Black Tie Affair

I worked this show as the boom operator and I have to say it was one of the smartest, funniest scripts I have ever read. Jay Tarses was a fabulous man to work for and put everything he had into it - great fun and at least one giant laugh every day. The cast were all great folks (Brad Whitford, Maggie Han and Kate Capshaw come especially to mind) and the we crew had our bits of fun too. It was such a shame that the "suits" at NBC had no sense of what I call intellectual low-brow humor - Not only did they change the name from Smouldering Lust (very funny), they only aired 5 episodes, the whole while shifting time slots so as to drown it out. It is a period of my life that I remember with great fondness.

This series lasted briefly (under six episodes?) in the early nineties and it's no wonder. Though the storyline of a Sam Spade like private dick (Bradley Whitford) and his super-competent gal Friday, Cookie was well written and a lot of fun for fans of film noir there was little chance this show would last.

There was no laugh track and the jokes weren't delivered with the heavy handed style television audiences have come to expect. Perhaps viewers tuned in and had no idea what they were supposed to be watching. Who knows.

With a continuing storyline featuring Kate Capshaw as an older, Bacall/Stanwyck type mystery woman this show managed to pay homage to the hard boiled detective genre without lapsing too heavily into parody. Another treasure swallowed up before it had a chance to find its audience.

I worked on the show too, all 13 episodes that were shot. Unfortunately, there was a major blunder during the first 2 days of shooting and a feud between Jay Tarsus and NBC. This resulted in the show airing after the options on all of the primary characters contract's has expired, which meant there was no possible way to continue the series.

There shooting blunder was that the first two days of shooting were over exposed by about 2-3 f-stops. What this translates to is that the image is washed out and extremely bright. Since reshooting the first 2 days was not an option, the first 4 episodes (4 weeks of shooting) all had to be shot at the same exposure setting. I'm sure that this is the reason why NBC wanted to not even air the show, but I think that Jay took it personally.

Anywho, I remember the boom operator (another one of these comments) and I remember helping her out on a few episodes. BTW, I stood in for John Calvin, who seems to have disappeared after 1995. The worst day of shooting was at the hotel where I had this squab sitting in front of me for 2 days. On the second day, I think that they sprayed it with Lysol to help cover the rotting smell.

If you're interested in this show, you should read a book called We Bombed in Burbank: A Joyride to Prime Time by Vance Muse (Addison-Wesley, 1994). The author was there from the beginning and interviewed everyone associated with the show as it was being created, cast, and shot. He documents everything from writing, to set decoration, to what the legal firm who checked the scripts found, to what happened when the show finally aired. He didn't say anything about the problem with the film mentioned in a previous comment. I never saw the show, but I still found this book interesting; if I'd actually seen any of the episodes I'd have found it fascinating.

I think about this show every once in awhile, although I only saw a couple of episodes. The problem was that my eyes would go right over "black tie affair" in the TV guide. It was such a boring, meaningless title. I knew it was a great show but my eyes just couldn't see it.

Originally it was supposed to be called Smoldering Lust, and the network chickened out, which is a shame, because I'm sure that would have just jumped out at me. I mean, you can't really ignore something called "Smoldering Lust."

It is perhaps one of the odder things I'm irked about, that some stupid networks made me miss most of the few episodes of something because they gave it a stupid, meaningless title that my brain just could not register, but it sure was a dumb move.