Odd Woman Out By Melanie Chartoff

  Amazon Prime the old late night comedy live show Fridays (1980-1982) popped up as a free viewing choice on their streaming network. I had fond memories of the show as being quite good, beloved over Saturday Night Live actually even though it was modeled after that show. So I watched all the available episodes again. 40 years later.
  This was the first appearance for me in the renaissance of Melanie Chartoff. She was a very attractive young woman at the time of the show, dreamy eyes. She was the one of the show who did the fake news broadcast every week as well as various characters. I remembered having a fan crush on her back then 40 years ago and it revived with these reruns of old programs that are still interesting and sometimes quite funny. Some good musical acts too, like The Clash. The show had a very good cast including a couple who went on to more fame together, Larry David, and Michael Richards.
  Naturally I got curious about what happened to Melanie Chartoff after Fridays and consulted IMDB. There were several listings for acting, but not being much of a TV watcher I never saw any of these shows. I was happy to see that she had apparently done well with a steady voice acting gig in a popular animated TV show. I have no idea what the SAG-AFTRA rates are for this kind of thing but it is a lot less effort than going bodily before the camera after memorizing all the lines.
  My friend found Melanie Chartoff on instagram and that led to the ebook just released, Odd Woman Out.
It is a collection of stories from her life.

   It all starts off like a showbiz autobiography. Having been a bit of a community theater star myself while in high school and born around the same time as Melanie Chartoff, I felt a bit of shame within myself for not knowing that I could have or should have come directly to NYC and set about making a profession. She recounts some interesting adventures in theater like the crazy big budget flop of an outer space set Broadway musical that ended up injuring some to the cast in the run-through and scattering the backers into greener, more earthbound, less grandiose, and precarious investment pastures.
   

  The showbiz stuff climaxes with the high profile casting on Fridays. Here things begin to turn as she feels the harsh glare of the celebrity spotlight that is on everywhere a TV performer attempts to go. But then, do they adore one because of something in the self or simply because of the TV celebrity success status? This is a hard question for anyone to answer, particularly a young woman in a patriarchal society. That is an extreme and unique position to be put in, the electronic blasted artificial imagery beyond what humans have ever had to deal with before in our evolutionary story. TV is a very powerful and still very new medium. I don’t think we know what to do with it yet, how to control it rather than it controlling us. I mean a TV performer just president. This was a TV phenomenon.  

  There seems to be a shift here in her story as Chartoff perhaps becomes more connected to what she really wants and needs out of life after being made aware of the hollow emptiness of TV celebrity.
  In the book this change to the more personal coincides with her mother at 64 finally divorcing her dominant crude belittling father. 

    Melanie Chartoff was not pleased with her father. He wanted her to stay at a retail job at Sears rather than an offered theatrical opportunity. This part caused me to once again think about the horror of trying to recover from the trauma of patriarchy. Was the whole showbiz game playing basically a work around, a means of finding attention and love? But where is it? Where is love? It is perhaps, up there, in TV celebrity? To those who do not and will never arrive, never get inside the TV, fame and fortune are remotely attractive. A blissful wonderland of success.
  Where could a woman go after arriving in celebritiville 40 years ago? An actor can only do the TV and movie roles that the patriarchal big business structure of commercial TV chooses to finance and what does that offer a thinking woman who is more than a pretty face? (For myself as an actor I started to back away when I was being sent by agents to casting calls for network TV cop shows. My emotional reaction was, I don’t even want to WATCH these stupid cop shows, let alone contrubute to their making or work to get a day player gig on them. And I was a man still getting chances in my 60s.)
  For a woman that attractive face must be maintained throughout the entire life of the career. She can be the wife, the scream queen, yes a few, very few get to be Mary Tyler Moore or Carol Burnett, but that is rare even more rare 40 years ago.
  With apparent good fortune Melanie Chartoff landed the Rugrats animation series.
  The last half of the book moves away from showbiz into family issues and more personal feelings about love and connection. With fits and false starts it all ends, late in the story and relatively late in her life, with a happy ending. 

