MISFITS OF SCIENCE: An Oral History (Pt. 1)

Originally published in April 2013 in collaboration with Popdose.com

Those of us who have experienced an era and lived to tell the tale are often guilty of over-romanticizing our recollections of how much more awesome things used to be “back in the day,” but with a bit of effort, we discover that it is possible to look back on our lives, acknowledge the imperfections of the past, and still find considerable enjoyment in the memories that we have accumulated.

If the preceding sentence doesn’t serve as a sufficient explanation as to why in God’s name anyone would want to put together an oral history of the short-lived superhero action/comedy series Misfits of Science, which NBC aired for a sum total of 16 episodes between October 1985 and February 1986, then let’s try this instead: for a 15-year-old kid who had a limited social life and cared more about comic books than classic literature, it was, for five brief months, the greatest TV series this side of The Greatest American Hero…and, as a result, I’ve never forgotten it.

With that said, it’s not like I’ve been sitting around obsessing about it since it went off the air. It’s just one of those fond memories from my childhood, like Automan or Mr. Merlin, that’s never quite gone away. Due to my soft spot for the series, however, when Jeff Giles, our illustrious editor here at Popdose.com, pitched me the idea of doing an oral history on the series, I didn’t hesitate for a moment before saying, “Dude, I could totally do that!”

I admit, I was kind of caught up in the moment, agreeing to the assignment before considering that two of the show’s primary cast members were deceased (Dean Paul Martin and Kevin Peter Hall), one went more or less off the radar after experiencing some personal problems (Max Wright), and one’s such a big star that, even if she does have fond memories of working on Misfits of Science, she can afford the kind of “handlers” who keep her protected from having to worry with requests to reminisce about her days as a teenage telekinetic (Courteney Cox). But, dammit, I’d accepted the gig, and I wasn’t going to just dismiss it out of hand without at least seeing what I might be able to accomplish with the people connected to the series who were readily available.

So I dived headfirst into the piece, and with the help of IMDb, I was able to get in touch with members of the creative team behind the series, a few of regular cast members, and several guest stars, almost all of whom were bemused at the idea that anyone would decide to do an oral history of Misfits of Science. Still, if they had memories of their experience on the series, they offered them up without hesitation, and if they didn’t recall anything in particular, they invariably apologized for not being able to assist me in my endeavor, although my favorite response came from the agent of one of the guest stars, who said that their client “does not remember anything about the show or even being part of it.” Well, fair enough, then.

What you see before you is the end result of my efforts. Granted, I didn’t expect it would ever turn out to be as extensive as it’s turned out to be, but as the number of interviews and entertaining anecdotes continued to add up, it slowly but surely transformed from a brief look back into a epic reminiscence. Admittedly, the number of diehard Misfits of Science fans was never that substantial, and it’s undoubtedly grown smaller over the years, but what you’ll find as you read this oral history is that you needn’t ever have seen the show to find it interesting. You just have to like TV and enjoy reading show biz anecdotes. If that’s your cup of tea, then this should be right up your alley. Or, at least, I hope it is, anyway.

In the meantime, just remember…

“When the unusual becomes the usual, the impossible becomes possible, the incredible becomes credible, and the weird gets weirder, who do you blame? The Misfits of Science!”

The Not-So-Secret Origin of Misfits of Science

James Parriott (series creator & executive producer): Television legend Brandon Tartikoff wanted to do a show about a team of people with…not necessarily superhero powers, but extraordinary abilities. First he went to Stephen J. Cannell, who turned him down and said, “No, that just sounds awful.” I think after doing The Greatest American Hero he was just sort of heroed out. After that, I think Brandon might’ve gone to somebody else, but it could’ve just been Cannell he talked to before he went to Universal. Either way, he went to Kerry McCluggage, who was VP of Development at Universal, and said, “Do you think Parriott would be interested in doing it?” So Kerry called me, and we went down to the commissary or to the corner store and we talked about it, and we said, “Well, it’s either gonna be really cheesy and awful and a terrible flop, or it could be one of those things that just catches on and is a hit. Do we want to do it?” I was really reluctant, because I’d started out on The Bionic Woman and The Incredible Hulk and was trying to get away from doing that kind of show. But we went ahead and thought about it for a day, and then we finally just said, “You know, what the hell: let’s try it.” So we tried it, and the initial tone…y’know, I said, “Well, I’m not gonna do this straight! We can’t do it straight. We’ve got to have our tongue in our cheek a little bit.” So that’s how we did it. And we had a lot of fun doing it. But it turned out to be the flop.

