Vicious rivalries? Illicitsex?
Not exactly. Here's the dirt.
ONE YEAR AGO, the world was shocked - shocked - by Barry Williams' revelatory book, Growing Up Brady: I Was A Teenage Greg. It was all there - Williams smoking pot before work, Florence Henderson joking about oral sex, Robert Reed brawling with the producers, and pairs of the kids fondling each other every time the tutor turned her back.
What if, 20 years from now, Full House's Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley, write their memoirs - Growing Up Tanner: We Were Preschool Michelles? A week-long visit to the Full House set on Sony's Soundstage 28, in Culver City, California, offers a sneak preview of what might be disclosed in such a tome. Nothing lurid - Bob Saget doesn't show up looped, Lori Loughlin isn't kinky (hey, she's married to an investment banker), and the kids keep their hands to themselves - but still, plenty of Full-scale amusement.
CHAPTER 1: The adults (or Dave Farts): Full House is known as one of the happier sets in town - leave the internal bickering to Knots Landing and Roseanne. "I really love everybody here", says star John "Uncle Jesse" Stamos. "That's such a boring statement, but it really is like a second family."
Maby too much like a family. For instance, Dave "Joey" Coulier is proudly breaking wind right there in the kitchen during rehearsal. His costars are apparently used to this; nobody giggles or runs away. Andrea Barber, 16, who plays the girls' lovably obnoxious friend Kimmy, simply fans the air with her script while concentrating her attention on the director. Bob "Danny" Saget, 37, and his adult male costars, Stamos, 29, and Coulier, 33, carpool together, even vacation together. Coulier and Saget go back 14 years, to their days working L.A.'s comedy clubs. The friendship between Stamos and Coulier blossomed in the show's first season (1987-1988). During a joint male-bonding gambling expedition to Vegas in 1989, they suffered the distinction of being tossed out of the Liberace Museum for joking about it.
There is, however, some dispute over who's funnier - Saget or Coulier. Saget is known for his dry, stream-of-consciousness musings ("Michael Jackson says you can count the numbers of surgeries he's had on two fingers," he says one afternoon in the green room, "but if he had 40 operations on each vinger, that's 80 operations..."). Coulier is renowned for his impressions and far-flung character voices (He's a Saturday-morning-cartoon veteran - notably on The Real Ghostbusters and Jim Henson's Muppet Babies). And each has extracurricular host gigs: Saget on America's Funniest Home Videos, Coulier on America's Funniest People.
"Dave can be a little more crude than Bob," says Candace "D.J." Cameron, 17. Says Stamos: "I think naked, Bob is funnier."
While Saget and Coulier say they're comedians at heart, there's a Serious Actor beating within Stamos. He sometimes flies to New York for acting classes and wants to do movies (he's still negotiating his series contract for next season). On the set he's the moody one - friendly but frustrated. And he would just as soon not work with the animals that make periodic appearances on the show. During our visit, Uncle Jesse must take a shine to a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. "The one week you come down, we have to have a pig on the show," growls Stamos.
CHAPTER 2: The Kids (or No Drew Barrymores Here): So far, so good: No signs of the child-star woes that befell The Partridge Family's Danny Bonaduce (who beat up a transvestite), Family Ties' Tina Yothers (who suffered an awkward growing spurt), or the whole crew of Diff'rent Strokes (too much to mention). The aspirations and daily routines of the House gang are pretty normal. Cameron just bought a black Nissan Pathfinder. Scott Weinger, 17, who plays D.J.'s refrigerator-raiding boyfriend, Steve, moonlighted as Alladin's voice and will go to Harvard in 1994. Jodie "Stephanie" Sweetin, 11, wants to be a doctor because "I'm pretty good at health and spelling."
The fraternal-twin Olsens, 6, are the Liz Taylors of the Barney set, meaning they have been famous for longer than they can remember - sice the age of 8 months, in fact, when they made their Full House debut. They have recorded and album (Brother For Sale), starred in a TV movie of the week (last year's high-rated To Grandmother's House We Go), headlined an ABC Mother's Day Special, and licensed their likenesses for dolls, T-shirts, and lunch boxes. Throughout their various ventures, they are shuffled around the country by an army of adults dedicated to keeping the dual commodities cute and happy.
