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EP_406_Jim Colucci_Golden Girls, Love Boat, and the Journey of 80s TV Storytelling_Transcript

Melissa Roth: Weirding Way Media.  

Amy Englehardt [Singing]: 80s TV Ladies, So sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, Steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh-[wolf whistle]. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

Sailor Franklin: Welcome to 80s TV Ladies where we laugh in order not to cry. I'm Sailor Franklin filling in for Melissa, who's off this week visiting family. So here are your hosts, Susan Lambert Hatem and Sharon Johnson.

Sharon Johnson: Hello, I'm Sharon.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I'm Susan. The thing we love equal to 80s television is books, all kinds of books, but especially books about 80s television. And today we have a very special guest joining us in studio who wrote a book about, yes, The Golden Girls. Maybe the book about The Golden Girls, Jim Colucci.

Sharon Johnson: Jim is a TV writer, author and entertainment journalist. He wrote Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Look Behind the Lanai. Published in 2016, it is the first-ever detailed retrospective of this famous 80s TV Lady show. He is a certified Golden Girls expert, though I'm not sure where you go to get certified for that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You go down to the 80s TV Ladies certified expert store. Maybe we need a t-shirt. But if there was a place to go get certified, Jim Colucci would be given the first stamp. He has written for countless magazines from The Advocate to TV Guide, written television specials, been a correspondent on The Frank DeCaro Show. And he's married to Frank DeCaro.

Sharon Johnson: He has also written books on All in the Family and Will & Grace, but his most famous book is of course his New York Times bestseller, Golden Girls Forever.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Welcome to 80s TV Ladies, Jim.

Jim Colucci: Thank you for having me. I had heard about this from other guests you've had and I was waiting for my turn on deck. I've been hanging out here in my Weezy Jefferson T-shirt, waiting for my chance to come on your show.

Sharon Johnson: I love your Weezy Jefferson t-shirt.

Jim Colucci: You know, I wore it because it is an attribute to two 80s ladies in one. And it's not only Isabel Sanford and Weezy, of course, but I got this at the estate sale of a woman named Allee Willis. And I don't know if you know about Allee. So Allee was a songwriter. She passed away a few years ago and she, first of all, her entire aesthetic was very much like Pee Wee's Playhouse. And she was friends with Paul Rubens. And so she had a house in the valley, in Valley Village, that she painted pink. And it was like walking into Pee Wee's playhouse. And it was just TV ephemera everywhere and crazy stuff she collected. And she had her recording studio there because she was a prolific songwriter. She was the writer of the Friends theme song for one thing, but also of September for Earth, Wind and Fire, which is probably her biggest hit. Neutron Dance, What Have I Done to Deserve This, the music from the musical Color Purple. And those are just the ones off the top of my head. She was a prolific songwriter.

Sharon Johnson: Holy cow.

Jim Colucci: And she had a great affinity for African American culture because she was from Detroit, first of all, and worked with Motown a lot of. So at the sale there were a lot of, you know, companies. I think they were probably black owned t-shirt companies that had fun stuff on them. And I got Wheezy Jefferson. It's probably cultural appropriation because the name of this t-shirt company is called Gully Originals. that's probably not a brand I would. I should. I should wear if I weren't culturally appropriating. But I figure I'm a gay guy worshiping Isabel Sanford, I can get away with it.

Sharon Johnson: There you go.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, absolutely. And I think t-shirts are for everybody.

Jim Colucci: Yeah. And it's also, you know, it's a way to honor both Isabel and Allee.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I think that's amazing. Isn't it amazing, zll these incredible, like, singer, songwriter creators that are sort of unknown, like living in the Valley and no one would know?

Jim Colucci: She was a character. You'd know. If you saw her, she had an asymmetrical haircut she was known for and was really always very loudly dressed. Bigger than life. She was so much fun.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That is so amazing. I love.

Jim Colucci: And there's a documentary about her, actually that just came out in the past year or two and I'm going to get the title wrong, so don't. I think it's called The World of Allee Willis, but it's on one of the streamers. So if you're interested in Allee Willis, it's A-L-L-E-E Willis. And she's just-- She's fascinating.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right, we'll put it in our Audio-ography.

Jim Colucci: Yeah, exactly.

Sharon Johnson: I definitely need to see that.

Jim Colucci: Oh, you'd love to.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. There've been so many great musicaldocumentaries recently. For some reason I missed the one about Stax Records and found it on the plane on the, my recent trip. And they only had one episode for some strange and odd reason. And so I assume I'm going to go back and watch the rest of it.

Jim Colucci: You know, that's what airplanes are for. For some reason I. When I'm at home, I know I'm going to watch the tried and true or I'm going to keep up with a series. And so I never end up experimenting as much as I do when I'm on a plane. For some reason, I'm a different person. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to try that. And often it's a show that I end up becoming addicted to and loving.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Isn't that fun? It is. It is sort of like. It feels like it's a, it's like a freebie, right?

Jim Colucci: Yeah, it does. It's like 30,000ft-Jim has totally different taste and it's totally more experimental.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And there's all sorts of crazy documentaries now that are really cool.

Jim Colucci: Like Mariska Hargitay's, yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: My Mom Jane. That's so great.

Jim Colucci: It is.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was really.

Jim Colucci: I'm so impressed. I always have been impressed with that. Okay, here's the theory that my husband and I have. We think that Mariska Hargitay is the great leveler in terms of anyone would sleep with her, male or female, straight or gay. We are convinced that she is, she's like the unifier.

Susan Lambert Hatem: She's the unifier.

Jim Colucci: I dare anyone to watch Olivia Benson and not have some reaction whether you want her to mommy you or whether you want her to sleep with you. I don't know what you want out of her.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You want her to arrest you.

Jim Colucci: You want her to arrest you, rough you up a little. But there's. I mean, Olivia Benson is amazing and Mariska is amazing. And what you see from that documentary is-- I'm so impressed with her and her family because so many showbiz families are screwed up and so many regular families are screwed up. Never mind that. But the consequences of some of the choices that Jane made in her life. Not meaning to hurt anyone. Jane was a. Seems like a pretty good person, but she made some choices that, you know, she was with different men at different times. And I think that could have been hard on her kids. And, you know, choices have repercussions. The fact that everybody comes together in that documentary and is able to deal with everybody else's choices and say, yeah, okay, well, that happened. Or, you know, I accept you as my half sibling and I accept. It's just they're really a lovely group of people and they could. It could have gone so differently, right? They could hate each other, they could be fighting over a fortune. They could be fighting over who sold the house. And you're not really her kid or I'm her-- More her kid than you. You know, it's. There's. You don't get any of that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It is true. Have you seen that documentary?

Sharon Johnson: I have. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing and fascinating. Like you said, the, the, the whole family dynamic, I mean, in much better circumstances, things go completely and totally sideways. And it certainly could have in this case, but for whatever reason.

Jim Colucci: Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: They all acted like grownups and adults.

Jim Colucci: That's exactly it. And I, having not always acted like a grownup in those situations myself, I walked away from that saying, my God, I'm impressed with these people.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. And again, she's, she is the great leveler. Like there's nobody that doesn't go, well, yeah, she's great.

Jim Colucci: Yeah, you want something out of her. Maybe you don't want to sleep with her, but you'd like her to pet your hair and tell you it'll all be okay.

Sharon Johnson: And I also watched the Paul Rubens documentary.

Jim Colucci: Yes. Another great one. Yes.

Sharon Johnson: Learned so much that I did not know about him and his life.  

Jim Colucci: And his temperament. Because you see his temperament too, in the interviews where he's really fighting the filmmaker and it worked out fine. But you can see, wow, okay. Yeah. People are complicated.

Susan Lambert Hatem: People are like, yes. And he comes off even more complicated.

Jim Colucci: Than you thought he would be. Yes, exactly.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You know, you can tell that it goes back to the days of the improv of the Groundlings.

Jim Colucci: Yes. And also the complicated nature comes to the fact that he really got unfairly treated on several occasions and is still smarting from m that and doesn't want to cede control to the filmmaker when, you know, things have been done badly to him. So I get it.