Getting the Gang Together

James Parriott: I can’t remember if Dean Paul Martin actually auditioned for us. He was pretty well established. I know Courteney had done the Bruce Springsteen video (“Dancing in the Dark”), and then she’d done one guest shot on…a Phil LeGuere produced show. I can’t remember what it was called. But I had a friend of mine who was on that staff, and they said, “Ooooh, don’t use her.” And I said, “No, I think she’s really got something! She’s really charming.” And she still had a little bit...actually, quite a bit…of her Alabama accent—she was from Birmingham—and was trying to get rid of it.

Jennifer Holmes had done a bunch of stuff. She was pretty well known in town at that time. I know she’d done something for me on Voyagers! The only bad thing about Jennifer was that she got pregnant. When the show got picked up, she said, “Jim, I have something to tell you…” I went, “Uh-oh. What?” She said, “I’m pregnant.” I said, “Oh, God…” So we had to hide that. In our later episodes, you can see that she’s shot from the chest or the neck up.

Diane Civita Cary (Miss Nance): I always refer to the ‘80s as my pop culture “missing decade,” as I was a new mom and pretty tunnel-visioned about trying to do my best in that department, so I have a kind of memory block about movies, TV shows, etc, during those years...even the ones I was in! I was raising two little ones—my daughter Olivia was 7 and my son Jed was 3 during Misfits—and working as an actress, too, mainly on television instead of in the theatre, which had always been my creative mainstay. Theatre rehearsals were often at night, and certainly the performances were, so I kinda dropped out of getting myself cast in stage productions. You want to be with your kids at night especially—that's when they really miss you, for the nighttime story and tucking in, for sure— and television was pretty much a daytime gig for me, aside from the occasional overtime days into night. I was grateful for every television job that came my way.

Playing Miss Nance was a hoot. It was all about the visuals, the props, and the wardrobe. Those said it all about her, with no dialogue required, which was a first for me, as my other guest star roles had been pretty dialogue-heavy. I am a confirmed dog lover, so I guess the episode where I had a Saint Bernard at my desk was a stand out. My daughter thought it was so funny to see her mom dressed up "funny" and acting "weird. It was the only show she ever watched me in that she still chuckles about. Well, maybe she remembers when I played Annie Oakley on Voyagers!, too. She was obsessed about horseback riding at a very young age.

It was a really good experience working for my husband, Jim Parriott. Because he’s so talented and his projects reflect that, it has always seemed completely natural working for or with him. When we first met in college we were acting together, and then he made the switch to writing. When we were married after finishing college, Jim spent two years as a graduate student in the screenwriting program at UCLA and I was starting to get work as an actress in commercials and television, so in that phase of our relationship, I was the one getting nice checks in the mail. Then, bam, the month after completing his degree, he had a film script optioned, got signed by William Morris, and within a year and a half, I think it was, he became a writer producer at Universal. He really zoomed to the top! He had a t-shirt someone gave him that read "Baby Mogul", because he was really young and looked even younger, like a kid. He wrote/ produced so many high level projects in such a short time, that sometimes he would walk into meetings and people would assume he was James D. Parriott's son!

Mark Thomas Miller (John “Johnny B” Bukowski): Misfits of Science was my first real job. I’d only done a couple of things before that, and I really wasn’t…to be honest with you, I was just a bad auditioner. I could do it well now, but back then I was just too nervous. I mean, it took me seven years to get my first job, really. But when I saw the script for Misfits of Science, I was, like, “Okay, I have to do this. This is mine. If I can’t get this right, then I should quit.” It was just that clear. I was, like, “I can’t screw this up.” So I was pretty obsessed. Just my behavior, I would say, more than anything else. But, like, in the past, I was trying everything to control my nerves, and I’d go in buzzed on some beer, anything I could do to try and calm myself down. This one, though, I was just locked on, like a soldier.

I would say it was a pretty standard audition. It went on for about eight weeks, and… man, I don’t even remember how many auditions I had. I think I went to the network three times, and I did a screen test. I don’t even know if they bother doing that much anymore. It was pretty hardcore. Of course, until you’re really famous, pretty much everybody has to read. You’d be surprised who still reads today, people are still fighting for jobs.

