`Dream On': Hbo Series Is A Fun-Filled Trip Back In Time

Television has never done much with its past, other than to re-run it or rip it off with varying degrees of reverence.

The HBO comedy series "Dream On" gives new meaning to the phrase "recycling program."

Without a vault full of dusty TV footage, the show would never have been dreamed up. Now, remove the vintage clips sprinkled through a half hour of "Dream On," and it would become just a better-than-average comedy.

Put them back and we get our hero Martin Tupper (actor Brian Benben). He's a 37-year-old Baby Boomer with a childhood spent watching TV, and a an id that operates like a VCR.

Women stomp on Martin's heart: Cut to a clip of a young Lee Marvin playing a boxer in an episode of the old anthology series "Schlitz Playhouse" and taking a right hook to the jaw.

Women make Martin offers he can easily refuse: Cut to a clip of Vincent Price from some other '50s chestnut raving "I'd rather be dead!"

Women make Martin think impure thoughts: Cut to an educational film explaining the mating habits of the bull elephant or to an actress pumping a butter churn.

It's called "interior monologue" - a character's thoughts, made audible. And in "Dream On," it's where some of the funniest moments happen.

"It was an area that had always interested us," recalls the series' co-creator Marta Kauffman, who along with writing partner David Crane had in their pre-"Dream On" days once tried to sell a pilot about a 12-year-old boy and his fantasy life. "What's going on in people's minds that we can't know about. What people really want."

What Martin, a slightly schlubby New York book editor, usually wants, he cannot get.

In the premiere of the show's second season - an hour-long episode Sunday at 10 p.m. with repeats Monday, Wednesday and July 11 - Martin still feels pangs of yearning for his ex-wife Judith (Wendie Malick). Now he must suffer through the making of a movie based on Judith's divorce and subsequent re-marriage to a humanitarian doctor who rescues baby seals when he's not saving the rain forests.

Martin visits the movie's set. There, his pangs for Judith are quickly drowned out by the sound of his love-bongo beating loud and fast for a minx of an actress (Mimi Rogers).

This gives Martin a chance to get dumped on not only by his wife, but also by the woman chosen to play her in the movie.

The episode features a crackerjack guest cast. Tom Berenger ("Platoon") plays the philandering actor chosen to portray Judith's philanthropic husband. Stephen Furst ("St. Elsewhere," "Animal House") plays Martin's movie double. Rock musician David Bowie turns in a worthy performance as a comically callous director, who ends a rehearsal by saying, "Well, that was 30 seconds of my life completely wasted."

Part of the fun of "Dream On" is listening to Kauffman and Crane's worldly-wise, loopy dialogue.

Another part of the fun is watching for the now-famous actors who make cameos in the old black-and-white clips: Last season the list included Ronald Reagan, Peter Lorre, Dennis Hopper, Geraldine Page, Cesar Romero, Ernest Borgnine, Joan Crawford, Art Linkletter, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Rod Steiger, Mickey Rooney and Burl Ives.

There's more where they came from.

Two years ago, MCA/Universal was wondering how to make a buck on its collection of 800 or so half-hours of anthology series such as "General Electric Theatre" and "Pepsi-Cola Playhouse." Unable to syndicate the stuff as-is, MCA/Universal turned to director John Landis ("Coming to America," and executive producer for "Dream On"). He eventually found Kauffman and Crane.

"Other people were coming up with game shows, variety shows," said Kauffman in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "None of them were actual story lines. We were the first to say it's gotta be a character you care about, or why tune in every week?"

The writers and a team of researchers have already trolled for clips through about 250 of the vintage half-hours, logging the best moments on computer.

Kauffman and Crane compose the episodes much as they'd write a short play, with one new type of punctuation to keep in mind - the recycled Bette Davis line; the sock to Lee Marvin's jaw.

"We used to argue over every comma," said Kauffman. "Now we argue over every clip."