#338 The Rebellious Comedy of Married with Children: Richard Gurman Dishes on TV’s Boldest Sitcom

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

all right, Kate, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome everybody to episode 338 of classic conversations, as always, I am your host. Jeff Dwoskin, great to have you back for what sure to be a shocking episode as we dive deep into the world of married with children. My guest today is Richard Gurman. He worked on married with children. He was a showrunner for married with children. He was there for pretty much the entire run, and has written the book, married with children versus the world, the inside story of the shotcom that launched Fox and changed TV comedy forever. We're diving deep, and that's coming up in just a few seconds. And in these few seconds, do not miss my incredible conversation with Jerry Jewell, cousin Jerry from the facts of life. That's right, amazing conversation last week. Do not miss it. But right now, do not miss my amazing conversation with Richard Gurman. He's worked on classics like Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy. We touch on those his time with Gary Marshall, and then dive deep into the world of married with children, and that's coming up right now.

All right, everyone, I am excited to introduce my next guest producer, writer, author, worked on such classics as happy days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork and Mindy, different strokes, married with children. Oh, facts of life. Ah, so and now, author of married with children versus the world, the inside story of the shot com that launched Fox and changed TV forever was that that was dramatic enough. Okay, welcome to the show. Richard Gurman, it's

Richard Gurman 2:20

nice to be here. Jeff,

Jeff Dwoskin 2:21

so amazing. Run and book on married with children. Thanks for sharing it with me. It was quite a run. It's quite an iconic show, and you've captured it very nicely.

Richard Gurman 2:33

Thank you.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:33

But if we can, can we build up to that for a second? Because sure, I just you worked on pretty much everything that I love, working out to that I mean, and including that I did

Richard Gurman 2:46

have an anticipation of this interview.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:48

I appreciate, I appreciate you dedicating your life to this moment. Well, first off, how did you what kind of led to just getting into the entertainment field, becoming a producer, writer, like, when did you know you had the skills? It is something you always wanted to do. Was there something that inspired you early on?

Richard Gurman 3:05

It's interesting. I always wanted to be a writer. You know, when you have that class in elementary school, what do you want to be when you grow up? I always wanted to be a writer. And then I just kind of put all that aside, and I went to school and studied sociology undergraduate, and then I went to graduate school of journalism at UC Berkeley, and we had an emphasis on documentary filmmaking. I mean, I chose the emphasis on documentary, Public Affairs filmmaking. And from my master's thesis, I made a documentary, and it got on the air, and I came to Los Angeles in the early 70s to interview for my what I thought was my career in documentary filmmaking, and I had interviews set up with various documentary and news organizations and so on. And then, strangely, my resume for the interviews got sent to somebody at a sitcom, a friend of a friend of one of the people that I was supposed to interview with gave it to somebody who was the executive producer of and your audience probably won't remember this show. It's called the Partridge Family, starring David Cassidy. About it, my

Jeff Dwoskin 4:11

audience will absolutely know that show. Okay, you're in the sweet spot. Go. Keep going. Okay,

Richard Gurman 4:18

so you know, it's about a family that was also a rock band, or rock ish band, starring David Cassidy, who was a huge teen idol at the time. So I didn't get any of the other jobs, and I got the job to work as assistant to the producer of the Partridge Family. And I figured, I'll move to Los Angeles with a job, and then I'll then I'll pursue my documentary career. Long story short, I got involved in the show, and they were very inclusive, and I got involved in story meetings and in the writing and so on. And so I really took to the sitcom writing form, and I did what every other aspiring sitcom writer, or any form of writing television writer would do. I wrote a spec. Script got it to the right people, and I ended up in a Gary Marshall, who your audience probably also knows Happy Days of Werner Shirley, Pretty Woman, lots of films, lots of TV shows, had an apprenticeship program, and he had full staff of writers, and he would also bring on three or four apprentices on each show, and sort of the theory was to grow your own to teach young writers the craft, according to Gary Marshall, according to what his needs were and his theories were. And when you did well in that then you got promoted up and wrote on his shows, which I did. So then I started writing for Laverda Shirley. And then happy days, you know, as a freelance writer, back in in the day, at that time, you were lucky if your show went two or three years and you got stay with it. Otherwise, you jump from show to show. Your show gets sometimes your shows that your audience would never have heard of, that was on for like six episodes, and then you'd be off. So I was lucky enough to be on some long running shows, and then I went over to Norman Lear's company, he of all in the family, fame and Maude and all that. And I worked on a show called different strokes. And I worked on a show called facts of life. And I cut around a foul of the facts of life folks, I had kind of an incident with them, and I quit the show. And when I quit that show, I found myself out of work, and the executive producers and creators of Married with Children handed me a script for this series that was going to go on the new Fox Network, and they said, Are you interested? And I read it, and I was interested like crazy. It was just off the charts, different, you know, intentionally different, because we were trying to gain an audience that wasn't on the traditional networks. That's the story of how I got to, married with children, how I started out in television. It's

Jeff Dwoskin 6:50

quite a resume. And I'm like, you can see behind me, I got Henry Winkler, I got Cindy Williams on the wall. Ah, you know, I

Richard Gurman 6:57

for the occasion.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:01

It's my whole office as autographs,

Richard Gurman 7:04

they were terrific. Kenny and Cindy were amazing. As difficult and irascible as they were, they were just, they were just fantastic and comedic geniuses. And it was like going to college for comedy, you know, to being writing for Gary Marshall and working on those shows. So yeah, appreciate the shout out to those

