#341 Grease 2, Bachelor Party, and TJ Hooker: A Cool Ride with Adrian Zmed

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

alright, Michelle, 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 341 of classic conversations, as always, I am your host. Jeff Dwoskin, great to have you back for what's sure to be a rockin good time. My guest today is none other than Adrian Zmed. We're diving deep into grease two TJ Hooker and so much more, and that is coming up in just a few seconds, and in these few seconds, do not miss my conversation with Jane Badler Diana from V sci fi legend. Do not miss that episode. But right now, do not miss my amazing conversation with Adrian Zmed. We're talking grease two TJ hooker, the Cubs and so much more enjoy. All right, everyone. I'm excited to introduce my next guest, actor, singer, star of stage and screen. Large increase too. TJ hooker. And so much more excited to introduce you to my guest today. Adrian Zmed. Hello. Hello, everybody. How are you?

Adrian Zmed 1:40

I am good, busy, busy times at this medhouse, my son's getting married at the end of the month. That is exciting, yeah, and I'm coming into New York to honor the director of Grease 2. She's being giving a lifetime award, so I'm rushing into Manhattan this weekend to help present the award to her.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:59

Oh, okay, so, all right. So Patricia birch, yeah. Pat birch,

Adrian Zmed 2:03

yeah. He was the original choreographer of the Broadway show, and then went on to choreograph hundreds and hundreds of productions after that. And of course, she directed Grease 2,

Jeff Dwoskin 2:15

love grease, two, my wife wanted to she's on my calendar. She's like, you're talking to Adrian Zmed. Tell them, I dance to back to school again. She was a dancer.

Adrian Zmed 2:25

You know that back to school? That's the opening number of the show. In my opinion, one of the best openings of a music movie musical ever, next to chorus line. It's just a magnificent opening. It introduces every single character laugh. It's like an epic. It's like an opera lasts forever and with little vignettes of dialog in between all the singing and the dancing and stuff. Very underrated opening sequence, in my opinion. It's really a terrific opening to a musical.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:55

I just rewatched threes two because I knew we were going to talk. Anytime you get an excuse to watch anything. Take it right? So it's and I agree it is. It's a great opening. It's a super fun movie. I know you were Danny on Broadway before Grease 2.

Adrian Zmed 3:12

Oh, God, was I Jeff? I can't. Grease is my life. It's just I did the original in the 70s. That was the second national tour. And then I probably was about the seventh Danny Zuko on Broadway in the late 70s. And then, and then I did another tour of it in the 80s. And then I did the Tommy Tune revival in the 80s. And I did that for almost six, six years.

Jeff Dwoskin 3:35

You were Danny Zuko, like you said, in 72 so you were like, well, not that early.

Adrian Zmed 3:40

I was actually still in school at the time, but it was 76 that I took the second national tour on, and then a year later, I was on Broadway doing it. Fact that that particular tour we were in LA on when they were filming the movie. We were at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, which is pretty exciting, because they were, you know, shooting the movie of this Broadway musical. And honestly, a lot of people didn't know that much about Grease. It was really the movie that kind of, like, introduced it to the whole world, in a way. It was, of course, enormously popular at that time. It had already been running in 76 by about five to six years. 7677 opening night, the movie cast came to see our our opening night at the Pantages Theater, and they brought up the whole cast on stage at the end of our our bows. And that's actually when I met everybody from the from the movie, plus I actually knew a lot of them from the original grease because, like Barry Pearl, who was a T bird, and of course, Johnny, we had the same manager, so I knew Johnny well before that and stuff. And that's also when I first met Olivia, too.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:44

That's amazing. That must have been quite a experience to be doing the play and then, yeah, cash show up. That just sounds a little intimidating, but also amazing.

Adrian Zmed 4:54

It was both exactly that, you know, it was intimidating and and and exciting at the. At the same time. And it's funny, I wanted more than anything, to get on Broadway with the show, and then when I was there, I was actually offered the Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat after doing it a year on Broadway, and I wanted to do it. I mean, that things were really popping for me at the time, and my manager said, Adrian, it's time for you to go to Hollywood. This is your time. I said, No, I don't want to do television or film. I'm a stage actor. This is all I want to do. Trust me, Broadway will be there for you when you want it to be there. I listened to him, and it all worked out just great. I did a lot of television, a lot of film, and then when I wanted to go back to Newark, it was still there. And I honestly, I do more theater now than I do television or film these days. Still,

Jeff Dwoskin 5:46

I get the impression theater has always been in your heart, your most passionate thing.

Adrian Zmed 5:51

No I ever wanted to do. I just I knew that it's what I wanted to do once I did my first high school production and I said, Hey, I'm good at this, and I really love it and enjoy it. I want to perfect my craft and continue to all I ever expected out of acting was maybe to be in a rep company like the Milwaukee Rep or or something like that, close to Chicago, my hometown and all, and maybe even just working. There's a lot of theater per capita in Chicago, you know, compared to New York. Too Little did I know? It just whisked me away. I thought I was just going to be like a draftsman in an architecture company, because I studied architecture when I was in high school. I went to a technical high school, and Grease came along, literally the year I graduated from the Goodman School of Drama whisked me away. I ended it up fulfilling my my dream, and also going and doing a lot of television and film in Hollywood. But glad I returned to to theater. The theater is, I would say that the film is the director's medium, the television is the producer's medium, and the stage is the actor's medium, because once the curtain goes up, it's just the actors on stage. Nobody can say cut. Nobody can say do it again. You just got to keep going and get it done. There's just nothing like it in the world. It's truly the most exciting, exhilarating feeling in the world. It's incredible, especially Broadway show that's a hit.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:13