Sharon Johnson: Well, and it also shows you too, that, that whatever you hear, read on the Internet, hear on the news, you have to understand that you're not getting all of the story. It's impossible to. Because people are complicated, situations are complicated. And I mean, I've long tried to take a beat and go, okay, what's the rest of the story? What are the complications? Because nothing is simple. But yeah, it was terrific. I highly recommend that as well. Not 80s TV Ladies related, but still, who cares?

Jim Colucci: It's great. I'm sorry, I started us on a tangent. Thank you. Thank you, Jim.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, we love tangents.

Jim Colucci: We could be here all day.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. But let's get back to you, and I am very curious what television meant to you growing up and 80s television in particular, and how it led you to today.

Jim Colucci: You know, I, think that my answer is probably, in a lot of ways, everybody's answer. And I will say the full thing to you now, but I think sometimes I'm almost shy about saying what television means to me because I think that I'm being maudlin about it or making it about me when probably everybody has this feeling. So that's my caveat, like, okay, if I'm going on too long and I'm being emotional about television, when everybody feels that way, then tell me to shut up. But, I mean, television has always been a huge part of my life. The one part that might be a little bit different is that I have a older brother who is one year older who is developmentally disabled, severely disabled, doesn't speak and doesn't read and whatever that. So, when we were practically Irish twins and in matching cribs, my parents would wheel in PBS for us to watch every iteration of Sesame Street that aired on Channel 13, New York. And I think it aired like three or four times a day. And so as a result, it didn't do anything for him. But I could read before I was two. And so TV was just always education for me. It wasn't even like a guilty pleasure where people call it the boob tube and say it's rotting your brain. I never saw it that way because I saw what it did for me from the very beginning. Electric Company was my favorite show. And so the other part of it is being a young gay kid growing up in the 80s, which were way more conservative about that, and growing up in a family that was a little more conservative about it and all those issues, TV was an escape. And it was a place where there were, you know, when there was seldom, but there was occasionally a gay character, they had some dignity in the episode. They were treated often by the end like they deserved to be equal. And so that was always a nice message. There were ideal families that were in some of those sitcoms where a gay character might be introduced. But even if not an ideal family that was functional, I mean, those were great escapes. And so I just always did that. I just. And, and I think it brought me to. Of course. And I think this, this is what it does for everyone, TV. It brings you a greater, a, greater understanding of the world and of other types of people. You know, I was growing up in the suburb of New Jersey. I, I don't know if-- I actually still live part time in New Jersey. And I, and I have noticed, I think it's more integrated than it used to be. The New Jersey of my youth in the 70s and 80s was very segregated, black versus white. And, you know, I guess if you look at the history of race relations in New Jersey, there were the Newark riots in the 60s, and that was a town that was considered very black. And I think that caused white flight in the cities and everything became more and more separated. Right? And so that was the legacy I grew up in. And so I grew up in a very white suburb. And I don't think I knew-- It was very Italian, very Jewish. That would be the only other minority I would know. And other than TV and, you know, going to the mall, you didn't get to meet other types of people that often. And so I'm glad that TV brought that to me, that I didn't grow up to be, you know, an adult before I had ever seen other types of people and seen them, again, presented with dignity and humor and everything else. so, Yeah, just the politics of the television, because TV's more progressive than a lot of the real-life people. And I'm glad to have been exposed to progressive politics and diversity.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, I think because we love the characters so much and we're invited into, particularly in the sitcom world and all of the worlds where you're invited into people's homes through television and it's a little bit different, right?

Jim Colucci: Yeah, it is. I always say that media obviously has. It's both a mirror that reflects who we already are, and it also is who we could be. And film is great at that because there are, of course, films that have completely changed American culture or the world. But a film is a two-hour, maybe three-hour sometime vehicle. And a TV show can come into your living room when you're at your most vulnerable, when you're in your underwear, when you're most receptive in a lot of ways. Maybe you're tired, maybe it's a long day. The world has beaten you down and you're receptive to something that's going to make you laugh or make you cry. But TV can come into your living room for a half hour or an hour every week, for 20 something weeks, every year, year on end. You fall in love with these characters. A film character can be iconic. A film character can be a poster. It can be something to aspire to, but it's not going to become your best friend. Mary Tyler Moore, Mary Richards could be your best friend. Dorothy Zbornak could be your best friend. In your mind. Of course, we know they're not real, but they really, they become a part of you. They become someone you feel you know. And so when someone like that then has an experience that's either great or can be awful. Maybe they're discriminated against. Maybe they are. There's violence, maybe there's a home invasion. Maybe there's, you know, whatever it is, their joys and their triumph. You feel them so deeply because you've gotten to know them so well over all this time. And so the power of that is enormous and including to sneak in some progressive messaging, as I wrote a book with Norman Lear about All in the Family. And, you know, that's what he saw so brilliantly, that even Archie, by the way, was lovable because of Carroll O'Connor and the writing. But the other characters who were more progressive, if they had been a film character who had lectured you once, you might say, you know what? Go to hell, meathead. Mike, I don't want to be lectured about this. But Mike came into your living room every week for those nine years. Actually, he was only on for the first eight. And became a friend and became a trusted source. And so I think that a lot of his viewpoint kind  of resonated with people over time. Even people who, maybe by the film, the show's premiere in 1971, wouldn't have considered themselves progressive, but some of that kind of got through to them. So TV has such immense power, and I love that about it.  

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, it has not just the entertainment value, sometimes it is all those underlying things that come along that make TV so compelling. At least I know it does for me.

Jim Colucci: Well, what better way to get through to someone than with laughter or with-- Through their emotions? Right? If we all see on social media, everybody trying to make. And maybe I think I'd say intellectual arguments, but some people are clearly not very intellectual. But still--  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Sometimes it's just arguments.  

Jim Colucci: Yes, sometimes it's just arguments, but they're trying to appeal to the intellect, to the brain, to change people's minds via the brain. And that's very hard to do because-- Especially in a, in an era when people don't accept facts as facts anyway. So it's going to be very hard to change somebody's mind with a fact when they're just going to tell you it's not a fact. However, emotion is where you really change hearts and minds and. And laughter and, you know, the spoonful of sugar of delivering. Designing Women I always think of doing this, delivering great messages along with hilarious situations. And you can laugh at Suzanne Sugarbaker and laugh with Suzanne Sugarbaker and still get the fact that, oh, she's being a buffoon here. Oh, here she's showing she has some heart. Here's what, what we really should get out of this episode, that this gay character who they were designing a room in a funeral home for, deserved the dignity and not to be treated like a pariah. Or she's wrong when she shoots Anthony. We get it, we get it, but it's because it's done with laughter.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I totally agree. We sort of talk about how television, particularly 80s television, but all television, I think from the beginning was teaching us stuff. It was our Internet before the Internet, because you could learn about something, a culture, a class. Or even again, Cagney and Lacy, they have a scene where they teach the captain how to use a microwave. And that was because America needed to learn how to use their microwaves. Now, some of it was also selling microwaves.

Jim Colucci: I was gonna say.

Susan Lambert Hatem: But it was that thing of, like, people didn't know how to use them. And it was technology that you got this information. And then they did it with rape and with, you know, police brutality and with cancer. And all these. These shows had an opportunity to showcase life lessons, but also life information that you couldn't really access as immediately anywhere else.

Sharon Johnson: And it was really television that I think the first thing that really showed people across the country, across the world, about how other people lived.

Jim Colucci: Yes.

Sharon Johnson: What sorts of families? And I could imagine going, oh, well, their families maybe live here, but they're--

Jim Colucci: And then that's pretty similar still.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, still just kind of like my family. It was the beginnings of that. I mean, listen, as we all know, at the end of the day, television is all about making money.

Jim Colucci: Right.

Sharon Johnson: That's what it was made for, and that's why it exists. And that's okay. But it also had all these consequences, intended or otherwise, that has made a difference in, in, in  our world and in our lives over the years.

