"If you had to summarize all of my episodes in one sentence, it would be, 'Be kind to your friends.'"

-- Lisa Melamed, Hey Dude writer

One measure of a television show's influence and quality is the follow-up success of the its creative talent. It should come as no surprise that Hey Dude's writing staff has since made its mark in the industry. Of the entire stable of writers, Lisa Melamed has achieved the greatest success in dramatic prime time television, producing and writing quality works for the networks.

Since Hey Dude ended, Lisa has served as a writer or writer/producer for Brooklyn Bridge (CBS), Sisters (NBC), Trinity (NBC), and Party of Five (FOX). She is now busy writing episodes for the forthcoming CBS series, The Fugitive, based on the vintage David Janssen "travelling man" series (most of you probably remember better the 1993 film starring Harrison Ford). As it turns out, The Fugitive is scheduled to compete in the same time slot as David Lascher's current series, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (WB).

Lisa Melamed (accent on the second syllable) graciously and generously volunteered some of her valuable time to relate her Hey Dude adventures. Her insights and experiences have an absolutely remarkable depth of detail. Remember, Hey Dude finished taping ten years ago! But after reading this interview, you'll feel as if you were there on the set, working and living with the gang on those sweltering Tucson sets.

Let me send out a big personal thanks to Ms. Melamed. She did a great job of running with the questions I posed, delving into wonderful detail and offering up many fascinating anecdotes. I also have to give credit to Doug Snauffer, who helped prepare some of the questions (the good ones). Note that Lisa's comments are transcribed as literally as possible, but the interviewer questions and comments have been editied for clarity.

Tuesday, June 6, 2000

Why don't you tell us a little about yourself?

Born in Manhattan, grew up in Brooklyn. Brooklyn College. Lived in New York--in Brooklyn, actually--for over thirty years. I moved to Los Angeles in May of 1990, which was shortly before I ended up going down to Tucson to do my Hey Dude stint. So I was working on the show when I moved. I actually used the fact that I was doing the show and have kind of a guaranteed, portable income as a good reason to make the transition from being an executive to being a writer. The show kind of provided me with a nice way of making that, which was to come out Los Angeles while I had some writing work. It's hard to come out here and completely start from scratch. While I was doing the show, it made it feel like I was a working writer in what is very much an industry town.

What were your influences early on?

I would say that my biggest writing influence--it's a little bit of a cliché, but I'm going to go there anyway--J.D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye is the first book that I read where I felt that I wanted to write like that. I was also tremendously influenced by Wendy Wassersteen, the playwright.

I'm strangely very influenced by songwriters. I find that lyricists whom I love were able to tell a story with real economy. That's a very good thing to remember. Sometimes it's very easy--particularly when you're writing dialog--to be very wordy. It's sometimes nice to remember that sometimes less is more, and to really trim it down and tell the story with enough heart, soul, and feeling--but also with economy.

The lyricists whose work influence me are Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro and Stephen Sondheim, primarily.

You were previously a "development executive?"

Yes, I worked at Scholastic Productions. I started there right after college, and moved up the ranks from being an assistant to being an executive. It was a film and television division of Scholastic Books. A lot of what we were doing was taking children's books and young adult novels and turn them into after school specials, series, or TV movies. So I kind of came out of children's publishing from a media place, from doing it in multimedia.

And that's how I met Alan Goodman. He actually came in to pitch me some projects, and then when he went on to do Hey Dude, he very nicely asked me if I wanted to write one.

Alan Goodman seems to be a name that keeps coming up a lot...

He was the catalyst. He was the first story editor, essentially the head writer for the first batch of scripts. And then Graham Yost took over that job.

I'll tell you my favorite Graham Yost story. He's just wonderful and brilliantly talented. It's such a pleasure to have watched his career. But there was one time when I went over to his house to go over an outline for the show. And when we finished with the meeting, he had to go off because he was doing research on the Los Angeles bus system! Get it? So that was very exciting. I have to say I was very thrilled to sit in the movie theater and see "Speed, written by Graham Yost."

So Alan Goodman brought you on to write one episode...that would be "Dan the Man," right?

Yes, and I pitched him a couple of ideas, and the one he liked was the one for "Dan the Man."

Was that your idea from conception? I've seen you quoted that writing is a collaborative effort --

Ultimately, from now having experienced being on both drama staff and comedy staff, Hey Dude was run a little bit more like a drama staff in that we didn't sit a table with a bunch of other writers and go through the scripts. It was actually a one-on-one between whoever was writing the script and Alan or Graham. And they didn't go through that kind of "punch up" process because though the show was a comedy, but it wasn't a "jokey jokey" kind of comedy. It was much more of a gentle humor and more realistic storytelling. So we didn't need that kind of punch up stuff. It actually seems more the way that I've worked on shows like Party of Five or Brooklyn Bridge, which was a single-camera film show, as opposed to a multi-camera sitcom.

But Hey Dude was shot in a strange kind of hybrid way. Which is, that we shot out of sequence like a film. But it was shot on video, like a sitcom. I don't know of too many shows that do that. It was sort of unusual.

