Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [39]
By the way, a couple years later, he wound up coming to ESPN as a consultant and working out a deal to buy a piece of it.
BOB PRONOVOST:
They tried to bring in people from New York to organize and schedule us; management was trying to get control of the asylum. It was a cuckoo’s nest. We were completely out of control.
We had this producer, Fred Muzzy, who was about 350 pounds and looked like Jackie Gleason. He was hanging out in Rhode Island at a clambake one day—he had a tendency to drink and was a great partier—and realized he had to be at work at 3:15 to do a show, and it was already 2:45. So he hired a helicopter and landed it outside the building in the mud. One of my funniest images of working at ESPN is of Fred strutting in through the parking lot, covered in mud up to his chest, walking into the newsroom, barking out demands like there was nothing wrong.
Another time, Fred went out and got drunk at a restaurant on the corner called Hamps, which we used to call Cramps. It got close to airtime and he hadn’t shown up, so I started to realize that in addition to my directing duties, I would have to start producing if we were going to make it on the air. Then all of a sudden, I see some PA is wheeling Fred down the hall in a chair and he’s barking commands all over the place. He came into the control room and was totally drunk. We wound up switching back and forth with producing and directing duties, and at one point, the TD [technical director] says, “I’m not putting up with this shit,” and walked out.
CHUCK PAGANO:
The most anxious day of the week was payday because you ran to the bank up the street to make sure the damn check cleared before it bounced. We were bleeding red. Everybody sort of kept their engine running just in case they shut the doors. Our desire was just to make product, get the fucking thing out of here, and figure out what the hell we had to do next. None of us were what any normal organization would ever hire—we weren’t refined enough. I guess we were like Vikings just trying to clear the forest.
CHRIS BERMAN:
The first year I still had a mustache, long hair, and long sideburns. Chet was president of the place, knew everybody’s name, and I mean every camera man who worked at eleven at night. I remember one time he passed me in the hall, turned, and said, “You still got that mustache, huh, Chris?” Now, I’m not a dumb kid, so I ask, “Does it bother you?” He says, “Let me explain something to you about TV. You’re pretty proud of what you say, aren’t you? You want people to listen to you, don’t you? So, if you wore a loud tie, 20 percent of the people are noticing this aggressive orange tie, and might not hear what you say. Suppose 10 percent of people, while not offended, are distracted by your mustache and are trying to decide should you have it or not, does it look good or not? They’re not listening to what you say. That would be a disservice, wouldn’t it?” I said, “I’m going down the street to buy a freakin’ razor right now. It will be off tomorrow, never to return.” That was my Chet. He didn’t order me to take it off. He put it in terms of me hurting myself.
STEVE ANDERSON:
I was lucky enough to be teamed with Chip Dean as a producer-director team. At the time, the networks were doing a great job, so all we wanted was to be as good as them. We watched everything they did. We knew what they did, how they did it, why they did it. So, part of it was to make sure that no one could say we weren’t as good. And then we tried to do things that were better.
We mostly did basketball, but we did a lot of other things together too. We got five cameras for the big games and were thrilled. We were trying to do off-the-ball isolation,