Jim Colucci: Oh, I think so. And. And not to be Pollyanna-ish and all positive about television all the time, but given where even as screwed up as we are now and how backward we seem to be moving, I'm going to say let's talk about 2016, before this whole era started. Whether that's-- Okay. Let's. This. Think of that as the good old days. that 2016 was so different from 1971 when All in the Family started. It was so different from 1980 whatever. And I can't imagine such social progress on so many issues taking place so quickly as it did in the TV era in other eras. Like, what were the really the social differences for gay People or black people or Jews between the 20s and the 30s or the 40s, were they did-- Was there that much progress? Probably not. But once TVs in the equation, I think that things kind of started to really accelerate in terms of acceptance. And so, you know, when I think of All in the Family and when you mentioned women's issues and reproductive issues and stuff in All in the Family, when they had Edith talk about either being in menopause or breast cancer, they got hate mail for that. How dare you talk about something so dirty. I watch this show with my children, with my daughters, like I'm a grown man writing this. I write this, watch this show with my daughters. What? You don't want your daughters to know the facts of life, that there's a such thing as breast cancer? And then, you know, think about, by the 90s, I would never have thought that even would have happened. Like, breast cancer was, of course, openly discussed and that was, you know, less than 20 years span. So I really think that things really accelerated through television. In a good way.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes. And, I think it's also the power of storytelling.

Jim Colucci: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Right? Like we have, you know, but it's storytelling on steroids. It's not we gotta get everybody into an amphitheater and teach them about the Greek chorus. You know, it's, oh, we can feed this right into your home. It's so intimate. It's so intimate. And you do find characters you fall in love with and they're with you forever. Like, you know, there won't be another Scarecrow & Mrs. King episode. But damn it, I still love it.

Jim Colucci: But why not reboot that? I mean, we have Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner. I was at a party recently, maybe six months ago, where Bruce Boxleitner was, and I was so tempted to go up and geek out. And I didn't. And I kind of regret it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: He would have loved it. Whad him on. We've talked to him. He was amazing. They met him in person.

Sharon Johnson: Melissa. Melissa. And our producer and I went to the 40th anniversary of Scarecrow and Mrs. King event that they had. He was there and Martha Smith was there and several of the other cast members, former cast members were there. and he was a delight. Bruce. I mean, they all were. But yeah, it was great.

Susan Lambert Hatem: He's a great storyteller. And he.

Jim Colucci: Now, I. Now I doubly regret not--

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, I have that same experience. I was at in a theater and Dick Van Dyke was right there with two people next to him that were uounger and I assumed they were with him. And I was like, I want to go up. But I felt like I couldn't. And then later I found out that he absolutely adores that.

Sharon Johnson: ‘Cause that's the thing. You don't know. Some, some people are like, please leave me alone. Others are like Dick and Bruce and like, love to talk to you and you know, nice to meet you and, and they really enjoy those interactions.

Jim Colucci: More often than not, they actually do like it. But it's more a case of, do I have anything smart to say right now, or am I just gonna be one of those people who goes, ‘member that show? ‘Member? Like, I don't wanna do that, I just wanna act. Okay, let me have something smart to say in this moment. Or maybe I shouldn't do it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And that's so funny because it is one of my questions for today. So we'll ask it right now, which is, you know, what's your advice if you see somebody and you want to say something?

Jim Colucci: What's, you know, oh boy, I am so the wrong person to give that advice because I have screwed it up on so many occasions. There are legendary stories of encounters that went wrong because of me. And I think this was one of your questions that I showed to my husband and said this one could take an hour alone. I have an infamous story about accosting Meryl Streep on the New York subway and how badly that went because of me. She was fine. Because of me. And same thing with JFK Jr. on the New York subway. You know, I would say don't go up to people when they're around their kids or grandkids. They get very protective. And even if, you know, you're just saying a quick hello. I have said hello to people in restaurants where the kids were around and gotten kind of like a weird look. And I was like, okay, yeah, you're being protective. There's one actress from an 80s TV show, I guess I won't say her name now, but I saw her walking a baby, pushing a baby carriage. It must be her grandchild, right near the entrance to one of the studios here in town. And I was walking by and I needed her for my Love Boat book. And so I went up and talked to her and she could not have run away faster. And I was just like, wow, okay, that went really not well. So yeah, I would say don't go up to people when they're around their kids and also, go up with something specific. To say, and a compliment that means something. You know, I. I always think of my husband talking about when he saw Julianne Moore on the New York subway. And he was ready to. He was like, I know exactly what I'm going to say to her. And he was waiting for the moment where maybe one of them would be getting off the train. So they would. She would know that it wouldn't have to be a long conversation. And the stop before my husband was gonna get off, another gay guy walks by Julianne Moore and says, I loved you in Safe. And she was like, thank you so much. No one ever talks about that movie when they talk about my stuff. And they had a nice conversation. And then when Frank got off the subway, he just said to her, he took mine. That was what I was gonna say. And he couldn't come up with a plan B. So that's all he could say to her. He took mine.

Sharon Johnson: I always wish that I had, like, a sign or something or something that I could say, sort of indicate I'm not crazy.

Jim Colucci: Yes. But see, the problem is that often makes you look crazy with Meryl Streep. Just the long and the short of.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It is, yeah, I gotta hear this story.

Jim Colucci: And it's a really long story. I look so bad in it. I see her get onto the New York subway. I'm the only one who recognizes her. She goes, and she sits by the pole. You know, the pole that we’re on the other side, there's the gap for the door. And she just hangs onto the pole with her right hand and puts her head down and just closes her eyes like she doesn't want to make contact with people. And I'm all like, that's Meryl Streep. Oh, my God. Everybody-- And nobody is paying attention. It's New York. They're all blasé. So I, like a creepy person, go stand in the gap of the door and have my left hand over her right hand. And I'm just looking down at her the entire. Like, I'm inches from her face for the entire ride. And it was a crowded subway, so she didn't necessarily think that, like, I was. It's not like there were feet around me. But, I still. I was the one who was inches from her face. And I start telling myself that, oh, she must be doing what I'm doing. I was on my way to a Carrie Fisher book signing at Lincoln Center, the Barnes and Noble, when it was there, and I knew Carrie a little bit. And I. So I was going to the book signing. And then I thought, wait a minute. Meryl's probably going to the Carrie Fisher book signing. Why else would she be on the 19 train right now? And so, okay, Meryl's going to the signing. I'm going to. So I'm convincing myself of this. So we start to get near the Lincoln Center stop, and she's still not looking up or paying any attention. I think this was in the day before earbuds, but you can imagine, like, maybe she had earbuds in. And I said, how am I going to alert Meryl that we're at our stop, and she's not paying attention, without telling everybody else that she's Meryl Streep? Because I did that to JFK Jr. once. I outed him on the subway. And he was nice about it, but I could tell he did not appreciate it. So, I was like, I know this is the crazy. This is the crazy where even the t-shirt that says I'm not crazy or the sign would not help. I said to myself, I'm going to address her in a way that only she and I will understand. That's a bad thought. When you have that right there, run away from that thought. So I thought, well, she's on her way to Carrie Fisher's book signing. She was in Postcards from the Edge. I'm going to call her Suzanne, her character name. So, yeah, this is. This is crazy. This is crazy. I like how you're gasping. This hasn't even happened yet, and you're gasping with embarrassment. So I'm already only like three inches from her ear. So I lean into her ear and I say, come on, Suzanne. This is our stop. And the moment I said it, it all hit me. Oh, I made this all up. She. I don't know where she's going. I just called her. She said, I just ‘what’s the frequency. Kenneth’ Meryl Streep, if you remember that reference. I just ‘what’s the frequency. Kenneth’ Meryl Streep. And so, the moment I'm done saying it, she tilts her head toward me and opens her eyes and just looks at me. And I was like, oh, my god. And I'm like, now three inches with Meryl Streep. And I'm like, you know, she's. She could be intimidating when she wants to. She wasn't even trying. And I'm like, oh, my god, I have screwed this up. So the doors open at Lincoln Center, and I jump off the train. And you would think for devilment, the doors don't close. The train just sits there in the station. And I now need to know whether she's getting off the train. Like, how crazy am I? So I hide behind a pillar. And I'm the only one. I'm the only one on this. This never happens either. I'm the only one on the entire platform at Lincoln Center. And I hide behind this pillar. Not well, I'm fat and I'm fatter than the pillar. And I'm watching the door of the subway and just. It's sitting there and I'm like, how long? When do subways just sit? And finally I hear the ding dong, ding dong, like it's gonna close. And I'm like, oh, she wasn't even getting off here. And with that, she stands up and like, adjusts this long dramatic scarf she was wearing and glides off the train. It's if the conductor had been saying, Meryl, we'll wait. We'll wait for you whenever you're ready. And so she gets off the train and she's now on the Lincoln Center platform. And I'm hiding behind a pillar like four feet away. And she sees me.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh no.

