Brotherton...A Quinn Martin Production!

"All men are brothers. But not all brothers are men. This fall on CBS...Brotherton! A Quinn Martin Production."

Okay, hang on, let me back up a bit...

Meet Gary Huggins, local Kansas City filmmaker. I've had the pleasure of viewing Gary's many years in the making black comedy, Kick Me. Definitely seek it out when it's made available. 

But I digress. I met Gary years ago when he called me up regarding an article I wrote for a film magazine about fun, dumb, bad movies as he worked at the local art house theater in my neighborhood. The theater's long-gone but our friendship isn't (although diminished because of that pesky old pandemic). But there I go digressing again.

Gary and I had similarly geeky interests growing up, such as getting excited about the new TV seasons. We've both pretty much put network TV behind us as the crap that it is, but we're somewhat experts on awful television shows and movies. And we both have a lot of spare time on our hands.

Which finally brings us to "Brotherton," our imaginary, perfect television show. It started out innocently enough when I texted Gary the burning question, "Were Raymond Burr and William Conrad the same person?"

He texted back, "No, same bodies, different people."

After giving it a little thought, I suggested they could play twin brother detectives in a small town and Shelley Winters would be the (rather large) wedge driven between them.

The premise was taken one step further. In Hollywood, the hackmeisters would call this a "high concept." Our unholy high concept was that actors who looked alike would play brothers, whereas brothers who are actors would not. 

Ta-dahhhhhh! We have what it takes to make it big in Hollywood!

Brotherton was born and we took off from there: Broderick Crawford as Burr and Conrad's dad; Junior Samples as the evil mastermind of a cartel who killed their mother; Orson Welles as the mysterious Mr. Biggerstaff who'd always vanish in a whiff of magician's smoke; Brian Dennehy and Charles Durning as twin competing skip tracers; narration by Jerry Reed; Gary Busey as the mayor; we decided that all the brothers are just sort of a CBS coincidence and would run that disclaimer at the top; Lawrence Tierney and Robert Tessier as twin priests (the nice, straight kind, of course); Pia Zadora as the wisecracking Mexican maid played by Stacy Keach (this takes some explanation: when Gary worked at the library in the movie section, a customer rented "Butterfly," the notorious Zadora/Keach sleaze epic. Every time the customer would return, he'd eye the cover with Zadora's pic on it and go "Mmmm, Stacy Keach." Gary never bothered to correct him); Eli Wallach, E.G. Marshall and Martin Balsam as triplet fry cooks; James Farentino, Anthony Franciosa, and James Franciscus as triplet gynecologists; real life twin brothers Conrad and Bonar (yes he really exists but his parents must've hated him by giving him that name!) Bain as feuding, unrelated next door neighbors married to the also unrelated Landers sisters; the Hagar twins as unrelated door to door salesmen; Pink Lady and Jeff as triplet jugglers...

Whew. Pretty epic, yeah?

Here's my favorite that Gary suggested: Gene Rayburn and Jack Palance as thawed neanderthal brothers who do odd jobs for rocks. Their business card says "GRUNT." I smelled a spin-off here.

And we kept going nuttier: Ed Asner and Vic Tayback as kooky cosmonauts whose capsule lands in a duck pond and now they have to pretend to be Mexican. Don't ask us why, because we haven't got that far into production yet.

And still going: The Hudson Brothers comprise the unrelated police force; Dom Deluise and James Coco play twin badass mafia collectors; Jack Lord and Robert Conrad are FBI brothers chasing the cosmonauts but unwittingly hire them to shingle their roof while the neanderthal brothers supply the foundation work by piling rocks; David Keith and Keith David are identical twin inventors who accidentally does the town's water supply with Viagra; Imogene Coca, Jo Ann Worley and Alice Ghostley as the most expensive hookers in town; Moms Mabley and Redd Fox in drag could play the twin madams with hearts of gold in a "very special episode"; Mel Torme and Barney Rubble are twin big game hunters who open a donut and taxidermy cafeteria; Dolph Sweet, Brian Dennehy, Kenneth McMillan, and Charles Durning are door to door quadruplet masseuses; Elizabeth Taylor and Divine as twin hairdressers; and it goes on and on and on.

I'll spare you the less savory suggestions.

Man, talk about a golden age of television!

Brotherton...a Quinn Martin Production!

Speaking of high quality entertainment, you won't find it in Bad Day in a Banana Hammock, the first in my continuing Zach and Zora comical mystery tales. But if you're looking for lotsa dumb yuks, you've come to the right place!