Posted on 07/15/2005 7:47:16 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Back in March, I received an e-mail from a stranger. He identified himself as Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s producer. He explained that they were planning for her to do a one-woman stage show. Although the second act would consist entirely of Dr. Laura’s answering written questions from the audience, they wanted a funny script for the opening act. Would I be interested in having a meeting? Sure, I’m game for just about anything that doesn’t involve heavy lifting or getting on an airplane.
So it was that a couple of weeks later, I drove up the coast to Schlessinger’s home in Hope Ranch, a very chi-chi part of Santa Barbara. The dinner was first-rate and apparently I passed muster because I was invited aboard the project.
We agreed on a basic format, which consisted, for the most part, of my writing monologues in addition to letters and phone calls to Dr. Laura from famous people and fictional characters, all seeking her help with their problems.
I went home and began writing. As I’d complete a page or two, I’d e-mail it to Ms. Schlessinger. As a rule, she seemed pleased. When she wasn’t, she’d let me know and I’d take another whack at it. As I had told her and her producer, a nice guy named Geoff Rich, I have a normal amount of writer’s ego, but I was more than willing to submerge it in this case. When I was writing for television, after all, I was writing dialogue for actors to perform. If they didn’t like what I’d written, I was more than ready to argue about it. But this was different. Dr. Laura wasn’t going out there as Hawkeye Pierce or Rhoda Morgenstern or Dr. Sloan, she was going on stage as herself, and she had to be totally comfortable saying the words I was putting in her mouth.
The first glitch occurred when I was mailed the deal memo. That was when I discovered that Dr. Laura was demanding the primary writing credit, even though she wasn’t going to do any of the writing. I told the producer that I was willing to wager that the lady I listened to on the radio would give short shrift to anyone whose ego was so needy that she’d insist on grabbing credit for work she hadn’t performed. He laughed. “Good point,” he said. Laughter over, he added that she insisted on the credit.
I told him I’d go along with it because I was preparing to fight over the royalty schedule. He gave in on the money.
In any case, I continued writing amusing, even witty, material for the next several weeks, all the time wondering when they were going to hire a director to start working with my star. Then I got the news—Dr. Laura had flown back to New York to meet a few contenders, and had selected a woman with a background in soap operas. Fine. I really wasn’t expecting Mike Nichols.
Dr. Laura e-mailed me to report that the director was coming west, and we’d soon be getting together to figure out what more needed to be written. I waited. Then I waited some more. I finally decided I had gotten the dates wrong. I hadn’t.
It seems that the director had not only arrived in Santa Barbara, but had begun working with Ms. Schlessinger. After three days, the director phoned the producer in New York and reported that it was hopeless. Dr. Laura couldn’t memorize lines, no matter how brilliant they were, and was in a panic.
Now I had known all along that she felt uncertain about her ability to remember lines, but the producer and I both assumed that was merely a natural case of the jitters. She wasn’t going to debut “Dr. Laura: In My Never Humble Opinion” (her title) in Santa Barbara until mid-August. Inasmuch as I’d been feeding her pages since early April, she had months to work on it. Besides, the stage set we had discussed would provide plenty of places in which to cleverly conceal cue cards if she needed them as a crutch.
In any case, when Mr. Rich began his phone call with the old news that “The good news is we have a director,” it wasn’t too hard to figure out that the bad news is that they no longer had a writer. The new plan called for Dr. Laura and the director to come up with ten topics that Laura felt she could discuss off the top of her head.
I was assured I’d be paid in full – always the right thing to say to a writer who has his lawyer on speed-dial. Before hanging up, I couldn’t resist asking Mr. Rich if Dr. Laura always delegated others to extend her regrets.
In retrospect, I liked dinner, I liked Dr. Laura’s house, her cars, and her producer. But I could only marvel at the chutzpah, the gall, of someone who spends three hours a day dispensing advice to people, telling them how they should behave, who signs off each and every hour with her signature, “Now go and do the right thing,” and who then behaves so boorishly in her own private life.
Dr. Laura, you insisted on stealing credit for work you weren’t going to do. And when, after three long months, because of your own inability to do something child actors do every day of the week, you dumped the person who did the work, you weren’t even decent enough to call or even e-mail an apology.
I’m afraid you wouldn’t know the right thing from a hole in the ground.
About the Writer: Burt Prelutsky is a humorist, movie reviewer, writer for television series and movies, and author of the new book, "Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco." His website is at http://burtprelutsky.com.
Burt receives e-mail at BurtPrelutsky@aol.com.
Why? Are you expecting a sizable portion of the talk radio audience to GO COMPLETELY INSANE in the next twelve months?
I had a friend who had just moved to LA when Dr. Laura had her brief disastrous foray into TV.....
So she signed up with a Temp Agency till she found a real job...one of the jobs...
Yes, audience member for Dr. Laura's TV show. They had to HIRE an audience; even giving away free tickets they got nobody.
