What History Has Taught Me: Tom Kramer

Tom Kramer

Tom Kramer was born and raised in Missouri but headed west to Hollywood at age 19. He is a three-time Emmy nominee and Writers Guild of America Award-winner on television shows that include Candid Camera (head writer) and HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (director). Tom loves exploring ghost towns and reading True West magazines when not walking his dog, Agnes. He lives in Southern California with his wife, Alicia, who just happens to be the daughter of original Mouseketeer Cubby O’Brien.

Don’t get me started on people who have no interest in the Wild West. Like jazz, it is uniquely American and a transformative period in the history of this country.

For my money, the best Western is Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven, mostly because I’m a huge Denzel Washington fan. But I’ll watch The Searchers any time.

I got my break when I was 19 years old and handed a short film I made to producer Bill Lee. That’s how I got hired to write and direct for the ABC late night comedy series Fridays. Right place, tight time.

The problem with AI is the term “Artificial Intelligence” sounds a lot like “Real Stupidity.” And I’ve never met a computer with a pleasant personality.

The only time I was star struck was when I directed George Carlin in a film I wrote. I grew up listening to his comedy albums, and he was the very first celebrity I directed,

Most people don’t know I lived in a remote monastery in New Mexico for 40 days. The best day there was when a monk took me open-range horseback riding. Up until then, I only rode horses in single file, walking slow over a narrow trail.

History has taught me that  it’s better to make good history while you can than worrying about your past.

The dumbest thing I ever did was giving in to peer pressure and trying drugs in Hollywood. The smartest thing I ever did was get clean.

My first memory of meeting cowboys was at Missouri’s Silver Dollar City when I was just a kid. They might have been just acting, but they were real to me.

While doing a TV series, I lived for three months in historic Socorro, New Mexico. I appreciate it more each time I read about that Wild West town in True West magazine.

As head writer on Candid Camera, I got to work with Burt Reynolds. Burt did his own stunt for our show, and I could tell by the way he walked that he had fallen off many a horse in his day.

Given the choice of directing domesticated cow or range cattle, I’d now pick the cow. I learned this the hard way when shooting a parody of UFO documentaries. Instead of Cattle Mutilation, we had a sign that read “Kick Me” on a cow and called it Cattle Humiliation. Range cattle aren’t too fond of being made fun of.

I got hooked on Westerns by listening to old Gunsmoke radio shows, and I read every Louis L’Amour novel I could find.

I’m glad my wife let me take her to the trifecta: Lincoln, New Mexico; Dodge City, Kansas;  and Tombstone, Arizona.

Closest I ever got to making a real Western was when I directed a spaghetti Western parody starring Guido Sarducci (Don Novello from Saturday Night Live) and Dawn (yes…of Tony Orlando fame)

Most people who know me don’t know that even though I’ve never owned a gun, I directed a History Channel series about weaponry in which I got to shoot almost every rifle made, from muskets to machine guns, to 50 mm sniper rifles.

The closest thing to my knowing a cowboy is that my wife Alicia’s dad is Cubby O’Brien from the original Mouseketeers. He loved playing cowboy on the Mickey Mouse Club.