Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (11 page)

Was I being brought in just so he could taunt me? I pictured him sitting there making me sweat, telling me with his blank stare he still has power over me.

“Oh, this is the guy who thought he didn’t have to write topical jokes. I fired you back then and now I can decide if you’re working for me or not again.”

But what choice did I have? So I went to the audition, and I admit I let paranoia get the best of me. It was a very friendly room. We did some minor catching up before I read. I got some great laughs as the part of Mr. Garrison, the clinic’s resident hypochondriac.

The late great comedic actor Richard Mulligan starred as Dr. Harry Weston on that show. The sixth season when I had my appearance, he was working in a clinic in downtown Miami. I was excited that I was referred to in the script as the hypochondriac who’s at the clinic every day. I took that, hoping I could return and be a recurring part of the show.

There were some other changes that season besides Dr. Weston moving from private practice to the inner city clinic. Marsha Warfield from
Night Court
and Estelle Getty who reprised her role as Sophia from
The Golden Girls
were brought on. Both obviously were fortunate to go from one nice home to another one. Gone from the show was Kristy McNichol due to her struggle with clinical depression. She played a cop, so that season they only referred to her as being away on “undercover assignment.” As far as I could tell, there was no mention of her around the set. The taping seemed to go very smoothly. The only distraction was Bear, the dog who portrayed Dreyfuss, the Weston’s family pet. All he had to do was coyly turn his head and nuzzle his face on Carol Weston’s (Dinah Manoff) lap. Bear kept messing up. On several takes he’d bark out of place during her lines. And on several other cues he did nothing at all. The audience loved it. His trainer stood by his side, frantically giving the dog cues to get him to respond at the proper time. Bear seemed more concerned with his trainer. He got up out of his chair once and approached him. One of the crew watched with sadness and remarked to me, “The dog’s senile. The guy’s in denial about it, but Dreyfuss has lost his step.”

There was another dog that looked just like Dreyfuss (Bear) in a cage and the trainer was teaching him how to do all the tricks; another young actor waiting to step in. Finally the producers said they had the shot they needed in an earlier taping. Sometimes tricky shots with animals or little kids are filmed earlier during the day if the performer can’t do it in front of the live crowd.

The trainer passed with his dog in front of me after their scene. The dog walked on, oblivious that what he just did might affect his showbiz future. But the trainer had an inconsolable look on his face. His head was down. He looked like he was the one walking with his tail between his legs. Trainers take what their animals do very personally. I was not sure if I was watching a sad passing.

Although I was referred to as the guy who came by the clinic every day, there was no indication I’d be back after that. Bob Tischler shook my hand and told me I did a great job. That was a better way to end a job than being told to clean out my office.

14

MURPHY/CLARK

S
ometimes the hardest thing about a job is being allowed to do it. I was asked back for a third appearance on
Murphy Brown
. I was relieved that I hadn’t alienated the producers with my self-serving character pitch. In fact, my agent told me, the staff was excited to have me back.

Yet when I arrived at the Warner Brothers lot the security guard wouldn’t let me in the gate. My name wasn’t on the drive-on list. This indignity happens more often than not when you’re guest starring and helps rub in your temporary status. For what seems like an eternity, the guard will tap the keys on his computer, trying to find my name. He will shake his head in frustration, as if I had asked him to decode an enemy espionage document.

After a couple of minutes, everyone behind me starts honking their horns and cursing me out, because they too want to make a good impression and be on time. Then, when the guard gives up, I have to pull my car to the side and phone someone on the set to fix the problem. It’s just a simple oversight, but while I am on hold several minutes, I feel all the stress and humiliation of being a non-person. Usually by the time the administrators remember to add my name to the daily list in advance, it’s the end of the week, and I’m gone anyway.

On my episode, I played a moronic bartender working at an awards ceremony who kept making the wrong drink for Murphy. And, just like with my other appearances, when she challenged me that I was wrong, I replied, “I don’t think so.” For some reason, though, it didn’t feel like it worked as well as the other two times. When I was the usher and the deli guy, those felt more like self-contained scenes. This time the joke relied too heavily on the crowd recalling that I was the “I don’t think so” guy from those two other episodes. I hoped the producers wouldn’t blame me for the bit not working as well.

It was a tricky situation. After having lobbied them to have me back, it would seem pretty ungrateful to complain about the material. I considered hinting what the “problem” was, but didn’t want to risk insulting them. There are many situations where I’m given material that is not that funny, but I can’t ever blame anyone and suggest it’s the writing.

Because this was my third time back, I felt more familiar with the crew, stand-ins, and writers’ assistants. But it still was their home, and I was just passing through. I was more like a friend of a family member, who visits sometimes from out of town. Everyone was cordial, but nothing more.

