"Night Court" Creator Reinhold Weege 1949-2012

[Zoneboy]

The Chicago native also wrote for “Barney Miller” and “M*A*S*H” and received four Emmy nominations.

Link


Reinhold Weege, creator of the daffy 1980s sitcom Night Court, which ran for nine seasons on NBC and earned seven Emmy Awards and 31 nominations but never the big comedy prize, has died. He was 63.

Weege, who before Night Court wrote and produced for ABC’s Barney Miller -- another lovable Manhattan-set sitcom set in the world of the law -- died Dec. 1 of natural causes in La Jolla, Calif., a family spokeswoman told The Hollywood Reporter.

Night Court, which starred the youthful Harry Anderson as night-shift judge and Mel Torme fan Harry Stone and John Larroquette as lecherous assistant district attorney Dan Fielding, began as a midseason replacement and ran from 1984-92. It was a top 10 show in 1986-87 and 1987-88.

Night Court anchored an early "Must See TV” Thursday comedy lineup for NBC, which opened with The Cosby Show, followed by Family Ties and Cheers.


With Weege receiving a writing credit on 105 of the comedy’s 193 episodes, Night Court received best comedy series Emmy nominations in 1985, 1987 and 1988 -- losing out to Cosby, The Golden Girls and The Wonder Years, respectively. Weege captured his first Emmy nom in 1979 when Barney Miller was up for best comedy series but lost to Taxi.

Larroquette collected a then-unprecedented four consecutive Emmys for best supporting comedy actor for playing Fielding before withdrawing his name from consideration in 1989. (In an inside joke during the third season, it was revealed that his character’s real first name was Reinhold, but he changed it to Dan out of embarrassment.)

Night Court often walked the line between lunacy and reality, and its edginess pushed the envelope of network television at the time. Needing a break from the intense demands of a weekly sitcom, "Reiny" retired from the show after six seasons. He also received four WGA nominations and a Humanitas Award nom for his work.

A native of Chicago, Weege also wrote for the TV adaptations of M*A*S*H and Semi-Tough as well as for Fish, the Barney Miller spinoff that starred Abe Vigoda. He created the short-lived sitcom Park Place, which was set in a legal aid clinic and starred Harold Gould and Alice Drummond, and wrote and directed TV's Nikki and Alexander, with Tim Matheson and Irena Ferris.

In 1968, his senior year at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect, Ill., Weege played Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons opposite future Babylon 5 star Bruce Boxleitner as Sir Thomas More. Shelley Pierce, his high school girlfriend whom he later married, portrayed Lady More. The play won the Illinois state drama competition.

In a story he told to the Chicago Tribune, Weege embarked on a career in Hollywood in 1976 after he was fired from his job as a reporter for a suburban newspaper. He wrote about a “secret meeting, which should have been public” concerning a development project in Schaumberg, Ill., that angered advertisers of the paper.

His big break came when he was hired as a staff writer for Barney Miller. After three years, Weege left the show to strike out on his own with Night Court.

In addition to his ex-wife Shelley, survivors include his daughters Tez and Alix and granddaughter Zoe.

A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. on Dec. 16 at Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Mortuary in the Hollywood Hills.

In lieu of flowers, donations can may be made to the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute.

[Skywalker]

Wow. Night Court is one of my favorite shows. The show was never the same after he left. R.I.P Reinhold.

[catlover79]

[Pavan]

Damn. Shocked!

[Mr. Television]

The guy created one of the best and most underrated sitcoms of all time. R.I.P. Reinhold.

[robyrob]

[megamanj2004]

This is quite unexpected here.

R.I.P. Reinhold Weege

[luvzjohn101]

Why did Reinhold Weege leave Night Court anyway? I loved it so much! Because John Larroquette mentioned it on Twitter, that's how I found out about Reinhold's death.

[glickmam]

Originally Posted by luvzjohn101

Why did Reinhold Weege leave Night Court anyway? I loved it so much! Because John Larroquette mentioned it on Twitter, that's how I found out about Reinhold's death.

Mr. Weege departed the show because of burnout.

[luvzjohn101]

Originally Posted by glickmam

Mr. Weege departed the show because of burnout.

Meaning that he ran out of ideas?

[glickmam]

Originally Posted by luvzjohn101

Meaning that he ran out of ideas?

Exactly.

[luvzjohn101]

Originally Posted by glickmam

Exactly.

That explains why Night Court went downhill when he left the show.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by luvzjohn101

That explains why Night Court went downhill when he left the show.

Here's a fairly good idea regarding how whack Night Court got post-Reinhold Weege:

From 1984 to 1989, this show was an absolute riot, especially the episodes with Florence Halop as the elderly bailiff. However, once Reinhold Weege stepped down as executive producer, the show became too contrived for me.

