"Alts"

Here’s a Friday Question that became an entire post.  

It’s from Douglas Trapasso:

Did a lot of writing/rewriting of Cheers happen directly on set? 

No.  Very very little.  Maybe a new joke or two, if that.  Most weeks, nothing. But that’s a creative choice.  We worked hard all week to get the show ready to film.  We would definitely make changes after the dress rehearsal, but once the cameras rolled and the audience was in place we trusted the material.  

Other shows like FRIENDS and WILL & GRACE did a lot of changing on the stage.  They also had prepared alternative jokes (called “alts”) ready to go.   You can’t argue success so their way was as good as ours.

But we felt that too many changes burned out the actors.  It’s enough that the actors had to memorize the script, perform the script at top efficiency, hit all kinds of marks and accommodate technical demands, without also being thrown thirty new one liners a show at the last second.  

And it really threw guest actors.  Actors not used to performing in front of a studio audience sometimes found the process difficult and maddening.  Throwing them new jokes on the fly only succeeded in rattling them more.  

I won't mention his name, but one time of FRASIER we had a pretty big movie star do a quick two page scene.  In movies he generally plays very cocky and in command.  He was terrified.  It took forever to film that two page scene.  Now imagine if we had also tossed him new lines. 

We also felt that series regulars would become very lax in memorizing the script if they knew it was going to constantly change on filming night.   (Although, on CHEERS, by the last few season they became very lax anyway.)  

There’s also audience management.  Stopping after every take for the writers to huddle for ten minutes takes its toll on the audience.  The novelty of being at at TV taping rubs off very quickly.  

So if you don’t move things along they just check out.  When that happens they don't laugh as much, they don’t follow the story, they just want to go home.   

And they figure out very quickly what you’re doing.  So they begin to laugh hard at any new joke just so show can move along.  As a result, you don’t even get a true reading as to whether the new joke worked.  

FRIENDS took so long they had two audiences.  One at 4:00.  They got burned out and a second audience came in at 8:00 or 9:00.  But that’s FRIENDS, an insanely beloved show.  Good luck had they tried that on 2 BROKE GIRLS.  

So for those reasons, we chose to rewrite very little on the stage.  We wanted to send the message to the actors that we believed in the material we had given them. We committed and asked them to commit as well.  

Again, this is just a creative choice the Charles Brothers made initially at CHEERS and when my partner, David Isaacs and I were running a show, we made that choice as well.  If you were ever in the audience of one of our shows, you'd thank us.

from By Ken Levine