Cheers

Onr thing leads to another and last week I was watching that crazy Scientologist video that Tom Cruise made were he talks about the importance of knowing and doing and helping people and how he does everything 110%. I never cared much about him one way or the other, but watching the video I got really uncomfortable. Something about it is very disturbing and upsetting. Most people think it's funny and I guess it is, but mainly, it's a video of a crazy person made by shady people.

Anyway, I wanted to look up one of his fellow Scientologists, Kirstie Alley. I'd read that she was the only surviving Cheers cast member to never make a guest appearance on Frasier and that's because her church is against psychiatry and anything that portrays psychiatry in a positive light.

This led me to look up Cheers, which I always liked. I remember my dad watched it and it would be on when I was going off to bed and some nights he'd let me stay up and watch. As I got older I could watch on my own and I thought it was pretty funny.

My favorite period was "the Diane years". As the show got older it got more goofy and less believable, which is typical for a TV show in its later years. I still watched till the end but I'd lost interest.

While I was reading about Cheers I came across the story of Eddie LeBec, Carl's husband and goalie for the Boston Bruins. He ended up getting killed by a Zamboni machine.

It turns out there's a whole story behind why the actor, Jay Thomas, who had previously starred on Mork and Mindy and went on the play a Morton Downey Jr.-type on Murphy Brown, left Cheers. Jay Thomas hosted his own radio show in LA before and during his time on Cheers and one day a caller asked what it was like working on Cheers. He complained about having to kiss Rhea Pearlman and she happened to be listening.

I read all this on the blog of one of the co-writers of Cheers, Ken Levine. He co-wrote the episode where Eddie dies, "Death Takes a Holiday on Ice" (I love that), and explains that they were worried that they wouldn't get permission to use the brand name but that the Zamboni people were more than pleased (I'm trying not to write "the Zamboni people loved it" because that's basically what Levine writes on his blog. I hope I haven't plagerized anything).

Every since last week I've been reading Ken Levine's blog; it's got a lot of behind the scenes stories about shows that he's worked on. One thing he said really jumped out at me. He said that one of the things that made him want to be a writer was The Dick Van Dyke Show- a writer's life seemed fun and Van Dyke had the beautiful Laura Petrie for a wife. It's funny because I once read Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing) say the exact same thing.

If I ever learn how to create a Blogroll on my page I'm going to add a link to his page. In the meantime, here's the Eddie LeBec story.




Note: everytime I try to add a link it doesn't work, so if you wanna find the story the name of the blog is By Ken Levine or look up Eddie Lebec on Wiki and there's a link to Levine's page there.