Negative Reaction

We are back and We're talking about Negative Reaction is the second episode of the fourth season. It came out originally October sixth, nineteen seventy four, directed by Alf Jellen, written by Peter S. Fisher, who was the showrunner at this time, story editor, and starring the one and only. Oh my god, it's so funny when he comes in and trips over that ottoman. It is Dick Vandyk as Paul Galasco.

He is a very snootie world famous photographer. I guess photographers could make a lot of money back then, or I guess when you're charging twenty four ninety nine for a book, you're gonna be making money. Hand over fist, my friend. So yes, it is the one and only Dick Van Dyke playing against type in a big way, playing Paul Gillasco major dickhead. One of my favorite episodes, I think it is.

I had such a fun time going back and rewatching this one. But Chris, I'm so curious, what are your impressions of negative reaction? So, Dick Vandyke is ninety eight years old, by the way, which is good for him. I don't have a lot of experience with Dick van Dyke. Given my age, I feel like the things that I know Dick Van Dyke for are Mary Poppins, which I never really saw as a kid, but I saw Night at the Museum, so that's what I know him from because he plays one of the guards of the museum at the beginning of the movie, along with another classic star of stage and screen, Mickey Rooney, so it's the two of them kind of hassling Ben Stiller.

So I don't have a lot of experience with Dick van Dyke. However, this is a Colombo episode, so my experience with Dick Van Dyke maybe isn't as important all that to say I liked the episode, I will say I don't know if the episode needed to be an hour and a half long, but I feel and maybe this is just me remembering wistfully the day's pass of this show. I feel like I've said that more frequently than not recently, where it's like, this could have used ten minutes cut out of it. We don't need Peter Falk bulking it up all the time, but they're gonna let him do it because that's this show. But I feel like I do have to point out that again, I enjoyed this episode, but there are some things in this episode that are just why are we doing this here?

Why are we doing this here? Show? Of all the places and things to do it. I'm curious where you're coming at this from as one of your favorite episodes, because I can assume the reasons, but I want to know exactly, because there's some stuff in this episode that yet's It's like, why are we It feels like we've done this before? Even it so feels like we've done this before, especially the episode where the guy hired the dude who it was published a parish.

The whole idea of the crazy bomb guy so reminds me of Alvin Deshler the Don Gordon role, to see Don Gordon playing that meek and mild character, even though he's not that meek and not that mild, especially like when it comes out that he had talked with the camera salesman and just bought a twenty dollars camera, but then asked for the receipt to be made out for one hundred bucks and gave the guy an extra ten so he could collect more money from Galasco. I thought it was nice. I'm like, yeah, that's the Don Gordon, I know, but otherwise he's just like, oh yeah, sure, mister Glisko, whatever you want. I'll do whatever you want. Man, you're up.

You aren't going down for this crime, buddy until Columbo comes on the case. And I totally agree with you. There are a lot of moments in this episode where I'm like, Okay, this really didn't need to be here. The whole Larry Storch scene doesn't have to be there. But I fun with it.

I love it though, and you can tell that Folk is having a hard time even keeping a straight face. He's just eating it up, and nobody plays flustered by Larry Storch. Kin. Yeah, God, we're here already, aren't we. I feel like the Larry Storch and Joyce Van Patten of it all.

It's definitely the two of them where that's twenty minutes that you could have just snipped right out of the end. So look, John Ashton, on the other hand, I'm not asking you to cut John Ashton out of the episode. He's already balding, he's got that hair, he's smoking that cigarette. He looks young, he looks good. He works well opposite Peter Falk, but yeah, some of the stuff in this episode whe with Joyce friend Paton's character and the homeless shelter was just, oh, you look like a homeless guy?

Does he? Though? Does Colombo look like a homeless guy? Really? I think it's funny that she thinks that.

Obviously that's the bit, But I don't believe for a second anyone's gonna be misremembering Columbo for a homeless person. Doesn't look that. It doesn't look that bedraggled. I guess maybe to a nun he does. I really like that.

And of course our old friend Victor Scotty coming back in this one playing the drunk getting what three two scenes at least, and here we hear about him in a third scene where he's talking with the police. But yeah, I really I like that stuff this one. Normally I would be like, what the hell like that whole computer print out thing that we were talking about recently and how long that went on for no good reason? But this just feels like it gives falkmore to chew on. But I can totally see where you're coming from.

I could see not liking those scenes, but I'm just eating up with a spoon. I like the scene where he's in the camera's store. I like that scene a fair amount because again, it's just like Colombo plays dumb so well and he knows how to get information out of people in a way that's just I don't know, it feels effortless with him, and in that scene, I love how he can play at times flustered but at the same time constantly digging, just digging for information, and I love how he digs the I love the way the characters written in this episode in terms of the way Colombo as a character is written in this episode, because that's the other thing we have to take into account. Most of these episodes aren't being written by the same people week to week, so it's someone taking Colombo, a character that's set in stone quote unquote, and then amplifying him through their lens of what they want to do and not losing sight of the way the characters kind of base interpretation needs to be a dress.

I think this episode does a really good job at keeping true to the Colombo character, which has been lost in some of the episodes we've seen recently, where it's like what why is he? It's not why he's he in this, but why is this a Why is this a case that Columbo's being brought in for? Is probably the better way of looking at these, because Columbo's just a cop at the end of the day's detective. But it's the cases that he's brought in on that allow him to show his expertise of deduction. It really does give him a chance to flex and like you said, just keep true to that Columbo nous of this.

And yeah, those scenes where it's a little long in the tooth, I think that's just him taking it out for a walk and just doing this thing with that. I'm okay. There are times where, yes, it is very annoying where you're just like, okay, let's get back to the story. But I felt like those moments added to it quite a bit. Yeah, maybe not so much with Scotti in the talk about the time in between the shots, but I feel like all of these scenes really add up.

