Rick Friedberg's Blog

I have the dubious distinction of having directed music videos that Al Gore’s ex-wife,Tipper Gore, used to demonstrate to Congress the need to establish the PMRC, a group to censor “inappropriate” music by putting a  disclaimer on CDs and downloads.   The videos were Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher,” W.A.S.P’s “Blind in Texas” and “Wild Child,”  and Y & T’s “Summertime Girls.”   I had a lot of autonomy and fun creating and directing music videos. W.A.S.P is the hair band in the movie This Is Spinal

Fans of movie and television celebrities would like to believe that their favorite artist is someone down to earth—someone a fan could share a drink with.  These same fans forget that their hero or heroine are there to sell themselves.  My experience is that not every celebrity is humble.   I was used to mixing TV commercial sound tracks with Buzz Knudsen, head sound mixer at Todd AO, who mixed all of Spielberg’s movies, winning an academy award for E.T. and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.  

 Charles Champlin, former critic for the L.A. Times, chose my first feature film, KGOD (aka Pray TV) as his entry into the USA film festival, a critics-only festival. He wrote in the Times:        "My pick this time was Rick Friedberg’s spectacularly irreverent Pray TV, an outrageous satire      on televised religion, it leaves no pitch unscratched, and the festival audiences cheered it."   Because KGOD  was such a hit at the festival., the distributor decided to test market it by screening it

 Charles Champlin, former critic for the L.A. Times, chose my first feature film, KGOD (aka Pray TV) as his entry into the USA film festival, a critics-only festival. He wrote in the Times:        "My pick this time was Rick Friedberg’s spectacularly irreverent Pray TV, an outrageous satire      on televised religion, it leaves no pitch unscratched, and the festival audiences cheered it."   Because KGOD  was such a hit at the festival., the distributor decided to test market it by screening it

I directed six pilot episodes of a VH1 TV series called Shoot the Band, which was patterned on the popular cable show Mystery Science Theater 3000. The series starred four stand-up comics who play in an over-the-hill garage band that hasn’t had a gig in thirteen years. They make random phone calls to try to get bookings. Their pitches were “We love Polish hot dogs,” to anyone in the phone book with a polish name; “Our grandparents are devout Jews,” to names like Steinberg and Weinstein; “We[image error]

Cocaine came to Hollywood like a monsoon to Mumbai.  After my first feature film, KGOD aka PRAY TV,  was finished shooting, my agent, Jane Sindell, who later produced PLEASANTVILLE and SEABISCUIT,   set me up with Amy Ephron, the youngest sister of the famed family of comedy writers.  Amy, an executive at Warner Brothers Studios, liked the script for KGOD and had seen some footage.  She called me in to meet John Veitch, head of production. They had optioned the rights to Alley Oop, a comic strip[image error]

Although there is great pain in casting, there is also joy.  We had refined, acted, and knew every scene of the movie KGOD, a.k.a. (later retitled) Pray TV, and were casting. One of the parts, that of Willie Washington, a rapping preacher in the style of Jesse Jackson, was hysterical on paper. Roger E. Mosley, previously-known as Tom Selleck’s sidekick on Magnum, P.I., received the “sides” (pages of a scene in the script), came in, had the lines fully memorized (something every would-be[image error]

With the increasingly sophisticated and less expensive high definition cameras and editing equipment available to us today, making a movie or a video is possible. And, fortunately, with the exponential growth of cable television, Internet streaming, video-on-demand, and mobile phone and iPad capabilities, there are ways to get your work seen.  Before this technological explosion, it wasn’t so easy.  But I got lucky.  I found a benefactor in Texas, home of wildcatters, corrupt politicians, and

Poet Alexander Pope’s quote “Hope springs eternal . . .” sounds like something a poet would believe. Is there any craft more obscure and less appreciated than poetry (yeah, the words of Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, or John Lennon)? If we, in show biz, didn’t have hope, we’d have long ago studied engineering.    One hope I cultivated was with my lawyer. He introduced me to a new client, Jack White, a songwriter/music producer from Berlin who capitalized on the popular craze of disco, after Saturday

With increasingly sophisticated and less expensive high definition cameras and editing equipment available to us today, making an inexpensive movie is possible. And, fortunately, with the exponential growth of cable television, Internet streaming, video-on-demand, and mobile phone and iTunes capabilities, there are ways to get your work seen.  Before this technological explosion, it wasn’t so easy.  But I got lucky.  I found a benefactor in Texas, home of wildcatters, corrupt politicians, and