The Story of Chess Records and the Chess Family.

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*****

SHOW: Fresh Air

DATE: October 20, 2000

*****

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

A few years after I started listening to jazz pianist, singer and songwriter
Bob Dorough, I felt kind of sorry about a turn his career had taken. He had
become the music director of an educational animated series called "Schoolhouse
Rock." Little did I know how clever and catchy some of the songs would be and
that he'd become better known for these songs than he'd been for his previous
records. Dorough's new CD features him performing with Dave Frishberg, who we
heard from earlier. Let's hear their duet on the title track "Who's on First?"

(Soundbite of "Who's on First?")

Mr. DAVE FRISHBERG: Well, Bob, they finally booked the two of us in tandem. We
can't come on and just sing songs at random. How will we handle this project
to which we have lent ourselves?

Mr. BOB DOROUGH: Yeah, we've agreed to put ourselves on exhibition. It's the
two of us from now till intermission. We ought to come with a logical way to
present ourselves. We got a problem, partly protocol, partly procedure, partly
pride. Which of us is the frim fram sauce...

Mr. FRISHBERG: And which is the chafafa(ph) on the side?

Mr. DOROUGH and Mr. FRISHBERG: (In unison) In other words, who's on first?

Mr. DOROUGH: We got a show to do here. Who's opening for who here? How do we
run this date?

Mr. FRISHBERG: Who's on first? Are you the mesmerizer? Am I the appetizer? We
better negotiate. Say I come up and get roaring and really tear up the place,
then you come on and get boring, well, that's known as a change of pace.

Mr. DOROUGH and Mr. FRISHBERG: (In unison) Anyhow, who's on first? It's really
an urgent matter. Who's the former and who's the latter? We better get this
straight. It's not a suggestion of who is the best or worst. It's simply a
question of who's on first.

GROSS: Bob Dorough and Dave Frishberg from their new CD "Who's on First?" They
co-wrote the hipster wannabe anthem "I'm Hip." I spoke with Bob Dorough in
1996. He told me that the idea for "Schoolhouse Rock" came from an advertising
agency.

Mr. DOROUGH: I went up to meet the president of the agency and it was his idea,
and his name was David B. McCall of McCaffrey and McCall. He said, `My little
boy can, you know, sing along with Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, but he
can't memorize his multiplication tables. So I had the idea, why not put the
multiplication tables to rock music and call it "Multiplication Rock." What do
you think?' And I said, `Well, yeah, that's pretty interesting.' And he said,
`Well, but don't write down to the kids.' Well, I learned later that he had
invited other Broadway songwriters to do this task, and they came up with a
more simple doggerel type of songwriting. Writing down, as it were, to
children.

GROSS: So when he said, `So what do you think?' what did you really think?

Mr. DOROUGH: I thought, `Well, yeah, this could be, you know, a limited idea.'
But when he added, `don't write down to children,' why the hackles on my neck
arose and I got quite intrigued. And so I agreed to tackle it, and I spent
about three weeks before I would let myself write the first song. I thought at
first--looked in math books. And since I picked my first title, and it was
called "Three Is a Magic Number," I even looked in magic and occult books for
the reasons that three might be a magic number.

GROSS: Did you get anything from those books that you used in the song?

Mr. DOROUGH: I did indeed.

GROSS: What'd you get?

Mr. DOROUGH: Well, that it was one of the magic numbers, and that it was, you
know, embodied in certain things like the Trinity, the old sayings, the heart
and the brain and the body--faith, hope and charity--trinities of sorts. So I
got mainly that, trinities. And, of course, I also was an adamant admirer of
Buckminster Fuller, so I was thinking of his triangle concept that makes
construction so strong.

(Soundbite of "Three Is a Magic Number")

Mr. DOROUGH: Three is a magic number, yes it is. It's a magic number.
Somewhere in the ancient mystic Trinity, you get three as a magic number. The
past and the present and the future, faith and hope and charity, the heart and
the brain and the body give you three, as a magic number. It takes three legs
to make a tripod or to make a table stand. It takes three wheels to make a
vehicle called a tricycle. Every triangle has three corners, every triangle
has three sides, no more, no less. You don't have to guess, when it's three
you can see it's a magic number.