And we complained last time about just the lack of clues, whereas this episode feels like it is just a bevy a treasure trove of all of these different clues. Because we've got Galscoe thinking that he is so much smarter than everybody else involved. Thinks that he's got everything on lock comes up with excuses like that, and that's one of the things I really like is just whenever Colombo comes at him with something, because Colombo is one more thinging so much in this episode, I counted at least four times that he does a one more thing, and every time he comes back he's said, oh, what about this, And Glesca's like, obviously, like why did it take so long between this time and this time? Oh, this is what must have happened, or this is must be what this other person was thinking, and just coming up with those excuses, And I love that every time he does that, of course, is like all right, and then he writes down and says out loud what the excuse was, I'm like, oh man, that just makes it sound so phony because it is.

Yeah. In terms of the dastardliness of the villain man Dick van Dyke, I think definitely he is. He murders his wife with a gun, Yeah, he shoots her cold, yes, yeah, and it's nuts. Would you say it's shocking for this show? A little bit though.

Some incredible film scholar on IMDb talks about how the luger that he shoots her with is obviously not loaded, because usually it's very good practice to have live ammunition and a weapon when you're filming something. I've heard, Yeah, I've heard, and in upcoming court cases, we may figure out how that's not the case. Weird, Yeah, I can't. Can you imagine going on IMDb and posting that on the episode of Colombo so bent out of shape but not practicing good gun for him, no good trigger for him. Okay, let me calm down.

Its tick Van Dyke, for fuck's sake. But I like the idea that he just murders his wife in cold blood, just shoots her point like in the head, skills her like it's I don't know, he's he's so matter of fact about it, and she's look, god, I'm not gonna say that. This is a well that the show goes to. But these shrews of partners, Yeah, it's god damn it. Show.

Does she have to be this gorgonite of a human being, this monster that it's I feel bad for him and that he has to kill her to get rid of her and he can't just divorce her. But at the same time, like, why not just divorcer dude? You're gonna go to jail. And I don't know if his secretary is into him or not, if he just is. This tension is what it feels like.

It feels like this is intense, but I don't know if she's aware of the plan. They're like them going off to the Philippines together. It feels like that's when he's going to make his move and be like, Oh, I'm so broken up by the death of my wife. If only I had someone here to comfort me and fuck me right, if only I had some ass willing and available ass God, And can you imagine the mustache ride you begin from Dick van Dyke with this facial hair that he's got. Could lord His facial hair in this episode is off the chain man that that beer look.

So this was what in the seventies, forty years ago, fifty years ago now? So yeah, So Dick Van Dyke is in his mid forties. They gave him the facial air to make him look older, right, they have to because he's going gray and forty Oh yeah, he's been gray for a long see. Okay, Like I said, I just have very little exposure to Dick Van Dyke as an actor. That's very far outside of my time range as a human being being alive.

Like I said, by the time I was born, Dick Van Dyke was in his fucking sixties. Obviously, the reruns of the Dick Van Dyke Show were all over the place when I was growing up. He had been in a bunch of movies, of course Mary Poppins, like you mentioned, he became a TV detective himself, and he was in Diagnosis Murder, so that was an okay one. We don't tend to watch that. We're not a Diagnosis Murder house here in Westland.

But he seemed to be all over the place, especially because right around this time in the seventies, he was actually a spokesperson for Cameras or Kodak, I think, which was ironic that he's the photographer in this The Kodak plocket Instematic Camera starts that less than twenty eight dollars the complete outfits a little more. Just tell him to remember which pocket they put it in the Kodak plocket Instematic camera. And then also he was in a ton of PSAs, like the whole Stop Drop and Roll. Like I learned Stop Drop and Roll from Dick van Dyke and his commercials. I'm rolling because I want to show you what to do if you close ever catch on fire, because the fire will just burn your clothes, it'll burn you.

So don't run, don't stand up at all, just fall down and roll. That way it'll squash out the fire and save your skin. So remember you pose ever catch on fire, Roll, roll, roll your body. It's also weird that he had his own show. He ends up getting his own show that runs for eight years.

Good lord. Yeah, and then just all the movies that he was in. I want to say he might have been in a movie called Cold Turkey about quitting smoking. I could be wrong about that, but yeah, he was in a lot of because this is also the era going into the seventies of more of the live action Disney stuff, and I seem to remember him doing a lot of that as well. So yeah, he was definitely a big presence, though not big enough where this was just like such a shocker to me to see him play a bad guy, but I know it was for a lot of people.

That was the other thing I was wondering, is how big of a shock is it that this actor is playing a villain? And again, like a pretty dastardly villain. I'm surprised in a lot of ways that this guy gets his hands as dirty as he does, because the other villain that was doing this did not get his hands as dirty. The idea was, I'm paying someone else to get their hands dirty, and this guy is just, Oh, he's just the patsy. He's just the fall guy.

He doesn't even know he's the fall guy. And I'm not saying in the other episode he knew, but in the other episode he was the one who committed the crime. Dick van Dyke is the one who commits the crime here, so he's that much worse because he's the one he's wanting to do it. He's wanting to murder his wife, he wants to be the one to do it. It's like, oh, man, he's a real piece of shit, and I think Dick van Dyke plays it really well.

But yeah, again, like I just wanted to have some context because my assumption was was shocking to see Dick Vandyke being this much of an asshole as a character. But I love it. I love that he's the mouse that Colombo gets to play with for an hour and a half because That's the thing too, is that the worse the villain, the better it is to see them get their comeuppance. And to see Colombo have this mounting pile of evidence and just one thing after another. And we haven't even talked about the end of this, and I want to save that for a little bit from now, but just to have all of these little pieces constantly going it just makes it even sweeter to me when he finally gets his just desserts.

