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Tavis: Wil Shriner, a veteran actor is he. Comedian and TV host who's making his big screen directorial debut with the new film 'Hoot.' He also wrote the screenplay for the film, which was adapted, of course, from Carl Hiaasen's bestselling novel. The movie is in theaters now across the country. Here now, a scene from 'Hoot.'

Tavis: Wil Shriner, nice to have you here.

Wil Shriner: Tavis, good to be here. I enjoy your show very much.

Tavis: Thank you. I'm glad, I enjoy your work, and I'm glad to have you here.

Shriner: Carl said he had fun here last time, Carl Hiaasen.

Tavis: Carl Hiaasen had a good time when he came on this show.

Shriner: He's crazy.

Tavis: You had a good time making the movie?

Shriner: I did it just to work with Carl Hiaasen and Jimmy Buffett. The idea was we went down, and we flew a sea plane down to the Keys and had a fish sandwich and said, "How do we make this movie?" And I said, well, you get a script you like and you go out and sell it. So, we sat down and I said, I'll write the script for scale if I get to direct it. And so we wrote it, and Carl had notes, Jimmy had notes, and then we gave it to Frank Marshall, who, Kennedy-Marshall's a big production (unintelligible).

Frank knows everything, so Frank had notes. Rewrote it, one meeting, our first meeting at Walden Media, we sold it. We got on a plane and they said, "You're making a movie." So, (laughs) it's easy, isn't it? And then we were out this weekend, we come out against 'Mission: Impossible.' So you work three years, (laughs) and you get clobbered. You get clobbered. I think people are buying tickets to 'Mission: Impossible' and sneaking into 'Hoot.'

Tavis: Is that what it is? (Laughs)

Shriner: Yeah. (Laughs)

Tavis: It's that old ticket scam again. That's what it is.

Shriner: Yeah, yeah, the multiplex (word), yeah.

Tavis: Yeah. Obviously, you consciously made this decision, but I suspect there were other things that you could have had on your resume as your directorial debut. You thought about this, obviously.

Shriner: Yeah, well, nobody was knocking on my door to direct a feature film. I've been directing these television sitcoms. I got very lucky I started at 'Frasier.'

Tavis: You ain't done bad. We'll talk about that in a second. 'Raymond,' 'Frasier.'

Shriner: (unintelligible) Sitcoms were great, but sitcoms were all, the sitcom is kind of an endangered species right now on television, so this was an opportunity to work with these two guys. That was really what it was about. I said, "If we can make this movie and have fun making it; it's a little kid's story." It's just a sweet little story about kids sort of seeing an injustice, and standing up for it.

And we're being compared, and everybody's well, a big blockbuster movie. We're just a little movie. We have a little, small budget, and we're...

Tavis: Not a bad project, though, again, to start your directing career.

Shriner: Yeah, well...

Tavis: For features, yeah.

Shriner: Feature film, that's where, in television, the writer's really in charge. But in features, being the writer and the director, you get to kind of call the shots. And you set out to make a film, and of course there's notes, the studio has notes, and people wanna sometimes over explain things and make it simpler for the audience, and then you start going oh.

Tavis: So just between the two of us, who's worse, the feature suits or the TV suits?

Shriner: The suits are younger suits, everywhere you go.

Tavis: Younger and younger.

Shriner: But the suits are all the same, as Carl likes to call them. They're not the sharpest group of people, but (laughs) it's the only - you get a greenlit movie, you wanna get it made. And that's the challenge. Unfortunately, if you have a television show or a movie, you gotta come on strong from the get go, or everybody's writing you off. And it's tough. It's like a horse race. Do you bet on the horse that gets out of the gate first, or do you get to the one that finishes? But in television and film, it's all about that coming out of the gate. So.

Tavis: And in horses, it's never the horse that comes out the gate first. (Laughs)

Shriner: No, I got a lot of horses that came out of the gate first. Yeah.

