Gary H. Miller Meets World

Summary

Pod Meets World: Gary H. Miller Meets World Released on April 21, 2025

In this compelling episode of Pod Meets World, hosts Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle, and Rider Strong engage in an in-depth conversation with the esteemed writer and producer Gary H. Miller. As a pivotal figure behind several iconic television shows, Gary shares his rich experiences, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and insightful perspectives on crafting memorable sitcoms.

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Introducing Gary H. Miller

Starting at 17:00

The episode begins with a warm welcome to Gary H. Miller, a seasoned writer known for his work on beloved series such as Laverne & Shirley, Bosom Buddies, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Gary reminisces about his early days as a school teacher in New York City before transitioning into television writing, highlighting the serendipitous moments that led him to Hollywood.

Notable Quote:

Gary H. Miller (17:19): “I was a school teacher in New York City for eight years, and I never imagined I would end up writing for some of the greatest sitcoms in television history.”

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From Classroom to Scriptwriting

22:00 - 31:00

Gary details his journey from education to entertainment, emphasizing the challenges of breaking into the industry without initial connections. He shares his determination to learn scriptwriting independently, leading to his first spec script for Laverne & Shirley. This persistence eventually landed him an opportunity, courtesy of Gary Marshall, marking the beginning of his prolific career.

Notable Quote:

Gary H. Miller (30:15): “One day, Gary Marshall’s office called my school. They wanted me to come be a writer. It was unbelievable.”

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Writing for Bosom Buddies and Collaborations with Tom Hanks

34:00 - 38:00

Gary discusses his time writing for Bosom Buddies, where he worked alongside a then-early-career Tom Hanks. He reflects on the creative synergy within the writers' room and the unique comedic dynamics that made the show a standout.

Notable Quote:

Gary H. Miller (34:26): “Tom and Peter were great together. They took our scripts to another level, creating magic in every episode.”

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Impacting The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

38:00 - 44:00

Transitioning to his work on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Gary explains his role as a showrunner and his interactions with Will Smith. He shares insights into shaping the show's narrative and balancing humor with serious themes, such as racial issues, to resonate with a diverse audience.

Notable Quote:

Gary H. Miller (39:38): “Balancing humor with serious topics was challenging, but it allowed us to create episodes that were both entertaining and meaningful.”

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Navigating Boy Meets World and Controversial Episodes

44:00 - 75:00

Gary delves into his tenure on Boy Meets World, particularly focusing on his controversial episode "If You Can't Be with the One You Love." He candidly discusses discrepancies between his original script and the final aired version, expressing his discomfort with certain scenes that deviated from his vision.

Notable Quotes:

Gary H. Miller (49:52): “The scene where Sean throws Angela against the wall was never in my script. It was added later, and it really bothered me.”

Gary H. Miller (55:37): “Sometimes, as a writer, you have to accept that not everything you create will make it to the screen the way you intended.”

Both Gary and Rider Strong express their concerns about how elements like Angela's character were handled, highlighting the importance of character agency and meaningful consequences in storytelling.

Notable Quote:

Rider Strong (54:39): “Angela didn’t have enough of a presence. It felt like she was just a prop for Sean’s character development.”

Gary also reflects on the lasting impact of Boy Meets World, attributing its enduring popularity to the likable characters and relatable life lessons embedded in the show.

Notable Quote:

Gary H. Miller (84:43): “You cannot substitute talent and likability. That’s what made Boy Meets World resonate across generations.”

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Tribute to Bob Tischler

80:00 - 85:00

A heartfelt segment where Gary honors his late friend and collaborator, Bob Tischler. He shares personal stories illustrating Bob's integrity, kindness, and unwavering support both professionally and personally. Their collaboration on the book Impossible and their enduring friendship underscore the profound impact Bob had on Gary's life and career.

Notable Quote:

Gary H. Miller (81:44): “Bob was a wonderful human being. He was caring, supportive, and a great writer. Losing him was devastating.”

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The Magic of Great Casting and Storytelling

85:00 - 91:00

Gary emphasizes the critical role of casting in the success of a sitcom. He praises the natural chemistry and likability of the Boy Meets World cast, attributing much of the show's magic to their performances. Additionally, he touches on the challenges of maintaining consistency and quality across numerous episodes and seasons.

Notable Quote:

Gary H. Miller (85:24): “Great casting and storytelling are unbeatable. The likable characters allowed audiences to connect deeply with the show.”

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Final Reflections and Legacy

91:00 - End

As the episode wraps up, Gary reflects on his career's journey, the lessons learned, and the importance of staying true to one's creative vision. He underscores the significance of Boy Meets World as more than just a show, likening it to a lifestyle phenomenon that continues to influence and inspire.

Notable Quote:

Gary H. Miller (85:59): “Boy Meets World is its own organism—a cultural phenom that goes beyond just being a sitcom. It’s about the connections and growth we all experience.”

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Conclusion

This episode offers a profound exploration of Gary H. Miller’s contributions to television, his creative processes, and the intricate dynamics of showrunning. Listeners gain valuable insights into the complexities of writing for beloved series and the personal stories that shape memorable storytelling. Gary’s candidness about both triumphs and challenges provides a balanced and enriching perspective, making this episode a must-listen for Boy Meets World fans and aspiring writers alike.

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Notable Moments:

• First Encounter with O.J. Simpson: Gary H. Miller (19:14) recounts his initial meetings with the star, adding a dramatic personal touch to his storytelling.
• Handling Controversial Content: Gary H. Miller (56:28) discusses the delicate balance of incorporating serious themes within a sitcom framework.
• Tribute to Bob Tischler: Emotional and personal reflections at 81:44 highlight the deep professional and personal bonds within the industry.

Final Thoughts: Gary H. Miller’s episode not only celebrates the legacy of Boy Meets World but also provides an authentic glimpse into the life of a showrunner navigating the ever-evolving landscape of television. His stories of perseverance, creativity, and friendship resonate deeply, underscoring the timeless appeal of the shows he helped create.

Transcript

[Danielle Fishel]

It's Danielle Fishel, Ryder Strong and Will.

[Will Friedle]

Friedle from Pod Meets World.

[Danielle Fishel]

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[Will Friedle]

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[Ryder Strong]

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[Danielle Fishel]

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[Ryder Strong]

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[Danielle Fishel]

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[Will Friedle]

So Susan and I were on a walk as you do.

[Danielle Fishel]

As you do every day.

[Will Friedle]

Every day. Twice a day usually. But we might not be on the same walk twice a day because I walk the dog usually in the morning and then we both do the walk later at night. But as. As we do, questions pop up.

[Danielle Fishel]

Okay.

[Will Friedle]

And so I got another walk in with sue and Sammy question for you. Okay, I'll ask the question, then I'll answer the question for myself to give you both time to come up with your answers. So we're walking down the street and I walk by a beautiful plant and it's one of my favorite smells in the world. Which led to top five smells in your life. Top five smells. So here we go. Here are my. And in order.

[Ryder Strong]

Wilfred L's hand circa 1993.

[Will Friedle]

Exactly. So in no particular order, the plant I walk by. Night jasmine. Absolutely.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh, I love it.

[Will Friedle]

I love it so much. My cologne. Bread. Fresh bread being baked.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh yeah, that's a good one.

[Will Friedle]

Susan makes this amazing oatmeal that are granola that makes our entire house smell like oats and cinnamon and honey. It's incredible.

[Danielle Fishel]

That sounds.

[Will Friedle]

And then good old fashioned gasoline.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh yeah.

[Will Friedle]

Are some of my top five smells. So I throw it back to you people.

[Ryder Strong]

Indy loves gasoline.

[Danielle Fishel]

I did as a kid too. As a kid.

[Ryder Strong]

It's not great for you, man. He's like, I know, but I like smells. They literally insert this smell. So we know to stay away from this stuff.

[Will Friedle]

So either one of you throwing it out there, what are some of your favorite smells?

[Ryder Strong]

Books, like a library like, you know, which I think we've talked about on this is actually like there's a vanilla smell that comes out of old books from the glue that used to bind. So books. I have a campfire and I have a. I have a candle that's called A night in the woods. It's just like. It's got a couple different tree flavors in it, but it's mostly. Mostly just smells like campfire. It's great. So yeah. And I guess coffee Coffee. Like, just like, knowing. Yeah. And then probably vanilla, which is a little up there with, you know, kind of the same. The same thing as books. But yeah, I like a nice distant vanilla. Not, like, too strong, not, like, overdone. But, like, when you know that there's, like, a nice vanilla flavor in the air. Gosh, bread is a good one, man. I've never thought about that. But bread is a smell of bread.

[Will Friedle]

Like, you walk into a place like a bakery where they're just baking bread. Oh, yeah. I just want to wrap myself up in it.

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah.

[Will Friedle]

So good.