There's a lot of things that go into getting to the ending. We have to get to the point where Columbo understands cameras. We have to get to the point where Columbo understands film composition. We have to get to the point where Columbo understands how that back and forth between him and Deshlaar, how that went back and forth because of the timing of it all. And then there's a couple other like small pieces of evidence.

He sees his pants don't have the powder burn and or he does have the powder burn on his pants, but there's not one on the other guy. So it's how to do well, I kick the gun and all this horseshit. But what I like is, to your point, the several bigger components build on to one another to create a whole piece of information that is used to catch him. And I think, for me, even though there are parts of this episode that don't necessarily outright work, the way that he has caught is the I'm not the best part of the episode, but the way that he has caught I think is up there for some of the best ways in terms of utilizing everything we've seen holistically to make one singular. This is it.

It's this thing, and I'm using all the disparate, seemingly disparate things together to make something makes sense. I like that almost more than most of the ways people have been caught up until this point in the show. The end of this episode is basically a drawing room sequence. This is as close to Miss Marble and here q Parrot as we get, which I think is fantastic. And yeah, you get all those little things like why did you write fifty thousand dollars rather than the address, Like it would be so much more difficult to remember the address than the fifty thousand dollars.

Now, that could be a major clue for any other episode, but for this one, it's basically just another nail in the coffin, and not even a nail, a thumb tack in the coffin, because he just keeps getting those. And I love that this one does have substance. It is not one of these, oh the shoes were tied wrong and it's oh, for fuck's sake, there was a marble in the trunk. Yeah, it's like what, but this is what was like a little bigger. It's just snowballs through this whole thing.

And that's one of the things I'm because even with this longer time, you get so much more of the clues and so much more of the build up. And I think that it also helps to make this episode a little bit more impactful because it does take longer that you're just like getting more of this rhythm of how things keep building and sinking Glesco with his whole bullshit story and look, as much as the Larry Storch scene is again like it's in the last ten minutes of the episode too, it's the last it's the final ten minutes before, it's the second to last ten minutes before the actual final ten minutes, So we spend ten minutes with him and Colombo getting to the point where he's will you sign an affidavit saying like you were in the car with this guy, you're his alibi.

It comes late enough that I don't think I get that. It ends up being the biggest piece of information in terms of you've perjured yourself here, pal. But yeah, it's interesting. Not a lot of episodes have been revealing clues up until last ten minutes. There's kind of other things going on that the episode is busying itself with, and this episode, like you, it has to get to that point to finally have all of the information.

And this is the button that this is the button that they're putting on it. That's the thing is he hasn't perjured himself. Dick van Dyke laid out, the story has everything so perfect, but then when Colombo does that dunderheaded quote unquote thing of reversing the negative and suddenly the clock moves from two o'clock to ten o'clock. Oh no, your your story doesn't now match up. It has to match up just that way that he has built everything so perfectly.

Dick van Dyke has built this entire house and then Colombo's just hit fucking up and just being like, no, it's ten o'clock instead, and it's just what you of course, it's two o'clock. March is over there, opens up that camera. See there's the negative. Holy fucking shit. Yeah, God is as good?

Oh my God. And then when Columbus saw this, you saw that, right? Were you a witness to what he just did? Were you a witness to what he just did? Were you a witness to what he just did?

I'm just like, oh, is this like a reference to like Peter in the Gospels or something like three times he gets caught by these guys. Yes, they will all swear that they just saw him go over to that camera. Open it up. You didn't pick that camera and that camera and that guy. I just love man.

This is one of those what remo you got him moments for Columbus. This is up there for me with the pulling the gloves out of the pockets moment, and the fact that the way that they set the scene up initially is they come in with Colombo and he's sitting there redoing the ransom letter, and you think that it's going to be that, and you think that is going to be how he gets him. They fake you out within the scene itself, which I think for me is the most important part about this episode is this episode keeps you guessing on how Columbo's going to do it. Columbo's going to catch him, that's always aknown like. By the end of the episode, this person's not getting away, so how we get there is just so important.

And the fact that this episode is unwilling to rest on its laurels, even in the last three minutes, I think is so impressive because it's committed to the bit as it were, It's actually committed to writing this kind of story the way this kind of story should be written, which is just when you think you've got it all figured out, there's even one more thing going on here, And this episode does that in a way that really Colombo hasn't, and when it does, it's the best episodes of the show. I love the pacing of that last scene and yeah, you're right, that whole thing where he's got the note and he's look at all these little bits, look at all these little bits of paper, and just that he had made Van Dyke come up with the excuse for why the newspapers were there, but not the rest of the scraps and everything.

If the woman came in, everything would be gone, and why did you just look? Yeah, I just love that. It's this doesn't really make sense. And then yeah, just to keep building until it gets that whole. And now he literally has it under a curtain, which I really appreciate what he takes this the sheet off of that blown up photo.

Oh it's so nice. And yeah, just to get him so angry. And not only do we have a clock in that photo and clocks and time and all this, Oh you call that four forty or five forty five, but yeah, this call was at five five o'clock. You're supposed to be there at five o'clock. I would have been there early if it was my wife kind of thing.

But then you also have the metaphorical ticking clock of the trip to the Philippines, so we have to get everything done before they leave the country, a little Johnny Cash moment. So I thought that was nice too, that you've got both of those coming together. We have to solve this case by this time, otherwise this guy's going to get away clean, going to go to another country, will probably never come back. Yeah, that's well, that's the other thing that wins. Once he's gone, he will be gone.