The way that the schedule worked was, say, we were starting on a Monday. We would have a cast reading of the episode. And then the director would spend an hour or two blocking some of the scenes with the actors. And they would have the afternoon off. If we needed to do any rewriting based on the cast reading, we would do that. Although, generally not too much because the scripts were in good shape when they went to the cast. And then we would shoot that episode Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, all day. But we would shoot all of the lodge scenes at once. And then we would move to the boys' bunkhouse and shoot all of the boys' bunkhouse scenes, and so on. So we were shooting it out of sequence, which is how you do a movie or a one hour show. Sitcoms are generally shot in sequence either in front of an audience or with a laugh track added later. So it was a pretty creative hybrid kind of production. And the fifth day we would have off. So if we shot Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we would be off on Friday. And then Saturday we'd start again. So it was pretty fast paced and I think pretty strenuous for those actors.

What would you do on that day off?

(Laughs) Sleep. Write. There are a lot of bookstores in Tucson. I like going to bookstores. Sometimes hike around or hang out at the hotel. We were all living at--when I was there it was---the Radisson, on Speedway.

Have you ever finished a script, and then later wish you could've added other elements to it?

Sure, and actually the great pleasure of an experience like Hey Dude is that we got to see our mistakes. It's not that our standards were lower, but the scrutiny was less. It was a kids' show with a low budget, so there weren't network advertisers breathing down our throats with a hundred executives going for every script. As a writer, you pretty much got to tell the story the way you wanted to. And for many of us, it was our first staff writing experience, or first TV writing experience. So, yeah, there were things that I watched--I'm not going to name them!--but there are things in the show that really made me wince. But they all taught me, and it was really a great way to start off, particularly because in network television you're frequently rewritten in your first couple of years as a writer on the staff. And I think that if I hadn't had the experience of Hey Dude where I got to actually see my scripts realized, it would have been much, much more frustrating at the beginning of my career. There's always something to look at and wish that it was better, and occasionally there's moments where you look at it and it's a perfect mesh of actor and director and writer, and that's the happiness of it.

The strange thing about being a writer is that when you're writing a script, it can be anything. And then when you film it, and it gets edited, it can and will be only that one thing. So you have to hope that, for the most part, you're working with people who are going to make your intentions better. There are some times that happens and there are some times it doesn't.

You mentioned that you pitched a couple of story ideas that got you started, "Dan the Man" being one. Were there other script ideas that you pitched that weren't accepted?

I have no idea what they were (chuckles). I remember going in to Alan with a couple of different concepts, and that was the one he gravitated to. I do remember that in the original pitch it was Ted who had the problem with the horse. Somehow, in talking with Alan, we decided to make it Danny. Which I think made the story better.

Yes. I noticed that your stories tended to concentrate more on the supporting characters and gave them depth.

I don't know that I noticed that. I know that at a certain point I started writing away from Ted because everybody was writing so much for him, and I just thought it would be more fun to go the other way with it. I think of myself as kind of the "chick writer" on the show. I mean, there were a couple of other women writing on the show, but I always felt like my stories inclined actually more toward the girls, just because I was once a teenage girl. And I brought a lot of personal stuff to those characters. Because of my memories, I wrote a lot for Brad. And I know that I like writing that character. I always thought of her as kind of heroic. I liked writing that character. I liked tripping her up. I liked that fact that she was on the one hand confident, pretty, and rich. And on the other hand, really struggling to fit in. I liked that Gemini aspect of her character.

Do you have a favorite episode?

"Miss Tucson" holds a very fond place in my heart, although it was a tremendously difficult episode. It was difficult in that it was different from the norm in terms of having the girls perform like that. The genesis of that script was looking at a show--and this has proven to be true in other shows I've worked on--where you have two girls. And I say this as a girl and hopefully not sounding too sexist, but there's often competition when there are two girls, whether it involves from them or outside of them, the perception of other people. It's the Betty and Veronica, the dark girl and the light girl, basically. The blonde and the brunette. There's always that sense of how are they rivals and how they are friends. And how they are sometimes both at the same time.

Friends and rivals

And so I started off looking at Brad and Melody in that way. Having spent a little time on the show, looking at Christine and Kelly, it might be interesting to explore some of the stuff that went on when you also had two girls in a show who were living away from home. I drew a little bit from observation, although that's always dangerous to do. You run the risk of people recognizing it sometimes. It was interesting because I felt Brad is the hero of that piece. It was a hard episode for Kelly to do because she was less of an exhibitionist. She was more comfortable when she was acting the character closer to who she was. It kind of made her squirm to get up there and do the pageant, which in some ways again reflected what was going on in the story. It was kind of interesting. But Christine, on the other hand, came from doing a lot of theater in Pennsylvania where she grew up. I knew that she was a good singer. I also deliberately wanted to write something where she got to sing.

I really liked the message of that episode, and I was proud of that script. It was funny and heartfelt. In all the scripts, what I try to convey...if you had to summarize all of my episodes in one sentence, it would be, "Be kind to your friends."