[Danielle Fishel]

Danielle, Cool water cologne.

[Will Friedle]

Cool water cologne. I've never even heard of that.

[Danielle Fishel]

What is cool water cologne? It's from the 90s. It's.

[Will Friedle]

It is so your high school boyfriend.

[Danielle Fishel]

Smell of every high school boy of the 90s, and it just takes you right back. It takes me right back to Michael Goldman. And, like, the same thing with Old Spice.

[Ryder Strong]

That's so funny. You got to start wearing Old Spice, Will. I know, but it's date night.

[Gary H. Miller]

She.

[Will Friedle]

Date night.

[Ryder Strong]

Pickles is coming out. Let's put on the Old Spice.

[Will Friedle]

Let's put on some Old Spice. She says the same thing. It, like, smells like high school.

[Danielle Fishel]

High school boyfriends. High school boyfriends love cool water cologne. Similarly to the gasoline. When I was a kid, I really love the smell of gasoline. But now, like, the markers. Like, the smell of, like, a. Those.

[Will Friedle]

You smell them deeply and you wake up 30 seconds later. Yeah. Love that.

[Danielle Fishel]

I like that smell. I think, like, anything pine. Like Christmas. The smell of Christmas.

[Ryder Strong]

Yes.

[Danielle Fishel]

Something pie. Me.

[Ryder Strong]

Fir, tree.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah. Christmas smell great.

[Ryder Strong]

I totally agree.

[Danielle Fishel]

Bread is really good. But also I'd like to throw into the mix the smell of bacon. Bacon cooking.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah, okay.

[Danielle Fishel]

You know, like the smell of breakfast. There's. There's something about the mix of coffee, toast, bacon that, like, I just call it diner.

[Ryder Strong]

Let's just call it diner.

[Danielle Fishel]

Smell of diner.

[Will Friedle]

Diner, yeah.

[Ryder Strong]

Hey, if there was a candle that was diner candle, that wouldn't be a bad call.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah, that's a great idea. We could. We could have a Chubby's. Chubby's Candle. If I could bottle the smell. The stinky smell of my children's feet.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh, God.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right now, really?

[Gary H. Miller]

Pre.

[Danielle Fishel]

Pre pubescent.

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah.

[Danielle Fishel]

Stinky kid feet.

[Ryder Strong]

I'm telling you, all that, like, loving your kids smells or not being bothered by your kid smells is gone by now.

[Danielle Fishel]

I know. I know.

[Ryder Strong]

By night, actually, I know. I have. I was like, suddenly, I did not want Indy to be anywhere. Like, yes. Until then. I was like, no, it's fine. You get used to it and you deal with or you fall in love with it or whatever. But now it's like, like literally anytime he smells, I'm like, dud this out.

[Danielle Fishel]

Go take a shower. I know, it's not cute anymore.

[Will Friedle]

What is it about the stinky feet? What. What does it even smell like? Can you relate it to anything?

[Ryder Strong]

It's just human intimacy, man. It's just being close to somebody that you love so much that you're. Yeah. I don't know.

[Danielle Fishel]

I mean, I honestly. Adler's farts when he was a baby. I was like, these are delicious. These are great. This is totally fine.

[Ryder Strong]

Like indies. The top of Indy's head was like one of my. You know, Cuz it's just like these weird because it's. You're never that close with another human.

[Will Friedle]

It's a pheromones. It's got to be like your. Your own.

[Danielle Fishel]

It's also like I could see if they lined 20 kids up, I'd be able to pick out which one was Adler by the smell of his little feet.

[Ryder Strong]

Right? And you know it's chemical and biological because like if I was ever around another kid, like sweaty, I'd be like, pooped his pants or whatever this is. I'm going to vomit. Like I cannot be in this. But my kid, I was like totally fine. Never had a problem with any of it. Like it's totally biological.

[Danielle Fishel]

So yeah, that would have to be on mine. Just Adler and Keaton's stinky feet.

[Gary H. Miller]

Oh God.

[Will Friedle]

Just dipped in cool water cologne and you're fine. I'd like to give. I'd like to give honorable mention to mushrooms, onions and garlic cooking. Oh yeah, that's a great combination.

[Ryder Strong]

Maybe the real question should remove all food considerations when we're talking about food. It's like fresh. It's like it never ends.

[Will Friedle]

Right?

[Ryder Strong]

So I feel like it'd be maybe, maybe an addendum should be that it's only non food.

[Will Friedle]

So then if I have to take bread off the list, it would instantly be trumped by WD40.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh man.

[Will Friedle]

WD40 smells so good.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh, sawdust. Yeah, Freshly cut sawdust. Like, hey, yeah.

[Will Friedle]

Freshly cut hay is another one that I really like a lot.

[Danielle Fishel]

Not so much for I don't like that. And you know what I don't like? A smell I don't like. I don't like that smell of rain on the asphalt that some people love.

[Gary H. Miller]

That.

[Danielle Fishel]

You know what else I don't like that people like.

[Ryder Strong]

I Don't like bottom five smells. So we have to do the top five. What looks like new car smell.

[Danielle Fishel]

Get it out of here. Open the doors. Wave that smell out.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, my God. I love new car smell.

[Danielle Fishel]

No, replace it with my kids stinky feet.

[Janice Torres]

This is stinky feet.

[Will Friedle]

Teenage boy car smell.

[Danielle Fishel]

I didn't know teenage. I think by teenage I'll be over it. I will not like it. It's something about the fact that they.

[Will Friedle]

Cool water or whatever. Just bring it to your 90s teenage. Teen boy. Teenage book. He smells like starburst and cool water. I love.

[Ryder Strong]

You know what I haven't smelled since the 90s? Is CK1. I'd still probably like that.

[Danielle Fishel]

Girls wore that all through the 90s and the boys were all CK1. Or Dra.

[Will Friedle]

Noir.

[Ryder Strong]

Like of all of the perfumes and colognes and stuff. Shaving cream. Barbasol. Shaving cream.

[Danielle Fishel]

That does smell good.

[Ryder Strong]

And I don't use it that much because I don't. Well, now I.

[Danielle Fishel]

Now you do.

[Ryder Strong]

But. Yeah, but I love that smell. Yeah, that's a good one.

[Will Friedle]

Good smells.

[Danielle Fishel]

Welcome to world. I'm Danielle Fischl.

[Ryder Strong]

I'm Ryder Strong.

[Will Friedle]

And I'm Will Friedle.

[Danielle Fishel]

It's like, what are we supposed to do now?

[Ryder Strong]

The show. That's what we're supposed to do.

[Danielle Fishel]

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[Danielle Fishel]

In our endless attempt to recreate every season's writers room, we have been able to connect with so many men and women who helped craft the show right at its heart on every page of its script. Whether they were there with us from the start, joined in the Michael Exit or the Michael Return, or maybe just contributed an episode from outside the Some of our best podcasts have been with these incredible creatives, and this week is no different. He joined the show in season five, just barely sneaking in an episode at the end, the eventually prohibited tale of teen drinking if you can't be with the one you love. Quite an entrance. Then, after getting Corey and Shawn blitzed, he wrote two in season six, including the recently recapped you're Married, you're Dead. So if you were wondering which writer liked messing with Cory and Topanga, we found him. His middle initial, H, most likely stands for heartbreak. He'd write two in the final season, sticking around till the bitter end. But it was his prior work experience that is even more impressive, especially probably to Will, Laverne and Shirley. Bosom Buddies nine to five. Give me a break. A Different World, Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Reba.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, come on. And I didn't talk to him about.

[Danielle Fishel]

Any of these back in the day.

[Ryder Strong]

God.

[Danielle Fishel]

Also, he worked with a murderer, at least according to a civil suit. And so we are thrilled to welcome to POD Meets World. Writer and producer Gary H. Miller. So good to see you.

[Gary H. Miller]

It's amazing to see you guys. I saw you on the strike line and then I think it was 22 years.

[Danielle Fishel]

20 some odd years ago.

[Ryder Strong]

The rap party.

[Will Friedle]

Actually, no, Gary, you and I. I don't know if you remember, I ran into you at Target.

[Gary H. Miller]

We went to Target, we exchanged numbers, right? Yeah, yeah, we said yeah, we'll call each other.

[Will Friedle]

And that never did.

[Gary H. Miller]

That guy. But, you know, I would have loved to listen.

[Danielle Fishel]

So fun. Well, we are so excited to talk to you. We know that you were an integral part of seasons five through seven, and we are excited to talk to you about that. But this is the first interview where we know right off the bat, we are nowhere near the most fascinating actors that you have worked with, because we know you worked on a show called first in Ten with O.J. simpson.

[Gary H. Miller]

Oh, my goodness.

[Danielle Fishel]

Can you please tell us what that was like?

[Gary H. Miller]

You ready to rock the stats?

