Poor Will Durst. The comedian, Internet columnist and host of the PBS series "Livelyhood" had to go begging for publicity in the past. But when he returned home to San Francisco after screwing up the $500,000 question for his friend Rudy Reber on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" the other week, he found 86 inquiries from the press on his voice mail.
What he didn't know — and it's probably just as well -- is that he had also become public enemy No. 1 online at the "Millionaire" chat board, as the evil man with the wrong answer who cost his so-called pal 218,000 clams.
So, Will, who is Rudy Reber and how did you wind up as his phone-a-friend on the night of Feb. 17?
"Rudy used to be a comedian back when we were all fellow soldiers in the comedy wars in the early 1980s here in San Francisco," the keeper of www.willdurst.com told TV Barn. "Rudy had been a good bud. Me and my wife Debi had gone over to his house a couple of times for dinner, and versa visa. Then Rudy and his wife Tina split up, and we didn't see much of him. Next time I saw him he was a used car salesman in Portland and was trying to get back into comedy. But they didn't have a lot of open mikes in Portland ...
"That was at least three, four years ago. And then (last month) I get a call out of the blue. I was going to be in Chicago appearing at Zanies. Debi called me and said, 'Rudy Reber just called. He's going be on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and do you want to be one of his lifelines?' So I said sure, no problem, what's the big deal?"
Lowering his voice, Durst added, "I didn't think he had a chance in hell of making it through the process. I was wrong. I was very wrong." But on with the story:
"So I call Rudy, who's living in Virginia. He tells me all I have to do is be by the phone for two 3-hour periods on Thursday. I was in the middle of a big writing project anyhow, so I stayed in the house. Actually, I was in a 'comedy condo' — the ubiquitous comedy condo where all of the comedians at that club stay."
(I'd never heard of a comedy condo, but apparently Zanies, Improv and all the other clubs each have one. It's cheaper than giving out-of-town comics a hotel room. Durst passed along this helpful hint for all the aspiring comedians out there: "Beware the brown towels at the comedy condo. And buy your own mayonnaise.")
"So I get the call from a little girl (at ABC), I can't remember her name. They call in the morning at about 11 and they say, 'Are you going to be near a phone later today?' I say yes. They say they needed me by the phone from 3 to 6 p.m. Central time.
"Three-thirty rolls around and there's a call to say 'Your friend Rudy is on the hot seat.' I answered the phone on the first ring and I just said 'Durst!', because that's the way I answer my phone. She said to me, 'No, you're supposed to answer it on the third ring like we told you, because the next person on the phone will be Regis.'
"See, I never thought he'd make it through the 10-person speed order quiz," Durst confessed. "He wanted to list Ben Stein, but he wasn't able to for some reason." (It would've been a massive conflict of interest; Disney has its hands in both shows, and many of the original "Millionaire" writers were borrowed from "Win Ben Stein's Money.")
"So the phone rings. I wait three times, but I figure it's been 45 minutes — no way has my good friend, smart Mensa member Rudy, made it for 45 minutes. But I hadn't accounted for show stoppages and so forth.
"Sure enough, it's Regis. I answer the phone, 'Durst!' He says 'Durst? We're looking for Will Durst!' Then he says it's the $500,000 question."
The question was, "Who directed Michael Jackson's video 'Bad'?"
"Now I'm not a big music guy. I have 10 presets on my car radio and not one of them is music. But this was a music question I knew! I was so excited for him. I was going to help him out! Oh man, was I confident. I was very confident."
Durst told Reber the correct answer was John Landis. Reber decided to risk his wad and answer the question. He said Landis.
The answer was Martin Scorsese. (Landis directed "Thriller.")
"They put me on hold. I was able to hear it, but I couldn't say anything. I couldn't go, 'Rudy, I'm sorry.' Plus, Regis took an inordinate amount of time. He stopped for the longest time and then he said, 'No, the answer is C.' And I just screamed. People in the comedy condo heard me screaming. And I didn't have Rudy's number.