Also having come out of children's television and knowing from all the feedback that we would get in the years that I was working at Scholastic Productions, is when you're writing for kids, pre-teens, and teenagers, you write for an audience that takes it very seriously. And it listens very carefully to what you're saying. If you have an opportunity to plop your thoughts down in someone's living room by way of being lucky enough to be a writer on a TV show, that you have a responsibility to say something valuable...as well as being funny and entertaining. People fall in water troughs all the time. But that one was a hard couple of days getting through it and incredibly hot in the lodge. Here are these two girls in these fancy dresses and hair and makeup. It often got deep into the hundreds when we were shooting in there with the lights.

Yeah, those sets did not have air conditioning, did they?

No, they did not! So it was pretty rugged.

Filmicly, I think "Stick Around" is the best looking of my episodes. I think Fred Keller did a really wonderful job on "Stick Around." I love the way the square dance looks. There was just something about that from a visual place that I thought looked really wonderful. This is sort of like which is your favorite child! I feel very fondly of all my episodes in different ways. But I would say story-wise on one ("Miss Tucson") and visually on the other ("Stick Around") , those two stand out for me.

You got to be on the set while several of your episodes were taped. That must have been nice.

I was there for "Miss Tucson," "Crush," and "Low Budget Brad," which I did as a rewrite, actually. That was somebody else's script and I rewrote it from start to finish. The other ones had been filmed in the time that I was writing for the show but not living there.

"Stick Around" let you introduce the new Kyle character.

That's always fun as a writer, I have to say. Particularly when you come onto the show late to the party, because I came to Hey Dude second cycle. There were five cycles of thirteen episodes. "Dan the Man" was in the second thirteen. So they show had been going a while and there were certain patterns established, ways in which the characters talked. Part of the skill of being a TV writer is being able to go in and adapt your own writing to the existing style of a show and yet bring something fresh and interesting to it. But the sneaky great pleasure is when you get to create a character. So I was very happy to be able to introduce a new character. Also, the actor who played his father is Debrah Kalman's husband, Jamie Bailey. It was nice to be able to write an episode for the two of them. They were both very happy to be able to act together.

Were you around when David Lascher left the show?

I know he came and went. I know he was there part of the time I was there because I have a wonderful Arizona sweatshirt that I got from him as a Christmas gift. He was great. So I was in on some of the writing Ted in and writing Ted out. But the bottom line is that David was a very large part of the show and everybody was really happy when he was there.

Was it tough writing for Kyle after Ted won the lottery and came back to the ranch?

No, it was actually sort of interesting. We had the Ted, Kyle, and Brad triangle. I don't think I wrote much of that. I know that Graham wrote some of that stuff. That wasn't something I ended exploring too much in my writing.

If you were writing the reunion movie, "Hey Dude: Ten Years Later," what would these characters be doing now?

(Laughs) That would require too much work! You know, I think it would be fun to do that. But I've lost track of a bunch of the actors, so I have no idea who they became as adults. And it would be kind of interesting to see that. Josh (Tygiel) was obviously such a little pipsqueak when the show started. And then I remember writing a recommendation for him for college.

I don't know what happened to Joe Torres. Joe is a very talented artist and I hope he's pursuing that, because he's a really, really talented artist.

So the "Dudesbury" story was based on that talent?

Again, when you work on a series, one of things that's tremendously fun is to take advantage of the actual skills and the actual likes/dislikes of your actors, and work them in. I knew that Joe in fact was an artist and I thought that would be a fun thing for him to play. He really loved that episode. It was fun for him.

He gave me a really terrific doodle, like an Escher, on one of the covers of one of my episodes. On his script cover. I think it was "Crush." And he had it mounted and gave it to me when the show finished. But I don't know where he is or what he's doing.

Jon (Galkin), I know, graduated from NYU and was doing something in the music business. He was tremendously interested in music. He would make all of us really good mixed tapes while we were there. I would be very curious to see how he turned out as an adult. He was a really nice kid. I really liked Jon.

How come Kelly Brown stopped acting?

She's raising her family. She's got two kids and I think really decided to put her focus there. She's a very happy and devoted mother of two sons.

As on site editor, did you see a lot of rewrite action?

Graham really got the scripts into good shape before they would get shipped out to us. The writers would do a couple of drafts and get notes from Graham and the studio, and usually when they sent them down to us in Arizona, they would be pretty much ready to film.

Was Hey Dude recognized as a good test of your writing ability when you went out to Hollywood?

Less a test of my writing ability, but certainly proof that I knew how to work on a show, and beat deadlines, and understood the needs of writing for production as opposed to simply writing for your imagination. The truth is, it wasn't a script people wanted to read as a sample, and I had to have spec scripts for adult shows. In fact, when Hey Dude was finished, Graham and I each separately wrote a Roseanne spec script. We both picked that show and we'd watch episodes together, fashioned our stories, and gave each other notes, which was tremendously helpful. And that was the script that eventually got me started on Brooklyn Bridge.

Lisa Melamed Interview:
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