Jeff Dwoskin 7:25

shows, Mark and Mindy. Then were you on set with Robin Williams? I mean, is that I was Mork and

Richard Gurman 7:30

Mindy. I just wrote an episode as a freelance writer, so I wasn't on the set with Robin Williams. I was there maybe part of the week when my show was was being a shot. And I have friends who are on that show who just had just amazing stories about Robin and how he just cracked everybody up, and how he changed off the lines and made them work, and so on and so forth. But I don't have a lot of personal experience with Robin. No more on Happy Days and Laverne

Jeff Dwoskin 7:57

later in 2020 you had made the happy days of Gary Marshall documentary. Yes, that must have been nice, kind of wrapping up, kind of a bookend to the it was very

Richard Gurman 8:07

nice when, when I sort of finished my sitcom writing career, I went back to documentary, back to my documentary roots to do. I did a documentary on Bob O for PBS, and then I had the opportunity with this fellow, John scheinfeld, who's a well known documentary director, to sell this documentary to ABC on Gary Marshall, and part of that was because I think it's vastly entertaining. He just, you know, dominated the TV world and the film world with everything Princess Bride and pretty woman and and Princess Diaries, I mean, not Princess Bride. And part of it was because I wanted to kind of connect my documentary training to all the sitcom work that I had done. And part of it was to give back to Gary Marshall, who had given me and so many other people opportunities in the business, and in a certain sense, jumping ahead the redwood children book is the same spirit of sort of giving back to to the show that launched my career and so on. So the Gary Marshall thing, you cannot believe everyone you know, Richard Gere, Henry Winkler, Pam dauber, Julia Roberts, everyone came in from everywhere to be interviewed. I mean, you, they were knocking on our doors to be interviewed. Usually you have to go say, Please, please, please, be in our in our show. But everybody, everybody wanted to pay homage to Gary, and it was a real pleasure. So that was great.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:38

That's amazing. Quite a testament to him. And then the only other thing I want to cover before we jump into married with children, sure, The Love Boat. Because I'm just at this one of my favorite shows.

Richard Gurman 9:50

I wrote one episode, one segment, I know with the temptation, one single episode, I know I love it, and I think I think it was supposed to be. About the temptations. And it ended up being about the Beach Boys, one of the other, I don't know, I had a connection there some people that I worked with that were on the Partridge Family were were running the show, and I used that connection to to get an episode of of The Love Boat. It was fun. And I still get residuals from that show, which kind of lives forever. I actually have a friend who Jim collucci, who writes a lot of these TV books, who's just finishing up a Love Boat book, so that's coming out soon.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:32

Oh, I've had Isaac gopher and doc on the show. So Charlotte Ray may not have been in that segment, but she was on that episode, and so was Ted McGinley,

Richard Gurman 10:41

yeah. Well, Ted McGinley, three shows with Ted McGinley, really, for me, you know, happy days, a Love Boat. And, of course, married with children.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:49

That's right, he came on the happy days later on, Dendy, that's right, yes,

Richard Gurman 10:53

oh yeah, yeah, big time. Oh, and

Jeff Dwoskin 10:55

then you did the Brady brides too. That was, we don't say, and that was, but you touched on that new Leave It to Beaver all the classics every show I've grown up with one way or another. You, well, boy,

Richard Gurman 11:07

you, you've certainly done your research. So there you go when you are, and I don't know how it is now the kids today, you know, in in the industry, but when you're a freelance writer in television, there's no year to year. You know you're you're basically on a show until the show gets canceled or you get fired. If you're lucky enough, as I was, to be on shows that ran for a long time, then you have some job security, but otherwise, you're back to pounding the pavement and writing another spec script and selling yourself over and over and over and over again. I mean, in in some ways it's a fantastic life. It's really great to be on those writing staff. In other ways, it's pretty insecure.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:51

It's some good ones. Dog with the blog was very popular, I know as well. But like that was a little my kids were older, so I didn't I missed that kids were

Richard Gurman 11:59

older, and what did Disney It was nice in kind of my later years, when I wasn't getting as much work on television shows, Disney was in the business of doing the multi camera sitcom, just like we did that. You know, nobody does it anymore, hardly a couple of shows. So they were keeping the multi camera sitcom alive, so they didn't mind hiring people like me who had some experience with it. So talking with the blog was actually a lot of fun. All

Jeff Dwoskin 12:25

right, now we have an incident with facts of life. We'll let people read the book to get the full story. But that led you to lead facts of life, yes, and walk. And this is just tying into the earlier you were saying, and Ron and Michael approach you the creators of married with children, yes, and that is the beginning of our story, right? You were with married with children for almost every season, but you took, I think it's normal, right? You were there the first few seasons, then you came back like you left for a few. I

Richard Gurman 12:54

took a few, first few seasons and did a show that you didn't mention, which maybe I shouldn't, I don't know, I did the TV version of Uncle Buck. Oh,

Jeff Dwoskin 13:03

okay, yeah, I had that written down. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Richard Gurman 13:06

And then after a couple years, then I came back to married with children, stayed for the rest of the run, so I was there from the very beginning, before we even did the pilot. I was really there on the ground floor, so you're

Jeff Dwoskin 13:18

legit. Oh, gee, so, but it's normal, like, I remember talking to the people who were early on at the Simpsons, and then even, you know, like Al Jean and them, then they leave, and they did the critic, then they come back. I mean, it's, it's a normal it's a normal thing.

