Ask A Genius 884: Ross Watley
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/03
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, this is Ross commenting on your website or feedback to the website www.rickrosner.org.
ross.watley@gmail.com
“Dear Mr. Rosner. Please remake your 70s to 80s action-packed cop show CHiPs. Modern audiences in a major network like NBC get the CHP and the original cast behind-the-scenes roles to deliver a series that is better than the original way and that fans of the original series and new audiences will love regardless of who they are. Aim to make this new series a real Emmy and Golden Globe and multi-award-winning crowning show that isn’t afraid.”
Rick Rosner: Yeah, all right. I agree that somebody should remake CHiPs. They made a movie out of it eight years ago. Dax Shepard made a movie, and they made it more of a comedy, and it was fine, but I’m not the Rick Rosner who created CHiPs. I know him; at least three Rick Rosners have written/produced for Hollywood, and I’m not that Rick Rosner. I thought of this like ten years too late. My wife got pulled over by the highway patrol on an unsafe lane change when she didn’t change lanes at all. The motorcycle cop had an obstructed view and assumed that she changed lanes and gave her a ticket. We took it to court, and he showed up and didn’t remember the incident but lied, and the judge was judge pro tem. Judge pro tem is not a professional judge; it’s just a lawyer who needs some hours of employment and steps into the judge role. This judge pro tem was lousy, and the whole thing sucked, but I realized that what my wife should have done was, when she got pulled over, say to the chips guy, “Do you want to give me a ticket? My husband created the TV show CHiPs.” Maybe she would have gotten away with that; I doubt it, though, because the cop was a dick.
Having the same name as Rick Rosner helped me when I started working for TV. I was a fact Checker, and I’d call, and people heard the name Rick Rosner; this was before the internet. Sometimes, I had to call actual celebrities like Shirley Jones or the assistant to Heraldo to verify a trivia show question about him. I couldn’t just look up on the internet, and people would take my calls because they were bored back then or people accepted phone calls. I got to talk to Baba Booey from the Howard Stern Show a few times. Shirley Jones, as I said and having the name Rick Rosner, people vaguely recognized it. They thought this might be semi-important, so they took the call. When Carol and I moved out to Hollywood, our new number was the old number of two stars and producers of Thirtysomething: Patricia Wettig and Ken. We’d get calls from big shots to that phone number. The assistant would call from Brian Grazer’s office or some big shots’ office or their school would call because their kid bit somebody, and it was very frustrating not to be enough of a schmoozer and a scammer to get a call from some huge Hollywood producer and not be able to talk my way into a meeting. Anyway, I’m not the CHiPs guy though I’ve had dinner with him a few times, and when I do something embarrassing, he will call or email and tell me to cut it out because I’m fucking up our name.
[Recording End]
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