You've seen him as a guest host on Saturday Night Live, but it's behind the scenes in
television where he has the greatest influence.
When he joined NBC's executive ranks, the network was languishing and it seemed permanently
in third place.
Last season it moved into second place and so far this season, NBC is in first place.
He's a powerful man who has an enormous impact on what we watch on television.
With Rona Barrett today, Brandon Tartikoff.
What an interesting man.
Hi Lisa.
Hi Rona.
How are you?
By the way, you know, he faced a lot of pressures when he was in third place.
I would think being on top now, pressures are just as great.
I've asked him that question.
I also asked his wife that question and I think the interesting thing about Brandon
Tartikoff is that he was taught some wonderful things by his father and that was stick-to-it-iveness.
No matter what, you never quit.
He is a real survivor.
He has survived in his personal life, Hodgkin's disease.
He survived those terrible times when they were in third place with Fred Silverman and
I think that's really what's made him into the kind of guy that he is.
And we're going to meet now, Lily, his wife, who was a former ballerina and Brandon Tartikoff
at age 37.
I used to think that he was able to leave his job at NBC, come home and be Brandon,
but now what's happened is the better he's done, the more consumed he's become.
So he brings his job home.
Your love for television, where do you think it really came from and why?
Well, I know that it came from an immediate connection, love at first sight and as a kid
I was, you know, I did a lot of other things.
I read books, I played sports, I studied and did my schoolwork and everything, but I found
television endlessly fascinating.
I could watch almost anything and have interest in it, even things that, you know, even programs
that were not designed for me.
I mean, I remember staying up late one night I had seen a Playhouse 90 about a home for
unwed mothers and I was eight or nine years old.
I didn't know that you could have a baby and not be married, so television forced my parents
to probably escalate the timetable they were on to give me the facts of life.
Since I've known Grant, he has never fought with his parents, it's weird.
I bet you if you put my parents under sodium pentafol they might blurt out that they were
seriously concerned about me when I was about the age of 12 or 13.
How bad were you?
I wasn't bad in the sense of getting into knife fights and things like that, but I was
always seemed to be finding creative outlets for doing, you know, sometimes innocent but
cruel things to people, pulling practical jokes and going around tormenting my younger
sister, setting up false charities and selling greeting cards and raising the money for myself
and...
Did they ever reprimand you?
I mean, how did they try to, you know, get control of you to set you straight?
Well, they disciplined me.
Ultimately, they sent me off to a school that was very strict.
Were you still allowed to watch television?
There was no television there.
Was this the way they got even?
I don't think they consciously hunted about for school that had no television, but there
was no television and I fondly refer to that period as sort of the dark side of the moon.
There was a gap from 1962 to 66 that there was a lot of television that was going on.
Unless it made it to summer reruns, I didn't get to see it.
When you have Hodgkin's disease, you know, way back then they do things to you and you
just never know how things are going to turn out years later.
Tell me about that time you discovered that you had Hodgkin's disease.
Well, it was a very horrifying type of experience to be 23 years old and walk into a doctor's
office and be told that you had cancer.
Your immediate reaction is, oh my God, I'm going to die.
That you know, I'm 23 years old and I'm going to be one of those people who has, you know,
a bad card dealt to them and that this is it.
And all I could focus on at that period of time is that I'm going to be the best patient
this doctor has ever had.
I'm going to be a patient that this doctor is going to tell other patients about when
he wants to encourage them to get better.
That was the only thing that I could think about.
And when they told me, you know, what I was going to go through and that you were going
to feel nauseous and you're going to not going to be able to go to work some days and we
know you like to play sports and exercise and you're not going to be able to do that
to the extent that you did it before.
My determination was just, well, that was other people and this is now and I'm just
going to beat this thing.
And I certainly felt that I hadn't done what I was supposed to do on this planet.
So I wasn't ready to give up the 23.
I believed in the doctors who were treating me and I believe at the time somebody mentioned
to me the expression the glass is either half full or half empty.
I could either go around bemoaning the fact that I was one of the few people at age 23
who got news like this or I could look at it and say, well, I'm one of the few people
who's been told that they have cancer who can actually have hope that they're going
to be 100% cured.
And that's the glass is half full.
So I opted for that, for that way of looking at it and it's turned out okay.
We never watch Thursday night.
We never watch things that work.
He he's superstitious.
It's very strange.
He feels that if he watches Bill Cosby, it won't work anymore.
It's just silly stuff.
