Raising the Dead for TV Guest Appearances

Caryn James

Thursday, May 14, 1998 | 11:03 a.m.

Gary, the hero of the struggling CBS series "Early Edition," usually gets a copy of tomorrow's paper today and wards off a future tragedy. In Saturday's episode he gets bopped on the head and lands in the 19th century instead. On his return he tries desperately to explain this to his best friend, Chuck, only to be interrupted by an unmistakable voice and face.

"He's talking about an improbable thing like going back in time," says Rod Serling, sitting calmly in a chair.

"You know this guy?" asks Chuck (Fisher Stevens).

"Never saw him before," says Gary (Kyle Chandler).

We have. And we know where he has come from. "This is ...," Serling continues, pausing dramatically while the doo-doo-doo-doo theme music is cued, "the Twilight Zone."

As a programming stunt to celebrate the network's 50th anniversary, CBS has raided its vaults and, through computer technology, allowed characters from classic shows like "The Twilight Zone" to interact with those on current similarly themed ones. Jack Benny turns up on "Cosby." Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) meets her journalistic hero, Edward R. Murrow. Steve McQueen's bounty hunter from "Wanted: Dead or Alive" talks to Chuck Norris' character on "Walker, Texas Ranger" about the possibility of doing a job together.

You can't precisely call such computer compositing working together, but you can call it ubiquitous. Dead people have been turning up everywhere, from "Forrest Gump" to television commercials to musical recordings.

Given the breadth of this technique, it's no wonder that the results range from clever homage, as in "Early Edition," to sickening commercialism, most famously in last year's commercial that had Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner.

The technique highlights unsettling questions about how and why we raise the dead. A primal satisfaction comes from the sense that they are not really gone. Look, Lucy is right here on "The Nanny."

But there is also a ghoulish, grave-robbing aspect. It will always be slightly creepy to hear Natalie Cole singing with her dead Dad, Nat "King" Cole, on their hit "Unforgettable." And though the fleeting appearances on the CBS shows are fun to watch, they also reveal an arrogant, borrowed glory, with Rod Serling and Jack Benny adding undeserved luster to shows that are in a conspicuously lesser league.

There is a practical reason why so many dead celebrities have flourishing careers. Though the technology that allows these magical-looking meetings has been available for more than a decade, in the past few years it has become more affordable and advanced.

Craig Weiss, the director of visual effects for the CBS Animation Group, was responsible for overseeing this week's stunts. He explained the process that makes the old and new seem to blend so seamlessly. Old film is transferred to digital videotape, which is then fed into a computer. Someone at that computer cuts out the old actor, frame-by-frame. The character is put into a computer compositing system, which allows images to be layered in a sophisticated way. The layered images include lighting, so the dead celebrity will cast the right shadows.

In the "Early Edition" scenes, Serling's voice and face are authentic but the rest of him is not, because the available "Twilight Zone" film did not have him sitting in the right position. His face was taken from the old film and colorized; a computer added his body. And he now conveniently reads a newspaper, playing off the premise of "Early Edition."

In all these CBS shows, the classic characters appear for only a minute or so. The scenes have to be throwaways because each series has the right to use the archival film for only two network broadcasts. The scenes will be snipped from additional network and syndicated reruns.

It is just as well that the appearances are brief, though, because the fleeting glance is often the most effective way to use old material. On Thursday night's "Diagnosis Murder," the sleuthing doctor, played by Dick Van Dyke, goes to a radio station to appear on a talk show. Walking down the corridor he looks into the window of another studio and sees the announcer: Rob Petrie from the old "Dick Van Dyke Show." The white-haired Dr. Sloan throws a quizzical look at his younger self and keeps walking. Pilfering the past is a happier experience when the resurrected celebrity is still alive.

When the celebrities are dead, the more cherished the memories the more painful it is to see them used badly. Commercials add an especially foul odor. It's hard to complain when the characters from "The Beverly Hillbillies" show up next to comedian Chris Elliott hawking Tostitos corn chips, as they do in one commercial. "The Beverly Hillbillies" was crassly commercial to begin with; this is not like defacing the "Mona Lisa."

Whether you are upset at seeing John Wayne turn up as an Army officer in a current Coors Light commercial may depend on whether you think Wayne's career was sacred or profane. But it seemed like the destruction of a beloved icon and a debasement of true art to watch Fred Astaire dance with that Dirt Devil when we want him to be with Ginger Rogers.

So, however much we may want to see the dead return, the experience can turn blood-curdling and offensive, as on Wednesday's episode of "The Nanny." Reversing the usual process, this series takes the show's heroine, Fran Fine (Fran Drescher), and puts her into an old "I Love Lucy" episode. Dozing off and dreaming while watching "Lucy" on the night before her wedding, Fran is dropped into the Ricardos' living room, becoming black-and-white in the process. In fact, Fran occupies the place where Ethel stood on the original film; the first computer trick was to wipe out Ethel.

"My God, Lucy, can you believe I'm getting married?" Fran whines.

"Dreamed about it a million times," says Lucy. In the original episode, Lucy has just found out she's pregnant and is actually talking about having a baby.

"It's like I'm following in your footsteps," Fran says, in a line that insinuates a connection between "I Love Lucy" and "The Nanny," a series that is the very definition of mediocrity. "You married a guy with a cute accent, I'm marrying a guy with a cute accent," says Fran. Well, a girl can dream.

There doesn't seem to be an end in sight to this trend. Ed Sullivan, for one, seems to be busier now than when he was alive. Last year CBS used him in promos alongside David Letterman, whose show is taped in the Ed Sullivan Theater. ("Ed, did you have rats in the theater?" he asks.)

And on Monday UPN will present what it calls "The Virtual Ed Sullivan Show," with a computer-generated Sullivan introducing contemporary acts. The impressionist John Byner provides Sullivan's body movements as well as his voice. Sensors connected to Byner's body allowed the computer Ed to follow his motions. The show is a campy curiosity, with current versions of the kind of variety acts that the Sullivan show featured. There is a representative of high art in Sarah Chang, the 17-year-old violinist. There is also a contortionist.

But, let's face it, Ed and his day are gone. Hauling him out of the grave is the equivalent of a novelty act. More worrisome is the nagging question that all this grave-robbing leaves behind. If a computer can eliminate Ethel, what's next?