Jim Colucci: And so she comes up to me and says, I'm sorry, what did you say? And this was my opportunity to make something up that wouldn't be crazy. But I just couldn't think fast enough. And I thought, you know what? She's going to hear that it's different and think I'm. So I just repeated it sheepishly. Come on, Suzanne, this is our stop. And she's like, And then she waited to see which direction I went, which exit I took from the platform and she took the other one. But she did go to the Carrie Fisher book sign.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh my God.

Jim Colucci: Okay. I actually ran up the stairs into the Barnes and Noble. They had closed off the upper level where they were having the book signing. And there was a poor Barnes and Noble employee, like, blocking the escalator, which was a really skinny escalator. And I just, I practically ran her over. I just zoomed past her and like red-faced and crying, like, I'm so sorry. I have to get upstairs. My husband's up there waiting for me. And I just said something crazy. Meryl Streep. And like. And so the woman was just like, oh, he's crazy. Like, I'm not gonna in the fight with something. So I get upstairs and I see Frank and he's standing right by the entrance to the, like the glass room where the book signing will be, which is already overflowing with people. And I just start saying to whimpering. I was on the subway. There's Meryl Streep. And he's like, you're not making any sense. And, with that, Meryl comes up behind me on the subway and just-- On the escalator and just glides past me and led to the green room where she's apparently going to meet Carrie. And I never saw her again. But I was like Meryl!

Sharon Johnson: Oh my gosh.

Jim Colucci: So, yes, the answer to how to, go up to people that you admire is A, don't do it when they're kids and their grandkids around; B, have something smart or respectful and a unique compliment; and C, don't be me. Don't do anything I've done.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Don't make up a whole story.

Jim Colucci: Don't make up a whole story in your head about how you know them and you can intimately call them by another name in their ear. I mean, oh, my god, the idea that she didn't like, call security or like, was so nice about it. I love that.

Sharon Johnson: What road took you to writing and journalism, in particular in TV? What was that journey like?

Jim Colucci: Oh, my God, it was so not the right road or the straightforward road. And now I have to say the straightforward road to journalism is probably one that I would tell kids, don't do it anyway. Because journalism has completely fallen apart, like many things. And, not just because of the politics of today, but I was saying this 10 years ago because the Internet really undercut what I do and I think what a lot of other journalists do, because the democratization of voices. Well, you could say democratization in most things is usually a good thing. It also can have negative consequences. And one of those is that when everybody's voice has equal weight, including people who are just making stuff up off the top of their heads, it's very hard to distinguish through the clutter who is a qualified voice and people who have trained to be journalists. So it's very hard to make a living now because whereas newspapers and magazines used to only hire qualified journalists and they get paid $2 a word or whatever it was, now there's no, almost no such thing as $2 a word. And a lot of those magazines and newspapers died because they were competing against in the Internet. So that being said, I didn't even take that the standard journalism road to journalism. anyway. I was a marketing and computer science major. I didn't want to do the computer science part particularly. But while I was working in New York at an ad agency, which not in a creative capacity at all. I was working in a numbers capacity. My husband was writing for TV Guide. He had a deal there. And actually I got a break. I had always written kind of keep me sane, even when I was studying computer science. So at, at-- I wrote for the school newspaper and their features magazine all through college anyway, so I, I had always kind of been doing it, but not-- I knew it wasn't a career, and I didn't know if it could be a career.

Sharon Johnson: Were you writing about television at that time, or were the features about a variety of things?

Jim Colucci: It was a lot about television, a lot of film. I was a film reviewer. I'm not a good film reviewer. And so I didn't make it as a film reviewer on that magazine for that long because I have very mainstream taste. And they wanted artists, you know, they wanted people to review the latest European film. And I would. That wasn't me, but I didn't see that as a career. I'm working for the ad agency in New York, and my husband, who was writing for TV Guide, was asked to cover a particular story. He had been chronicling The Sopranos from the very beginning of that show. We're both Italian and from New Jersey. I think that's how he got the beat. He did an interview with James Gandolfini before the show was ever on the air and on set. And so he really was ingrained, enmeshed with them. And then The Sopranos-- This was probably 1999 or 2000. They were having a very hyped-up casting call in New Jersey at a high school in Harrison, New Jersey. And, they were gonna possibly, you know, cast some people for probably only minor roles. They didn't say it that way, from this casting call. And so the TV Guide editors asked my husband Frank to go cover it, but they wanted someone to do it undercover. And they didn't realize until a couple of days before, wait a minute, he can't go undercover. They know him. And so they had a last-minute, like, who can we get? And so they asked if I wanted to do it because I knew his editors too, just through him. And I was like, sure, I'll go undercover at The Sopranos casting call. Well, I'm not an early riser. So I probably left too, too late anyway for this casting call. But they expected, I don't know how many, maybe a thousand people. They got something like 20 or 30 thousand people come to this high school. It was so much that it overwhelmed the entire town. It shut down the highways in every direction. The police had to come and shut it down. And so I, at the time that it was supposed to be starting, was still stuck on Route 280, halfway between New York and Harrison, New Jersey, because all the exits were closed. And so by the time I made it to the town, the cops had shut it down hours early but earlier. But there were still thousands of people standing in line, milling about, pissed that they didn't get in with their headshots. And so that became my story. Talking to all the people who were pissed that they didn't get to go to the Sopranos Festival. And then once I did that, I just kept pitching to TV Guide. And it was honestly not something I again saw could be a career, but it was that I had a New York rent that was killing me. And I had a not-great paying job in advertising. And this was a way to make up the difference. Oh, I could sell some freelance stories on the side. And I wasn't always busy at work in advertising. So I would secretly close the door of my office and do an interview with Don Adams, you know, and then open my door again and pretend I was crunching numbers. So I did that for years where I had, like a secret double life where I'm interviewing celebrities with the door closed. And then. And so, eventually I. I had always wanted to write.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Was it $2 a word?

Jim Colucci: Yes, TV Guide was $2. I don't know what they are now. I don't think they probably are. But back then, it was $2 a story. Yeah, it could be. I mean, and they would assign low word counts. Like, you would get a story that was like 300 or 400 words. But hey, for 600, 800 bucks extra this month, that's great. And then, especially if you did a couple stories a month. and so after a couple of years, I started thinking. Well, I've always wanted to write a book about a TV show. And the reason is really because of the consumer of books that I've always been about TV shows. That and the books were always terrible. When I was a kid, before the Internet, the only place to learn about your favorite shows would be either the columns and TV Guide that would be about it. And my parents were too cheap to subscribe to the actual TV Guide, so I just had to rely on the TV supplement in the local newspaper. And there'd be a Q&A column and maybe three or four questions with answers about current shows. And that was the only source I had, but I always thought, I want more. And there would be occasionally books about TV shows, but when you'd get them, they'd often be written on the cheap. They'd have errors in them that as even a casual fan-- You'd be like, that's not even right. And so I thought, you know, with the shows that I love, I want to do a deep dive. I want to be able to tell people that every single detail that I've always wanted to know about the show and have it be right. And so after the couple of years of experience with TV Guide, I started pitching a Golden Girls book.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And, and this is year this.

Jim Colucci: Oh, so this would be 2002.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay.

