#bert schneider

We defused a lot of the tension with humour, naturally. On the set, and on the road, we had a game we used to play called Killer. Jim Frawley invented it. The idea was each person was allowed three shots per day. You could shoot whoever you liked—you just mimed your hand as a gun, like kids do, y’know—tssshhh! And whoever was shot had to die. But you couldn’t just fall down, nice and simple—it had to be a spectacular death. You had to moan and kick and fall over furniture and people and take about three-quarters of an hour to do it—like they used to in all of the best Westerns. And if you didn’t die loud enough, or long enough, or imaginatively enough, or if say you just didn’t die at all, because you were being introduced to the Queen Mother at the time, then you lost a life. And if you lost three lives—you were out of the game. Forever. No second chances. That was as good as being really dead. So, of course, we’d look for the best moments to shoot each other—when it would cause the most commotion. Not everyone was included. It was a clique of about eight. Sometimes we’d have a different director—we used to have a guest director to do one or two shows. They’d be in the middle of a scene and somebody would get shot and the whole scene would be ruined because this was very serious business—you couldn’t lose a life. The game produced no end of possibilities for going right over the top. In the middle of a love scene once—I had the stars coming out of my eyes, the whole bit—I’m walking over to the girl with my arms outstretched and she says, “Oh, Davy!” We’re just about to kiss when … Tssshhh!—Peter shoots me. I have to go into an epileptic seizure routine for about five minutes—knocking lamps over, fall over a drum kit, out the door, roll around the parking lot, up the stairs, across the president’s desk—“Oh my God, are you all right, David?”—“Aaargh! Shot, sir!” Back out the door, down the stairs, onto the set, collapse in a heap at her feet. Wild applause. One time in Australia, in front of about five million fans at the airport, Micky got shot and he fell all the way down this gigantic escalator. People were stunned. They thought he’d been assassinated. It was very rarely someone wouldn’t die—not even a token head slump. One time was the Emmy Awards. I think it was Bert Schneider stepped up to receive the award for “Best New Comedy Show.” We shot him, but the moment was too special for him to spoil it. He won an Emmy and lost a life. Towards the end of the second year—to show you how badly things were going—even Frawley couldn’t be persuaded to die anymore. Everyone had been up all night, as usual. We were on the set—first diet pill of the day—started fooling around, messing up takes as always. But somehow it wasn’t the same. Nobody was laughing. Frawley was so mad. The only thing we could do was shoot him. Dolenz shot him—he didn’t die. Mike shot him—still standing. I shot him—nothing. What a bummer. All the feeling was gone. The beginning of the end.

The Monkees with Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider and the Justus release party in 1997.

Lecture 9: (Theme From) The Monkees (1966-1968): The Monkees were a creation of American film director Bob Rafelson and movie producer Bert Schneider looking to cast a television program (The Monkees) about a fictional band. While the show lasted only two seasons (1966-68), it made Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork famous, won two Emmy Awards and gained an intense cult following. Perhaps most importantly, it provided a platform from which to launch a real musical career. The program’s theme song, which spoke to the counterculture youth with verses such as “We’re the young generation, and we’ve got somethin’ to say,” was itself a big hit.

“Hi Mike, Micky, Davy, and Peter! It’s Bert and Bob here. We’ve finally decided on a plot for the new Monkee movie! It’ll be about the psychological torture. Hugs and kisses!”

The limited series premieres May 17 on Apple TV+.

“What’s happening as time goes on is that the movie [Head] is becoming a chronicle of an age. At the time, it was just a chronicle of the Monkees.” - Peter Tork, The Monkees Tale (1985) Q: “What do you think of the music from the film ‘Head’?” Peter Tork: "Well, since I wrote and produced two of the songs myself, I think it’s fine. I did ‘Can You Dig It?’ And ‘[Long Title:] Do I Have To Do This All Over Again.’” - Goldmine, 1982 “The funny thing is that the lyrics [to ‘Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?’] came to me right out of the air. I was just playing those chord changes on the guitar, and I opened my mouth and that’s what popped out. The song was weirdly prophetic. I had no idea that was going to be my attitude about anything having to do with music when I wrote that song." - Peter Tork, Listen To The Band liner notes (more about "Long Title..." here) “‘Can You Dig It’ is about the Tao. The hook line I wrote in my dressing room on the set [of the television series in 1967]. The chords for the chorus I’d written in college, and [they] had just stuck with me.” - Peter Tork, Head box set liner notes (more about "Can You Dig It?" here) "I think they're ['Can You Dig It?' and 'Long Title...'] the best songs in the movie [Head]. I love both of them. I thought they were just terrific. He had plugged himself into that whole Stephen Stills connection and was working with those guys. I think they fit the movie better than anything did. When those two songs start up in the movie, it comes alive for me.” - Michael Nesmith, Head box set liner notes “Thorkelson expressed a preference for the Monkees’ ‘Headquarters’ album, because it was the group’s first self-performed album […]. The soundtrack to the [...] movie ‘Head’ also is among Thorkelson’s favorites. ‘It was a little tinny, but back then I guess we were a little tinny,’ he said. ‘That movie will always look good,’ commented Thorkelson.” - The Bowling Green News Revue, May 24, 1979 "'When we made Headquarters, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven,' says Tork. 'My whole goal had been to be a member of a band that worked. The next thing I know we're making a movie and it doesn't have anything to do with the business of being in a band together.' [...] 'There's some weight behind the idea that Bob and Bert wanted to wreck the Monkees, to stop it cold in its tracks,' says Tork. 'I've never known for sure. Bert and Bob might have thought out loud: "Let's kill the Monkees!" Or they may have not thought so out loud but at some unconscious level, they were sick of the Monkees and wanted to do something else.' [...] 'It was a joy seeing a movie being made, but I didn't like working for Bob Rafelson,' Tork says. 'I did what he told me, but I can't say that I ever had any heart connection with him.' His favorite scene, in which he recounts what he has learned from an Indian mystic, was actually directed by Nicholson. [...] Tork has seen Head around 80 times but it took him years to work out why it bothered him so much. In the movie, the Monkees are hoodwinked, bamboozled, chased, assaulted, mocked, trapped in a black box and reduced to dandruff in the hair of actor Victor Mature, before ending up back where they started. In the words of the sardonic Nicholson-penned theme tune, 'So make your choice and we'll rejoice/ In never being free.' 'Most people are dazzled by the psychedelia, and that's fine, but for me finally the point of the movie is the Monkees never get out,' Tork says sadly. 'Which is to say Bob Rafelson's view of life is you never get out of the black box you're in. There's no escape.' So how would a Peter Tork cut of Head end? 'There might have been a scene where we get out,' he says wistfully. 'We jump in the water and get away.'" - The Guardian, April 28, 2011

Caption reads: Bert Schneider (R) escorts Charlie Chaplin from the Beverly Hills Hotel to the 44th Academy Awards on April 10, 1972.