Some Time With... Lenny Ripps (Part 1)

Hey, fan Arritos, Welcome back to How Rude Taneritos. If you've been listening to this podcast long enough, you've definitely heard us mention Lenny Rips a time or two. Lenny was a writer on Full House during seasons one through three, creating some unforgettable episodes, including the Sea Crews, which we can't wait.

We won't hold him, we won't hold him responsible for that.

We forgive him and can't wait to talk to him about it.

Yes, I personally have a personal affection for Lenny because he is the writer who created Kimmy Gibbler and I cannot wait to pick his brain about this. He's known us since the very beginning, and we're so excited to walk down memory lane with him.

Here he is, Lenny Rips.

Lenny, we haven't seen you since the original Full House, like for thirty something years, we haven't seen you.

It's really extraordinary because full House is with me all the time. I get upgrades and and I cut the line.

See people, Hey, that's that's it, you know it was.

It was good for a lot of line cutting.

There you go, And it's interesting how beloved.

It is, so so beloved.

I yes, we just went to I just went to nineties Con this weekend where they do a bunch of different shows. Oh my gosh, Like the fans absolutely lose their mind over Full House. It's it's so great and it's such a it's such a crazy thing that it's still going after all these years.

And it's interesting because it was such a struggle to figure it out.

Yeah, the first season we were like, oh, I don't know, guys.

The issues were that we were not used to writing family shows, you know, I mean I came The first people I wrote for was Joan Rivers and Rodney Daangerfield and Bette Middller.

You know what I mean.

I mean that blows my mind.

Wait, you got to tell this story because this is crazy how you met Joan Rivers.

I'm getting everyone's history because yeah, things that we didn't know about when we were kids that now were like, oh my god. We were like everyone was legendary that we were working with and we had no idea.

We're just bopping around.

Like, well, okay, I'll tell you.

I got out of college with a degree in film history, which is worthless, but it's but for four years you got.

But for four years you love it right.

Yeah, it's like getting a degree in show.

And tell you know right, right, which is also called a theater degree.

But so I got out of school and it was a recession.

There weren't a lot of jobs, so I moved back to Baltimore just to look for work.

I did eight different things, and I became a social worker.

Really yeah, my husband's a social worker, so I love it, yea.

So I did that for three years, and in the interim, some friends of mine and I started a downtown newspaper okay, and I wrote restaurant reviews and a boxing column and it was pretty funny. And a woman who worked for the state of Maryland read it and was doing bicycle training films for children, okay, and hired me to write these little films. And in the interim, Joan Rivers came to Baltimore and this friend of mine, this woman is

Wow.

This friend of mine called me the next morning and said John wants to read your jokes, says I've never written a joke.

Is that I don't have any order to read.

But yeah, but but but I mean I was funny and then super funny, but they weren't.

She was so stupid that he was so fat.

That right, So I sat down and I wrote ten jokes and I went backstage and she didn't went on stage and killed and she used it interact for five years.

Oh my god. My first joke was my mother's allows the cook she serves ketchup as a vegetable. It was a big joke. That's great, And I got seven dollars and fifty cents.

Wow, and every week, which is still a lot for comedy these days.

Right, So every week I sent her fifty jokes, okay, and she would buy one or two.

But in turning them down you begin to understand waiting jokes is about syntax and vocabulary, and John Rivers wouldn't say those words are not in that order.

Right, you still find her voice?

Yeah, and stand up. Do you have a very very definite way you tell jokes you tell stories?

Yeah? Yeah.

But great line for the old comedy writers was I think Jewish rage gentown. Well, you know, which means put your sensibility.

I mean, so many of the best comedians comedy writers are Jewish and there is a certain.

You.

I find that it's great writing, so but not a ca.

Can't came out here. And I hung out with the comedy story in the ambrov and started writing jokes. And Joan Rivers was out of town for the for three months and so, and when she came back and down, she got me a few interviews. And I started in variety televisions okay with uh for for Dick Van Dyke and Captain and t'aneil who you I.

Guess Captain and t'anil muskrat Love come on.

And all of these hockey shows, right, And I wrote the Star Wars Holiday special.

Oh, well, we're going to get to that.

We're going to get to that because Andrea watched it. Well try to, I'm sorry.

So then after that I was doing pretty well in variety, and my agent said, Vriety is dying.

You got to this sitcom.

And so I took a pay kind of half to get back into sitcom. And so that's how I got started. And then I wrote features and other things. I wrote Full House.

So how did you get involved with Full House? Did you meet Jeff Franklin.

And he put and I were doing Bosom Buddies.

