Join us on a fascinating journey through time as we explore Bruce Miller's 44-year career in entertainment reporting, filled with on-set experiences from some of the most iconic TV shows and movies.
This includes all of the various spinoffs of "Star Trek," the penultimate episode of "M*A*S*H" and beloved sitcoms such as "Cheers," "Frasier," "The Big Bang Theory" and "The Office."
We also dive into the realm of TV set design, with stories from the sets of popular shows like "Grey's Anatomy," "The West Wing" and "Parks and Recreation."
We also share a few stories about the 1982 film "Annie," which was shot on the campus of Monmouth University, which co-host Terry Lipshetz attended in the 1990s, and the 1978 film "Ice Castles," which included Bruce as one of the many extras.
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About the show
Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Welcome everyone to another episode of Streamed & Screened, an entertainment podcast about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, senior producer at Lee and your co-host of a program with Bruce Miller, who we've pulled out of a time capsule this week from reporting. He's been doing entertainment reporting forever with the Sioux City Journal. But he's been everywhere.
And we wanted to do a special episode. We are coming up on 44 years, 44 years. Can you believe that? But you know what? I thought it would be fun to talk about something that people always ask me about, which is do you get to actually go to the sets of these things? Do you get to talk to the movie stars?
Oh, you're just making all that up, aren't you? Now, after this many years, you can't make it up because it's just too difficult to think about. Wait a minute. Didn't I use that line before? I can't use that line again. You need to have that one on one contact. And that's the thing I think has been the biggest joy of covering entertainment, is actually getting to meet people that you maybe admired at some point or you like their work or you think that they're different than their public persona.
So yeah, that's been a really cool thing. And early on in 1980 was the first trip I took to the West Coast for pilot season, whatever you might want to call the new shows. And one of the things that's very common is they'll take you to the sets of various shows so you get a chance to watch them film things.
You get a chance to walk around the set and look at all of that kind of fun stuff. You get to interview the actors. It is a really kind of head turning situation the first time you do it. I have been on the set of every Star Trek series except the first one, and I have sat in every captain's chair, which is interesting because all aren't comfortable.
I've gotten to see, you know, some big back in the day they were mini series. They weren't limited series, but I've been on the sets of those. I was on the set of The Thorn Birds, which was like a it looked like a working sheep ranch in Australia, but it was actually in California and we had dinner on the porch of the of De Gaeta, which was the name of the the ranch and with the stars.
And one of the stars, Rachel Ward, was really upset because one of the producers said that she was in she was a nine in looks and at three and acting up and she got all upset and started walking away from the set of this. And all you could think about is they're not done filming this thing and she's bailing because she doesn't like what the producer said.
And they immediately ran after her and tried to smoo