Richard Gurman 13:31

Yeah, yeah. How

Jeff Dwoskin 13:32

did they sway you away, though, to do Uncle Buck money.

Richard Gurman 13:38

What happens is, you, you reach a certain plateau. I was supervising producer, or whatever. I'm married with children, and then, you know, your star is ascending. It's like your credits. And so they offered me a two year overall deal. So, and then it was working on Uncle Buck, and if that gets canceled, I still have a deal to stay there and work in development. It was nice. I mean, I was sorry to leave, but it was a really good opportunity. And I ran that show. I wasn't running married with children, so it was a career opportunity as well as a financial opportunity. And so I took it,

Jeff Dwoskin 14:12

love it all right. So, married with children, so you've come from Gary Marshall, Norman Lear, what we would consider, I mean, Norman Lear had some edgier shows as well, but like, this is now going to redefine, like, all the family and stuff like that, right? So now we're about to embark. Fox is brand new. What made you want to was it just like the excitement for everyone involved, just to kind of completely take a shift?

Richard Gurman 14:33

Yes, it was. Apparently, it was the excitement and the freedom. What Fox did? I mean? They launched a new network in an era where there hadn't been a new network in like 50 years, and so ABC, CBS and NBC were just dominating, and there were entrenched viewing habits. And the other thing that some of your viewers will know and some younger ones won't, it wasn't like such a thing as streaming like you could watch your show at any time that you wanted to. You could sit down and. Punch it up. So it was called linear television. So in order to launch a new network, to get people to watch you, you had to do something different to get people that was Fox's theory. If we do something really different, we can get people away from their viewing habits on NBC, CBS and ABC. It wasn't automatic for Fox to get people the level of Jim Brooks and Ed Weinberger and Levitt and Moy to come work for them, because they had huge salaries on networks where their work would be seen by million, guaranteed to be seen by millions of people to work for Fox, you were taking a chance. You were taking a chance that your show might break out. So to incentivize these top writer producers to work for them, they gave them creative freedom. You could do it essentially what you want with very little censorship and also guaranteed episodes on the air. So instead of doing a pilot, and this factors in largely later with the casting Ben O'Neill. But instead of doing a pilot, and then you get thrown in with 70 other pilots, and they maybe pick five or six to put it on the air, you were guaranteed 13 on the on the air. So that's why Ron and Michael wanted to Ron and Michael, as much as they had traditional backgrounds like me, they worked on the Jeffersons, they worked on silver spoons, they worked on shows like that. They were very iconoclastic. They were, you know, a lot of writers are rebellious, but you you do the job. These guys were particularly rebellious. And they hated formula television where everybody, you know, hugs at the end of an episode, and everybody learns something. So Ron and Michael set out to do really an anti sitcom. It was, it was called, we're not the Cosby's was a name for it at first. It didn't stick. But so they, they came to me, and they said, we've written this out of the box comedy. We want to take a chance with us and do this, and I was out of work, and I read it, and I loved it, and I said, Hell yes. So that's that was the beginning of my involvement with the show. I was deeply attracted to the material. Let's put it that way. And I had, I had some faith that it was a crap shoot. I had no idea it would take off. Nobody did, you know. And it didn't take off for quite a while. That was my entry point.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:26

It was interesting because, like, when I was reading the book, man, I lived through linear television and that whole idea. So the show was 87 and so it wouldn't even be a it would be a decade before DVDs are coming out, and then TV on DVDs where people could binge that was like, the start of binge watching, where you could start to experience things you may have missed. But yeah, this was, like the whole counter programming thing and all that. It was great insight. And I know there's a good story coming up, and I'm from Michigan, by the way, so I know that ties in coming to you from Michigan, where I guess one of our people saved the show in a way,

Richard Gurman 18:03

that's a way to go under it.

Jeff Dwoskin 18:06

I'm being hired by the Michigan PR folks to spin it. It was interesting, like the whole casting process, how that you talk about that they took the pitch literally originally. Oh, this is Sam Kinison. And what if Sam Kennison and Roseanne got married, and then, like, Oh, okay. And they took that pretty literal.

