In Hollywood, size counts. Whether budgets, box-office receipts, parties or pools, bigger is inevitably considered better. That being the case, the town's greatest honors, adulations and compensations are offered to the stars of the biggest screen. Movie actors are the most luminous in Hollywood's star system; television performers may be admired but for the most part are . . . well, smaller points of light.
So what are Martin Short, Dudley Moore and Gene Wilder, who have built big careers for themselves by getting big laughs in big movies, doing on small-screen sitcoms this fall?
Part of the answer is that none of them has had a big film lately. Television is offering them a chance to work. But more than that, television is offering them a chance to do a kind of work that the movies don't. And that combination, they say, is worth suffering any gibes about a perceived demotion in the Hollywood pecking order.
"A well-known producer of epics saw me in a restaurant and asked what I was doing," Wilder recalled the other day. "I said I was doing a television series and he said 'Television?' in a very negative way. Truth is, 10 years ago I would have thought the same thing.
"But times are different now. Who today would make 'The Producers' or 'Blazing Saddles'? A studio executive today might not be able to leave the script to 'Young Frankenstein' alone--he'd want to pump it up with special effects. And I don't think anyone wants to do the kind of films I was making (as writer and director)--'The World's Greatest Lover' or 'Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother'--because those were small, sweet little comedies that wouldn't make $100 million for anybody. I feel I'm doing now what we used to do in the films, but it's a little shorter. We're doing 22 minutes and 45 seconds of a nice comedy story."
"Something Wilder," in which Wilder plays the father of 4-year-old twins, premieres on NBC on Oct. 1. Short, whose features range from the well-received "Innerspace" and "Three Amigos" to the more recent commercial duds "Pure Luck" and "Clifford," stars in "The Martin Short Show" for NBC on Tuesdays. And Moore, best remembered for his Academy Award-nominated role as the soused aristocrat in "Arthur," and as a lust-crazed songwriter in pursuit of Bo Derek in "10," turns up Wednesday as the father of three daughters in CBS' "Daddy's Girls."
Charles Joffe, a longtime comedy manager and producer who has worked with Short and Moore, doesn't believe these efforts represent career downgrading. "I don't think it's a measure of success one way or the other these days," he maintains. "Film and television are intertwined now. Marty is a product of television, Dudley came from the stage, and Gene came from the theater. They've all done some of their best work outside of film, so why not now?"
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"Why am I on television?" Short muses, stretching out in a studio office after a long day of rehearsals and before a round of late-night wardrobe fittings. "My pat answer is that I'm a Canadian actor and there's no star system in Canada and we like to work in film, television and theater at once--blah, blah, blah. Actually, this is about the pure joy of doing this kind of work. I think television is the best medium for comedy. It's the most forgiving and the most immediate."
The comic-actor has been brilliant on television before, as a cast member of both "SCTV" and "Saturday Night Live." On those shows he proved himself to be a devastating mimic, and he also unleashed some wildly eccentric comic characters, such as the decidedly simple-minded Ed Grimley and the demented albino nightclub crooner Jackie Rogers Jr. In 1986, Short made the jump from small screen to big screen in "Three Amigos," and last year he made a Tony-nominated Broadway debut in Neil Simon's "The Goodbye Girl."
Short, 44, says he's quite happy to be working in television again. "I've done two HBO specials and I had an animated, Saturday-morning Ed Grimley show, so I've never felt like I was very far away from television," he said. "When I mentioned to my agents that I wanted to do television again, they assumed that I was talking about HBO. But I've done one-hour cable specials and I've done late-night. It seems like the really interesting success would be to do it in prime time. That's what intrigues me, and that's our grand experiment."
'The Martin Short Show" features Short playing the host of a TV comedy show, enabling him to do sketches, pre-taped sequences, character bits and biting parodies within a continuing story line. The show is something of a mini-"SCTV" reunion: Andrea Martin is part of the supporting cast, Eugene Levy will direct and make occasional appearances, and several "SCTV" writers are serving as co-executive producers.
Tuesday's episode features Steve Martin reminiscing with Short about their times together on the set of "Three Amigos." Martin also hits relentlessly on Short's wife, played by Jan Hooks of "Saturday Night Live."