And that's because it's getting It's made very clear that they have a tenuous grasp on him at the moment, because again, they have to have him admit to doing it. Is really what happened. This is clear that he has to admit it. And look, this is the other thing that I appreciate about this episode, and we've talked about this on other episodes. There have been some of these words, this shit's pretty impeachable.

Oh wait, this guy's not going to jail. Columbo's gonna get slapped on the wrist. You're trying to do it again, man, stop it. You can't get people in this circumstantial ass evidence this time ain't nothing circumstantial. The only person who could have known which camera it was is the person who was taking those pictures, and there will be I don't know how there would be any way in a court of law he could get around that.

I'm assuming that this guy takes a plea deal. Is why what happens. He admitted he did it and goes to jail on twenty years, gets out on ten for bad behaviors. So he's out of jail by the swing in mid eighties anyways, and we just had to kill his wife. I think about that often when we watch the show, because sometimes the show is just like, there's no way these people are actually in trouble.

This episode, Dick van Dyke signs his own death warrant and does it with such a plom Oh, you fucking idiot, Like, the one mistake you can't afford to make is the mistake that you made, which is fucking up in front of Columbo, because he is waiting for you to fuck up the only way that he can get you to fuck up, which is this. This whole episode has been building to this one moment of only the person who took the picture could have The only person who took the picture is the person who was there, and that has to be Dick Van Dyke or somebody else. And he outs himself and yeah, it's really well done. I had a false memory about this episode for a long time. I always thought that the main cop that Columbo dealt with was Jerry van Dyke, the brother of Dick Van Dyke.

I don't know why I thought that, But then going back and seeing Michael Strong in this role as the other detective, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, he looks a lot like Jerry Van Dyke did at this time, so I thought that would have been, uh, oh, I can be in your episode, but you gotta throw my brother a bone kind of thing. But I really like Michael Strong. I've only seen him that I remember in a few things, but he's in one of my favorites, point blank, the Lee Mervin film. So it was really nice to see him in here, and I think that he he does a good job of being present but not overwhelming the narrative. He's not Bob Deshie.

He's just like, Okay, I'm just this other dude. But he's got enough charisma that you can always tell when he's on screen. We also mentioned earlier on that John Ashen is in this episode. He's he's in it. He's not given much to do.

Unfortunately, I think Michael Strong has given more to do than he is, and he shows up more throughout the episode. This episode I think is strong front to back again. The little additional Peter Falk isms. I just have to deal with that moving forward, not like it's a bad thing, but like it does. Just come on, I get it, I get it, you're in charge, we get it, like you're the one.

You're the one telling people where and how to sign and on what line to sign on. We get it, he or fault, But I don't know if I need to see you and Larry Storch sit a car for ten minutes and he huck it up. Yeah. I did have a chance to talk with John Ashton about because me, if somebody's on Colombo and I'm talking you with them, I will ask them how their experience was. He said he had a great experience on this and that Peter Falk was a very generous actor and would actually run lines with him.

Wasn't just like him and his trailer alone or back someplace just doing his lines. Falk would run those lines with him so he could actually get a real feel for it, which I thought was pretty great. I get the distinct feeling. Peter Fulk was an actor's actor, but he was not a director's actor. There are actors that other actors love, and then there are actors that directors love, and then there are actors that actors hate, and then there are actors that directors hate.

I think Peter Falk was an actor that directors hated but actors liked. And I think that's because he stuck up for actors and actors' rights, which if you're in the position that Peter Falk was in, that's not it. And that's not as easy of a thing to do as it would seem because the visibility of Peter Falk makes it less tenable to do, because why would you endanger your career for other people's career or just the need to have an industry actually treating people with respect, And Peter Falk thought it was important. And look, it's like anything else. If you open the door, why not let your couple of your friends in through the door too.

That's what Peter Falk was doing. Clearly, Hulk Cogan was doing it with Brute as the barber Beefcake his entire career. So some people gotta make money. Everybody's got to eat. Vito Scotti's got to be Peter Falk's friend.

Sure feels like it at this point. But I read that Fred Draper's even in this episode at one point. I didn't see him in here, but I'm just like, okay, that makes sense because he seems to show up in so many of these Peter Falk I think again, like the stories about him being prickly. I totally get it, but I also want to make clear like sometimes the person telling the story is just important as the the stories being told about, and directors and producers not resonating with Peter Folk and what he does, and that's not surprising, is what I'm getting at. There wasn't a whole lot of dirt behind this one.

I read The Usual Suspects, Mark dewidzy X book, David Kanig's book, some of the other ones that are on the bookshelf now, which is so nice that we're getting more of these Columbo books. Keenig was looking about some of the actors that were up for the role or had been talked about for the role of Galascoe, and then whence they got to Dick Van Dyke, it just was a done deal. Luckily, mister Kanig has written another book which is Unshot Colombo, Cracking the Cases that Never got filmed, and we'll actually have an interview with him after we're done talking about negative reaction. So I hope that people will stick around and hear that because it's another amazing book, and to hear from each of these seasons which scripts got picked versus which ones didn't and how far along some of these scripts got to it's pretty remarkable.

And a season like this where you got six episodes, there are a lot of contenders in the running for being filmed for this one. Yeah, six episodes. It's just that that's a lot of people vying for an opportunity at that table. And yeah, because some of those episodes in the last season were like, why were they doing this again? Why waste that time?

That precious time that you're given on a retread? And so far this season, I don't feel like either one of these have been real retreads of They've had elements from other ones, but it hasn't been like a hard and fast, total retread. When we come back next month and we talk about by Dawn's Early Light. This is also the beginning of the Patrick McGowan era, and McGowan plays a huge part in Colombo going forward, which is completely fucking insane to me. Patrick McGowan has had nothing to do with the show up until this point though, correct, correct, Yeah, Okay, for those of you that don't know why I'm reacting this way, Patrick McGowan is someone whose show The Prisoner Jess and I covered many moons Ago on the one season show and Mike the Prisoner Good Show until that last episode.