Oh, okay, was doing Buddies.

Jeff was a.

Consultant one Buddies, Okay, so he would come in a few days a week to punch up and look at stories, you know, I mean, he was very helpful obviously.

Yeah, that's where we met.

How did you wind up on Bosom Buddies? Just through the the.

In the business, I had done a show for Paramount.

With Angie who was in Saturday Night Fever.

Donna was the girl in the backseat and really really talented person.

So that was my first full time sit coup there and Paramount was very much a family then everybody knew everybody. Yeah, and when some Buddies came up, I was young and was and Buddies at the time was a very very hip show.

Yeah, oh gosh huge.

So I was new blood or.

The Paramount a lot, and I got an interview and it worked out. And again, guys, that was the difficulty. You go from some Buddies where we're doing tattooed jokes and sexual jokes to a full house you've got to figure out.

Yeah, yeah, he has a lot.

Actually, that explains a lot about the season one.

Well, we were just trying to find our way with kids without writing adult jokes that kids are.

Saying, right, And also, like the show, you know, originally was the about three comics, and it really was kind of more focused on the adults on the guys, which was most show. Most shows that had kids in it were about the adults and the kids were kind of the side pieces. And Full House was one of the first, like real big family sitcoms that the kids were just as important I feel like in the storylines and in what was going on in the house and the scenes

You know, I think what we discovered is if the story was not while the family was important, it was the journey of the kids.

Yeah.

And I think the success was it was a time in America when families were falling apart and everything was very very different, that kids didn't have moms and dads like they always did. Everything was changed, and Full House, I think, in a positive way, gave validation and approval to that. It says you can have an unc medicinal family and still have a wonderful, loving family.

Yeah, and that's that is a message that so many fans like reiterate to us over and over and over again. How impactful that was because of how many people out there that don't have families that look like you know, quote unquote what yeah they think it's supposed to and being raised by grandparents or uncles with this and I'm so glad that full House that we got to be a voice for making people who maybe didn't feel like they saw their family on TV feel a little more like, No, this is family.

Is who you, who you love, and who raises you, and that's what that's what counts.

And it all seem very normal. Yes, you know, I mean that that's the other thing that I worked for. This is a very normal family. Although the situation is odd, right, the family is real.

Yeah, you know, and I.

Think we wanted without knowing it, probably it's something that we wanted to say. Yeah, I mean, my parents stayed together, but that was just for the sake of the dog. But by and large, kids needed to see there's life after divorce. Life yea of a parent.

Yeah, and you could so fine and be stupid and be dopey and have a great.

Time, but there was definitely there was still heart to the family that really like was you know, despite all the ridiculous situations, that they really cared about each other and it was genuine and and also you know, the because the cast really cared about each other, that sort of genuine love and affection was a lot easier to portray and to write for because we actually enjoyed each other.

Sometimes the conflict for me and other writers was not everything ends happy right, right? And we I don't know if when I was there, we never got the answer, but we never figured it out. But I wanted some shows to end unhappy. Well, problems weren't solved.

In a little more realism, right, I haven't wanted.

To tell this story even a problems learned solve, people still have each other in life goes on.

Yeah, that's an important message.

Yeah, but this was a different time in the world and they didn't want to tell that story.

Right, Yeah, it was right.

Yeah.

People definitely wanted things to like, particularly sitcoms, Like I wanted to kind of wrap up and know that there's an ending and know that everything's going to be okay. I'm also like you and a little more like well, but sometimes you know, it's not all tied up in

Yeah.

I'm not saying that was right, by the way, I'm saying that that was something that we sometimes talked about.

Yeah, oh I bet, because you know, Full House was.

Everything worked out okay and everyone ended with a hug, and that's you know, that's not life, but it was.

But that's okay, it is. But my ratulation was that fantasy is okay to.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that that fantasy of family always sticking together and working it out and ending it with a hug and nobody getting really ever that mad like that was a huge appeal of the show because so many kids tell us like, I grew up in a in an absolute absolutely chaotic household and everyone was screaming and everyone was this, and so to see a family that like can be upset at each other or something, but then work it out and it's not it doesn't turn into a big thing, and they hug it out and

If I had to do it now, I think I might make Because the world's a different place. I think you could tell all those works complicate the stories and now for.

Sure, yeah, for sure.

And I think on Fuller we were able to do a little bit more right because the sensibility is a little bit different. People are kind of like, look, you can't everything isn't perfect. But and also you were adults, Yeah, exactly, exactly. How so had you written for any kids before?

Well, as I say, I mean the.

