In loving memory of John Ritter--the man, the magic, the master!

"Brady Brady Brady": Here's the story of an oft-old story ... never told with quite this much authority

Guest Shot blog 
By Jude Cormier

When I first heard that a book called Brady, Brady, Brady was coming out, my first thought was, "What? Another book on The Brady Bunch? Hasn't that subject been covered to death?" 

And I say that as a die-hard fan. Then I saw who the authors were to be: Sherwood Schwartz and his son, Lloyd J. Schwartz, the two guiding hands behind the Brady family throughout most of their incarnations. So I knew this was a must-own for me. 

When I first got my copy, I was surprised to see it was a hardcover. All of the other Brady books were paperbacks. I had owned most of them and had read and re-read them many times. What could be possibly be said that's new and different? Well ... not much. Plenty of the facts that were covered in the other books are simply verified here. The difference is we get the perspective from the two men who were there from day one. 


Misconceptions the other books have put forward as fact are corrected here, such as the supposedly near-death drowning of Susan Olsen, who played Cindy, while on an outrigger filming one of the show's more adventurous episodes. Lloyd tells us that has been a gross exaggeration of what really happened. 

The book is written in two sections, the first by Sherwood, the creator, who basically gives us the story of how the Bunch came into being. He clearly states that this book is not intended to be an episode-by-episode guide, so if you have one of the other books, hang onto them just for that aspect. I noticed a few errors that a fact-checker, an editor or proof-reader from the publisher could have corrected. When I mentioned this to Susan (yes, we are casual acquaintances via Facebook), she told me (in humor) that I was "picky, picky, picky."

The second section is written by Lloyd, who handles the Brady story after the original 1969-74 ABC series. Lloyd's section is really fun to read; he has a great way with words and storytelling. Lloyd shares his account of being a college student during Bunch's genesis after serving as a dialog coach on his father's previous TV creations, Gilligan's Island and the short-lived cave-people comedy It's About Time. Initially he was hired in the same capacity for his dad's new blended family sitcom, but soon he realized that all the things the associate producer was doing, he could do and better. 

His father gave him a chance, but not the title, less nepotism charges be levied. Lloyd more than proved himself and soon Sherwood granted his son the official title of "associate producer," making him one of the youngest to have achieved that status.  



One subject that both father and son clearly agreed on was Robert Reed. Specifically, that he was a pain and only landed the role of Mike Brady thanks to his Paramount "pay or play" contract. They contend he was clearly not into doing comedy, much less Gilligan-esque slapstick. But they also concur that Reed loved his TV kids deeply and was overjoyed to be asked to reprise Mike Brady for the 1981 TV movie The Brady Girls Get Married. 

But by the time of The Bradys--CBS's short-lived 1990 primetime attempt at making the Bunch into a quasi-soap opera--everyone had just about enough of Bob's temperament. (When Ann B. Davis cusses you out, you know you have sunk to new depths.) 

Lloyd discusses further Brady incarnations such as the theatrical movies and the fight to get the first big-screen feature properly made as a satire that didn't destroy Bunch's reputation. He doesn't care for A Very Brady Sequel, which was made without the father-and-son team's input. The follow-up Fox TV movie The Brady Bunch Goes to the White House was a Schwartz production--and Lloyd is very proud of it. Here is where I heartily disagree with Lloyd. It is the one Brady project I refuse to own. Seeing it once on TV was one too many times. 

The book, though, is a must for any Brady fan, simply for the fact you won't get this perspective in any other Brady tome. It is a light, airy read, which helps offset the fact that it covers really nothing new (as in major revelations) that you haven't more or less known before. Except for the bit about the dead security guard found during the filming of the Bradys-do-a-TV-commercial episode. 

Now go off, buy the book and start practicing your "Keep On Moving" choreography in your plaid bell-bottoms!

 

Check out Jude's Facebook campaign to bring season four of The Donna Reed Show to DVD!

"Baywatch" babe Nicole Eggert: kicking depression, FunnyOrDie.com and loving her older, wiser self

Check out my new interview with Nicole Eggert in the September issue of Wellbella magazine:

"I can't get out of a bikini now to save my life," says former "Baywatch" babe Nicole Eggert, now 38. It's a most ironic statement from the '90s blonde bombshell who last year ended her two-year public seclusion by letting it all hang out in a gutsy Funny orDie.com video spoofing a not-so-svelte figure squeezed into her itsy-bitsy-bikini-clad TV lifeguard persona ...

Click here for the rest of the story about the former Charles in Charge star.

Just in case you were thinking of wearing white shoes after today ...

Also, here's a longer version with Kathleen Turner's kick-ass line "SUZANNE SOMERS, this is my BAD SIDE!"

Remembering Tulsa's late Admiral Twin Drive-In: The not-always-happy daze and eerily liberating nights of an Oklahoma outsider

Yesterday one of my generation's favorite spooky-sexy-kitschy childhood haunts, made famous in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film The Outsiders, sadly went up in flames ... hours before showing The Final Exorcism. (Hello!)

But though Tulsa's (and Route 66's) historic Admiral Twin Drive-In has died at age 60--generous donations may rebuild the eight-story edifice by next May--its celluloid-worthy memory remains emblazoned on the minds and hearts of generations who grew up marveling at the larger-than-life images projected on its majestic screens.

