Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 23, 1995 TAG: 9508230037
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He puts his hands together and bows his head; concentrates on his lines; strains to remember them exactly as they were written for him on the back of a pink laundry receipt.
With his stark white hair and mustache, he looks like Captain Kangaroo's understudy.
What's troubling the 69-year-old retired Roanoke County librarian-cum-volunteer museum guide is that everything he says and does is going into that camera and out to America on national television. All of America.
Hal Glicksman lets Garretson take his time. Glicksman is a producer in the advertising and promotion division of NBC news. He travels the country directing people like Garretson in promotional spots for NBC's ``Today'' show.
On a hot, oddly windy Sunday in early August, he came to town to give a few Roanokers a brief shot at fame. Or rather two brief shots: one 10 seconds long, the other four seconds. He filmed at 10 locations in all, two spots at each, and all ending with the show's catch phrase: What a difference ``Today'' makes!
The first one is scheduled to run Sunday morning around 8:30 on NBC. The 10-second ones air once during the ``Today'' show, while the four-second ones air three times, during "The Other Side," "Leeza" and "Another World."
Roanoke is the 73rd city Glicksman has been to for filming. Garretson's spot will be about Glickman's 1,000th.
"The whole key is getting people to relax," Glicksman says. "If we wanted these to be perfect, we'd hire professionals."
Garretson leans against the locomotive and cranks up his smile. The first part of his 10-second spot goes fine.
"If you want to know where the classical trains come from, visit the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke."
It's the last sentence that bedevils him.
"If you want to move into today ..."
No.
"If you want to move into history ..."
No.
And finally:
"If you want to move into the world in the morning, turn on the 'Today' show and see what a difference `Today' makes."
Glicksman looks up from the camera and smiles. He signifies his approval by putting his fingers to his lips and flinging a kiss to the air, Italian-style.
Glicksman does that a lot, flinging kisses to the air. It's part of his rather contagious enthusiasm. He also talks a lot about "magical television." And icons.
Icons are his business.
Glicksman is like an ambassador from Rockefeller Plaza on a whirlwind tour of your town. He shows up, by himself, passing out ``Today'' show cloisonn pins all over the place. He links up with an NBC affiliate camera crew - in this case John Overstreet and Mike Hanger from WSLS (Channel 10) - and sets out to capture the place. Always, he looks for the local icons - the landmarks and the people. And not just the mayors. He wants the characters.
When he tells stories about some of the people he's filmed - like the guy in Georgia who escapes from handcuffs while in a gyrating washing machine - his eagerness carries him right up into your face.
Magical television, he'll say.
Glicksman operates by the seat of his Levi's, planning only a few days ahead. He's gone mostly to major cities like Chicago and New York. He came to Roanoke from Memphis, Tenn., via Louisville, Ky.
He said his boss, Jeff Kriner, picked Roanoke off the map the way Mormon leaders Joseph and Hiram Smith picked a place in Utah to settle. They hadn't filmed in the mid-Atlantic states yet, so Kriner pointed to Roanoke on the map and said, "Go there."
Catherine Fox, director of Roanoke's Vistor's Bureau, got a call from Glicksman about 4 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 2. He was coming Saturday night and wanted to film Sunday. Fox had to scramble to line up people and places to shoot.
Fox, Glicksman said, is a field producer's dream, because she had things ready to roll when he got here.
That Sunday started with a 7:30 a.m. breakfast at Hotel Roanoke followed by a shoot with Roanoke Mayor David Bowers in front of the hotel's old entrance.
Next stop was High Street Baptist Church to shoot the choir and former mayor Noel Taylor.
Glicksman shows up at a scene, looks at the people and the place, and writes the script right there. He writes on anything - old hotel stationery, a scrap of envelope, a laundry slip.
In his egg-shell white suit with a tiny "Roanoke" lapel pin, Taylor is half-minister, half-dignitary. But when he gets his lines, he's all-business. He studies the words intensely and rehearses them out loud.
When it comes time to shoot, Glicksman strives to keep the people in front of the camera at ease.
"Smile," he tells the choir. "Pretend you just got that big check from the IRS with the mistakes on it."
Most of the shoots go quickly - they have to, with 10 to do that day. The usual problem is getting everything said in 10 seconds. When the words run long, the excuses fly.
"You see, sir, I'm used to going slow to get the `amens' in," Taylor said.
"We're Southern. It takes longer," said Laban Johnson, Roanoke's special-events coordinator and co-star of public TV's "Cookin' Cheap."
Johnson was filmed at the Mill Mountain Star. Glicksman wanted the star in the background, but the light wasn't right. So Roanoke's ultimate icon won't be on national television.
But such problems are part of the routine for Glicksman. He just makes it up as he goes along.
Jacqueline Loeb and Kristen Blasberg, both 21, wandered up to the Star to check out the overlook. An hour later, they were in front of the camera reading one of Glicksman's scripts.
The rest of the day was nonstop filming: E.C. Warren, owner of the Roanoker Restaurant, at the restaurant; Rob Callahan and Ezera Wertz at Wertz's Country Store on the City Market; Garretson at the transportation museum; a Blue Ridge Parkway Ranger on the side of the parkway; and Kim Epperly, proprietor of Mini-Graceland at her shrine to Elvis Presley.
"For a city guy like me to walk up and see all of these icons of Elvis ... I was speechless," Glicksman said a few weeks later. "It was like I stepped off the planet into another world."
This from a man who had just left the real Graceland amazed that people pay $20 to see it.
The last spot, starring Fox, was filmed at Wonju Street, the Southwest Roanoke thoroughfare named for one of Roanoke's sister cities.
By 5 p.m., Glicksman was on his way: He hitched a ride to Washington, D.C., with Blasberg, who was on her way home to Connecticut.
In all, spots from eight of the 10 locations will be aired. The Wertz's Country Store spots were cut because of sound problems. And Glicksman's boss just didn't like the ones with the college girls. Fox's spot will run first.
George Garretson's hard work paid off, though. His spots made the cut.
"His look was great," Glicksman said later. "He reeked of train."
Magical television.
by CNB