[Danielle Fishel]

You know us always, always.

[Gary H. Miller]

Well, okay. God, these are such long anecdotes. And I know we have limited time, and I certainly want to get to the drinking episode.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

But let's sit back and have a little drink and talk about Mr. O.J. quick backstory before I even mention it. So I used to be a school teacher in New York City. I taught school for eight years, and I taught in a school in Queens. And on my lunch hour, I would jog, which included going across LaGuardia Airport, was right near the school. And then one day, I see him, O.J. simpson, who was like the biggest star, you know, from the Hertz commercial in America, loved him. And I saw him going to the terminal, and, you know, I'm this stupid person from Brooklyn, lowly school teacher. I said, O.J. o.J. You know, like, like a 10 year old. And he looked at me, gave me that O.J. smile. Right?

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

I ran back to school and into the teacher's room, and it said, I just saw the Juice, you know, and I was so excited. Yeah. Well, now cut to some years later, and I'm in now living out here with my youngest daughter who was born with the impairment. So we, we had taken her to a doctor in a building in Westwood, and we were waiting at the valet, and there he was again. And like a Ferrari pulls up. And right before he gets in, he looks at me and says, is that your little girl? I said, yeah. She says, she's so pretty. She's beautiful. I said, thank you. I said, oh, My God, again, O.J. simpson. My second meeting. So then segue to, I take over the show, 1st and 10. It was kind of floundering, and I, I made it more realistic. I, I added big business steroids, you know, real football stuff. I wrote O.J. simpson into the show, and we became kind of close.

[Danielle Fishel]

Wow.

[Gary H. Miller]

I used to watch Monday Night Football in his house. You'd watch it, and the Heisman Trophy is right over There.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh, my gosh.

[Gary H. Miller]

And we flew. We spent a weekend in Kansas City together, the two of us. We went to see the Chiefs play the Chiefs play the Raiders. And we flew on the Raiders plane. Oh, my God, So many funny stories about that. Oh, funny, funny. In hindsight, right? I'll get to. I'm talking real fast. So we're in Kansas City and, you know, everybody loves the guy. And. And we were in the mall one day and the father comes over to son, and the father's crying, and OG says, why. Why is your boy crying? Why are you crying, sir? He says, ask my boy his name. The boy he named Emoji. Named it. Oh, this is America's.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryder Strong]

Beloved.

[Gary H. Miller]

We all know the story. And on a. On a flight back, we. I hit the. I was in the worst turbulence I had ever been in my life. And I'm talking. I'm on the plane with the Raiders, right? And they're getting their barf bags, right? You've got these 260 pound linemen, and they're crossing themselves. And it looks like we're going down because we're dropping like 10,000ft. And I turn to look at OJ and he's just sitting there with a smile on his face. Nothing scary.

[Danielle Fishel]

Nothing.

[Ryder Strong]

The calm of a psychopath.

[Will Friedle]

Exactly.

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah. So then here's a great. You see, you got me started on this. So here's a great anecdote. So when first and 10, they're negotiating, as you guys know, about negotiations with actors, the producer comes to me, says, look, Gary, we're having trouble. O.J. we're not sure we can make this deal. Can you write him out of the show? I said, well, I guess I wrote him into the show. I guess I could write him out of the show. Which I wasn't. I didn't like that idea. But then OJ Comes to me by himself. He says, you think you could write a show like this for me, a different show? And I said, sure, let me write.

[Danielle Fishel]

You out of this one. That's a great idea.

[Gary H. Miller]

We'll make it a baseball show. And I went and I pitched it with him, and we get a go on the pilot. It was easiest pitch ever, because I'm pitching and I don't even think the executive. She's listening to me. She's just staring at O.J. right? And I'm thinking in my head, as, you know, if you pitch, this isn't going well. I got to shift gears. And I finish and I think, this is awful. And she says, this is A project we must do. And so I get in the elevator with O.J. and I'd say, this is the easiest thing I've ever sold. I said, this is great. He says, that's good. A little while later, I get a call from his lawyer, his attorney, Skip. He says, listen, OJ would like co writing credit on the pilot.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh.

[Gary H. Miller]

I said, oh, really? I said, okay. I said, tell him he only has to work with me about two hours a day and I'll do, I'll do the brunt of it, I'll do most of it. He says, no, no, no, you don't understand. He doesn't actually want, want to do anything. He just wants co creating credit for the pilot. I said, why? He said, because his mother would be very proud of him if he was in the Writers Guild. I said, she'd be proud he's in the hall of Fame. Isn't she proud enough of him now? Right?

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Danielle Fishel]

Is that not enough?

[Ryder Strong]

The WGA card is really big deal.

[Gary H. Miller]

So Skip to the attorney, says, look, you either agree to this, well, this deal was done, it's going to blow up.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh, my God.

[Gary H. Miller]

Said, okay, I'll agree. But you tell this to OJ that I'll give him half writing credit on a script that I write if he goes to the Canton hall of Fame and tell them half that yardage is mine. Wow. So he's dead.

[Ryder Strong]

So that killed it or killed it killed that deal.

[Gary H. Miller]

He then got a deal with NBC. They sent him to New York to be an on field reporter. I get, I got him a little going away gift, was the last time I had talked to him. And then one day I was in Florida on vacation playing golf, and I got the call from my friend saying, do you hear about Nicole Simpson?

[Danielle Fishel]

I said.

[Gary H. Miller]

I was on the golf course most of the day. She was found dead. I said, oh, no, this is before cell phone. I said, I don't have OJ's number. You got, you gotta listen, you gotta get me OJ's number. I gotta call him, call him. And he said, no, you don't understand. They think he did it. And then it just got, you know, as surreal as it could possibly be. Wow. Some time ago I wrote an article for a mandatory magazine called OJ and Me, which is basically what I just told you, you know, in more or less terms. And I mean, I was subpoenaed for the, the second trial also. So I read the article about this, what I'm telling you, and this woman in the comments says, how dare you Associate with that murderer as a lady. This was before I knew he was a murderer.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah, exactly.

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah, he's a murderer. So. And then, anyway, there's my long.

[Ryder Strong]

Wow. We did not expect that. Like, we were expecting, like. Oh, yeah, we talked on set a few times and you know, that's incredible.

[Gary H. Miller]

Listen, I. There's other stuff that I won't even go. And it's got nothing to do about the horrific results of all that. But, you know, just because when the lawyers were interviewing me as a witness, they wanted to know, was he aggressive? Did he said, you know what? I was wrangling real football players, was the least aggressive out of any of them. And I had John, who would break anything that came close to you. You know, I got John Matusiak anecdotes too. But let's.

[Danielle Fishel]

Well, I want, we want to talk to you about some of the other shows you worked on too, because you have truly written on some of TV's most iconic shows. I mean, your first script being Laverne and Shirley, which is quite a debut. How did that become your first gig?

[Gary H. Miller]

We're going to need to make this a five part interview. So I, at least I told you I was school teacher in New York, years in and not loving it. Not loving the job and not loving the pay, which is always low for teachers. Great, great contributors to our culture that they are. But so my wife said, hey, you're funny. Why don't you start writing scripts? What do I know about scripts, you know? But I went to the local library, took out a book, showed me the format, and I wrote a mass script. Right. I'll make a very long story shorter. I started writing specs for everything. I started sending letters. Remember? No, no, no Internet, no right way of contacting anybody. And, and if you guys remember, if you're old enough to remember, you can't, you can't get in to see anybody if you know, you know, sometimes even if you are somebody, you can't get in. So I started writing letters and I also started hanging out at the Improv in New York, giving freak jokes to comics. And they let me know what producers were coming in from the West Coast. So it would be kind of like I'd wait outside the Improv and when the producers were leaving, I'd run after them, my script in my hand, and like a baton piss in a relay race, get in their hands. We can't read this. You gotta sign a waiver. And one guy, Tom Patchett, he said, look, I'll send you a waiver send me a script. I did. It was a mesh. That was my first spec. Was a mesh. He said, this is not bad. Get yourself an agent. So now I look up agent in the phone book, remember? And I send her the script. She says, this is pretty good. I'm going to send it to the producer. So again, I'm ignorant. I don't know anything about show business. I told my wife, Karen, I said, I think we're going to Hollywood because.

[Danielle Fishel]

The agent's sending it to the Bronx.

[Will Friedle]

Sold our home and bought it.

[Gary H. Miller]

By this time, we had moved way, way out, away from New York in western New Jersey. We're living in the woods, and the mailbox was across the road. And I'd go every day for the letter saying, you know, come to Hollywood.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, wait, I have to ask. Do you remember what your MASH was about? Do you remember the specific?

[Gary H. Miller]

The title was called Mistress Fever.

[Will Friedle]

Okay.

