Title: Get in The CarJane! Adventures in the TV Wasteland

Author: Billy Van Zandt

Publisher: Van Zandt/Milmore Productions

ISBN: 978-1-7344017-1-4

In Get in The Car Jane! Adventures in the TV Wasteland, Billy Van Zandt holds very little back as he recounts the funny behind-the-scenes tales of his writing and producing TV sit-coms.

These are based on the journals he kept on all of his productions, which, as he expressed to me in a recent interview, are part textbook, part gossip, though, all truth.

Van Zandt is the co-author and star of the Off-Broadway plays You've Got Hate Mail, Silent Laughter, Drop Dead!, and 21 other theatrical plays written with Jane Milmore, including A Night at the Nutcracker, Wrong Window, and summer stock perennial Love, Sex, and the I.R.S.

He also wrote The Property Known as Garland starring Adrienne Barbeau that broke house records at Off-Broadway’s Actors Playhouse. He is an Emmy Award fr his television special I Love Lucy: The Very First Show, and won People's Choice and NAACP Image Awards for his work on the Martin Lawrence comedy Martin and a Prism Multi-Cultural.

Each chapter in the volume dedicates itself to a different TV show, including I Love Lucy: The Very First Show, Newhart, Anything But Love, Nurses, Martin, Daddy Dearest, The Wayans Bros, Staten Island 10309, Bless This House, The Hughleys, Yes Dear, and Janet Saves the Planet.

Van Zandt indicates in his introduction that the stories are not an autobiography but a synopsis of some television programs he was associated with. He even tells us that his writing partner, Jane Milmore, confirmed the stories and the quotes. He also ran each chapter past people who were with him at the time of each story.

The format of the book is informal and makes the writing easy to follow. Van Zandt shares dozens of anecdotes, perceptions, and the many obstacles he ran into with performers such as Martin Lawrence. Nonetheless, he does consider Lawrence a comedic genius. However, he may have been out of control, demanding, and a pain in the derriere.

Often the picture he assembles is one of disarray and nastiness, especially where scripts are written and re-written several times to satisfy the lead actors or the network's executives. In the closing paragraph of his adventures with Nurses, Van Zandt confesses that his time there taught him how not to run a show. “In addition to being psychotically organized and appreciative of people who work for me, in all the years since, I've never made established stars audition, I've never kept a writer in the room for lunch, never made a staff work at Saturday, and always made sure there were enough shares on the set.” All of this was absent in the Nurses.

Readers interested in appreciating the “nitty gritty” of sitcom writing will find the read fascinating. As Van Zandt states: “You'll learn the business as I learned it. Naïve at times, stupidly arrogant at other times, but always honored and thrilled to be part of it all.”

Follow Here To Read Norm's Interview With Billy Van Zandt