"Meanwhile, I couldn't breathe for 48 hours. I didn't tell people at the comedy club. They just thought I was unusually morose. The news media had no problem telling the story in 120 words. But I couldn't."
"Then Rudy calls on Saturday. He says, 'Don't worry about it, buddy! I had a great time! I'm getting out of telemarketing! I couldn't ask for any better publicity!'
"Well, it turns out — I could!"
By accepting Durst's wrong answer, Reber blew the chance to keep his winnings of $250,000. He went home with $32,000 instead. Durst has already figured out that he can make it up to Reber by sending him $20 a month ... for 908 years.
"We speak every couple of days now," says Durst, adding with a laugh just slightly tinged with bitterness: "He's my counselor."
Durst gave me Reber's phone number in the Newport News area. I called. Sure enough, the first thing out of Reber's mouth were compassionate words for his hangdog friend Will.
"The poor guy," Reber said. "He's been getting abused for a week. That poor bastard. I felt so crappy for him." (The show aired one week after its taping, on Feb. 24.)
My first question to Reber is, why Durst? And why call him for that question?
"I've known Will a long time," said Reber, who had chosen chose two comics, a deejay and two relatives as his phone-a-friends. "My brother's a Ph.D., but he wouldn't know a Michael Jackson video from his left foot. My brother-in-law is a lawyer. He knows law, he knows art history. The deejay was a classic rock guy."
But Durst knew a lot of pop culture history, so that's how he became the go-to. Only after the taping did Reber realize — of course! — that the deejay probably knew the correct answer to the "Bad" question. (And, as Reber later confirmed, he did.)
Reber is a telemarketer these days, but he is well known in West Coast comedy circles. Mavis Leno produced a horoscope for him 15 years ago that predicted he would one day become a writer. Reber even had the singular honor of being dissed once on stage by none other than Rick Rockwell, the man who infamously hooked up with Darva Conger last month on Fox's "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?"
"I had gone down to San Diego about ten years ago. I went down on a day's notice to do a comedy competition at the Improv. All of the L.A. guys were there. Afterward I'm standing up there in the back while they're tallying up the count on stage. I wasn't No. 5, 4, 3 or 2, so I knew I had won, because I knew I was definitely in the top five. Sure enough, I was No. 1 -- but Rockwell, who was the emcee, just said, 'Who the hell is THIS?' Because he thought it was going to be one of his L.A. pals. And I thought, 'F--- you.'"
Of Rockwell the comedian, Reber said, "People who've seen his act know why he got out of comedy."
But after his "Millionaire" appearance, Reber will likely use what winnings he has to get out of telemarketing and try a fresh start, possibly in radio. An old friend, "Dennis Miller Live" producer David Feldman, called him up and said, "You've got to get into radio," and Reber is seriously considering that.
As for Durst, he's thinking of getting into the witness protection program.
"I haven't seen the show yet. I can't. It's too painful. Someone has taped it for me. Maybe in five, six years we'll look back on this and laugh ...
"Rosie O'Donnell made it even worse for me because she was a phone-a-friend and she offered to pay the difference if she was wrong. Thanks for raising the bar, Rosie!"
Durst wrote a first-person account of his misadventure for the new issue of TV Guide. He's promised Reber the freelance money from the article. The two of them may also surface this week on an "Extra" segment. We're not sure if he gave TV Barn a print exclusive — I'm an undisguised fan of the "Livelyhood" series — but we're pretty sure Will won't be returning most of the 86 press inquiries he received. He's peeved about the way he's treated by the rest of the media.
"The AP called me a `famous comedian,'" he grumbled. "They've never called me a famous comedian before. I couldn't get a story written about me — until this."
Picks to click ... for the week of March 6 are here ... By the way, the first guests on "Lifetime Live" are Hillary Clinton and Melissa Etheridge.