[Gary H. Miller]

It was about. Frank's wife was coming for a visit, Louise. And, well, there's. You know. And they didn't know what to do with. What was the mistress?

[Will Friedle]

With Hot Lips? With Houlahan.

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah. And so they. They concocted that she had some kind of illness, and they try to keep her away from the wife. I remember. I haven't said, that's great.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, that's great.

[Gary H. Miller]

It's pretty mediocre, Joker. So I. I then got very frustrated. I start churning out spec scripts for Three's Company. Welcome Back, Tyler, Barney Miller. All the shows of that day. Yeah. With no results and getting very disheartened. I start writing letters. Fred Silverman, abc. He said, we need new blood. We need new writer. I said, well, if you need new writers, I'm the guy for you, right? Send it out. Fred Silverman, Hollywood, California. And we pretty much get 10,000 unsolicited scripts and letters. One day, Guy calls me from abc. He said, I don't know why Fred wants me to do this, because he's not. He's leaving. He's going to NBC. But he wants you to write a script for Laverne Shirley or Happy Days. Those are our two big shows. And we'll see that the producers read it. So it's okay. So I write a Laverne and Shirley and send it in, and then I start writing, and I get nothing. Nothing. Six months go by. I go to that mailbox. The mailbox says, leave me alone.

[Danielle Fishel]

Stop coming to me.

[Gary H. Miller]

So I start writing letters to Gary Marshall. I'm funny, and I start writing funny letters. And, okay, here's another Detour. So I mentioned that my daughter was born with impairment, and I was very despondent at this time. She was an infant. I was holding her in my arms, and she had seizures. That was her problem. I'm holding her in my arms. Get this. You couldn't write it. I'm watching Laverne and Cheryl. It's a Tuesday night, right? She's in my arms. She's having a seizure. We call the doctor, and he says, look, if she has another seizure, you got to bring it into the hospital tomorrow, okay? And I go off to work in New York, which is 60 miles away, and all day I'm expecting to call from my wife to say the baby had a seizure. You got to come to the hospital. So the assistant principal comes into the gym, had a gym full of 100 maniac kids running around, and she says, Mr. Miller, it's a call for you. I said, I know, I know. And I somberly walk to get the phone, think it's my wife, and it's Gary Marshall's office.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh, my gosh.

[Gary H. Miller]

Telling me they want me to come be a writer. Wow.

[Will Friedle]

They called your school. Gary Marshall's office called your school?

[Gary H. Miller]

Well, yeah.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, my.

[Danielle Fishel]

Wow.

[Ryder Strong]

Wow.

[Will Friedle]

So did you. Did you then go to the set of Laverne and Shirley, which is arguably one of the most famous and contentious sets in the history of Hollywood?

[Gary H. Miller]

I didn't know what to do. I mean, I knew I had to go. Now, mind you, civil servant, eight years in the system, and I was known as Crazy Mr. Miller because I was always be writing whenever I could, you know? And they say, what are you doing? I said, well, one day, I'm gonna. I'm gonna make it. You know, that kind of stuff. And. And when it happened, it was, like, you know, pretty unbelievable. And I remember one teacher, Charlie Vermillion, he stops me in the hall. Now, mind you, this is back in the 70s, and kids didn't just pass from one class to the other. You took your life in your hands if you were in the hallway during class. And so Charlie grabs me. He says, gary, you got eight years in the system. You can retire in nine more years. What are you doing? I said, charlie, I'm going to be working on the number one show in all of television.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah. Oh.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh, my gosh, man. Did your daughter have another seizure that day? Did you. Did she also end up at the hospital or.

[Gary H. Miller]

No, no, no.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, thank God.

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah, she's still to this day. I mean, my daughter is Jacqueline. You guys know her?

[Danielle Fishel]

I know I know. I just wanted that day I needed that story to wrap up. You were expecting that phone call. You didn't get that phone call that day.

[Gary H. Miller]

So you talk about ying and yang, whatever this. So it was tempered, you know, because there was still issue with our child, you know, which has always been an issue, but a lot of us deal with. With, you know, personal issues, but that story. And so, you know, some years later, I said to one of the supervising producers at the time, who became a good friend of mine, Phil Mishkin, I said, how did I get hired? All these writers in our city, Los Angeles, right. Are vying to be the next writer on Vernon Shirley. Why did he hire me? And Gary Marshall said, give me the school teacher who writes me the funny letters.

[Danielle Fishel]

Wow.

[Gary H. Miller]

Didn't make a reference to the script. The funny letters.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right. He liked your letters.

[Gary H. Miller]

And every time I saw Gary and I did see him, we. We didn't develop any kind of relationship. But I would see him from time to time in the town. And every time I'd say, thank you, thank you, thank you. And as I got later into my.

[Ryder Strong]

Career, I would say, I think exactly.

[Danielle Fishel]

Another show we wanted to talk to you about was Bosom Buddies. It has come up before on this podcast in regards to just being one of the perfect Tom Hanks, perfect sitcom acting. Did you get to work with him directly at all when he was that green?

[Gary H. Miller]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The two. Look, let's not give Peter short shrift. These two. These two were great together.

[Will Friedle]

Yep.

[Gary H. Miller]

It's not sad. Peter went on to have a good career, but he kind of became a little bit of a joke because you. One guy's Tom Hanks, One buddies becomes Tom Hanks, and the other becomes Peter Scolari. And certainly have different types of careers, but they were great together.

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah, they were.

[Will Friedle]

They were.

[Gary H. Miller]

You guys. When the stuff hit the stage, they made it better. This was really impressed me. You know, I would write something that. We would write something as writers, and these guys just took it to another level. And it's a great feeling when that happens because, you know, a lot of times it doesn't. A lot of times it goes the other way. And. And they were terrific. And, you know, they would. They were new. They. They were so fresh, they were so young. Nobody knew them. You know, Tom and I, we had a Bruce Springsteen relationship that we were both crazy fans. I mean, we never met Bruce Springsteen. And I used to have the old Norelco cassette recorder, and Tom would come into my office to listen to my Springsteen tapes, right? Yeah. We used to have this thing where there's a song called Jungle Land by Bruce Springsteen and there's a certain lyric. And Tom and I used to see who could say this lyric the quickest. And the lyric is, I'll probably botch it. Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of the Dodge drinking warm beer in the soft summer night's rain. You know, and we try to say it faster than you. So, you know, lo and behold, he goes on to become one of Bruce Springsteen's best friends. I see him on a yacht with Bruce Springsteen and everybody else, you know what I mean? And I'm waiting online for 10 hours to get know. But Tom, when ABC let them go, you know, we only, we were only on for two seats.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah, yeah. That was one of the shows that was criminally canceled earlier today to have a tough time.

[Gary H. Miller]

I mean, guys dressing in dress. Yeah, going to do that. But we knew we were funny and we were hip funny. We were reference funny, you know what I mean? We had a run where we mentioned somebody in the script and they would die for some reason, reason next, next week or something like that, you know. But we really prided ourselves on being very hip. And to this day we still have a kind of a cult audience in a sense.

[Will Friedle]

I'm one of them.

[Gary H. Miller]

And Peter, I mean, you know, Peter, when I was consulting producer on Reba, there was a part for Peter and I made sure that Peter got it. So Peter did Ariba and he was in the same scene with my son Max, who had dialogue in that scene. So it was really a treat for me to work with you.

[Danielle Fishel]

Also made stops over at 9 to 5, give me a Break and A Different World. And then you jumped over to a sitcom starring an award winning rapper who had never acted on TV before with the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Did you like, was it obvious right from the beginning he was going to be a sitcom star?

[Gary H. Miller]

Yes. Yeah, you could, yes, you could just see it. Although we had a very interesting relationship of the two seasons that I was.

[Danielle Fishel]

You and Will Smith, when I took.

[Gary H. Miller]

Over the show, he kind of had his own way all the time. And I said, look, I, I, I'm not like that. I said so, you know, he said, and he, I think he respected that. And I told him things like, look, you're telegraphing your joke because you don't, you don't have confidence in it. So you're touching the actor in the scene with you right before the joke. It's a thing you do, a habit. You do that. I know the joke is coming next. You should, you know, stuff like that. You know, that we discussed. I made him sit and watch. He hated this. The old Sergeant Bilko series. You'll never get rich with Phil Silvis.

[Will Friedle]

Great show.

