Dropping Names

DROPPING NAMES

...and other things

With Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes

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Tim Matheson on Dropping Names with Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes

The new episode is out

Tim Matheson turned down Animal House rather than play the wrong guy

The casting office wanted him for Greg Marmalard. Tim Matheson told them he would rather not be in the picture at all. That is how he ended up as Otter instead. Eric Stratton, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you.

He also tells Brent and Jonathan how John Landis quietly talked Chevy Chase out of the same movie over lunch, by pointing him toward Foul Play and Goldie Hawn instead. And how John Belushi walked away with what may have been the biggest cheque on the whole production. Around thirty five thousand dollars.

There is a lot more in it than Animal House. Tim grew up on soundstages, and he remembers all of it. This one runs an hour and a half, and it earns it.

Also in this one

Lucille Ball, teaching a kid actor his job. On Yours, Mine and Ours she told him to always rehearse with his own props. He has never forgotten it.

The speech he never got to make. Spielberg cast him in 1941 opposite Nancy Allen. He was ready to tell her how he felt on day two of the shoot, right up until Brian De Palma walked onto the set and proposed to her.

Learning to speak an Aaron Sorkin semicolon. Seven years as Vice President John Hoynes on The West Wing, two Emmy nominations, both lost to Charles Dutton, and exactly one improvised sound he got away with adding to a page of dialogue.

And he directed Brent. Threshold, with Peter Dinklage and Carla Gugino, in the week the show got cancelled.

Watch the episode

One hour thirty three minutes. On YouTube now, and in every podcast app you already use.

One bit of housekeeping

We are weekly now

New episodes every Wednesday at 10am Pacific, instead of every other week. Same show, twice as often, which either sounds like good news or a threat depending on how you feel about us.

Your turn

We have spent a year telling you our stories. Now we would like yours.

You have met someone. Everyone has met someone. You stood behind somebody in an airport, you served someone a coffee, somebody famous was rude to you in 1998 and you have never fully recovered.

Tell us where you were, who it was, and what they said. It does not have to be a big story. The best ones are usually thirty seconds long and end with somebody saying something completely ordinary. If it is a good one, we will read it on the show.

You can put your name to it or stay anonymous. Your call, there is a box for it.

Drop a name

From the archive

One of the great days of his life

Since John Landis comes up in this one, here he is again, from an episode earlier this year.

Bill Prady had shot exactly one episode of Dream On. The following week the phone rang. They were not shooting that day. John Landis was making a Coca-Cola commercial for the Mexican market, starring Jerry Lewis as the Nutty Professor, and did Bill want to come over.

He spent the whole day there.

"One of the great days of my life," he says, "because like most people my age, Jerry Lewis was a god to me when I grew up."

He had form. When The Nutty Professor first came out, Jerry Lewis did a live stage show between every screening at the Metropolitan Theater in Houston. Bill stayed all day and watched every single one.

From The INSULT That Created The Big Bang Theory's Bill Prady, around 15:47.

Two quick things

The Daily Drop

Four clues, four guesses, one mystery guest, a new one every day at midnight Pacific. There are 156 of them in there now, all built from people who have actually been named on the show. No account needed. Play today's.

The Season 2 logo contest closes 1 October

Design the logo for season two. It has to feature both of them, which we accept is asking a lot. Entries close at 11:59pm Pacific on 1 October. Have a go.

Go and enjoy it. There is another one next Wednesday.

Brent & Jonny

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