Bicycle videos that you had started with, but that was really well.

But being a social.

Worker, I worked with the kids, so I hadn't necessarily written for them. I knew how to listen to them.

You really did, You really did, and you you wrote some of the greatest, no really, some of the greatest episodes for the kids in those in those early seasons.

You really like brought a voice to the young people of this show.

And your and your humor and all of that, Like so much of that is evident in Steph and you know kind of the smart ass comments and stuff.

It's really well helped shaper. I love it.

Yeah, you wrote some of my favorite episodes, like the chicken pox episode, so season one, the oat boat commercial, you wrote that one. Just one of the guys with Kirk Cameron, you wrote that one, Like all of my favorite episodes.

Say wow wow, So thank you for residuals. I still get them.

You're welcome. Well, well, those were a thing too, you know, the gifts that keeps on giving me and I.

Made friends on the show that are still friends today.

Oh I love that.

That is That's the one like common thing throughout the cast and the crew, As everyone says, I like, I still talk to people that I met thirty some odd years ago on that set and we just clicked.

It was just such a family.

It was.

We were really really fortunate.

In terms of the writer's staff. We were there eighty hours a week.

Yeah, I mean, you guys were That's the thing writers packed.

You know, nobody knows it, but writers are like, are there all hours of the day and night. They're in the writer's room. They they're basically trapped in there. They're fed pizza and crusts of bread, no.

Energy drinks.

Yeah, yeah, they're locked in a room.

No, but it is.

I mean the writing staff is put in heavy, heavy, heavy hours and really spends a lot of time in.

The being in battle. These are your comrades.

Yeah, it was kind of juggling you have to do because you're writing scripts that are coming up in the future while revising the current script that we're shooting this week. So there's a lot of manipulation of your brain. You have to thinking forward but staying you know, current as well.

Benny, I don't know if you know this, but Andrea actually wrote an episode of Fuller House at the end. Is an incredible writer, and so she got to write an episode. So she she was was there in the writer's room.

With well and it blew my mind.

It was so great to get experience because as actors, we don't see the script until it's the table draft, you know, till we're there for the table reading.

So I had no idea.

This process starts like three months in advance, where you have to submit an idea and then you know, a one pager and then an outline, and every single step has to get approved by the network and the studio. It's a very involved process and.

The pus at the end of the day, we don't want the audience to see how you make the sausage right.

Because the sausage does not usually look good in the very beginning. The sausage, the sausage that we start with looks nothing like what's put on the plate, you.

Know what I mean.

Yeah, for the hell of it, I was doing an episode of bos and Buddy.

I saved everything from the first page to the final shooting strip, and it's a document.

This big, Oh my gods, and there's many colors.

And right, yeah, there's oh yeah, there's the whole color of you know, rainbow of pages you go through. But what a cool process to like see.

Really how you know, you you don't quite think you're like, oh, there's a revision, there's this, but like it's constant going over, No this doesn't work, and we get it and put it up on our feet and we're like, no, this doesn't work, you know, and like it's just a constant process of like that Now that sucked.

Don't do that. Now try this? Now that sucked too, you know.

Yeah, you know.

People would ask me how long does it take to do a script? My answer is until you shoot it.

Right, and even then you may go back and shoot it again.

That's right.

I mean I've worked on plenty of shows where we would redo entire acts on a Friday evening.

It was not great for the actors.

No, No, I think we've had to do that a couple times, where we had to go back and shoot something from like a couple of weeks previous or whatever.

And yeah, you're like, oh, I've already let this out of my brain. I can't go back.

It's also a very collaborative process. Once you get to a certain draft of your script, then it's turned over to the writer's room where you all got to collaborate and pitch your jokes. Can you talk a little bit about writer's room dynamics.

Yeah, Well, the writer's room is my favorite place. If I have any skill at all is that I'm a pretty decent joke writer.

Oh yeah, and I'm very.

Fast and I stutter. So my joke always was I'm faster than you, and I stutter. And I get more jokes in. But the writer's room is sports.

Yes, yes, you're tableful of people who are all friends until you sit at the table and becomes competitive. Right.

I mean, you all say you're working, you all say you're working for the same script, and you're all part of the same team. But I want to get my damn joke in right, and I want to get as many jokes that I wrote into that script as possible, right, Because writers have egos the same way actors do. We express our our egos is when you write a script and you hear your joke right, and he gets laughs.

You go everything line by line.

And so you do the outline and you like it, and then you write a second draft and you like it, and then you send the outline out to the producers and the executives and the studio and other people who know nothing.

And and then that you have to incorporate all you got to figure out how do you do notes?

