Legendary TV director Don Mischer talks about his new book and life in the control booth, from Obama to the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the Olympics and more

Few producers in live television have had a career comparable to Don Mischer’s in television, a career spanning six decades and virtually every major event, from the Oscars to the Olympics to Obama and everything in between. His appearances include the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics and the 2002 Winter Olympics; the Super Bowl Halftime Shows with Michael Jackson, Prince, Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen; Obama’s Inauguration Ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial; Motown25; the Democratic National Convention; the 100th anniversary of Carnegie Hall; the Academy Awards and Emmy Awards; and so many other events in our lives.

Mischer has won 15 Emmys, a record 10 DGA Awards, the Peabody, the PGA’s 2012 Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television and the 2019 DGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Television, along with just about every other award one could hope for can think about a career in television.

Now retired from the manic life of live television, Mischer looks back and provides a highly entertaining and insightful conclusion by writing (with Sara Lukinson) his autobiography: 10 Seconds To Air: My Life In The Director’s Chair,” which is full of incredible anecdotes and stories about his life in the control booth during so many memorable moments, not to mention working with the likes of Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Frank Sinatra, Prince and countless other legends.

I recently met Mischer at a book signing at the DGA Theater in West Hollywood, where he charmed an audience of his colleagues as he discussed his career with one of them, Kenny Leon. He started right at the beginning.

“I was 9 years old when television came to my hometown of San Antonio, Texas, and I remember watching the very first (television show),” he recalls. “I was in a gym, a big gym, and there were cameras on the floor, lights, booms and mariachi bands and square dancers and country bands and things. And we were sitting in the audience watching it on stage before we played, and the whole basketball court was surrounded by monitors. And so we could stand in the stands, watch the action live on the floor and watch it on television. And that planted the seed. You know, I fell in love with television.

As in the book, Mischer has a remarkable overall memory and it is a real browser simply because of the large number of situations and scary moments that for him were simply part of the plot. Prince delivered one.

“It’s always a challenge. There are always challenges, I think you get addicted to rolling the dice every time you do these things, especially when it’s live. It is like daring to do good. And I think that really had a lot to do with it,” he says, recalling Prince’s direction during his Super Bowl performance. “Sometimes you can predict things like this. And sometimes it doesn’t work. I mean, for example, the Prince Super Bowl in the rain. I mean, based on the weather forecast and based on the gig, when we were rehearsing it, Prince was playing and it was raining. There was no doubt about it. Rain came. Prince played four electric guitars live. Would they stay the course? Would they soon? He had two dancers called “twins,” elegant, tall ladies with long black hair and eight inch heels, and his stage, like his logo, was a sort of mixture of male and female figures, and it was smooth when she came up . was dry and treacherous when wet. So I just sweated it out the night before. What happens when Prince falls? What happens if one of the twins falls? Do you just get over her and move on? A twin on deck?

“And so the first half of the program was good. I communicated with Prince. We covered the stage together. It weighed about twenty tons. It was built by 600 volunteers who worked on it for a month. And so, just as we were counting down to the start of the halftime show, the floodgates opened. I mean, they really, really opened, there was an avalanche. I was talking to Prince, who I was communicating with, and he was buried on stage, he wanted to come up and I said, “Man, it’s really going downhill, and I just want to give you a heads up, it really come off.” . ‘ There was silence and he said: ‘Can you make it rain more?’ And he clearly saw the rain as a challenge, so he rose to the challenge and delivered one of his best performances in history. This is how these things happen. And it was spectacular because the rain hit the lights, creating ethereal smoke and wafting across the stage, lights, water hitting the lenses, they made those six-pointed stars that you get, and the whole thing was magical, even if I’m afraid of that, you know. I mean, I’m really scared of it. That’s the fun of the job.”

Mischer has become somewhat of an expert at creating Super Bowl halftime while directing and producing six of them. Sometimes he had to explain some strict rules to the biggest superstars.

“Well, the first thing you say about the Super Bowls is the first thing you say to the artist when you talk about the Super Bowl: Whoever you are, McCartney. “Sir Paul, this event is now beyond your control. Okay, you have no control over this. You’re a cog in the wheel of Super Bowl Sunday.” And I said there will be things you have to deal with. And I remember going to London and talking to him, and it was right after Janet Jackson’s wardrobe problem. Then I got hired to host the Super Bowl. The Nipple Gate,” he said, explaining that you have to know who’s watching.

“Super Bowls are family events. It’s appointment television. They are seen by families in their living rooms, from everyone as young as 6 to grandparents. 20% of the audience is under 12 years old. So you have to be very careful about what you say and how you say it, what you wear and everything else, and this is especially true if you want to be at the Super Bowl. , you have receive to agree to it. You must agree to limit the duration to 12.5 minutes. And there were times when we had very difficult discussions. I remember the Rolling Stones, they sang a song at their halftime show with the lyrics where Mick Jagger said, “I was your dick, but now I’m just one of your dicks.” I said we could do it during the Don’t Say Super Bowls. We can’t do that Do The. And I remember I was on the phone with the lawyers in London and one of them said to me, “You Americans are so stuffy. Why can’t you do this?” But that’s only part of the problem. They negotiate all the time.”

A special moment that Mischer describes in the book is Michael Jackson’s classic “Motown 25” special.

“I first met Michael when we did Motown 25. And we did “Motown 25” in 1983, and the concept was that everybody would come back and sing a Motown song. So Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, The Tops and The Temptations, all in Motown, came back and did it A Motown song. We wanted Michael to come back and do something with his brothers, the Jackson 5. He said, ‘I’ll do it, but you have to give me a song yourself,'” Mischer recalled.

“So Suzanne de Passe and I produced it together and I directed it, we were about to say ‘no’ to Michael Jackson! Then the night before the show we said to ourselves: “We’d better watch it.” We evacuated the theater, it was midnight, the house was dark, only the light was on Michael. Smokey Robinson was there and Linda Ronstadt was there and de Passe and I were there in the audience. That was it.

“Michael came out. He had the fedora, the hat, the glove, the whole thing, which is now all in the Smithsonian Institution, under glass, by the way, and he did “Billie Jean.” And we looked at each other and said, “Okay, who’s calling on Monday?” It’s because Marvin Gaye wanted to do “Sexual Healing”… he loved Motown, but wanted to do “Sexual Healing” instead. We said, “No, everybody’s doing a Motown song!” But after watching Michael do “Billie Jean,” Suzanne and I looked at each other and said at the same time, “I’ll take Marvin Gaye’s call Monday morning. .” It’s still considered a cultural moment in our history, that “Billie Jean” performance.

There are so many memories, so many stories like this, and Mischer could probably write a second book with them. I had the pleasure of working with him writing the Governors Awards program during Oscar season. To see him in action is very special. When asked if he regrets the way his career turned out, he summed up his life as a director as follows.

“That’s a good question. And one I’ve thought about a lot since I quit. “Am I gone too long?” You know, I remember flying back one night to see my kid in the play when we were doing something in New York, and I saw the play and went straight back to the airport and was red-eyed again. And I’m sorry for that on one level. But you know, the people around me understood that. I had a very supportive family. And that’s something,” he said.

“Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself, ‘Do you want to do it again?’ I would probably do it because it’s so damn addicting. It’s the rolling of the dice and the adrenaline, and it’s addicting. You like to put yourself in a situation where everything is on the line, and everything is alive, and it can’t be done again, and there’s only one chance, and that’s it. And if you screw it up, you screw it up and it’s gone. That’s part of the story.”