Jim Colucci: And I wrote a Golden Girls book proposal. I wanted to be able to tell everything about that show the way I always wanted to know every little nitty gritty detail that hasn't been either revealed or it's been in many different places, not compiled into one. And I didn't instantly get a deal to do a Golden Girls book because of the ageism and misogyny that is in the world. And of so many publishers who would care about that, that's exactly what I would get. The pattern would often be that my agent would approach a junior person at a publishing company who would often be a gay guy, a young woman, a person of color, somebody who would get it and they would say, oh my god, how has there not been a book about The Golden Girls? Yes, yes, I can't wait to do this. And they'd run it up the flagpole and then we'd hit some old white guy in marketing who'd say, that's a show that's over 10 years old at this point, over 10 years old, about old ladies who'd want to watch that? Why would we publish a book on that? And then it would die. So in the meanwhile, there was an open writing assignment to write a book about Will & Grace and like, my second favorite show that I'm also obsessed with. And so I auditioned for and got that assignment. And then later I was able to, based on the strength of that, able to sell my first Golden Girls book and keep going. So I had no training other than writing for the school paper, which was good training because there were people who were journalist students and grad students or whatever who were my editors there.

Sharon Johnson: Isn't it interesting that so many years after, I'm sure many people said, oh, who's going to watch this show about these middle-aged women? And this show becomes a phenomenon, and yet there is still-- The mentality out there.

Jim Colucci: You will still hear that.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah.

Jim Colucci: I mean, more people now get it because they see all the merchandise out there, and they see that, you know, they can read about how it's a phenomenon. And the phenomenon is one of the few old shows that grows rather than recedes in time. But you will still encounter people in business who will be like, about old ladies, that's as cool as The Golden Girls. I mean, I remember not to bring up horrible names again, but, you know, in 2015 or 14, Mitch McConnell, when he was trying to be sexist about Hillary and ageist about Hillary, he said, like, oh, the Democratic ticket is starting to look like a rerun of The Golden Girls. And I was like, you don't realize that's actually a compliment. Like, keep saying that. Because The Golden Girls has immense popularity. You'll get people to want to like her better. But, you know, there are so many clueless people who just refuse to get it. And it's because of the ingrained disdain for older people and women that they think is totally cool. They're cool with it.

Sharon Johnson: And dare I say it's probably mostly men who are making these kind of comments?

Jim Colucci: I think it is mostly men. I don't see many women say, hey, women should be irrelevant. I think it's got to be men.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, that's. That's crazy. All right, so it took you. The. The book came out in 2016. So it was--

Jim Colucci: Well, two books. I wrote two books about The Golden Girls. What ended up happening was still in 2006, I was encountering the pushback about The Golden Girls. But I was at a wedding where the gay best-- What was his title? It wasn't Best Man. He was the bride's best man. Basically, whatever he called himself. It was a cute name. Happened to be an editor at a gay, ah, and lesbian publishing company, actually. And he was just starting a book, a series of guidebooks that would have, the spines would be in different colors, so it would form a rainbow on your shelf. And the yellow ones were going to be the guides to pop culture. And so I said, well, Golden Girls. And so The Q Guide to The Golden Girls ended up becoming the first Q Guide in the yellow category, and I daresay their bestseller ever because of the power of the girls. But then I always wanted to do a larger book about The Golden Girls because The Q Guide, for a lot of reasons, had to be smaller. There was no budget. There was no photo budget. But also Disney, which owns The Golden Girls to this day and was one of the producers as Touchstone Television, didn't really want to be bothered with The Golden Girls for the same reasons. Now, to be fair, Disney, of course, is the home of Star Wars and Frozen and these billion-dollar behemoths and more that I'm not even thinking of to name. And although The Golden Girls is big, it wasn't as big 20 years ago as it is now. And it wasn't a billion-dollar property. And so to them, these library things I think were a headache, particularly to their lawyers. That's just a headache. That's just busy work that we're going to have to do to make peanuts. ‘We're making money on Star Wars. Just go away.’ So every time I would approach Disney for photo rights for The Golden Girls, which was necessary to do the kind of book I wanted to do, they would, well, first of all ignore me for a good seven years. Like just not respond because of the way that they had one person who was the photo rights person and she was, she looked, her office was in Brigadoon. I don't think she was reachable via, via email or anything. You had to go over a bridge, through the heather, through the mist, with a, with a pigeon, with a scroll and then, and they could, you know, she'd read the scroll and then write back and wouldn't sign it with wax. I mean like it was, everything was done. Like it was done hundreds of years ago in her office and she just would ignore you. But, by the time I got the permission, it was to get it out in time for 2016. So 10 full years later of meeting, of begging Disney for permission and at the time that I did the book, to brag a little bit, I say in the book that there is no Golden Girls merchandising out there other than, I called it, sisters are doing it for themselves, making it on Etsy, bootlegged because that's all there was. And lo and behold, my book comes out as a New York Times bestseller. And about six months later, Disney starts rolling out Golden Girls merchandise and there's more and more coming to this day. So I think it kind of woke them up to the fact that there was money being left on the table and this is growing. Why are you ignoring it?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, yeah. But they continue to do that, all the studios.

Jim Colucci: They all do. Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It, it's like it, you know, Hidden Figures comes out, does amazing and they--

Jim Colucci: Yes. Well, anytime a movie about women comes out and is a hit, whether it's Book Club-- Or was it ‘Magnolia Hotel,’ ‘The Great Marigold Hotel.’ And they view it like it's a one off. Like it's a fluke. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, that was a hit. But like, you know, that was just that. That was that. It's not gonna get-- Like, no, you idiots. Like, these are people who will want to go to the movies and see themselves. And you're not giving them vehicles to do it. And when you do, they show up.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, yeah.

Jim Colucci: Some isms are so ingrained in Hollywood because if you have to realize that Hollywood is a giant high school, and if it were really about making money, people would look in the niches where they could have have it all to themselves and make the money there. But it's not. It's about looking young and cool. And every executive wants to look young and cool. So you don't want to bet on the old lady property because if anything goes wrong, they're going to say, well, why did you invest in an old lady property? You're fired. If you invest in the newest, you know, Marvel movie and it misfires, they can say, okay, well, that was a rare Marvel misfire. I mean, like, you're not going to get fired because, like, Marvel, duh usually makes money. You're cool. So if you stick in a narrow lane of what has been proven to make money in a very male, young way, you won't lose your job. But if you go out on a limb to all these crazy things, like things about women or people of color, then you'll be nuts. And then nobody will come and you'll get fired. It's a giant high school.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's a giant high school. And it's also wrong.

Jim Colucci: Right?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Of course. They're so wrong. They're leaving money on the table. It's willful ignorance.

Jim Colucci: It is.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right, well, we've solved it, okay?

Jim Colucci: We've solved the problems of Hollywood.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right. So how do you organize a quintessential guide to The Golden Girls?

Jim Colucci: Okay, so the funny thing is, having heard me talk and go off on a lot of tangents, you probably think that I'm very scattered. The irony is I'm a really anal, left-brain Virgo. And that actually helps with books like this because there are so many missing, so many little parts and that you have to synthesize and put together. And you know, The Golden Girls was one thing, and you know, there, however many guest stars that I interviewed, a couple, maybe, like,  200. Now I'm doing a book about the Love Boat I've just finished and I've interviewed about 500. And that's because I always compare-- The Golden Girls is like doing a hundred-piece puzzle or 500-piece puzzle and doing the Love Boat, writing about the Love Boat is like doing a 5,000-piece puzzle. Because if you were a guest star in The Golden Girls, you were there all week. You were probably one of only a few guest stars. The episode was--You had a major part in it. You would have stories definitely about working with those four women. There'd be something. With the Love Boat, you were one of maybe eight or ten guest stars. You were only there on your day to shoot your little scenes. You never know what people are gonna remember. And so it's like the pieces are so much smaller to assemble, to get the full story. And either way you have to be very, I think, right brained about-- Left brained about it. Left brain about it. Yeah, left brained about it, which is very organized. I actually-- This is the engineer part of me, the computer science part. I actually take my notes in Excel. So I interview people, I transcribe the interview, and then I actually have a spreadsheet. Okay, this episode is going to have a hole when I need to talk about the theme. It's going to have a hole where I need to talk about the guest stars. And so there's a cell for each of those things and I fill in the cells with quotes and then I can see visually where the holes are in the book. And that's literally how I do it. Because otherwise it's too hard to keep track of what you have and what you need and when you're done. And I'm not good at knowing when I'm done because I love the interviewing. But with Will & Grace, I did it even more, where I literally took the notes as I was watching the episodes in Excel and I would tag them with a-- Like, I, made up a series of keywords that I could use as an index. So I would be like, Jack's feelings on being gay, Will's feelings on this. And I made up, maybe, you know, 20 of those keywords. And then I could sort the spreadsheet by either by episode name, by date, by season, by keyword. And so anytime I needed to know anything about the show, I could actually sort in Excel and come right to it. And that's very anal. But it worked.

