St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 55

Apr. 5, 1987 SILOUIS POST-DISPATCH 7E GWTW Murdoch lists. Bette Midler was the most popular Scarlett in these, and Gerald Miller proposed Midler play opposite Woody Allen: "I want to see him carry her up the stairs." David and Gail Adams suggested Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner as Ashley and Melanie in the Mel Brooks version. Then there Is the rock version, starring Madonna and Penn, backed by Sting as Ashley, Janet Jackson and Grace Jones as Prissy and Mammy, Cher as Melanie, Joan Rivers as busybody Aunt Pittypat and Dr. Ruth as Belle Wat-ling.

Robin and Kevin Kelly suggest, "This version would produce a top-10 album and several music videos." Yo, Scarlett! How about Brigitte Nielsen and Sylvester Stallone in the leads, with David Lee Roth as Ashley, Clara Peller (as in "Where's'the as Aunt Pittypat and Vanna White as demure Melanie. Debbie Brower also suggested Ronald Reagan portraying a carpetbagger. Finally, we hope, Jacques Moss proposes "Gone with the Dune," set in Atlanta and the "immediate suburbs Tara, Twelve Oaks and Ara-kis." The highlight of this David Lynch-directed production would be Linda Hunt, echoing her servant's role in "Dune," delivering her impressive line: "I am the servant Prissy." Which leads us to Shirley Can-trell's "NO! No sequel to Leave it alone. Let us remember 'GWTW' with the orignal cast. Let us dream about what might have happened if tomorrow was another day." From page three many to the actual ages of Margaret Mitchell's original characters.

The same can be said of Stephanie Dillon's Brat-Pack trio Demi Moore as Scarlett, Tom Cruise as Rhett and Andrew McCarthy as Ashley. She is also one of several readers who proposed Bea Arthur as Belle Watling, with the following explanation: "Having paid her dues to a seemingly thankless Hollywood, Bea Arthur's tremendous talent deserves the reward of playing opposite Tom Cruise perhaps only Bea Arthur could befriend, fall in love with, let go of, and still remain friends with this gorgeous hunk. What a small reward indeed, for bringing the change of life home to America every Saturday night, and for proving that we aren't getting older, we're getting better." Some of us are just getting weirder, such as those who proposed various sex reversals in some roles. Either Richard Pryor or Gene Wilder as Prissy was intriguing. And then there were proposals for the black version of GWTW, which is quite logical, considering recent years have seen black versions of everything from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Dracula." Billy Dee Williams was mentioned as Rhett with Diana Ross or Diahann Carroll as Scarlett.

the race reversals would have to extend to the servants, us Shelley Winters as Mam-, jjw and Goldie Hawn as Prissy. Which brings to mind the sex and race-reversal version, with Divine as Mammy. We received various "spoof" cast Key West From page three week's Fox block, Viands said, Channel 30's nine minutes of commercial time is sold out. Each 30-second commercial is valued at $800, about five times the cost of a spot in the movies Channel 30 has been running on Sunday nights until now. In the grand fourth-network scheme of things, though, Viands' station and its counterparts in about 100 other cities are merely the last links in the chain, the delivery people who transmit the programs to viewers.

The heart of the operation the development and production of programs, the plotting and execution of sales and PR strategies is in the hands of Murdoch's minions in California. At the top of that heap is Barry Diller, who heads not just the would-be network but Fox's company-owned television stations and the 20th Century Fox movie production and distribution operation. "Whenever people have used the term, 'fourth I have always thought it was irrelevant," Diller told television critics recently. The Fox television operation, he said, "will succeed or fail based solely on its programming." Not surprisingly, Diller said he was confident Fox would succeed where others had failed to establish a fourth national broadcasting programming service. But he said he understood the nay-sayers.

"Anybody has a right to be skeptical about what we're trying to do," he said. That freedom does not extend to his own staff, however. Diller called his group of executives "young, energetic, positive-thinking and not cynical because they haven't been in it all their lives. They're not experience-less, but they haven't been corroded by that process." Jamie Kellner, the executive specifically in charge of the network operation, echoed Diller's belief that programming will determine the network's fate. "These giants," he said of the three networks, "must maximize their ratings in every day part.

