Jim Coane, the eventual Executive Producer of Dragon Tales, was working at Sony Studios and called me to help create a kids show. Jim thought of me because his son loved my kid's novel The Red Wings Of Christmas, which had just been optioned by Disney for an animated feature. I had worked with Jim on Totally Hidden Videos for Fox as a writer/segment producer/actor.

 

Jim‘s secretary, Lisa, had gone to the Laguna Sawdust Arts Festival, and found these amazing dragon drawings by Ron Rodecker. I went to the Sony lot where Jim gave me the drawings and a bit of a rough rundown. He gave me a tour of Sony‘s lot and took me for lunch at the commissary; trying to woo me into working with him.

 

Three days later, I put together the treatment for the show, including creating the concept of the two headed dragon, Zak and Wheezie (I am told J Lo named her two twins after the characters Max and Emme). Initially someone wanted to name these characters, Snarf and Bugger, but that idea was squashed. Jim named the little boy Max after his own son.

 

We were competing for a huge sixteen million-dollar grant from the Federal Government. Eventually, we beat out the Muppets and Sesame Street for the PBS grant. I was told that because of the huge grant the show was in the “black” the day it aired.

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Jim and I then headed to New Orleans for the NABIP Television Convention to try and sell the show.

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Children’s Television Network came on board and gave Jim and me lot of notes to redo the treatment. I had to leave the next day because I was a celebrity on the seven-day Days Of Our Lives cruise to the Mexican Riviera. I spent the entire voyage in my cabin, rewriting and faxing pages to Sony. This was in the infancy of the Internet so I bought a small portable printer and had to have the ship fax the pages out to Sony. Not a cheap endeavor at the time!

 

In order to get the federal grant, there had to be a companion show written and submitted with Dragon Tales. So overnight, I created a show called Show And Tell Me based on my school lecture program I do around the country called Anyone Can Write a Book. I get an entire group of 10 to 100 kids to orally write a book and illustrate it within an hour. It is a wild, fast–paced, loud and fun event!!!  A while back I spent an entire week teaching at the Phoenix school district…4 to 5 classes a day!

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The rest is TV history.

 

I hope one day Show And Tell Me gets produced…