I did get to socialize more with the cast. I talked with Faith Ford about cruises
—
Ford had been a “celebrity” passenger on a cruise when she had a small part on the show
thirtysomething
. She was chided for annoying a woman by laughing too hard at dinner. I told her I worked once as a stand-up on a cruise and for the entire trip I had to hide in my cabin from all the passengers who were overly fond of critiquing my act everywhere I went.

There were some small perks to having been around the
Mur
phy Brown
set so many times. One day I felt particularly excited when I found a deserted bathroom in a production office next to the stage that no one else seemed to know existed. Guest stars usually have to use the big public restrooms. Most guest star actors don’t get a dressing room with a bathroom or even a phone in it. And most of these dressing rooms aren’t even anywhere near the set. The guest star dressing rooms are so small and far from the stage, there’s usually no point to ever spend any time there. It’s usually a little hovel with a door that never stays closed and that shakes anytime someone walks past.

On the Warner Brothers lot, the low-end guest cast dressing rooms for scores of shows were cluttered together in a massive bunch. The rows and rows of identical flimsy wooden shacks were sort of the ghetto of the lot. The only way I’d be able to try to find my room would be with the escort of an eager young production assistant. That’s why I preferred to hover around the set on my breaks, munching on the tons of candy bars and other goodies by craft services.

Where I was with my life and career,
Murphy Brown
was the closest I had to a home, and that’s why I was so thrilled when a few weeks later I got a job on the same lot on the new show
Lois & Clark.
Everyone would be so excited and surprised when I’d stop by the
Murphy Brown
set to say “hi,” or so I imagined.

Lois & Clark
was an hour-long new version of the Superman classic with an emphasis on romance and a touch of humor thrown in. It was my introduction to a technique my agent and agents-to-be would use with me: pretending that they were responsible for getting you a job. They’d say, “I sent your tape to this new show and got you booked without you even having to audition.” That sounded great until I got to the set and the showrunner told me that she’d seen me at a
Murphy Brown
taping and had me in mind for the part of a bellhop.

It was just a one-day job. Lois and Clark were working undercover as a newlywed couple, and I was a nosey bellhop that came by. That morning we rehearsed my two scenes in the hotel. We’d start shooting after lunch. I had my plans. I’d skip lunch at the commissary and head to the
Murphy Brown
stage for my visit. I was psyched! I forgot about the stringent security. The guard was sitting at a desk not even ten feet away from the door on the stage when I entered. He was the one I had signed in with each morning a few weeks earlier.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

I was slightly stunned. I was expecting, “Hey Fred, what brings you back here? This is a surprise.”

Instead, I had to say, “Yeah, it’s me. I was working here a few weeks ago. Don’t you remember?”

“So, what do you want?”

I had to think a second. I said, “I want to visit. I want to say hi to some of the people ’cause I’m working on the lot.”

Now, he had to think. He called over the head of security and in front of me they discussed what apparently was an unusual and potentially dangerous situation. (This was way before 9/11.)

Finally, the first guard got his orders. “Okay, you can have a sticker, but don’t go on stage ’til they finish with this rehearsal.”

I stood around the craft service table and saw Joe Regalbuto and Faith Ford walk toward the set.

“Hey guys!” I said as I approached.

“Fred, what are you doing here?” Joe asked.

“I’m on the lot doing a part on
Lois & Clark
, this new show.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Joe said.

They then wished me luck and walked back toward the set to join their fellow cast-mates.

I don’t know why I felt let down. They were nice enough. I’m not even sure what I was expecting. It was pretty unrealistic to expect a massive fuss over me being there and having another job. I guess I was hoping to hear:

“Well, come by and say hi anytime. You’re family!”

“Hey, you traitor you, working on another show!”

“Everyone, look who’s here! It’s Fred!”

Their indifference was not unique. Even my friends and family weren’t that excited about my
Lois & Clark
appearance. When I gave a heads-up to Joel, he asked me, “Are you in the beginning, the middle, or toward the end?” In other words, “How much of that crap do I have to watch to see you?” I suppose after suffering through
Vinnie & Bobby
,
Amen
, and
Living Single
(I had two lines as a delivery guy), he only wanted to see what he had to see.

Even my mother didn’t see me on
Lois & Clark
because it ran the same time as
Gypsy
with Bette Midler, which my parents just could not miss.