GROSS: Now do you think most of the people who grew up listening to your songs,
and most of the people in the bands now performing your songs on the new CD, do
you think that they have any idea that these weren't written and performed by
people in advertising agencies or theme houses, that they were written by you,
an interesting and eccentric jazz performer and that some of the other songs on
here are sung by interesting and eccentric jazz performers?

Mr. DOROUGH: Yes. Well, I'm sure they didn't even think about such things.
They grew up and they learned and they watched. They were a captive audience,
one of my partners pointed out, George Newell, because, you know, they were
watching Saturday morning cartoons and suddenly there would be this little
three-minute film and they got hooked on them and it actually did them some
good. And as we went on in our productions, I kept bringing in some of my
buddies from the jazz world. So it was a kind of a little bit of an
underground movement there.

GROSS: Yeah. Well, you brought in Dave Frishberg, the singer and songwriter
and pianist; trumpeter and singer Jack Sheldon; singer Blossom Dearie.

Mr. DOROUGH: Yes. Grady Tate, a drummer who sings--or a singer who drums.
Excuse me, Grady, I didn't mean that.

GROSS: Now I'd like to give our listeners who've been hearing your "Schoolhouse
Rock" songs a taste of the other side of Bob Dorough, so I thought I'd actually
play something that you recorded in concert on our show once that you've also
recorded on your own records. And it's a song called "I'm Hip," which you
co-wrote with Dave Frishberg--you did the music, he did the lyric.

Mr. DOROUGH: That's right.

GROSS: And he also worked on some of the "Schoolhouse Rocks." He did "I'm Just
a Bill." And so you recorded this on FRESH AIR in 1982. This is Bob Dorough,
piano and vocals, "I'm Hip."

(Soundbite of "I'm Hip")

Mr. DOROUGH: Well, I'm hip. I'm alive. I enjoy any joint where there's jive.
I'm on top of every trend, look at me go, vodi oh, doe. Bobby Dylan, he knows
my friend. We're so hip, hanging out in Malibu. Well, I'm hip, but not weird.
Like you notice I don't wear a beard. Beards were in, but now they're out.
They had their day, now they're passe. Just ask me if you in doubt, because
I'm hip. Now I'm deep, deep into Zen, meditation and macrobiotics. And just
as soon as I can, I intend to get into narcotics--I've got to try some of that
stuff. Because I'm cool, cool as a cuke. I'm a card, I'm a cat, I'm a kook.
I get so much out of life, really I do, scooby do, boo. One more time, play
"Mack the Knife." Let her rip. I may flip, but I'm hip.

GROSS: This is just a fantastic recording, and I'm proud that you did it on our
show.

Mr. DOROUGH: Well, thanks.

GROSS: So in a self-serving way, I'll just get that in.

Mr. DOROUGH: I've gotten many reports from NPR fans saying, `Oh, we heard you
you doing "I'm Hip" on FRESH AIR.'

GROSS: Oh, good. Good.

Mr. DOROUGH: That's great. It's lasting.

GROSS: Good.

Mr. DOROUGH: Well, that's me. That's the other me. That's what I do. I go
into smokey nightclubs and play the piano and sing.

GROSS: Bob Dorough recorded in 1996. He has a new CD with Dave Frishberg
called "Who's on First?" Coming up, an interview with Kevin Spacey.

This is FRESH AIR.

*****

TERRY GROSS, host:

Kevin Spacey stars in the new film "Pay It Forward." On this archive edition,
we have an interview with Spacey recorded in 1991 before he became a movie
star. His films include "The Usual Suspects," "L.A. Confidential," "Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil," "The Negotiator" and "American Beauty," for
which he won an Academy Award. I'm one of the Spacey fans who discovered him
in the TV series "Wiseguy." He played bad guy Mel Profitt, a twisted drug
dealer and corrupt businessman with a thing for this sister. Here he is
pulling a gun on the hero of the series, undercover agent Vinnie Terranova.

(Soundbite from "Wise Guy")

Mr. KEVIN SPACEY ("Mel Profitt"): Do you like roulette? One round, six
chambers.

Mr. KEN WAHL ("Vinnie Terranova"): Come on, Mr. Profitt, I think maybe you've
got a nose full. Don't do this.