Among children, the Olsens tie with basketball star Michael Jordan for the highest Q rating - or recognizability score - on TV, though some of their peers confuse them with their shared fictional persona (both play Michelle because child-labor laws limit the amount of time either may work). "I just say, 'I'm not Michelle, we're Mary-Kate and Ashley", says Mary-Kate, taking a break from her tutored first-grade schoolwork one morning to answer a few questions, which had to be submitted in advance to their publicist. This season the twins began memorizing their lines, rather than always being prompted by dialogue coach Brian Kale. And they're aging quite nicely.
"They've always been adorable", says a source on the set, "but now they look less like troll dolls."
Adria Later is the Full House studio teacher the twins call "the principal". She juggles the Byzantine network of parents, agents, publicists, and nannies - and their schedules - to make sure all her charges masters the three R's. Later also serves as acting coach/keeper to the newest members of the Full House family, Blake and Dylan Tuomy-Wilhoit, 2, the impossible cute fraternal-twins sons of Karen Tuomy-Wilhoit, a former schoolteacher, and Jeff Wilhoit, a sound-effects specialist. "We've talked to all the kids who work on this show and they've all got their heads on straight," says Karen. Will she allow her babies a career after Full House? She hesitates. "I think this show is probably unique", she says, "because you're always hearing stories about child actors who go nuts."
CHAPTER 3: The Writers (or How To Keep 24.5 Million Coming Back Every Week): The masterminds of Full House, executive producer Tom Miller and Bob Boyett, rule a sitcom empire where the sun rises after the evening news and sets by Junoir's bedtime. Their mass-market know-how was sharpened as producers of Happy Days; they currently oversee (besides Full house) Family Matters, Step By Step and Getting By. Lorimar's Miller-Boyett label is synonymous with minor family crises of the middle class, an odd gig for two rich, single, middle-aged men.
"There was a lady in our business who once said, 'For God's sake, half-hour comedies, it's not like you're doing brain surgery'", says Miller. "The way we feel is, Oh, it's more important. If you make a mistake with brain surgery you only kill one person,but we're dealing with millions of children's minds out there."
If those millions of little minds only knew. During a meeting about the two-part season finale (the last part airs May 18), in which Full House goes to Disney World, one writer observes, "We need to show something about [Danny's Girlfriend] that we've never seen before." "What about a takeoff on The Crying Game?" suggests another.
Earlier, ABC execs complained the current cliff-hanger script doesn't create enough tensions when Michelle is discovered to be missing in a theme park. Writers start suggesting lines: "Michelle was found dead in the well, dad?" "I think I saw Jeffrey Dahmer in the park?"
"When we hire writers"," explains co-executive producer Dennis Rinsler, "we hire funny, twisted, demented, very sharp people - people who want to write Cheers and [/i]Seinfeld[/i]. Then we take their twisted sense of humor and we hone it to work on the show." Led by Rinsler and Marc Warren (who share executive-producer status with their bosses, Miller and Boyett), the 11-member writing and producing staff spend most of its time censoring its own racy ideas. One script this season started with a writer's suggestion that little Michelle call a phone-sex line. In the final version, she ran up the phone bill calling Dial-A Joke.
But what about the inevitable - at some point won't soon to-be high school senoir DJ have to confront the issue of virginity? "We would love to do that episode," says Warren. "Something like that would be fantastic! It would be a dream! But it's not the show."
And so, like Marcia Brady before her, DJ might as well head for the nearest convent.
The Olsen Twins: How To Tell Them Apart:
♦ Ashley has a freckle above her lip, "but you really can't see it on camera," says the twins father, David Olsen.
♦ Mary-Kate's a lefty; Ashley is right-handed.
♦ Ashley is a wee bit taller.
♦ Mary-Kate sings; Ashley dances.
♦ Mary-Kate love horses; Ashley doesn't care for them as much (though they both take riding lessens after church on Sundays).
♦ Ashley wants to be a ballerina or makeup artistwhen she grows up; Mary-Kate wants to be a cowgirl.
♦ Ashley is a minute older.