I can't imagine I do. I've done stand up for quite some time. So okay, I know seeing the thrill of being up there, and, yeah, I can see the allure for, you know, for you, because it's like, it's so immediate to be able to, you know, you film a movie like Reese, too, you never really hear the reaction they're watching it. You're not there. It

Adrian Zmed 7:31

took about, you know, we shot it a year and a half later. They finally, you know, released it, and then you hear reactions in the audience and stuff. It's not the same. It's just not the same. And you can't again. You're not in control of really, what's up on that screen, other than what you allow, allow the director to have in terms of your takes and stuff. If you don't like it, you say, Please give me one more. Please give me one more, and you hope that they use the one that you like. You just don't, you know, what they're going to use. It's really kind of out of your hands these days. I'd actually rather be behind the camera if it's going to be something in television or film, and I'd rather be on stage if I'm doing theater. Couple

Jeff Dwoskin 8:12

questions, one is, still have great hair, but, yeah, your hair was killer in Grease 2. That's quite a pompadour.

Adrian Zmed 8:21

Yeah, I was the king of the pump, and that's all me too. You know, remember, they wanted to actually put up a Merkin, hot pompadour on my head. I know what to do, you know, just let me, let me play with it. And to this day, I just go into the show, when I come out, when whoosh goes into the pompadour, all by itself, after all, yeah. I mean, I must have at least 10 years of performances of Danny Zuko under my belt when you put all of the tours that I've done in all the Broadway productions that I've done. In fact, the writer of Jim Jacobs of Grease, calls me Robo Zuko. I never missed a shot ever, except when I broke my ankle, and that's a long story. On stage,

Jeff Dwoskin 9:03

you broke your ankle while playing Danny Zuko, yeah, yeah,

Adrian Zmed 9:07

it was the original production, but when I did the Tommy Tune revival, I never missed a show for about six years. Yeah, that one was a weird thing. I don't know if you've ever heard of the ghost of the National Theater in Washington, DC, there's actually a PBS special on it. And quite a few famous, famous actors over the decades have actually were on that PBS special and all. And I believe it was the ghost of the national theater that put something in my way that never, was ever, ever, ever there after having done it for two years, and it was just weird. And broke my ankle, and I could swear that I just saw this entity off stage that looked like not human, but something that was there and all and again, it's a PBS special goes to the National Theater, and that was the only time I ever missed and I lost missed about two months at that time. Um, of doing it, doing the show, but it was weird. Who was

Jeff Dwoskin 10:03

paying off this ghost who went after you, then, let's follow the money.

Adrian Zmed 10:07

Well, yeah, really. Apparently this ghost, uh, was at the turn of the century, was an actor in a show there, and it was a classic Shakespearean show, and they had a running poker game underneath the stage, and he was shot underneath stage during a performance, and he just keeps haunting that theater. That's all I can say. That's amazing. Honestly, if people should look it up, the ghost of the National Theater, it's actually pretty interesting and very hair raising. You know, it really I won't step foot in that theater ever again.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:40

Oh, I believe in hauntings. We I used to work at this comedy club called the holly hotel in Michigan, and it was haunted. It was a known haunted locale. Oh, wow. So when you did, you did Dan Zuko when you were 40 for the revival,

Adrian Zmed 10:58

a teenager in my 40s,

Jeff Dwoskin 11:00

Forever Young was, I guess it's that's the beauty of of acting. Were you the oldest one at the cast at the time? Or was it all actors around your same age? No,

Adrian Zmed 11:10

no. In that production, the Tommy Tune production, they, the producers, had a gimmick of bringing in a Rizzo once every every year. And it started with the Rosie O'Donnell, and then it was Brooke Shields. The list is absolutely endless. And some of some of the rizzos were were around close to my age at time, but to tell you the truth, yeah, I was probably the oldest one in the cast. Yeah, I'm used to being in so many productions and the chorus being young, so I'm just used to working with young people all the time. It was also one of the frustrating things of being an actor, of working with young actors who had just gotten their actress, their union card. I just couldn't understand why somebody would audition like crazy and eventually get like for example, they wanted me to take the after I did Broadway. They begged me to take the tour out, because I I was so well educated with Grease, I knew everything about Grease, and they knew that I would be an asset on the road, and I could keep things in shape. And I went through in the four to five years that I was on tour with it, then I went through, this is not the course I'm talking about. I went through 57 principles in those three four years. And I just didn't understand why somebody who didn't even have an equity card would come to the tour be a pink lady or a tea bird for six months and then leave without having another job. It was just kind of like that new generation of, oh, I need to do something else now kind of a thing, and in my day, your your goal was to get, you know, into a huge hit and then run it out as long as you can. Because productions in our business don't last very long. There's always an ending to a production that you do, whether it's television, film or Broadway. And even if Broadway is a huge hit and last for over 10 years, there's still an end to a show. So I just thought, you just cherish it, but no, but they're all still both casts the original and the Tommy Tune casts all dear, dear family friends of mine to this day. And we do zooms all the time, like what I'm doing with you. There's a thing of like 30 people in little thumbnail pictures in our zoom calls, and we just catch up every couple of months see how everybody's doing. Did you contribute

Jeff Dwoskin 13:28

to that book? Edgar and Barbeau was part of with the grease memories going all the way back? Yeah,

Adrian Zmed 13:33

I'm in the book. Okay, yeah, my story, some of my stories are in the book. That was a big compilation of all of us in the Zoom stuff and saying, Hey, we're going to do this. Get your stuff going. Tom Moore, who directed the original, would talk to us and coach us on the stories and everything. And then we all submitted our stories. And then it was really Adrian who edited, you know, put it all together, and Tom who oversaw it. It was really fun. It's actually a, if there's anything that's like a it's like a running diary, is what it is, a running diary of stories of this show that was this phenomenal hit that broke box office records in the 70s. And of course, you know, the grease one, and you know, was one of the biggest grossing movies of all time. And and Grease 2, didn't do too badly. In fact, it does better now than it did when it first premiered. Tell you the truth, in video and in rentals and all, it actually outsells and out rents Grease. One today. It's a little more kid friendly. It is a

Jeff Dwoskin 14:32

little more kid friendly. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it came out right. I think it made like 15 million the critics were not kind, but it would, but it did go on to become a cult classic. It's like, solidified, yeah. Do you want to know what my favorite line from the movie is that my brother and I, we always say, if someone brings up grease two, yeah, what it's it's Dodie Goodman, if someone brings up grease two, it's just the first thing that pops in our mind that goes, I.

