Josh Brolin and Private Eye
Private Eye stars Josh Brolin and Michael Woods
In the mid-80s I lived in a little house in North Hollywood and – before he got famous – Josh Brolin lived right down the street with his first wife and baby.
Around that same time Josh was cast in the new Tony Yerkovich Universal NBC TV drama called Private Eye, and – independently of his casting – I was hired to create the main title sequence.
It was great for the product that Josh and I knew each other because when I was given the two main cast members – Josh and his co-star Michael Woods for one long night, we were able to create and collaborate on some great shots in their cool 1950s cars around the night time Hollywood streets and the Sunset Strip.
I shot with this new piece of equipment – a huge crane rigged on a car platform – that I had used the previous year for another series with Michael Nouri call Downtown.
I could do 360 degree moves around the cars making big booms from up high to down low in one shot.
The next day I started editing the sequence to this fabulous, sexy jazz theme that Tony had commissioned from the best studio musicians in town. Tony had previously created Miami Vice so he knew all about cool sexy guys and atmosphere with great cars and cigarettes and chicks.
It was set in LA in the ‘50s with all of the great nightclubs and Sunset strip hangouts. I made sure to use lots on stock shots of the Hollywood scene and nightclub signs with lots of chrome and klieg lights and metal.
As I was editing, I came across a porno film clip of people having sex and, as a gag, I cut it into the edit of the sequence for Tony to see for the first time.
He came to my office and I ran it for him against the jazz main title theme.
I watched him watching the sequence. When the porno clip came up, he suddenly frowned and looked confused.
He put up his hand to stop me and said, “…wait a minute…” I feigned dumbness and looked at him quizzically. He said, go back a little bit, I think I missed something.”
I looked at him again. He turned and looked very sternly like he was really unhappy.
I started to worry just as he broke into a big, loud laugh.
He said, “you son of a bitch!” We both laughed and he said, ”too bad we have to take that out. It kinda works. But the network would have my head!”
For a time, the show did very well, but after a year it was cancelled.
Maybe we should have left it in. I later designed a logo for his production company.
