After battling CBS, Bonnie Hunt does her thing with The Building

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service on August 18, 1993

Jonathan Stone, Copyright 1993

CBS hasn't got a clue about what to do with Bonnie Hunt.

So the network will let her do her own thing. It's called The Building, and it premieres Friday at 9:30 P.M. for a six-week run.

"I have to give CBS credit," said Hunt, star of Grand and Davis Rules, whom you may also have noticed as the White House tour guide in the recent feature Dave. "This just never happens. They gave me...money and, really, they did give me the opportunity to see this through."

But the opportunity did not come without a fight. CBS wanted a star vehicle. They wanted her to call it Bonnie -- "with a big heart over the 'I' and those big chubby letters," Hunt told a handful of TV critics recently in Los Angeles. "You know, 'Bonnniieeeeeeeeee.'"

She wanted to do an ensemble sitcom with her very talented friends from Chicago's Second City comedy troupe, the one that's spawned stars from John Belushi to, well, Bonnie Hunt. And that's what she got.

The network wanted a simpler show, not the cascades of verbiage that fill The Building.

The network wanted traditional camera work.

"I had a big battle with them about the pilot. The first time they saw it, they said, 'More close-ups and cut to you when you laugh at the joke.'

"I said, 'Why don't we just give them a paint-by-numbers thing, and the audience can say, "Oh, okay, Joke No. 2's coming up." You're nuts.'"

Most hat-in-hand program peddlers would be reluctant to call network executives "nuts." All of them, except Hunt, apparently, would refrain from publicly criticising the TV power boys.

But she's different, and the show that she created, wrote, and stars in is different, and don't come crying to me that there's nothing fun and different on TV when this program disappears because you didn't watch it.

"It's so typical in this business," says Hunt, that executives "see someone and say, 'You are different. I want to work with you. We want you.'

"And then they hire the person with the unique talents and offbeat perspective and they say, 'Now we've got you. You can't do that.'"

The trouble with Hunt is that she doesn't accept their power.

"That's why they hate me. That's truly the thing that drives them crazy about me. I'm willing to not do the show."

And she's also willing to not do other shows. When Delta Burke left Designing Women, Hunt says, she was offered the replacement job that went to Julia Duffy. When Duffy left, Hunt was offered the job that went to Judith Ivey.

She turned down Home Improvement, too.

"They offered me a lot of money," she says, "but I had this show. I just wanted to try a different approach to television."

The story of how it got to the screen, albeit on summertime Fridays, the dreariest of TV times, is at once a testament to and an indictment of CBS. Most of it is also a sad commentary on the way network television operates:

"I called (CBS Entertainment president) Jeff Sagansky directly and said, 'Hi, it's Bonnie Hunt.'

"CBS had always offered me what they call a holding deal, where they give you a bunch of money and they develop a show for you with two writers who don't know anything about you or your abilities, and they cram you all together and roll the dice.

"I had no interest in that, even though they give you a lump sum to kind of not work."

Hunt explained the rationale behind such creatively stale deals that seem to spawn about half the new shows in any season.

"It's a balance of power...it can be categorised, so that the power and the control is organised, so that they (network executives) can see exactly what's happening and kind of have the final say on it."

Hunt's show went differently.

"The first time (Sagansky) read my first script, I think he said, 'Aw, it stinks.' You know, 'Forget it.'

"Then, about six months went by, and I met with a bunch of different writers because they kept saying, you know, 'If you get a good writer behind it and put his name on it, you'll sell it.'

"...And every writer I met said, 'I see you in pink chamois, and Dr. Joyce Brothers walks in.'"

"I'd walk out of the meeting, and my agent would say, 'You know, he's pretty good.'

"And I'd say, 'Oh, my God.'"

At this point, Hunt's story took a turn from that of the usual would-be television executive producer.

"I just wanted to leave the script as is, so I went back to Jeff again and he read again and he said (she heaves a big sigh), 'It's a good show.'"

She fails to mention that by this time she had also acquired a 2,000-pound gorilla for a partner -- David Letterman, who's a friend of hers. Later, she acknowledges, "I needed some strength in my corner."

Sagansky asked Hunt and her buddies to stage the pilot for a few CBS executives as a play.

"I think they noticed that there was something about the teamwork there that made it different, and the writing is from the truth."

Maybe you'll notice it, too. There are lovable folks in The Building -- Big Tony and his unseen wife, Antoinette, and two kids, Little Tony and Anthony, Jr.; Stan, the good-hearted actor; the perky Holly; Brad, an unemployed columnist; and, of course, the just-jilted Bonnie, a struggling actress who's found local fame as the Randolph Carpet girl on TV.

They're warm and funny, and sometimes refreshingly confusing.In their awful time slot, CBS still isn't giving them much of a chance. Now it's your turn to take up Hunt's fight and, by watching, show the TV power brokers that simple redundancy is not always the best answer.