Interview with Rowby Goren (Laugh-In, TunnelVision, He-Man)

Rowby Goren might not be a name everyone reading is intimately familiar with, but it only takes a cursory glance at his myriad of credits to realize it would be hard to find someone without at least a passing awareness of something he's worked on. Rowby is a veteran comedy writer whose work stretches from variety shows that range from classic to infamous (Laugh-In, Pink Lady & Jeff), beloved sitcoms (Three's Company) and iconic children's cartoons (He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). I contacted Rowby to talk about his work on the 1976 sketch film TunnelVision, a film where he's listed with the somewhat dubious title of "creative consultant". I had to talk about that film for a podcast, and learned quickly that despite containing appearances from multiple notable future comedy stars (SNL's Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, Al Franken & Tom Davis, SCTV's John Candy & Joe Flaherty; as well as Betty Thomas, Roger Bowen & Howard Hessman), there really isn't much about that film online. Rowby was kind enough to agree to a call to discuss the film, at which point I realized: I needed to waste even more of this man's time. His list of credits was too fascinating for me to have his time and only use it to focus on one small part of his wide-ranging career. So, Rowby was generous enough to agree to a more general chat, offering a bit of a career retrospective. 

Q: Let’s start from the beginning. Your first real job in Hollywood was writing for Laugh-In. What was the process of writing like for that show? For things like the joke wall, was that everybody in the room at once throwing lines out, or would you go off individually and prepare a certain amount of jokes?   

Rowby: We had two big groups of maybe six writers, and we worked in an apartment building; they didn’t have any room in the main offices for the writers. Once a week we’d all get together and pitch on what’s in the news. We did that in a group, otherwise we’d work together as teams in the individual apartments. Everyday we’d get an assignment: ‘do 4 joke wall jokes’, ‘do a sketch for whoever the guest star is’. We had special writers for Dan Rowan & Dick Martin for their monologues. Only the cocktail party was a group effort.

Q: How did you find yourself landing Laugh-In as your first job?

Rowby: I got on the show because when it got on the air I went crazy over it. I started writing jokes on the way to work at the divorce court. I was a typist clerk, and I wrote on the 20 minute bus rides to the courthouse and back. Then I typed them all up, and I sent in my 10 favorite jokes. And I get a call the next day at the courthouse saying ‘who are you? What is all this?’ from (Laugh-In producer) George Schlatter. He wanted me to meet with him and Dan at his office in Burbank. So it’s just…they were 10 jokes, you know? It was amazing. Every comedy writer in town wanted to write on that show. Two days later, I turned in my rubber stamp at the marriage counseling department, and it started everything.

Q: Was there anyone in the cast you particularly liked writing jokes for? 

Rowby: Well of course Lily Tomlin, who’s always been my favorite and who I still see occasionally over the years. They were really all good, particularly the original cast. Jo Anne Wurley, Ruth Buzzi, they all had their individual talents. Goldie was fun, Ruth was reliable, Dan & Dick were terrific. It was a dream job. We had all these celebrities come in. Jack Benny was a guest star, and he was my comedy hero, and I spoke to him when he was getting his makeup on. The whole thing was an amazing adventure for me. 

Q: You won an Emmy around that time for your work on Hollywood Squares.

Rowby: Yes, I have it in my closet. I don’t know why it’s in my closet, I should take it out.

Q: Was the writing process on Hollywood Squares similar to Laugh-In?

Rowby: Well, not exactly. I got the Emmy for that show, but I didn’t particularly have fun writing that show. We had people who wrote the regular questions, and we were the ones who would step in for the gags, like Paul Lynde’s lines. Often we’d get these guests booked at the very last minute; it was a great job for the guests because often they’d be doing five shows in one day and make several thousand dollars. It definitely was a grind. But I got an Emmy out of it. A real Emmy (laughs). 

Q: While still working in the variety show scene, you also wrote for a fairly infamous production, Pink Lady and Jeff. That’s a show I’m a bit fascinated with. What can you tell me about the atmosphere backstage there?