Richard Gurman 18:24

The initial pitch is called an elevator pitch. It's what a writer puts together a way in 30 seconds where you can sort of understand the concept. And the elevator pitch was, what if Sam Kennison and Roseanne Barr got married and had kids, and there was never an intent on the writers, from the writers point of view of actually hiring Sam and Roseanne, they're very head strong people that that couldn't fit into the mold of the sitcom, although Roseanne did it at some point. So the studio took them literally and went and offered Sam and Roseanne the job of I mean, Sam and Roseanne, in theory, could have been Alan Al and Peggy, Peggy and Al, and they turned them down. And when they did this, it was at the very beginning of the casting process. So it didn't quite interfere with casting, per se, except that it raised the expectation in Fox's mind. And we could have had Sam and Roseanne. Well, who else have you got? Kind of, you know, it sort of puts that pressure. So we went into casting with that in mind. And you want to just continue with the casting story, yeah, okay, so, um, Katie really wowed everybody. I mean, she was great. And the other parts were fairly easy to cast. I don't want to be dismissive to say, I mean, they were, they were really talented artists who, you know, did them, David garrison and Amanda Burson, so on, so but casting Al, casting Al was was very, very difficult, and they saw everybody possible, and people just were playing it like all wrong, when a lot of people were playing it like the. Ali Mooners, like Jackie Gleason. Other people were playing it like, like evil, like Jack Nicholson and the shining like, you know, here's John, you know. So, because it was just this edgy character, and the trick with an edgy character is you still have to like him. I mean, if you take Archie Bunker as the as the Arc type, I mean, Carol O'Connor is just, you know, it's just brilliant, because he's so irascible and he can be so nasty and racist and politically incorrect, and yet there's something endearing there. So we needed something like that for Al. And so the casting director found this guy at O'Neill. He came in and he didn't necessarily want to do it, and he came in from a handball game, and he was all sweaty, and he came into the interview, and what he did was he did this before he even said a word. It's a scene from the show, and in this particular scene, he walks in the door and he talks about his woes and so on, so forth. And he gave out this sigh as soon as he walked in, and when he gave out the sigh, Michael Moy, who created, was one of the creators of the show, said he knew exactly then that he was going to be our, our Al Bundy. And what the Psy said was, when he walked in the door, that he knew that his day, now that he was home, was going to be just as bad as his day was. It wasn't going to get any better. And that was like the key to the character. It's like, he can't, he can't win home or work and so on so forth. So they loved him, and they they brought him to the network. Okay? So they, you go to the network, and in this instance, the network has the final choice. You choose the people that you think are great, and you bring them all to the network, and they've got the yay or nay. They're the masters of this domain. They can make you or break you. And so you bring them to an audition where people deliver their lines live, and then network says, Oh, we like him, we like her, we like this kid, we like that kid. And that's how a show gets cast. And there's a little a little negotiation as you go. So everybody gets approved. Katie gets approved. David Garrison, Amanda, the kids who, by the way, were not who ended up as bud and Kelly were not David and Christina, that's another story. So they bring in ed for and another character for Albanian. So afterwards, they all turn to Barry Diller, who's this high powered, brilliant, but kind of ruthless executive. And they say, Well, what do you think? And he says, He's okay, but I think you can do better. And I don't really like him, but I and I think, but you guys do what you want. And he leaves the room. He leaves the room, and everybody from Fox and everybody from our studio says he's the guy. We're going to hire him. So after they hire him, they say they're going to hire him, the head, the second highest Fox executive who was in the room. His name is Garth and Sierra. He goes back to his office. Barry Diller calls him, and he says, What would you do? Garth says, we hired Ed O'Neill. And Barry says, I said I didn't like him. Garth says, But you said, do what you want. And Barry Diller says, Well, I didn't really mean it. And so he what he said he couldn't go back on it. But what he did go back on he called the studio the next day, and he said, If you stay with Ed O'Neill, you can stay with Ed O'Neill if you want. But if you do, instead of having 13 on the air, you've got a pilot with an option for 12. So you with your pilot. If you don't prove it to me that he's the guy. You get nothing. If you pick somebody else that I like, you get your 13 on the air. Well, the studio decided to stay, and Ron and Michael created the show, decided to stay with Ed O'Neill, and so they went into the pilot taping, not knowing whether they were going to have just one pilot, or whether they were going to be a series, and Ed himself didn't know it. I mean, Ed, actually, Ed didn't knew that. Barry Diller didn't like him particularly. But it wasn't until he read my book that he knew the fact that they changed the option from 13 on the air to one with an option for 12. And he said he's glad he didn't know that, because if he had known that, it would have been a very tough night. So we shot the pilot. Everybody loved Ed, but okay, but now the casting problem becomes the kids, because in this show, because the parents are so kind of brutally honest and so tough, and so, you know, even though they love their family, it's tough love. The kids came across kind of weak, and so he felt bad for the kids, and the humor didn't land. The humor the vis a vis the kids. So we had to go out. So what we did was we decided to recast the kids and reshoot their scenes. That's when we found David Faustino and Christina Applegate. David had been considered before, but passed on and Christina. Christina herself had passed on the material. She thought it was just not for her, and then she ended up loving it. And so we ended up with the that's how we ended up with the entire cast, including David and Christy. But it wasn't easy. It was fraught with problems. And. When we overcame them,

Jeff Dwoskin 25:01

did anyone else? No, I know Ed didn't know. But was any of the other cast aware that none

Richard Gurman 25:06

of the other cast members knew, because we just figured it would just create too much of a tense I mean, pilot knights themselves are very tense, and you go out there and you don't know if you're going to get laughs or not. I mean, it's not like you've seen these characters over and over, like Seinfeld every week. And then, you know, aha, yeah, yeah, all you have to do is say something in your character. I don't mean all you have to do, but you know what you mainly have to do? And you know, with a pilot, it's like, Who are these people on top of which you're used to seeing, Cosby and family ties, you know, where everybody's nice to each other, and here you have this family who's, you know, rude to each other, you know. And what you find out at the core is that they love each other. So it's a big, big experiment under the best of circumstances, and under the circumstances of married with children. It was particularly edgy because A, the material was so edgy, and B, the whole question of Ed O'Neill was on the line. So that's how we went into the pilot. It's interesting

Jeff Dwoskin 26:05

that they were all worried about Ed O'Neill, and then the original Kelly Tina, kiss Barry, the original bud Hunter, Carson, yes, they end up being the ones. That's got to be a hard conversation, that's got to be a hard pill to like, make it all the way through the pilot, and then, because it's got to be so hard to even get that far. Yeah, I'm

Richard Gurman 26:23

not sure who did that, casting director, maybe, but you know, I mean, it's you could say it's particularly tough on kids because they're kids. You can also say they have their life in front of them, but yes, it must have been very, very hard on them and hard to tell them. And I'm sure a lot of what they were told was similar. What I said was, you did a really good job, but we need, you know, edgier or this or that, but yeah, that must have been a tough one. One of the kids was the dog, the son of Hunter Carson was the son of Karen Black, a show biz Ma, an actor, a famous actress. So anyway, fortunately, we were sort of insulated from those conversations.