[Gary H. Miller]

I said, watch this guy. Watch this guy drive an episode. No matter how flimsy the storyline is. It's like a moving train and he takes everybody on the train with him and you get to the end. I said, that's the kind of energy we need in 22 minutes. Slow time in a 22 minute show is deadly. It really.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Not to say you can't have your moments. Right. But you know what I mean, you just need. And you know, when you edit the show too, that's what you look for. Again, we're in a 22 minute play, beginning, middle and end. I mean, that's why so many of your discussions and your, your, your listeners discussions about, well, what happened to this and what happened to that and how could they leave this out and what's that. But, but as you know, the process is, is hard and half hours. Well, I don't know why we call it half hours. The 22 minutes.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Are harder than hours. And if you think about it, the big, the big great sitcoms that did their finales is an hour. It kind of bombed.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

The Seinfeld hour wasn't good. I think the Cheers hour wasn't good. So what happens when I take over Fresh Prince? They tell me, we want you to write an hour opening season show.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh.

[Gary H. Miller]

Oh, man. Right. What I did. And, and you know, it was pretty good and had the funniest scene I've ever written was in there. It was called the bungee jump scene. And that seemed to work. But. Yeah. I can tell you a lot about Fresh Prince, about Will. I don't know, I might need an attorney.

[Danielle Fishel]

We don't want you to need an attorney, that's for sure. And then you enter the Boy Meets World universe in season five with, I mean, which might. Is a little bit of a step down from everything else you had been working on. How did you end up in the Boy Meets World universe?

[Gary H. Miller]

Well, it was odd. I mean, I, I did, I was showrunner Fresh, principally, I just, I guess, same time you guys were on the air.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Right. 94, you were on the air, right?

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

So we were on concurrently. And you know, that's got its clout. And then I went from there. I had a, an Overall deal at 20th and, and, and then I was contacted by an executive at Disney, David Himmelforce. I don't know if you could.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah. Remember the name.

[Gary H. Miller]

Sure, yeah. And don't remember how the conversation went, but it was in the fifth season when there's a little bit of turmoil. There was a change in the guard that eventually happened, of course, as you know, and. And that's when they signed me in as a consulting producer. So I came aboard in the fifth season, kind of just after the fifth season at had started and, you know, Michael hadn't been there yet, and then he took over shortly after I got there. And then. Okay, that adjustment had to be made in terms of dealing with. With Michael Jacobs. And I found the staff really nice, great friends. We, we were close knit. I met friends that I still have to this day. Jeff Mannell is my closest friend.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

You know, what a wonderful guy he is.

[Danielle Fishel]

The best.

[Gary H. Miller]

I. I became terrific friends with Bob Tischler. Great guy. We, we wound up writing together for the last 20 years. We have a book on Amazon we wrote together.

[Danielle Fishel]

You and Bob?

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah, romantic comedy called Impossible. And when we lost him suddenly last springtime, it was devastating. And I, I still feel his loss every day. He's just such a great friend. But that's all boy meets world stuff, you know, Like I said, no things happen in life and you meet different people. And Allison Gibson, she hired me to work with her on Reba. So, you know, you know how it works.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah, those connections, you meet mate with people and some of them are in your life forever.

[Gary H. Miller]

But it's interesting, Danielle, that you mentioned, you know, it being a step down. It was different because most of the staff people in Burmese world were either young or they were kind of Michael disciples in a sense, you know. And so now suddenly, Bob Tischler, who was also a showrunner, and myself two showrunners, now we're on staff, you know, and, and possibly with different attitudes than mostly everybody else. Not that they really want to do good work, of course. That's always the goal. But, you know, it was. It was an interesting dynamic. Bob and I kind of had a little bit of sympatico there. How to deal with things.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right.

[Gary H. Miller]

Wow.

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[Danielle Fishel]

So had you seen Boy Meets World before you became a consulting producer on it? Had you? Did they give you VHS tapes to help you prep?

[Will Friedle]

Did they sell you VHS tapes of the show?

[Danielle Fishel]

Because we bought ours.

[Gary H. Miller]

They gave me drawings and I tried.

[Danielle Fishel]

Okay, they gave you a comic book, animatic Perfect.

[Gary H. Miller]

No, you know what? I don't remember. What I usually do if I. If. If I get hired on a show that I don't know about or if I'm up for a show I don't know about is, you know, watch 10 episodes, seven episodes, or last season, I did that with A Different World, too. I hadn't been watching A Different World, and you kind of cram and you. You watch and you get a. A feel for it. But yours is so different because you guys are growing up. You know, every year it's different. You're different people, in a sense, different values, different objects of what you want to do, and relationships change and all that. So it was a very interesting show, and I am very pleased with some of the episodes that I wrote for the show. Really? I think we can get to talk to it sometime later.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Chat. Dying episode is one of my favorites that I've ever done.

[Danielle Fishel]

We haven't gotten to that episode yet, so we have not seen it.

[Will Friedle]

Dies. Wait a minute.

[Gary H. Miller]

No, he comes back later.

[Will Friedle]

That's true. Yeah.

[Ryder Strong]

Get rid of Blake.

[Will Friedle]

You can't. He's too good.

[Danielle Fishel]

So in your first season, season five, you write an episode late in the show, order the controversial and somewhat banned if you can't be with the one you love. Do you remember the genesis of that very kind of adult theme? Was it your idea?

[Gary H. Miller]

Okay, here we go. First of all, I'm sorry, we're all losing out on residuals on that episode.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right.

[Gary H. Miller]

Ironically, my first on air, Laverne and Shirley script that aired on television was called what do you do with a drunken sailor? And it was about. It was a kind of a serious Laverne Shirley, where her brother Bobby, played by Ed Begley Jr. Comes home on leave, and he's got a drinking problem. So it was in my pedigree through those kinds of stories, and I've also gravitated on my career. I've done some real serious, what they call the special episodes, some serious stuff, especially Different World. I did a racial violence episode when I took over Fresh Prince. I said, we joke about it, him not having a father. Let's bring his father back. We brought his father back.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, it was a great episode. It's like one of the most famous episodes.

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah. So I kind of gravitate towards some serious themes. I figured that at Corey's age, young kid, boy like that, being the feelings he had about Topanga and being, you know, separated from her would lead to some experimentation of a kind, especially since he was considered Depressing and everybody was on his case, and so on and so forth. So I can't exactly remember if it was my idea. It probably was because of my history with that. But I can tell you that this episode is a story of two acts. Acts a acts. The first act is pretty true to my draft. I have my draft. I'd love to send it to you.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yes.

[Gary H. Miller]

Secondary goes off into Michael Jacobs land.

[Danielle Fishel]

Okay.

[Gary H. Miller]

Right. Let me give you an example. I. I listened to your. Your discussion. Will, you're not in the episode.

[Will Friedle]

No.

[Gary H. Miller]

In my script, you're in three scenes and in both acts. And not only are you in both acts, you're in the climactic act with Sean and Jack and Corey in the apartment.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Jack enlightens Sean about the predisposition, the genetic predisposition, and how serious it is. And that he hit Jack's mother. And that's what turns Sean. The girls weren't even in that scene in my screen. So the heat that I might take because Sean throws Angela against the wall was never my script. I wouldn't put it in my script. And I cringe every time I see it. I don't know how you feel about it, Brian, but it upsets me because my name's on that script. You know, there's a lot of shoving in that episode that wasn't in my draft. So I don't know where the penchant for shoving people comes from. So that's one thing I certainly wanted to point out. The other thing is that the family's more involved in promoting. There's a scene before Corey goes to the party where Alan basically says, you know what? You are depressing everybody. Do something about it. You know, like a father's eye. And that's the. That's when Corey goes and gets the alcohol and shows up. There's also another family scene after the cop car shows up where Amy's worried they're out late. And Alan says, don't, don't worry that we told him to have fun. He's having fun. Let them be. And then they get the call. So. Yeah. And then the second act goes from where it was. But also in the second act, in my draft, I have Feeney being much more instrumental in helping Sean. Feeney goes to Sean. He gives him a card for a doctor to call. Dr. Kramer. Call him. He can help you with this. And then after Sean is enlightened by Jack, Sean eventually does go for help. And the last scene is. I have it written. I look at the script sometime later, not the Next day. So all those things about, well, how could this. Why would he. He's drunk one day, he's not drunk the next day. No, there's a pass. It's real hard to show that, you know, if you could write it in a script. Right. Unless you say sometime later, you know.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah. And a chiron. Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

So that. Those are some of the broad strokes about that episode.

[Ryder Strong]

Wow.

[Danielle Fishel]

Wow.

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah. I remember we. Our feeling was like, this should have been a two parter or, you know, he was trying to cram so much into it. Yeah. So it sounds like the Angela Factor was like layered in after your draft and it just trying to do too much. So much.

[Gary H. Miller]

Her reaction. I couldn't stand her reaction. If I were writing that scene and you shoved her, you would hear about it right there in a moment. She wouldn't, you know, slink away and cower and say, late. I sure love you when you don't drink. She'd tell you off in no uncertain terms is what she would do. So again, those are choices. I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just revealing the way.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Will Friedle]

Now, how much say in the room did you have? If there was something that, you know, from your original draft you felt very strongly about? Is that something that if you fought for it would stay in? Or was it kind of, hey, this is. We're changing it and that's just the way it is. I mean, we all know it's Michael show at the end of the day and he gets to do what he wants. And that's what. One of the things you get when you're in the big chair is you just. That's. That's how it works. I mean, so is it something that if you had gone in and really fought for it, it would have changed, or is it kind of like, no, this is, this is where we're taking.

