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If Your Writing Doesn’t Scare You… You’re Probably Doing It Wrong — Billy Van Zandt
Film Courage: How much writing had you done before you were hired on [Bob] Newhart?
Billy Van Zandt, Comedy Writer/Playwright/Author: We had probably seven or eight plays published with Samuel French and going around the world. They were looking…it was the seventh season of Newhart I guess. They were looking for playwrights. The people who ran the show, this is just a weird coincidence but it worked out great, Mark Egan/ Mark Solomon had been writers who had been taught by Bob Carroll, Jr and Madelyn Davis who were the I Love Lucy writers.
I Love Lucy is the whole reason I got into show business in the first place. I wanted to do that sort of comedy. They were hiring playwrights to be on their writing staff. We met with them and had a great time and I ended up getting friendly with Madelyn and Bob and it couldn’t have been better.
We went home at 5:00 every night as opposed to shows that last till 3:00 in the morning doing rewrites.
