PLUME: What led to you getting the part on Grace Under Fire?
THOMAS: That was right after that, really. This would be about ’93. I met with Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey in early ’93 and did the pilot. I didn’t think it would get picked up, but it did.
PLUME: How would you sum up your tenure there?
THOMAS: It was a tough show to do, because Brett was very unstable.
PLUME: It seemed to have a lot going for it, but deteriorated quickly.
THOMAS: t was a well-written show in the beginning. Chuck Lorre wrote the pilot and his career speaks for himself. He went on to do Dharma and Greg, so clearly he wasn’t a one-time wonder. He was a guy with some talent, but he got booted off the show by Brett in the first season. It was a power struggle between the guy who created the show and the person who wanted to take it over. The actress. That was a shame, because Chuck was a great writer, and to lose the creator and a great writer is usually death to a show. But, again, to give Chuck more credit, the show had such momentum at the network after that first year, that it took five years to die. After Chuck was moved out, there was a new showrunner every year, and probably the most salvageable thing I got out of that show was my relationship with Tom Poston. He was hired to play my dad, and we ended up having a great time together. It was a very tough show to do, and it was only because I made good money that I stayed. I actually tried to get out twice, but I was in a contract with Carsey-Werner and couldn’t get out.
PLUME: From the outside, many viewed it as Brett Butler destroying the show. Was that your perspective?
THOMAS: Without question.
PLUME: Was it intentional or unintentional, in your view?
THOMAS: Not consciously intentional. But now we’re into psychology and I’m not really qualified to address this. I think that Brett was someone who really believed all the media hype that surrounds a show launch. She thought she should be – not only the star of the show – but the head writer and the architect of everything as well. The irony was that she wanted to be in every scene, and that’s just not good writing. That’s not even good if you’re a skilled writer, to put a character that you want to be the lead in every scene. The audience needs a break from the main character in order to appreciate them more when they come back.
PLUME: Especially when you have such a good supporting cast like that.
THOMAS: Yeah, and it was a shame, because everybody was sort of frustrated and so was I. I mean, if you look at what I did on that show, it was mainly “Yup. Nope. And maybe.” and I’m in the background. I’m the most expensive day player to ever hit TV.
PLUME: They were definitely working towards making you a stronger character in that first season.
THOMAS: Yes, in the first season. But after that it just went away. That was Chuck. Chuck had plans for me, but the other producers were just trying to get through the hell of working with Brett. There was a common understanding among everyone on the show after Chuck left, that we were all just trying to get through this, make the money and get out with some shreds of dignity and pride.
PLUME: Was everyone involved happy when it ended?
THOMAS: No. I mean, I think there were mixed feelings. Nobody wants to lose a job, but other than that the money question, yeah, people were happy it ended. It was the closest to purgatory that I’ve ever experienced while I’ve been living.
PLUME: I also see that you’ve done a bit of voicework for the past few years. Was that intentional or did people call you up?
THOMAS: Actually, it was usually because of a friend or someone that I knew. I did The Simpsons because I know those guys who write the show. Weinstein and Oakley brought me in on that. I did some stuff at Klasky-Csupo and I don’t even remember what that was. There was a couple of guys that I knew that did voices on Animaniacs and I ended up doing some of those. Have you ever heard of a show called CatDog?
PLUME: Yes.
THOMAS: Well Tom Kenny is CatDog, and he’s a good friend of mine, so I ended up doing one of those. There are other ones, but I can’t even remember the ones that I’ve done. In these voices, somewhere during the time when I was at Grace Under Fire. I also sold a pilot to ABC for a gameshow called Family Challenge. We produced the pilot for ABC, but they decided they didn’t want to do it. Then I was stuck with a gameshow pilot. My partner was Woody Fraser, and we took it over to The Family Channel, and then we did 120 episodes of the show over there. But I was still on Grace Under Fire, so I really wasn’t hands-on and active as a producer, but it was me who originally sold it to ABC. I’ve always been in there selling something and doing something, you know?
PLUME: When did you launch Maple Palm Productions, your production company?
THOMAS: I launched that right towards the end of Grace Under Fire. I wanted to start my own independent film company. The first picture we did was directed by Ernest Dickerson and starred Courtney Vance, Virginia Madsen and David Keith called Ambushed. It was not a comedy at all. It was a race drama set in the south. I produced that and deficit financed it. We ended up selling it to HBO. Also while I’ve been here I wrote a movie for Fox that takes a stab at the relationship between the media and the courts. It’s a comedy called Out Of Order. I was trying to package it with Chevy Chase, and I still am, because I think Chevy is just sitting there ripe waiting for a HUGE comeback.
PLUME: It’s almost as if he’s this abandoned performer.
THOMAS: Yep. You wait. If it isn’t me, someone else is going to scoop him up put him in a movie which will hit big and it’ll be like, “Oh yeah Chevy’s great.” because audiences still love him. They think he’s a really funny guy. Watch. I’ve stopped in a theater and I’ve sat in an airplane and turned to watch the audience watching his face, and there was real affection there.
PLUME: He’s just one of those performers that needs the right materials.
THOMAS: Yep.
PLUME: I don’t know who’s chosen his material the past few years.
THOMAS: Well, there’s more of a perception of it being bad than it really is. Vegas Vacation was not really that great, but on the other hand, it opened well. It opened at 13.7 million, and that speaks well for Chevy. Other than that, he’s only been in that thing with Norm McDonald where he played a real bit part as a doctor. He hasn’t really opened anything where he is the lead, including Snow Day. He’s not the lead in that. So I’m trying to get that going independently and I’m still working on that right now, but the independent film market is like the myth of Sisyphus. Every day you come in, you roll the rock up, you think you got it, you go home, and it’s at the bottom of the hill again when you come in the next day. It’s really terrible, you know? The independent film business is the hardest business that I’ve ever been in. I’ve had pretty good luck in TV, being able to sell my ideas and produce and make them over the years, but independent film is hard.
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