That calls for the 'least objectionable We plan to succeed by attracting the very best creative talent and then give them enough room to do their best without layers of interference. We tell them: 'Be original, do the best you can do and be This approach can have a number of benefits. First, as Kellner claims, writers and producers obviously will be happier if a network doesn't have a lot of people trying to second-guess its work. But that's hardly unique to Fox. In fact, it was Grant Tinker and Brandon Tartikoff who made it work for NBC.

ABC, after a false start a couple of seasons ago, now seems to be following suit. Second, minimizing network interference minimizes network employees, which helps keep costs down. The networks have learned the same lesson. Even though the philosophy isn't original, Fox's approach has managed to get a number of very creative people to make shows for them. James Brooks, who wrote for and co-produced some of MTM's most memorable shows, is executive producer of "The Tracey Ullman Show." Doing most of the hands-on work are Ken Estin and Heide Perlman, who helped write and produce the best seasons of "Cheers." Stephen Cannell, co-creator of Fox's "Jump Street Chapel" action show, lists "The Rockford Files," "Stingray" and "The A-Team" among his network successes.

Ed. Weinberger, a veteran of "Taxi" and "The Cosby Show" is producing "Mr. President," a Fox comedy starring George C. Scott. But there's a fundamental point being overlooked here: Making successful television shows is not a science.

Even the most talented producers have made shows that have been soundly rejected by the viewing public and, given the uncertainties of all creative endeavors, they certainly will make more of the same. In fact, some of television's most savvy observers have described network programming as the business of minimizing failure, rather than maximizing success. The overwhelming percentage of the networks' new shows do not survive to see a second season. Many series don't even get beyond 13 episodes, which is the number of programs Fox has ordered for most of its new shows. Diller thinks his operation will be different.

"I don't think that most of our shows will fail," he maintained, "Our threshold of success is a little different. If our shows are at a sufficient level of quality, they'll work." Kellner said that "household (ratings) shouldn't be the yardstick" of success for Fox shows. Rather, the company says it should be judged on its success with viewers age 18 to 49. Of course, Fox knows that it enters the national fray with potential coverage of only 84 percent of the country vs. network coverage of 100 percent.

On top of that, the vast majority of its 100-plus affiliates are stations broadcasting in the UHF band (Channels 14 through 83), which almost automatically means lower ratings than VHF stations (Channels 2 through 13). No wonder, then, Fox has scaled back its projections for national ratings of its prime-time lineup from an 8 to a 6 (each rating point represents 874,000 American homes with TV sets). Here in St. Louis, where each rating point stands for about 10,500 homes, Channel 30's Viands said he'd be happy with a rating of 6. But he admitted that that's because his Saturday and Sunday night movies have been pulling ratings of 1, 2 and 3.

"I have no downside risk," he said. Translation: Nothing could perform worse than those movies. But Viands' advertisers are paying five times the previous rate for commercial time in the Fox shows and may well be expecting five times the audience. That means local ratings of 5, 10 or 15. A 6 is barely at the low end of that range.

What Fox's network aspirations really face, then, is a mine field. Murdoch has given Diller $100 million to give the fourth-network dream its initial grounding in reality. That sounds like a lot, but networks have spent that much on the development of one season's worth of new shows, most of which fail. What keeps networks going is the success of their ongoing prime-time schedules, the profits from daytime and Saturday morning shows and, until the last couple of years, from network sports divisions. Fox Broadcasting, on the other hand, has none of those elements, which help cushion the blow of inevitable new-show failures.

It better have very deep pockets. The fourth-network scheme is also extremely vulnerable at the affiliate level. Virtually by definition, the stations that have signed on as Fox affiliates are stations whose own programming efforts have failed on Saturday and Sunday nights. But even in its poorly rated weekend night movies, Channel 30 had 12 minutes of commercials to sell each hour. In Fox's programs, it has only three minutes an hour.

To generate the same amount of money, it has to charge significantly higher rates for ads, which can only be justified by significantly higher ratings. Viands said he plans to stick with Fox "all the way," which means, he explained when pressed on the point, that a year would be a fair trial period. Even that commitment could be sorely tested, though, if ratings problems make local advertisers antsy. When ABC launched its network in 1953, there were already three national broadcasting services in operation: NBC, CBS and DuMont. Two years later, Allen DuMont folded his tent, having put on some good shows but never having made any money.

