This was back in the 90s. He was working with Larry Charles (a producer and writer known for "Seinfeld," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "Borat"). I like this scene where Dylan pulls the old hot coffee trick on Charles:
"So they bring a hot coffee for him, like a cappuccino, and they bring the ice coffee for me and they put them together in the middle of the table, and he immediately grabs my ice coffee and starts drinking my ice coffee," Charles said. "And I'm watching him drink it and I'm not touching the other thing. I don't want the other thing. And finally he almost finishes my drink and he goes, 'Why aren't you drinking your drink?' And I'm like, 'You're drinking my drink.' And he laughed and that broke the ice. It's like a test. Like, he drank my drink. How would I react?"
Yeah, that's comic and surrealistic. Then there's the old box-of-scrap-paper trick:
Charles recalled Dylan bringing a box of scrap paper with phrases written on it and dumping it on the table. "I realized, that's how he writes songs," he said. "He takes these scraps and he puts them together and makes his poetry out of that. He has all of these ideas and then just in a subconscious or unconscious way, he lets them synthesize into a coherent thing. And that's how we wound up writing also. We wound up writing in a very 'cut-up' technique. We'd take scraps of paper, put them together, try to make them make sense, try to find the story points within it. And we finally wrote...a very elaborate treatment for this slapstick comedy, which is filled with surrealism and all kinds of things from his songs and stuff."
What a cut up. HBO greenlit the project, and Bob immediately performed another scrappy switcheroo: "I don't want to do it anymore. It's too slapsticky." Love that Bob!
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"Ideally, you'd find complete focus and do one thing well. You'd pick one really important thing, say No to all the rest..."
To live as a surrealist you must be dishonest.
I was in France this summer, and yes, there were Jerry Lewis movies, yes, more than one, on the TV.
I thought that was just a joke on the French.
Did anyone here ever actually see that 50s series "Love that Bob!" ? A truly funny series about a randy photographer of the female form (of course it would be panned as highly sexist today and never see the light of day.)
these people are unfunny.
looks to me like Dylan was just screwing with them.
I love the way the guy talks about dylan's box of scraps. such reverence.
Ah liberals. always looking for the god-man that walks among us.
Almost 60 years since I watched Schultzy and crew. Gread transition show - half vaudeville and half modern sitcom. Chuck morphed into Dobie Gillis. - virtually the same character. Fast talking Schultzy did not fare as well, becoming the insipid maid on The Brady Bunch. Much in the same way ultra hip Maynard G. Krebs became the cardboard airhead Gilligan.
That episode of "Love that Bob" is from 1958. "Dobie Gillis" (my all-time favorite TV show) began in 1959. You're right that Dwayne Hickman was playing exactly the character he would be as Dobie.
And I agree that Schultzy was better than that Brady Bunch maid character for Ann B. Davis. And of course that Maynard was better than Gilligan.
Bob Cummings is supposed to be funny because of his endless sexual harassment of women.
"Did anyone here ever actually see that 50s series "Love that Bob!" ?"
Sure! That was one of the standard shows that everyone watched in the 50s.
What was all the other crap? "The Gayle Storm Show," "My Little Margie," "Date with an Angel," "The Ann Sothern Show." (I'm remembering ones with lead female characters for some reason.)
"The People's Choice"!
Here's some "People's Choice." With a talking bassett hound... and Jackie Cooper.
Maybe in the '90's that was how he was writing his songs, but there is a lot of evidence in film and anecdote that the earlier Dylan was always writing and typing out lyrics, pulling stuff not out of a box but out of the air around him. Charles's description sounds more like Burroughs' cut-ups or collage. It is easier make a decent collage than an good painting.
But nice to know Bob still liked playing tricks.
I do remember "Love That Bob", with his secretary, Shultzy, whose next job was as the Brady's maid. Bob's nephew became Dobie Gillis. There was also a show called "December Bride" with a neighbor who had a wife who was much discussed but never seen. Same joke was used with Niles Crane's first wife. Maybe it is all the same show.
Is there a Bob theme?
Inert matter. I watched some of the shows you mentioned. I cannot remember a single thing about them. I'm pretty sure that they passed through the system without a single beneficial or harmful effect. No one joined the Peace Corps or became a serial murderer because of them. They helped to kill time. Fluff for the pillow but possessed of no other significance.
Dylan seems like a total dick here. Wasting other people's time and energy, and drinking another man's coffee? He needs a fucking ass-kicking.
"There was also a show called "December Bride" with a neighbor who had a wife who was much discussed but never seen."
I remember that! With Spring Byington. And for some reason that made me remember "Pete and Gladys." Oh, yeah, wasn't Pete the man who talked about his wife Gladys, and then then came up with a spinoff where we got to see Gladys. Played by Cara somebody.
All this makes me think of "The Burns and Allen" show and "The Jack Benny Show."
There were all these sitcoms that were mainly just some family in their living room with occasional forays into the kitchen.
Now, I looked it up: "In a popular 1950s CBS sitcom, December Bride, starring Spring Byington, Pete Porter (Harry Morgan) was the next-door neighbor who spent most of his time complaining about his scatterbrained wife Gladys, who was unseen to viewers. In this spin-off series, Gladys emerges as the redhaired comedienne Cara Williams. Pete is an insurance salesman, and the happy couple resides in Westwood, California."
I had forgotten about "The People's Choice" but it made me think about Nancy Culp who I thought had played the neighborhood bird watcher, but I looked it up and she was on the Bob Cummings show instead. She was better known for the Beverly Hillbillies but also ran for Congress in Pennsylvania but lost. That made me think of Sheila Kuehl, who after playing Zelda in Dobie Gillis became a law professor, served in the California Legislature and just the other day beat Sargent Shriver's son Bobby to win a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. So somehow this is all about loving that Bob.
What about the Burns and Allen Show. Now that was entertainment.
Bob Dylan and his scraps of paper...
vimeo dot com/72540087
A lot of these scarcely-remembered shows like December Bride and Pete and Gladys were rerun on weekday mornings on CBS, along with I Love Lucy. That's when I remember seeing them.
One of my summertime memories.
Bob Cummings comes off today as super creepy. It's uncomfortable watching him.
"Smith preached that his church was the “restoration” of the early, true Christian church...." might work if it weren't for the fact that polygamous Abraham wasn't a Christian. Abraham lived when there were still unicorns and talking donkeys running around
Don't forget that Harry Morgan of "December Bride" went on to be the 2nd CO (Col Potter) of the Mash unit in the tv series "Mash" replacing McLean Stevenson--born in Normal, Illinois and who often wore a blue sweatshirt with a big orange Univ of Illinois "block I" on it during the series--who was the Mash unit's first CO, Lt. Col Harry Braymore Blake.
How does one get "deeply into" Jerry Lewis?
I'll see it when i believe it
I don't remember that "Love that Bob" episode. I watched a lot of those shows in reruns because I was home sick from school most of that school year. I may have been in the hospital when that one aired. I would have remembered that one because of my ancestry. I think people now probably miss the comedy in that show because Bob is the youthful looking but middle aged girl chaser who never gets the girl. He has everything except what she wants. Anyway, I notice in this and some prior shows I watched a few years back that his gag setups are straight out of Jack Benny's comedy book. The other actors get the good lines, Bob does a take (makes a face), the audience laughs. That is Jack Benny. Anyway, thanks for that Ann.
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