It was almost too easy for me to play Johnny B. For one thing, I was in a punk band in college, and I played in a couple of other really crappy bands, so there was that. But, y’know, I think when you’re young and you’re kind of a self-obsessed actor, you think your emotions are so unique and no one understands the depth of your pain and all that narcissistic crap… Yeah, it was just too easy. It was an easy part for a kid. “Look at me, I’m in pain! I have feelings! No one understands me!” My kid’s only five, and he’s already playing those notes. “You don’t understand!” Uh, yeah, I do, actually…

After Misfits of Science, I did have a few jobs where I just got the phone call and they’re, like, “Do you want to do this?” Stephen J. Cannell did that. He was a super cool guy. He actually called me up when I was on vacation, and he was, like, “Do you want to do this thing (on Sonny Spoon)?” I’m, like, “Sure! I don’t even care what it is!” Because, y’know, I liked him. And then, when he described it, it sounded neat. But I would say that was the only job I ever screwed up myself. I really did. I just didn’t get it. First they made Mario Van Peebles the director, which is kind of like taking a prisoner and making him the warden. They were trying to beef that show up, but then they let him direct it. I just… No one’s really asked me this before, and I’ve never offered the information before, either, but…I didn’t understand that, in TV, you’re supposed to act as people wish they could act. That’s what a hero is. On that job, I went in there, and I was being too real. I was acting as if I was really a cop in these situations, so my reactions were not hero-like. They were neurotic and nervous, and I was going for humor and everything else. I kind of messed that one up. I just had to learn to be more David Hasselhoff. He’s the master of it. He’d just walk into the network and go, “Hi, I’m great!” And they’d be, like, “Yes, you are!” And he’d get the job. If I had a little more of him in me, I’d probably still be working!

Enter the Writers

Donald Todd (writer & supervising producer): I had just gotten my very first assignment, which was the new incarnation of The Twilight Zone. I had done two episodes of The Twilight Zone as my break-in gig, I’d just quit my day job, and…I guess my agent must’ve got the script in. The one thing I don’t remember is how we got the meeting. But I got brought in to meet for a staff writer job, and I was hired. So I don’t know how it came about, but I do know that there weren’t a lot of episodes ordered, and (series creator) Jim Parriott wasn’t able to hire a very big staff. In fact, the staff, by my recollection, was me as a staff writer and Morrie Ruvinsky as a producer…and that was the staff! And then Jim was the executive producer.

Jim will correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe we had a six-episode order and just had to get through that, so, y’know, Jim was gonna write some, we were gonna write some, and that was that. And then, gradually, we got more and more, and…I think we ended up doing 16, but it was just, like, “Well, you’re gonna do two more.” “Great. Fine. We’ll just do that.” And then it was one more after that. I think it was like because Brandon Tartikoff liked the idea and didn’t want to kill the show, but the ratings just didn’t do much opposite Dallas. I don’t think we were always opposite Dallas, because we had different timeslots, but whatever we were up against was killing us. The only network we could beat was ABC, ‘cause at the time I think ABC barely did Friday nights.

James Parriott: I think Don’s got it mostly right, but I think he might be wrong about us starting out with six episodes. I’m pretty sure it started out as a 13-episode order, and then…I can’t even remember how many episodes we actually made! 16? I think it started out with an order of 13, and then we had the two-order, then the one-order, then they cancelled us. It was pretty weird.

Donald Todd: It was an interesting run, though, because Jim wasn’t allowed to increase the staff, so the three of us basically made every episode for the whole season. But for me, it was literally life-changing, because the lack of staff meant I had to jump in and learn things that I never would’ve learned if I’d been in a regular staff situation. I had to learn to produce shows. He just didn’t have the time to do it all himself, and so he let me, a brand new staff writer, and Morrie, a producer who I think had never done television, learn how to make shows from the very beginning all the way to delivering them to the network.

James Parriott: It was tough. It was just the three of us, and Don was new, and Morrie had never done television. Don became our star writer, but he and I would always be in there early in the morning, jamming, trying to get stuff out.