Rowby: Fred Silverman, who had all these huge hits, (told) the Krofts he wanted them to write a pilot for Pink Lady and Jeff. When they explained it to us, we said ‘what? They don’t speak English?’ That was probably the first thing we thought. So we had Mark Evanier, Lorne (Frohman) and me (as writers) for the pilot. You know when you’re writing television, at least in my case, you’re like a child. You have to have faith in the show. You never think you’re writing a big flop. Even the first year of Laugh-In, when they were doing the pilot, George Schlatter explained to me people would walk by the studio and say ‘what the hell are they doing in there?’ It didn’t make sense to anyone. So it’s easy after the fact to say ‘what were you smoking when you were writing Pink Lady?’ But, after the initial shock that we would be writing this show, we started getting into it, and believing in it, and believing that these were two delightful young women. Most importantly, Sid Caesar was our guest star. When I was a little kid, I used to wake up at night and through the crack of the door into the living room I’d be watching Sid Caesar and Milton Berle. (Caesar) asked us, 'do you mind if I join you in the writer’s room to work on some of the stuff we’re gonna do on the show?' And we said (drops jaw) 'could you?!' We were thrilled! We were able to experience Sid Caesar’s mind. We had already written, and he would come in and go ‘why don’t we try this, and try a little bit of that?’ So, he made it wonderful.

Rowby: It was also a show that was really run by the writers. We had a lot of last minute changes in our guest stars, because people were sort of being forced into being a guest star by Fred Silverman. So, you know, Cindy Williams would end up being Erik Estrada. So we had to always keep juggling the scripts up to the last minute. Larry Hagman was our guest, and we heard terrible rumors of how difficult he was to work with, (but) he was delightful. We did a scene with him and an elephant, and the elephant took a shit during the taping. It really was a wonderful experience for us as writers. Then we did the last show, and it was really a disappointment, because I was totally into the fantasy. You gotta be like that when you’re in this business. 

Q: You also worked with (famous creative team) Sid & Marty Krofft. That was a bit of an infamous time for them, the variety show period.

Rowby: Well, it was. It was wonderful working for them too. Sid was the guy with the crazy imagination and then his brother, Marty, was the more serious guy. Marty recently died and Sid did a wonderful testimonial at his funeral. They spent a fortune on those shows. I remember on one of the variety shows that we wrote for them we had a whole amusement park with a merry-go-round and everything. It was always over the top. I’m sure they always went over their budget. 

Sorry folks, this was about the best quality I could find for a picture of this set

Rowby: In the case of the Saturday morning shows of theirs I worked on, which were sort of rehashes of Pufnstuf, they just dug the old costumes out of the warehouse. (Referring to “The Lost Island”, a regular segment on children’s variety show The Krofft Superstar Hour, later retitled The Bay City Rollers Show) We had a whole studio filled with dirt and trees and (people) chasing after (actress on the show) Louis DuArt, who was our damsel in distress. It was a lot of fun working for them. And I made a lot of money with them! (Laughs) 

Q: It’s around this time you were the creative consultant on the sketch film TunnelVision. How did you find yourself getting that job? Did you already know (director) Neal Israel or (producer) Joe Roth? 

Rowby: Tunnelvision all started with Tony Orlando & Dawn. I was a writer on the (variety) show Tony Orlando & Dawn at CBS. Neil was in charge of promo at CBS, where his department would do the 30 second and 15 second commercials for the shows. I went in there to meet with him regarding some Tony Orlando bits, and he said ‘would you like to do some promo on the side?’ I said ‘yea, I really like editing.’ In those days it was two inch video analog tapes. So I would go in at like 2 in the morning and do promos for All In the Family and all these other CBS shows. At some point Neal came to me and said he wanted to do a theater show and have television sets on the stage and do live comedy bits. 

Rowby: We went to (famous Hollywood comedy club) The Improv, and we met with who I assume was the manager of The Improv in those days, and that was Joe Roth. Joe was nobody in those days, and he’s had and still does have an enormously fantastic career. We started taping comedy bits. We didn’t do film initially, it was all on tape. Then at some point Neil and Joe said, ‘hey, this is a movie.’

