Broke in LA

It is NOT easy scoring free tickets to the taping of a show..scoring meth is probably easier.  I remember the days in Philly where I'd cut classes and take an elevated train to a taping of "The Mike Douglas Show".  I've been in Oprah's audience, and Phil Donahue's, and Jon Stewart's, and Sally Jessy's(again, you're too young for this blog) and Dick Cavett's..but tickets were easily gotten..you just wrote away for them and voila! They'd be in your mailbox.

But now..now with technology!--they are nearly impossible to get, even for a crappy show that nobody wants to see.  Our Uber driver is a native and said her grandmother waited for ten years for tickets to "Ellen" and literally died before they came.

We used the same service everyone uses, called "1-Iota" and I'm beginning to think they don't care one iota if your reasons for stopping in LA in the first place are ever materialized.

We were on waiting lists for shows we don't watch and shows we never heard of..game shows, talk shows, sitcoms..and came up empty. No Kimmel for us(he was taping in Brooklyn anyway)..no Will and Grace.

We were on the list for James Corden, who has become a hero ever since he shut the mouth of fatt-ist Bill Maher, who I actually liked before he showed his ugly side.

Bill Maher's sister was our wedding guest(our wedding--the reason for this LA/Hawaii trip as we bring in our 30th) and she is the funny, charming, warm, quite overweight woman who wore a slinky beaded gold dress, and all my gay male friends who watched our video would yell at her to "work it, girl!" as she enthusiastically danced the Alley Cat.

Getting off track again, and we haven't seen Bill Maher's sister in years, but how could he make statements like that to begin with?

"A brownie a day keeps the sexists away"

OK..back on TRACK...

So finally, finally after being on a waiting list for free tickets to ANYTHING, Jim finally gets some..for a new show called "Broke." on CBS.

We were so excited when the Uber driver let us off at CBS Radford Studios in Hollywood..and the incompetence began.  We were misdirected so many times to so many incorrect places that my leg itself did the speaking for me:  "Look dudes..I'm am aching..I can't walk this far!"

We were instructed to lock our cell phones (in a safe location, and I thought they'd be back in our possession within the hour--which was a HILARIOUS thing to think about)and I breathed it all in.

I was on sacred ground.  For a couch potato like me, this was more meaningful than walking on the cobblestone streets of Rome:  I was walking on the very grounds that bore the heels of MTM and Valerie Harper and Carol Burnett.

Instead of crowds being drawn to someone holding a sign in front of a cathedral, people were flocking to signs printed with the words "Last Man Standing" and "The Neighborhood."  (Ok, they're crap shows that I'd never watch, but still!!)

We're walking en mass to the Sound Stage, and we're walking past the lots for "The Talk" and "Brooklyn 99" and "American Housewife."  (The latter two are shows I actually watch--and adore)

We're walking through areas that smelled like freshly shaved wood chips, and we're passing flat bed trucks that have props bagged up that say things like "Boutique: "American Housewife") and I'm thinking:  "I KNOW that boutique..I've seen scenes there!" and it's just fascinating to me that a set is assembled and disassembled so easily.  I need to believe that the fictional town of Westport Connecticut is real...that the boutique is real and always there, inviting us all in to hear Katie's sarcasm.

I'm actually getting excited now...I've had a lifelong dream to be on a sitcom--to be part of the writing team..and now that I've seen what that dream entails, I'd rather have acute sciatica in both legs.

Because seeing a sitcom filmed..seeing the reality of what it actually is--is about as far from Hollywood Glamour as me donning the red carpet in a Clifford  the Big Red Dog suit.

The show is not on CBS's schedule yet, but might be a mid-season replacement.  

It is basically awful--a cliche ridden, stupid comedy with forced lines and contrived situations.  It's not winning Emmys, it's not luring it Neilsen families, and it'll probably never make it on the air.

The set was weird..something you might see in a weird dream you can't recall.  

The hilarious warm up guy told us we'd see the pilot first.  ("Broke" is like a thousand shows you've seen before it.  Like "The Pruitts of Southhampton" but less funny and again, if you weren't born in the 50's or 60's, you are going to be lost)

It's not "Two Broke Girls" bad, but it's not "Gilmore Girls" good either.

