Who Wrote The Monkees? – “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth” by Dave Evans

Who Wrote The Monkees? – “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth” by Dave Evans Part 3 of an on-going series

This week’s Antenna offering for The Monkees – “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth” – was written by Dave Evans who is one of the nicest, kindest, men I have ever had the pleasure of interviewing.

Mr. Evans remembered being asked by Davy’s manager, Ward Sylvester, to write something that would highlight Davy’s ability with horses and hence this episode was born. Mr. Evans also remembered being asked by Bob Rafaelson to be on set for rewrites as needed, which gave him the chance to get to know the actors early on – an opportunity not all the other writers shared. After his two-season, nine episode run on the show he moved on to Laugh-in and Love, American Style, but told me no other job ever gave him the pleasure The Monkees did, so he eventually quit writing and went into conflict resolution, where he won awards for his ability to bring deeply distant parties together in compromise.

A 2014 article in the Los Angeles Times tells you all you need to know about him:

A tale of two churches — and a persistent racial divide, The Los Angeles Time

After the 1992 Los Angeles Riots Evans, the son of a minister, was a member of an all white Presbyterian church that created a cross town friendship with an all black Presbyterian church. Members of each began to visit the other church to create community. Twenty years later, Evans is the only member of his church still visiting the other church.

More information on The Monkees:

Previously in Who Wrote The Monkees?:

Why The Monkees Mattered: Chapter 3: Look Out, Here Comes Tomorrow: Counter-Culture Comes to Television and Middle America via The Monkees

Why The Monkees Mattered: Chapter 3: Look Out, Here Comes Tomorrow: Counter-Culture Comes to Television and Middle America via The Monkees

from Why The Monkees Mattered by Dr. Rosanne Welch — Coming Fall 2016 – Click for more info!

Monkees Question of the Moment: What did you learn about the counter-culture from The Monkees?

Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Final Book Cover! – Why The Monkees Matter by Rosanne Welch

So exciting to share the cover art that the McFarland graphics team has put together for my book! It makes everything start to feel more and more real.

Even though it won’t be available until Fall (the better to coordinate with the premiere of the show!) I enjoy seeing each step in the process.

Guess it’s time to make up some bookmarks with this to hand out at events!

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture by Rosanne Welch

Rory Williams – Family Man Part 3 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (1:14)

Dr. Rosanne Welch presents “How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity: A Study of the Doctors and their Male Companions“ at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library. Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

Watch the entire presentation here

Transcript:

So Rory is a reflection of modern day fathers and what women are looking for ina modern man, if they’re going to spend the rest of their life. You want somebody else who’s going to help you clean the toilet. Right? When you get married, it’s not just you cooking dinner every night. It’s a shared job. It didn’t use to be. I had a friend who would go to work, her husband got home an hour before she did. He would sit on the couch and wait for her to get home and start making dinner, ’cause dinner was her job. Yeah, yeah. So things have switched around and the show is reflective of that. I think that’s really beautiful. And, of course, we know who the baby grew up to be. River Song! Who allows us a family of “Ponds”, even though they were stripped of the chance to raise her. We now have a Pond family as part of The Doctor’s story and again Rory overlooking all of that. He had to deal with his feelings of losing his chance to raise his child. That was something that harmed him, more than all the danger. How many times did Rory die. Really now. All those deaths didn’t bother him nearly as much as being denied the chance to raise his own child. So, I think that defines him much more deeply as a family man above all other things.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Happy Birthday, Micky Dolenz!

In honor of Micky Dolenz 71st birthday here’s my opinion of his best natural smile, displayed in a moment from Monkee Mother (written by Peter Meyerson and Bob Schlitt).

The episode involves guest star Rose Marie (from the recently ended Dick Van Dyke Show) as Millie, a woman who moves into the Monkees’ beach house when they can’t pay rent. As a way of highlighting each Monkees’ niceness (in a time when all long-haired boys were bad ones) Millie has a moment with each boy where she asks him to do a household chore and then declares each ‘a nice boy’.

From 7:40-8:09 she asks Micky to fix a leaky faucet.