  From an exhilarating showbiz start into a warm embrace into what is really valuable to her, what she really wants and needs; That is the story told in Odd Woman Out.
  This is the voice of a woman. When she talks about love, objects of love, she does not hold back. I found myself wondering if a man could write about an object of love in the same way. Our expectations and boundaries are different. Man speaking of a love object might be viewed as creepy but a woman would not and Chartoff is not in her final chapters when she writes about a man she cares for and his family that she embraces.

These are my thoughts while reading the book. They are entirely subjective based on my own experience. Other readers' experience of the book will be entirely different. 

The Best of Fridays

 The Best of Fridays is a 2013 issued 5 DVD set of material from the classic 1980 show.

There is much to enjoy with the late night, live from Los Angeles, sketch comedy program. The episodes offered on the DVD, all have outstanding moments, while a few are very solidly funny/compelling all through.

This show is basically a Saturday Night Live copy, except on Friday and the opposite coast, but it easily stands on it’s own and even exceeds the original. I preferred it over SNL. Of course Fridays was only on for 3 seasons, not long enough to get stale. And SNL, geez! It’s STILL ON?!?!?

It was really broadcast live from LA. It had a special cast in Michael Richards, Larry David, Melanie Chartoff, John Roarke, Brandis Kemp, Darrow Igus, Maryedith Burrell, Mark Blankfield, Jack Burns, Bruce Malher, and sometimes Rich Hall.
Franky I have a much warmer fan feeling about this cast than any of the Saturday Night cast configurations that I have seen (which is not all of them).

I saw these programs live when they were originally on. Much of it made a lasting impression with the stand out performances of Michael Richards, and Mark Blankfield in particular. Both of these two went to the edge and over with physical manifestation of recurring comedy characters. This physical work might just be what is key to make a real lasting impression on the mind of the viewer. In particular Mark Blankfields manic “Pharmacist”- (“Take a PILL!” “I can handle it, I can handle it.”) whirling around the set with the prop pill bottles flying here and there is unforgettable.
I remembered Michael Richards with his less manic but equally dangerous contained explosive feel of his performances as the narcissistic “Cool Guy”. He had a way of nervously moving which made the character feel kind of threatening and powerfully memorable even 40 years later. 
John Roarke had the ability to vanish from the show completely consumed in the celebrity imitations he performed including his Reagan imitation and a nicely done Woody Alan.

The women were not given as strong of characters to reenact as the men mentioned above, but it was a delight to see “Women Who Spit” on the DVD. As well as their secondary characters such as Melanie Chartoff’s “Little Sister” to Micheal Richards’s “Battle Boy”.
Melanie Chartoff is releasing an e-book of stories and essays in February 2021. I look forward to that. She had very dreamy eyes back then.   

The DVD contains 16 episodes plus some very interesting extra material. One of the extras is a sit down on-camera reunion with most of the cast in 2013 talking about the show that they all worked on 33 years before. This is a very enjoyable addition for fans of the show as the intelligent and creative cast reminisce and bring in backstage details on the classic show. William Shatner was a guest host in an episode included on the set. Michael Richards talks about how Shatner rehearsed. He doesn't really do the role until showtime, just reads flat.
The cast also mentions how they enjoyed hanging out with the bands that were on, particularly The Clash whose show is included on the DVD and is really good. 
There is also an extra that is an extensive reunion conversation with many of the writers. These reunion talks are really interesting to fans of the show plus provide a lot of insight into how a show like this is mounted and could work within commercial network constraints and local affiliate opposition to more edgy and political material. There are a lot of critical Ronald Reagan sketches on the show that got them knocked off of some affiliates in the south.

There is a good deal of talk about Andy Kaufman’s great “Fight scene” with the cast. A legendary TV moment from one of the best and most revolutionary comics ever. He has some excellent movement on the DVD besides the fight scene.

The trouble with these extras in the 5 DVD set is that they talk about episodes that are not included in the collection which stimulates interest the set can’t satisfy. For instance Michael Richards talks about Shelley Winters being guest host and we sure want to see that one.

I love Fridays. I wish they would put all of them within my access to watch again.