My book, "The Radio Producer's Handbook" (co-written with Eric & Kathy's producer John Swanson), is about how to produce a radio show, but there are also many stories about our encounters with celebrities, including Oscar nominees. In honor of tonight's Academy Awards, here are a few excerpts about our brushes with Oscar.
John Travolta was nominated for Best Actor in 1977 for "Saturday Night Fever" and in 1994 for "Pulp Fiction"
Sometimes with a little perseverance, a little creativity, and a lot of luck, a major movie star can appear on your show. John Travolta appeared on a few radio shows with John Landecker in the seventies when both of them were at the pinnacle of their respective businesses. They formed a friendship, but lost touch when Travolta’s career went into a slump and Landecker moved to a different market. After Travolta’s resurgence with Pulp Fiction, Rick Kaempfer (Landecker’s producer) tried to book Travolta to appear on the show for a birthday surprise. He found out that Travolta was filming in Texas, and talked to the unit publicist. Kaempfer sent her pictures of Travolta and Landecker together, and tapes of their previous interviews. It was obvious from all of these things that there was an actual friendship there. Still, the unit publicist wouldn’t budge. Finally, Rick asked her to just mention the name Landecker to Travolta. If he said he didn’t know Landecker, Rick promised to stop calling. She gave in. Travolta was excited to hear from Landecker, and called in to the show on Landecker’s fiftieth birthday as a surprise. After that, every time he came to Chicago, he insisted that Landecker’s name was put on the list of one-on-one interviews.
Mary Tyler Moore was nominated for Best Actress for her role in "Ordinary People" in 1980.
Mary Tyler Moore was a guest on a show produced by Rick Kaempfer about five years ago. She was appearing via satellite on a television publicity tour. It was scheduled to be a ten-minute interview. Mary knew that she was going to be interviewed by a man and a woman, but that was all she knew. As soon as the interview started, the female interviewer started getting belligerent and questioned Mary Tyler Moore’s sincerity. Mary got upset. She started to go after the woman, until she began to sense that something was going on. After a few more seconds, she recognized the voice. It was her good friend and former co-star Valerie Harper, who happened to be in town doing a play. The awkwardness of the first few seconds of the interview led to a truly special interview that Mary probably remembers to this day.
Michael Douglas won an Academy Award as a Producer for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in 1975.
Michael Douglas was doing a satellite interview on the John Landecker show from New York to promote a movie. To close the interview, Landecker played audio clips of the sex scenes from Fatal Attraction, Disclosure, and Basic Instinct and asked Douglas to identify who he was having sex with in each scene. Douglas got a kick out of the creative approach, correctly identified each woman, and the interview ended with a flourish.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for "Good Will Hunting" in 1997.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were appearing on the John Landecker show to promote their participation in Project Greenlight. Affleck and Damon have a tendency to verbally spar with each other when they are on the air together. Landecker realized this and told them he wanted to end the interview by playing a clip of each of their finest acting performances. When he played a clip from Reindeer Games to playfully tease Affleck, Damon piled on to gently mock his buddy. When this clip was followed up by a toy horse whinnying, Affleck got to mock his buddy for being the voice of the animated horse in the movie Spirit. The interview ended with a flourish, and both actors left the studio laughing.
Harrison Ford was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1985 for "Witness"Sometimes interviewing a big Hollywood star isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Harrison Ford was in Chicago promoting his movie about a Russian submarine. He was not only the star of the film; he was one of the producers. Yet, it was obvious from the moment he stepped into the interview room that he wanted to be a million miles away. Five or six people were granted access to this interview (round table) including representatives from the shows of both writers of this book. Ford scowled at the interviewers, and often didn’t even answer the questions. When he walked out of the room a few minutes later, not one person in the room had anything usable. It wasn’t the questions. It was the interviewee. John Swanson found a creative way to use the interview anyway. By taking one comment out of context (Ford drank Vodka in Russia); Swanson poked a little fun at the ornery star. In the interview that aired, host Eric Ferguson asked all the questions he originally intended to ask, and Ford answered every question by talking about vodka.
Those are all excerpts from "The Radio Producer's Handbook" which is still available by the way. Click on the link on the right to buy it at either Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Quick Hits
Here are a few sentences apiece about some of the other Oscar nominees I've come across in my role as radio producer.
*Tom Hanks (Two-Time Best Actor Winner--"Philadelphia" and "Forrest Gump")
I unsuccessfully pursued Hanks for five years before finally getting in on a roundtable interview when he was in Chicago to promote "Road to Perdition". One of Landecker's favorite movies is "That Thing You Do" which Hanks produced, wrote and starred in. John totally dominated the interview room because he had hundreds of questions pent up about that movie. Hanks was happy to talk about it, but after five minutes or so realized there were other people in the room, and he was here to talk about "Road to Perdition." He said "Where the heck have you been the last five years?"