You don't have to do everybody's notes.

What I would do is do the really stupid easy notes and someoneuld say this, characters should change, you should do that line, and we need a green vase. I changed the vase, and I tell them what a brilliant idea was. Now the vase makes it work?

Right, Yeah, there was tell them it was their idea. That's brilliant. It's great.

Yeah, and it makes sense because listen, everybody wants to feel part of it. Yeah, right, I mean, every idiot executive wants to sit home with his family.

And say that was my idea. Yep. And so you do that, you know, because you.

Want to stay in the air, right, and you don't want to give into anything that's substantial, right, So you know, let him change the decoration on the tree.

Right as much as you can, right, You let that And it's it's very much a like, okay, what you know.

I think a lot of people think, especially when you are a super successful writer, actor, and.

You know there's a little more pull. But there's always a committee of people above you going yes, no, we like it, we don't like it. This sucks?

Can it?

We're all free.

No matter where you are on the ladder, there's always someone about you going nope, you know, and that's this business is like you have to learn, like, Okay, what are my battles, what are the things that I really want to pick? What are the things that I have to do to make some other people happy because they're here and I've got to all kind of work together.

Who take the collatter process.

On stage, Yes, when I would get notes from the guys or you that made sense, Okay, the words were in your mouth, you know, if they work better than I do. As long as you get the ideas right, you're want to change words, that's okay. If the ideas don't work with your character, let's talk about it. These are valid conversations.

Usually, right, I agree.

So, so there's this process you're juggling, so you're working when ideas and outlines and drafts, you knowing it's all of this at the same time.

That's really exciting.

It's super exciting, and you guys don't really see it like on its feet until.

Well into the process.

Do you remember when I brought in the violinist, what you did wait for what reason?

At a Monday reading, we always in the show act in the last act, in.

The heart scene was always right right. One Monday at a reading, I hired a violinist.

No you did not. I think I do remember that scene you.

Want the violin as you were doing the table.

I really I do remember this that you bring it. That is genius. That is I didn't we think that ourselves for fl brilliant.

It was like on Fuller we had one of the who was it that dressed up once and to do like a they one of the writers was was reading one of the guests starring Rolls, and they like showed up as.

Just as the Russian woman in the dressing room.

The dress root right right right, but they showed up like and just saying like the writers still love, they love coming in and doing something fun and ridiculous that are reading like, but that's brilliant.

Just hiring a violinist.

I mean, people get so angry.

Oh man, if you if you did that today, there would be one hundred social media videos about it.

Oh my god, I wish we had evidence of this all.

All I'm saying is I'm finding someone who plays violin, and I'm just gonna have that number on me at all times.

So and everything is always changing.

And then so the first day they read the script, you get everybody's notes, you redo those notes. So sometimes it's a couple of hours. Sometimes someone looks in and says, who wrote this ship and throws it away, and right, yeah, yeah. The evening that's the goes out to the actors, the director. The next day, the writers come in and start working on next week script as you guys are rehearsing that Tuesday afternoon, we come and see the rehearsal. We start

Work, or this move it we're doing that right.

Thursday is camera blocking, where one of us is in the studio watching a essentially a dress rehearsal with the cameras. At that point we try to do as little rewriting as possible. I think on Thursday night you got very few notes.

Usually yeah, Thursday night.

Usually between like pre tape day which was Thursday and show day, there was we didn't do too much.

Re because the actors have already memorized.

On Fuller, I feel like we did a few times. There was a couple of times that we did a lot of big rewrites. I think usually when the when the legacy cast was there, I think Thursday and Friday was always like they were like, ah, we don't like any of this because John Well, John was always rewriting his.

Life, would rewrite everything. Were like the seventeen new pages right like on show night and we're like, what is this.

We felt that with a young cast that just right.

Yeah, yeah, you can't be changing It's it's really hard to change all of that on the on the kids that that was when we were older.

Then we could adapt to it. I mean we still were like, what the hell is all these new pages?

But oh, by the way, you do a joke better if you're practiced for a week then if you heard it ten minutes ago. So I don't think it gets better.

I think it just gets different, right, I agree, which.

Is always the challenge for writers. We love jokes because they're fresh, right, Well, if you hurt them five times, they don't seem funny, so you change them. But they are finding thought, it's just never heard them before. So how do you trust your material?

Yeah, it's trusting the material.

And it's also I find as an actor finding something in it that I find amusing, or that I can that that I can pick out and do something different with or or you know, a different emphasis or a different something to make a joke stay fresh.