Mr. SPACEY: Not cocaine. Rule one, don't inhale the retail. What I take is
medicine, Jack, prescribed PX formulas. Dr. Feelgood's number nine. It
doesn't put me to sleep, but it makes me feel a whole lot better.

Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.

GROSS: You've done theater and movies, but really I think, like, your
breakthrough role in terms of public recognition was on "Wise Guy,' you know,
in the role of Mel Profitt. Did you expect that that would happen on TV?

Mr. SPACEY: Well, one of the reasons that "Wise Guy" intrigued me, both as a
character and in terms of how we approached it, was I felt that I'd watched so
many actors play bad guys as sort of slick and antiseptic and kind of cool and
in control that because Mel was so bizarre as a character--that when you're
playing a character like that, the parameters are much wider. You can get away
with a lot more. That--I felt that if--we could approach it with almost total
abandon, which isn't done all that much on television, certainly in series
television.

GROSS: You've said that you wanted to meet with Cannell before taking the role,
and you wanted to tell him that you wanted to slowly build the character and
that it might not be clear right from the start what you were doing.

Mr. SPACEY: Well, yeah. Stephen didn't understand. I turned down the show at
first, and Stephen didn't understand, you know, who--this young pup, virtually
unknown New York stage actor, was turning down a major role on prime-time
series. He just couldn't figure me. So he thought, well--and Steve is a very
smart and intuitive man and he said, `Well, will him come and talk to me?' And
I said, `Sure.' So I went in that night--this all, by the way, happened in
about 12 hours. I went in that night after I'd met him in the afternoon,
originally, and we sat and we talked for an hour. And I'd had a couple of
experiences doing episodics as a guest, and they weren't very good experiences,
and I--while I thought that I might be able to do something, I was afraid that
the same kind of conditions would be at play on this show.

GROSS: What kind of conditions?

Mr. SPACEY: Well, a lot of times if you're a guest on a TV series, you find
that--and particularly if you're not known, if you're starting out, you find
that there's a lot of line producers who sort of stand behind the camera asking
a lot of questions about `Why is his hair like that?' or `Why is he wearing
that tie?' `What's he doing with his fa--why doesn't he just play it the
way--God.' And it becomes very confining as an actor to have someone there who
is not necessarily artistically inclined making decisions and judgments.

And on "Wiseguy," because I felt that the character--I thought, `This isn't
going to be something that I walk on the set on the first day and decide how to
play. This is something that I want to have evolve and grow over these seven
episodes, and it ended up being nine in the end. But I thought if--I said to
Stephen in this meeting, I said, `If you let me do what I think I can do with
this role, you're going to think that you have an actor who's completely lost
his mind as you watch the dailies'--which are what they watch every day--`of
the film that you've shot, because it won't make sense to you. And it might not
even make sense in totality, but I think we'll be able to do something that
will be interesting and unique.'

GROSS: I'm interested in finding out a little bit about you. You were born in
New Jersey, but you grew in up Los Angeles. Tell us something about your
childhood. Why did your parents move? What did they do?

Mr. SPACEY: My father was a technical procedure writer, and he worked for
corporations as diverse as Rockwell. And what that means is, very briefly--the
guys who put together the F-16? They have to put it together with a manual and
my father wrote that kind of manual. Not the F-16, in particular, but as an
example. And my mother was a private secretary. She worked at Busch Gardens
out in California for a number of years.

GROSS: Busch Gardens, oh, boy.

Mr. SPACEY: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Did you go there a lot?

Mr. SPACEY: Are you kidding? I had more Budweiser sweaters than I can count.

GROSS: Oh, boy. I've always figured, you know, you can't afford to go to
Europe, but you can go to Busch Gardens, right?

Mr. SPACEY: That's right. That's right. And I started when I was--I went to
school out there--we moved around quite a lot. I think it's one of the reasons
why I feel at home wherever I go, because we moved so much that I had to make
wherever I went my new home. And I started a theater--in junior high school, a
guidance counselor suggested that I take a drama course, and I did and they
can't stop me yet.

GROSS: Have you ever been very brash or aggressive about getting a part or
getting an audition?

