I created The 4 th Floor Show with TV’s Alex Herschlag back in the early 90s, back when television was still in its infancy and anything went. Alex became the executive producer of “Will & Grace,” but back in the early nineties he was just a street tough with a dream, and my sidekick. And you didn’t cross him, he’d cut you, and I assume he ran“Will & Grace” the same way.
Back in ’91 Alex and I had writers’ offices in a building on the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga. We rented offices from Karl Shaefer, who had an overall deal with Hearst Entertainment. They subsidized the offices and Karl invited writers that he liked to take offices there for very little money. It was sort of a writers’ farm system. He called the set-up The 4 th Floor – mainly because we had the whole 4 th floor, and part of the second. Karl created shows like “TV 101” on CBS, and “Eerie, Indiana,” on NBC. (Karl gave me my first staff writing job on Eerie, Indiana. Thanks, Karl!) We had a number of future Emmy and Oscar-winning writers there. Steven Gaghan, Oscar-winner for writing “Traffic.” Joe Minon, who wrote “After Hours” and “Vampire’s Kiss.” Jerry Stahl, who wrote “Permanent Midnight.” Michael Perry, Emmy-winner, and many more. It was a fun, creative time for everyone, but the best part was that we had a conference room on the second floor with a pool table and a ping pong table. Writers would take several breaks a day to challenge each other to a game of pool or ping pong. Most brought along a change of shirt because we worked up quite a sweat during those matches. These games really made the monotony and isolation of the solitary writing process much more bearable.
The 4 th Floor Show was shot on a little hi-8 video camera. The concept was a talk show done within the confines of my tiny office, with none of the luxuries of a regular talk show. The audience was only about five people sitting on a couch three feet in front of my desk.
We shot six or seven 4 th Floor Shows, each one between 10 minutes and 30 minutes long. This was over a period of several years. And the cost was almost nothing. Everyone volunteered their services. We only paid for editing. Some of the guests who appeared on the shows were George Clooney, Rob Schneider, Kevin Meaney, John Putch, and Ellen DeGeneres.
I’m only putting up a couple of clips from one show. It should give you some idea of what the show was.
The first clip is the opening of the show and the guest star was George Clooney. (A hell of a ping pong player, I might add.) This was during his first year on ER. He had just been shooting scenes on location in Chicago and flown back late the night before. He got up early on a Sunday morning and came down to Hollywood and Cahuenga to do me a huge favor and shoot this. (Thanks again, George)
The second clip is a part of the show where we break into a musical number. I’ve never seen this happen on another talk show, but you’ll see it on The 4 th Floor Show. Entertainment with a capital E. Or a small e. I don’t know. I guess it’s the same word either way.
VIDEO CLIPS:
