John Larroquette show

[Jody Keith Gilbert]

> Please forgive errors.
> OCR technology isn't perfect.
> Neither is spell checking.
> 
> 
> Reprinted from
> Seattle Post Intelligencer
> Monday, March 7, 1994
> without permission.
> 
> 'John Larroquette Show'
> has its novel connection
> 
> 
> By Scott Williams
> The Associated Press
> 
> NEW YORK -- Bulletin: Thomas Pynchon, great American novelist, has
> served as a script consultant for "The John Larroquette Show," a
> bleak, mordantly funny sitcom wasting in the lowlands of NBC's Tuesday
> nights.
> "In a weird way, we got him to rewrite the script," said Larroquette,
> who plays John Hemingway an existential hero-schlemiel-alcoholic-night
> manager of a St. Louis bus station to which the adjective "sleazy" is
> a high compliment.
> You see, both Hemingway and Larroquette collect rare first editions of
> Pynchon, the reclusive author of "Vineland," "Gravity's Rainbow," "The
> Crying of Lot 49" and "V."
> Pynchon has a special love for the losers lost on the wayside of the
> American dream. So co-executive producer Larroquette decided to
> feature Pynchon in a script and sent the work-in-progress to Pynchon's
> agent for approval.
> " We made up a novel that he hasn't written -- and he gave us
> permission to say that he had written 'Pandemonium of the Sun,'"
> Larroquette said.
> The mysterious, never-photographed Pynchon refused, however. to let a
> "Larroquette" extraj in a plaid shirt, be videotaped from the rear and
> represented as Pynchon.  He asked us not to pretend he was in the
> environment at all," Larroquette said.
> One scene called for Hemingway's antagovist, the lunch counteer
> operator, Dexter (Daryl "Chill" Mitechell), to reveal, quite casually,
> that he's a longtime pal of the much-traveled writer.
> "You must have seen him, he was sitting here last night!" Dexter
> insists. The script says Pynchon was wearing a T-shirt with the
> picture of a certain, obscure musician.
> "Pynchon, through his agent, wrote back and said, 'Would you please
> make it a picture of Rocky Erickson on the T-shirt?'" Larroquette
> said.
> "I looked up Rocky Erickson. He was a psychedelic rock 'n' roll
> musician in the '60s who was institutionalised shortly thereafter and
> spent most of the rest of his life in an insane asylum. Somebody that
> Pynchon liked, I guess."
> Larroquette owns uncorrupted proofs to "V." and "Gravity's Rainbow"
> and even one of two signed copies of"V." -- the First British edition.
> Rut Larroquette -- like most Pynchon fans -- would never presume to
> initiate a personal correspondence with Pynchon. "I sent him a copy
> of' the script and signed it, 'Thanks for not being here--John.'"
> Larroquette also has collected more than a thousand volumes of Samuel
> Beckett's works. And he never wrote the author of "Waiting for Godot,"
> "Malone," and "Krapp's Last Tape," either.
> "I started writing a letter to Samuel Beckett," he said, managing a
> dry, existential chuckle. "And I thought, 'What for? To tell him, "I
> like your work"?' I mean, he need; that? He cares?"
> The days Larroquette's literary excursions are circumscribed by his
> intense desire to make a go of his series, which NBC offers each
> Tuesday night on the sacrificial altar opposite ABC's monster hit,
> "Roseanne. "
> He saves a special, icy tempt for the programmers staked his fledgling
> show's success against one of ABC's _ . performers.
> "It wasn't brave and daffy, it was stupid," he said.
> For the next six Tuesdays. NBC will air back-to-back episodes of
> "Larroquette." Critics, fans and lovers of Thomas Pynchon hope this
> double-pump strategy will boost the show into a strong second season.
> Larroquette wants nothing more than a different time slot or a
> different night. Anything but head-to-head competition with
> "Roseanne"!
> "There's no way I can compete with her," he said.
> 
> "I'm not saying she's not an actrcss. I'm-- and I use the term
> loosely--an actor, and my whole purpose is to hide my personality
> 
> "Roseanne's LIFE is her act," he said. "That's where she gets her
> humor from, the things that happen to her. I don't want people to know
> things that happen to me.
> 
> 'She's got this great platform that she's very comfortable with
> exposing hersclf," he said.
> 
> "As I said on the 'Today' show the only way I could compete with her
> is if I started drinking again and rekindled my affair with Prince."
> 
> 
> ==============================================================================
> 
> John (Jody) K. Gilbert
> Department of English
> Simon Fraser University
> Burnaby, B.C. Canada
> office phone (604) 291-3220
> dept. phone  (604) 291-3136
> internet     gilbert at sfu.ca
> 
> 


==============================================================================

John (Jody) K. Gilbert
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C. Canada
office phone (604) 291-3220
dept. phone  (604) 291-3136
internet     gilbert at sfu.ca