Donald Todd: When I speak to film classes or TV classes, I say that I managed to get away with not spending four years of tuition, because I got their education over the course of 16 episodes…and I was paid to do it! I had to learn to cast, to do sound mixing, to do spotting, to do editing. We edited on flatbed Steenbecks then, learning editing. All the stuff that the Universal television machine was. And they were a machine. They were the ones who did Magnum, P.I. and Columbo and Murder, She Wrote and…just shows that were done of a certain kind, and they had a machine in place. And I learned that machine. It was the best possible education.

James Parriott: Something that I bemoan to this day is that television has become so compartmentalized. They just want writers to be writers, and so on. And I think that’s a big mistake. I think the writers drive the shows, they become the show runners, and I think they ought to be on the set, in the cutting room, and in budget meetings, so they’re able to learn how what they write impacts the budget. That’s the way I was taught in the mid-‘70s when I came on the scene. Harve Bennett, who was my mentor, just sort of threw me into it. He was, like, “Go down and do a dubbing session! Go down and do this! Go down and do that!” And it was great for me. I was a filmmaker, so I just said, “Yes! Wow!” And I’d go and cut. You just learned so much, and then you become the guy who runs the show, like Don Todd. He knows how to do it all. So that’s something I always strive to do.

Donald Todd: When I came on, they had a pilot, and…I think we were going to reshoot some pilot stuff, as you do, but we started right away coming up with episodes and pitching them. I remember that story process was fascinating to me. Jim taught us very quickly, Morrie and I both, his story structure method of putting four acts on the board, with five beats per act, and keeping each character alive in each beat. There was a schematic way of doing it to begin with, from which you could branch. I didn’t know anything, though. I’d never done this. I mean, I’d done sitcom pilots at the beginning, and I’d done a couple of Twilight Zone episodes, but I’d never seen a one-hour done. I’d never even thought about writing a one-hour. I wanted to be a sitcom writer.

So I had to learn that from the beginning. We jumped in and did episode pitches, and then he took us…I can’t even imagine doing this now, but he took both of us to the network story pitch, where you have to pitch your season, and that was fascinating to me. Nowadays you’d never do that, because the stakes are so high that you would only bring in executive producers, but there we were. He involved us in every single step. And I remember we threw out a bunch of our first story ideas, which is what happens, and wrote some more. And we were always behind at that point. Always. Because there were not enough people.

Meeting the Misfits

Mark Thomas Miller: Oh, you’re gonna make me cry…

I met Courteney Cox the day that we shot the scene on the beach in Venice, which was rather ironic, because I lived half a block away from that. I lived right on the beach. Actually, there’s a scene later in some episode where I’m sitting on a wall, and my building’s the one right next door. So, yeah, I walked right out to the beach there, right on Westminster, we had the trailers, and I was introduced to her, and then we shot the scene where…let’s see, some guy on a skimboard splashes me, and she makes him wipe out. I think our introduction scene in the show was the first time I met her. She was young and beautiful, and she was the kind of girl that everyone in the whole cast and crew adopted as their little sister. I mean, there wasn’t a single person that had any negative to say, not a single person who wasn’t in love with her and didn’t want to take her home. That’s just who she was. You were just, like, “Wow, you got the job…” I don’t think all of us had even seen the Springsteen video, and it probably wouldn’t have mattered if we had. I think we were all too caught up in our own crap. Courteney…I could never say a bad thing about her. Even to this day, she’s just the sweetest, nicest person I’ve met in this town.

Donald Todd: I’m still friends with Courteney Cox. Courteney and I bonded a bit because she was as new as I was. I had had one small job, she had had one small job, and we were both out of the south. She’s from Alabama, I’m from South Carolina and Florida, and…we missed the south! And my wife at the time—we’re not married now—she was from Atlanta, and Courteney would have us over, and she would make her southern food for us, and we’d have her over and make southern food. So we got along that way, and we’re still friends. I spoke to her very recently, in fact.

Diane Civita Cary: Courteney was a delight. She was brand new to acting—I think Misfits was her first long term gig, so she was untrained—but she was so eager to learn. It was amazing how naturally talented she was, in addition to being beautiful, and how well she handled the pressure. James Parriott: Dean Paul took Courteney under his wing and was like a big brother to her. He was great with her, and he helped her through the pilot shooting. They became very close. When Dean Paul died, it was really tragic for all of us, but Courteney took it really, really hard.

