Friday, Sept. 17, 2004 | 8:48 a.m.
We've all heard the pitiful tales of former child stars whose personal lives took tragic turns after the cameras stopped rolling on their hit TV series: Some became petty criminals and had their mug shots flashed on the nightly news; others grappled with substance abuse and frittered away their fortunes while trying desperately to distance themselves from the characters they portrayed.
This is not one of those stories.
To hear Marc Price tell it, he only had two options following his seven-year stint playing geeky neighbor Skippy on the '80s sitcom "Family Ties."
"I could have been the person who runs from it and wants to avoid it and tries to pretend it didn't happen," he says, "or I could do what I did, which is embrace it and just enjoy it and use it as a tool to help introduce people to Marc Price."
Embrace it, he did. Some 15 years after the hit NBC sitcom ended its run, the actor -- a longtime stand-up comic who wraps a week's worth of performances Sunday at The Improv at Harrah's -- often introduces himself to people (including this columnist) as Marc "Skippy" Price.
"It's kind of become my nickname," he explained during a recent call from his Los Angeles home-office. "It's what my family calls me; it's what my friends call me," although he concedes these days, "My Skippy superpowers are more than waning."
You won't catch 36-year-old Price biting the hand that fed him well during his late teens and early 20s. He recalls his "Family Ties" years as "a tremendous experience for me. It's almost funny talking about it still because it's been so long, but obviously it's that important in my life."
For starters, the show turned him into an international celebrity. Price says he was "treated like a Beatle" while visiting Australia and other locales during the sitcom's heyday.
"I was the delinquent of all times. I really took advantage of my child-star status," he insists. Luckily, he "sharpened up, smartened up somewhere along the line and I realized, 'I have got this great opportunity' " to learn the inner workings of the television industry while on the set -- lessons that continue to serve him.
Price, the son of late Borscht Belt comedian Al Bernie, first took the stand-up stage alongside his father when he was just a lad. He flew solo during his early teens with an appearance on "The Merv Griffin Show" before pursuing an acting career. At age 14, he landed the role of Skippy.
Because his was not a main character on "Family Ties," Price had fewer lines to learn than, say, series star Michael J. Fox. Often, "I would literally sit in the director's booth and watch how the show was put together" behind the scenes. "I had time to watch the process and learn from it ... and I took advantage of that and I really studied."
He discovered acting "wasn't enough" for him. "I really needed to be a part of the creation of the show."
After "Family Ties" ended its run in 1989, Price, then age 21, started his own production company. He says he worked on a couple of projects for the Walt Disney Company, which included hosting the game show "Teen Win, Lose or Draw" from 1989 through '92.
More recently he joined forces with Bud Friedman, founder of The Improv club chain, on another production company called Bud Friedman Digital. The outfit produced, among other projects, 65 episodes of the game show "National Lampoon's Funny Money," which aired from 2002 through 2003 on Game Show Network; and "Comics Unleashed," a special hosted by Richard Jeni (who headlines this week's Improv bill) for the cable channel Animal Planet.
The production company's goal "is to work with comedians and funny people to create new formats and new kinds of comedy shows," Price says, explaining that it also serves as "a middle man of sorts between the incredible talents in the comedy community" and "the business side of Hollywood, which I've learned ... is a necessary evil, meaning if you don't learn how to work your way through the Hollywood system, it doesn't matter how talented you are, nothing will get seen."
Separate from Bud Friedman Digital, Price struck out on his own to create and produce the 2002 reality series "Star Dates," which aired on cable's E! channel. He paired several of his "D-list celebrity friends" -- including Dustin Diamond, best known as Screech from "Saved By the Bell"; Kim Fields of "The Facts of Life" fame; and Butch Patrick of "The Munsters" -- with non-celebs for wacky blind dates.
"People complain about all the reality shows, but I look at it as a brave new frontier where anything goes," Price says. "Where things before were very structured and they were done in a very specific way in the 'Family Ties' days, now there's room for anything" on television.
He does occasionally step back in front of the camera. Price spent the bulk of this summer in Greece covering the Olympics as host of "Athens on Location," a series of minute-long feature segments, sponsored by Sprint and NBC, which ran stateside throughout the Games on select Sprint mobile phones.
Count on hearing a bit about his Olympic antics and Greek goings-on ("I didn't want to leave") in his act. "Modern comedy -- which my dad taught me, which is very different from the ba-dum-bum jokes and mother-in-law stories and stuff of the old days -- is really about what's true to the person."
Because of his "Family Ties" gig, "Some people thought maybe I was riding out the comedy boom of the '80s," he contends. "But when you look at my life and my history ... and you see that it's in my blood -- I'm third generation, my grandfather was in vaudeville -- you realize that it's my destiny.
"Some of the other kids that were on TV shows and stuff didn't have comedy to kind of fall back on."
Price spent the better part of 10 years performing on the road -- "to the point now where I hardly ever do," he explains, calling this week's Improv shows "a special engagement for me."
While the nickname still draws some crowds, he knows he won't be able to rest on his Skippy laurels forever.
"It's not the lure it once was, but that just gives me a reason to try to find a new lure, a new reason that people respect me and want to see me," Price says. "It's inspirational, believe it or not. I wake up every morning and go, 'OK, how am I gonna make things happen today?' "
Out for laughs
Updates about the forthcoming third annual Las Vegas Comedy Festival, happening Oct. 13 through Oct. 17 at the Golden Nugget, continue to arrive: Bernie Brillstein -- a producer and talent manager credited with discovering John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner -- is slated to receive this year's Steve Allen Pioneer of Comedy Award.
Ed McMahon will pick up the Bob Hope Lifetime of Service trophy; and The Buddy award, named in honor of the late Buddy Hackett, will be presented to one professional stand-up whose performance is deemed "The Best of the Fest."
As previously noted here, the Diller and Caesar awards (odes to comedy legends Phyllis Diller and Sid Caesar) will also be handed out this year during a banquet on Oct. 16. Meanwhile, Flamingo headliner George Wallace is set to present the "Burnin' Hot Comedy Show." Call 736-6595 or visit www.lasvegascomedyfestival. com for times and ticket info.
Three funny guys will set up shop in The Mirage's Danny Gans Theatre: "The Tonight Show" host Jay Leno holds court Sept. 24 and Sept. 25 (tickets are $85), and returns for another pair of shows Nov. 5 and Nov. 6. David Spade, co-star of ABC's "Eight Simple Rules," takes the stage Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 ($70), and again Nov. 26 and Nov. 27. Ray Romano breaks from taping the final season of his hit CBS sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond" to perform a trio of shows (tickets are $80) Oct. 8 through Oct. 10.
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