Things are different today, of course. There are the three networks. There are strong non-network independent stations. There is basic cable and pay cable and home video. Is there room for Fox? The odds are against it.

Comedies From page three "Ninety-two in the Shade," has abandoned the balmy island for a Montana cattle ranch, decrying the encroaching traffic and chain hotels. The writers who remain are divided over vyhat or whether the island has contributed to their work. The sub-tropical climate is the initial draw. Locals claim it is the only place in the nation that has never seen snow. "We come down here to get away from the cold weather.

But you wouldn't come back every year just for the fishing and the weather," said biographer William Wright, whose books have chronicled the lives of Marjorie Merriwether Post, Lillian Hellman and Claus von Bulow. "There is a fabulous symbiosis here that I find very congenial. The natives are friendly," Wright said. Geographically, it is the end of the line, the southernmost chunk of land in the string of keys that stretch from Florida's Atlantic coast into the Gulf of Mexico. "It's pleasant.

It's quiet. Diversity is tolerated," said writer Lurie. "If it becomes noisy and uniform and people start leaving, it will become dull." Authors are idolized, good literature is adored, and sometimes even read. "Here in Key West, everybody knows how hard it is to write a book," said Wright. Writers mingle and gossip in Key James Merrill, Connecticut's poet laureate, who lives in Key West from mid-December to March and won the 1977 Pulitzer for his "Divine Comedies," claimed Lurie and Wilbur for friends "long before anyone won prizes." "We go to each others' houses for dinner.

We gossip, about each other, about the absent people," Merrill said. "There's very little talk about writing among writers." The island is no poetic muse for Merrill, who deliberately positioned his writing desk to face away from the window at his shady green-and-white wooden house. "It's pleasant when you stop writing to have lovely weather and to be able to bicycle to the market," he said. ThomasSanchez, current resident and author, of "Rabbit Boss" and "Zoot-Suit Murders," would like to believe there is no writer's colony. "I think as soon as you have a writer's colony anywhere it is the end of something.

It's not the But he adds, "Whether or not there is a writer's community, there exist groups of writers. We do see one another. You could call New York City a community of writers. This place gets the attention because it's so small." Too small, for those who would protect it from invading hordes. "Tell them about the drug smugglers and the mosquitos.

That will scare them off," Sanchez advises. From page three "every we do a 15-minute playlet, so it's different from doing sketches." Not all that different, though. The one thing a lengthy sketch does permit, though, is greater character development the sort of thing we used to see on Jackie Gleason's hour-long series or, for that matter, Sid Caesar's and Imogene Coca's classic "Your Show of Shows." It takes polished, talented actors to pull off those kinds of pieces, and judging from the samples I saw there's every reason to believe Ullman can do it. Working with Ullman each week will be Julie Kavner and Dan Castellaneta. Best of all, the writers producers of the show are Heide Perl-man and Ken Estin, the people responsible for some of the best episodes of "Cheers." "Duet," scheduled to premiere next week, is exactly the kind of show that will kill Fox's attempt to build a fourth network.

It is an absolutely conventional sitcom with a couple of transparent gimmicks thrown in to make it appear unusual. Ben Coleman (Matthew Laurance) is a New Yorker living in L.A. He writes detective novels and is sweet, funny and off-beat. Beautiful Laura Kelly (May Page Keller) owns a small catering service and lives with her kooky sister, Jane (Jodi Thelen). Laura's looking for a sweet, funny and off-beat kind of guy to fall in love with.

What we have here is a pretty talented bunch of actors in search of an honest premise, not some California-pop-psych-singles baloney. If this show were premiering on ABC, CBS or NBC, it would be skewered for its bland predictability and its strained sincerity. Because it's one of Fox's early efforts, the temptation is to be more forgiving of its faults. No way. Let's call a turkey a turkey and be done with it.

Eric Mink Imaginary Theatre To Tour Schools The "Imaginary Theatre Company, which tours for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, will do four public performances in the next two weeks, three of "Gendervision," aimed at junior high and high school audiences, and one of "The Protozoa Revue, for ages 6-12. Wayne Salomon directs "Gendervision," by Kimberly Flynn and Michael Mayer, to be performed at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Nottingham School, at 7 p.m. Friday at the Eureka Senior High School and at 7:30 p.m.

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