Mr. SPACEY: Extremely. I would not have done "Long Day's Journey Into Night"
with Mr. Lemmon had I not not taken no for an answer. When that play was being
cast, the people who were casting it didn't feel I was right for it, and
wouldn't see me for about eight months. So I finally went to a series of
lectures that director Jonathan Miller was giving and stole my way into a party
in his honor and got enough courage to sit in a chair next to him at one point
and talked for about an hour and convinced him to see me for the part.

GROSS: What were some of the things you told him when you got his attention
that you think convinced him to give you an audition?

Mr. SPACEY: I think basically he understood what I had been going through in
terms of trying to get an audition. I think there are--you know, sometimes
people in this business, in this industry, who think that directors want big
stars and big names for parts when, in fact, they're just really looking for
the best actor for it. And so sometimes it's hard to get over those hurdles,
and I think he just saw in my eyes and understood the struggle that I'd gone
through in trying to get an audition and was sympathetic to it. And we had
also talked for at least a good 40 minutes before I ever even brought up "Long
Day's Journey." I just got to know him a little bit and chatted, and I think
out of that, as well, was what--he decided to give me a shot.

GROSS: Did you ever do stand-up comedy? I think I'd read that about you.

Mr. SPACEY: Yeah, yeah, you've done your work here. Yeah, I did. In
California, actually, I did stand-up comedy for about a year and a half in
clubs and bowling alleys where...

GROSS: Bowling alleys?

Mr. SPACEY: Oh, unbelievable. And let me tell you, when you're doing your best
material and there's not a peep and then you hear the sound of bowling pins
being knocked over, it's really so encouraging.

GROSS: Well, I don't know if you'd really find your audience at a bowling
alley.

Mr. SPACEY: Boy, I'll tell you--well, also, at the time, I was doing an
imitation of Johnny Carson in my act, and I realized that people who were at
bowling alleys for midnight talent contests don't watch Johnny Carson, so they
had no idea who I was doing. They were absolutely clueless. And...

GROSS: What other stuff did you do?

Mr. SPACEY: I did a lot of topical material. I even actually--somewhere on
tape, ABC did a pilot for a series called "The Comedians," which is something
that they'd done in Grenada Television down in England, and I hosted it as
Johnny Carson. And somewhere there's a tape of this thing that we did in 1978.
I was just out high school. And occasionally, for benefits and things, I'll
bring Carson out again, because he's so much fun to do, and he's difficult to
do. I find a lot of comedians who I watch do him do a very sort of
high-profile Carson. It's very high comedy. They're impressionists who have
to be identified. Their characters have to be identified in the first 10
seconds. And I approach Carson a little bit like an actor. I went sort of
underneath, and, in fact, I was going to do--I did the Carson show, and it was
a big thrill to do the show because I used to hang out at "The Tonight Show"
and watch him live almost for an entire summer to learn how to do him. I
didn't get a chance that night to get to do him because I ended up only having
three minutes, but they promise the next time I'm on (imitating Johnny Carson)
that Johnny and I will meet. And you know what? Nobody will care. It'll be a
weird thing, but...

GROSS: Oh, yeah. So why did you give up comedy and go into acting? Was that
your plan all along.

Mr. SPACEY: No, it really wasn't a plan so much as it was just the way things
turned out. A friend of mine had come to New York and attended Juilliard and
had been encouraging me through letters if I was really serious about acting I
should come and audition. And I finally did and was accepted. And I think I
just decided that--I think I understand why people like Robin Williams and
Steve Martin, Billy Crystal have gone out of stand-up comedy and ended up
becoming actors. I think because stand-up comedy has so many limits to it,
that as a performer you just ultimately feel that you need to break out of it.
I mean, I was never in their league, by any measure, but I understand the idea
of wanting to--and I was always an actor. Stand-up was sort of a side light,
but it was ultimately an incredible experience and absolutely terrifying.

GROSS: Kevin Spacey, recorded in 1991. He stars in the new movie "Pay It
Forward."

This is FRESH AIR.

*****

TERRY GROSS, host:

The new movie "Pay It Forward" stars Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel
Osment in his first role since "The Sixth Sense." Film critic Henry Sheehan has
a review.