Rowby: In those days, you couldn’t take your cell phone out and make a movie, you really had to know what you were doing. Fortunately at CBS (laughs), they had a film editing crew who were doing the promo cuts. This is all very much quite illegal (editor’s note: what a beautiful turn of phrase), but there’s a cutoff date for where I could be charged with a felony. They were doing the editing for TunnelVision at CBS. And of course on CBS’s clock. I remember one time leaving the vaults at CBS carrying a dub of a Johnny Mathis special, this big 2 inch reel of tape that we needed (for Tunnelvision). So it was really guerilla shooting. We shot all over the place. On the streets; next door to CBS is where we shot the CIA Candid Camera thing, and on the other side is where we did the ‘air is going bad’ sketch. So Neil was playing dangerously. I remember when the whole thing was over, and the film became very successful, at some point he met with his boss from CBS New York. And by the way, everything I’m saying is as I remember it, I give others the right to overrule what I remember. But my understanding is he had a very serious meeting with the guy from CBS New York who was very much involved with branding and everything. He said, ‘Neil, you even took the CBS (logo for) the Tunnelvision logo.’ That was literally the CBS logo, (but we made it) an eyeball in the mouth. It was grand larceny, and I would maybe be on a misdemeanor charge because I was just following his directions (laughs). 

Rowby: Here’s an example of how a typical (Tunnelvision) taping could go. Let’s do (for example) The Broccoli City sketch. About 4 or 5 in the morning, I show up at the apartment building that my parents had near Fairfax with bags of broccoli. I wake (my mom) up, and I said ‘we need you to cook a bunch of broccoli because we’re gonna be shooting a film around the corner.’ It was an old hamburger stand that’s no longer there. So my mother, in her pajamas, starts cooking all the broccoli. And while she’s cooking, (my parents) go ‘we wanna be in (the movie) too!’ So if you look at Broccoli City, (they’re) sitting in the background. 

Rowby: I had never heard of Chevy Chase when we shot that thing. I was there, and I had no idea who he was. He shoots it, and I hear later on his agent and manager were furious that we put him as the first name (on the poster). He’s only in there for about a minute or so.  

Rowby: It’s just amazing how it all fit together, without us really knowing what it was going to be. It was only towards the end that Neil or whoever decided ‘let’s make it a big hearing.’ So the wraparound was put together after the fact. The ending was shot at the Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles. Because I worked across the way at the divorce court, I was able to arrange for that whole section to be shot there. That sequence just by itself, if you want to talk grand larceny, was the most flagrant. We had a huge film truck parked right outside, all paid for by CBS. It was the only thing (in the movie) that was really shot properly: it had real lighting and real film set ups and everything. Everything was done without permits, but of course this was done with permits, I guess he figured he was just gonna do it. Towards the end of (making the movie) they had to do some color correction, because half of the footage was on film and the other half was on tape. They were short on the budget, so I went with Neil to some second mortgage loan company, and he got a second mortgage on his house in Venice to finish the color grading. So Neil was really the crazy guy who started this impossible thing. 

Q: What led you to being the director of the follow up, Cracking Up? 

Rowby: TunnelVision was such a huge success that Neil & Joe got a deal to work on another movie, and that was gonna be Americathon. But the distributors needed a movie fast. So while Neil & Joe were spending a lot of time getting Americathon ready at the Fox studio - they were no longer in some little dumpy house in West Hollywood - the idea was to do another wraparound thing (and have) people bring in their own material. So, it really wasn’t written. At some point it was decided the wraparound would be an earthquake. But they needed something fast. So they approached me to direct it. We got performers who already had their sketches written. I’d never directed before. They had to tell me the words to use to be a director. ‘Roll tape’, ‘action!’; whatever it was I always got it in the wrong order! (Laughs) So I knew I wasn’t all that. 

Rowby: We shot a lot of the outdoor sequences at the old MGM lot, which is now a bunch of condominiums. At that point the back lot, which had all these wonderful old sets, was really in bad condition. I mean I saw the trolley station from Meet Me In St. Louis, there was the Andy Hardy street, all very much run down. And there were remains from one of the King Kong movies by that crazy director from Italy.

Q: Dino De Laurentiis?

Rowby: Yes! (The King Kong set pieces) were made out of some kind of foam, which became the boulders you see in Cracking Up. 

Rowby: My mother and father play the doctor and nurse (in Cracking Up) who run up with bottles of urine. That was my idea. They were supposed to have blood in them, but we didn’t have any red fluid to put in the bottles. So (I said) ‘why don’t we just get lemonade?’ My mother and father always wanted to get into my Neil Israel films.