Simplest one. Reinhold Weege leaves as Executive Producer. There was a certain wackiness to the show that was blatantly obvious. Once Weege left, that edge was taken away, and that's when many of the events that are currently on the list, occurred. The "kindlier, gentler Dan", the elevation of Phil to almost a main character, Bull's fiance, the introduction of the court stenographer, Gilber Godfried... all of these were occurrences AFTER Weege left, and they were just not funny. Anyone who says Night Court went downhill after Selma Diamond passed away is nuts, because most of the truly great shows occurred when Dan became the full letch, and Mac was brought in. That didn't happen until Season 2, and Selma died during the summer break between 1 and 2. And I also think that Markie Post was a heck of a better character than Ellen Foley ever was, because she was the best antithesis to Dan. You had the Angel in Christine on one side, defending all the scum, and you had the Devil in Dan on the other, trying to send the people up the river. It was that dichotomy between good and evil that made their interaction with Harry so much fun. Harry was the Everyman, with the Devil on one shoulder and the Angel on the other, as played by John and Markie. The show was on it's stride when it was Harry, Dan, Christine, Mac, Roz, and Bull (basically Seasons 3 through 6), and finally jumped the shark when Weege left.

When creator Reinhold Weege left the show after the sixth season, "Night Court" definitely jumped. The seventh season tried to carry on Weege's trademark combination of wackiness and sentiment, but the writing quality just wasn't there; the actors acted like zombie versions of their old selves, and desperate new twists were added like Christine getting married and pregnant. The two subsequent seasons tried to make the show more "verbal" and "witty," which basically meant making everybody boring, even the once-manic Harry. It's too bad, because under Weege's regime this was a wonderful show; despite all the cast changes, despite the early loss of the wonderful Selma Diamond, it was always incredibly funny and fast-paced, the underrated crown jewel of NBC's first and best "must-see" Thursday lineup. Incidentally, I don't really understand the previous poster's beef against shows where you actually CARE about the characters. "Seinfeld" was great but its heartlessness is not something I'd want to see repeated.

When Reinhold Weege left as exec producer, the goofiness left too, and the show simply stopped being funny. Dan got soft, the storylines got schmaltzy, stupid extra characters (the stenographer, Gilbert Gottfried, et al.) came in, the show tipped from anarchic to heartwarming, and I hate heartwarming.

I agree...this show jumped at the beginning of the 1990-91 season , when Chris Cluess and Stuart Kriesmann became exec producers. The season before, with Christine pregnant et al, at least had the zany elements of what made the show great, even though you could tell the actors were getting tired and they had a minimum of 3 subplots running in each ep. But when Cluess and Kriesman added that reporter girlfriend for Judge Stone and the Stenographer and newsstand guy (did either one ever get more than one line per ep)...Chirstine's divorce...THAN the whole Phil death thing....yikes. Pretty embarrassing to watch.

This is a show that practically defines its own moment when it JTS'd. It was created and produced by Reinhold Weege (writer for the great Barney Miller). At the end of the Weege-produced episodes of Night Court, you can hear his deep laugh on the closing production credit. Weege quit the show a couple of years before it ended, and his laughing production credit was deleted. When the show began, it was a nice vehicle for the mildly eccentric comedian Harry Anderson. After Weege left, it went all over the place. There was one episode where Judge Harry imposed a sentence on an *animated* Wile E. Coyote. Give me a break! And Markie Post's virginal character becomes an unwed mom for no reason, finally falls in love with Harry (long after anyone cared), left him, and then made John Larroquette's character go crawling for her in the final episode. Man, what a mess!

I agree that the show jumped around 1990. As a loyal fan at the time, I remember my anticipation of the "Potty-Man" episode that lampooned Andrew "Dice" Clay, and my subsequent disappointment with how weak the show turned out to be. In the show, the Potty-Man character ends up in court for some reason, and Dan is, of course, a big fan. In the end however, everyone gangs up on the Potty-Man for his non-PC humor, and Dan "realizes" that the Potty-Man's humor is "wrong." While Andrew "Dice" Clay and Night Court's pre-1990 humor are quite different, they are both irreverent. Old school Night Court was not at all Politically Correct, but in this episode, the show went on record as being completely P.C. If Reinhold Weege had still been there, I doubt he would have gone out of his way to diss the Dice-Man. It's a shame that a once irreverent show had become so lame. Naturally, it wouldn't be long before the once-great show was put out of its misery.

[jessm78]

Yeah, you guys make some good points. I've noticed this trend in other shows I used to follow and enjoy (they were great in the beginning & had a formula that just really worked, but once the exec producers stepped down and someone else took over the reins, it wasn't the same).