Sharon Johnson: It's brilliant, actually. I think I mean, it's.

Jim Colucci: Well, thank you. Someone understands my maniacal mind.

Sharon Johnson: I don't know that I ever would have come up with that. But it's. It is it. To me it just sounds absolutely brilliant because as you said, it's, it's much easier to do that up front than try to go back later and try to reconstruct it.

Jim Colucci: Exactly.

Sharon Johnson: So-- Oh, wow, that's amazing.

Jim Colucci: When you know what you're looking at, it's like, oh, you can see where the hole is. You can sort and know like, okay, I have a lot on this topic, but like, you know, 10 lines on this topic, but there's one line on that topic. Okay, I, need more.

Susan Lambert Hatem: God, that's amazing. Now in Golden Girls Forever, you don't cover all the episodes of the book.

Jim Colucci: I wanted to, but then it would be like a doorstop that no one could, you know, fit on their bookshelf or afford. You know, the thing is, publishers are. It's all done on via a formula of how many pages is the book, how much color printing and how much will we have to charge for a cover price. So they are conservative about how many pages they will let you have. And that is always a problem. And so with The Golden Girls, I actually begged for more pages. And so I learned this, that books, ah, are printed in their groupings of 16 pages. And each of those groupings of 16 is called a signature. And so when I was doing The Golden Girls book, they had given me X number of signatures and I begged for more. I wanted three more signatures, meaning 48 more pages. They gave me two more signatures. So I got 32 more pages, which was even a lot for them to do, was generous in a way. I mean, I wanted to give them a book that sold well, but I understand their formula and that they were worried about the money. And so I knew from the start, just doing the math, you know, if you have 200 episodes of a show and you know that each show is going to take at least one page in the layout, usually two. Okay, you can't do every. Right there. You can't do every episode. So you have to take a more thematic approach. And in a way that's a good thing because not every episode is going to have a living guest star or a guest star with a story or some of the episodes are just not as interesting. And so what I did with The Golden Girls was I wanted to cover the. Yes, the episodes that everybody expects to see. And yes, the case of the Libertine Bell is not in there. And yes, it was in there until my publisher cut it at the last minute without telling me. But they needed pages, I guess.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You've heard from some readers.

Jim Colucci: I have heard from some readers, and I don't blame them because I would have looked for that, too. And there were good stories that maybe in a future edition. But with the exception of that, yes, I put in any episode that I know fans are going to want to see. But after that, the way I choose the episodes to talk about are the ones that have stories that are very telling about either how a show is put together, how the relationships among the people that we care about evolved, or how the show shaped the world, because it's a theme that really was groundbreaking or something. And so it really. The episodes that went into the book are the ones that further the arc of the story of The Golden Girls. Not necessarily just because they had a funny line or whatever. I mean, they all have funny lines.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: Can you talk about some of the surprising things that are your favorite things that you learned in doing your research for the book?

Jim Colucci: For Golden Girl specifically? You know, I think that we all knew that originally they wanted Betty White to play Blanche and Rue McClanahan to play Rose. I think that's come out pretty well. But, you know, when I started the research in 2005, that wasn't as well known. So, of course that makes you think, what would that have been like? You know, it could have been good, and it maybe wouldn't have been as good as what we got. So, yeah, I just hearing about the way the show was put together, I think one of the things that I was surprised by back then, and I don't know if people know this now, and I compare it to The Love Boat, ironically, because it's something that Mark Cherry said, too. When I was interviewing him. Mark Cherry got his first writing job ever on The Golden Girls, having been a fan. And this was. He and his writing partner, Jamie Wootton, were the first fans of The Golden Girls to be hired to write for the show because they came in with a second regime. And the first regime had been there since the very beginning. And so, you know, they were. Mark was now a second generation of writers being hired who already had watched four seasons of the show and were fans. But having known the show as a fan and being a gay man and knowing how LGBT-positive the show was, he said he assumed that he would get to that writer's room and it would just be a big old bunch of queens. And he'd have a great time. And he said, instead, he walked in and it was all straight people. And in fact, they were talking about a boxing match they had just seen. And he walked in like, am I in the wrong-- What? Am I in the wrong place? He was afraid of what he'd gotten himself into. Of course, today, when they staff a sitcom or any show, they try to get diversity in the writers room. In fact, they mandate diversity in the writers room. And that's mostly a good thing. And I say mostly because it's very hard when you're staffing a group of sometimes only five or six people to represent everyone of every stripe. And once you start mandating that every stripe has to be represented, you may be knocking out some writers who would be really good for your show. And so I have a little bit of mixed feelings about that, even though diversity, of course, is a goal we should go for. And so what I marvel at is that for better or for worse, it was mostly a bunch of straight white men writing this show about women and getting it kind of right. I mean, yes, it does sound like gay men talking sometimes. And, you know, we always joke that-- I think Mark Cherry jokes that there's an alchemy that you take these straight white men's, jokes, put them in the mouth of Bea Arthur, and it comes out like a gay man. And there was occasionally a gay man or writing group in the room, and there were some women, and there was only one person of color the entire time, the writer Winifred Hervey. And so there was a little representation. But for the most part, I really marvel at how they got it as right as they did for who they were. And then the reason I say contrast that to The Love Boat is The Love Boat is the straightest show ever. They only talked about. They made a couple of gay jokes along the line. There was one kind of hidden, cloaked gay storyline in the later seasons, and that show was produced by the biggest bunch of queens. There were gay men in the writers room. There were gay producers, there were bisexual producers, and it was just that they weren't allowed. That was. It was that much earlier than The Golden Girls. And they weren't allowed to bring that kind of subject matter to the television.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Did they want to?

Jim Colucci: Some of them did. Some of them did. And some of them tried. And they were actually. So one of the showrunners was gay, and his niece wrote for the show as well. And I know she kept pitching a gay storyline that they kept turning down and even her uncle would turn it down. No, we can't do that. Eventually they did. As I said, they did one very, very. You have to know what's going on to know that it's a gay storyline called Frat Brothers Forever. And that's as daring as they dared get. But then they got daring on other things. It's just wherever that particular issue was in its trajectory of acceptance. So civil rights had started earlier than gay rights in terms of African Americans. And so there were stories on the Love Boat that were very moving and smart about equal rights for black people. So they did that, but they didn't do gay people because the black struggle was a little further along at that point. And so it's, you know, it's always, what moment in time you catch them.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Did they do women stories on the Love Boat?

Jim Colucci: They did, and they got some pushback. So Joan Rivers did an episode. Joan had made it known that she wanted to do a Love Boat and that she'd like to do something really kind of special. In the meanwhile, one of the writers had pitched a story about a woman who was a breast cancer survivor having a love affair on the show. And it was one of the young female writers, the same woman who actually pitched the niece of the executive, the one who pitched the gay story. And she pitched the story. And the reaction to the story from the straight white guys in the room was, why would anyone want to watch a love story about a woman with one tit? Can you imagine saying that at work? Never mind that you're in a writer's room where you think you can be bawdy or whatever. Okay, forget that. Can you imagine looking a human being in the eye and saying that in this day and age? That's what I'm saying. Like, even women's issues, look how far they've come, in those decades that, you know, that is unfathomable now. And that was their, their take on it, that, no, we're not going to do that. No, we're not going to do that. And she would argue back, well, what if we did it this way? What if she, you know, I think like, like women and gay guys and people of color have had to do for decades. You don't get to tell them off for being a pig. You work within the system, right? And so you take that note, like you're taking it seriously, and you say, okay, well, I hear you. What if we did this? I mean, the fact that she had to do that is infuriating, but she was persistent. And it happened to dovetail with Joan wanting an issue show to do. And so they did an episode where Joan is a mastectomy survivor. I don't know if she had a double or a single. And she has this love affair. And so mostly that's a triumph. Right? And so Love Boat did take on women's issues. Now, that being said, if you watch that episode, the man she falls in love with, she's like a rich society lady. And the man she falls in love with is very blue collar. Now, they do that on the show sometimes there's, you know, opposites attract, whatever. But he's also a garbage man. And so is the message that if you are a breast cancer survivor, you're gonna get a guy, but he's basically, literally be someone who collects garbage.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Like, oh, wow, okay.