Jeff Dwoskin 27:04

Sorry to interrupt. Have to go console a couple kid actors. It didn't get a job, unmarried with children, no. But I do want to thank you all for your support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors, you're supporting us here at Classic conversations, and that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my conversation with Richard Gurman, so David Faustino, who had auditioned and then didn't get it right, what made them and just after shooting the pilot that they realized, oh no, no, that is what we needed. Was it something like that?

Richard Gurman 27:34

He was amongst the people that were memorable. So they brought him back in, and Michael told me that then when, you know, when he auditioned again, he just had this devil in his eye, you know, which is kind of his character, you know, he sort of like, oh, this sweet kid. But, you know, he's, he can, he can be poisoned, too. It just came through. And then he still, he still had to go to the network, as did Christina, and audition with other kids. And, you know, Christina, similarly, had. They had never seen Christina because she hadn't come in to interview, but when they saw her, they saw right away that that she had this sort of, this tough character. You know, it was all you wanted kids that would also give the parents problems, because nothing was going to be easy in this family. And that proved to be true for 11 years. It's

Jeff Dwoskin 28:25

funny when you think back on this cast now, there they were not names then, and they all went on to have such levels of success,

Richard Gurman 28:35

monster careers. I mean, going to do 11 more. You remember children being 11 years is a huge career series for any given actor. The fact that he went into another series that went another 11 years is just is almost unfathomable. And Katie with her biker show, and Christina with dead to me and her movies, I mean, David has forged ahead, and he's done some animated voices, and he's done he's sort of had a hip hop career too. I mean, he didn't take off like the other ones did, but, yeah, it's pretty amazing. They went from absolutely not being known at all to being household names. Like, twice

Jeff Dwoskin 29:18

I grew I mean, like many, like, I grew up how I was introduced to Ed O'Neill or kitty Seagal or Christine Applegate. Was through married with children, but, like, when you watch Ed O'Neill, but then I also lived through the whole Modern Family. Right when you go back and you watch him as Al Bundy, you realize, like, how and Katie, like, you realize, like, how amazing they really were as those characters, like, when you can, you know, I mean, like, because he was so different on my family, what

Richard Gurman 29:45

they brought to it, and how deeply they, you know, I think part of what you're saying is how deeply they, they committed to those characters without winking. You know, they just played those characters knowing that, that, you know, he was telling his son that his car is. Important to him than his son, you know. And you just, with a straight face, and you know, you know that he's, you know, he loves his son, and he'd do anything for him. But, you know, just to go through those, those motions, in those scenes, it's really, it's really a testament to their, their acting ability, and they, and from the standpoint of writers, you know, they gave us. I mean, yeah, we write the scripts and the words are there, and we know what the characters are, but they give you just as much in return and to elevate it, and they also do it in a way that suggests what you might do in the next script or in the in the next scene. I mean, Katie brought all kinds of things to the character that you know we play. We wrote her Michael and Ron wrote her as this as she is, this is kind of lazy, doesn't do housework, sits on the couch, watches TV, Bon Bons and so on so forth. But, and she took that, and then she had this notion that, but she thinks she's kind of cool and she's sexy, and she and she wants to wear, you know, tight pants, and, you know, do a strat and walk a certain way. And she brought all that to the character. And Ed brought his kind of disgruntled, you know, every man, kind of the world on his shoulders. And David had this kind of feisty, I mean, his the whole Hip Hop thing that he brought into it was something that we hadn't thought of, and that was sort of blowing up in the culture. And he brought that to it. And Christina found a way to play a dumb person, smart, is the only way I can say it. And she brought that, you know, and David and Amanda and Ted, you know, had all their qualities too. I don't want to diminish them, but just in terms of the core, core group, you know, the process of making a show, which I talk about in the book, is, you know, you write the scripts. They rehearse. You go watch their rehearsal. You see what they do. You see what doesn't work. You see what they may have added. You change that. And it's this alive process. You keep changing. You keep changing up until last minute. Even during the show, you have an opportunity, if a joke doesn't work in front of the live audience, to change a joke or change a line, and, you know, right up until the last minute. So it's this very alive thing. And you need a responsive cast, and they need a responsive writing staff. You know, like a movie, you gotta wrap. You know, you've got, you've got to finish months before you start shooting it. And I know they, they change stuff right up the last minute. But in this case, you really can't. You really, it really is alive, amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 32:34

All right, so you launch, married with children, everything goes end of season one. Let's see what it said. 100 and 11th of 125 shows, not, not, not great at the time. But, I mean, we know, we know the future. We know the future where it goes on to be mammoth, but people are resonating. People see themselves, because there's something about this counter programming and this parody, but it's like, but it's more real. That's kind of like, I think the joke of it, I mean, it's a real version of real. But, like, yes,

Richard Gurman 33:03

that's a good way to put it. Yeah, people who do like it absolutely love it. So, you know, we're not completely catching on, but two things help us. One is, I mean, it is very low in the whole scale, but we're on Fox, and so in Fox's universe, it was relatively high in their universe, which is a low bar. But you know, that was one thing that sustained us at the end of the first season. So

Jeff Dwoskin 33:29

you have a great story about the counter programming that we were talking about with Season Two with Santa Claus, and the difference between how family ties approached the traditional Christmas episode and how Married with Children approached it. And I just love that story of you guys killing Santa Claus.

