80s TV Legends: Golden Girls, Love Boat and Jim Colucci Forever

Weirding Way Media. Eighties, So pretty into the city. World. Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, where we laugh in order not to cry. I'm Saylor Franklin, filling in for Melissa, who's off this week visiting family.

So here are your hosts, Susan Lambert HadAM and Sharon Johnson. Hello, I'm Sharon and I'm Susan. The thing we love equal to eighties television is books, all kinds of books, but especially books about eighties television. And today we have a very special guest joining us in studio who wrote a book about, yes, the Golden Girls, maybe the book about the Golden Girls. Jim Calucchi.

Jim is a TV writer, author, and entertainment journalist. He wrote Golden Girls Forever, an unauthorized look behind the Lunai, published in twenty sixteen. It is the first ever detailed retrospective of this famous eighties TV Ladies show. He is a certified Golden Girls expert, though I'm not sure where you. Go to get certified for that.

You go down to the Eighties TV Lady's Certified Expert store. Maybe we need a T shirt. But if there was a place to go get certified Jim Calucci would be given the first stamp. He has written for countless magazines, from The Advocate to TV Guide, written television special has been a correspondent on The Frank DeCaro Show, and he's. Married to Frank DeCaro.

He has also written books on All in the Family and Will and Grace, but his most famous book is, of course, his New York Times bestseller Golden Girls Forever. Welcome to Eighties TD Ladies. Jim, thank you for having me. I had heard about this from other guests you've had, and I was waiting for my turn on deck. I've been hanging out here in my Weezy Jefferson T shirt waiting for my chance to come on your show.

I love your Weezy Jefferson T shirt. You know. I wore it because it is an a tribute to two eighties ladies in one, and it's not only Isabelle Sandford and Weezy, of course, but I got this at the estate sale of a woman named Ali Willis. And I don't know if you know about Ali. Ali was a songwriter.

She passed away a few years ago, and she, first of all, her entire esthetic was very much like Peewe's playoffs, and she was friends with Paul Rubens, and so she had a house in the valley in Valley Village that she painted pink, and it was like walking into Pewe's playhouse and it was just TV epemera everywhere and crazy stuff she collected, and she had her recording studio there. Because she was a prolific songwriter. She was the writer of the Friends theme song for one thing, but also of September for earth Wind and Fire, which is probably your biggest hit wo Neutron Dance. What have I done to deserve this? The music from the musical color Purple, And those are just the ones off the top of my head.

She was a prolific songwriter, ohly cow and she had a great affinity for African American culture because she was from Detroit first of all and worked with Motown a lot. So at the sale there were a lot of you know companies. I think they were probably black owned T shirt companies that had fun stuff on them, and I got Weezy Jefferson. It's probably cultural appropriation because the name of this T shirt company is called Gully Originals. That's probably not a brand I would I should I should wear if I weren't culturally appropriating.

But I figure I'm a gay guy worshiping Isabelle Sandford. I can get away with it. There you go. Yeah, absolutely, And I think T shirts are for everything. Yeah, and it's also you know, it's a way to honor both Isabelle and Ali.

I think that's amazing, isn't it amazing? All these incredible like singer songwriter creators that are sort of unknown, like living in the valley, and no one would know. She was a character. You'd know if you saw her. She had an asymmetrical haircut she was known for and was really always very loudly dressed, bigger than life.

She was so much fun. That is so amazing. And there's a documentary about her actually that just came out in the past year or two. And I'm going to get the title wrong, so don't. I think it's called The World of Ali Willis, but it's on one of the streamers.

So if you're interested in Allie Willis, it's a ll E E. Willis and she's just she's fascinating. All right, we'll put it in our audiography. Yeah, exactly. Oh yeah, well, I definitely need to see that.

Oh you'd love it. Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh. There's been so many great musical documentaries recently. I for some reason, I missed the one about Stax Records and found it on the plane on my recent trip, and they only had one episode for some strange and odd reason, and so i'd soon I'm going to go back and watch the rest of it. You know, that's what airplanes are for.

For some reason, I when I'm at home now, I'm going to watch the tried and true or I'm going to keep up with a series, And so I never end up experimenting as much as I do when I'm on a plane. For some and I'm a different person. I'm like, you know what, I'm going to try that, And often it's a show that I end up becoming addicted to and loving. Isn't that fun? It is?

It is sort of like it feels like it's a it's like a freebe right. Yeah, it does. It's like thirty thousand feet. Jim has totally different tastes and it's totally more experimental. And there's all sorts of crazy documentaries now that are really cool, Like yeah, is yes.

My mom, Jane, that's so great. It is it so impressed. I always had been impressed with Okay, here's the theory that my husband and I am. We think that Marishka Hargeta is the great leveler in terms of anyone would sleep with her, male or female, straight or gay. We are convinced that she is.

She is like the unifier, She's the I dare anyone to watch Olivia Benson and not have some reaction whether you want her to mommy you or whether you want her to sleep with you. I don't know what you want out of her arrest you rough you up a little, But there's I mean, Olivia Benson is amazing and Marishka is amazing. And what what you see from that documentary is I'm so impressed with her and her family because so many showbized families are screwed up, and so many regular families are screwed up. Never mind that, but the consequences of some of the choices that Jane made in her life, not meaning to hurt anyone. Jane was, it seems like a pretty good person, but she made some choices that you know, she was with different men at different times, and I think that could have been hard on her.

Kids, and you know, choices have repercussions. The fact that everybody comes together in that documentary and is able to deal with everybody else's choices and say, okay, well that happened, or you know, I accept you as my half sibling and I accept It's just they are really a lovely group of people, and they could it could have gone so differently, right, They could hate each other. They could be fighting over a fortune, they could be fighting over who sold the house. And you're not really her kid or I'm more her kid than you. You know, it's you don't get any of that.

It is true. Have you seen that, Doug? I have. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing and fascinating.

Like you said that, the whole family dynamic mean, in much better circumstances, things go completely and totally sideways, and it certainly could have in this case. But for whatever reason, Yeah, they all acted like grown ups and adults. Exactly, And I having not always acted like a grown up in those situations myself, I walked away from that saying, my god, I'm impressed with these people. Yeah, and again she's she is the great leveler, Like there's nobody that doesn't go, well, yeah, she's great. Yeah, you want something out of her.

Yeah. Maybe maybe you don't want to sleep with her, but you'd like her, you know, pat your hair and tell you it'll all be okay. And you also watch the Paul Rubins document. Yes, another great one. Yes, I learned so much.

That I did not know about him and his life. And his temperament because you see his temperament too in the interviews where he's really fighting the filmmaker and you know it worked out fine, but you can see wow, okay, Yeah, people are complicated. Yes, and he comes off even more complicated. Than you thought he would be. Yes, would be exactly.

You know, you can tell that it goes back to the days of the improv of the groundlings. Yes. And also the complicated nature comes to the fact that he really got unfairly treated on several occasions and it's still smarting from that. Yeah, and doesn't want to seed control to the filmmaker when you know things have been done badly to him. So I get it well.

And it also shows you too that whatever you hear read on the internet here on the news, you have to understand that you're not getting all. Of the story. It's impossible to because people are complicated. Situations are complicated, and I mean I've long tried to take a beat and go, Okay, what's the rest of the story, what are the complications? Because nothing is simple?

But yeah, it was. It was terrific. I highly recommend that as well. Not eighties TV ladies related, but still, who cares. It's very no.

I sorry, I started us on a tangent. Thank you, Jim. Oh we loved so we could be here all day. Yeah, but let's get back to you. And I am very curious what television meant to you growing up and eighties teles in particular, and how it led you to today.