[Gary H. Miller]

I don't remember. I certainly know the shoving scene really bothered me and I don't recall if I expressed that or not. I might have. I certainly never held myself back when I wanted to express myself. But as you said, it wasn't my show. Right. Not the show. I've been a showrunner, so I know both sides of it. I know that side and I know this side and I know the writer's side and I know, you know, all the pressure you get from. From executives and studios and all that stuff, however it, it bothered me and, and obviously it didn't bother anybody else enough that because it stayed in and you know, sometimes I wonder, I said, why wasn't there a network note about that? I mean, why. Why was that condoned?

[Danielle Fishel]

Right.

[Gary H. Miller]

Of course you couldn't. You'd have a hard time doing that scene today.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Gary H. Miller]

I mean, Ryder, how do you feel?

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah, I mean, I remember it all just felt too much like that scene in particular was like, oh, we're going to compress this revelation about his dad and, you know, basically make Sean an angry alcoholic, you know, abusive. I think the. I guess for me, if you're going to do that, it just never felt like the consequences were resolved in a way that empowered Angela. It was always like, oh, Angela. Getting hurt was a way for Shawn to change and for him to come to a realization, as opposed for it to be a moment of like, oh, Shawn needs. You know, if you're going to hurt somebody, have her stand up for herself a little bit or have her affect the change in Shawn, as opposed to just kind of being a prop, you know. Unfortunately, Angela, especially at that point in the series, she didn't have much of a character. She didn't have much of a voice. I mean, now we're seeing in the season six stuff there is, you know, they've developed her and now Corey finally talks to her, for instance. But back then, you know, she was just kind of brought in. Her first couple episodes were great, but then I feel like the rest of season five, she does not have enough of a presence, you know, that it's not written to. So. Yeah, so that bothers me.

[Gary H. Miller]

But I agree 100% with you. It should have been a more elaborate episode to, you know, two episodes, to say the least, because kind of gives, you know, I have an award here for the episode. So any. Anytime you tackle something like that, sometimes you'll get an award for it because there is some good stuff in that, obviously.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

But it gives it short shrift. It's just right, you know, and that's what's wrong sometimes it's sitcom is one episode, oh, wasn't his ear cut off last week? And that was years back.

[Ryder Strong]

Right, right.

[Gary H. Miller]

We got to carry these things through. You know what I mean?

[Will Friedle]

Well, there was no streaming at the time, so weeks would go by, if not months would go by, you'd forget what happened, you know, hey, two seasons ago. Like, we always joke about mash, where it's like, at one point everybody's wife was named Louise, and then there was change to Mildred, and Sean had sisters and a brother and this. And so when the idea of streaming didn't even exist, even the idea of we can watch these back to back to back to back to back. You're writing it, and you kind of. Okay, I'm kind of forgetting some of the details of the stuff we did before, and you just kind of move on with it for what you need that week. And now that we're streaming all the old shows, it's like, wow. Oh, okay. There's not a whole lot of consistency in some of these.

[Danielle Fishel]

Well, and when we interviewed, when we had the Brah Meets World guys on, and I remember being very. Feeling very poignant when they pointed out that what it felt like to see the only woman of color on the show be the one treated in that way.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Danielle Fishel]

And how that comes across to the audience and how that adds a layer to it that certainly I had never thought of, but hearing them say it was like, yeah, absolutely. What kind of a message does that send to the people watching? So I can see, of course, why that would bother you, and it's very interesting. Thank you for providing that perspective for us, too, because we have had, you know, a lot of writers on, and we've often talked about how the writer whose name is on the script, they are always almost like, oh, well, that really funny thing you're talking about. Oh, that. That you don't give me all the credit for it. It was a group effort. But it also can happen in the reverse way, where your name is on a script and something is in there that you do not like, that you're not proud of, of that you actually completely do not agree with, and yet people want to then give it to you and say, well, you're the one who wrote it. And. And we haven't really had that perspective on this show before, so thank you for one. Your honesty in telling us about that. And. And, you know, bringing that up for us, because it's a perspective we have not experienced on the show before.

[Gary H. Miller]

Okay, thank you. The Burmese world guys, they interviewed me.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

And we had a really good time. And. And. And why what you're. What they said about that moment with Angela really hits home with me again.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Because part of what they said to me was, as two young black men, how a lot of the episodes I wrote, especially in a Different World, really affected them and their families and their community. You know, thank me.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right. In a positive way.

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah. Thank me for the. The messages in the. In those episodes. And then, you know, for. For them to think, what Gary Miller. What is he doing to this black woman? You know? Right. So. Yeah. That you have no voice. And I guess this is kind of a voice. So a little bit of rebuttal, right?

[Danielle Fishel]

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[Danielle Fishel]

So then in season six, we just watched your episode, your script of that season. You're married, you're dead. I am assuming that that was may script that had it been for anything other than for a family show on Friday nights, probably would have taken place in a strip club. Is that correct?

[Gary H. Miller]

That's exactly right. You know, and again, I'm guilty. Wrong. Wrong arena for that show. But again, he's a college kid. I know college kids. Do they go to strip clubs? So it was a strip club. In my draft, it got changed. In fact, in my draft, I think it said the women are scantily clad, as network standards and practices will allow.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right, right.

[Gary H. Miller]

Caveat I put in there and, you know, I got chains at Club Cleavage. And then by the end, the girls were dressing like nuns. It wasn't. It was like, who does life right?

[Danielle Fishel]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

You talk about the change in an episode. Now, I'm not defending that episode, so. Not like I would defend the drinking show or anything else. I thought it was kind of fun. But the whole Eric, Jack, Rachel storyline was completely new.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Script. They were vying for her attention and they hired a college. A buff college guy to woo Rachel because their theory was she's more susceptible on the rebound. So we get this fellow dumper and then one of us moves in. That was that storyline. How they.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh, my gosh.

[Gary H. Miller]

How they wound up in Club Clevage, I don't remember.

[Ryder Strong]

It's funny because I actually really like the idea of having the sort of male version of eye candy coming in. You know, like having a buff guy. Because then you have like a mirror storyline. Yeah, you have. And how they would think that that's how she would think. But, you know, we just gotta.

[Gary H. Miller]

We should write together.

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah, that's good.

[Danielle Fishel]

Here's a question. Did you create the tushy dance?

[Will Friedle]

No, no, no, no.

[Gary H. Miller]

You know, I watched the episode and I laughed. I said, this is a cute episode. You know, sometimes we'll get, you know, too analytical, too serious and forget what we're doing here, you know?

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

And I. I listen to you guys enough to know there's a lot of times when, you know, the comedy is. Is suspect in a sense. But, you know, it is a sitcom and you do need to do that. Otherwise you have drama. So it's always hard to do the balance. You know, you have a special episode. Then again.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah, we struggle with that same thing we do struggle with trying to. To not. Sometimes we take it too seriously. We know we take it too seriously, but then, you know, that's what we're doing, is we're analyzing a show. That's the point of kind of what we're doing.

[Danielle Fishel]

We also have said several times we do not reference enough how unbelievably difficult it is to churn out 22 scripts or sometimes 24 scripts. Yeah, yeah. At the breakneck speed that you guys are doing it and receiving notes from network and standards and practices and your actors who are, you know, having opinions about things like, you know, you're. You're not gonna please everybody. And not every one of them is gonna be, oh, wow, love this. A plus. You know, sometimes you're just gonna have an episode that exists, and that is gonna be what it is.

[Will Friedle]

Sometimes Henry Winkler is literally jumping the shark. Can happen.

[Gary H. Miller]

Listen. And you don't know where the notes are coming from.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

And again, I'll talk out of school. I got nothing to lose anymore. When we went on Reba, by the way, a little history on Reba, Allison was writing that pilot while she was on. On our show.

[Danielle Fishel]

Okay. Allison Gibson.

[Gary H. Miller]

Allison Gibson. We became friends. She was in the office next to me, and she was telling me about it. And then when she went to pilot on it, I did a little work with her on it. She need a little punch and stuff like that. So I worked with her, and then she eventually hired me on the show. And Reba McIntyre's husband at the time was Narville Blackstock. If you want to create a villain's name, there it is.

[Ryder Strong]

I was gonna say, great name.

[Gary H. Miller]

Great name.

[Will Friedle]

He's trying to steal the sudden.