15

DON’T MAKE TROUBLE

I
was filming
Good Advice
, a short-lived sitcom, starring Treat Williams and Shelley Long. During a rehearsal, Williams and I were backstage, waiting for our cue. Williams was a charming puppy dog; a ball of energy that couldn’t keep still. He was playing a slick, womanizing divorce attorney, and Long starred as a marriage counselor, and in typical sitcom–coincidence style, they had offices on the same floor. He’d try to get new clients, who were going to Long for counseling.

“What actresses do you have crushes on? Who do you like?” he eagerly wanted to know.

“Not so much the typical starlets,” I said.

“Who? I probably know ’em. Tell me!”

“You know this actress, Alice Krige?”

“Know her? I worked with her! Yeah, she is sexy! Who else you like?”

“I like this actress Jenny Agutter. She was in
An American Werewolf in London
. Do you know her?”

Just then, I heard the assistant director scream, “Fred, be quiet! You’re disturbing our rehearsal with your goddamn chatter back there!”

My heart sank, but before the feeling that my life was over could completely engulf me, Treat stepped onto the set and took all the heat.

“Why are you chewing out Fred? Why do you assume it was him? He wasn’t talking. It was me. I was asking him some questions.”

He stepped backstage to rejoin me and gave me a reassuring wink as if to say, “I got your back.” Wow, how I appreciated it. Not everyone would have done that. I certainly did not want word getting back to the producers that I was being a disruption. It was a small thing, but indicative of the kind of guy Treat was.

Two producers from
Murphy Brown
, Michael Patrick King (who later went on to run
Sex and the City
) and Tom Palmer, had taken over this show, which already had a tumultuous history.
Good Advice
had been put on hold several times due to changes in cast, producers and writers, story lines, and Shelley Long’s health problems.

I was offered the part of Paulie, a jerky newsstand guy, who Treat, as a joke, sets up with Shelley on a blind date. Luckily, I didn’t have to audition. I had a history with those producers, and they had me in mind when they wrote the part. But when something like that happens, it can get screwed up by the agents. If they know a part is written for you, they immediately want to jack up your salary.

The Screen Actors Guild requires actors with speaking parts to get paid a minimum that’s called “scale.” If you’re not a household name, almost every time an agent asks for more than scale, they get turned down. So when they tell me they’re asking for more money, it always alarms me. It reminds me of one of my favorite jokes: These two Jews were lined up against a wall about to be executed by a firing squad. One says to the other, “Maybe we should ask for a blindfold.” The other one says, “Murray, don’t make trouble.”

That’s how I feel. Don’t make trouble. I’ll do it for whatever. I know it’s kind of pathetic. I’m afraid I’ll get them mad. “Who the hell is he to ask for anything! And I don’t care that it’s his agent who made that request! Stoller’s never working for me again!”

Yeah, don’t make trouble. I want it so that every time they think of me, they say, “Now that was effortless, no headache at all! We have got to bring that guy back!” I want the producers to tell their friends, who are producers of other shows, what a great guest I am. “He makes no demands.” I make sure never to be late, to always do what I’m told, to never take any wardrobe that doesn’t belong to me, and to never flub a line. You’ve probably seen those blooper shows or outtakes at the end of an episdoe, where a star like Kelsey Grammer messes up his line and then cracks up along with the other stars. When you’re a guest cast member, you aren’t allowed that kind of hilarity, because it just costs money and reflects on your lack of professionalism.

The stars who make fifty thousand a show and have dressing rooms with the bed and the colossal home entertainment center don’t have to be perfect. They’re secure. They’re on fun, familiar turf. But I’m walking on eggshells. I’m on probation. I’m the guy from the minor league who got called up just for a game and has to hit it out of the park.

Treat Williams and I bonded more than any star I had worked with at that point. He was like my sensitive, big brother that week. He encouraged me to ask him questions about actors he’d worked with and films he had been on. And he was trying to help me with women. He pointed to an assistant prop artist.

“What about her? Want to ask her out?”

“No, they always seem to go for the blue-collar grip guys walking around with gaffer tape and a staple gun attached to their shorts.”

I followed him around on breaks excitedly asking him about one of my favorite movies,
Hair
, so imagine my amazement when I witnessed one of my idols break wind in front of me. What an honor. He wouldn’t be the last. Passing through so many shows, I never thought I’d be witness to so many greats passing gas in my presence: Peter Boyle, Tony Danza, and Grandma Yetta from
The Nanny
. But no one took this to the extreme Jason Lee did when I worked on
My Name Is Earl
. It turned out he had a penchant for constantly farting and stinking up the set and trying to drive the guest actor off his mark. The crew would just shake their heads, annoyed but used to it by the third season when I made my appearance. He enjoyed seeing how long the guest could stand on his mark before fleeing to the end of the set covering his face. It turned out he liked me and he told me I could let some go too if I wanted.