You know, I think that my answer is probably in a lot of ways everybody's answer, and I will say the full thing to you now. But I think sometimes I'm almost shy about saying what television means to me because I think that I'm being maudlin about it or making it about me when probably everybody has this feeling. So that's my caveat Like, Okay, if I'm going on too long and I'm being emotional about television when everybody feels that way, then tell me to shut up. But I mean, television has always been a huge part of my life. The one part that might be a little bit different is that I have a older brother who is one year older, who is developmentally disabled, severely disabled, doesn't speak and doesn't read, and so when we were practically irish twins and in matching cribs, my parents would wheel in PBS for us to watch every iteration of Sesame Street that aired on Channel thirteen New York and I think it aired like three or four times a day, and so so as a result, it didn't do anything for him.

But I could read before I was two, and so TV was just always education for me. It wasn't even like a guilty pleasure where people call it the boob tube and say, you know, it's rotting your brain. I never saw it that way because I saw what it did for me from the very beginning. Electric Company was my favorite show. And so the other part of it is being a young gay kid growing up in the eighties, which were way more conservative about that, and growing up in a family that was a little more conservative about it and all those issues.

TV was an escape and it was a place where there were you when there was seldom but there was occasionally a gay character, they had some dignity in the episode. They were treated often by the end like they deserved to be equal, and so that was always a nice message. There were ideal families that were in some of those sitcoms where a gay character might be introduced, but even if not an ideal family that was functional. I mean, those were great escapes, and so I just always did that. I just and I think it brought me to of course, and I think this is what it does for everyone TV.

It brings you a greater understanding of the world and of other types of people. You know, I was growing up in the suburb of New Jersey. I don't know if I actually still live part time in New Jersey, and I have noticed I think it's more integrated than it used to be. The New Jersey of my youth in the seventies and eighties was very segregated black versus white in you know. I guess if you look at the history of race relations in New Jersey, there were the Newark Riots in the sixties, and that was a town that was considered very black, and I think that caused white flight in the cities, and because everything became more and more separated, right, And so that was the legacy I grew up in.

And so I grew up in a very white suburb, and I don't think I knew it was very Italian, very Jewish. That would be the only other minority I would know. And other than TV, and you know, going to the mall, you didn't get to meet other types of people that often. And so I'm glad that TV brought that to me that I didn't grow up to be, you know, in an adult before I had ever seen other types of people and seen them again presented with dignity and humor and everything else. So, yeah, just the politics of the television, because TV's more progressive than a lot of the real life people.

And I'm glad to have been exposed to progressive politics and diversity. Yeah, Like I think because we love the characters so much, and we're invited into, particularly in the sitcom world and put all of the worlds where you're invited into people's homes through television, and it's a little bit different. Right, Yeah, it is. I always say that, you know, media obviously, as it's both a mirror that reflects who we already are, and it also is who we could be. And film is great at that, because there are, of course films that have completely changed American culture or the world.

But a film is a two hour, maybe three hours sometime vehicle, and a TV show can come into your living room when you're at your most vulnerable, when you're in your underwear, when you're most receptive in a lot of ways. Maybe you're tired, maybe it's a long day, the world has beating you down, and you're receptive to something that's going to make you laugh or make you cry. But TV can come into your living room for a half hour an hour every week, for twenty something weeks every year, year on end. You fall in love with these characters. A film character can be iconic, a film character can be a poster.

It can be something to aspire to. But it's not going to become your best friend. Mary Tyler Moore, Mary Richards could be your best friend. Dorothy's bornet could be your best friend in your mind. Of course, we know they're not real, but they really they become a part of you.

They become someone you feel you know. And so when someone like that then has an experience that's either great or can be awful. Maybe they're discriminated against, maybe they are. There's violence, maybe there's a home invasion, maybe there's you know, whatever it is, they're joys in their triumph. You feel them so deeply because you've gotten to know them so well over all this time, and so the power of that is enormous, and including to sneak in some progressive messaging, as I wrote a book with Norman Lear all about all in the Family, and you know, that's what he saw so brilliantly that even Archie, by the way, was lovable because of Carol O'Connor and the writing.

But the other characters who were more progressive, if they had been in a film, character who had lectured you once, you might say, you know what, go to hell meete head, Mike, I don't want to be lectured about this. But Mike came into your living room every week for those nine years, actually he was only for the first eight, and became a friend and became a trusted source. And so I think that a lot of his viewpoint kind of resonated with people over time, even people who maybe by the film the show's premiere in nineteen seventy one wouldn't have considered themselves progressive, but some of that kind of got through to them. So TV has such immense power and I love that about it. Yeah, it has not just the entertainment value.

Sometimes it is all those those underlying things that along to make TV so compelling and at least I know it does for me. Well, what better way to get through to someone than with laughter or with through their emotions? Right? If we all see on social media everybody trying to make and maybe i'd say intellectual arguments, but some people are clearly not very intellectual. But still sometimes it's just argument.

Yes, sometimes it's just arguments, but they're trying to appeal to the intellect, to the brain to change people's minds via the brain. And that's very hard to do because especially in an era when people don't accept facts as facts anyway, So it's going to be very hard to change somebody's mind with a fact when they're just going to tell you it's not a fact. However, emotion is where you really change hearts and minds and laughter and you know, the spoonful of sugar of delivering a designing woman I always think of doing this is there it delivering great messages along with hilarious situations, and you can laugh at Susanne sugar Baker and laugh with Susanne sugar Baker and still get the fact that she's being a buffoon.

Here. Oh, here, she's showing she has some heart. Here's what we really should get out of this episode that this gay character who they were to designing a room and a funeral home for, deserved the dignity and not to be treated like a parah or she's wrong when she shoots Anthony. Yes, yeah, yeah, we get it, we get it, but it's because it's done with laughter. I totally agree.

We sort of talk about how how television, particularly eighties television, but all television I think from the beginning was teaching us stuff. It was our Internet before the Internet, because you could learn about something a culture, a class, or even again, Cagney and Lacy, they have a scene where they teach the captain how to use a microwave, and that was because America needed to learn how to use their microwaves. Now, some of it was also selling microwaves, I was going to say, but it was that thing of like people didn't know how to use them, and it was technology that you got this information, and then they did it with rape and with you know, police brutality, and with you know, cancer and all these these shows had an opportunity to showcase life lessons but also life information that you couldn't really access as immediately anywhere else.

And it was really television, I think, the first thing that really showed people across the country, across the world about how other people lived, Yes, what sorts of families and and you I could imagine going, oh, well, their families maybe live here, but there. And they may pretty similar. Still I'm still just kind of like my family. It was the beginnings of that. I mean, listen, as we all know, at the end of the day, television is all about making money, right, That's what That's what it was made for, and that's why it exists, and that's okay.

But it also had all these consequences intended or otherwise that has made a difference in our world and in our lives over the years. Oh I think so. And not to be pollyannaish and all positive about television all the time, but given where even as screwed up as we are now and how backward we seem to be moving, I'm going to say, let's talk about twenty sixteen before this whole era started. Well, that's okay, let's think of that as the good old days. That twenty sixteen was so different from nineteen seventy one when All in the Family started, It was so different from nineteen eighty whatever.

And I can't imagine such social progress on so many issues taking place so quickly as it did in the TV era in other eras, like what were really the social differences for gay people or black people or Jews between the twenties and the thirties or the forties where they did. Was there that much progress? Probably not? But once TV's in the equation, I think that things kind of started to really accelerate in terms of acceptance. And so you know, when I think of All in the Family, and when you mentioned women's issues and reproductive issues and stuff in All in the Family, when they had Edith talk about either being in menopause or breast cancer, they got hate mail for that.