Holy fuck, ain't it good? Lord? Anything Patrick McGowin kinda sends a chill up my spine. Somebody walked over my grave because Patrick McGowan's kind of an unfun dude. Not he was so unfun.

He didn't think that James Bond was a character he wanted to play because the character had too much sexual intercults. Eh, why British sensibilities have been dinged upon? What the fuck? Dudes? Patrick McGowan being in things that I like, maybe not a good thing, is what I'm saying.

Yeah, Patrick McGowin and Peter, I can't think of a stranger friendship, especially just to think of those two walking down the street together. To hear that this is going to be a thing that persists and continues and it's not just a one office I'm excited, but with a fair amount of trepidation until we come back and talk about that. Chris, what are you up to these days? Just working on podcasts over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where everything I work on can be found other than ranking on Bond, which is on our respective patreons at the ten dollars level in higher once a month. If that's the thing you're interested in, which it might be, you can check it out there.

What about you, Mike? Pretty much the same thing all the way down the line. We definitely talk about that sexuality of James Bond and just how he's banging anything that moves a lot of times. He's worse than Captain Kirk. McGowan wants none of that.

How dare you up front to my British sensibilities that characters are having sexual intercourse without actor Jimmy hatt as well, Mike. That's what they called it back, yeah, by old John Thomas. God, can you imagine Patrick McGowan hearing that Penis song from Monty Python's Meaning of Life? Just like, oh my god, what is my ears hearing? Such a fucking asshole?

He just it's so weird because Patrick McGowin is just that this is the last moment before he becomes an integral part to the future history of this show is Yeah, for better or for worse. There are times where I really like McGowin and other times where I could really do without him, But in the next one I like his character quite a bit, So I'm curious to get your reaction when we come back to talk about by Don's Early Light. Until then, stick around for that interview with David Kanig and we will catch you next month. How did this one come together? How did you even decide to put this book together?

It came to me while working on shooting Colombo. Is that was I had access to a large number of scripts that didn't get filmed, several of which I refer to but don't go into any depth on in shooting Colombo. And one of the themes of the production of the show Colombo was Peter falk using the excuse and his producers as well of oh, I'm only doing two or three or four or eight whatever a small number of shows this year because we don't have enough good script You know, if we had more good scripts, we've made more shows. That's when we only do a handfully each year, and I'm getting access to some of these unused scripts and I'm like, these are really good? How come you didn't make these?

And so that's when it occurred to me, is I wonder if there are is it just these dozen that I stumbled on or are there more? And why really didn't they get made because some of these I was able to find close to twenty scripts, and most of them are really good or could have been good with a little massaging. There were several clunkers, but most of them could have been made into great episodes of Colombo. Typically, how many people would work on a script for Colombo. It would typically start with the person who pitched the story, and if they got to go ahead, most of the time they'd get to develop it themselves into a full teleplay that would run eighty to one hundred pages.

And then, if everything went perfectly and movely than just the story editor or who Colombo called the executive story consultant, that person would smooth it, and then the executive producer if it was a write producer, of which may until Peter Falk became the executive producer, most of the producer executive producers before him were writing producers. They came from a writing background, and they'd give it or once over. So that's in a perfect world, that's how many would work on it. Sometimes it oh, that didn't work, we'll try it with you writing, and it could be eight people working on it at some point, and when it came to these. I know that you said several were treatments, and some of those would go what twenty five thirty pages, and then you even found full fledged scripts.

It surprised me because in interviewing some of the folks who worked on Colombo in the early years, while working on shooting Colombo, a lot of people would writers would say, oh yeah, this story I was given was only two or three pages, and then I turned it into this full script. So I had assumed that most of the original story started like the Larry Cohen a first batch of of stories that started during the end of season two, that there were just two or three pages. And then I started finding some of these, and it's no very few that there were a couple that were just a couple of pages, but a lot of the Larry Cohen and and other later stories were twenty some pages. They really developed. The fellow who wrote the screenplay for Anne old Port in a Storm made famous that, oh yeah, I was given these two or three pages and it was very little and just the bones of the thing, and then I created this masterpiece.

And it's no very Owen's original his original story and twenty five pages and everything's there. He really gets and many of the people who were just get a story credit. The original story for Blueprint for Murder, which Levinson and lak did, is almost the whole story. It's simply they don't get credit as writing it. But really most of those ideas in that episode, short of the specific dialogue, it's all there.

Yeah, Larry Cohen just felt like a machine. You quote so many just of the titles other than the titles. How much were there for some of those other ones, because you name off like ten you said that he wrote different things, Well, it was more than ten. It was between twelve and twenty of which I was able to view about a half dozen of them, not counting the ones that actually were used. There were about four or five of his that actually didn't fire episodes.

And he I mean, and he did this in a couple of months. How someone could be that creative? And his stories are really interesting. Some of them are not necessarily usable, but they're all pretty fully developed. I have unique clues, unique setups, and really interesting unique settings and murderers.

That's something that didn't happen from the go. It was in the beginning. There is stereotypical prescription murderer, ransom for a dead man's like, okay, let's get like the generic glorior or psychiatrist. And he started giving them more interesting jobs and settings and take them to the racetrack and other type things that weren't envisioned at the very start. And of course for me, the most satisfying thing was to hear the description or read the description of the Brian de Palma script and just to finally know more about that, because I had read rumors and little snippets of things for years, but you finally just blew the lid off of that and walked us through so much of that story.

What and the story around the story, and just how the Palma was part of it and then wasn't, and then how Scorcesei almost was it Just a phenomenal tale, What a standout piece. Now, what did you personally think about that? About the actual screenplay? Would do you think it would have worked? I love how they're talking about Paul Williams being the murderer, this very Truman capodiesque murderer, which I think would have been interesting.

