As part of my ongoing campaign to (1) keep the sitcoms of the 1980s in the public consciousness and (2) showcase my nerdery, I'm reproducing this e-mail exchange between me and my man JMV. The title of this post refers to the guitar lick after "as long as we've got each other" in the Growing Pains theme song.
From: John
Subject: upyeralley
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 11:53:19 -0800
To: Matt
found on the "futon critic" tv industry news site:
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/cgi/gofuton.cgi?action=newswire&id=6425
GROWING PAINS II: HOME EQUITY (ABC) - The Alphabet has released a detailed description of the upcoming telefilm: "Production has begun in New Orleans on "Growing Pains II: Home Equity," an all-new two-hour movie based on the hit '80s television comedy. The film will air during May 2004 on the ABC Television Network. Alan Thicke, Joanna Kerns, Kirk Cameron, Tracey Gold, Jeremy Miller, Ashley Johnson and Chelsea Noble will all reprise their roles from the series, which ran for seven seasons on ABC.Ms. Kerns (whose directing credits include "Defending Our Kids: The Julie Posey Story" and "Boston Public") will direct the movie.As the lyrics to the "Growing Pains" theme song said, "We're nowhere near the end. The best is ready to begin . . ." "Growing Pains II: Home Equity" finds Jason (Thicke) and Maggie Seaver (Ms. Kerns) ready to start a new chapter in their lives. With the nest finally empty, they have put the family home up for sale and are preparing to spend their retirement years traveling (Maggie longs for a villa in Tuscany, while ever-thrifty Jason wants to tour the USA in a Winnebago).But all that's easier said than done, as Mike (Cameron) and a very pregnant Carol (Ms. Gold, pregnant in real life with her third child), each with their own agenda for wanting their parents to stay put, team up to sabotage the move, while little brother Ben (Miller), now a realtor, needs the big sale of his parents' home to please his boss. Meanwhile, Chrissie (Ms. Johnson), now an aspiring singer, just wants to get out from under her parents' watchful gaze so she can launch her career as a rock star.Jim Green and Mark Bacino are executive producers, Albert J. Salzer is producer and Christine Lynch & Loren Segan wrote the script for the film, from Green/Epstein/Bacino Productions, Inc."
-JMV
www.octopushat.com
From: Matt
Subject: Re: upyeralley
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 08:46:32 -0800
To: John
thanks for the heads-up. this sounds interesting. the winnebago angle is particularly intriguing since there was an episode where maggie's father (played by gordon "maytag repairman" jump) sells his house and buys a winnebago to tour the country, much to the chagrin of maggie's mother, who's too meek to protest the sale of her home until it's too late. they may work that into maggie's anti-winnebago stance.
i'm also surprised that kirk cameron is returning. usually when sitcom stars go wacko-christian they want nothing to do with their network past. cameron, of course, played buck williams in the straight-to-video movie adaptation of "left behind," and i think that he, like willie ames of charles in charge fame, became a regular on evangelical television. evangelivision. anyway, kirk cameron's wife is amazingly hot. she played mike seaver's girlfriend on growing pains for a while. she was also in the "left behind" movie. if kirk is coming back there's really no reason for her not to come back as mrs. kirk. and that would add a degree of hotness to the growing pains movie that a pregnant tracy gold could never accomplish.
i always hated jeremy miller. he was on celebrity double dare once and he came off as a total "i'm too cool to be here" prick. he also did some commercial hocking some kind of video game hotline and identified himself as "the star of growing pains." i was really hoping he'd get coked up and die.
but the real question is, will andrew koenig reprise his role as richard "boner" stabone?
matt
wow...i thought i was the only true 80's sitcom nerd out there but apparently i am very mistaken. i caught myself watching the first Growing Pains movie as if in sin, hidden in my bedroom, with the volume down....but now i think i will hold my hed up high for the second movie.
now if only they would make a movie for Charles in Charge. the eight year old in me really misses Scott Baio.
wait just a god damn minute. there's another growing pains movie? does it involve them going to europe and getting involved in international espionage? because family ties and facts of life both made movies like that.
i think a good charles in charge movie would be like a romeo and juliet type thing, with the pembrokes and the powells as rival families. jason could fall in love with sara, and adam could kill him. no, wait. adam isn't nearly cool enough to be tybalt. i guess adam should fall in love with lila and get killed by jason? i smell a winner here, folks! who's got a script?
I just want to know what happened to Punky and Cherry. Where that reunion movie? You know that Allen was going to get Margeaux knocked-up eventually once they got over that whole having cooties thing. Punky will have to put Henry in an old folks home. And Cherry is caught having sex with her teacher Mike Fulton. I smell an emmy there.
Well the Growing Pains movie i saw was on the Family Channel and Maggie was running for office and Carol was falling in love with the other candidate's co-worker or something like that. it was made a few years ago and i really never thought i would be able to talk about it in an open forum with nerds like me, so unfortunately i don't remember all the details - but they do repeat it on the family channel.
i think i am going to seriously consider penning the Charles and Charge movie script, but Jamie has to be an integral part of the plot. you cannot have a true 80's sitcom movie without the inclussion of Nicole Eggert.
The final scenes of the Growing Pains II were shot Friday night 3-19-04 at a Sav-A-Center grocery store on Carrollton Ave. in New Orleans. Looking forward to see a newcomer to the movies..my neighbor Justin will be playing the role of Robbie. Everyone loved him on the set. They even rewrote the script a little to give him some lines, etc. Justin says the 3 scenes he enjoyed the most: playing with a real frog around the adults; throwing marshmellows and cheese balls in the grocery store and made a mess in the kitchen with chocolate. We'll have to wait and see how much gets left on the edit room floor.
From another nerd...
After JUST watching the series Finale, they had already sold their home when Maggie took the job in DC. So how could they sell the house again?