Richard Gurman 33:48

Yeah, well, you know, in typical network sitcoms, you know, Santa you know, Christmas time is a time to come and embrace and so on so forth. We, as I mentioned, trying to do some counter programming. As it happens, our Christmas show this year ran at 830 at exactly same time as family ties. Christmas show on family ties. Michael Keaton, Michael J Fox character Alex Keaton gets a job as Santa at a department store, and he befriends this kid and unites the kid with her father, who's who can't be there for Christmas, and somehow they come together at the Keaton family house for a Christmas dinner, you know, very homework Christmas, you know, and very wholesome and married with children, we do have something a little different. They're all sitting around the couch, Marcy and Steve and peg and Al and the kids, and they are and Al is griping that the Santa at the competing mall is for a publicity stunt, is jumping out of an airplane and handing out leaflets for discounts at the mall and there, and it's on TV, and he can't bear to watch it, because it just means more business for the other Mall. And all of a sudden you hear that the plane has gone adrift, that Santa's shoot isn't. Opening and that he's falling under the sky. And then you see behind you this blur, and you see this thud, and you realize that Santa has fallen to his death in the Bundys backyard. And that's our Christmas show. It was a smack in the face, a kick in the groin to the way network television does their show. And in typical fashion, you know, Al never comes out a winner, exactly, even though he's even though it's counter kind of programming, the corner comes and they're taking Santa away, and the kids from the neighborhood are all rushed to the Bundy front door because they saw Santa fall, and they want to know if he's all right or not. So Al has to pretend that he's Santa to prove to the kids that he's all right. So he has to take the suit off of dead Santa, put it on and go out and talk to the kids and pretend he's Santa, and at which point he insults the kids in his own style. But in any event, that was our Christmas show, and just perfect example of the kind of counter programming. And you watch family ties, and you get this wholesome show where, you know, Alex brings two families together, married with children, we kill Santa. So you couldn't get a better example of counter programming than than our Christmas shows. Love

Jeff Dwoskin 36:15

it. And then season three also brought Michigan zone. Terry rakulta, am I saying that? Yeah. So we get a protest going. Sorry that it came from my state. But oddly, it had the kind of negative it had some it sounds like it ruffled a bunch of feathers, but then eventually, kind of actually drew it was sort of the attention that you needed to get a lot of eyeballs Michigan

Richard Gurman 36:40

housewife with political connections watched a particular episode, and there were vibrator jokes, there were stripper jokes, there were negligee and there was, I won't say typical, married fair, but not atypical, either. So she saw a married children episode. She was expecting something else. She complained. She complained to advertisers, and her story just took off. You know, you know, like somebody now, you'd say it was viral. There wasn't internet at the time, or there was very little, but it was on the front page of The New York Times. It was on Nightline, it was on the morning talk shows. All of a sudden, this one woman was taking on this show and the network, and she got to the advertiser. She got to Procter and Gamble. She got to General Motors and Coca Cola, I can't remember exactly which ones, but she got them to say that they would hold back their sponsorship until the network did something about it. And the what the network did was they changed the time slot from 830 to nine, and then they said they'd look at some scripts. But they didn't really do too much. And what happened that Jeff was hinting at was that all of the attention from the news, from the media, got a huge amount of publicity for the show, and a lot of people tuned in that weren't otherwise tuned. It's like, what the hell's going on on married children that this woman is so upset, and what they saw they liked. I mean, they could come and still also be upset, but what they saw they liked, and our ratings took off from there. So she almost got the show canceled, because at the time, we weren't doing that well, and if you get to the advertisers, you can that's the bottom line of the network. So she potentially got us canceled, but she ultimately gave us a huge boost, and we just kind of kept going from there. So we owed a debt of gratitude to her,

Jeff Dwoskin 38:30

because this is now probably 1989 90, yeah. So like you said, I mean, like, no internet, no no social media, yeah, it's impressive, right? I mean, you know, you could do that now, and, like, it wouldn't be as impressive, because you could things can catch fire real fast, right? Because

Richard Gurman 38:48

you could plant it and also be competing with everybody else that was planting everything too. But yes, it was very impressive. And we went from thinking, you know, we might get cancer, we had no idea. You know, apparently that's not an uncommon thing to happen when something gets negative attention and they can have a positive result in the media. But we, no one knew how it would play out with our show, but it played out right. All right.

