MY TV JOURNEY

    Jean Shepherd and Leigh Brown visited the NJN studio, signed a very simple agreement and we went to lunch. Jean loved to do business between bites.  After we all tossed out a title for the show.  I suggested that the show be called "Shepherd's Pie" after the traditional dish of leftovers that has served as dinner for many over the years.  Jean added, “We’ve got some crust!” And Leigh gave her blessing, “I like it!”  And so the show was launched.  And in time it would fulfill its namesake and become a half hour of “odds and ends” that the great story woved together into a very good “dish”.   .Jean was never one for scripting - we produced segments on the fly.  Somehow subjects appeared before us.  Shepherd had the uncanny ability to see the very common and turn it into the uncommon - and usually top off with an universal truth.  However, he was very difficult for me to "direct" (if any one really could really do that?). He r...

My collaboration with the famed writer and humorist Jean Shepherd was truly serendipitous; like many things in life this was a happy accident .  Doug, our Program Director, assigned me to shoot a pledge break donation spot with Jean, a part time New Jersey resident; WOR radio humorist,all-around raconteur and storyteller.  Jean was making the rounds hyping his new WGBH public TV show - Jean Shepherd's America.  In highschool I listened to him in bed when the atmosphere was right for the WOR radio signal to skip all the way to South Jersey from Manhattan.   I was fairly blase about doing this quick job.  Fundraising promos were necessary but - BORING for most directors who think the assignment is below their talent level and should be left to an assistant!  The crew had no idea who this guy was so I filled them in as we drove north in one of the station’s ancient black Plymouth station wagons to "Shepherd Farm" in Washington, NJ.  It was a long ri...