I keep a copy of one of her nude photos in my wallet...y'know, protection from vampires.
YES!!!
She has no tv presence. I guess because she was trying to be nice and likeable for that audience. I always am suspicious of people who jump around from moral system to moral system. She went from partying hippie to professional Orthodox Jew to whatever she is at the moment. There's no reason to believe that in her personal life, she has any particular loyalty to any particular ideology. Another reason to be suspicious of her is that cackle. Verges on insanity.
I'm SHOCKED that you could be sooooo naughty.... LOL
They always do that with a new program. Dr. Joy Brown did the same thing when she went to television.....so what?
He was hired to be a ghost writer. Why didn't he understand that? Also, why didn't he get his money up front? He sounds a bit naive, but maybe that's how business works on the left coast.
Or this one.
My only criticism is she jumps to conclusions too often on what the caller's problem is - I know she can't let them go on forever but there is some middle ground between cutting them off so she can give an answer that has nothing to do with the issue and boring the audience with minutiae.
It's almost like she's not even listening. I know she would say something like she's been doing this for years and she knows where the caller is going, but her answer isn't even close to what the caller needs. She's definitely not intuitive which she probably thinks is an advantage but it really isn't in her field.
Do like her family values though.
The whiner did not seem to be upset when the initial contact was made by a subbordinate to Dr. Laura. Why would he be upset when his termination was issued by same?
"MUST stay married regardless of the circumstances.......to be unrealistic, therefore flawed."
Dr Laura makes exceptions for infidelity, drugs and drunks....
Remember that she's not getting these calls "cold." They've been extensively screened, and before she pushes the button to start listening to them, she's had a chance to read a lengthy summary of their issues and problems that appears on her computer monitor. The screener also makes sure that the caller has a legitimate problem and is a real caller, not someone who is trying to create a situation to embarrass or stump Dr. Laura. When she appears to be cutting a caller off to jump to conclusions, you'll rarely hear the caller say, "No, Dr. Laura, you completely have hold of the wrong end of the stick, it isn't like that at all." All talk show hosts do it this way. Laura's screeners are really tough and insightful, and often they only let the markedly idiotic callers through, for dramatic effect.
How do I know? My dad worked for a big organization that had both a TV station and a radio station. When Dad would drive in from the country to pick up his paycheck, I would go with him and I saw how they operated.
What bothers me is her authoritarianism. "Go do the right thing."
I'm certainly no moral relativist, but she comes off as coldly imperious, and seems to lack any sense that it is "human to err," and that very good, well-meaning people can and DO make mistakes, especially when they are young.........like some 40 years younger than she is. I find myself wondering just what kinds of "skeletons" there might be in her own closet from when she was somewhere between 18 and 30, which is the age range when millions of people make poor life choices....and with the very best of intentions.
I also have trouble with the fact that there was a "deadly" estrangement between herself and her mother, and while it may be that this wasn't her fault at all, it's extremely weird that her mother's body lay in that house for a couple of months before anyone even knew that she had been killed (by an intruder, as I believe it was finally reported). Just not easy to explain something like that scenario, considering Laura's profession.
Thanks so much for your comments. They add so much substance to this thread! I truly appreciate your remarks.
Char :)
I don't think she's a monster. I think she's boring as hell.
Not being able to stomach more than 30 seconds of her drivel, I'm not qualified to judge whether she's a monster or not, so I'll leave that to others.
And she's only fair as a porno-poser.
One of us is misunderstanding this story. Where does he say that he didn’t get paid? You added the line to the title that she “stiffed" him, but I don't see it.
I read that her producer promised to pay him. Did I miss something about later refusal or are you making that part up?
I’m not a fan of Dr Laura, but liked her for awhile. I could never reconcile how a woman could sleep with her producer on her way to the top, and then when her body gave out, preach the morality of abstinence so condescendingly, even after the photos came out.
It sounds like there was tension between Burt Prelutsky and Dr Laura from the beginning. No wonder she treated him rudely in the end. No wonder he’s now betraying her professional confidence. Only a nut would do that. No wonder they couldn’t get along. I don’t think that will help his career or hurt hers.
I know people who have worked with her and say she cusses like a sailor.
Just the way Burt wrote it, I drew that conclusion from it. I'll email him and ask if he can clarify this point.
........and thanks for adding this bit: "I could never reconcile how a woman could sleep with her producer on her way to the top, and then when her body gave out, preach the morality of abstinence so condescendingly, even after the photos came out." It is something that I never knew.
Thanks for asking about Burt's salary issue. Nothing wrong with challenging assumptions!
Char:)
I highly recommend you look into Sirius. Both Elder and Bruce are on, along with Laura Ingraham, G. Gordon, Glenn Beck, NRA News, and lots of catagorized commercial free music. Mrs. H-T gave it to me for our anniversary this year and I'm really liking it.
Dr. Laura is a bitch. But if Einstein had been an asshole would E still be equal to MC squared? If Newton had been a child molester, would apples fall up?
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