Donald Todd: I also became very good friends with Dean Paul Martin. I was Dean Paul’s only normal guy friend. That’s what he called me. He said, “You’re my normal guy friend.” He was Hollywood royalty, and he only knew that world. And I was this kid from the south who drove this 1968 Camaro SS, red with a white racing stripe. And he thought that was really cool, and he wanted to do a show about a guy who drove a Camaro and solved crimes. He thought we should do that show. So we would hang out, and he would take me to Vegas to show me how that’s done, and I would take him to my house to show him how normal people live.

Mark Thomas Miller: I’d never really had much of in the way of an acting job before Misfits of Science—it was all just little parts—so I also first met Dino when I worked with him. He busted my balls just a little bit in the beginning, and it was really funny, because…well, basically, I was sort of a little bit younger version of him. Because of all the tests they do, I guess they decided that I was the teenybopper hero of the show, and he’d kind of already done that. But he became one of my closest friends in the world…and so fast! We just bonded instantly. He and Kevin Peter Hall were two of my closest friends, but Dino and I…he was more like a brother. It’s weird. I don’t want to get too deep into this, but…I’ve always said that it was like we were the same people, but we grew up in completely opposite worlds. He had tried to prove himself, which he had done half a dozen times. He played at Wimbledon, he played semi-pro football, he flew jets, he was an actor in movies, and he just was trying so hard. Meanwhile, I just didn’t give a crap! I mean, like, I was starting from zero, so I really just wanted to laugh and have a good time. And I think that’s why we had such a ball.

James Parriott: I can’t say enough about Dean Paul. He was just a real leader and a terrific guy. He was self-deprecating, but meanwhile he’s a jet pilot, he’s got women falling all over him…he was one of those guys who you kind of want to be. He was just a genuinely good guy. And I liked him an awful lot.

Diane Civita Cary: I remember laughing all the time on the Misfits set with Dean Paul, who was hilarious and just an all around cool guy. When I heard that he crashed his plane, I was devastated, as we all were, but there was some sort of small consolation in the fact that he died doing what he loved most: flying fighter jets. He was in the Air Force Reserves, and he was always talking about where he had flown the weekend before and so forth. That was his joy. But it’s still horrendous to lose such a multi talented, wonderful person at that young age.

Donald Todd: Dean Paul and I became really good friends, and when I was on my next show, Jim had the hard task of calling me and telling me that Dean Paul was dead. I remember that day. I was working on ALF at the time.

Mark Thomas Miller: Kevin…I stood up at his wedding. Like I said, he was one of my closest friends. I didn’t have a lot—I still don’t!—but these guys were really generous. We had a lot in common, doing the same thing at the same time. He and I were both fish out of water. Kevin was from Pennsylvania and I was from New York, and we were all just kind of winging it. He was one of the sweetest, nicest guys I’ve ever met. You’ll never find anyone saying anything bad about Kevin. He was just a great guy. Such a sweet guy. His only problem was that, after two glasses of wine, you had to carry him to the car…and he was 320 pounds! And that’s not an exaggeration: I literally had to carry him to my car and drive him home after two glasses of wine. He was such a lightweight. But he—like the rest of them—was generous, loving, and…just good people.

Diane Civita Cary: Kevin Peter Hall, what a kind, lovely person he was!

Donald Todd: Kevin was great. Kevin was such a nice guy. The story of him being a 7’2” guy who did not want to play basketball, even though he got through college that way…I mean, that was his real story. He never liked basketball, but people said, “Just play basketball, we’ll give you a college scholarship,” so he did. He was the gentlest guy. At the time, I didn’t really know that he was gay…or that gay was a thing!...so it never occurred to me that that’s what he was struggling with, that he really just didn’t want to play sports, that he wanted to be an actor and an artist. I was brand new in town. Now I think it would occur to me that that was the psychology behind it, but then I thought, “What a nice guy, but why wouldn’t he want to play basketball?” To me, it was just an unbelievable, eye-opening experience into the world of television.

