of background on the mile race, and the four-minute-mile record.

Here's the Hallmark URL with a newly cut trailer.

Here's a look at the promotional video from the film.

Sub-fours in high school actually happened a few times in the 60s, then not again until Alan Webb did it in 2001, and not since then.  Over many years and incarnations, "Chasing a Dream" evolved from "Sub-Four" to "Finish Line" to "Miles from Nowhere" to its final Hallmark title.  One thing that always stayed the same was that the original runner was named John Van Horn in tribute to Bryce's close high school friend who died at the age of 18 in a car crash but is still remembered and missed.

Finally, because things always change (sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse) from "the page to the stage," here's a draft of our original screenplay, when it was known by its original title, "MILES FROM NOWHERE."

Download MILES-Zabel

For fun, if any of your runners would like to vote in our Movie Smackdown! poll pitting "Prefontaine" against "Without Limits," then CLICK HERE.

Watching TV So You Don't Have To

Lee Goldberg writes regularly on A Writer's Life

I finished writing my latest MONK novel the other day and I felt like lazing around. I've had a lot on my mind lately and after writing a book I didn't feel much like reading one. So I vegged out on television...some new, some old. 

The "new" were the latest episodes of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES.  

The BATTLESTAR episode was, astonishingly, one hour of pure exposition...mightily well-written, grandiose and flowery exposition, but exposition all the same....the dreaded "Irving the Explainer" taken to new, galactic heights by three Cylon-the-Explainers.  Only a serialized series on it's last episode or two that doesn't give a damn anymore about drawing new viewers would dare film an episode like that and call it entertainment (though Marc Bernardin at Entertainment Weekly thought it was so "revelatory" that it "melted my Goddamn face off.")

The TERMINATOR episode was merely dull and totally uninvolving, relying heavily on the over-used trick of having the hero (or in this case, heroine) talk to an imaginary character. Alan Ball should be shot for doing it so effectively on SIX FEET UNDER because now every TV series has to do it. Nobody seems to have noticed that it became a cliche three years ago and is now slipping into unintentional parody. At least the folks on GREY'S ANATOMY have raised the stakes by having the heroine fuck the character who isn't there...oh, wait, I take it back, GALACTICA did that two seasons ago when it still had a sense of humor to go along with all of its dread and misery. The folks at TERMINATOR have forgotten what made the TERMINATOR movies so much fun...and have gotten mired in dreary angst...probably because angst is cheaper to shoot than Terminators destroying things. The John Connor character has become a morose, whiny, Excedrin headache come-to-life...but the two lady Terminators? They're great.

"Animal Armageddon" on Animal Planet

Have you ever actually thought about mass extinction? You know, those times when damn near everything dies and lots of species simply go away forever? It's been on my mind a lot, for almost a year now.

Since last May, I've been working as a consulting producer and lead writer on "Animal Armageddon," a series for Animal Planet about mass extinctions. It's been like going back to college and having to take all the courses I dodged the first time around, plus a few I probably couldn't even spell properly. In terms of being a mind-boggling head-trip, it's been both a treat and a brain puzzle. I don't say this about every project I work on but this one has truly changed the way I look at the world.

"Animal Armageddon" is an eight-part miniseries that begins airing this Thursday, February 12 with a show about the first mass extinction, the Ordivician ("Death Rays"). The first four episodes are scheduled to air between now and the first week of March, and the final four will air sometime this summer.

One thing I can tell you is that if you only catch two of them, they should be the ones on February 26 ("Doomsday") and March 5 ("Panic in the Sky"). That's a two-parter dealing with the death of the Dinosaurs. Let's just put it this way. The comet or asteroid that hit the Earth 65-million years ago was about the size of Mt. Everest. It was traveling at about five miles per second. When it hit in the waters near what's now the Yucatan, the energy it released was the equivalent of all the nuclear weapons that have ever existed, exploded at the same time, exploded in the same place (are you ready for this?) TIMES 10-thousand. Yeah, it was a big one. Part one deals with the first 24 hours or, as I called them in my script, the Worst Day on Earth Ever. Part two deals with the first year. By the end of it, the Dinosaurs were pretty much gone.

M.A.N.T.I.S. - TV's First African-American Superhero

 Call Me ... the MANTIS! 

I guess it's only appropriate that a week after President Obama historically took office, distributors would get around to releasing "M.A.N.T.I.S." on DVD because it, too, can claim to be an African-American first, starring actor Carl Lumbly in the title role of a scientist/superhero.  The series ran for a season back on FBC over a decade ago.  I received the WGA "Developed By" credit on the series and served as "Co-Executive Producer" and thought that now, for the record, a little trip down memory lane might be in order.

"M.A.N.T.I.S." was the first TV series where the powers-that-be gave me the keys to the car and said I was in charge of the writing staff. This was back in 1994 when I was coming off a successful first season of the "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" series. Sandy Grushow was in charge of FBC-TV back then, and he’s the first guy who said I was seasoned enough to be in charge of a budget of $1.4 million per episode and not blow it.

Anyway the deal was, "M.A.N.T.I.S" had started as a two-hour pilot, written by Sam Hamm ("Batman") and directed by Sam Raimi ("Spiderman"). The two Sams had a disagreement with Fox about how the series should go (they saw the series as an alternative world with an all-black cast and Fox wanted it to be a super-hero who was black in a regular American city), and walked away from their own project. Fox still wanted to do the series but somebody needed to make the changes and run the show. Both Hamm and Raimi were extremely gracious and understanding in the transition, nothing was made personal, and the series lived and (almost) prospered.