I think that was before Murder by Death, so you could have had that fulk capodi thing with that one, but yeah, to have all of those things and to have everything being shot from that small height, it just feels so much like he's getting ready for Phantom of the Paradise, or the ideas from that script make it into Fantom of the Paradise. But yeah, I love that whole thing, especially the three students that joined Colombo, which was very interesting because that seems to be a theme through so many of these scripts. Is Colombo having a helper of different sorts. Yeah, that's true, and it did make me wonder. Don't spell it out in the show in the book, but I know Hawk did not want regulars.

He wouldn't mind having somebody once or twice maybe, but he didn't want these strong characters that tagged along with him the whole time that could either deal the show a little bit or force his character into a repetitive dynamic. If he would have Wilson there every show, it would have suddenly turned into a buddy series, which he was not looking for. That, which is interesting because he's so generous as an actor, at least in my opinion, that you get hal Avery coming back so many different times, or just some of these other Vido Scotti of course coming back multiple times. But yes, they're playing different characters. They're not always playing that same person.

He certainly didn't have a problem with bringing folks back, but the same characters that you've seen. That's what he didn't like. Of course, In that the Palma script, the thing that I liked the most was that he got Burt again because I missed Bert so much after those first few episodes. Yeah, he had been gone for a few years. I get the impression reading that the Palma didn't know the show super well and that said scene it a couple of episodes maybe and remembered, oh, yeah, I remember Bert.

I'm going to put him in thinking he was because you think you watch it in dead Weight and Ransom for a dead Man and you think, oh, this is going to be a regular character through the whole thing, and then suddenly three months into the series he disappears. So it makes me wonder if that's what he thought. Oh, he's part of the regular crew, So I'm going to put him in. But because his cript is it's amazing, and I think they could have made it work, not exactly as it was written. Need to be strengthened in certain areas, or tweaked a little more like the Ragna Klumbwood could have been a terrific episode.

I got a little Waldo Leidecker in there as well, especially him being in the bathtub when the murder is taking place or quote unquote in the bathtub. Yeah, yeah, and all sort of touches like that that had never been done in a Colombo before. But it just seems, Wow, what a fresh way to look at it. Well, the thing I'd like too, in those early days of Colombo, having Spielberg there in one of the first episodes, you get that very dynamic camera work, and you have not necessarily it's not threatening Peter Falk as far as the director as the star versus him as the star, but it really gives you some good flavor. So having a strong director like a diploma, I think would have been a real boon to the show.

Oh, I think it would have been huge, because I think that's in some ways the show would suffer later when the directors, we won't say theres but they didn't quite have the cachet to where Bock would trust them and say, Okay, I trust you to do and I'll do whatever you want. Because if he did place that trust in you. He was going to give you whatever you want. And if what you wanted was a little misguided at times, as Patrick mub you in me could be, it would take you in places that some of us disagree you should have gone in. But if you could have had more Spielberg, maybe a Scersesey or folks like that who would have commanded his respect and he would have gone along with them.

What interesting places we could have been taken. Oh yeah, they could have been almost a little boot camp because he already had Demi coming in. There could have been like the postgraduate work from the Roger Corman School. Oh that's that would have been great. Yeah.

And the thing too that I appreciate about your book is that as you're describing these scripts, at the end of the description, you will break it down as far as what the weaknesses and strengths were, and then also what ideas would make their way into other scripts or what ideas might have been recycled into those treatments or scripts. Yeah, because some of them were, especially with Clute, because Peter Fox loved his clues. But even if he had a problem with the with your script, whether like in the the Palma. One. His main problem was that the killer was too colorable.

He was afraid he would overshadow his own character. Who that's the main weakness of that script. If it has one huge weakness, it's that Colombo is underwritten in that his part is not very colorful. More than usual. He didn't have a whole lot to do besides the detective word, and this Truman Capoti character is just over the top.

He might get rid of a script for a reason like that, or because the story was weak, but if he saw a strong clue in there, he would put it in what they call his clue book, and he'd saved it for later. And he would frequently get scripts that were pitched to them in which maybe he did like the story, and he'd go, I got a couple of clues. I want you to work. I don't know how gonna how you're gonna do it, but here's the clue. The work fees into your script somehow we just covered last month exercise and fatality, and that just I think you said in your book that there were your first book, that there were a lot of recycled clues in there, and it felt like it there were some the most interesting thing about that was how Larry Cohen successfully pitched that story.

Is in his pitch to Colombo, he made a big deal about his shoe lace's clue. He went over the top. Then the front page of his pitch was, this is a clue that has never been done. That all the millions of viewers at home can participate in the clue as they're saying it, as they can take off their own shoes and tie them backwards. And never before in the history of television have people been able to solve the mystery themselves in their own home with their own shoes.

So that that always I enjoyed that. It's like Larry Cohen as William Castle. Yes he was. That's especially if you're Larry Cohen and you're pitching fifteen stories at once, you've got to make some of them some of them stand out, and so quite a few of his treatments do have a little salesmanship built into there. Did you find any favorites?

Were there any where? You're just like, oh, man, I really wish they would have made this. There were a handful that I loved and that I think if done properly, because it's a especially in my later years, Colombo showed if done improperly, they could ruin anything, how good a clue or a story. If it was played wrong or written poorly, it wasn't gonna work. But the DiPalma script that I adored that was wonderful.