For me and apparently many others--check out the 'Save the Admiral Twin" Facebook page--the now-charred landmark remains a beloved portal to our wide-eyed youth spent watching movies and making memories under the moon.




Drive-ins, of course, became a national rage in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Kids of the 1970s (like me) learned this by watching Happy Days. Kids of the 1980s (still like me) learned this by watching The Outsiders. (More on this cultural phenom in a moment.) The true power of the outdoor theater first hit home for me, though, at the cross-section of these latter decades, during the late spring 1980 release of the Seventies-schlock-worthy film Friday the 13th.

Yes, the original original--not the remake of the original. The pre-Jason-slaying version. Before he went 3-D and before the time it was personal. (Wait, I'm thinking of a WTF-Michael-Caine-ain't-no-Roy Scheider Jaws. Carry on.)

Anywho, my parents took my sister and me to a double feature at the Admiral Twin that fateful, turn-of-the-decade late spring/early summer. I can't remember the first movie we saw that night. It was probably such family fare as an encore presentation of The Deer Hunter, which my dad, good old Irv, took us to see in 1977. As if that weren't good enough on my psyche, the second, lesser-known Twin feature began with a woman getting hacked to death in the woods. Kill-kill-kill-ma-ma-ma-innocence-innocence-innocence.

My 16-year-old sister and her nerdy 8-year-old brother sat with our mandibles dropped to our family Suburban's backseat floorboards while one nubile teen after another dropped like flies on the billboard-sized screens before us. My mom spent approximately 90 minutes saying things like, "I can't believe we're watching this $#!+!" and "Oh, my God, don't look, Chris! Irv, let's get the hell out of here!" I think that was the one moment in the 1980s that I appreciated my father. Because I wanted to see the creepily turtlenecked Betsy Palmer's eight-story carnage, and he was all, "Har-har-har ... the car won't start!"


Imagine seeing this on an eight-story outdoor screen as a squirrely eight-year-old kid.

And then Mrs. Vorhees lost her head. In super-slow motion. On a giant screen. The lot full of Camero-hood-necking, faceless teens surrounding us screamed, "Wooooohooooo! Noooo waaaaay! Kill her, bitch!"

Mayberry it wasn't. But to me, it's as good as a black-and-white Floyd the Barber going crazy and cutting a lip-giving Aunt Bee. The Eighties had arrived. And so had I.


Check out my two-part interview with the chick who made Jason's mom lose her head.


When The Outsiders put Tulsa on the map (a year after another of author S.E. Hinton's Matt Dillon-starring teen flicks, Tex, did the same), I'd hit the throes of adolescence. Actually, the throw-ups of adolescence is more apt. I was a true outsider's outsider. If I'd been alive in Tulsa in the Sixties, I'd have been the kid who was ostracized by the poor kids who lived on the wrong side of the tracks. In fact, an additional set of tracks would be installed just to keep me on the other side of the other side. If I ended up on the right side of the wrong side of the tracks, I'd have to give up my hair gel at knife point so C. Thomas Howell could feel good about himself.

(I was apparently such an outsider in Tulsa that S.E. herself [yes, that one] acted put out when I interviewed her in person in 1990 for a story I was writing for The University of Tulsa's student newspaper, The Collegian. Here I was a college freshman asking her about the famous Tulsa-based films based on her best-selling books for a story extolling her coronation as one of her alma mater's "distinguished alumni" for TU's Homecoming. Ms. Hinton was clearly annoyed by my aww-shucks excitement and, well, was downright rude and hostile. Seemingly, she'd waited a quarter century to find someone who was more awkward than she was as a teenager to project all of her outsider frustration [or whatever] onto. Why couldn't I have been sitting two feet away from someone more hospitable to a naive, enthusiastic teenager ... like Mrs. Vorhees?)


The Outsiders Admiral Twin Drive In Theater

scopio sting film | MySpace Video

That said, I watched in wonder as the cool kids at my junior high school--in a modest suburb of Tulsa called Catoosa--impersonated the poor kids in The Outsiders. It was surreal and mildly uncomfortable (Hey, I'm the outsider, dammit!), but in a weird way I connected because we were all proud that our metropolitan stomping grounds, namely the Admiral Twin Drive-In, now had national street cred. The outsiders of Catoosa were now insiders. Except for me, of course. I was from the wrong side of the tracks in Catoosa. You can't get any more outside than that.

Unless, of course, you were actually outside ... at the drive-in theater. And then you were strangely inside, because you were in the dark and invisible--this time, in a good way ... like everyone else.

At the Admiral Twin Drive-In I felt connected to the outside world both literally and figuratively. I'd always wanted to move to Hollywood and write about and for the industry that had entertained and informed my youth. Gassing up the car and driving in to the Twin with my friends helped me get through high school and college and enjoy an occasional, plenty-good escape as I planned my great escape. (Thank you, S.E., for further strengthening my resolve : ).

Whether it was a slasher film, a coming-of-age feature or (the last movie I saw at the Twin) The Fugitive that brought me to this cherished, soon-to-rise-again Tulsa relic, nothing was more liberating than experiencing a night as an Admiral Twin outsider watching the stars under the stars.