Lisa Waugh


Hi M.D.

I hope you and your family are doing well. I must apologize that I am in the middle of post production on a film and I'm scattered, smothered and covered to use an old Waffle House term.

I can give you a quick story here and let you use it however you wish.

We use to commando shoot W2L. I don't mean we did it in the buff (although Kip kept suggesting it) but we would shoot all over town in the middle of the night while the proper authorities and business owners were safely in bed.

One night we were shooting a weird little sketch in a parking garage. The scenario was that Kip and Scott couldn't get out of this garage (for the record - this was way before that freaking Seinfeld episode) and they run across all of these bizarre characters.

They happen upon a hardcore feminist possibly lesbian compulsive fast walker on her nightly jaunt in the parking garage. They ask her for assistance and she goes zoo on them.

Now we didn't rehearse this scene (hell, we barely wrote anything down on paper) and I was supposed to beat them up then pummel Scott with a baseball bat.

I tried to be careful. I really did. Scott's scream could be heard all the way to city hall. I'm surprised the cops didn't show up.

I really whacked his knee good. I think we have this on tape somewhere.

I loved working on Waay Too Late. I made some life long friends, dated a couple of those boys and it prepared me for the career I'm ass-deep in now. Hollywood ain't got nothing on no budget, middle of the night dead on your feet shoots, and eight viewers.

Oh and I also popped Scott in the mouth that night, too.

Sorry, Scott. I love you, man. [Editor's note, here's a further comment about Scott from Lisa] Scott is Scott McCauley. Funny thing about Scotty is that we put him in drag so many times and he never complained. He played my mother once and freaked me out by holding up his foot and asking in a raspy voice, "Does this look infected to you." I still have nightmares.

Well, M.D. I hope that works for you.

I'm off to sit in a dark room with an editor, smoking too much and nitpicking the audio until its right. Just like those nights at Channel 31 with my buddies of Waay Too Late.

*************************

I just finished producing "Lightning Bug" in Cullman County. Robert Hall, who did special fx on W2L and currently has his own creature fx studio in L.A. - Almost Human, wrote and directed the film.

The film has good buzz here in L.A. and we hope to get a distribution deal very soon.

While we were there shooting, I remembered the beautiful skies and the crazy tornado weather. I miss that sometimes.

Note: The movie is called Lightning Bug: www.lightningbugthemovie.com and that's the link to it.



[Semi-Final comment from Lisa] - - - - "Channel 31 was a bunch of wacky times. Kind of like Catholic school only with more smoking and Harry Hatfield."
[ [Here's a rememberance of Lisa from Cactus. He didn't get it quite right, but it was close. Then, below, is Lisa's accurate version of what happened. Both are funny and is ALL LISA in both cases.]

CACTUS' VERSION:
I read Lisa Waugh's email.. She is a very smart ( more ways than one ) young girl...You know MD, she was from Scottsboro and a good friend of Frances and Sue Ellen... Lisa is known best in Scottsboro for her interview with a reporter from Channel 9 out of Chattanooga.. Back in the 70s, the local school teachers here in Scottsboro were picketing the Scottsboro school board demanding higher pay and lower teacher to student ratio..

At the time Lisa, a senior at Scottsboro High School, was working for Ron Livingood at WKEA-FM here in Scottsboro as the local high school reporter. Her main interest was reporting the fact that Channel 9 News was in town covering this unusual event , that being school teachers threatening to organized a local teachers union here in Scottsboro... So as the Channel 9 reporter was doing her story on tape she turned to Lisa and asked her what she thought about all this.. Lisa said, "I don't like this one little bit, my boss, Mr. Livingood who owns the local radio station, is the main person who got all these teachers all worked up in order to get something to report other than the local funeral announcements on his radio station newscast ". Ron fired her on the spot and that is when she called me about Channel 31.. The rest is history...

[ NOW, LISA'S VERSION of what really happened: ]
I'm still chuckling. This happens a lot with me... it seems like it would be true but that's not exactly the way it happened.

Here's how it went down. I was a senior at SHS. Not a reporter for the school. I wasn't on the honor roll or involved even in the band that year.

As I pulled up to school one morning I was delighted to see that school was out and that teachers were not in class. They were, in fact, picketing. Right on! Great, I'm thinking. I don't have to come up with another excuse to ditch school (I was a decent student, not stellar, and my senior year was about taking the exact amount of days allowed off to work on my tan and water skiing skills).

Anyway, I go hang with the students milling around the teachers. I got the jist of the strike pretty quick and thought the teachers had a point. I didn't realize that my teachers not only had to put up with all of our nonsense as crazy teenagers, they were also having to teach too many of us and getting crap pay. That didn't seem fair.

There were tv cameras there. One reporter was interviewing a pimply faced classmate of mine and the student just wasn't getting the point across. She seemed a bit uninformed. So I stepped up and said something like, "Seems like the teachers are getting a raw deal. The superintedent and board need to get on the ball and fix this cause we've got some great teachers here. It would be stupid to let them go. "

And then I went one better and said something like, "I think it's interesting that a Chattanooga station is here getting the story when I don't see any of the local tv or radio stations. Maybe they're busy with hog and funeral reports." Yep, real clever. Hell, I was 17.

Anyway, the strike was settled. The teachers went back to work with a little more pay and they were a little more nice to me.

Shortly after this I had to get a job and my mom was after me to get something I would be interested in so I could afford gas for my sh#t brown Nova. She suggested getting a job at the local radio station.

Sounded better than working at the Golden Corral (where I spent four long days finding out I sucked as a waitress - the power blue polyester outfit itched anyway).

I got an interview with Ron Livengood, the owner of WKEA. I was a bit nervous. I dressed up, got my faux Farrah hairstyle in its best shape and showed up with my seriously silly resume.

Mr. Livengood was very nice. He smiled a lot. I realized after a few minutes that he was actually smirking at me. He let me ramble for a bit and then asked me if I was on tv recently, slamming local radio including his station. I turned 16 shades of red. "Uh, yeah, that was me." I didn't even offer to explain. He laughed so hard. I just sat there looking like a dumb ass. He appreciated that I didn't deny it. Despite my mouthiness on tv, he hired me on the spot. Gave me my first job in radio.

I learned to appreciate David Allen Coe, Merle Haggard and cigarette smoke so thick, I needed a machete to find the ladies room.

And that's how it happened.

© 2003 Smith Broadcasting, Inc. [update 7-25-2003]