And but that's also the art of the comment writer is to put it in those words right, so it sounds like you thought of it, not like you read it right.

And with characters like Jody and Him, those characters led themselves to big jokes.

Yeah, oh yes, right, I mean they were always easy to write for because basically you got bunchlines.

Yeah we were.

We were the zingy punchlines, the sarcastic, you know, one liners, the all.

Of that, and uh, and Kimmy didn't have to be realistic.

No, Kimmy was anything. Anything goes with Kimmy Gibbler.

Yeah, Kimmy was you could be she was a wild card and could say or do her family could you never saw them, so they were that you could make fun of them all you wanted with ridiculous stuff like it was.

She was.

It must have been such a fun character to write for because it was like.

Yeah, it was in many ways the freest character.

Yell and you you.

Wrote the first episode that I appeared in the first day of I created, So.

You created Kimmy Gibbler.

Yes, that was my idea.

Like, oh my gosh, I have so many questions I've never asked you, like I tell me the like tell me these conversations you had in the writer's room. What notes did you get about Kimmy Gibbler, How did you shape this character?

What was in your brain? Tell me everything.

No, we just wanted someone really funny and stupid without any responsibility.

Okay, just as any character.

Yeah, everybody was so conventional, true, and it was important to us that an unconventional character.

A contrast to the Tanners.

And that's always been part of it comes.

Right, is the weird neighbor.

Well, it sort of presents itself as a foil, like you said, to the conventionalism. And also it's now an outside observer that's constantly in the Tanner House that can kind of say the things that maybe the audience is thinking.

Or maybe like you know, the Greek Greek chorus way.

To say the unrealistic crazy stuff, right. You know, she didn't have to be logical, it didn't have to be this family person tried to make a go. She said whatever she wanted.

To say, and to the adults too.

I was very snappy with the adults and Bob Saggett in particular, Kimmy, Kimmy and Danny had that dynamic where they were just lob barbs at each other.

But that evolved. That happened because we saw, you kid, Kimmy and Saggot we're good together. Yeah.

We we were about to review an episode where it's one of the first interactions between Kimmy and Danny where it's just like, oh.

My gosh, here it is the genesis.

Yeah, it really like you see it starting and you're like, oh, yeah, they kind of start off with like, oh, Kimmy's annoying, but and you kind of see like Kimmy's annoying, but also like they kind of they tolerator but like toss jokes back and forth.

You know, like it's a But at first we just wondered her to be funny, right, and then finds up, well, you know, we got to give him more.

Let's make him more of a person.

Mm hmm.

Do you remember early when she walked in, gave a zinger, and left.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was in one scene, the first scene, and then I was out for the rest of the episode. In those in the first season.

Kimmy was an eight year old Don Rickles.

That's a great, great discrimation.

I mean that's how I saw her. I always saw her as Don Rickles.

His personality. What a compliment.

So did you ever wish we would have met Kimmy's parents? Like I know, we meet her brother in Fuller House, but we never met Garth. We never met mister and missus Gibbler. Was there any talk about introducing the Gibblers?

But when I was there, there was no talk about it. It's awesome. I think it's funnier to have sometimes have imaginary characters.

I'll accept that answer.

I'm not saying that's truthful for all the time.

Yeah, but sometimes you can reference people that are Yeah, but.

When I was there was a pretty big cast, so we never talked about that.

We only we just like, yeah, how that house was? There was just too many damn people in that house.

Oh.

I love Lenny so much.

What a pleasure to talk to him after all this time, and he is still funny and witty and sharp as ever.

Oh yeah, He's just that was so special.

I've always wanted to ask him about how he come he came up with Kimmy Gibbler in that character, right, that was so special, so special.

I'm so glad.

I'm so glad we got to have him on the show so that you and our audience could finally have all of the answers that they wanted about the creation of Kimmy Gibler Kimberly Gibbler. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today for another fantastic episode of How Rude Tanna Readers were Tanner readers?

I kind of like that.

How Rude Tanner. Rito's such a pleasure to have you all here.

Make sure that you are following us on Instagram at how Rude Podcast. You can also email us at Howard podcast at gmail dot com. You can send us questions for some of our minisodes, more questions that hopefully we can answer with some of our guests and wonderful things that we talk about. And also make sure that you're liking and subscribing the pod to the podcast wherever you're listening to it so that you can make sure and get the newest episodes as soon as they come out.

Oh you, and you delivered it with attitude like I can hear it in your voice.

You are confident.

It's on a bracelet.

Oh wait, someone put it on a bracelet that's brilliant, so you can wear it like a cheat sheet. Ye bat at inks nights gone

H