I also remember Kevin had this fake girlfriend…and, again, at the time I thought it was just him fooling around, and it was kind of funny. But, yeah, he had a girl, I’ve forgotten her name—Evelyn, maybe? —but he would talk about her and what they did the night before. He was joking, and everybody knew he was pretending, but…I was 25 years old, maybe 26 by that time, and just brand new to the whole thing, so I was just, like, “Oh, he’s such a funny guy…”

James Parriott: Kevin Peter Hall was just a really, really, really great guy. It was very sad when he died. He was always laughing and was one of those guys who always brought the sun up when he walked on. Just a cheerful, terrific, wonderful guy…who had to make his own clothes. Which is hilarious, but he did. He said, “I grew up on a sewing machine. We couldn’t find things in my size, because I’m so big, so I had to make my own stuff.” I always thought that was funny.

Diane Civita Cary: Mark Thomas Miller was this utterly relaxed, cool guy, with an Elvis kinda vibe that was at the same time uniquely him. Off camera as well as on, he was just charismatic and charming, a real “no sweat” dude. I thought for sure he was going to catapult into the pixie dust stratosphere and become a big movie star. Whatever “it” is, he had it!

James Parriott: I always thought—I think everybody did—that Mark was on the verge of being a breakout star. And I think he could’ve done it, but...I don’t know what happened, but his career just kind of stalled and got slow. After the show, we’d talk on the phone and have lunch every once in awhile, and one day he said, “You know, I’m just not having any fun. I think I want to get out of the business.” And he did.

Mark Thomas Miller: No one was famous when we did Misfits of Science. But, I mean, that was the beauty of that job. No one had any credits, really. Most Friday nights, we’d end up at somebody’s house, having dinner and crashing or whatever. We truly were just starting out, and none of us were married. Dino had a kid who stayed with his wife, but…he was probably the only one of us who really had his crap together. The rest of us were kind of living out of our vans, y’know? Not literally, but…it was easy for us to spend 16 hours a day on location, ‘cause we didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Donald Todd: The cast was all so new and so young and so enthusiastic that I think they were great fun. Now, Jim dealt with them a lot more than I did. I was on the set plenty of times, but they didn’t bring their problems to me, so I just enjoyed them. Too much, in fact. I remember Jim having to take a van to the farthest level of the Universal backlot to pull me off the backlot because I was sitting there having dinner with the cast instead of writing a script. But it’s because I was just enjoying being on a TV show!

And Then There’s Max

Mark Thomas Miller: Max Wright came in later, after the pilot, and he was…more experienced. I’ll just say that he was a lot of fun to watch. And he was a professional. And we’ll leave it at that. I didn’t really know him personally, and I guess if you had to say some of the more stereotypical things you hear about actors, he probably had those traits, but…I dunno, he was just an unusual guy. He didn’t really bond with anyone else. I mean, the rest of us were a pretty tight group, but…y’know, we all got along, but he was just the kind of guy who, if we were five minutes late or something, he would just snap. And we’d be, like, “Uh, what the hell’s that about?” So he’d run a little more hot and cold. But I don’t really remember doing much with him on the show. Dean worked with him the most, anyway. Him and Kevin.

James Parriott: Max was a fun guy on the set. He was always just great. Fun, wry… That darker side, I never knew. He was always just a really good guy. He was the old hand in the cast, and he was funny, because he took everything with a grain of salt and always had a good joke. He and Don got along famously, because they both have a very dry wit.

Donald Todd: My relationship with Max Wright got me my next job after Misfits of Science. I had an agent, but a brand new agent, and I was a brand new writer, so I just had to be aggressive. When Misfits of Science ended and then Max got cast on the show ALF, I just had my agent call his agent…which is a weird thing. I wouldn’t think about doing that now. But I had my agent call his agent to have Max call the producers and say they should hire me. And it worked! It at least got me a meeting, anyway. That’s something that I don’t think too many other actors would do. Or maybe I didn’t give him a lot of choice!

Max and I… Maybe I was just naïve at the time, but my wife and I would invite people over to have dinner. That’s how we got to meet people. And Max came over. He was out here, and he didn’t have…I think his family was back in New York, and he was alone out here, so he’d come to dinner at our house. I just thought he was the greatest guy. He eventually ended up with some bizarre troubles that I could not even imagine.

