Michael Schlesinger and The Back Story of Biffle and Shooster

TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

TVC 674.1: TV Confidential remembers Michael Schlesinger, the film executive and champion of classic movie restoration who was also the writer, producer, and director of The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster, a collection of 1930s-style comedies—all starring Will Ryan and Nick Santa Maria—that pay homage to The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and other vintage comedy teams from the Golden Era of Hollywood. Though filmed circa 2013, the sets, camera shots, attention to detail, and, above all, the performances of everyone involved in the Biffle and Shooster films are all so convincing, they look and sound as if they really were unearthed from the 1930s. Michael Schlesinger passed away Thursday, Jan. 9 at age seventy-four. In this segment, which originally aired in August 2018, Mike and Will join Ed and Greg Ehrbar for a conversation about the origin of the Biffle and Shooster characters (and how Mike came to be involved with them); the painstaking dedication to authenticity that Mike took to making the Biffle and Shooster shorts; and how Mike parlayed his friendships with such stars as Robert Forster, H.M. Wynant, and Robert Picardo into getting each of them to appear in the films.