Jim Colucci: It's not the 100% home run that they may have thought it was, but, you know, again, the times.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my god, that's so bad. Well, I'm. I'm so excited about the Love Boat book.

Jim Colucci: Oh, me too. And I've been collecting amazing stories. And it's. It's from the 70s and 80s when there were lots of crazy, bawdy, druggy things going on. And so the stories are wild from the Love Boat. And it's just like, oh, my god. I mean, the number of stories of the people who. And the number of people who saw Carol Channing inadvertently naked alone. Not necessarily. I mean, if you sit in the door of your trailer with the door flung wide open in a yoga pose, naked, eating a chicken wing, you should realize that someone's gonna walk by at some point.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, I think that's the point.

Jim Colucci: I think that might be the point. Oh, gosh.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my gosh. That's crazy. All right, well, here's. Here's a question about Love Boat. Did they really just go on a ship and send people on those ship on trips?

Jim Colucci: Yes and no. Okay, so the. They. There were three pilots to The Love Boat. They were shot. Those were shot on real cruises back in the day when Princess. Very nascent relationship with Princess. They just did, from one of them. They did a quickie, three-day trip to Mexico for one of them. They did it on the Queen Mary while it was docked in Long Beach. So it didn't go anywhere. and then for the most of the early seasons, they would shoot everything on the soundstage, but they would shoot not quite B-roll, but like, often dialogue scenes with no dialogue with the cast. And they would take them every however many months, maybe twice a season on one of those quickie Mexico cruises and just shoot them walking on the deck. So you'd see a scene with no dialogue of Isaac and go for, like, crossing from the pool into the whatever. And. And that would start, and then they'd cut to a soundstage scene. So they would do a lot of that when they started. And even in those early seasons, maybe doing some scenes on the real deck that they would incorporate with scenes from the same storyline that would be done in the soundstage. So you might have the. I remember, you know, Rue McClanahan. And was, it Ted Knight with her? I don't remember, sitting out on deck having a conversation. And there's the real pool behind them. And then you cut to, they're in the dining room, and it's on the Fox lot. So they would do that. But they really were smart with The Love Boat. And they realized they had this captive audience that was enthralled with cruising, enthralled with all the foreign ports of call that they could have coming into their living room. And so they started to get adventurous. So they experimented early on, maybe in season three or four, with an Alaska cruise. Okay, well, now that's a longer cruise, and it goes through another country to go through Canada to Alaska. So it's more adventurous. They had to really invent ways this. I mean, I actually went on a leg of the Amazing Race as a journalist, and I loved it. And I marveled at how they put together all those moving parts. And that was in the day of cell phones and paging and texting and email. The Love Boat did this Alaska cruise and everything they would subsequently do without email, without cell phones. They would shoot footage on a real ship, which presents its own problems in terms of what do you plug into and how do you keep things grounded and from getting wet and from, like, people electrocuting and all that. Then they would have to fly the dailies back to Aaron Spelling in Hollywood for him to watch them. You couldn't transmit them electronically. And Aaron didn't fly. He was afraid of planes. So there were all these analog ways that they had to do these really complicated things, but they managed it and they tested it with this Alaska cruise. Hey, that went well. Now let's go here. They ended up, by the end of the show, going all over the world. And in the latter seasons, I would say maybe 6, 7, 8, 9, what they would do was it-- Their breaks-- They ended up-- They started out their life on The Love Boat with a weird schedule for network, because most network dramas start filming maybe around June, like, after the upfront announcement in May of what goes on the schedule. Dramas will start filming maybe in June. Sitcoms film in, like, August. They're ready to go by September. And then they're kind of always kind of trying to beat the clock, producing new episodes before the old ones air. With The Love Boat, because they started as TV movies, they kind of were always off calendar. And then also a strike in 1980 kind of threw them off calendar. But it ended up being a good thing because they started realizing that, oh, if we are in production at different times of the year from everybody else, we can get some of the TV stars from other shows while they're on their hiatus, and we can get all these great guest stars who have nothing else to do. And our hiatus, the way it has been working out, is rather than be from, like, March to June, we could take a hiatus that starts in, like, April and goes to August. And that's summer in the Northern Hemisphere. And it's when a lot of these great cruises go out. And we could partner with Princess and just cruise the whole summer and then chop up each cruise into individual episodes. So that's what they would do. They would go out in April, May, June, maybe not the whole summer, but they'd go for six or eight weeks, and they'd go around a region of the world, say, Europe, and they would fly casts in and out to different chunks of the cruise, and they would then chop up into those casts and have episodes ready to go. So there was one summer where they cruised all around from, like, England. They went to Norway, then they went around Spain to Italy and Greece, like. And so that became, okay, here's the Greek episode, here's the Italian episode. And they had different casts. And what was great for those casts is that if you got that gig, not only did Spelling always send you everywhere first class, but you could cruise the whole summer for free first class. You could. You didn't have to be there for just your episode. If you wanted to be with them all summer, you could do it. So a lot of these. The great stories that in my book come from these weird groupings of people that you didn't even know were on the show at the same time because they were in different episodes that aired at different parts of that season. And, you know, there's a story about, Henry Morgan choking on a piece of steak in the dining room, and Cesar Romero, who wSasn't even in his episode, tried to save his life with the Heimlich maneuver, and it wasn't working. And then Audrey Landers, who was in yet another episode, her boyfriend at the time-- he became her husband, I believe-- was a doctor. And they had just been in Marrakesh, I think, and they had all picked up these, like, pirate outfits with swords or everything. And so he ran across the long banquet table with his swashbuckling sword and grabbed Henry Morgan and ripped the piece of steak out of his mouth. And, like. Well, while, you know, all these other random people, like Jamie Farr and whatever, were, like, applauding, like, you think, like, this is a pop culture fever dream, and you didn't even know these people were in the same episode. But they weren't. They were just cruising all summer.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Cruising. Because that's. I remember hearing stories of stars who said, I did it because I got to go to China.

Jim Colucci: Right.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I did it because I got. And I was like, okay. So they actually went on these cruises.

Jim Colucci: They did. And those were in the latter years. They were the first show, Western show to film in China. There's a question whether the Muppets actually did it before then. But they were either first or second, and they have stories about that. You know, Bernie Kopell talks about, you know, you go in your hotel room, you'd be like, that's an unusual light fixture. And because it would be a bug. You know, it was like the, and the guides who would show them stuff were very particular about what you could and couldn't do. And there were. You had to bribe certain, certain cultural attaches to let you see this at a certain time. And it was crazy that all the details they had to deal with on these shows. And again, in an analog world where if, you know, you weren't just texting somebody, no, I'm not going to pay you a bribe. It would be like, secretary, take a memo, dear, so. And so I will not bribe you. But, okay, now fold that up, put it in an envelope, put it in the mail, put a stamp on it. In few weeks, we'll know. You know, it was crazy.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Now put another envelope. Put $200 in it.

Jim Colucci: And you're right. Exactly.

Sharon Johnson: You mentioned Amazing Race. That is one of the few reality competition shows that I watch. I've watched it since season one. I love that show. At some point, maybe after we're done, I need to hear about your experience.

Jim Colucci: First leg of season 13 in Salvador, Brazil. It was an amazing experience. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my gosh.

Sharon Johnson: I've always thought that it would-- If there was any show I would do, it be that one. I just love that show, the way it's put together, the way you can't cheat, the way you can't screw with other people. Because that's what I hate about most of them. I don't care.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, they've gotten crazy now. Who, like, it hasn't just gotten more and more like, oh, and now you have to cross this gull. You know, there are Amazing Race that's always been.

