I see . . . I see . . . I see Humphrey Bogart in your future! “Here’s looking at you, kid.” (Slumps over.) Image via Wikipedia Commons
Yesterday, we took a look at our influences from the past with the “Who are Your Literary Parents” game. Today, let’s move our past into the future with a new game from Bitter Script Reader, who says: “Good news! Your next pilot’s been ordered to series before you’ve written it.
“The catch: it’s pre-cast with your celebrity crushes when you were 13. So how are you building a show around that?”
I said:
“OMG! They got Robin Williams! OK, it’s going to be a séance comedy set in Boulder, CO with Robin channeling all his greatest impersonations. IDK, I guess they need someone fantastic to channel Robin. Miranda Richardson? #oneandonlylove at 13, Robin.”
Can you just imagine? LOL, well, I can. Once I get done with Bunny Blavatsky, Jack and Olivia, darling Porky-Pie and that airship/plus size adventurist space opera, an impersonator who turns psychic is on my list. (Full disclosure: earlier this week, I saw Jim Carrey on a Saturday Night Live clip doing just that. #inspiration #goalz)
Feel free to fudge the timeline; I THOUGHT I was talking about my teenage crush, but when I did the math, it turns out that my first crush was my 10-year-old crush. All the other girls were swooning over Leif Garrett, but I was head-over-heels with Mork.
Some people do say that your crushes aren’t always about sexuality – that a lot of times, those fizzy feelings stem from respect for that person’s skills. For example, when you fall madly in love with a teacher or a mentor . . . sometimes that isn’t about love for the person, but love for their competence and brilliance. And boy, did I admire Mork’s goofy dorkiness combined with his mad wordplay and frenetic energy. I’ve got the goofy dorkiness down pat; I still yearn to have even a fraction of his quick wit and boundless energy.
Miranda Richardson, by the way, just played a psychic in the Amazon Prime series, Good Omens (by Terry Pratchett (my real dad), and the wonderful Neil Gaiman). I first noticed her as the delightfully homicidal Queen Elizabeth I in Black Adder, and she really is a wonder woman of comedy. She’d be perfect to star in my mini-series!
How about you? What would your greenlighted series look like? (Try and think of this before you peek at the comment thread for this tweet . . . or go ahead and look. Amazing ideas there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them do come to fruition – maybe not cast with the crushes in question, but I bet there are a lot of little seeds for great television oaks here.)
(Wanna see that Jim Carrey skit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwZdFFl14fs “Psychic Medium — Saturday Night Live” 5:45 with Jason Sudeikis, Nasim Pedrad and Vanessa Bayer)
Eight Ladies Writing 
Michaeline, I love your seance comedy idea. I’d watch that in a hot minute.
I don’t remember having any celebrity crushes growing up, though my best friend had more than enough for the two of us.
I was a big fan of both The Brady Bunch and The Ortridge Family though, so my new series probably involves two large families locked in some sort of weekly conflict. I’m envisioning various members of the Avengers and Marvel universe filing the various roles. For some reason, “the Church Lady” from Saturday Night Live just sprang to mind. Perhaps as the “Alice the Maid” character? Or maybe as a comic-relief neighbor.
I was a very weird kid. I think by 13, I’d seen Ghostbusters (OK, no. I was almost 16), and I distinctly remember crushing on Egon (Harold Ramis), even though he was kind of a self-absorbed jerk. I didn’t exactly crush on Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones . . . but I think I wanted to BE his character when I grew up, LOL. I may have also crushed on the crazy helicopter pilot from A-team, and the car from Nightrider. OH! And Remington Steele! How could I forget my crush on Pierce Brosnan? How old was I then? Fourteen.
I love the idea of Bradys vs. Partridges with a Church Lady referee. What fun!
Oh, you know who else I had a crush on? The comic book guy from A-ha’s video, “Take On Me.”
By 13 I had homework and I wasn’t allowed to watch TV, so I don’t remember having any crushes from that age. When I was eight, I had a crush on the kid who had a recurring role on The Rifleman. What kind of show would I build around him? I barely remember him now. I think I’d put him in a contemporary racing stable with Annette Funicello (I did watch The Mousketeers, although I didn’t have a crush on anybody) —maybe a mystery series, with a first episode that figures out why all the horses are dying at the Santa Anita track in California. Sounds a little flat. I’d have to get some juice from someplace. But maybe it’s a start. Fun exercise, Michaeline!
Horse racing is big stuff! Who is that ex-jockey that Jenny likes so much? I’ve got a trilogy by the author, and I can see the pink cover of that thing, but can’t read the title in my mind.
My father tended to hog the TV in the evening, so we either watched what he watched, or grabbed a book. Remember when a house would only have one TV, and the “remote control” was, “Hey, get up and change the channel, kid.”? Right now, we’ve got four TVs in the house (and that doesn’t count the little DVD player or the computer screens) — our room, in-laws’ room, kitchen and living room. If you’d told me that when I was 13, I would have thought I was RICH! LOL, and now I hardly watch anything at all except the weather, YouTube and Good Omens.
At 13 my crushes would have been Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, Patrick McGoohan as The Prisoner and, above all, David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin. on Man from U.N.C.L.E. He’s still adorable as Dr. Mallard on NCIS–and still too old for me.
What kind of show with those three? I’m gonna say a dystopian sci-fi spy show!
Maybe with this theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztgay_6icoA
Ooh, ooh—David McCallum, YES!!! Okay, so it’s that kid from The Rifleman, Annette Funicello, and David McCallum as the secretive trainer brought in at the last minute to solve the problem. Or something. Any serious with David McCallum is a winner. Maybe I’ll leave out the kid from The Rifleman. Yeah I think that works.
Not too long ago I saw a rerun of Hart to Hart (with Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers), and the guest stars were David McCallum and Tippi Hedren as a couple who ran an animal rescue safari place. I can imagine Tippi Hedren did it only because she was promoting her own animal rescue efforts, but still it was a bit tough to wrap my head around the two of them as a couple.
LOL.
You know what’s even more difficult to wrap your head around? David McCallum, who apparently released multiple albums, having any kind of a signing career.
How did Hart to Hart hold up? I remember vaguely watching it, but I remember NOTHING, not even the title sequence (which showed up recently as some sort of parody).
This sounds like so much fun! I was too young for the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (or we only had three and half channels, and couldn’t get it). Our re-runs were the Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. No real crushes for me there, but I wanted Jeannie’s bottle! All velvet cushions and draperies . . . .