Adrian Zmed 15:01

Oh, Dodie. Dodie was just a treasure. And Dodie Dodie was exactly that. That's exactly the way she was off camera. The person you saw on camera that was Dodie. She was such a wonderful, kind, sweet lady. And it's very, very funny. It was, it was actually to work with her, to check with work with Eve Arden and Sid Caesar and Connie Stevens Tab Hunter. It was just a joy to work with those pros.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:27

So grease is in your blood, your Danny Zuko touring Broadway, and then they offer you Grease 2 comes up.

Adrian Zmed 15:33

It wasn't just an offer, believe me. I worked hard at getting. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 15:37

what I mean is, Was it, was it a hard that? Was it a hard decision. But, I mean, Grease was at the time, was so iconic, got into the sequel to, like to be part of a sequel. It seemed like it would have been great at the same time, but also been like, oh, you know, it's a sequel to, like, the expectations that have been so high,

Adrian Zmed 15:57

yeah. I mean, we were all under the gun there. And, God, I'm actually glad it was really Maxwell and Michelle on the cover, and kind of like all of the pressure was really more on them. And honestly, there wasn't very much pressure on me, other than to put my Danny Zuko on film and have fun. And Pat birch gave me carte blanche with that show. She just let me do whatever I wanted to do. And eventually, when I went overboard, she said, that's a little too much. Adrian, she was, again, I think I mentioned to you, I don't know whether it was on camera or it was just before we, we went on and you were taping, but we're honoring Pat birch for a Lifetime Achievement Award in theater and as incredibly well deserved and all and I, she was my, my champion. They they wanted because Maxwell and and Michelle really weren't huge stars at that time. They needed other than the teachers who were iconic stars, you know, in their own right, they wanted a rock star in my role. The producers, Robert Stigwood and to Alan Carr Pat wanted me to do Johnny badly. She knew after, after all the grease that I had done, that I would be able to, kind of, like infuse the Broadway show into the T birds, if I was one of the T birds and everything. And she just strategically put me. She would send me into audition every time they auditioned a rock star right after they went in, the one who was the front runner to to become Johnny. And I would always outdo them, and every time they said, All right, it's still his. All right, it still is. About 10 auditions later, I finally, they finally said, All right, it's his. It was a grueling time, and it was exciting and it was scary, because, you know, how is this going going to turn out? You know, you think about it, it was really quite a daring thing that they were trying to do. It's two years later, all the teachers are the same. The school's the same shot at the same school. The only difference are the T birds and the pink ladies. And they just reversed Danny and Sandy in terms of one being from, you know, Olivia was from Australia, Maxwell was from England and stuff. So it was a reversal of the roles and stuff. And it was really kind of ingenious how they they did it, and kept the teachers as the ones that you remember from the first movie. And again, it wasn't a proven hit on Broadway. So this was really scary, because you just didn't know what people like the songs. The first one was a proven hit at that point, almost 10 years by the time it was released. Again, as you said, the critics you know, were not kind to it, but the generations of past several decades have discovered it. And I have kids who are five years old who come up to me, and they do start singing prowling or score tonight. It's just kind of amazing. It's kind of like, you're, you're immortal. That's the difference between theater and television and film. You're, you're kind of like immortalized. And it's, I'm glad I was have been able to do both in my career.

Jeff Dwoskin 18:53

Grease two is one of those movies that you just like. The more you watch

Adrian Zmed 18:58

it, you discover a lot of things with it. The more you see it. Some

Jeff Dwoskin 19:02

movies you have to watch, like, I didn't get Pulp Fiction admittedly, the first time, then it became one of my favorite albums. Sure, if someone were ever to say, like Grease 2, really, I'm like, You need to watch it again. You need to just go watch it one more time.

Adrian Zmed 19:14

And then a lot of people have said the same thing. Is what you're saying? Yeah. Do

Jeff Dwoskin 19:18

you remember any of the rock stars I read the Tom Cruise audition for Johnny Nagar alley. Anyone else? Do you remember? Of note that, Oh

Adrian Zmed 19:26

God, I remember going in after Andy Gibb, the one of the Gibb brothers, Casey and the sun. Casey, from Casey and the sunshine. I remember he was there for a bit. Honestly, it's all a blur to me at this point, it was just so intense. It was all done in in within a two to three week period of, you know, you'd audition and then go home and they say, you're still in contention. You're still in contention. They're not giving it to you yet and just going in and out. But I, you know, those are some of the ones that I kind of remember. They tried to avoid me being in the room when they would leave. The room, but I would see on the list when I would sign in. You know, the thing that I was I was there as to who had just been there? But, yeah, so you had mentioned time with Cruz. He was one of

Jeff Dwoskin 20:09

them. Yeah, I found I was on the internet, but I like you doing prowling with the other T birds on solid gold. Yeah,