There was one that came two seasons almost came two seasons later called Roar of the Crowd by Howard Bird, which was set in a circus, which they tried over and over to make and they just couldn't get a good pop at the end. But he played a high wire performer in a circus, and it's just got so many wonderful unique scenes. And the other my other two favorites was there was one that originally started called Ladies Set for Death, which was the original Lemonson and Lank and Peter Fish or Pilot or Missus Colombo, and the when they pulled out of Missus Colombo, the script never got made, but Bill Link held onto the script and when they needed scripts for the remode of Colombo, he said, let's rewrite this.

One's such a good one in which the murderer was like a money haul, Let's make a deal game show host, and it's just such a clever gotcha clue in which you know he's the murderer, but you don't know how he did it. And until the very end, and I'm reading the script going, how did he pull that off? You think, because it doesn't show how he successfully was able to get away with it. And then at the end Colombo and it's all every aren't you? And then of course my absolute favorite, and it's the one if Columbo ever comes back, they have to make this.

And then it's the one that inspired Columbo's last case called Here No Evil. It is simply one of the best Columbo scripts I've ever read, by far, the best unmade one I've ever read. And it's just it's filled with everything. It writes Colombo perfectly. It's an interesting story, it's got clues that are really different, it's got some funny Thatt pieces, and it has so many callback to the earlier days of Colombo that anybody who loves Columbo, which just love this one all the way through.

Where are you finding all of these? Is there an archive at a university or a library, or these people's personal papers. Some of them are spread out at various libraries. There's a couple that are at the Academy Library in Beverly Hills, the Margaret Herrick Library, where they have just a huge repositorio of writers and actors and directors have donated their personal papers to their The Writer's Guild has a number of a large script collection, including a few unmade scripts of the Jackson Gillis one specifically and a couple other locations, and a lot of king folks who worked on the show and had these scripts that they were never able to use, who sent me copies, which was very Jennifer generous and I appreciate.

Were there better records for the older things or the newer things? There's always the split between the NBC days and the ABC days. It's not necessarily records because none of them came from NBC or Universal themself. Though it's not like one place was keeping records. It was just individual person by verson.

How many records did this writer, how a versions did they keep? I know one writer I spoke with who worked on a Colombo said during COVID, I had to clear out my heck and I think I just threw out all my old Columbo scripts and like, when am I ever going to need Columbos scripts? I'm like, oh, I need you Columbo scripts. So it's just the individual person that's been so ratifying to me, because the two books I written out on Colombo I don't think could have been written ten years ago because there just wasn't access to the material that I was blessed to receive. But over the last ten to fifteen years, as people have passed away or realizing they're getting close to the end of their time and have donated their personal collection to these archives, is that when I wrote my first books on other subjects many years ago, this type of material was not around, and now a lot of people do have if you look hard enough, some of it's out there.

You're talking about how the one script was almost Missus Colombo, it was almost the finale, and then you've got these scripts. I believe it was theater Flicker who his script for Colombo had also been pitched as a mcmillanan wife, and I can't remember if it was a third thing or not. These scripts move and change themselves, are very mercurial, I imagine exactly had Ted Flicker, who was one of the creators of Barney Miller, was right before he helped create Barney Miller. His project was a Colombo that originally started as a mcdollanan wife. And since all these folks worked together, a Universal has an office building called it used to be called the Producer Building.

It's called the john Ford Building or something different now, but it was a producers building where all the producers had their own offices. And so the guy Paul Mason, who produced McMillan wife was just right down the hall from the guy who did McLeod who was the guy who did down the hall was the guy who did Banachek, and you know, so they if they read it and they didn't think it was right for them, but it was not unusual for them to go and typically they tell the right this I like this, but it's because his script is just bonkers as well. Really, which has a murderer who's like a mister Rogers. It's my character. So the producer of mc millan wife like, wow, this is really good.

I don't know if it's a melan White, but maybe a Colombo. So he went down he gave him some tips on if you're gonna I've never written for Colombo, but I've held him out around because they would always pass their scripts around, gee, can you take a read on this and give me your thoughts, and he made from suggestions and Ted Flicker took the MD milleni wife producers suggestions and rewrote it as a Colombo and took it to the guys a Colombo and they're like, this is pretty good, and they put it on the board of possible episodes for that season, and it just like it was a little too a little too different kind of hearing the details of that one, I was trying to picture it and it was so unusual too to have Colombo the when the murder actually happened, but an amazing, unforgettable murder if nothing else.

You get two pages in and you're like, wow, you just killed the guy on stage in front of us by insta foaming him to death to us. Yeah, I suspect that was one of the big reason that they wanted to hope to make that one work, and it just never came to be. And in front of probably screaming children as well, gaving showing yes. That would have been interesting to well off because it was a kiddie show that the performance was killed doing so it would have been a lot of little kids sitting around at the Hollywood Bowl. I'm really glad that you talk about the rules or the guidelines that they had for the eighty nine show, especially the whole thing of these stories should be pulled from the headlines, which is very long order esque, but to have that in Colombo, because I recognized some of the events, some of the stories, but just since there was that kind of it was nineteen eighty nine in the early ninety so I don't necessarily remember all of the headlines that were happening.

But like the Uri Gellar amazing Randy thing, I thought that was wonderful. That was the thought of the producer then, Richard Allan Simon, who was the last producer at NBC of Colombo. He did the end of season six and all the season seven, and then he was the first producer when they started back up again, so of the first season back and the first show of the next season, even though that one was actually made during before he got fired during the first season, but it took so long it didn't air until the following season. But that was one of his ways to he wanted to make the show not Colombo. It's still the meat Colombo, because he really loved the character who he was like, Okay, how can I make this more like other shows that to me are more exciting, because he didn't really like Colombo, thought it was a little boring formulaic and it was too hard to just have this verbal chess matt back and forth for two hours.