The daily digest ... for March 7, 2000: Apologies to everyone who kept checking in on Monday — my "In" box runneth over, and it wasn't till Monday night I was able to clear out the time to do the page ... John Carney writes, "I'm sure you saw the bizarre incident with Tad Low of 'Pop-Up Video' forcing his way on stage during the "TV Guide Awards" to protest the fact that his show didn't win for best music program. As I noted to you a couple of years ago, the production company's Web site was always so strangely critical of VH1. Well, I've been watching VH1's new news show, 'The Daily One,' tonight. Cane and Lynda Lopez talked about the incident, calling Low a 'jackass,' pointing out that the show comes from an independent production company. They also proclaimed their affection for Carson Daly — whose MTV show "TRL" won the award — and showed footage of Low being escorted off following the incident. 'Pop-Up Video' is actually one of my favorite shows, and I hate to see it headed towards apparent cancellation" ...
UPN sent out a press release billing its companion Web site for its new drama "The Beat" as "the first-of-its-kind Internet site." Why? Because it features "original 'webisodes' — innovative vignettes on the Internet — that correlate to UPN's new cop drama," which is from the shop of Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, creators of "Homicide." But wait. Didn't NBC have "original 'webisodes'" of "Homicide" on *its* Web site? The "Beat" vignettes are produced on digital camera, so I guess that sets them apart, but "first-of-its-kind" is a tad fatuous ... The producers of "Freaks and Geeks," however, sent out a very charming p.r. to critics, along with yet another "relaunch episode" of their critically acclaimed show. "That's right, our third relaunch in one year," reads the memo from Judd Apatow and Paul Feig. "I swear to God this will be our last relaunch. That is because we have only one other option - our funeral ... We're having a great time making the show regardless of the madness that surrounds us" ...
In a rare defeat for Discovery Networks, the holding company for Discovery, TLC, Travel Channel and a bunch of digital-cable-only channels said it is giving up on Discovery People, a/k/a Eye on People, which it paid CBS $100 million for last year. People's inability to get onto cable systems eventually pitted it against Discovery Health, a startup channel with a lot more promising growth curve ... Lynette Rice reports in Entertainment Weekly that "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire" is back, and being contemplated for a 2000-01 run by UPN, among others ... And did you catch the classic comedy moment on Friday's "Late Show"? The first time the control room lets the "Decaffeinated Coffee" jingle fire too early? Dave turns to Maria Pope and says, "--ly Balloo," a reference to Bob & Ray's ace reporter Wally Balloo, who always began talking a split second before the control room potted up his mike.
Coming up next:
Wednesday: Campaign 2000: The late-night vote
Thursday: TV Barn reader feels the need for "Greed"
Previously on TV Barn:
3 March: "Contact"
2 March: Bush whacked
1 March: Reader mail
29 Feb: Kathie Lee quits
28 Feb: Kathie Lee triumphs
24 Feb: Reader mail
23 Feb: More games to come
22 Feb: "X-Files" meets "Cops"
21 Feb: Dave is back!
On this date... in 1979, Karen Wolek's testimony dramatically ends the Marco Dane murder trial on "One Life to Live." Under cross examination from the District Attorney, Wolek blurts out her secret: "How much more do you want, Mr. Callison? Haven't I said what everyone wants to hear? What you want everyone to hear? That I am a common hooker like Katrina Karr? That Marco Dane was my pimp? Is that what you want me to say?" Well, yeah, it is. And that the real murderer is Talbot Huddleston (one of Karen's clients). Years later, it's revealed that Marco's identical brother Mario was the actual victim. That's life in the soaps! Judith Light wins an Emmy for her breakthrough breakdown performance as Wolek, a role she took over from fellow future sitcom star Julia Duffy.
March 7: in 1989, Jamie Lee Curtis has a new creep going after her, but it's just Goth goof Richard Lewis. And at least in the beginning of their series, their relationship is "Anything but Love." -- Tom Heald
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