‘Tis the Season to Celebrate Tools!
Let me take you back to 1997 and a visit to Berland’s House of Tools in Lombard (still humming today) for my TV show Ben Loves Chicago on Channel 50 (five years after my time at WTTW.) This was the lead-off segment of a Valentine’s Day Special (another favorite tool-related holiday) to honor a particular kind of love affair. The love a man has with his tool.
I’m not a major tool guy myself, but I do recognize the opportunity to get silly with words, wield dangerous hunks of metal, lampoon butt cracking and let it all hang out. This one speaks for itself, of course.
And yet…I do want to thank Roger Bain, “The Tool Man,” who sang his signature tune on this one, and who sold me on the idea to do a piece on Berland’s in the first place. Brilliant of him.
I also want to briefly explore my wife’s contention that this show was more entertaining than Wild Chicago. I will tell you this: Ben Loves Chicago (BLC) gave me a platform to get a bit crazier, a space to dare allow my outrageousness full throttle. When I started at Wild, I was cautious, even scared. I’d never been on TV before and I didn’t want to blow this amazing opportunity. John Davies, my co-creator and early director at WTTW, stressed that the show was about the city and its quirky inhabitants, not me. That was a welcome bit of information that helped take the pressure off. I didn’t have to showboat, be the center of attention.
Gradually, I gained confidence and found – even during Wild Chicago – that my creative impulses were getting stronger, wanting to stretch out, explode. Scott Jacobs, the late video pioneer of IPA editing house in Chicago, weekly congratulated me with every show we posted there, declaring his pleasure at bearing witness to the birth of a new television comedy talent, a compliment I truly treasured. I’m still grateful for his encouragement.
This video exemplifies what Scott was talking about. I was the boss of this show, so I let the host and producer have free reign. And now we were on a commercial channel, so the ratings would determine our future. Fortunately, viewers liked what they saw, and we enjoyed a nice little run. Three Emmys too.
I got to employ my improv tools as well. Mainly, “explore and heighten,” To prepare for the shoot, I simply brainstormed every kind of association I could make with the word “tool.” Fertile ground, people. Then I called upon The Muse to help me craft questions that could yield funny answers, and, even if they didn’t, would still be funny in their own right. Oh, and I asked a lot of questions before the shoot about what kinds of tools I could get my hands on; what could we make a lot of noise with; what could we destroy, create sparks, simulate actual dismemberment with? I knew going in that this was going to be a winner. What say you?
Tool Turn-On