Another highlight is at 9:06 when Peter asks Millie if she likes music and then they go into Micky’s lead vocals on “Sometime in the Morning”, perhaps the finest of Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s songs written for the show.

We all know he’s done great work behind the cameras and on the Broadway stage since the show – but today we’re wishing Happy Birthday to the Voice of The Monkees.

Who Wrote The Monkees? – “Monkees in a Ghost Town” by Robert Schlitt and Peter Meyerson

Who wrote The Monkees? – “Monkees in a Ghost Town” by Robert Schlitt and Peter Meyerson Part 2 of an on-going series

The second Monkees episode Antenna TV is airing this weekend is “Monkees in a Ghost Town”, by the writing team of Robert Schlitt and Peter Meyerson. The partnership ended shortly after their work on The Monkees with Schmitt moving into one-hour dramas such as The Father Dowling Mysteries and, eventually, Matlock while Meyerson teamed up with fellow Monkees writer Treva Silverman on an episode of That Girl and a Buck Henry series called Captain Nice before eventually co-creating Welcome Back, Kotter.

I was lucky enough to interview Mr. Meyerson several months before he passed away and he regaled me with several stories about his time on the show and socializing with the actors, particularly at parties at Peter’s house, as Meyerson himself was quite the hippie, so their philosophies were well matched.

A few of the other writers I interviewed kept referring to Mr. Meyerson as their ‘college guy’ and in “Ghost Town” we see his homage to that perennial of literature courses – Of Mice and Men.

Yes, that is veteran actor, Lon Chaney, Jr. on the right.

More information on The Monkees:

Previously in Who Write The Monkees?:

“Success Story” by Bernie Orenstein

Walking the Los Angeles River with friends on Saturday #losangeles #la #california #walk #nature #outdoors #friends

Walking the Los Angeles River with friends on Saturday #losangeles#la #california #walk #nature #outdoors#friends

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My Favorite Book of Letters Between Writers, Cheever’s Glad Tidings

Answering another friend’s Facebook post reminded me today of one of my favorite books of letters between writers is between Cheever and John Weaver.

I stumbled upon Glad Tidings: A Friendship in Letters : The Correspondence of John Cheever and John D. Weaver, 1945-1982 many years ago at a used bookstore and deeply enjoyed reading how these two writers discussed their work and the origins of their most famous projects.

Of course, Cheever was also writing to Harriet Weaver but the editors left her name off the title, so it’s also a good look at how the Weaver marriage operated (in the same way The Letters of S.J. Perlemnan became a look at the marriage of Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell since he wrote so often to them).

What I enjoyed most was the inside look Cheever gave of coming to Hollywood when a studio adapted his story The Swimmer into a film – Weaver had much more experience living in Los Angeles as a writer of local histories so he helped Cheever navigate La-La-Land.

If you don’t know either of these writers, a selection of Cheever’s short stories, The Stories of John Cheever, won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (not too shabby) and John D. Weaver’s obituary in the Los Angeles Times tells you how important he was: “Weaver wrote two novels and eight nonfiction books, including one that helped change history: “The Brownsville Raid,” a 1970 book that led to the exoneration of 167 black soldiers who had been discharged without honor 64 years earlier.”

Both are well worth reading – as is Glad Tidings. Check them out.

Who wrote The Monkees? – “Success Story” by Bernie Orenstein

Who wrote The Monkees? – “Success Story” by Bernie Orenstein Part 1 of an on-going series

The Monkees episode Antenna TV will air this weekend is “Success Story” – written by Bernie Orenstein, a freelancer who wrote two other episodes: “Dance, Monkee, Dance” and “Monkees à la Carte”.

This 5 minute interview focuses on his memories of writing for The Monkees .

His more full time writing was on the variety show The Hollywood Palace which showcased Hollywood talent such as Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. He later produced Sanford and Son. In our interview I asked Mr. Orenstein if he was part of the youth culture and he said with a laugh, “My wife accuses me of missing the sixties entirely, and I’m afraid she’s right. I avoided the ‘emerging counter-culture scene’ mostly because I didn’t know there was one going on.” He has taught in the MFA program for Writing and Producing Television at Long Island University in Brooklyn.

Rory Williams – Family Man Part 2 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (1:08)