[Gary H. Miller]

He used to be, I think, the keyboard player in a band or the bass player, Right. But no more. Now he's her husband, and he's the first guy to give notes after a table read. Wow. And me, as a veteran writer, I've been to all the wars since 1979. I said, we're taking notes from the keyboard. And then way at the end, when it got really ugly, they called me in for a meeting, and Narvel Blackstock said to me, you know that episode, the football episode that we all hate? I said, yeah. He said, I can't believe you could go home and sleep at night. And knowing my wife had to stay on stage and say that, that stuff, embarrass herself like that. And I said, narvel, let me explain something to you. It wasn't a good episode. But sometimes we spend more time on a lousy episode than we do on a good episode because we can't find it, you know, so it's painstaking and it doesn't work out well. But getting back to what you mentioned about when you're doing 22 a season, you're gonna have some clunkers.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Everybody's got to understand that. And. And that's part of the. The deal. It's part of the experience.

[Will Friedle]

And that's for every show in the history of Hollywood. There's no. It's like. It's like finding a boxer who's fought for 12 years and never lost. It doesn't exist. You have good episodes and bad episodes, and your favorite show in the history of the world, whatever it is, has had bad episodes too. So it's just the way it works. Yeah.

[Danielle Fishel]

So no spoilers. We already heard a spoiler about Chet dying because.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, my God.

[Gary H. Miller]

That was on tv.

[Danielle Fishel]

We just haven't watched it since it was on. Spoiler for us because we have not seen it since the 90s. Writers never watched it. So this. It will be writer's first time seeing it. It'll be Will and I, only our second time see, seeing it ever.

[Gary H. Miller]

I can give you a little tease for it.

[Danielle Fishel]

Okay. Okay.

[Gary H. Miller]

Please.

[Danielle Fishel]

It's. It's called we'll have a good time Then. Right. Okay.

[Gary H. Miller]

A lot of. A lot of my scripts, I'll use song lyrics.

[Will Friedle]

That's from Cats in the Cradle, right?

[Danielle Fishel]

Best song.

[Gary H. Miller]

I'm a big Harry Chapman fan, and I thought of his lyrics. Actually, the alcohol shows was from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young Love. The one you're with Y. Yeah.

[Ryder Strong]

Right.

[Gary H. Miller]

So I told this to you, Rider on the strike line. Maybe you don't recall or remember. At the table read for the. For the Chet Dying show. Ryder wasn't there. He couldn't make it. He was sick. For some reason, he wasn't at the table. And Matt Nelson read writer's part and love Matt Nelson. Great guy, rest in peace, but not writer strong. And the script tanked at the table. It did. And I knew this is a damn good script, you know, and so. And I was experienced enough to know that it was still a good script. And I didn't need ABC executives to tell me whether it was good or not. I know. And I said, it's not a good experience where you don't have the lead guy in the show.

[Will Friedle]

Not exactly.

[Gary H. Miller]

You know, and so I'll leave it at that, because I will save what Michael Jacobs said right after the read and in the room with everybody there. How's that for a tea?

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh, yeah.

[Will Friedle]

What did he say?

[Gary H. Miller]

He held up the script and said, I know what's wrong with this and I can fix it. I'm sitting right next to him. And instead of saying, you know, Ryder couldn't be here today, so, you know, so, yeah, that's the kind of stuff that, you know, comes with the territory in a sense.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

And Ryder, to your credit, when we went up and started making changes and you said to Michael, I really like what was here before back to, you know, and, and again, that's, I think I wrote five episodes for the show, but that's by far my favorite. I, I, I think Rachel has a much more significant role as a person in that script than she normally has, although she is still a sex object. That's, that's the mantle that, that we bear. But, but anyway, that we can talk about that when we talk about it.

[Danielle Fishel]

You mentioned that you, you knew you have kind of a reputation for writing these very kind of poignant, heavier. Did you recognize it? Yeah. Very special episodes. Did you recognize it at the time? And where do you think that comes from with you?

[Gary H. Miller]

I don't know, because I really pride myself and this may sound egotistical and somewhat cocky, but I've always felt like I'm the funniest guy in any room I'm in and I write real funny stuff. But at the same time, I've been able to go into those areas again with the parameters of a sitcom and deal with really, really hard issues. The racial violence episode I wrote for Different World couldn't even air it today because of what the content is, the things that are said that we don't say anymore, you know, and it was as controversial as an episode. Could be very proud of it. And there used to be a, I think he was a, a doctor professor at Harvard or, or, or, or Yale. Dr. Alvin Poussaint. And he basically was the spokesperson for the black community, for want of a better description. And one script I wrote about, which was about a restricted country club, again, a different world. One of our characters was asked to join a white club and son had a problem with it. And it was about tokenism and all that stuff. Right. Sitcom. And he said, this is one of the hardest hitting episodes on race I've ever read. I hope it's well accepted. So that's the kind of thing that, you know, I, I like, but at the same time I go, wait, I'm right. One of those accolades but, you know, they're good, too. They're good and they're satisfying, and sometimes they're more meaningful than writing a great joke.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

Although great joke is a great joke.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Danielle Fishel]

What do you think, Speaking of jokes, what do you think gives you more satisfaction getting a laugh from the audience or getting a laugh from the writers room?

[Gary H. Miller]

Oh, the audience in the writers room. We're too beat up in the writer's room, too.

[Danielle Fishel]

Nobody's laughing.

[Gary H. Miller]

There's nothing coming out of writer's room that you can really apply to anything else. We're all worn out. And then, you know, there's other stuff going on in the writer's room. There's. There's competition, there's jealousy, there's anger. But a great joke, when you write a great line. I. I love great lines. I. I thought I had written down something that Eric said in. In the episode that he's not in.

[Will Friedle]

Oh.

[Danielle Fishel]

From your script. That he wasn't.

[Gary H. Miller]

But, you know, I don't seem to have.

[Will Friedle]

I can't wait to read that draft, though.

[Gary H. Miller]

I can't read this draft.

[Will Friedle]

Please.

[Gary H. Miller]

You can see what I'm talking about. We could rename it A Tale of Two Acts, because we would love.

[Danielle Fishel]

That Certainly is.

[Will Friedle]

So I have. I have a question for you, then. With all the work you've done. Is there. And not saying to take anything away from any room you've been in, but when you look back, what do you think was the funniest writers room you've ever been involved in?

[Gary H. Miller]

I love the Boy Meets World people I work with. I really do. I'm saying that because it's your show, but I think Bosom Buddies Writers room was so tough, guys would get up and cry. I mean, we were so brutal with each other, but there was just some magical comedy coming out of it.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

And it had to do. Chris Thompson created it. Chris has gone to. He was a dear friend of mine, and, you know, he sets the tone for what the show. Show should be. But Boy Meets World is close. I had a good room on Fresh Prince. Different World was a bit more serious. Give me a break. So. So that stuff. So I'd say Bosom Buddies, and then. Then you got some.

[Danielle Fishel]

Wow, that's good company to be in hell.

[Will Friedle]

Yes.

[Gary H. Miller]

So I think you guys have been blessed by some really good writing and at times, some not so good writing.

[Danielle Fishel]

You mentioned your dear friendship with Bob Tischler. And you mentioned the book. You guys wrote a book called Impossible. And unfortunately, as you also mentioned, we lost Bob last year. So we will not have the opportunity to have him on our podcast. So we wanted to ask you, as a dear friend of his, what would you like people to know about Bob?

[Gary H. Miller]

Wow, I wish I was prepared for this. You know, you guys have been on a while with this podcast and Bob and I were always planning to come on together, really. And, you know, because we had some great stories and we probably have more courage together to tell some of those stories because, you know, certain people aren't going to like those stories.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right.

[Gary H. Miller]

But anyway, but Bob, Bob is a wonderful human being. He was giving, he was caring. I'll give you one example that Bob Tischel did on Boyman's World. Okay. There was a pilot written by two of our young writers. He stuck up for these two writers whose pilot was being co opted by another source. And I was standing there and saw him do this. It was in that moment my, my respect for Bob Sword. I said, this is, this is a guy, you know, because he's just a decent human being and a great writer. You know, Bob, Bob produced Saturday Night Live. He was a writer.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

He's got a great pedigree. And, you know, I guess we were, we were joined at the hip hop boy Meets world because we were two of the older guys, we were two former showrunners. And now we were thrust into this, this very particular set of circumstances in terms of the creative aspects of the show. And, you know, we bonded. And then of course, in harder times as we got older and you know, there's ageism in the industry, we wrote out, we wrote scripts and screenplays and pilots and pitched here and there, you know, and then eventually we wrote our book and didn't make any money, but he was a great guy. And when I got really sick, he was there for me. And when he got really sick, I tried to be there as best I could for him, but, you know, lost a great friend.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah. I'm sorry for your loss.