It's sort of in-between..maybe more in between "My Mother the Car" and "Veep" but closer to the former.

But the thing is, the producers think they're creating the best thing since "I Love Lucy"(okay..NONE of you are too young for that) because we were kept on that set for SIX HOURS!

If you gave me tickets to "Hamilton" and then a free meal at Carmines to be followed by free tickets for "Dear Evan Hansen" I'd think:  "hmm..that sounds like it'll be over six hours..that's too long of a day!"

I mean, I'd go, but at least that scenario included food!

We got candy and cold sandwiches between "takes"..(My dinner was a bite sized Kit Kat bar)

William Shakespeare probably didn't have this many rewrites.

I felt like I was a prisoner..no bathroom breaks, no pain meds on me because I thought I'b be at the event for maybe two hours..no food..it was a friggin' e-s-t gathering!  

Sure, it was fun seeing actors flub lines, and Pauley  Perrette is adorable in her own crazy Goth way.  She told us between take one and 350 that all her family were cops and firemen from Alabama and Tennessee, and I glare at Jim but then she wins the audience over by dissing Trump.

The little kid who plays her son was adorable, Antonio something, (don't bother googling..the taping lasted a LOT longer than the show will) and I recognized him as Nicholai from "Brooklyn 99"-- a very well written show.

The warm up guy was doing his best between takes--engaging us with silly stories and getting the audience to come up and dance and play stupid games for T-shirts and Kit Kats, until the show runner named "Mama Michelle" would cue something that sounded like a firm alarm and the taping would resume.

I know every line by heart now of Season One, Episode Four of "Broke" and all I could think of is the relief I feel that I never became a sitcom writer.

The actors are great, the writers too..and I'm sure the director is a nice man, but the group of "producers"-- a bunch of coked-out 22 year olds--we're driving us crazy and making me hungry.  They'd rewrite line after line after line. A cast of thousands with clipboards and coffee cups were on that stage, blocking our views of the directors chairs and the celb names on them

I wanted to scream, "This is NOT "Fleabag"..WTF are you folks doing?  We NEED to Uber back to our hotels for food and medicine!"

Poor Natasha Leggero, an actress I heard of but never saw.  She plays some kind of stereotypical rich bitch sibling, and I actually wanted to run on the set and hug her bony assed self, saying things like, "you said that line perfectly!  They are crazy!"

She had to say a line that went something like, "you know Tokyo?  The land of buildings and..."

Her first line was "noodl-y soup: and I thought that was a clever adjective--"noodl-y"--but they made her change it to "weird game shows" which is a reference I'm sure nobody in the audience or nobody reading this blog will get, unless you're as obessed as I am.

Every time I'd hear that fire alarm(a sound used to signal re-taping was about to commence) I'd think about how hungry I was, how much my leg ached, and how INSANE all these rewrites were.  A production assistant  told me the little kid from "Brooklyn 99" had to be in school the next day, and they HAD to be  wrapped up no later than 10:00 PM"

We had been there since 3:00!!  

What show did these producers think they were making?

Jim's phone was imprisoned--we were missing 100 possible celebrity death alert notifications because Pauley Perrette's arm was three inches away from where it should have been?

When they finally wrapped, again, almost six hours later!!..we were told that the cast was so happy and now the episode was in the can, awaiting EDITING!!

WTF was left to edit???

This show is about NOTHING, but not in a Seinfeldesque way..more like "nothing special"

You should have heard the snarky things I was whispering to Jim--and you probably will if the  "show" ever makes it to the air because I found out at the very end that there were overhead mics that picked up every word I said, including "I can't believe this is what passes for writing these days."

It was lovely to play my sciatica card and get a golf cart ride back to the wall that locked up our cell phones, and she explained a little bit about every set we passed..so that was exciting.

Next up:  A 9:00 AM tour of Warner Brothers Studio..then maybe some Hop/On/Hop Off tour of sleazy Hollywood...and tonight, we're going to  real movie screening, courtesy of Jim's friend Tom who makes documentary films out here.

Something tells me that's going to be less of an ordeal...