Chip Keyes (Gimme A Break, Valerie / Hogan Family, Shaky Ground)

Chip Keyes joined me to discuss Chip being a nickname for William, his mother being a working woman during the war; watching Howdy Doody & The Mickey Mouse Club and wanting to be in to show business; watching Disney and westerns; getting his comedy from his mother's sharp tongue; the influence of The Dick Van Dyke Show; his love of Maverick and James Garner; writing his first sketch in eighth grade; Laugh In becomes a hit and he sees Second City as a way to make sketch performing a career; forming the Portable Circus; becoming a local hit on campus; doing a gig in Hartford; getting George Sherman to be a director; taking the troupe to New York and around the country; a sketch using the word "shit" gets press and a talking to from a Jesus freak; auditioning and not getting SNL; becoming a page; his original plan was to become a teacher; leaving the page program to move to L.A.; SCTV; getting a play produced; his partner, Jeffrey Lippa wants to be an actor; he makes a critical decision; wins on Match Game to give him time to figure out what he wants; goes back to NYC and host a kids show; makes good money doing commercials; Taxi inspires him and his brother Doug to write a spec script; a great note made his spec script better; writes 2 episodes of Sanford; Mort Lachman becomes a mentor; gets hired on Gimme a Break; writes "The Chief's Gay Evening"; does a pilot with George Kennedy; gets job on Valerie; moved to Perfect Strangers; going back to Valerie and being told to come up with stories that could work for Valerie or a replacement; Valerie Harper was tense and a control freak; hard to write for characters who were so nice; Jack Carter; O.J. Simpson; PORKO; Dennis Burkely; getting a GLAAD Award; Valerie condom episode; episode had a warning and was exiled to late night in his hometown; NBC asks for Fire Prevention week and MLK episodes; not liking the AIDS episode after he left; Willard Scott; Edie McClurg doing an episode after almost dying from giardia; Christine Ebersole; Judy Kahan; turning Mrs. Poole from mean to magical; not bringing back Judy Kahan for season 3; the Paris episodes and working on the Eiffel Tower; Jason Bateman and his father direct episodes; Arlene Golonka & Gerald Gordon; Shaky Ground; not being sure of Matt Frewer as title character; George Kennedy was offer only but still read, Frewer would not read; wishing he could have recast with Phil Hartman or George Wendt; "Matt takes"; Matt improvs with a black dildo in front of a young Jennifer Love Hewitt; working with Chris Demetral, Betty White and Marie Osmond; Reagan jokes; Nixon, Reagan, and Trump; writing two episodes of Two of a Kind for the Olsen Twins; the brothers go their separate ways for a while; write Star Patrol; cast Charles Rocket; line producer shoots out of sequence, network doesn't understand; pilot is rejected