Well Bill Martin and Mike Schiff were the creators and they knew we had to do a family show. Everybody came at it from the angle of having been a kid and a teenager.
Steve Martin is one of the most intelligent, well-read human beings that I've ever come across. He is equally as funny off screen as he is on. But he also has a very intellectual side, and he's a really nice human being. We actually become good friends.
When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston, there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, Malcolm X was alive; great, great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.
If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it.
Around 5th and 6th grade I thought Dean Martin was the coolest guy in the world; he was a great singer, had his own television show and acted in movies.
In an attempt to amuse my friends and family, I would do impressions of Dean Martin, singing Everybody Loves Somebody. I secretly really enjoyed singing the song.