[Will Friedle]

Well, we. We often talk about one of our biggest regrets is not realizing or being able to. To see the talent that we had writing for us at the time and to be able to sit down and, and talk to you all about, I mean, again, Danielle will come on and, you know, reading your resume, and I'm just sitting there going, I can't believe I didn't get. I would sit there and would have peppered you with questions about Laverne and Shirley and all stuff. And we just didn't know. We were young and wrapped up in.

[Danielle Fishel]

Ourselves and IMDb didn't exist. We didn't, we didn't know to ask for your cvs. Yeah.

[Will Friedle]

I'm so sorry that we didn't have more respect for the, the men and women that were actually putting the words in our mouth because what a staff we had. And we just, we didn't know.

[Gary H. Miller]

Everybody has their own story, you know, mine, as I said, it's kind of like kind of Cinderella ish, in a sense. You know, Kermit the Frog goes to Hollywood. You know, I grew up a working class kid in Brooklyn and the last thing ever in my mind was that I would one day be doing this, you know? Yeah, that. So that, that's, you know, that's the nature of it all. And same thing goes for you guys. You know, you all have individual stories and, and things happen and things. Life takes many turns. I mean, I'm going to be 77 on Saturday.

[Danielle Fishel]

Wow.

[Will Friedle]

Hey, happy birthday.

[Danielle Fishel]

Happy birthday.

[Gary H. Miller]

So I guess I'm one of those guys who said, I, I've seen it all and yet I haven't seen anything yet.

[Danielle Fishel]

Well, here we are 30 years later, still talking about that Boy Meets World.

[Gary H. Miller]

That's the most amazing part. Yeah, I know it's 30 years because the last season, in February of last season, my youngest child, Alexandra, and she just turned 25, so. Yeah, but there's a good barometer for how long?

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah, exactly. What do you think is the reason why Boy Meets World still resonates with all these generations?

[Gary H. Miller]

I gotta give Michael his props there for keeping that show alive for all those seasons. You know, that's no small feat.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

And of course, the creative talents that were involved in working the storylines and the episodes and the arcs, but it's mostly you guys. You cannot substitute talent. You can't substitute for talent and likability. And I'm really stressing likability. All of you are all likable characters. People loved you, people rooted for you, People became invested in you. And that's good because. That's good because it allows the audience to escape and.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Gary H. Miller]

To feel something else and feel. And I think that's the magic of it. And you know, you know, writing is great. You know, it's hard and good writing is wonderful. God, look at the stuff that's on today in terms of what's wonderful writing. But great casting. Boy, you just can't. You can't beat it. You just can't. And that's what happened on this show. And Danielle, you know, I listened to the first podcast and what you went through, but thank goodness that the negative part of it didn't happen. And look what happened to you. You became an icon, so.

[Danielle Fishel]

Exactly. I know.

[Gary H. Miller]

And the other side of it is it could have gone south, it could have gone the other way.

[Danielle Fishel]

Absolutely. I very easily could have been let go. And I, it. That show changed my life. And I've, you know, I certainly, every single week I was there, up until about season, midway through season six, every single week I was there was like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.

[Will Friedle]

And then someone flipped off the light.

[Danielle Fishel]

Switch and then I was like, okay, how much longer are we gonna do this?

[Gary H. Miller]

So there's another interesting dynamic to what you're doing now is you're now adults with your own grown up lives and back then you were kids and, and, and, and, and, and, and so I think probably why your podcast is so popular, aside from the show itself, is you, you three and, and how you've changed and what your lives are like. And you know, it's almost looking at your own kids and saying, well, yeah, and they're successful, they're doing things and so on and so forth. So there's added elements to all this. So I don't think Boy Meets World is, can be a pigeonhole as a show. I think it's more of a, of a, of a thing of lifestyle in and of itself. Boy, am I going off, right?

[Will Friedle]

It's cool.

[Danielle Fishel]

It's its own. You're right. It's its own organism.

[Ryder Strong]

It's a cultural phenom of some. Yeah, it definitely goes beyond cultural feeding.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah, there you go. I like that.

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah, I got you. There you go.

[Ryder Strong]

Punch it up.

[Danielle Fishel]

Gary, thank you so much for being here with us, for joining us. You're. We could listen to your stories forever. We appreciate your perspective. We appreciate you coming on and spending your time with us. And I appreciate you for sharing all that stuff about Bob too. And not being able to have him on is going to be really high up on our list of regrets of this show that we didn't have him on sooner and then we missed the opportunity. So thank you for sharing with us a little bit about him. And your book Impossible that you wrote with him is available. I think you can get it on Amazon. So if anybody's interested in reading that, you can, you can find that.

[Gary H. Miller]

Thank you, Gary. It's a fun read, no problems. And I guess I'll speak to you guys soon. About chat, about the chat episode.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah, about chat.

[Gary H. Miller]

Yeah.

[Will Friedle]

We got to know what's going on.

[Danielle Fishel]

I know we haven't seen that episode yet, so it's hard for us to talk about it before. But we can have you back on when that episode comes around so that we can. We can get the behind the scenes scoop on that episode as well.

[Gary H. Miller]

Spoiler alert. Is a hospital with.

[Will Friedle]

Oh, God.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh, God. Is Mr. Turner still there?

[Will Friedle]

He's still just one character after another. Sharing rooms. Nice.

[Ryder Strong]

Oh, God.

[Danielle Fishel]

Wow. Thank you, Gary. We'll have you back to talk about that.

[Ryder Strong]

Great to see you, man.

[Danielle Fishel]

Great to see you.

[Gary H. Miller]

Bye.

[Danielle Fishel]

Oh, man.

[Ryder Strong]

We gotta have another lunch. We gotta have a lunch with him.

[Will Friedle]

I know.

[Danielle Fishel]

We gotta have a lunch with Gary.

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah, just all the lunch. Funny. I had that experience meeting him on the. On the strike line. It was really revelatory. Just because I never talked to Gary when we were back on the show. And there was really kind of. If anything, there was. I thought he was like, not really a writer. I thought he was more like a. I got. Somehow the story got down to me that, like, Gary had to be there and that, you know, so to find out that he was as much of a pro as he was clearly has. But he was just so. You know, he took a backseat on our show. He took a backseat. I had no idea. And so when we saw him on the strike line, we started talking. I was like, oh, you are very aware of what's going on. You are very clearly a creative force to be reckoned with. And I just had no idea.

[Will Friedle]

And.

[Ryder Strong]

Yeah, and he shared with me then, basically, what he shared now is that he just had so much respect for us as actors and was so happy to be writing for us, which at the time, I had no. You know, just took it for granted.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Ryder Strong]

So. Yeah.

[Will Friedle]

Well, don't you remember we. The joke was that we even put in our movie that we thought he was a mob boss because he always.

[Ryder Strong]

Wore sunglasses, he always wears quiet, and he was quiet. And he was from Brooklyn, New Jersey. Guy.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah, exactly. And so that we. We made a joke out of that. But, yeah, we didn't. We just didn't know the caliber of the people that we had. I mean, had I known that this guy had written for Bosom Buddies and Laverne and Shirley, I mean, these are some of the greatest sitcoms in history. So. Yeah, it's one of the things you. Hindsight being what it is, you wish you could go back and just talk to everybody about what's going on.

[Danielle Fishel]

And I really do think it's just so interesting that this is the first time it's been brought up that there could be something you really don't like about a script that has your name on it. Normally it's come up where we're like, oh my gosh, there's something so funny in this. And they're like, hold on, don't give me credit. Like, we haven't had somebody come on and go, my name's on that script and I don't like this. Like, that's kind of. That's one of the first times we've had that perspective.

[Will Friedle]

So do they Alan Smithy in sitcom, too?

[Ryder Strong]

I don't think so.

[Will Friedle]

I don't know if that's even a thing.

[Danielle Fishel]

Do what?

[Will Friedle]

So if a writer doesn't like their director or direct or. But it's also a writer, there'll be scripts where it'll say written by or directed by Alan Smithee, which is just somebody has taken their name off.

[Ryder Strong]

Generic Hollywood.

[Will Friedle]

Generic Hollywood name. So anytime you see that.

[Ryder Strong]

Placeholder.

[Will Friedle]

Yeah.

[Danielle Fishel]

Thank you all for joining us for this episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us on Instagram Pod Meets World show. You can send us your emails podmeetsworldshowmail.com and we've got merch.

[Will Friedle]

Apparently Chet dies merch.

[Danielle Fishel]

Podmeetsworldshow.com will send us out.

[Will Friedle]

We love you all. Pod dismissed. Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast produced and hosted by Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong, executive producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman, executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Tara Sudbaksh, producer Matty Moore, engineer and Boy Meets World superfan Easton Allen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon and you can follow us on Instagram @podmeatsworld show or email us.

[Danielle Fishel]

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[Adam]

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