How dare you talk about something so dirty? I watched this show with my children, with my daughters, Like I'm a grown man writing this. I write this, watch the show with my daughters. What you don't want your daughters to know the facts of life, that there's a such thing as breast cancer, and then you know, think about by the nineties, I would never have thought that even would have happened, Like breast cancer was of course openly discussed, and that was, you know, less than twenty years span. So I really think that things really accelerated through television in a good way.

Yes, And I think it's also the power of storytelling, yes, right, like we had, you know, but it's storytelling on steroids. It's not we got to get everybody into an amphitheater and teach them about the Greek chorus. You know. It's Oh, we can feed this right into your home. It's so intimate.

Yep, it's so intimate, and you do find characters you fall in love with and they're with you forever. Like you know, there won't be another scare Chromasis King episode, but damn it, I still love it. Oh why will not reboot that? I mean they're both we have Kay Jackson and Bruce Boxitler. I was at a part pready recently, maybe six months ago, where Bruce box Lightner was and I was so tempted to go up and geek out and I didn't, and I kind of regret it.

He would have loved it. Had him. We've talked to him. He was amazing. They met him in person.

Melissa I, Melissa and our producer and I went to the fortieth anniversary of Scarecrow Missus King event that they had. He was there, and Martha Smith was there, and a number several of the other cast members former cast members were there, and he was a delight Bruce, I mean they all were, but yeah, it was a great storyteller. And now I doubly regret not having a costume. Yeah, I have that same experience. I was in a theater and dig Van Dyke was right now with two people next to him that were younger, and I assume they were with him, and I was like, I want to go up, but I felt like I couldn't.

And then later I found out that he absolutely adores that. Because that's the thing. You don't know. Some people are like, please leave me alone. Others are like Dick and Bruce and like love to talk to you.

It's, you know, nice to meet you, and they really enjoy those interactions. More often than not, they actually do like it. But it's more a case of Do I have anything smart to say right now? Or am I just gonna be one of those peopleho goes remember that show memoer like I don't want to do that. I just at okay, let me have something smart to say in this moment, or maybe I shouldn't do it.

And that's so funny because it is one of my questions for today, so we'll ask it right now, which is, you know, what's your advice if you see somebody and you want to say something, what you know? Oh boy, I am so the wrong person to give that advice because I have screwed it up on so many occasions. There are legendary stories of encounters that went wrong because of me, And I think this was one of your questions that I showed to my husband and said, this one could take an hour alone. I have an infamous story about accosting Meryl Streep on the New York cupt Way and how badly that went because of me. She was fine because of me, And same thing with JFK.

Junior on the New York Subway. You know, I would say a don't go up to people when they're around their kids or grandkids. They get very protective and even if you know you're just saying a quick hello. I have said hello to people in restaurants where the kids were around and gotten kind of like a weird look, and I was like, okay, yeah, you're being protective. There's one actress from an eighties TV show I guess I won't say her name now, but I saw her walking a baby pushing a baby carriage it must be her grandchild, right near the entrance to one of the studios here in town.

And I was walking by and I needed her for my love Boat book, and so I went up and talked to her, and she could not have run away faster and faster, and I was just like, wow, Okay, that went really not well. So yeah, I would say, don't go up to people when they're around their kids, and also go up with something specific to say and a compliment that means something, you know. I always think of my husband talking about when he saw Juliane on the New York subway and he was ready to He was like, I know exactly what I'm gonna say to or and he was waiting for the moment where maybe one of them would be getting off the train so they would she would know that it wouldn't have to be a long conversation.

And the stop before my husband was going to get off, another gay guy walks by Julia and Moore and says, I loved you Insafe, and she was like, thank you so much. No one ever talks about that movie when they talk about my stuff. And they had a nice conversation, and then when Frank got off the subway just said to her he took mine, like because that was what I was gonna say, and he couldn't come up with a plan B, so that's all he could say to where he took mine. I always wish that I had like a sign or something or something that I could say sort of indicate I'm not crazy. Yes, but see the problem is that often makes you look crazy.

With Meryl Street, just the long and the short of it is. Oh yeah, I got to hear this story. It's a really long story. I look so bad in it. I see her get onto the New York subway.

I'm the only one who recognizes her. She goes and she sits by the pole, you know the pole that we're on the other side. There's the gap for the door, and she just hangs down to the pole with her right hand and puts her head down and just closes her eyes like she doesn't want to make contact with people. And I'm all like, that's Meryl's great, all right, I got everybody and nobody is paying attention. It's New York, they're all blaise.

So I, like a creepy person, go stand in the gap of the door and have my left hand over her right hand, and I'm just looking down at her the entire like I'm inches from her face for the entire ride. And it was a crowded subway, so she didn't necessarily think that like I was. It's not like there were feet around, but I still I was the one who was inches from her face, and I start telling myself that, oh, she must be doing what I'm doing. I was on my way to a Carrie Fisher book signing at Lincoln Center of the Barnes and Noble when it was there, and I did. I knew Carrie a little bit, and I so I was going to the book signing, and then I thought, wait a minute, Merril's probably going to the Carrie Fisher book signing.

Why else would she be on the one nine train right now? And so Okay, Meryl's going to the signing. I'm going to So I'm convincing myself of this. So we start to get near the Lincoln Center stop and she's still not looking up or paying any attention. I think this in the day before earbuds, but you can imagine like maybe she had earbuds in.

And I said, how am I going to alert Meryl that we're at our stop and she's not paying attention without telling everybody else that she's Meryl Street Because I did that to JFK Junior once I outed him on the subway, and he did. He was nice about it, but I could tell he did not appreciate it. So I was like, I know, this is this is the crazy this is the crazy way. Even the T shirt that says I'm not crazier the sign would not help. I said to myself, I'm going to address her in a way that only she will and I will understand.

That's a bad thought when you have that right there, run away from that thought. So I thought, well, she's on her way to Carrie Fisher's book signing. She was in Postcards from the Edge. I'm going to call her Suzanne, her character name, so yeah, this is this is crazy. This is crazy.

I like how you're gasping. This son hasn't even happened yet, and you're gasping with embarrassment. So I'm already only like three inches from her ear. So I lean into her ear and I say, come on, Suzanne, this is our stop. And the moment I said it, it all hit me.

Oh I made this all up. She I don't know where she's going. I just called her. I just watched the frequency Kenneth's Meryl Streep if you remember that reference. I just watched the frequency Kenneth Meryl Streep.

And so at the moment I'm done saying it, she tilts her head towards me and opens her eyes and just looks at me, and I was like, oh my god. And I'm like, now three inches by'd eye with Meryl Streep, and I'm like, you know, she's she could be intimidating when she wants to. She wasn't even trying. And I'm like, oh my god, I have screwed this up. So the doors open at Lincoln Center and I jump off the train, and you would think, for devilment, the doors don't close.

The train just sits there in the station, and I now need to know whether she's getting off the train, Like how crazy am I? So I hide behind a pillar and I'm the only one. I'm the only one on this This never happens either. I'm the only one on the entire platform at Lincoln Center and I hide behind this pillar. Not well, I'm fat and I'm fatter than the pillar.

And I'm watching the door of the subway and just it'sting there and I'm like, wow, lo, when do subways just sit it? And finally I hear the ding dong ding dong, like it's gonna close, and I'm like, oh, she wasn't even getting off here. And with that, she stands up and like adjusts this long dramatic scarf she was wearing and glides off the train as if the conductor had been saying, Meryl, we'll wait, wait whenever you're ready. And so she gets off the train and she's now on the Lincoln Center platform and I'm hiding behind a pillar like four feet away, and she sees me, oh do And so she comes up to me and says, I'm sorry, what did you say? And this is my this was my opportunity to make something up that wouldn't be crazy, but I just couldn't think fast enough, and I thought, you know what, she's going to hear that it's different and think I'm so I just repeated it sheepishly, come on, s in, this is stop.