Adrian Zmed 20:20

yeah. I mean, Dionne Warwick was the host of solid gold at the time for you know that song. A little quick story about that. That song, we were so over budget and late in shooting Grease 2, that really we we pretty much ran out of time and just had a few days left to tie up all the loose ends that needed to be shot. And the last song, you know how in movie musicals, you have to record it first, and then they play it back on camera. And so you lip sync to what you do. And that's another art in itself. Lip Syncing you actually really have to sing out if you're really going to look like you're actually singing the song when you're lip syncing on film. That song was the last song that we recorded, and there were only a few days left of of shooting, and Pat came up to me and said, Adrian, I'm sorry. I know this is one of your songs, but it's probably we're just going to shoot the tail end of it at the talent show and but it'll be on the record. And then they heard it, and everybody across the board said, Oh my god, this is probably one of the best songs in the show, especially you listen to the lyrics are ridiculous, yeah, you know, with as a fee male butcher, with best tongue and tongue, see, it's just, it's just nice. Night and day. It's just brilliant for a high school kid to be saying these things, if there's an innocence and a naughtiness about it, but it's not nasty or awful. You know, most kids don't even know what we're saying in the lyrics, but they Pat's and everybody said, We've gotta, we gotta shoot it. I don't know how we're gonna do it, but we're gonna shoot it. So we literally had a 24 hour period to shoot an entire number, which is unheard of, to shoot an entire musical number in a movie in 24 hours. For example, the the bowling sequence, the score tonight, took four weeks to shoot that and quite a few broken ankles because of the the gutters, and people stepping in the gutters and spinning out, stepping on them and then falling and stuff like that. Pat knew that we were shooting the the gas station sequence that night, and he said, we're going to start the song there, and then we're going to rush back to the to the the high school, which became a little mini movie studio because we all had lockers there, and we our motorhomes were all there and stuff like that, and we finished it as if we were rehearsing it on stage. That's how we managed to do it in that 24 hour period. And I mostly choreographed everything that I I choreographed everything that I did and that because Pat was busy with the director of photography trying to figure out how to shoot it and the logistics of actually getting it done. It was really an exciting 24 hour period. It was like doing live theater, because it was so immediate and had to be done. And we didn't have a lot of takes to do it. We literally had to do everything in one take, every camera angle that that she came up with. It was just no room for error. It was pretty exciting time.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:19

That's awesome. It made it in the movie Pat's right, winning the award just for that, and then some other stuff. That's

Adrian Zmed 23:24

the kind of stuff she she does. One of the things about Pat, and one of the things I'm going to say to her when I helped present the award for her, is, uh, she's a master at taking your talent, what makes you unique, and exploiting it, making it even better than what you can bring to it. I just I'll never forget how I watched her pull a magnificent performance out of Michelle Pfeiffer. When she did cool rider, she was terrified of doing a musical. She had never done a musical, and Pat just pulled out. And I just saw her working with her hour after hour on, just letting her body improv, improv and do things and say, okay, okay, that's good. That's good. Now do it a little bit further, put your arms up here and say she would develop it and pull it out of you and all. That's the kind of director she was and kind of and that's that's the same with her choreography. She just took what you did naturally and made it better. Quite brilliant. Very few directors work that way.

Jeff Dwoskin 24:24

No, in defense of Grease 2, when we say it only made 15 million, and the expectations were against Grease, which made like 100 million, or something like that, the weekend that you guys came out

Adrian Zmed 24:34

Grease, one I think made 180 180 and I think we, we made around when all was said and done around 70 to 80 million is from what I remember least. I may be

Jeff Dwoskin 24:43

wrong. It was just in those early times. I'm just, I'm just reading IMDb, so you're probably right.

Adrian Zmed 24:49

It's the end. I'm saying that the even when the video generation started, it still, still was picking up, even at that time,

Jeff Dwoskin 24:57

I was gonna say was when you guys came out. You guys came out. Against et Star Trek to Rocky three and poltergeist. So it was a, it was a pretty heavy weekend,

Adrian Zmed 25:07

yeah, yeah. And it's funny, I was actually doing TJ hooker at that time, and Bill was opening, you know, in his movie. That same weekend, we had dueling movies, and he'd make fun of me all the time. So we're going to kick your ass the box office.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:22

Well, Star Trek two was the greatest Star Trek movie of all time. So it was brilliant. It was, yeah, I want to talk about TJ Hooker and William Shatner, but I did want Michelle Pfeiffer was had moved on from you in the movie. She was done with Johnny, yeah, but you got to spend a lot of time with Lorna Luft Judy Garland's daughter. Oh,

Adrian Zmed 25:41

still a dear, dear friend. I became very I got close to Lorna, and still am quite close. She probably she had the best voice of the entire cast, and she had very few blinds to sing in the show. She should have had her own song. She truly had the best voice of the entire cast. To be perfectly honest, she had a better voice than her mom and her sister. She's amazing. She's quite amazing. Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 26:06

she only she had little parts in the songs. Yeah, right.

Adrian Zmed 26:10

I mean, you know, she had that little soft voice that she used all the time, and then all of a sudden, the middle of score tonight,

Speaker 1 26:16

Hey, Johnny, Johnny come just not be a baby tonight.

Adrian Zmed 26:23

It was like, Holy mackerel just came out of her.

