When it comes to producing the next hot TV show, Mike Fleiss is quick to emphasize that not all ideas are created equal, especially in today’s fast-paced market. Many of the sitcoms of yesteryear wouldn’t translate to today’s world, and with the innovation of the internet, Fleiss says the first TV show pitch he sold would’ve likely never see the light of day in the current climate. However, in the early 1990s, when he went to a high-ranking network executive with an idea he came up with to feature stars in commercials before they struck gold in Hollywood, the exec jumped on the opportunity to make Fleiss’ vision a reality and Before They Were Stars hit TV screens across America.
“I was working for a guy named Stephen Chao, who was the head of the Fox Network at the time,” Mike Fleiss remembers. “I was just working on his shows. But he encouraged me to try to think of my own shows.”
Fleiss, who admits he spent much of his childhood absorbing TV fare of all genres, especially those created by the late production great Aaron Spelling, says he developed a particular knack for remembering which famous faces he was spotting in advertisements.
“I’d watched Jodie Foster do a commercial as a kid for toothpaste or something like that, and then later become a big star,” Fleiss shares. “So I had sort of monitored that over my childhood, seeing how people started, and so I thought it would be a fun little show to do. That was my first show.”
During the creation, Fleiss says he leaned on memories of when he would quiz friends who came over to guess which celebrities were hawking products. However, he acknowledges that today, these clips can all be easily found online.
“It was clips,” Fleiss reiterates. “Back then, there were more sort of recognizable TV and movie stars and music stars. Everybody knew who Lee Majors was, or Tom Cruise was, or Brad Pitt. Now, today’s stars, they don’t have that much penetration. So we were able to sell a show that was just clips of famous, really famous people, Sharon Stone, Jack Nicholson, in their very first roles in commercials.”
When it came time to make the show, Fleiss says he had all the content already in his head from what he had remembered seeing over the years.
As a TV producer and writer, Mike Fleiss says he has grown exponentially since his earliest days in the business, but he looks back on his initial pitch with a certain nostalgia since he admits he was always fascinated by how actors and actresses got their start.
“I knew that I liked watching it,” he explains.
And that’s exactly the same formula Fleiss says he still uses to hatch new show concepts. “I’m always coming up with ideas,” he reveals. “Just try to imagine something that I haven’t seen on television and try to think about something that might interest me.”
He says he then asks: Will people enjoy this? If he thinks they will, then Fleiss says he packages his next big idea.