And she's like uh huh, and then she waited to see which direction I went, which exit I took from the platform, and she took the other one, but she did go to the Carrie Fisher book Silence my god, Okay. I actually ran up the stairs into the Barnes and Noble. They had closed off the upper level where they were having the book signing, and there was a poor Barnes and Noble employee like blocking the escalator, which was a really skinny escalator, and I just I practically ran her over. I just zoomed past her and like red faced and crying, like I have me get up here with my holenses up there waiting for me, and I just said something crazy mel Streep. And.

The one was just like, oh, he's crazy. I'm not going to get in fight with some So I got upstairs and I see Frank and he's standing right by the entrance to the like the glassroom where the book signing will be, which is already overflowing with people, and I just start saying to whimpery, I love the subway. There's Meryl stream and he's like, you're not making any sense. And with that, Merrill comes up behind me on this way and just on the escalator and just glides past me and goes led to the green room where she's apparently going to meet carry And I never saw her again, but I was like, Meryl, Oh my god, so yes. The answer to how to go up to people that you admire is, hey, don't do it when they're kids and their grandkids around.

Be have something smart or respectful and a unique compliment and see, don't be me, don't do anything I've done. Don't make up a whole story. Don't make up a whole story in your head about how you know them, and you can intimately call them by another name in their ear. I mean, oh my god, the idea that she didn't like call security or like, it's so nice about it. I love.

That's what road took you to writing in journalism in particular, and TV, how did what was that journey? Like, oh my god, it was so not the right road or the straightforward road, and now I have to say the straightforward road to journalism is probably one that I would tell kids. Don't do it anyway, because journalism has completely fallen apart, like many things, and not just because of the politics of today. But I was saying this ten years ago because the Internet really undercut what I do and I think what a lot of other journalists do. Because the democratization of voices, well you could see democratization in most things is usually a good thing.

It also can have negative consequences, and one of those is that when everybody's voice has equal including people who are just making stuff up off the top of their heads, it's very hard to distinguish through the clutter who is a qualified voice and people who have trained to be journalists. So it's very hard to make a living now because whereas newspapers and magazines used to only hire qualified journalists and they get paid two dollars a word or whatever it was, now there's almost no such thing as two dollars a word, and a lot of those magazines and newspapers died because they were competing against the Internet. So that being said, I didn't even take that the standard journalism road to journalism anyway.

I was a marketing and computer science major. I didn't want to do the computer science part particularly. But while I was working in New York at an ad agency, which not in a creative capacity at all, is working in a numbers capacity, my husband was writing for TV Guide. He had a deal there, and actually I got a break. I had always written it kind of keep me saying, even when I was studying computers.

So I wrote for the school newspaper and their features magazine all through college anyway, So I had always kind of been doing it, but not I knew it wasn't a career, and I didn't know if it could be a career. Were you writing about television at that time? Or were the features about a variety of things. It was a lot about television, a lot of film. I was a film reviewer.

I'm not a good film reviewer, and so I didn't make it as a film reviewer on that magazine for that long because I have very mainstream taste, and they wanted artists, you know, they wanted people to review the latest European film, and I would that wasn't me, But you know, I didn't see that as a career. I'm working for the ad agency in New York and my husband, who was writing for TV Guide, was asked to cover a particular story. He had been chronicling the Sopranos from the very beginning of that show. We're both Italian and from New Jersey. I think that's how he got the beat.

He did an interview with James Gandalfini before the show was ever on the air, and he's on set and so he really was ingrained and meshed with them. And then the Sopranos, this was probably nineteen ninety nine or two thousand. They were having a very hyped up casting call in New Jersey at a high school in Harrison, New Jersey, and they were going to possibly cast some people for probably only minor roles. They didn't say it that way from this casting call, and so the TV Guide editors asked my husband Frank, to go cover it, but they wanted someone to do it undercover, and they didn't realize until a couple of days before. Wait a minute, he can't go undercover.

They know him, and so they had a last minute like who can we get And so they asked if I wanted to do it, because I knew his editors too just throw him, and I was like, sure, I'll go undercover at the Sopranos casting call. Well, a, I'm not an early riser, so I probably left or too late anyway for this casting call. But they expected I don't know how many the maybe a thousand people, they got something like twenty or thirty thousand people come to this high school. It was so much that had overwhelmed the entire town. It shut down the highways in every direction.

The police had to come and shut it down. And so I, at the time that it was supposed to be starting, was still stuck on route to eighty halfway between New York and Halfway and Harrison, New Jersey because all the exits were closed. And so by the time I made it to the town, the cops had shut it down hours early but earlier, but there were still thousands of people standing in line, milling about, pissed that they didn't get in with their headshots. And so that became my story, talking to all the people who were pissed that they didn't get to go to the Sopranos castimal. And then once I did that, I just kept pitching to TV Guide and It was honestly not something I again saw could be a career.

But it was that I had a New York rent that was killing me, and I had a not great paying job in advertising, and this was a way to make up the difference. Oh, I could sell some freelance stories on the side, and I wasn't always busy at work in advertising. So I would secretly close the door of my office and do an interview with Don Adams, you know, and then the gl open my door again and pretend I was crunching numbers. So I did that for years, where I had like a secret double life where I'm interviewing celebrities with the door closed. And so eventually I had always wanted to write.

Was it two dollars a word? Yes? TV Guide was dollars. I don't know what they are now. I don't think they probably are, but back then it was a story.

Yeah, it could be, I mean, and they would assigned low word counts, like you would get a story that was like three hundred or four hundred words, but hey, for six hundred and eight hundred bucks extra this month, that's great. And they especially if you did a couple of stories a month, and so After a couple of years, I started thinking, well, I've always wanted to write a book about a TV show, and the reason is really because of the consumer of books that I've always been about TV shows that and the books were always terrible. When I was a kid, before the Internet, the only place to learn about your favorite shows would be either the columns and TV guide that would like would be about it, and my parents were too cheap to suscribed to the actual TV guide, so I just had to rely on the TV supplement in the local newspaper and there'd be a Q and a column and maybe three or four questions with answers about current shows, and that was the only source I had.

But I always thought, I want more. And there would be occasionally books about TV shows, but when you'd get them, they often be written on the cheap, they have errors in them that, as even a casual fan, you'd be like, that's not even right. And so I thought, you know, with the shows that I love, I want to do a deep dive. I want to be able to tell people that every single detail that I've always wanted to know about the show and have it be right. And so after the couple of years of experience with TV Guide, I started pitching a Golden Girl's book and this is year this, Oh, so this would be two thousand and two, okay, And I wrote a Golden Girls book proposal.

I wanted to be able to tell everything about that show, the way I always wanted to know every little nitty gritty detail that hasn't been either revealed or it's been in many different places not compiled into one. And I didn't instantly get a deal to do a Golden Girls book because of the agism and misogyny that is in the world and of so many publisher it would that's exactly what I would get. The pattern would often be that my agent would approach a junior person at a publish company, who would often be a gay guy, a young woman, a person of color, somebody who would get it and they would say, oh my god, how has there not been a book about the Golden Girls? Y, Yes, yes, I can't wait to do this, and they'd run it up the flagpole.