But I do remember Max disappearing from the set one day. We’d had an argument on the set, and he said, “I need a minute.” And he disappeared from the set. And we waited and waited. We shot some other stuff, then we went to his trailer, but he wasn’t there. He disappeared! And then he calls me a few hours later and says, “Uh, I’m in New York. I’m sorry. I just needed to get away.” He’d gone to the Burbank airport and gotten a flight to JFK. And he came back the next day, but that was the beginning of what I believe were some, uh, troubles he went through. But I was, like, “Oh, okay, I guess this happens. I guess people just fly to New York to take a moment…”

James Parriott: Wow, I had forgotten that. Yeah, that was my one negative Max Wright experience. I was just, like, “Holy shit, really? Really?” It was pretty flaky. You’d think I would’ve remembered that!

Playing the Heartthrob for 16 and Tiger Beat

Mark Thomas Miller: You get a press agent, and they do their stuff, and I had a manager, and he was doing his stuff, so everyone was doing what was right, but I didn’t… Y’know, young actors, we all have these big dreams, but unless you’re getting an Academy Award for doing heavy drama, you’re never being taken seriously. And I had a dose of that. You wanted to be doing what Sean Penn was doing, y’know? But, truthfully, that (teenybopper) kind of stuff just happens. It feels really dumb. I remember posing for some of those photos, just feeling like a moron. I’m in somebody’s kitchen, and I’m, like, “Look! I’m making breakfast!” But I’m thinking, “I don’t do this!” I didn’t have to do it that long, because the whole series didn’t last that long.

In retrospect… I’d be far more understanding now that I know marketing and I actually market products myself. I would’ve said, “Well, this is how it goes. It generates income. Don’t take it personally. You’ll grow out of it.” At the time, though, it was a weird thing. And it wasn’t anything that someone created. The studio smart-tested the character of Johnny B, and he tested higher at Universal than anyone since the Fonz. That’s actually why Brandon Tartikoff picked up the series. Well, he and his wife did. They picked it up because of that character. So I kind of knew it was there. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to work. So I did.

Interacting with Tartikoff

James Parriott: Brandon Tartikoff would have lunch with me every once in awhile. There was this restaurant across from NBC called Chadney’s, and we used to go there, and he’d talk about the show and say, “What can we do to help?” This and that. It was a tough show, tonally. But he really liked it. He bought the show because, if you remember the pilot, where Johnny B fires lightning bolts out of his hands…? That’s why he bought the show. He said, “When I saw that scene, I went, ‘Yeah!’” I don’t think his family liked it all that much. I think they only kind of liked it. But Brandon said they lit up when they saw that scene, and he said, “That’s when I knew I was gonna pick up the show.”

Donald Todd: I’ll bet you that I never met Brandon Tartikoff on Misfits of Science. I remember meeting Brandon when I was on ALF, and then I went on to do an NBC pilot right off of ALF. That’s my memory of Brandon. But I think it was mostly that he was a guy that they talked about. As a staff writer, it would’ve been really unusual for me to have met him. We dealt with the heads of the studio, and that was unusual enough for a staff writer, but, again, Jim involved everybody. But I think once they went to the network…you don’t bring in a staff writer. Plus, I was probably just brash and mouthy. I can’t imagine putting me in a room with a network person. I can’t imagine doing it when I did, when I was doing pilots, but on Jim’s show, I’ll bet you he didn’t bring me in. But Brandon, he loved the show, or it would not have gone as long as it did.

James Parriott: Yeah, I think that’s true. I totally think that’s true. The numbers did not support the show staying on the air.

Mark Thomas Miller: We were all isolated from that world. We just stayed in our trailers and played cards. I didn’t understand any of the business, didn’t want to. Most actors don’t. And that’s to their disadvantage. Actors don’t understand business, product development, characters, or any of that stuff. They just don’t get it. They don’t even know how to manage their own money. I really didn’t, either. You just want to be in that game. I talked to Tartikoff once or twice. I talked to his wife a few times, though. She was awesome. Super nice. But actors, we’re just pawns. A producer would bring me into their office my manager would come along, the producer would give me some sort of backhanded speech about, like, “Don’t get too big for your britches,” and I’d walk out going, “What was that meeting about, anyway?” My manager said, “Well, he’s afraid of you becoming really famous and being a pain in the ass.” I’m, like, “Really? That’s what that meeting was about?” But I was just sort of naïve to all of it. I was just having a great ride.

That’s it for Pt. 1. Stay tuned for Pt. 2! And until then…

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