Jeff Dwoskin 26:27

Was it true that this was meant to be the start of multiple sequels and like a TV show like this was they were going to turn this into a whole kind of thing when they revived Grease, with Grease 2? Yes,

Adrian Zmed 26:39

I think that they wanted it to just to go on and on and there be a grease three and a franchise, because actually, that's when franchises were starting, back in the 70s and 80s, and they wanted it to be that. But I guess we didn't do as much as they wanted at the box office, and it just never came to be. Look, they have been wanting to do another they've been wanting to do a remake of John and Olivia's grease, first grease for years. At one point, Britney Spears is going to play Sandy. It just it's been on and off and on and off for years. And I think eventually they just all thought, why fix it? If it ain't broke, you can't really make it any better than what it was

Jeff Dwoskin 27:18

right to begin. I hate when they remake movies like when they do, like Grease Live on TV, where it's kind of a theatrical thing, yeah,

Adrian Zmed 27:25

that's that's a different thing, because they're actually doing the the theater version of it. And, you know, the theater version is different than the than the original first movie, number one, Grease, was meant for adults, not for children. When it premiered on Broadway, it was wrong. She and there was a lot of swearing and a lot of gestures, of Fu and all that kind of stuff and everything, even the subject matter, it's about Rizzo possibly being pregnant, Sandy kind of changes into a little bit of a slutty girl to for the end for it's almost completely unpolitically correct in so many ways, but Jim Jacobs, who wrote it, is one of my dearest friends to this day. We're both from Chicago and Die Hard Cubs fans. I talk to him all the time, and he walks to his mailbox and pulls out a stack of residuals from a production that's somewhere in the world of Grease to this day. And I say he's the luckiest guy in the world. He's

Jeff Dwoskin 28:20

just amazing. Sorry to interrupt. I have to take a quick break. I want to thank all of you 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 amazing conversation with Adrian Zmed. Let's talk a little more cubs. I love the Cubs. My I mean, from Detroit, so I like to, I love the Tigers, but

Adrian Zmed 28:44

I see, I see your Tigers at, yeah, I do. But

Jeff Dwoskin 28:47

growing up, though, and like, my brand was in Chicago, so we would go to Wrigley Field all the time, only bleachers. We'd only ever sit in the bleachers. That was his thing. And it was, like, it was the greatest. It was great.

Adrian Zmed 28:58

I grew up five blocks from Wrigley Field, and I spent my youth if I couldn't get into the bleachers, I was out on Waveland or Sheffield Avenue with my mitt waiting for the balls to come over the fence. One of the great, great, incredible moments of my life was I started playing softball with a team called the Hollywood all stars. And we used to go around to Major League Baseball parks to play a game before the the night game for a charity of of that local ball team. And we did it in Chicago. And we played the 69 Mets in Wrigley Field. And I played center field my my big idols from when I was a child growing up, Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Glen Beckert, Billy Williams, they were all on that team, and I played, I played, I played baseball against them in Wrigley Field. It was just one of the greatest moments in my life. Fact that I've got a in my office, I have, like, pictures of some of the stuff from that day, specifically,

Jeff Dwoskin 29:59

that's awesome. Um, that is really cool. It was a great, great fun. But

Adrian Zmed 30:03

the bleachers, the bleachers are the place to to sit in Wrigley Field, yeah, because you can't wait for the home run ball to come into the bleachers from the opposing team and throw it back. We originated that the left field bleacher bumps originated throw it back. Throw it back, and you you were pressured to throw it back. Course, you wouldn't throw a Chicago cub ball back. You'd keep that one. I

Jeff Dwoskin 30:28

remember that very, very well, man. So you know, you know how your phone knows what you're doing, because it listens to you and stuff. So I my phone knows I'm going to be talking to Adrian Zmed so on Tiktok. What pops up out of nowhere, literally, like days ago, this cool rider, I guess it's a, it's a play that they've been doing for 10 years in London,

Adrian Zmed 30:48

in the UK, yeah, yeah. I was actually in the UK doing a production of La cajo fall just before the pandemic. So I know, I know a lot about that show, yeah, yeah. Because

Jeff Dwoskin 30:57

it was, it was just, it was a clip of a woman who was reprising her role singing, cool writer,

Adrian Zmed 31:03

oh, I actually haven't seen that. I haven't seen it. You say it's on Instagram, or Tiktok,

Jeff Dwoskin 31:06

Tiktok, at least Tiktok. It's

Adrian Zmed 31:08

on Tiktok, yeah? And I think Maxwell is going back this year to play it a teacher, Mr. Stewart, yeah, Mr. Stewart, in their the one that they're doing this year, that was Tab Hunter, right? Yeah, now, great guy.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:24

He was awesome. So, so Maxwell Caulfield's going from to he'll be singing reproduction, which is another such a great song. Come on, is it? It's so clever. I love that song. It was a matter of fact, when my daughter, when my wife, was, you know, getting all excited and talking about, oh, I danced to back to school again, and then she pulled up. I don't know why she chose to pull up reproduction to play for my daughter, but that's the song she pulled up. And so, yeah, it's great. So I guess my only follow up question is, is it really Christopher McDonald going, where does the ball in Go?

Adrian Zmed 31:58

That's, that's, that's Chris. Oh yeah, that is crazy. Where does the ball and go? Yeah, yeah, we did that point. I you know, a little side note on that boy. We got very horny while we were filming that thing. Oh my goodness, yeah. The whole song's about sex. I mean,

Jeff Dwoskin 32:22

and metaphors. If I remove, to remove back to school again and prowling from the list which ones then fall into your favorites. I'm just trying to remove the obvious ones because I'm sure like you love

Adrian Zmed 32:32

those. It literally has to be prowling because of the story behind it that I told you. It was the song that almost did not get into the movie. And because we worked, the T birds and I and Pat birch and the crew, worked, you know, that in that 24 hour period to make it happen. So it wasn't just that was a really fun and great song, everything it was, it was the effort. It was truly a team effort to actually make that thing, make it into the movie.