Jeff Dwoskin 39:13

Thank you, Terry, season four. All right. So well, you're you were gone when David Garrison left, yeah. So David gernson, season four, decides he's gonna leave. So this is kind of disrupts the whole Fab Four kind of momentum you have of the main four characters, good way. And then he's gone in season five and beyond with an occasional guest star. But I get that he just wanted to leave. But, I mean, it's also hard to believe too. I mean, I believe it, but, like, I

Richard Gurman 39:40

know, I mean, it's like most people who are sitcom, if it takes off like that and ended up running 11 years, it's just, it's their gravy train. It's, you know, it's, it's defining. It's exactly what they want. David, bless him, had a Broadway career before this, and he was tired of the. Com life, and he wanted to get back to New York, and he wanted to give get back to his Broadway career, which he did, and he did very well. He was in Wicked he was in a lot of things. And then he also ended up doing a little little TV too. So there was no sense of a, he wasn't fired. B, he had Ron and Michael's blessing to leave. It's difficult when a main character like that leaves, because, and particularly in our case, a lot of the humor of of Al was playing off of Steve. Steve was this yuppie banker. Al is just this down in the down on his luck, shoe salesman, you know, who can barely pay the bills and so on so forth. And Steve drives a Mercedes, and, you know, just aspires to all these things with Marcy, and a lot of the tension between Steve and Al drove the stories. I mean, it was, it was an outlet for Al to unleash his fury, and it was, it was a place you could go to for jokes, and with him leaving, it wasn't just that we lost the character. We lost the character relationship between Al and Steve, which made it difficult. It was eased a little bit by the fact that he agreed to stay for half of the season, and so we could write him out progressively, which we did, and then we didn't add Jefferson until a season later. Two things sort of coincide, after four or five years. The premise of shows, you kind of run out of story. You've done so many of the same stories over and over. Shows tend to get bigger and broader. Ours became even bigger and broader, so to speak, because Steve, in a certain way, grounded, grounded Al, because Al had this target, and his fury was unleashed on Steve. And you could work out the stories through that, not always, but but when Steve left, we found we needed al to have other, more targets. And we we went to the shoe store more, and it was the customers and or it was the phone company, or it was, it was kind of, you know, kind of part of the title al Bondi, marriage zone versus the world. It was, sort of, it sort of became al versus the world. And the show became a little more as off center as it was. It still was kind of grounded and had a certain reality to it, sort of a certain grittiness to it. And right about the time that Steve left, and some of this would have happened anyway, as I said, some shows, most shows, after 456, years, start to get broader. But Steve leaving hastened the broadness of our show. And we still did some great, great shows that were very, you know, we did shows with Martians. We did shows, you know, where they they get stuck in a free you know, they get into fist fights in the middle of a freeway. And, I mean, we still did absolutely great, great shows, but it definitely hastened the broadness of the series. And

Jeff Dwoskin 42:58

then Amanda Beerus starts directing, she she'll go on to direct 30 episodes. And Christina applegates becoming a movie star, right? She's breaking out a little bit as well. Did that impacted it? I know, I know Amanda beers. There was some internal stripes with that. O'Neill,

Richard Gurman 43:13

yeah, I don't think with Christina. I think Christina, you know, she became a movie star. The only thing that I remember it was much later, around the ninth or the 10th season, she came back from having done a movie, and she had her hair completely cut short, and she wanted to stay with the short hair. And we just thought that, because she had just done so well in this movie. I forget what movie it was, but we actually had her get a wig, which she obliged. Christina was never a problem in that regard, what happened with Amanda and Ed and you know this, I wasn't gonna write about it that much, but I ended up writing about it because it's, it's in the news, it's in it's, it's not a secret. A lot of times when actors have an artistic bent and they they use their acting time on the stage as a training ground for them to become a director. And so Amanda had aspirations to be a director, and what better training ground than than right there, and she even took some courses and so on. So she she negotiated a deal where she got to Direct X number of episodes per season, and after she proved herself that first season, then she got more and more and more and more, and she was actually a very, a very good director. What happened was it sort of threw ed off and the balance of the relationships off, because here Amanda was this fifth character in an ensemble where Ed was the king, and all of a sudden, she's giving him directions on what to do and how to do it. She's the director, and she has to, and he's professional, and he's gotta, he's, he's got to do it. So it hastened. They had a decent relationship up up to that time, but it caused friction between the two of them. They ended up sort of dancing around each other. If. The rest of the the rest of the series, really, and some of it, and said, was very specific to episodes, to certain ways that she was directing, and that, you know, he said he would have told any director to do it differently, but he he admits that that part of it was having to listen to her, and instead of her being part of an ensemble. She was, you know, she was the head voice on the set. Then the other thing that happened that I reference in the book is that that caused bad blood between Amanda and Edison. Amanda came out as being gay very early in in Hollywood history, four years before Ellen and and she was very accepted on the set, and she was very upfront about it, and she's very outspoken about it, and was very much a role model for other people in the industry. And it didn't affect her character, pretty much, you know, I mean, if you knew she was gay, I mean, there's so many actors that are gay, it's not like you can't play straight characters. And she kept playing it the way she was playing it, but she didn't invite ed to the wedding. I mean, there was always already a little bad blood between them, so she didn't invite ed to the wedding. And he sat her down and he said, and it was causing friction on the set. And we had them talk it through. She said, you know, Ed, I just thought when my bride to be spouse, to be and I were walking down the the aisle in church in matching white tuxedos that you wouldn't the reason I didn't invite you was that I thought you wouldn't been able to stop racking up and just making a scene. And I didn't want that at my wedding. So Ed took Umbridge, and he says, What are you talking about? You know, two women walking down the aisle in white, tuxed. And then he started to picture that in his head. And he started laughing out loud right then, as we were talking. And then he said, You know something, Amanda, you were probably right in not for your wedding. He was honest about it. You know, from that point on there, there was definitely, you know, as there is on some shows as bad blood, but they were both very professional, and they played their scenes like Al and and Marcy. I mean, they they had a rivalry on the set as well. And they were very professional, you know. I mean, there's some bad blood between them, but it wasn't like it was gonna have to cancel the show or anything like that. That story. Thank

