Dream Job with Leslie Neilson

       I dreamed I was the head writer on a television show, or rather, a remake of an old show. I was talking with Leslie Neilson who was starring in our show as Dr. Marcus Welby, MD. We were walking behind the set and talking about one of the scenes my writers had come up with that required on camera stunt. We were shooting some of our show in front of a live audience. I wanted to bring in a stunt person and not risk our star, or we needed to re-write the scene. Our live audience would be excited to see a little "movie magic" I felt. We read through the scene a couple of times, deciding to keep the couch stunt in. Mr Neilson also felt that having a stuntman come in was a good idea (neither of us were in favor of pushing him over the back of a couch, no matter how much padding there was.)

       We rehearsed what we wanted to say, then went hunting for the producer. Our conversation was far funnier than the script for the show, so I knew I was going to go back and punch the script up after we browbeat the producer into doing the scene "Leslie's way."

       One of the delights of this dream was how perfectly normal it all seemed. Including the frustration of being a sort of baby sitter for the other writers (having to go pull them out of places to come back to work after lunch, breaking up fights, being their cheerleader and task master.)