So he wanted a little more action, a little more danger, a little more things, as you mentioned, tied to headlines, and those were his ideas. Also. He figured if he tied it to a recognizable personality type, it would be a much more marketable thing, and that his bosses at NBC and later ABC I would like it. So if you look back at everything he worked on for Colombo, you know all those season seven and season eight episode you can, if you study him close enough, you can go, oh, yeah, that is that's based on that character is based on Oliver North. Oh yeah, that's based on Agatha Christie.

Oh yeah, that's every single one of them. He's based it on a real person. It was a heartbreak to read the book and to hear about all of these great ideas, all of these great scripts, and you do a great job of saying that it probably didn't getting made for this reason or this reason. But then you look at some of the episodes that did get made and you're just like, ah, yeah, I would have rather have had that than like last salute to the Commodore agreed times one hundred. They didn't bat one hundred or a thousand.

Maybe they did bad one hundred, didn't bad thouthans as far as which one they picked out at times, But I believe that the original script were the columbos that did get made. Most of those, it wasn't the original script's faull the ones that have big weaknesses. There's usually a good story and if it would have been given a little more time. In some cases or in most cases, I think they just made bad decisions in trying to make things funny or no fee when they shouldn't have been, or just the bad production decision that if things got spiraled out of control during those last few years. Were there things that you were trying to find that you could never find?

You mentioned the one writer who might have thrown his scripts away. Were there other things that you knew of that you couldn't get your hands on? There were I would have loved to have actually read more of the I read about half of Larry Cohen's submissions, and then the other half there's no except for the title and dates and such, there's no record of those. So he had some titles that like a Murder at the Racetrack one which I'm like, oh, I would I'd liked this, and a few others I would like to And it was also my biggest The biggest white whale that I wasn't able to find was a story Stephen Botchko wrote that they almost they tried to make and they never did, and I could never tried writing to his family and just could not find that script.

And I don't even know the actual name of it because in the production material in which they refer to it a number of times because they almost made it, they always called it orient Express in the Air, and it was always written in such a way. It was always written where when they were producing Last Loute to the Commodore, they always referred to it as the Marina story, or when they were working on Wore the Crowd, they always referred to it as the Circus story. So I know if it was just a nickname that was the actual name of the episode, But that to me sounded like that's when I really would like three, because this was at the same time that they were working on Last Salute to the Commodore, and I know they wanted to do like a traditional who Done It type, multi suspect murder mystery, so I'm sure that's what it was like, just setting an airplane instead of on a train, so that that would have been fun and hopefully one day that'll turn him.

So what's next for you? You're going to be writing about Missus Colombo now, Nope, I'm not a massive Missus club. I like my Missus Colombo unseen is my preference. So I've got a few more Colombo projects. Maybe no future Colombo books as yet.

But for the Blu ray release the United States of Colombo. The first ones came out the NBC years came out last year, and they did a beautiful job with it. But at the last minute, after myself and a number of other commentators had done these incredible commentaries to audio commentaries to glow with to go with them, at the last minute, the producer realized they didn't get the rights to include any commentaries on this. So even though they they went through seven months of work they spent I don't want to know how much money they spent to produce these things and audio engineer them and sink them out, and they were just they were amazing. All these audio commentaries could not be used.

So I know some of the other folks who worked on that have been trying to figure out, Okay, all this information and interviews we conducted, what can we do with that? And I know a couple of the guys are trying to turn theirs into a book. And me, because so many of the material was recorded interviews and new insights, sad, I'm trying to figure out, Okay, how can I whether it's an audiobook form or something that I can bring out a lot of these news stories and trivia, comments and insights and interviews sac to the episodes rather than in book form, I think they would play better. So hopefully next year some of us can start releasing some of those. They won't be the exact audio commentary, but based on a lot of the same information and hopefully one hundred times better.

I told you, I'm I listened to the book and what a coup getting Jason Coulp to be the narrator. Oh my gosh. He for those folks who don't know a Jason Colp. He's one of more than one son of Robert Colp, who's one of the iconic millains of Colombo. And Jason is not only an amazing actor, is all right, but he's one of the best known narrators of audio books out there.

He's done I don't know, Lord of the Rings or I can't think of all the huge title that he's he's done, and he was so kind to do Unshot Colombo, and he's the best. I could not have imagined somebody better. And his voice has that feel of his father, which is perfect. And he even does a little you know when he does Colombo and telling his stories, you know, a little Peter Fox slips it. He's just so so good.

And I as much as I love to have people read the book, oh my gosh, but listen to the book is just a treat them out treat. Yeah. I love when he dips into his Columbu voice. It's fantastic and just gives that little spice in there. But it's never a soliloquy, but just a little bit, just a little bit, and he does a pretty good truma capone there too.

Yes, yeah, definitely, yeah, that was a real treat being able to hear him do all of those voices and just yeah, it really lent itself to the audio form as well. The descriptions of these scripts, you really make them very compelling. Oh good, thank you. Yeah. I hope folks enjoy it because it's all the work of others.

I'm just sharing other people's information and memories and judge like that. So happy to be able to deliver it. So other than the audio commentaries and trying to figure out what to do with those, what else are you working on these days? Promoting whatever I've got to do. I've got to hopefully add the end of the year or early next year, Shooting Columbu will be out in paperback, so that'll be expanded by a little bit.

I don't know how much more information I'll put in for the paperback release, but will make that a little longer. And then hopefully around Christmas time a booker wrote about ten years ago about danny Ka that'll finally be coming to paperback as well, and I'll expand That'll be expanded as well, So those will be my latest book projects. Is there a place for people to keep up with you and your work online. Yep. They could certainly find me on social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever, just for David Kanik or Dave Kanik or I'm not too hard to find, mister Kanick.

Thank you so much, it is always such a pleasure talking with you. Thanks mine. I hope we do it again very soon. AD title papal Resi