And then we'd hit some old white guy in marketing who'd say, that's a show that's over ten years old at this point, over ten years old about old ladies who'd want to watch that? Why would we publish a book on that? And then we'd die. So in the meanwhile, there was an open writing assignment to write a book about Will and Grace and like my second favorite show that I'm also obsessed with, and so I auditioned for and got that assignment, and then later I was able to, based on the strength of that, able to sell my first Golden Girls book and keep going. So I had no training other than other than writing for the school paper, which was good training because there were people who were journalists, students and grad students or whatever who were my editors.

There is it interesting that, you know, so many years after, I'm sure many people said, oh, who's going to want to watch this show about these middle aged women? And this show it becomes a phenomenon, and yet there is still the mentality out there. You will still hear that. Yeah, I mean more people now get it because they see all the merchandise out there and they see that, you know, they can read about how it's a phenomenon, and the phenomenon is one of the few the old shows that grows rather than recedes in time. But you will still encounter people in business who will be like about old ladies.

So it's as cool as the Golden Girls. I mean, I remember not to bring up horrible names again. But you know, in twenty fifteen or fourteen, Mitch McConnell, when he was trying to be sexist about Hillary and ages about Hillary, he said like, oh, the Democratic ticket is starting to look like a rerun of the Golden Girls. And I was like, you don't realize that's actually a compliment. Like keep saying that because the Golden Girls has immense popularity, you'll get people to want to like her better.

But you know, there are so many clueless people who just refuse to get it. And it's because of the ingrained disdain for older people and women that they think is totally cool. They're cool with it, and. Dare I say, it's probably mostly men who are making it. So I think it is mostly men.

I don't see many women say hey, women should be irrelevant. I think it's got to be men. Yeah, that's crazy, all right, So it took you. The book came out in twenty sixteen, so it was. Well two books.

I wrote two books about the Golden Girls. What ended up happening was still in two thousand and six, I was encountering the pushback about the Golden Girls. But I was at a wedding where the gay best what was his title, It wasn't best man. He was the bride's best man basically. However, whatever he called himself, it was a cute name.

Happened to be an editor at a gay and lesbian publishing company actually, and he was just starting a book, a series of guide books that would have the spines would be in different colors, so it would form a rainbow on your shelf. Nice and the yellow ones were going to be the guides to pop culture. And so I said, well, Golden Girls. And so the Q Guide to the Golden Girls ended up becoming the first Q Guide in the yellow category, and I dare say their bestseller ever because of the power of the girls. But then I wanted, I always wanted to do a larger book about the Golden Girls because the QUE Guide for a lot of reasons, had to be smaller.

There was no budget, there was no photo budget. But also Disney, which owns the Golden Girls to this day and was one of the producers as Touchtoone Television, didn't really want to be bothered with the Golden Girls for the same reasons. Now, to be fair, Disney, of course is the home of Star Wars and Frozen and these billion dollar behemoths and more than I'm not even thinking of to name. And although the Golden Girls as big, it wasn't as big twenty years ago as it is now, and it wasn't a billion dollar property. And so to them, these library things I think were a headaches, particularly to their lawyers.

That's just a headache. That's just busy work that we're going to have to do to make peanuts where we're making money on Star Wars. Just go away. So every time I would approach Disney for photo rights for the Golden Girls, which was necessary to do the kind of book I wanted to do, they would well, first of all, ignore me for a good seven years, like just not respond because of the way that they had one person who was the photo rights person, and her office was in Brigadoon, and I don't think she was reachable via via email or any You get to go over a bridge through the heather, through the mists with a pigeon with a scroll, and then and they could you know, she'd read the scroll and then right back and wouldn't sign it with wax.

I mean, like it was, everything was done like it was done hundreds of years ago in her office, and she just would ignore you. But by the time I got the permission, it was to get it out in time for twenty sixteen, So ten full years later of needing begging Disney for permission, and at the time that I did the book to brag a little bit, the I say in the book that there is no Golden Girls merchandising out there other than I called it. Sisters are doing it for themselves, making it on Etsy, bootlegged, because that's all there was. And lo and behold, my book comes out as a New York Times bestseller, and about six months later, Disney starts rolling out Golden Girls merchandise and there's more and more coming to this day.

So I think it kind of woke them up to the fact that there was money being left on the table and this is growing. Why are you ignoring it? Yeah? Yeah, but they continued to do that, as they all do. Yeah, it's like it, you know, Hidden Figures comes out does amazing and.

Yes, and they well, anytime a movie about women comes out and as a hit, whether It's book Club or was it Magnolia Hotel, the Great Marigol's Hotel, And they view it like it's a one off, like it's a fluke, Like oh yeah, yeah that was a hit, but like, you know, that was just that was that it's not gonna get like no, you idiots, Like these are people who will want to go to the movies and see themselves and you're not giving them vehicles to do it, and when you do, they show up. Yeah. Yeah. Some isms are so ingrained in Hollywood because if you have to realize that Hollywood is a giant high school, and if it were really about making money, people would look in the niches where they could have have it all to themselves and make the money there.

But it's not. It's about looking young and cool, and every executive wants to look young and cool. So you don't want to bet on the old lady property because if anything goes wrong, they're going to say, well, why did you invest in an old lady property? You're fired. If you invest in the newest, you know, Marvel movie and it misfires, they can say, okay, well that was a rare Marvel missfire.

I mean, like you're not gonna get fired because, like Marvel, duh usually makes money. You're cool. So if you stick in a narrow lane of what has been proven to make money in a very male, young way, you won't lose your job. But if you go out on a limb to all these crazy things, like things about women or people of color, then you'll be nuts and then nobody will come and you'll get fired. It's a giant high school.

It's a giant high school. But and it's also wrong, right, Like they're so wrong, they're leaving money on the table. It's will form ignorance. It is all right, well we've solved okay, we've solved the problems of Hollywood. All right, but how do you organize?

So how do you organize a quintessential guide to the Golden Girls? Okay, So the funny thing is, having heard me talk and go off on a lot of tangents, you probably think that I'm very scattered. The irony is I'm a really anal left brain virgo. And that actually helps with books like this because there are so many little parts and that you have to scynth the size and put together. And you know, the Golden Girls was one thing.

And you know, there have were many guest stars that I interviewed a couple. Maybe I had like a two hundred. Now I'm doing a book about the Love Boat. I've just finished, and I've interviewed about five hundred. And that's because I always compare The Golden Girls is like doing a hundred piece puzzle or a five hundred piece puzzle, and doing the Love Boat.

Writing about the Love Boat is like doing a five thousand piece puzzle. Because if you were a guest star and the Golden Girls, you were there all week, you were probably one of only a few guest stars the episode was you had a major part in it. You would have stories, definitely about working with those four women. There'd be something with the Love Boat. You were one of maybe eight or ten guest stars.

You were only there on your day to shoot your little scenes. You never know what people are going to remember, and so it's like the pieces are so much smaller to assemble to get the full story. And either way you have to be very I think right brain, left brain, left brand about it is the left brain about it, which is very organic. I actually this is the engineer part of me, the computer science part. I actually take my notes in Excel, so I interview people, I transcribe the interview, and then I actually have a spreadsheet.

Okay, this episode is going to have a hole when I need to talk about the theme. It's going to have a hole where I need to talk about the guest stars. And so there's a cell for each of those things, and I fill in the cells with quotes, and then I can see visually where the holes are in the book. And that's literally how I do it, because otherwise it's too hard to keep track of what you have and what you need and when you're done. And I'm not good at knowing when I'm done because I love the interviewing.