Jeff Dwoskin 33:02

Do you have a second choice just for one that you enjoy, that you're like, Oh, that's a great song, soundtrack wise, yeah,

Adrian Zmed 33:07

well, I look at it and I remember every second of shooting and stuff like that. But I have to admit that doing the whole it was, it took, like I said, for four weeks to shoot that whole bowling sequence, the scene and the song, I mean, score tonight was pretty fun to do, doing these slides down a bowling alley. Everybody wants to do that.

Jeff Dwoskin 33:27

Yeah, that that's, that's a great number. You know, many times I had to

Adrian Zmed 33:31

do that knee slide because I had to hit a mark. You know that you have to in acting if you walk into a room the camera is in focus for a certain spot, for when you stop, and you have to kind of out of your peripheral vision see where you're stopping. Well, I had to do a nice slide from one end of the bowling alley to the other end of the bowling alley. I had to go down at the right spot, protect practice it so many times to even get close to where the mark is. And then they start rolling the cameras. 50 takes later, I finally hit the mark.

Jeff Dwoskin 34:02

How greased up was that floor?

Adrian Zmed 34:05

It was greased up with my bloody knees. It's really I already had. I had broken my my leg in high school, and already had a bad knee. I thought my career, that particular, my right knee was always a problem for me, I was I could barely walk after, after doing all those 50 knee slides, and I had so much I've always had to favor my my left leg throughout all the productions that I've done in musical theater. I've been doing musical theater for over 40 years. At this point in my life, I still did. I just did a production of a casual fall in the United Kingdom for a year and was still dancing. And what the pandemic did for me was I said, Well, maybe this is a good time to replace my knees. So that's what I did during the pandemic. I replaced my knees and a hip as a result of all of the dancing and all of the stuff I've done in musical theater and I've. Like I can play Danny Zuko again. I'd have to dye my hair, but I, you know, I can, I feel like I'm a kid again. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 35:08

awesome. Well, it's good. I'm glad you're I'm glad you're feeling good, and I'm sorry that Grease 2 destroyed your knees or took what was left. It was

Adrian Zmed 35:16

worse, but it wasn't just grease too. It was all years and years of, like I said, I probably a total of 10 years doing all of the Grease and versions of Grease that I did on stage, probably close to 10 years of performances. And it's what it was. There isn't anybody else's done Danny Zuko more than I have. Can you can you can ask Jim Jacobs who wrote the damn thing about that

Jeff Dwoskin 35:37

you're a king Danny Zuko.

Adrian Zmed 35:38

He would be a great interview. He's an incredible storyteller. One

Jeff Dwoskin 35:42

last trivia thing I found they, I guess in in South India, they remade the movie. They made a remake of them. What? Yeah, it's called premaloka, Premo at, P, R, E, M, a, l, o, K, a, in 1987

Unknown Speaker 35:54

Uh huh, yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 35:55

I guess they adapted the screenplay. And when we talked about earlier, I read, you know, I say I read, because I Who knows if it's true when they were going to make it, you know, the trilogy and all that kind of stuff that when they decided and bailed on it, that became High School Musical, or at least High School Musical that was based on that I

Adrian Zmed 36:11

did. Well, I could see that actually at this point, but I've got to look up this. You said that. So there's an A version. It was done in the eight, in 87 in India,

Jeff Dwoskin 36:21

yeah, South India. Crema loca. You said, C, C R, P E, P R, P R, E, M, ah, premloka.

Adrian Zmed 36:27

Ah, I wonder what that i That must mean Grease. There's always been international versions of Grease, done, even when I was on Broadway. There was a South American and Mexican versions of Grease, and they called it basalina.

Jeff Dwoskin 36:41

Doesn't have vision ring to it, but yeah, right, Vaseline.

Adrian Zmed 36:49

But when you actually look at all the versions in all the countries that were done of it, they used their version of what Grease meant to their culture. Yeah. Jim Jacobs has hundreds of posters from all over the world of versions of Grease that were done. It's really quite a quite a legacy that

Jeff Dwoskin 37:09

is amazing. Yeah. All right, so you mentioned horniness during reproduction, but you were also, if we can go to the mid 80s in one of the best sex comedies ever, bachelor party. Oh, I loved your face. Yeah, they're like, where's it going? Bachelor party?

Adrian Zmed 37:27

I did one in in the 90s, and I'll we can touch on that one in a second. But, yeah, you know, I had just finished doing a it was a second year of TJ hooker, and bachelor party came up, and I was able to do it in my hiatus from TJ hooker. We actually shot that. We just had an actor strike last year. The strike before that was when we shot bachelor party. We actually shot bachelor party during an actor strike. And the way we were able to do that is the producers said that whatever is is agreed on as the final negotiations with the actors contracts and everything like that, we will compensate the actors for the whole thing, whatever is agreed on, there was a whole clause we were able to actually shot. We were one of the only productions going on during that strike, which was in the 80s, early 80s actor strike and Tom and I, I knew Tom because I had done a guest spot on Bosom Buddies. We knew each other really well and lived very close to each other. And we used to carpool to work because we lived in the San Fernando Valley in Studio City. And the the studios were the Culver City Studios, which is came the Sony studios or and it's the old MGM Studios too, and it was a, we have to go down. You've always comedians joke about the 405 in Los Angeles. It's like a parking lot. So we call ourselves the diamond Lane boys, because we they the HOV lanes were now, you know, the the way to go, because you could just go past all the traffic. And while we were in the the HOV lane going to work. We discussed on what we were going to do after bachelor party was released, because our careers are probably over, because all we did was goof off for 13 hours a day for three months. That's all we did was goof off. And we thought it was going to be the worst movie ever made. And it actually, when we saw the director's cut, it ended up, looked at each other and said, This turned out pretty good. It's funny. And again, it's one of those shows, of movies that become a cult classic.