That's when he like turns into a child.
My tastes are very eclectic.
I am not, you know, a high brow type person.
I appreciate and love the higher end of the spectrum of shows that we do in terms of more
sophisticated entertainment like the same elsewhere as the cheers and whatever.
And I can get equally excited about watching a punky Brewster.
I look at that little girl on the show and I say, now I hope that my daughter grows up
with as much spunk as that little girl has.
What about the 18?
The 18 was really the first show post Fred Silverman that NBC put on that became a big
success and so for me it said, well, maybe I can do it on my own.
And I think the show's a lot of fun.
Brandon adores Fred and regardless of what happened to that during that period, he still
respects him and will do anything for him.
But I thought he was going to kill Brandon.
How did you manage to survive that period with Fred Silverman, loving him the way you
did, the fact that he was your mentor and yet knowing deep in your heart there were
decisions that were being made that were not always right?
Well, when I was his number one lieutenant, when I was his, made his head of programming
when I was 31, I knew that, you know, that he was going through a tough time.
I felt that when he came to NBC, there were a lot of factors that he had not taken into
consideration when he came here in terms of how severe the problems were.
I also thought that he caught a couple of really incredible bad breaks in terms of the
Olympics for one.
It was a tough period.
I was, however, privileged to be at the foot of the master.
But how did you get through it though, Brandon?
How did it not drive you crazy?
Because most people at some point would have probably given up and just walked out.
But I think that's where my relative youth at that point, I had nothing to lose.
I had not proven myself in any way, shape, or form to even have the job that he had given
me at the time.
He had picked me out of the litter.
No one else in town would have made me the head of programming.
I felt I owed it to him, no matter how tough it got, I felt that I had very little to lose
by trying to carry out what he wanted done on the shows.
And some of those shows turned out to be successful.
Fred came in, having been on the cover of Time and Newsweek, and the media loves to
set up their giants and then to try to knock them down.
Are you afraid that will happen to you?
I'm afraid that, the only thing I'm afraid of is that I do this so long that I start
ripping off what I have already done before.
Wake up in 1990 and say, you know the A-Team, what happens if we did it with elderly ladies?
What would we call it then?
No, I mean I hope that I give someone else a chance to do it at that point.
You can't do this job forever, and I can't sit here and watch them do this job forever
and be part of it forever, because it really does wear you out.
I know that there have been a number of top executives, men who own companies who have
wanted you to leave NBC.
Why do you stay here with Grant Tinker?
First of all, there are a lot of rumors of those offers.
My loyalty to him keeps me here, and how good he's been to me also keeps me here, because
I don't know if I can leave working for such a benevolent boss like Grant to go to work
for some people who don't seem to have any qualms about changing their executives the
way they might their socks or underwear.
Have the ever once come to you, Brandon, and said, you must do this?
Only when I host Saturday Night Live.
I guess my appearance on tonight's show represents a sort of a switch.
A president becoming an actor.
When I think of Brandon's job, I think of Saturday Night Live, and those people go on
to do wonderful, great things, but they never experience that all-encompassing experience
of Saturday Night Live, which is every minute of every day and night.
And Brandon's job is that right now.
It's every minute of every day and night, and the highs are so high and the lows are
so low.
And I don't think he'll ever quite replace that.
If it all came to an end today, tomorrow, what would Brandon Tartikoff do next?
I don't know, maybe I'd go back to school and become an English professor or be a high
school baseball coach.
I'd run a restaurant.
There are a lot of other things that I have little inklings of interest.
But I don't think that far in the...
I'm more worried about what the ratings are going to be on Helltown this Wednesday than
I am about what's going to happen in 10 years, because whatever happens in 10 years, they
won't be able to take away from me what's already happened till now.
So...
Brandon Tartikoff, thank you very much.
Okay, thanks, Ronna.
Whether in music or in movies, it's proving to be the year of the sting.
The rock star's bite was felt at the box office in two major movies.
His first solo album, Dream of the Blue Turtles, yielded three pop hits and served as the backbone
of his third film, the just-opened documentary, Bring on the Night.
In this two-part interview, Barbara Hauer explores Sting's music, his movies, and what
makes the former leader of the police so arresting.
It was just two years ago that Every Breath You Take was a number one hit for the police
and the most popular record today.
The group was at its peak, following one gold album with another, reaching heights that
took just about everyone's breath away.
But not Sting's.
Never content without a challenge, this son of a British milkman and a hairdresser decided
to branch out.