*Karl Malden (Best Supporting Actor Winner in 1951 for "A Streetcar Named Desire")
He was in the studio talking about his memoir, and he couldn't have been a nicer man. After the interview was over, we asked him to record a promo for the show. It was a one-liner saying something like "The John Landecker show--don't leave home without it." He refused. He thought it was disrespectful to American Express.
*Tony Curtis (Nominated for Best Actor for "The Defiant Ones" in 1958)
I went to a bookstore to interview Tony when he was in town doing a book signing. Nobody showed up except for me. It was kind of sad. (Although--having done a few book signings myself--it happens, trust me.) He was in the biography section looking at a book about Marilyn Monroe. I asked him about her and JFK, because it was the thirtieth anniversary of JFK's assassination that week. To be honest, I don't remember what he said. I couldn't take my eyes off his unbelievably bad toupee. (I feel bad saying that, but it's true. He was very nice to me, despite my constant glancing upward.)
*Charlton Heston (Best Actor Winner in 1959 for "Ben Hur")
Another very bad toupee. Heston was appearing on Clark Webber's show on WJJD--which just happened to be down the hall from our show (Landecker). When Heston was done, we cornered him and got a few moments with him. He was game for anything. He even recorded a promo for us as Moses.
*Julie Andrews (Best Actress Winner in 1965 for "Mary Poppins")
I was so excited to meet her because "The Sound of Music" was a movie that my family watched every single time it was on television when I was a kid. I even spent a summer in the mountains of Salzberg...right where the movie was filmed. She was in town to do the stage version of Victor/Victoria and showed up for the interview with her husband Blake Edwards. Edwards was a nut--he wouldn't stop cracking jokes. It was non-stop. It was hard to picture the two of them married, until I saw her laughing at all of his jokes. She thought he was the funniest man in the world.
*George Kennedy (Best Supporting Actor in 1967 for "Cool Hand Luke")
We wanted to talk to him about OJ because he came on our show during the trial (and remember, he appeared in the Naked Gun movies with OJ). He wanted to push some diet supplement. It wasn't going that well until we did a word-association game with him. He has worked with every major star in movie history. When we started asking him about people like Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, and Paul Newman, I could have listened to him all day.
*Mel Brooks (Best Original Screenplay in 1968 for "The Producers")
He is one of my idols, and although I had talked to him on the phone, I hadn't met him until the summer of 2000. When I heard that he and Carl Reiner would be appearing at a Jewish United Fund dinner and that they would be performing "The 2000 year old man", I called the PR woman for JUF. She got me in on a press pass. Meeting the two men (both of whom I love) was brief and inconsequential because I was too star struck to speak, but the performance was hilarious. The dinner before the show also provided one of the most awkward moments of my life. The PR lady was sitting at the table with me just before they were going to show a short film. She suddenly remembered something and asked "What is your nickname on the show again?" I stuttered...looked around the room...and admitted it was "Rick the German Boy." She was horrified. The film was all about "Hitler's Kristal Nacht." I actually uttered this phrase to her after the film was over: "My best friend is Jewish."
*Albert Brooks (Best Supporting Actor Nominee for "Broadcast News" in 1987)
When I was Steve and Garry's producer, calls from Albert Brooks were a semi-regular event. He was never officially booked as a guest, he would just call whenever he had some new material he wanted to try out. Every time I answered the phone, he humbly said "This is Albert Brooks. Do you think Steve and Garry have a few seconds to talk to me on the air?" Uh, no. They would much rather talk about Steve's pool. No matter what they were discussing at the time, they dropped everything whenever Brooks called. He was so unbelievably hilarious that they would just let him go for forty five minutes at a time without ever stopping for commercials. Steve and Garry were just as in awe of him as I was...and they didn't want to risk asking him to stay on the line for fear that he might have had said no. He always called me back after his segments and asked me to send him the tape.
Those are just a few of the stories. Maybe next year I'll blog about some of the other Oscar nominees I've encountered (like Julia Roberts, Elliot Gould, Randy Newman, Ann Margret, Linda Blair, Robert Duvall, Stephen Rea, Bill Murray, and Tom Cruise.)
One last story before I sign off. In 1996, we had Oscar Nominee Adam Schlesinger on the show. Who is he? He is the main songwriter for "Fountains of Wayne," which at the time was a completely unknown band (They do the song "Stacey's Mom" if you still don't know who I'm talking about). He was nominated for best song for "That Thing You Do" which he sent to Tom Hanks on a cassette. This was the first morning interview Adam had ever done, and let's just say he wasn't accustomed to getting up at 7 a.m. He actually put his head down on the console and went to sleep during the commercials.
If you have any Brushes with Academy Award Nominees, send 'em in via e-mail below. I'll include them in a future post.