Jeff Dwoskin 39:29

It is, and I just re watched it. I wasn't 100% sure I'd ever seen the whole thing. I knew I saw. I remembered, like, parts of it, because I probably hadn't seen it forever. Like I remembered Tom her baby was, here are these on, you know, I mean, like, and stuff like that. And so I rewatched it. It holds up. You know what I mean? Because sometimes you watch, like, an 80s come and you're like, oh, but it was, yeah, it was still hilarious. And I forgot how goofy funny Tom Hanks was.

Adrian Zmed 39:55

Yeah, it was brilliant. He was quite brilliant in that role. And then. When he went on to do big, it was even better and more challenging. And I thought he should have won the Academy Award for big. That should have been his first Academy Award, because that was one of the most brilliant performances I had ever seen and all but yeah, it does hold up. And I think it's because so much was real what we were doing, we would literally be improving off camera. And then director said, okay, all right, come on, get in front of the cameras. Let's do that. Let's, let's do exactly what you just did. And then we improv a little bit more, and it would go a little weirder and and stuff. And so much of it was just us just goofing off and improving with the whole thing. It was a blast. We had so much fun doing that, that movie.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:38

So I have two questions. One the car or Debbie, but my real question is, when the hookers haven't shown up yet, and you're like, how's the party so far? It's just the guys there, and they whip that can at you, and you catch it, and then just take a drink from it. How many takes did that take? That's all I need to know. I

Adrian Zmed 40:57

didn't even remember how that eventually, I think in all the takes that we did, something was coming my way. And I actually did grab something and I started it was something that I could eat, and I ate it. And then I think it was Neil Israel, who directed it, who said, Hey, let's do a can. And he literally had a crew guy in the middle of all that, just kind of like sling the can up into that direction so that I could catch it and take a sip of it. And that was one of the only things that was actually set up, the can, the actual can. But it came out of doing it many times, and me grabbing a couple of things and taking a chunk out of an apple or, you know, a bag of potato chips or something like that and stuff. But, you know, we did that quite a few times. It was fun. It's so much fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:46

And then you sang in this movie too. You got a great voice, by the way.

Adrian Zmed 41:49

Well, thank you. Thank you. It's like because I came from, my roots were in musical theater, and the the producer knew exactly who Joe Roth was, the producer of that of that movie, Joe went on to become the head of Disney and produced tons and tons of huge blockbuster movies. And he was, we were close friends, and he, I knew Joe from a workshop musical that I had done for him. And it was when remember the old, the old movie called The Warriors, I think sounds a movie about gang gangs in New York and stuff like that. And there was a whole big thing about gangs, gang pictures, Warrior, you know, gang movies. And this was a musical based on that. He knew what I could do, and he actually purposely wanted me to do that role, and he wanted to have to move to be on the soundtrack. And wanted the song be one of the songs at at the party, the bachelor party, little demon. We actually snatched it from Kiss. They were about to record it. We grabbed it before they did. Nice. Rick Derringer produced that. That song One of the great, the guitarists of all time. It's a

Jeff Dwoskin 42:57

great song. It's it really is. So, alright. So TJ hooker, how was working with William Shatner? Other than him just giving you a hard time about dominating with Star Trek two? Yeah,

Adrian Zmed 43:09

we actually got along extremely well, and to this day we still do. I just saw bill last week at 93 years old, and he acts like he's 60. He's just amazing. He's like a miracle of science. I just don't he's just amazing. I got along very well with him. I think it's because we were so there was such a vast age difference between the two of us. He, he became my mentor. You know what I mean, my like a father figure to me and all. And it became a true partnership of the two of us in in the car. And I looked up to him, and I really did learn a lot, quite a lot, from Bill, just by watching what he did. Hooker was I had done two series before hooker that each one only lasted about seven episodes before that, and I still was very young, being being on camera, and it's, it's very different to transferring your theater technique and putting in, you know, on on film and stuff. So I just learned a lot by watching Bill and learn to trust myself, rather than I wanted to cure cancer with my acting, that is, and I overdid it. I always over acted, and I pushed too much into everything. There's a whole term that directors use with with actors who are more like me, and that is, less is more, the term less is more. And I was the poster child for that term. But honestly, by osmosis, just watching Bill and how he handled himself, himself in a close up, and what he did was just, it's like a masterclass that I spent five years with him doing, and we just, we had a blast on the show. I mean, come on, we were playing cops and robbers, and we were getting paid for

Jeff Dwoskin 44:49

it. I know it must have been great. You got an awesome unit. You got to wear a cool uniform. We did

Adrian Zmed 44:54

our own stunts, especially with the cars and stuff. I mean, we did a lot of our own stuff and everything. It was just. We had a blast. It was an absolute blast. Met a great, great cast. Heather was an angel. Jimmy Darren was awesome. Richard heard the captain was great. So much fun. Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 45:10

because Shatner, you could probably learn a lot from talk about someone who's, like, so iconic, but like, you can't just call him Kirk without acknowledging TJ hooker, Boston, legal, right? Even his just his appearances in the twilight zone, yeah, it's just, it's like, there's a lot of things that pop there. Now

Adrian Zmed 45:27

there aren't many people in Hollywood who have had his career. He has never stopped working. Yes, there are. And he again, he mentored me. He said when I was making a really good, great paycheck every week doing hooker. He, you know, kind of said, save your money. Save your money. Invest it wisely. It's not going to last forever. TJ, hooker will not last forever. And I did, I did everything that he told me to do. It was just great advice from him, and it was a he's always been important to me in my life. And now, after going up in space, now he's going to the Antarctica this year.