But with Will and Grace, I did it even more, where I literally took the notes as I was watching the episodes in Excel, and I would tag them with a like. I made up a series of keywords that I could use as an index, so I would be like Jack's feelings on being gay, Will's feelings on this, and I made up maybe you know twenty of those keywords, and then I could sort the spreadsheet by either by episode name, by date, by season, by keyword, and so anytime I needed to know anything about the show. I could actually sort in an excel and come right to it. And that's very anal but it worked. It's brilliant, actually, I think, I mean, well, thank you.

If I want to understands my note I combine. I don't know that I ever would have come up with that, but it is to me. It's just sounds absolutely brilliant because as you said, it's it's much easier to do that upfront than try to go back later and try to. Reconstruct it exactly. So oh wow, that's amazing.

When you know what you're looking at. It's like, oh, you can see where the hole is. You can sort and know like, okay, I have a lot on this topic, but like you know, ten lines on this topic, but there's one line on that topic. Okay, I god, that's amazing. Now, in Golden Girls Forever, you don't cover all the episodes of the book.

I wanted to, but then it would be like a doorstop that no one could you know, fit on their bookshelf or afford. You know. The thing is publishers are It's all done on via a formula of how many pages is the book, how much color printing, and how much will we have to charge for a cover price. So they they are conservative about how many pages they will let you have, and that is always a problem. And so with the Golden Girls, I actually begged for more pages.

And so I learned this that books are printed in their groupings of sixteen pages, and each of those groupings of sixteen is called a signature. And so when I was doing the Golden Girls book, they had given me X number of signatures, and I begged for more. I wanted three more signatures, meaning forty eight more pages. They gave me two more signatures. So I got thirty two more pages, which was even a lot for them to do.

Was generous in a way. I mean, I wanted to give them a book that's sold well. But I understand their formula and that they were worried about the money, and so I knew from the start just doing the math. You know, if you have two hundred episodes of a show, and you know that each show is going to take at least one page in the layout, usually two. Okay, you can't do every right there, You can't do every episode, So you have to take a more thematic approach, and in a way that's a good thing, because not every episode is going to have a living guest star or a guest star with a story, or some of the episodes are just not as interesting.

And so what I did with the Golden Girls was I wanted to cover that, yes, the episodes that everybody expects to see, and yes, the case of the Libertine Bell is not in there, and yes it was in there until my publisher cut it into the last minute without telling me. But they needed pages. I guess you've heard from some I have read from some readers, and I don't blame them, because I would have looked for that too, and there were good stories that maybe in a future edition. But with the exception of that, yes, I put in any episode that I know fans are going to want to see. But after that, the way I choose the episodes to talk about are the ones that have stories that are very telling about either how a show is put together, how the relationships among the people that we care about evolved, or how the show shaped the world.

And because it's a theme that really was groundbreaking or something, and so it really the episodes that went into the book are the ones that for they're the arc of the story of the Golden Girls, not necessarily just because they had a funny line or whatever. I mean, they all have funny lines. Yeah, Can you talk about some. Of the surprising things that are your favorite things that you learned and doing your research for the. Book for Golden Girls specifically?

You know, I think that we all knew that originally they wanted Betty White to play Blanche and Rue mcclanney had to play Rose. I think that's come out pretty well, but you know, when I started the research in two thousand and five, that wasn't as well known. So of course that makes you think what would that have been like, you know, it could have been good, and it maybe wouldn't have been as good as what we got. So yeah, I just hearing about the way the show was put together. I think one of the things that I was surprised by back then, and I don't know if people know this now, And I compare it to The Love Boat ironically, because it's something that Mark Cherry said too when I was interviewing him.

Mark Cherry got his first writing job ever on The Golden Girls, having been a and this was he and his writing partner, Jamie Wooten were the first fans of the Golden Girls to be hired to write for the show, because they came in with a second regime, and the first regime had been there since the very beginning, and so you know they were Mark was now a second generation of writers being hired who already had watched four seasons of the show and we're fans. But having known the show as a fan and being a gay man and knowing how LGBT positive the show was, he said, he assumed that he would get to that writer's room and it would just be a big old bunch of queens and he'd have a great time. And he said, instead, he walked in and it was all straight people, and in fact, they were talking about a boxing Max match they had just seen.

And he walked in, like, am I in the wrong What? Am I in the wrong place? He was afraid of what he'd gotten himself into. Of course, today, when they staff a sitcom or any show, they try to get diversity in the writer's room. In fact, they mandate diversity in the writers' room.

And that's mostly a good thing. And I say mostly because it's it's very hard when you're staffing a group of sometimes only five six people to represent everyone. You have every stripe, and once you start mandating that every stripe has to be represented, you may be knocking out some writers who would be really good for your show. And so I have a little bit of mixed feelings about that, even though diversity, of course is a goal we should go for. And so what I marvel at is that, for better or for worse, it was mostly a bunch of straight white men writing this show about women and getting it kind of right.

I mean, yes, it does sound like gay men talking sometimes. And you know, we always joke that the I think Mark Cherry jokes that there's an alchemy that you take these straight white men's jokes, put them in the mouths of the Arthur and it comes out like a gay man. And there was there was occasionally a gay man or writing group in the in the room, and there were some women, and there was only one person of color the entire time, and the writer Winnifred Hervey, and so there was a little representation. But for the most part, I really marvel at how they got it as right as they did for who they were. And then the reason I say compressed that to the love Boat is the Love Boat is the straightest show ever?

They only talked about They made a couple of gay jokes along the line. There was one kind of hidden cloak to gay storyline in the later seasons, and that show was produced by the biggest bunch of queens. There were gay men in the writer's room, there were gay producers, they were bisexual producers, and it was just that they weren't allowed. That it was that much earlier than the Golden Girls, and they weren't allowed to bring that kind of subject matter to the television screen too. Some of them did, some of them did, and some of them tried, and they were actually so.

One of the showrunners was gay, and his niece wrote for the show as well, and I know she kept pitching a gay storyline that they kept turning down, and even her uncle would turn it down. No, we can't do that. Eventually they did, as I said, they did one very very You have to know what's going on to know that it's a gay storyline called Flat Brothers Forever, And that's as daring as they dared get. But then they got daring on other things. It's just whatever.

Wherever that particular issue was in its trajectory of acceptance. So civil rights had started earlier than gay rights in terms of African Americans, and so there were stories on the Love Boat that were very moving and smart about equal rights for black people. So they did that, but they didn't do gay people because the Black struggle was a little further along at that point. And so it's, you know, it's always what moment in time you catch them. Did they do women stories on the look Book?

They did, and that they got some pushback, so Joan Rivers did an episode. Joan had made it known that she wanted to do a love Boat and that she'd like to do something really kind of special. In the meanwhile, one of the writers had pitched a story about a woman who was a breast cancer survivor having a love affair on the show. And it was one of the young female writers, the same woman who actually pitched the niece of the executive, the one who pitched the gay story, and she pitched the story. And the reaction to the story from the straight white guys in the room was, why would anyone want to watch a love story about a woman with one tit?

Can you imagine saying that? And at work never mind that you're in a writer's room where you think you can be body or whatever. Okay, forget that. Can you imagine looking at human being in the eye and saying that in this day and age. That's what I'm saying, Like, even women's issues, Look how far they've come in those decades, that that is unfathomable in it now and that was their their take on it.

Then no, we're not going to do that. No, we're not going to do that. And she would argue back, well, what if we did it this way? What does she know? I think, like women and gay guys and people of color have had to do for decades, you don't get to tell them off for being a pig.

You work within the system, right, and so you take that note like you're taking it seriously, and you say, okay, well I hear you. What if we did this? I mean, the fact that she had to do that is infuriating. But she was persistent and it happened to dovetail with Joan wanting an issue show to do, and so they did an episode where Joan is a mystectomy survivor. I don't know if she had a double or a single, and she has this love affair, and so mostly that's a triumph, right, And so Love Boat did take on women's issues.