Jim Colucci: Well, there have always been things that I, as someone who has a fear of heights and other things wouldn't, just wouldn't do. I'd be like, nope, I'm out of the show. Bye.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Jim Colucci: And you know, actually, a lot of the shows, including Amazing Race, do something that they call like the elimination station. So if you're eliminated from the show, you don't go home because that would be a tell to everybody that you didn't win. So what they do is they sequester you at some resort. And so a couple of times, like in Salvador, there was a height challenge that I'm like, okay, if I were the contestant, I would be like, see ya. Not doing it. But I'd be like, wait a minute. That means I could spend the entire production of the show in the elimination station, which is basically sitting around the pool drinking Mai Tais at somebody else's expense. I think I want to be eliminated first.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes. I'm totally in that. But you can't go out and explore other things, because you can't.

Jim Colucci: Although the elimination station is usually somewhere remote on, you know, it's not like it's in the continental US where people would recognize you. But, yeah, I guess, maybe not. You know what? I'd be okay with that. If they say you have to spend the next six weeks sitting by this pool drinking, and people will come and wait, and people will come and wait on you. And then eventually other contestants will come and keep you company. It's not like you're gonna be alone.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And you're just. And, And it's all paid for.

Jim Colucci: And it's all paid for. I'd say, you know, that may sound better than going on the Amazing Race. Okay.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right. My sister wanted us to do that.

Jim Colucci: And I was like, no, no, I would murder my husband. I mean, he's so slow witted at some things and I. And I'm so impetuous that I think we'd kill each other now.

Susan Lambert Hatem: How, how did you guys meet? Because I wondered if you met through the work or through.

Jim Colucci: Not really, no. We grew up in neighboring towns in New Jersey, although we didn't know it, and he wrote a memoir about it, and I read his memoir in the Barnes & Noble and went to his Barnes & Noble book signing and met him there.

Sharon Johnson: Wow. And the rest is history.

Jim Colucci: And the rest is history.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's so sweet.

Jim Colucci: Yeah, so we, we grew up five minutes away from each other and didn't know it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That is so cool.

Jim Colucci: I mean, we're seven years apart, so we wouldn't have known each other really, but.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, that's so cool. And then, and then you both ended up, because you work together. How's that?

Jim Colucci: Well, we don't really work together much. I mean, we overlap a lot. While I was researching my Love Boat book, he was researching his disco book. And so, of course, there's a lot of overlap there. I think of all the times there's a disco song, Charo singing the disco Love Boat theme. And so there would be quite a few times where we would be like, we want to gang interview you. And I remember we were going to go out to lunch with Donna Pescau, and as COVID flared up, particularly again the week that we were going to do it. And so we decided to be safe. And so we did by phone. So I just remember him talking to her for, like, an hour about Saturday Night Fever. And then she was so, you know, such a good sport that he's like, I'm now handing you over to The Love Boat. And then I got an hour about The Love Boat. And so, yeah, we had a lot of overlap.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That, that is, I don't know. It seems, it seems totally fine.

Jim Colucci: It was. Oh, no, I mean that doing the research for all of these books has been a dream come true because I've always been able, I've been lucky enough to be able to pick shows that I want to spend years with for me to write about a show, you know, I, I, I guess there are many people out there who are smarter than me and do things for a paycheck or a credit or a stepping stone. I just don't have it in me because I do spend years with a, with a show. I mean, it took me 10 years to get that other Golden Girls book out. And this Love Boat book I've been researching, I mean, there was a, a blip in the publishing, process, which is why it's not out yet, but still, I started researching it nine years ago. For me to want to spend nine years on something, it has to be a show I love and that I really get a kick out of talking to all the people because otherwise you're going to just go crazy.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And so what was it about The Love Boat?

Jim Colucci: When I was picking my next book after The Golden Girls, and I didn't know that I would get asked to do the All in the Family book in the meanwhile. So, actually, that happened in between as well. But I came up with a list for my publisher. They asked me for a list of shows that I'd want to write about. And when you really think I have a list of criteria in my head, and this is not a genius list of criteria. It's all common sense. But when you go through that checklist, there aren't many shows to write about because it has to be a show. First of all, obviously, that there's an enduring following for me, and this is my personal preference. It should be a show that's no longer on the air. And I learned that lesson from Will & Grace only because books have a really long lead time and shows have a really short lead time. And so for me, for Will & Grace, the plan was to cover through season six. We were writing it while the show was in production, and so. But I had to turn my manuscript in by the latest February. They haven't finished writing season six by February. You know, it airs in May. And so it was very hard to try to stay up to date on the latest of what's happening on the show when you had to turn your book in before they were even done writing. And I didn't want to do that ever again. I vowed, okay, only write about shows that are in the past. And that gives you better perspective. It should be a show where the cast is mostly alive and also amenable to talking about it again. So that eliminates things like Friends and Seinfeld, because I don't think that those actors would give me more time to talk about the same thing over and over. They've done books, and I don't blame them. Like, why would they want to do it again? And that's another thing. There shouldn't be a definitive book already about the show. I compete with somebody else's book. And so when you really go through all of that list, it really narrows down what there is left to talk about in a way that I would want to go deep. And so at the time that I was choosing in 2016, what would my next book be, the one thought I had was The Big Bang Theory because it's popularity and because I love it and all that. However, it had just gotten a two-season renewal and I was like, I'm going to have the Will & Grace problem. And so I didn't pursue that. And now Jessica Radloff has written a brilliant book about it. So I'm glad, you know, that worked out that way. And so I kind of went into the meeting with the publisher like, okay, I'm sheepish because the one idea I know that you like because it's a hot show I don't want to do, but I have a couple of, like those back pocket ideas that they tell you to go into pitch meetings with that are the crazy ones, and you never know what, there's spark to it. And so I had a couple of classic shows that were even older than The Golden Girls like the Love Boat is. And, you know, a lot of times I thought that the publishers thought that The Golden Girls was too far in the past. And so I started naming them and I think The Love Boat was the second one I said. And they were like, yes, that do it. And I was like, oh, I'm so happy you feel that way because I was noticing it bubbling up in pop culture even then. You know those memes that people make of putting yourself in The Love Boat credits or putting a famous person in The Love Boat credits, I see them on Instagram all the time. When someone dies, they put them in The Love Boat credits whether they were in it or not. Or sometimes around Halloween, they'll put in like Eraserhead or Freddy, you know, so I just started to hear people talking about the show more anecdotally and I knew it was getting more play on MeTV and Cozi and that meme was coming out. And that's one of the reasons I put it on the list. Hey, that's a show I would love to spend time with. I know there's good stories. It has an amazing array of guest stars I would get to meet. And it's becoming more popular. And so, the fact that the publisher said yes and got it as a miracle.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's fantastic. It makes a total sense. It makes total sense. I'm so excited.

Jim Colucci: Yeah, I'm excited for everyone to see it because you're not going to believe some of the stories. And some of them, some of them, I'll tell you, outside the book, because, you know, maybe the lawyers will make me take them out.

Sharon Johnson: When you started working on The Golden Girls book, had the entire series been released on DVD at that point? I mean, what were you relying on in terms of being able to go back and watch the episodes?

Jim Colucci: Good question. I can tell you exactly how many have been released on DVD.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my gosh.  80s TV Ladies listeners, this interview with Jim, we talked for two hours and 20 minutes. We had such a good time. However, we got to cut this one short here. So if you want to hear the second half of this interview where we continue talking about The Golden Girl stories and Love Boat stories and all things Jim, please go to our Patreon. Patreon.com/80sTVLadies. You can try it out for free or you can join and listen to the second half of this. So check us out on Patreon.  

Sharon Johnson: For today's audio-ography, you can find Jim Colucci at JimColucci.com that's J-I-M-C-O-L-U-C-C- I.com and on Instagram @jimcolucci. Links will be in our description.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Golden Girls is streaming on Hulu, Philo. Oh yeah, and it's on Disney. Unless you gave up on that one because they caved.

Sharon Johnson: You can also buy it on Apple TV or Amazon. You can buy it on YouTube. Sometimes you can just find episodes on YouTube. As always, we hope 80s TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the 21st century.

Amy Englehardt [Singing]: 80s TV Ladies, So sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, Steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh-[wolf whistle]. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

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