Focusing first on a movie career, which began in 1979 with Quadrophenia, Sting ultimately
became a bona fide actor with his impressive supporting performance in Plenty.
And taking one of the most dramatic risks in the music business, Sting put the police
on parole, leaving himself free to form a solo identity, backed by a group of black
American jazz musicians.
Currently, the band is on tour with a double platinum album to its credit and a feature
length film, Bring on the Night, which documents the evolution of the new Sting.
I get bored easily and success is as boring as anything else if it's the same success
again and again.
And so I felt the need to take a risk and go out and see if I could do it in another
context.
And it's very exciting.
And my managers and the record company are all going, oh no, please, you know, our mortgages
are on the line here.
And I said, look, I like to take risks and that's what I'm about, so let me do it.
It's interesting about you personally, you have no fear of change, whereas three quarters
of the Western world is terrified of the devil they don't know.
Well, I've always thought of myself as a rising star, as it were, someone who came from lowly
beginnings, if you like.
And so I like change because every time I've changed, it's been for the better.
And not just materially, I mean spiritually in the sense of my character's grown because
of change.
So I embrace it and I love it.
Why are the critics so quick to say that you change, that you reinvent yourself, that you
are chameleon-esque?
Because that's my game plan.
I love doing it.
I think once people have decided what you are, once they've labeled you with a great
big stamp here, then that's it.
You have no freedom and you're constantly being told what you are.
I like the ability just to be what I like.
I think I have a pretty ambiguous image.
People aren't quite sure whether I'm a nice guy or a devil.
And I think that, you know, it's freedom for me.
I don't want to be known that well.
But Sting, why let a camera, even though it's your camera that you have commissioned, why
let a camera come into your life that way?
Why would you do that?
Well, cameras and publicity and being famous are part of my life.
And the game that is played is that you allow people to see enough of you to be attractive,
not enough to scare them away.
And that's my life.
When I walk out on the street, I'm playing that game.
When I talk to you, I'm playing that game.
When I make records, I'm playing this game.
I'm inviting scrutiny.
I'm inviting observation.
At the same time, I'm wondering whether I can survive it.
This is in the London mirror, Sting, milkman son, millionaire pop superstar.
The festival of Britain was in full swing.
A general election was around the corner.
But for Ernie and, what's her name, Audrey Sumner, the big event in life was the birth
of their ugly baby boy in 1951, Gordon Sumner.
I don't provide much, many of the laughs in the film.
I'm too busy and too worried during the film to be Mr. Funny, but my band are so spontaneous.
And there's a gaiety about them that is so engaging.
And they horse around.
They poke such fun at you.
You laugh at it.
Does that loosen you up?
It's what I need, basically.
I think the whole process of being a successful rock star is kind of deifying, you know, God
speaks, having a band like that where they really take it out of me a lot.
It's good for me.
And they do it out of affection.
They don't do it out of anything else.
And I love them.
I felt I had to make a journey in the music I was making.
And I wanted musicians who also had to make a journey.
And I chose the best.
I think I got the best drummer, the best sax player, the best bass player, and the best
keyboard player.
And when I turned around, I realized they were all black.
And I'm becoming black.
I'm starting to speak like that.
It's very strange.
But also, I think something's rubbing off of me onto them.
And it's great.
I'm trying to change what the archetype of rock star is for myself, for my own sense
of dignity.
I think it's a pejorative term normally, you know, rock star.
What does it mean?
It means someone you don't want to invite to dinner, really.
Not that I'm the kind of person you really want to invite to dinner either, but I want
to be unique.
I'd hate to be the age of 40 and wearing tight satin trousers and screaming with my hair
all...I wouldn't want to be that, but I want to sing for the rest of my life.
And therefore, I have to make what I do dignified.
The excitement and the adrenaline rush of going out in front of over 70,000 people,
screaming in anticipation for you to come out is irreplaceable.
And there's nothing quite like it.
Meryl Streep came to the concert the other night and came backstage, actually, and said,
God, I envy you.
Because you know, in film, you don't have an audience.
You have a director who says, yeah, that's great, or try again.
On the stage, in front of all those people, there's nothing like it.
I suppose being a politician or being the leader of some country at war would be the
same.
But you know, what I do is harmless in a way, and it's not like being a politician.
At the same time, it's just as gratifying in the power.
And I'll be candid, it's power.
You feel a sense of power.