Now that being said, if you watch that episode, the man she falls in love with, she's like a rich society lady and the man she falls in love with his very blue collar. Now they do that on the show sometimes there's you know, opposites attract whatever. But he's also a garbage man, and so is the message that if you are a breast cancer survivor, you're going to get a guy. But he's basically literally be someone who collects garbage. Like, oh wow, Okay, it's not the one hundred percent home run that they may have thought it was.

But you know, again the times, oh my god. That's a bad well, I'm so excited about the Love Boat. Oh me too. And I've been collecting amazing stories and it's it's from the seventies and eighties when there were lots of crazy body druggy things going on, and so the stories are wild from the Love Boat and it's just like, oh my god. I mean the number of stories of the people who in the number of people who saw Carol Channing inadvertently naked alone are just back avail at not necessarily.

I mean, if you sit in the door of your trailer with the door flying wide open, in a yoga pose, naked eating a chicken wing, you should realize that someone's going to walk by at some point. Oh, I think that's the point. I think that might be the point. Oh gosh, my gosh, that's crazy. All right, Well, here's here's a question about Love Boat.

Did they really just go on a ship and send people on those ship on trips? Yes and no. Okay, so they there were three pilots to the love Boat. They were shot. Those were shot on real cruises back in the day when Princess a very nascent relationship with Princess, they just did from one of them.

They did a quickie three day trip to Mexico for one of them. They did it on the Queen Mary while it was docked and long beach so it didn't go anywhere. And then for the most of the early seasons they would shoot everything on the sound stage, but they would shoot b roll but like often dialogue scenes with no dialogue with the cast, and they would take them every however, many months, maybe twice a season. On one of those quickie Mexico cruises and just shoot them walking on the on the deck, so you'd see a scene with no dialogue of Isaac can gopher like crossing from the pool into the weever, and that would start, and then they'd cut to a sound stage scene. So they would do a lot of that.

Then they started and even in those early seasons, maybe doing some scenes on the real deck that they would incorporate with scenes from the same storyline that would be done in the in the sound stage. So you might have the I remember, you know Rue McClanahan and was it ted night with her? I remember sitting out on deck having a conversation, and there's the real pool behind them, and then you cut to there in the dining room and it's on the fox lot. So they would do that. But they really were smart with the Love Boat, and they realized they had this captive audience that was enthralled with cruising, enthralled with all the foreign ports of call that they could have coming into their living room.

So they started to get adventurous. So they experimented early on, maybe in season three or four, with an Alaska cruise. Okay, well, now that's a longer cruise and it goes through another country to go through Canada to Alaska. Because it's more adventurous. They had to really invent ways this.

I mean I actually went on a leg of the Amazing Race as a journalist and I loved it, and I marveled at how they put together all those moving parts. And that was in the day of cell phones and paging and texting an email. The Love Boat did this Alaska cruise and everything they would subsequently do without email, without cell phones. They would shoot footage on a real ship, which it presents its own problems in terms of what do you plug into and how do you keep things grounded and from getting wet and from like people electrocuting and all that. Then they would have to fly the dailies back to Aaron Spelling in Hollywood for him to watch them.

You couldn't transmit them electronically, and Aaron didn't fly. He was afraid of planes. So they are all these analog ways that they had to do, these really complicated things, but they manage it, and they tested it with this Alaska cruise. Hey, that went well, now let's go here. They ended up by the end of the show going all over the world.

And in the latter seasons, I would say maybe six, seven, eight nine. What they would do was it their breaks. They ended up they started out their life on the love Boat with a weird schedule for network because most network dramas start filming maybe around June, like after the upfront announcement in May of what goes on the schedule, dramas and drama will start filming maybe in June. Sitcoms film in like August. They're ready to go by September, and then they're kind of always kind of trying to beat the clock producing new episodes before the old ones air.

With the Love Boat, because they started as TV movies, they kind of were always off calendar, and then also a strike in nineteen eighty kind of threw them off calendar. But it ended up being a good thing because they they started realizing that, oh, if we are in production at different times of the year from everybody else, we can get some of the TV stars from other shows while they're on their hiatus, and we can get all these great guest stars who have nothing else to do and our hiatus. The way it has been working out is rather than be from like March to June, we could take a hiatus that starts in like April and goes to August, and that's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and it's when a lot of these great cruises go out.

And we could partner with Princess and just cruise the whole summer and then chop up each cruise into individual episodes. So that's what they would do. They would go out in April, May, June, maybe not the whole summer, but they'd go for six or eight weeks, and they'd go around a region of the world, so say Europe, and they would fly casts in and out to different chunks of the cruise, and they would then chop up into those casts and have episodes ready to go. So there was one summer where they cruised all around from like England, they went to Norway, then they went around Spain to Italy and Greece, and so that became okay, here's the Greek episode, here's the Italian episode, and they had different casts.

And what was great for those casts is that if you got that gig, not only did Spelling always send you everywhere first class, but you could cruise the whole summer for free first class. You didn't have to be there for just your episode. If you wanted to be with them all summer, you could do it. So a lot of these the great stories that in my book come from these weird groupings of people that you didn't even know were on the show at the same time, because they were in different episodes that aired at different parts of that season. And you know, there's a story about Henry Morgan choking on a piece of steak in the dining room, and Caesar Romeiro, who wasn't even in his episode, tried to save his life with the Heimlich maneuver and it wasn't working.

And then Audrey Landers, who was in yet another episode, her her boyfriend at the time he became her husband, I believe, was a doctor, and they had just been in Marrakesh, I think, and they had all picked up these like pirate outfits with the swords or what everything. And so he ran across the long banquet table with his swashbuckling sword and grabbed Henry Morgan and ripped the piece of steak out of his mouth, and like, well, while you know, all these other random people like Jamie Farr and whatever, we're like applauding, like you think that this is a pop culture fever dream and you didn't even know these people were in the same episode, but they weren't. They were just cruising all summer. Because that's I remember hearing stories of stories who said, I did it because I got to go to China, Right, I did it because I got And I was like, okay, So they actually win on these cruises.

They did, and those were in the latter years. They were the first show Western show to film in China. There's a question whether the Muppets actually did it before them, but they were either first or second, and they have stories about that. You know, Bernie Capel talks about you know, you go in your hotel room, you'd be like, that's an unusual light fixture and because it would be a bug. Yeah, you know.

It was like the and the guides who would show them stuff were very particular about what you could and couldn't do, and they were you had to bribe certain certain cultural attaches to let you see this at a certain time, and it was it was crazy that all the details they had to deal with on these shows. And again in an analog world where if you know, you weren't just texting somebody. No, I'm not going to pay you a bribe, but it would be like you, secretary, take a memo. Do you hear so? And so?

I will not bribe you, but okay, now fold that up, put it in an envelope, Put it in the mail, put a stamp on it. In a few weeks, will know you know it was crazy. You Now put another envelope, put two hundred dollars in it's You're right exactly. You mentioned an amazing race. That is one of the few reality competition shows that I watched.

I've watched it since season one. I love that show. At some point, maybe after we're done, I need to hear about your. Experience of season thirteen in Salvador, Brazil. It was an amazing experience.

I would do it again in a hard pap. Oh my god, I've always thought that it would. If there was any show it do would be that one. I just love that show, the way it's put together, the way you can't cheat, the way you can't screw with other people. Because that's what I hate about most of them.

I don't care. Yeah, they've gotten crazy now who like it hasn't just gotten more and more? Like? Oh, and now you have to cross this gullt. You know, there are amazing things that's always been well.