Jeff Dwoskin 46:03

Oh, really. He still does comic cons. He still does. He still holds core to Comic Cons. Oh, yeah, yeah, so amazing. You must have loved hosting Dance Fever. Well, yeah, because

Adrian Zmed 46:13

I had been away from singing and dancing. Okay, I did. I did do grease two where I was able to sing and dance. And then when I first went to Hollywood. I had just left the Broadway show of Grease and Saturday Night Fever had already come out. Everything when I arrived in Hollywood in 1978 they were spin offs of Saturday Night Fever, and I was the poor man's John Travolta. I had just come from Hollywood, starring as Danny, and I had a string of guest spots on iconic shows where I had to dance, where I danced, disco danced and did things. In fact, I played one of my great roles was the disco dancing pickpocket killer on the Starsky and Hutch. That was like your first thing, right? Well, no, I had done quite a few guest spots at that point, but it was one of the my guest spots where I was disco dancing, and Aaron Spelling produced that Starsky and Hutch, along with the Leonard Goldberg, and they were shooting, they were about to do a DJ hooker, and they specifically wanted me to be in hooker because of that guest spot. They remembered me from that. And it actually that was my audition for hooker. You

Jeff Dwoskin 47:21

never know. You never know. It's gonna lead to why. And then when

Adrian Zmed 47:25

hooker was canceled, I had already done a few guest appearances on The Merv Griffin Show. And MERV Dance Fever was already running for about five years. At that point, he was replacing Danny Terrio in like year seven. He wanted to get 10 years out of Dance Fever. He when he found out that that hooker was canceled, it was literally the day after we were canceled. He contacted his office, contacted my agent, and asked me to post it. And I said, How often do I get to sing and dance in Hollywood? So I told I grabbed it. I grabbed it like in a second. And the crazy thing about it was that two weeks after I had agreed to do it, we actually started going into rehearsals for for Dance Fever. I was called. My agent was called and said, hey, guess what? We're We have 11 more episodes that we're going to do, of Grease, of of TJ hooker, and it's going to be in late night television, and it's going to be on at 11 o'clock at night. And the reason for those 11 episodes was to complete the five year syndication package, apparently, to sell a series in syndication that would air two times in a year long period, you had to have five years of 26 episodes a year. They needed to finish it. I couldn't do both at the same time. I had already signed the contract for Dan's fever at the time, so I couldn't shoot those last 11 episodes, which was tough for me, because hooker was my home and I wasn't able to do it up. On the other hand, I was grateful that I was able to have three years doing a dance fever, and it was a blast. It was so much fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 48:51

Awesome on Dance Fever. That's a bummer, though. And TJ hooker, because I can imagine it's like graduating, and they're like, Oh, wait what? Yes, I missed the part, right?

Adrian Zmed 49:00

Like, oh, there's another class I needed to take. Oh, but I want to go finish it, you know? Yeah, it worked out. Okay. Dance Fever was just a blast. Another, like I said, how often? And, you know, Dance Fever was the precursor to everything all these competition shows today. Think about the format of Dancing with the Stars. It's three judges who make comments about that, everybody who just did their dances. The main difference is that the judges were were, uh, TV icons, TV and film icons. The dance partners were from all over the country. They got their few minutes of stardom, you know, by doing that. But that's the format that everybody uses, is the pre judge format on all that again. Merv Griffin was quite a he broke the mold on a lot of things, and he knew what he was doing. Some of his I mean, his shot, two of his shows are still running, Jeopardy and wheel of fortune, we shot Dance Fever in the same studio where Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy was shot, and we shared the same dressing rooms while we were shooting Dance Fever. So I got to be a very good friend. With Pat and Vanna and and Alex Trebek and stuff in those three years of doing it and his stuff is still still running, which is amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 50:08

That is amazing. Quite a legacy. Yeah, one other cameo that you made, which is in one of my favorite franchises ever, which is Sharknado. I love Chuck. I have a whole episode where I talk to Thunder Levin, who wrote one through four. I just love it. So you have the honor of being killed by a shark in the opening of of the fourth Sharknado four, the fourth awakens, yeah, yeah, me and Wade. Newton, yeah, you and Wade right? Yeah? Newton, yeah. So you get it right in the chest. So you get it in the chest.

Adrian Zmed 50:43

I live in Vegas now, and I had just moved to Vegas when they were doing that, and they found out that I was here, they coaxed me to come in and say, Hey, can we kill you in our movie? Like it'll be the opening sequence, you know, you'll see it right away. What the heck? You know, let's do

Jeff Dwoskin 51:01

it by four. It was super cool to do that, right? Yeah, they had to earn that a couple times. I remember, for two they were like begging people, I can't, thank you enough. This was so fun. I so many great stories. Oh,

Adrian Zmed 51:14

thank you. You were this was a you were terrific. And it was nice to go down memory lane and to talk about all these wonderful little stories of things that I've done in my life.

Jeff Dwoskin 51:23

Oh, well, thank you for sharing them with me. You're awesome. And I'm gonna go brag to my wife. I talk to you. Hi to

Adrian Zmed 51:31

your wife. Thank you very much. Thank

Jeff Dwoskin 51:34

you so much. And

Adrian Zmed 51:35

to all your audience out there. Hello everybody. Yeah, have a good time watching this. Take care.

Jeff Dwoskin 51:41

All right. How amazing was Adrian Zmed? So much Grease 2. Great insights into his time as Danny Zuko and grease2, TJ hooker the Cubs. Ah, bachelor party. This episode had everything. All right, well, with the interview over. Ah, can't believe it just flew right by. Thanks again to Adrian Zmed for hanging out with me, and thanks 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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