Was there some critics of this film quick to say that it was a very self-serving thing
for you to do?
I'm sure it will be said.
I'm sure that there'll be a negative attitude towards it somewhere.
I can only say that it was an honest attempt to show how a band worked.
And I wasn't trying to glorify myself.
No, I wasn't doing that.
I didn't.
You know, I think what we see in the film is me.
I'm not what I allow.
Some people say tense.
Some people say very preoccupied.
I saw you in a large group, and I would not have approached you if hell froze over because
there's a certain authoritative, really back-off attitude that'll let me know that you were
not fair game.
I'm not sure whether I'm austere out of arrogance or shyness, and I think it's probably a bit
of both.
I think I am arrogant, but I do have my moments of humility.
You sing a third, you sing a fifth, I'll sing a tonic.
The same with barbed wire, the same with bridge, the same with chasm or chasm.
Chasm.
It was chasm yesterday.
I sensed in the film a slight desire to instruct, to elucidate.
Do you think that goes back to when you were a school teacher?
I'm still a school teacher.
Once you've been put in front of a class of children, you never lose that sort of, about
sit down and listen, really.
It's something I'm fighting against, really, because I don't think there's any such thing
as a teacher.
I think the phenomena in the classroom is learning, and the teacher is merely an enthusiast.
I had the biggest laugh when I realized you were a school teacher to nine-year-olds.
I thought, somewhere in this world, there's an entire class of kids that have grown up
and said, oh, Sting, yeah, he was my teacher in third grade.
I mean, that's a funny notion.
Absolutely.
Ever run into any of them?
I sometimes get letters from a couple of them, and they tell me what they're doing.
They're spelling good.
Oh, their spelling's great.
Thank God.
Nothing to do with me.
You don't correct their letters and send it back.
I correct most people's letters when they write to me, but...
Say, see me after the concert.
Dot your eyes.
There's so many contradictions about you.
Do you ever confuse yourself?
I think we're all full of contradictions.
To deny the contradictions is to lose power over evil.
I think if one considers oneself to be good, totally good, then one can't control evil
impulses.
And as soon as you lose this vision of yourself as being an angel and a devil, a contradictory
image, then you're lost.
You become mad.
To think yourself completely good is madness.
To think yourself completely bad is also madness.
To think yourself both is sanity.
Are you surprised and or pleased?
I haven't mentioned the word police once.
Yeah, I am pleased because this year, 1985, it's not an issue.
We had our big success as the police in 1984.
I think all of us as members of the police feel we don't want to be bonded together by
panic.
It's not so, God, we can't do anything.
We'll have to get back as a group.
I think if we did that, I think we'd fail miserably.
I think the whole point of being a band is that you have a confidence about it.
You're such a young man, Sting.
You are in a hurry.
Why?
I don't know.
None of us are guaranteed, you know, 67 years.
We could all die tomorrow.
And I sort of eat every meal as if it's my last.
And I like living that way.
It's exciting.
Do you ever miss Gordon Summer and simpler, less complicated days?
No.
I think I'm happier now than I've ever been.
Coming up next week on Entertainment Tonight, Monday, Matt Dillon.
He considers Target his first adult role.
Tuesday, Diane Carroll.
Her love life on Dynasty is up in the air, but off screen it's just fine.
Wednesday, John James.
Will his character be changing or Dynasty 2, the Colby's?
Thursday, Jack Lemmon, a much honored actor, goes for more in Macaroni.
And Friday, Peter Strauss.
Some candid comments about his new mini-series, Kane and Abel.
All next week, all on Entertainment Tonight.
Here are the entertainment stories that made headlines this week.
The Los Angeles District Attorney said there is no evidence to support a new investigation
into the death of Marilyn Monroe, who died over 23 years ago.
The Nielsen Rating Service reported the combined network TV audience is up, almost 5 million
viewers from this time last season.
Liberace has checked out of a hospital and retired from performing for 6 months after
a diagnosis of anemia.
And Candace Bergen gave birth to a 9 pound, 2 ounce girl.
It's the first child for the 39 year old actress and her husband, director Louis Mall.
The baby's name is Chloe.
The FCC announced it will vote Thursday on two huge broadcast transactions, the sale
of ABC to Capital Cities Communications and the sale of the Metro Media TV stations to
Rupert Murdoch.
And Dynasty star Joan Collins married her business manager, Peter Holm, in Las Vegas.
He's 39, she is 52.
