deeper, making it richer and better. You couldn’t buy that kind of
education.”
After three years at
Taxi
, during which Kemp wrote 14 episodes,
school time was over. Producers Glen and Les Charles (who also lives
in Montecito) along with director Jim Burrows were departing to launch
Cheers
, and Kemp was offered the chance to create a new show for Bob
Newhart, the button-down comedian whose first self-titled series had
gone off the air when
Taxi
began. The challenge of coming up with a
new setting for one of his favorite comics proved irresistible, even if it
took a little wrestling with the network.
“At first, they wanted me to basically do the series with Bob still
playing Bob Hartley, but I wasn’t interested,” Kemp explained. “Finally
they just said, ‘Okay, it’s just Bob and whatever you want to do.’”
Kemp decided to put Newhart in a bed & breakfast in New England.
A writer of how-to books still serving his deadpan brand of humor in
a different environment. The show was an instant success, and ran for
eight seasons from 1982-90. Kemp left after two seasons, however, ready
for new challenges, including creating
Fresno
, a pioneering satire of
evening soap operas that starred fellow future Montecito resident Carol
Burnett, as well as the short-lived series
The Popcorn Kid
.
ALONG THE SIDELINES
C
oach
came along in 1989. Hayden Fox was created out of a
dream.
After being asked to come up with an idea for a series for
Buffalo
Bill
actor Dabney Coleman (who had also starred in
Fresno Kid
), Kemp
fell asleep that night wondering what he could do for Coleman, and
woke up at 3 am dreaming about Kay Stephenson, the former coach of
the Buffalo Bills football team, who Kemp had never met.
“Somehow, I’d made the association while I was asleep, but the idea
of Coleman as a football coach was pretty interesting,” he said. “So, I
got up and wrote several pages of notes right then, which literally came
pouring out.”
By the time Kemp had finished up with
Fresno
, however, Coleman
wasn’t available, and he turned instead to Craig T. Nelson. The actor
had once been fired from an episode of
Taxi
, but Kemp couldn’t recall
the incident at all. “All I remember was that his audition was really
fascinating,” Kemp said. “He seemed to have an innate understanding
of the character of Hayden Fox – a coach who had sacrificed his
marriage and family for his career and then found himself questioning
whether it was worth it.”
Coach
ran for nine years, and over the course of the series the
character put his life back in balance when his daughter comes to the
college where he coached, and then his career flourished. Meaning the
series was as much a life lesson as comedy.
“The best writing is working toward some emotional truth,” Kemp
explains. “Life is funny. If you write emotions and stories that could
happen to real people, that’s what makes it rich. That’s always been my
process.”
So the offer to revive his favorite character – the one who had
exhibited the most inner growth – was hard to pass up.
“I was completely caught off-guard (by the offer to bring back
Coach
). It’s not anything I would have considered. But they said we
could work in whatever time frame we wanted.”
Kemp came up with the idea of creating a sequel rather than a re-
do: Coach Fox, now retired, would be coaxed back into the fold by the
son he’d adopted back on the original series’ last episode, who now (in
his 20s) has just been hired for his first college coaching job. Hayden
would serve as his son’s assistant – an idea straight out of real life’s Lane
The competitive climate among the
writers of Taxi extended well beyond
the writing room. “Even dinner,”
Kemp says, “on re-write night was
a competition. Who could be most
creative in what they order?”
PROFILES
|
104
summer
|
fall