Q: Around the mid 80s you seem to take a hard shift into working in cartoons and children’s entertainment. Can you tell me what motivated this move?

Rowby: I get a call from my agent and he says ‘they’re looking for writers for Fat Albert'. I said ‘well I have two problems with that. I don’t know how to write cartoons, and from what I’ve seen of Fat Albert, I can’t write that kind of dialogue’. It seemed very artificial to me. He said ‘well at least meet with them.’ (They) talked me into at least doing one script. The writers they had were certainly not seasoned comedy writers. Bill Cosby, after all, was a (stand up) comedian, before he was something else… They needed somebody like me, so I did it. I wrote a script and they really liked it. So then I wrote 13 of them, more than anyone else for that particular batch of Fat Alberts. I found I really liked writing cartoons. I liked calling the camera shots. When I was doing TunnelVision & Cracking Up, as a director, I really didn’t know what I was doing. When I was doing sitcoms, directors didn't want you to call camera shots. They don’t want you to put any action in it at all, or they get very upset with you, at least in those days. So when I was doing cartoons, I really liked stuff like calling the camera shots and moving the pace along. The storyboard artists loved my scripts because they were easy to animate. Sometimes people would say in their script, ‘he gets out of his car and walks across the parking lot’. You have to cut (things like) walking across the parking lot. They had no idea. They had a lot of writers who didn’t have good writing backgrounds, a lot of beginning writers. 

Rowby: When Fat Albert was finished, they said ‘we want you to stay for He-Man'. I said, ‘my God, (I thought) I didn’t know anything about Fat Albert. I know nothing about He-Man!’ I’d see these big pictures of him on the wall and I’d pay no attention. As I used to say when I would go to the He-Man conventions, I referred to the picture on the wall, I said, ‘he looks very homoerotic.’ And I was never invited to any of those conventions again (laughs). So they said ‘we want you to stay on. Next Friday, you gotta have a premise for us.’ They give me a thick bible that doesn’t make any sense, and never made any sense. I figured, ‘ok, I’ll make He-Man Fat Albert with muscles. Mushmouth is gonna be Orko.’ That’s really how I did my first script. I kept writing more, and some of them are very popular today. I have fans all over the world who are thrilled with the He-Man scripts I wrote. 

Rowby: By writing on He-Man, which made billions of dollars for the toy companies, I was in demand for other shows. I got a call from CBS, they wanted me to write for The Berenstain Bears. The Berenstain people (creators Stan & Jan Berenstain) were very upset with the scripts they were getting, and they wanted to pull the show from CBS. So (CBS) says ‘can you try and do a script for them?’ And I did and they absolutely loved it. (The Berenstains) flew out from their farm in Pennsylvania, which they never did, because they wanted to meet this guy who finally got their cartoons right. And they were a lot of fun to work with. Stan Berenstain was hysterical. 

Rowby: I was writing for all these crazy shows, including one about Rambo. The guy had to show me what guns to use in the scenes because I didn’t know anything about weapons. I wrote all kinds of cartoons, because He-Man was kind of serious, and I had my comedy background. So I wrote a big mixture of He-Man type adventures, you know and for other toys, and comedies. Finally I said, I don’t want to do this anymore. I remember I told my agent, ‘don’t ask me to do anymore. Enough, I’m done with this!’ He said, ‘we want you to do one more.’ The guy who created ALF had an idea for a cartoon show. They said ‘at least meet with them.’ So there I was sitting at a table with the guy who created ALF, and the people I knew from (production company) DIC, and I said to myself ‘why am I sitting here? I really don’t want to do this anymore.’ 

Rowby: (After that) I pretty much stopped writing anything for television. Though I have a script I’m working on that I think is really funny. I finished writing it right before the Writer’s Guild strike, so I had to hold off on that for a while, but I’m gonna make some finishing touches and (work on developing) it again with someone who’s interested. And I’m doing my own puppet show. If you go to Rowby.com, you’ll see I’m getting that ready. I did puppets when I was a little kid. So I’m back to doing that, and doing what I want to do, rather than being an expert at what the networks want or what the rights holder for a character wants. I’m just having fun (working on) my puppet show. It’ll be about 5 minutes long, 5 episodes a week, and then I’ll put it together as one package. So you see, I can’t stop.