And the wedding chapel owner said she didn't know it was Collins until the bride took off
her sunglasses.
Those were the entertainment stories told in headlines.
Now for those told in pictures.
Monday, ET attends the 200th episode party for Dallas, where the stars pondered the past.
I've always been enchanted with Pamela's past.
She was a very single woman, an aggressive woman.
Clip Barnes drove hot rod cars and listened to classical music.
Sue Ellen didn't meet JR until she was at Miss Texas, and that's where JR met her.
He was one of the judges at the beauty contest.
And there's a milestone among TV's Don Patrol.
Also, Good Morning America is 10 years old.
We have learned a lot about how to do this kind of a program.
And we find that it's not perhaps as easy as it perhaps even appeared 10 years ago, even
though we thought it was difficult.
It's very difficult to do it well.
Tuesday, ET covers protests from US TV networks over South Africa's restrictions on journalists.
The central thing here is this new censorship, this new policy that says basically, the problems
are not the problem.
The people who call attention to the problems are the problem.
The one thing we cannot have happen under any restrictions is to have the story disappear
when it's a legitimate news story.
And Congress hears testimony on record company requests for attacks on blank audio cassettes.
The equipment makers and tape makers sell their products by encouraging others to help
themselves to our products.
The taping technology has been the recording industry's best friend.
Wednesday, ET covers the Juno Awards, Canada's version of the Grammys.
I'm really happy that I'm acknowledged as a Canadian, although I'm not sure that it
makes any difference, you know, about nationalities anywhere around the world as far as music
is concerned because I think it's songs first and it's not nationality.
I just think that in the next year or so, international people will see a lot more,
you know, good Canadian music and I'm out there doing my best to spread the word.
And rock stars mingle with high fashion in London to raise money for Ethiopian relief.
I think if everybody contributes as much as they possibly can, then we could sort out
a lot of the simplistic world problems.
If art was meant to be for the glory of God, then why can't it be for the glory of mankind
sometimes, you know?
Thursday, ET goes to a party at New York's Hard Rock Cafe for the new video cassette,
The Best of John Belushi.
His impact on television somewhat got clouded by the circumstances of his death.
I think that if people reexamine the work, they'll understand why people are still talking
about John two or three years after he died.
Listen, he should be here tonight.
There's no doubt about it, you know?
Friday, ET measures media mania as Washington, D.C. awaits the royal couple.
If you want to go gaga over the Prince of Wales, please be my guest, but don't expect
me to.
I mean, I go gaga over presidents, not princes.
And that's a quick picture review of the week's entertainment stories.
Throughout the history of Hollywood, there have been countless horror films.
How then do you find a new angle for a scary movie?
Well, this is a job for the Shoemaker Report.
Howling wolves, sinister castles, things that go bump in the night, haunted houses.
All these things remind me of Frankenstein, Dracula, Transylvania.
But now there's a new movie out that does away with all those old horrifying concepts.
The movie is Transylvania, 65,000, co-starring St. Elsewhere's TV doctor, Ed Begley Jr.
Who is this?
Who's here?
Who is this?
Did you see Butterfield 8?
Yes, I did.
It's nothing like that.
Begley co-stars in this horrifying comedy with Jeff Goldblum, two modern day reporters
looking for Frankenstein.
Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You smell perfume?
Yes, I know what was in this room.
What?
The creature from Estee Lauder.
Despite what critics say, is the team of Goldblum and Begley another Hope and Crosby?
Yeah, there are some tremendous similarities between Hope and Crosby and Jeff and I.
I, for instance, wear the same size dress as Hope Lang and Mary Crosby and Jeff have
some similarities I can't discuss here.
In one scene, Begley is attacked by an over sexed vampire.
That took a lot of takes.
Dick, that took a lot of, you know, take after take.
I think the scene speaks for itself.
I think we've proven our point.
Movies about vampires aren't so hard to take anymore.
Dick Shoemaker, Entertainment This Week.
Tough duty.
You know, that was actually Dick's house in the background.
It probably would be.
Next weekend we've got a treat for you.
This week we'll salute Hollywood's biggest movie and TV studio, Universal.
And I'll be back Monday with Mary Hart for the start of another week of entertainment
tonight.
We'll talk with Matt Dillon, Emanuel Lewis, New York Knicks, Star Center Patrick Ewing,
Elizabeth Taylor and Melissa Manchester.
And you have a good week and you have a good week.
We'll see you next week.
Thanks for watching.
I'll see you next week.