I agree with the quotes about how season 7 tried to maintain that bit of zaniness, even if it wasn't as crazy and goofy as the earlier seasons. I think it jumped around mid-season or so when Christine married Tony and then got pregnant, and toward the end of the season it just kept dropping IMO. I watched this show faithfully during its first run, and even in season 8 I could tell how different it was and missed the earlier days. I especially wasn't thrilled with Harry getting the girlfriend, the whole Phil Foundation thing and Dan turning nice, etc. Still I watched it to the very end as a loyal fan. I wasn't a huge fan of Lisette (the stenographer) and I really didn't like Gilbert Gottfried's character either. All this stuff happened after Weege left so I do think that had a lot to do with it.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by jessm78

Yeah, you guys make some good points. I've noticed this trend in other shows I used to follow and enjoy (they were great in the beginning & had a formula that just really worked, but once the exec producers stepped down and someone else took over the reins, it wasn't the same).

I agree with the quotes about how season 7 tried to maintain that bit of zaniness, even if it wasn't as crazy and goofy as the earlier seasons. I think it jumped around mid-season or so when Christine married Tony and then got pregnant, and toward the end of the season it just kept dropping IMO. I watched this show faithfully during its first run, and even in season 8 I could tell how different it was and missed the earlier days. I especially wasn't thrilled with Harry getting the girlfriend, the whole Phil Foundation thing and Dan turning nice, etc. Still I watched it to the very end as a loyal fan. I wasn't a huge fan of Lisette (the stenographer) and I really didn't like Gilbert Gottfried's character either. All this stuff happened after Weege left so I do think that had a lot to do with it.

The new executive producers even admitted that they intentionally tried to tone down Night Court's then "trademark" zaniness/goofiness beginning w/ Season 8:
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-09-..._1_night-court

Stu Kreisman and Chris Cluess, executive producers of NBC's "Night Court," knew just what to say when they were asked to rejoin the fading hit to preside over its eighth and "final" season.

"We said, 'Are you nuts? No way! We don't want to do that.' And we said no," Kreisman recalled.

Then, he said, Warner Bros. Television replied, "Well, if we deposit a huge amount of money in your bank accounts, would you reconsider?"

"Yeah," Kreisman said, nodding.

"Yeah," Cluess said, nodding.

The pair, who met as CBS pages in the '70s, went to work for "Night Court" creator and then-executive producer Reinhold Weege in 1984 as the show's first staff writers. They were executive story editors when they left.

"We then decided the show had no future," Kreisman said. "We made the right career move. We went to 'The Tortellis.' " That show failed.

They were understandably leery of going back to shut down a dying series.

"Night Court" was in trouble. It was losing its audience. The cast members were tired of their characters, and the writers felt they had exhausted about every angle of the show's comic potential.

The humor was mostly sight gags, and the characters had become too cartoonish--even for "Night Court." Dan Fielding, the lascivious prosecutor played by John Larroquette, had become a one-note caricature.

"We had a show that we didn't watch because we didn't like it that much," Cluess said. "We had a show that still had a lot of energy, with a wonderful cast, but the show had gotten into a direction that we felt was wrong.

"The second problem was that we were on Fridays at 9 o'clock, where you could do a nude show and no one would know you were there," he said. "We had color bars for two weeks and we beat 'Full House.' "

First, though, they had to convince the cast that the show was going to change. They took each actor to lunch. They promised new things for the show.

"We lied to them!" Kreisman said.

Cluess and Kreisman then spent six weeks plotting the show's new direction.

"The direction we decided on was a much more verbal one, with far less sight gags and, to a certain extent, far less silly. We decided to look and explore the characters," Kreisman said.

And they told the actors that one of the characters was going to die.

As it turned out, Dan's sidekick, Phil the derelict (played by Will Utay), was the victim, killed by a falling piano at Carnegie Hall.

His life insurance policy left Dan $11.6 million, on the condition that Dan use the money for philanthropy--the Phil Foundation.

"Now we have the ultimate Reagan-era character ... who couldn't spend a dime on himself," Cluess said.

With Larroquette interested in his character, Cluess and Kreisman started disrupting the other characters' lives. Utay returned as Phil's twin brother, bilking Dan of his millions and precipitating his downfall.

"We took these characters where they'd never gone before--to real life," Kreisman said. "They responded fantastically. They were excited about coming to the show. They never knew what was going to be in the script the next week."

About halfway through last season, NBC moved the show back to Wednesday nights.

Cluess and Kreisman made sure that their big episodes happened in November and February sweeps. They "stunted" furiously, bringing in guest stars like Bert Parks, Jack Jones, Mel Torme and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

"It was just a new sensibility. It was having the show grow up, being a lot more verbal, a lot smarter," Kreisman said. " 'Night Court' had this stigma of being a silly show, but it's not that silly anymore."

In time, the audience came back.

When the audience returned, NBC realized that it liked the show because it was "low-maintenance" and still relatively inexpensive to produce.

Once again, their bosses negotiated, i.e., put a huge amount of money in the Kreisman and Cluess bank accounts, and got them to agree to a ninth season instead of a sad finale.

"We were more surprised than anybody," Cluess said. "We never thought the show would go.

"We're going to shut the show down again, hopefully this year, and then halfway through the season I'm sure we're going to hear again, 'Guys, what about a 10th year?"'