Jeff Dwoskin 47:24

you for sharing that. That's so alright. So Ron and Michael running the show, and then Michael Lee's Ron runs it. Michael Lee's Ron comes back. And then season 10, they hand you the keys with Kim Weiskopf, how was, how did it feel to like, Finally, be kind of,

Richard Gurman 47:40

it was tough. It was like, and I think I use this phrase in the books, it's like, I was a substitute teacher. I mean, the cast was so I mean, first of all, historically, people who create shows stay with shows for a few years. They don't always stay as long as Ron and Michael did, but they did stay with the show, and they were brilliant at what they did, and the cast imprinted on them. And they doing a show, being an actor in front of, you know, it can be a very insecure thing. Ron and Michael instills a lot of confidence in them. So all of a sudden, Ron and Michael were gone. Michael was a consultant, and I was running the show with this guy, Kim, Kim Weiskopf, a fine writer who had been on the show the year or two before. So the cast was a little testy, and start feeling that maybe the scripts weren't, you know, quite the same. And, you know, and we had Michael to back us up and and, you know, we got through it. And was a bumpy year, and one of the decisions that we made that caused the bumpiness was we had always had Katie's parents from this wanker County, which was this fictional, you know, Dog Patch, kind of, you know, where everyone married their cousin and so on. It was just like, you know, there's kind of this crazy backwoods County, and we could make jokes about them off camera, about who was doing what, to whom, and where, and so on, so forth. But we brought them. We brought her father and her mother. The mother never appeared. She was She stayed upstairs, but the Father, we brought them in front of the camera, and I think that that was one of the mistakes that we had. And the the other thing is that at ninth, 10th year of a show, it's just, it's hard to keep it fresh, and, you know, and so that, combined with neither Ron nor Michael running the show, you know, made for a bumpy year, but they were still ultimately very professional, and we did a lot of great shows, and we got through it.

Jeff Dwoskin 49:26

I think you're awesome. It was, I think it was all it was all great. It's funny. Like, when you I think when you're living through a moment, like, I always say that, we always say like, like, when you're watching Seinfeld at the end, it was like, you know, but it's like any show, but if you watch it now and you don't know what season it was. You just enjoy the show, you know? I mean, it's only when you're like, kind of watching it, comparing it real time, or is, you know, real season, this season, once you kind of look back, you're like, oh, you know, the awesomeness is always there. Thank you. Okay, then we have season 11. That's the end. And then no finale. They kind of pulled the rug out. Yeah. Yeah,

Richard Gurman 50:00

season 11, I pulled back. I was just consulting, and this very funny woman, Pam eils, came in, and she ran the show for season 11, and then they had moved the time slots around, and the ratings were kind of going down, but they never couldn't make a decision about the idea that they were going to cancel the show. Usually, when a show runs 11 seasons, you get the opportunity and it gets canceled. Seinfeld, you know, a lot of show you get the opportunity to do a finale, to do a closing episode that kind of wraps things up. For better or worse, they're often not that good, by the way. New Art was great. Seinfeld, not so great, but it gives closure to both the actors and the feeling is also to the audience. So there wasn't enough time to make that decision. They canceled the show without doing a final episode. And in fact, the actors didn't even find out that they were canceled until months later, and they found out through weird sources. Ed was on vacation someplace, and a honeymooning couple said they had heard it on the radio. Katie was was on a TV show, and someone told her, as was Christina. And by then, by now, at this point, there's a lot of internet presence. You know, there wasn't the beginning, but you know, there's and you get fans saying, you know, they were cheated out of the final episode, and so on and so forth. So there was no opportunity to have a final episode. There were a couple of episodes that I felt and I talk about in the book that gives some closure, a show where Christina almost gets married, and it's called off, but she's ends up being proud to be a Bundy in a way that isn't usually discussed on the series. And part of the impetus of the book was to give some closure, to talk about kind of what happened behind the scenes, and to let fans look back on it, and, you know, sort of take a breath and just sort of get the big picture that they they sort of never got. Yeah, I mean, there was a bit of a kerfuffle about not having a final show, but the actors and they all felt there was, it's kind of a maliciousness on the part of the then and it's sort of a little Rodney Dangerfield that we don't get enough respect to have a final show. I'm sure some of it was a business decision, you know as well that they they really couldn't figure it out at the time. So anyway, it kind of fell through the cracks, and a lot of fans were upset about it.

Jeff Dwoskin 52:18

Well, those fans can take solace in your book, everyone, go get it. Married with Children versus the world, the inside story of the shot comm that launched Fox man changed TV. Comedy forever. Longest title ever. Richard, longest title ever. Well,

Richard Gurman 52:33

I think Married with Children versus the world becomes the good. I love it. Yeah, thanks for being so informed on your questions, too. I appreciate it.

Jeff Dwoskin 52:41

Oh, hey, I love reading the book, and it's great topic, and you're awesome, and thanks for sharing all your stories. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, how amazing was Richard Gurman, are you ready? Ready to re binge all of married with children. I know you are. Grab the book, married with children versus the world, the inside story, the shotgun that launched Fox and change TV comedy, forever, forever, forever, forever. I can't afford actual effects, hey. But anyway, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway. So um, Mary, if you haven't watched married with children, definitely now's a good time to binge watch that as well. So I'll put a link to the book in the show notes. Wow, that interview just kind of flew by, huh? It's over. I know that means the interview is over. The show is this episode's over. I huge thank you again. It's Richard Gurman for sharing so many great stories with us, and a huge thank you to all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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