Greetings, Uncle!
Scott Baio, Director
Dock Of The Baio Pictures
1987

Coming off the disappointment of Casting Pearls (see Stage) David Sicherman attempted to retreat from the high pressure world of entertainment and become a full time hanger-on. The weeks and months he spent attending rock-and-roll galas and celebrity auctions left him with nothing more than an empty feeling and an earring worn by Pat Benatar in the "Love is a Battlefield" video. Then one night early in 1987, at a benefit for the Cincinnati Bengals, Sicherman met Scott Baio.

Baio, himself a former child star, was parlaying his success with the Charles in Charge Franchise into a film career. Nearing the end of preparations for his directorial debut in Greetings, Uncle! he had only one task left to complete. Who would play the supergenuis roller-skating nerd Oswald Von Meek?

Says Sicherman, "I was a little down and I met Scott Baio at a party and he told me he remembered my performance (in Angels Run, Little Boys Work), and how I was once going to be the next him. He said he had a great part in the movie he was making with Willie (Aimes) and asked if I'd be interested. I was a little hesitant, but a pope prays and an actor acts, so I agreed to do it."

"Begged." Says Baio. "He actually got down on his knees and begged me to give him something, anything in my next picture. I don't know who in the hell told him I was making a movie, but I've been able to put it behind me. Recently."

It was not exactly a triumph for Sicherman. He'd become hooked on cough medication a year earlier and it left him groggy and sounding as smooth as a French Silk Pie. Adding insult to injury was the roller-skating, an activity he'd never had much proclivity for. Most of the scenes found him at best barreling into furniture and actors, and at worst flying through sets being forced to say his lines as quickly as possible before he was out of range of the microphones.

Still, it was not a complete failure. Another of the film's costars, Lisa Whelchel, was coming up on her final season on The Facts of Life and though their affair lasted only a week and a half, it was enough time for Sicherman to get Whelchel to convince the show's producers to contract him for the following season.

"Yeah, we had a little thing," Whelchel told Liz Smith, "but there wasn't much to it. It mostly consisted of a week and a half of the two of us sitting on a couch while he yelled 'Hi Blair' over and over. I can't say that I wasn't charmed. At least not until the injunction is lifted that says I can't. And then I sure as hell will."

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