SOME THOUGHTS ON ICE SKATING

I'm not normally a fan of ice skating, but when the Winter Olympics is on TV the event I watch with most interest is figure skating. You don't see much comedy skating in those events, though, and I miss it. I guess that's because the scoring is always based on acrobatics that require long, graceful glides.

Maybe the Olympics is the wrong venue for comedy. Wether it wins medals or not, what I want to see on ice is comedy sketches.  Maybe some fat skaters once in a while.

Serious skating obviously favors the thin but funny skating often favors the fat, especially in sketches with characters the audience can relate to, as in the story of a likable overweight novice who's only doing it to impress his girl. Everybody likes to root for the underdog. Think of Jackie Gleason's skating sketch in The Honeymooners.

To make that kind of sketch work, a fat male skater requires a skinny, long legged, Shelly Duval/Olive Oyl-type girlfriend...

...yeah, someone who looks like this....

...and a smug, male super skater who competes for the girl's attention,
someone with a personality like Kenneth Mars (above)...

Or Carl Reiner (above, left).

Funny props and costumes are acceptable...

...but they can't be much fun to wear, especially if the head is covered.

If you were a skater wouldn't you love to choreograph a comedy routine for the ice? Maybe something like a girl vocalist (above) surrounded by her skater sidemen.

You'd think hip hop would be a natural fit for ice skating but a few YouTube videos I saw convinced me that it's hard to do that kind of thing on skates. The dancers would appear slow.  Even so, somebody must have tried it. It would be fun to see "Gangnum Style" or "You Can't Touch This" moves on ice...even if they're just punctuation  between the big acts.

 Don't underestimate punctuation. Some of the funniest stuff comes in short doses. In the example above creative executives periodically dance in and try try to modify or censor the dances.

A flock of tall, thin, frenetic Gilray dandies would work great on ice...maybe in a takeoff of ballroom dancing.

Monty Python-type battling housewife skaters?

I like Keaton's image of dozens of would-be brides chasing a rich bachelor. Would that work?

Would some version of Keaton's boulder sketch work on ice? With fake boulders, I mean.

Of course, any ice show would have to include drama as well. I once heard that skaters don't like to skate on ground covered by fake mist. Would it work better if the mist was over their heads like menacing clouds? Hmmm...maybe that's not practical.

If overhead mist was possible, imagine the the effects you could achieve! Lightning, ghosts, long undulating Chinese dragons...anything could be made to appear from the clouds.

Most skating comedy would work best in small theaters (above) where the audience could see the faces of the skaters. Theater of any sort usually doesn't come off well in giant stadium theaters.

BAD STORYBOARDING

Carl Reiner (above, left) was indisputably one of the funniest people ever to work in television. The best sketches he did with Sid Caesar may never have been matched. In view of that it's hard to account for why his own sitcom pilot, "Head of the Family" was so...so not happening.  

I don't mean it was conceptually flawed. The germ of something valuable was there right from the start, and the show succeeded beyond expectation when it was reworked as "The Dick Van Dyke Show." I just wonder how it could have come about that a talented guy like Carl could have made so many mistakes at the outset. 

The answer I'm going to give is almost certainly wrong, but for the purpose of this blog I'll assume that Carl crashed because he was a victim of bad storyboarding. 

Here's (above) the intro to Carl's show. I'll assume it was done by an evil storyboarder who was hell-bent on sabotage.

The boarder has Carl dash out of his house and into his car. The music is generic, wacky, suburban music. Being evil, the boarder makes his human star a tiny speck. In this shot the car and the mailbox appear to be the true heroes of the show.

On a reverse angle (above) Carl pulls out of the driveway. You can't really see him. Geez, everything in this shot is light grey.

Above, the light grey car disappears into the light grey morass.

Now it's (above) the grey city's show. Carl doesn't stand out very well.

When he comes up to camera (above) he's covered by other people.

At last (above) we finally get to see our star. He enters his light grey office...