There have always been things that I, as someone who has a fear of heights and other things, just wouldn't do. It'd be like, nope, I'm out of the show by yeah. And you know, actually a lot of the shows, including Amazing Race, do something that they call like the elimination station. So if you're eliminated from the show, you don't go home because that would be a tell to everybody that you didn't win. So what they do is they sequester you at some resort.

And so a couple of times, like in Salvador, there was a height challenge that I'm like, Okay, if I were the contestant, I would be like, see yah, not doing it. But I'd be like, wait a minute. That means I could spend the entire production of the show in the elimination station, which is basically sitting around the pool drinking my ties at somebody else's expense. I think I want to be eliminated. First, Yes, I'm totally in that.

But you can't go out and explore other things because you. Can't sess not Although the elimination station is usually somewhere remote on it. You know, it's not like it's in the continental US where people would recognize you. But yeah, I guess maybe not. You know what, I'd be okay with that if they say you have to spend the next six weeks sitting by this pool drinking, and people will come and wait, people will come and wait on you, and then eventually other contestants will come and keep you company.

It's not like you're gonna be alone. Yeah, and you just and it's all paid for, and it's. All paid for. I'd say, you know, that may sound better than going on the Amazing Race. Okay, all right.

My sister wanted us to do that, and I was like, no, No, I would murder my husband. I mean, he's so slow witted at some things, and I'm so impetuous that I think we'd kill each other. Well, now, how did you guys? Because I wondered if you met through the work or through not. Really.

We grew up in neighboring towns in New Jersey, although we didn't know it, and he wrote a memoir about it. And I read his memoir in the Barnes and Noble and went to his Barnes and Noble book signing and met him there. Wow, and the rest of the station and the rest is history. That's so sweet. Yeah, So we grew up five minutes away from each other and didn't know it.

I mean we're seven years apart, so we wouldn't have known each other really, But yeah. That's so cool. And then you both ended up because you've worked together. How's that? Well, we don't really work together much.

I mean we overlap a lot. While I was researching my love Boat book, he was researching his disco book, and so of course there's a lot of overlap there. I think of all the times it's a disco song, Charles singing the disco love boat theme, and so there would be quite a few times where we would be like, we want to gang interview you. And I remember we were going to go out to lunch with Donna Pescou and as COVID flared up, particularly again the week that we were going to do it, and so we decided to be safe, and so we did it by phone. So I just remember him talking to her for like an hour about a Saturday night fever, and then she was so you know, such a good sport that he's like, I'm now handing you over to the love Boat.

And then I got an hour about the love Boat, and so yeah, we had a lot of overlap. That that is, I don't know, it seems totally fun. It was, Oh no. I mean that doing with the research for all of these books has been a dream come true because I've always been able. I've been lucky enough to be able to pick shows that I want to spend years with.

For me to write about a show, you know, I guess there are many people out there who are smarter than me and do things for a paycheck or a credit or a stepping stone. I just don't have it in me because I do spend years with a show. I mean, it took me ten years to get that other Golden Girls book out. In this love Boat book, I've been researching. I mean, there was a blip in the publishing process, which is why it's not out yet.

But still I started researching it nine years ago. For me to want to spend nine years on something, it has to be a show I love and that I really get a kick out of talking to all the people because other you're going to just go. Crazy and so what was it about the Love Boat? When I was picking my next book after The Golden Girls, and I didn't know that the I would get asked to do the All in the Family book in the meanwhile, So actually that happened in between as well. But I came up with a list for my publisher.

They asked me for a list of shows that I'd want to write about. And when you really think, I have a list of criteria in my head and that this is not a genius list of criteria, it's all common sense. But when you go through that checklist, there aren't many shows to write about because it has to be a show first of all, obviously that there's an enduring following For me, and this is my personal preference. It should be a show that's no longer on the air. And I learned that lesson from Will and Grace only because books have a really long lead time and shows have a really short lead time.

And so for me, for Will and Grace, the plan was to cover it through season six. We were writing a while the show was in production and so but I had to turn my manuscript in by the latest February. They haven't finished writing season six by February, you know it airs in May, and so it was very hard to try to stay up to date on the latest of what's happening on the show when you had to turn your book in before they were even done, right, And I didn't want to do that ever again, Okay, only write about shows that are in the past, and it gives you a better perspective. It should be a show where the cast is mostly alive and also amenable to talking about it again. So that eliminates things like Friends and Seinfeld, because I don't think that those actors would give me more time to talk about the same thing over and over.

They've done books, and I don't blame them, like why would they want to do it again? And that's another thing. There shouldn't be a definitive book already about the show I compete with somebody else's book. And so when you really go through all of that list, it really narrows down what there is left to talk about in a way that I would want to go deep. And so at the time that I was choosing in twenty sixteen, what would my next book be, the one thought I had was The Big Bang Theory, because it's popularity and because I love it and all that.

However, it had just gotten a two season renewal and I was like, I'm gonna have the will and grace problem, and so I didn't pursue that. And now Jessica Radloff has written a brilliant book about it, So I'm glad you know that worked out that way. And so I kind of went into the meeting with the publisher like, Okay, I'm sheepish because the one idea I know that you'd like, because it's a hot show, I don't want to do. But I have a couple of like those back pocket ideas that they tell you to go into pitch meetings with that are the crazy ones and you never know whether they're spark to it. And so I had a couple of classic shows that were even older than The Golden Girls, like The Love Boat is and you know, a lot of times I thought that the publishers thought that The Golden Girls was too far in the past, and so I started naming them, and I think the Love Boat was the second one I said, and they were like, yes, that do it.

And I was like, oh, I'm so happy you feel that way, because I was noticing it bubbling up in pop culture even then. You know those memes that people make of putting yourself in the love Boat credits or putting a famous person in the love Boat credits. I see them on Instagram all the time. When someone dies, they put them in the love Boat credits, whether they were in it or not. Or sometimes around Halloween they'll put in like eraser Head or Freddy, you know.

So I just start to hear people talking about the show more anecdotally, and I knew it was getting more play on me TV and Cozy and the meme was coming out, and that's one of the reasons I put it on the list. Hey, that's a show I would love to spend time with. I know, there's good, good stories. It has an amazing array of guest stars I would get to meet, and it's becoming more popular. And so I was the fact that the publisher said yes and got it as a miracle.

That's that's fantastic. It makes a total sense. It makes total sense. I'm so excited. Yeah, I'm excited for everyone to see it because you're not going to believe some of the stories, and some of them, some of them I'll tell you outside the book because you know, maybe the lawyers will make me take them out.

When you started working on the Golden Girls book, had the entire series been released on DVD at that point? I mean, what were you relying in terms of being able to go back and watch the episode? Good question. I can tell you exactly how many have been released on DVD. Oh my gosh, Eighties TV Ladies listeners this interview with Jim, we talked for two hours and twenty minutes.

We had such a good time. However, we got to cut this one short here. So if you want to hear the second half of this interview, where we continue talking about the Golden Girls stories and love boat stories and all things Jim, please go to our patreon patreon dot com slash eightiestv Ladies. You can try it out for free, or you. Can join and listen to the second half of this So check us out on Patreon.

For today's audioography. You can find Jim Kalucci at Jimcalucci dot com. That's Jim Colgucci dot com and on Instagram at Jim Kalucci. Links will be in our description. Golden Girls is streaming on Hulu Filo.

Oh yeah, and it's on Disney Plus unless you gave up on that one because they caved. You can also buy it on Apple TV or Amazon. You can buy it on YouTube. Sometimes you can just find episodes on YouTube. As always, we hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century's.

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