#Weird al headline news cast tv#

He wanted to do this amazing mixed-media title sequence. Just look at that opening – and that was all Al, man. But I have the original painting I did of the set, which I treasure. White: They wouldn’t let me keep anything. Yankovic: I still have the hamster Habitrail that he designed for the show. It was the merging of three major themes for me: the subterranean fantasy world, the James Bond lair and the man-cave kind of thing. I did a Keene painting of “Weird Al” with big eyes. I made it like a basement den with cheap green paneling, a crappy couch and some weird bad art. White: I definitely put all the pop-cultural references I could think of into the set. He’s just got such a specific look that ties in everything from Fifties advertising to way-out space art. Al’s show was my second go with CBS with them trying to recapture that “Pee-wee magic.” That show cast a huge shadow. There was a cowboy group, and it was pretty much a “Pee-wee goes west” kind of thing. Prior to The Weird Al Show I did a show called Riders in the Sky for CBS. Wayne White : It’s tough to follow up a hit like Pee-wee. They were both Saturday morning live action shows on CBS ostensibly hosted by a man child – and we had the same art director, Wayne White. Certainly, I would have liked to have been as beloved as Pee-wee, and to have had the show be as respected I didn’t want to be some kind of cheap knockoff. Yankovic: The comparison was definitely a two-edged sword because I loved Pee-wee Herman, and I thought Pee-wee’s Playhouse was brilliant. It’s kind of a Pee-wee’s Playhouse type of thing.” She said he wanted the tone to be for kids, but subversive and really fun. She just brought it up to me like, “Hey, there’s this CBS Saturday morning show that we’ve just gotten the green light on called The Weird Al Show. My wife at the time ran a music video company and Al was one of her directors. Peyton Reed : At the time, I’d never met “Weird Al.” I knew his work. That’s really all we’re looking for right now.” So I said, “We’re an educational show!” We weren’t … but that was the deal we made with the devil in order to get it on the air. We were just about to get the thumbs up in the meeting, and they had the caveat: “Oh, you know what? The FCC has got this thing where we have to have a certain number of educational children’s shows.

#Weird al headline news cast tv#

“Weird Al” Yankovic : We first started pitching a “Weird Al” children’s TV show in 1984, around the time of “Eat It.” My manager and I felt my personality and energy would lend itself well to a kids show, but it wasn’t until the mid-Nineties where things seemed to click.

Now he’s got his very own “Weird Al” show … To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of one of the weirdest moments in children’s television, Rolling Stone caught up with Al, and many of his collaborators, to take a look back at the unrealized potential of The Weird Al Show.