Film students interview award-winning TV writer

Emmy award-winning writer David Pollock was able to use all of his material without anyone cutting his lines during an interview directed yesterday by two film and video studies 402 students.

Pollock, who has written for such hit television sitcoms as All in the Family, Cheers, Frasier, MASH and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and feature films such as Bad Boys and Toy Story, was in front of the camera yesterday when LSA seniors Judy Woloshen and Kat Vincent directed an interview with Pollock as part of a class assignment.

"This project was for our television studies class. We had to do an interview, so our teacher brought in different people from the industry. Our jobs are to produce it," Woloshen said.

Film and video studies Prof. Jim Burnstein, the coordinator of the University's screenwriting program, interviewed Pollock who is on campus to speak to a dramatic writing class.

"We have started a TV writing class. We try, and this is unique to our program, to use real writers as teachers. David's son was a student of mine," Burnstein said. "When I met Tim, I realized that (David and I) were represented by the same agency, Paradigm, in (Los Angeles). That's how I got to know him. David has a major history of TV and sitcom writing."

During his taped interview, Pollock said that as a student at San Francisco State University, he had no idea he would end up writing.

"I was attracted to TV and comedy, but it wasn't really clear at that point what I was going to do," he said.

Pollock started his career as a page for CBS studios, where he met his partner, Elias Davis.

"We were exposed to a lot of comedy shows," Pollock said. Davis "had a vague interest in that although he assumed up to a few months before graduation that he would become a lawyer."

Davis did not attend law school but instead paired up with Pollock. Their first job was for a morning radio show in Los Angeles for which they wrote jokes and radio bits. In April 1967, they moved to the Joey Bishop Show, writing monologue jokes that aired opposite the Johnny Carson Show.

Moving from show to show, Pollock and Davis wrote for comedians such as Jack Benny and Steve Allen and later entered into a very different arena of entertainment - sitcoms.

Writing for shows such as All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Pollock said, "If you can hear the character in your ear, get the voices and rhythms down, it makes it a lot easier."

After writing the first half hour of the final episode of MASH and Cheers, Pollock and Davis won an Emmy Award for an episode of Frasier.

Pollock said award winning writers have days that are no different from other professionals.

"We come in and gossip, talk about what's in the news, where we're going to have lunch, who we're going to have lunch with, anything to not have to turn and face that blank page," Pollock said.

After switching from TV to feature films, Pollock wrote for Toy Story 2, scheduled to be released at the end of the month.

Pollock was one of three interviewees to participate in 400-level film and video studies productions.

"In this class, (students) learn to direct and produce. I thought it would be a good opportunity to have visitors talk to classes and have an archive tape and then have those turn into class projects," said the class' professor Terry Sarris.

Three hundred-level film and video studies students helped with the production and acted as a studio audience. "This is part of one of our assignments, but also it is to get an insight onto how an interview goes and how a studio works," LSA senior Michelle Johnson said.

Pollock has some advice for these aspiring students.

"For screenwriters, write a screenplay. Think up an idea and write it. First take a class in it though," he said.

"For TV, pick a show that you like where you identify with the characters and try to mimic it," he said.

11-05-99