...and ceremoniously gives his hat to one of his writers. I forgot to say that Carl plays the role of a story editor for a TV show. This is where he works.

The title comes on and it's about a family, except we haven't seen a family yet. I'll add that Carl looks a little smug and unfriendly here.

He (above) removes the legs of one of his writers from his desk...

...then he takes his coat off while his credit comes on. Too late Carl is seen to be wearing dark clothes so that he he stands out from the grey. Fade out/fade in to...

...to his home (above) where we see his wife preparing food. Er, actually what we see first is the distant room behind her. The storyboarder made all the perspective lines point to it. Carl's wife is wearing...what else?...light grey.

The titles go on with his wife and son both getting a credit, but I'll end the intro here and switch to the reworked version of Carl's show (below), the later one that starred Dick Van Dyke. See what you think of it.

In the reworked show the title quickly fades on and we get a moment to read it. This intro is all indoors on a beautifully lit set. I presume the evil storyboard man has been killed and replaced with a good storyboard man.

Then the star comes in.

He's met by his wife and son. Since they seem likable, and they like Dick, we assume that Dick Van Dyke must be likable, too.

Dick's wife points to their guests...

...and that motivates a cut to a wider shot showing Dick's writer friends. Notice the perspective lines point to Dick.

Dick walks towards them and does a broad, funny trip over the ottoman.

We dolly in as everyone helps him up.

Dick comes up smiling. He probably tripped on purpose as a gag. In other words, he liked his friends enough to play a little prank on them. The good storyboarder has twice showed us that Dick is a funny, nice guy who's loved by his friends. Fade out. This is the end of the intro.

An interesting comparison, eh?

Carl stayed on as executive producer and the real life story editor of the show. On the advice of Danny Thomas and Sheldon Leonard it was shot at Desilu, which had the best TV facilities of its day.

So, was Carl an idiot for goofing up his first pilot? No, not at all. The later one works much better but who's to say that we wouldn't have made the same mistake in his place?

Carl's original intro understandably tried to drive home the point that the star was a family man who commuted every day to a glamour job in the big city. The later intro took a different tack and tried to make the point that the star was a funny, likable guy who the audience would probably like to spend time with. The latter point turned out to be the right way to go.

CARL REINER: GENIUS

Here's Carl Reiner's pilot (above) for what would later become "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Poor Carl. The studio execs hated it. And justly so...it was just too generic. Fortunately Danny Thomas, who had his own production company, saw the potential in it and asked his producer Sheldon Leonard to give it a second try. That second try would make a BIG difference.

I thought it might be fun to compare the two versions. I'm cheating a little because I'm illustrating the second version with the seventh episode of the series just to make the contrast greater.


 
Here's (above) the way the way it looked after Leonard finished with it. He replaced Carl with Dick Van Dyke, brought in Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie, shot the series with a live audience at Desilu which used an innovative three camera technique, and picked powerhouse John Rich to direct. Carl was re-assigned as a producer, which effectively meant Story Editor with strong creative influence. Leonard saved the show.

 Now we all know Carl Reiner was an immense and flamboyant talent...look what he did with Sid Caesar...but when he had a chance to do his own show his own way he was strangely timid. He apparently needed other people to create an environment where he could come alive and be himself. That's what Danny Thomas and Sheldon Leonard did for him. They wanted to streamline the structure so Carl's personality could shine through, unencumbered. Wow! There were some good producers in those days!



One last thought: you're probably thinking that Dick Van Dyke and the rest of the cast were the true stars of that show, not Reiner. That's only half true. Somebody had to do for Dick Van Dyke what the executive producers did for Carl. Reiner made it possible for Van Dyke to shine. He gave Dick lots of physical shtick to do...more than any other sitcom would have allowed...and he carefully built up to the physical stuff so it would have maximum impact.

Take a look at the extended physical comedy in the scene above and remember...somebody had to allow that to happen. Somebody had to encourage it. Somebody had to give it context, so it wouldn't seem like a digression. That was Carl.