HENRY SHEEHAN reporting:

Three-quarters of the way into "Pay It Forward," Kevin Spacey gives a speech.
He does it in the character of Eugene Simonet, a demanding, caring, Las Vegas
middle school teacher whose face is a healed-over mask of scars from some long
ago third-degree burns. We have been waiting for this speech since we first
met Eugene at the movie's start.

Early on, one of Eugene's students, an 11-year-old named Travis, played by
Haley Joel Osment, has asked about those scars, only to be rebuffed. Eugene
becomes romantically involved with Travis' mom, Arlene, a recovering alcoholic,
and still declines to talk about them. It's only when Arlene, played by Helen
Hunt, starts seeing her abusive old husband again that Eugene is not only
infuriated, but moved to speak. Then he doesn't just break his silence, he
orchestrates a symphoniclike response. Here's an exchange that functions as a
sort of prelude to the climactic revelations.

(Soundbite from "Pay It Forward")

Ms. HELEN HUNT ("Arlene"): What do you want me to do?

Mr. KEVIN SPACEY ("Eugene Simonet"): Oh, I don't know, be smart.

Ms. HUNT: He's his father, Eugene.

Mr. SPACEY: He impregnated you, Arlene. In what other ways has he been a
father to Trevor, unless knocking somebody around is a new family value.

Ms. HUNT: What you are talking about? He never touched Trevor.

Mr. SPACEY: Oh, that's right, only you. He only took it out on you. That's so
much better.

Ms. HUNT: What did Trevor tell you?

Mr. SPACEY: Enough. Arlene, secrets like that shouldn't be kept. What good
does it do Trevor?

Ms. HUNT: You weren't there. Ricky never meant to hit me. We were drunk.

Mr. SPACEY: What is it with women like you? Is that something you really tell
yourself, `Oh, it's OK he beat me. Trevor's OK.' Trevor's locked himself in a
bathroom and he can't breath and he's hoping and praying that it will stop.

Ms. HUNT: Trevor never went through that.

Mr. SPACEY: How do you know what Trevor went through?

SHEEHAN: Listening to Spacey, it's easy to understand why he's won two Oscars.
His voice is a complex instrument, responsive to even the slightest
modulations. What other actor can speak practically in a monotone for his
less-stressed exchanges, and make it sound like musical conversation? When
Spacey's characters do become angry or distressed or gleeful or scared, his
gentle baritone allows for what sometimes seems like infinite gradations in
volume. He can always go up one more register. You probably never think of
Clint Eastwood while you're watching Spacey, but they are probably the only two
leading men in Hollywood capable of expressing rage without raising their
voices.

So when Eugene finally tells us about the scars, it's the expected Spacey tour
de force. No doubt theaters across the country will fall silent on schedule as
packed audiences listen to Eugene reveal the horror behind his face. But like
almost everything else in "Pay It Forward," it doesn't mean too much. The movie
is a good example of what happens when melodrama degenerates into soap opera.
"Pay It Forward," which was written by Leslie Dixon from a novel by Catherine
Ryan Hyde, falls into this trap almost immediately. The title gets its name
from an assignment Eugene gives his class: Find a way to improve the world and
put it into action. Travis responds with the suggestion that everyone do a
difficult and demanding favor for someone in trouble. Then, rather than be paid
back, you tell the person to pay the favor forward by doing a good turn for
three other people.

This gimmick becomes the monster that ate the movie. In a subplot that begins
four months after the main action, but dovetails with it by the film's climax,
Jay Mohr plays a cynical Los Angeles reporter who accidentally encounters what
he dubs the pay it forward movement--more and more sob stories. In the
meantime, the tentative if euphonious love match between Eugene and Arlene is
subjected to the pressures of Travis' invention. It's not enough that they get
together, but must do so under Travis' moral blanket. Director Mimi Leder,
fresh off "Deep Impact," gets all this across with the understatement of,
`Well, a comet hitting the Earth.' This is, of course, so much hooey. People's
problems aren't big because they become part of some national movement, and
individuals aren't good because, or just because they spark one. That's the
whole point of melodrama, that each and every person can be, is, the star of an
emotionally overscaled existence, that we all get to sing our arias, and we
don't need cues courtesy of "Pay It Forward."

GROSS: Henry Sheehan is film critic for The Orange County Register.

(Credits given)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.