Tavis: Yeah, it's never that horse, I tell you. I was at the Derby not long, days ago. I learned that. It ain't the horse that comes out the gate first. (Laughs)

Shriner: No. I went to the Derby once and got to ride a thoroughbred around that track, though, and that is a thrill.

Tavis: Ain't that amazing?

Shriner: I almost killed myself, but.

Tavis: You mentioned, speaking of species, you mentioned a moment ago that the sitcom you see as an endangered species. What did you mean by that?

Shriner: Well, a little bit, in a sense that the four camera sitcom, now we're in the single camera, in 'My Name Is Earl' and 'The Office.' These are comedies shot with one camera, like a movie. The multicamera, like 'Frasier' and 'Becker' and 'Raymond' and 'Wife And Kids' and a number of the shows that I've been fortunate enough to be involved with, were we'd bring them in, an audience watches on Friday, you shoot in front of an audience in a couple hours.

And that form, for some reason, the executives feel it's sort of a tired format, or something. Occasionally, along comes a hit, but the last hit that's out there is 'Two and a Half Men,' I think. The last really bona fide hit that's come along. So everything's cyclical in this business. So I think it'll change, but right now, for me, I saw that sort of, 'cause 'Becker' was going off the air, 'Frasier' was going off the air. All these shows were sort of retiring. We had our nine year run, and we're gone. And for me, I went, "Well, wait a minute, a feature?" This is good. Yeah.

Tavis: Were you excited enough by the prospects, not the prospects. In retrospect, did you enjoy directing the feature enough to want to do that, as compared to television?

Shriner: Yeah, it is. We shot in Florida, in July and August. So you got heat, you got humidity; we had four hurricanes come around us. And we were trying to capture the beauty of this old Florida that Carl grew up in and I grew up in, and which was a very small, undeveloped Florida. So we tried to capture the sort of seventies, family kind of feel of a movie.

I would again immediately. Carl and I are talking about doing another one of his projects. And it's just fun, 'cause you have a good time. That's the thing I've learned. If you like going to work, it's long days. You go in at 5:30; you get home at 10:00 at night. It's not like hosting a talk show, which is hard work, as well. I remember in the eighties, when I did my talk show, we did 200 hours, and it was like a treadmill you're on. And when it finally ends, you're like (makes noise). That was a run. (Laughs)

Tavis: Well, I don't wanna do that just yet.

Shriner: No, no, no. You're doing great. (Laughs) The talk format, it's been around the block. Light talk was popular, then it went to Geraldo and Jerry Springer and all that format, and then now it's back. Ellen's popular again. Having talk, it's cheap to produce. And to me it's immensely entertaining. And you get great people on the show, based on them wanting to come on to promote something they're doing.

Tavis: It's not bad work if you can get it.

Shriner: Yeah, exactly.

Tavis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You grew up in Florida, as you mentioned a moment ago.

Shriner: I grew up - well, I was born in New York City. My dad, Herb Shriner, was from Indiana, so.

Tavis: That's (unintelligible).

Shriner: Yeah. So we spent a lot of...

Tavis: (unintelligible) Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Shriner: Fort Wayne, Indiana. We spent a lot of time up in Clear Lake and Angola, and that northern area there, as kids in the summertime. But I was born in New York, and then I moved to Florida. I lived in Florida, then I came to L.A., then I moved back to Florida. Went to the University Of Florida, and then I came to L.A. in the seventies to go to UCLA film school to be a director.

Tavis: Yeah, here you are.

Shriner: And I met David Letterman, and he seduced me into this comedy world. (Laughs) This dark world of stand-up comedy. And we had such a great time. Comedy in the seventies and eighties was as much fun as it is.

Tavis: You have a fascinating career. We were talking earlier, of course, about the fact that you've directed historic sitcoms, I think. As people look back on this period, 'Frasier,' clearly a major hit. 'Everybody Loves Raymond.' You've worked on some high quality stuff where comedy is concerned. Your relationship with David Letterman, who pulls you into this. Your father, a stand-out in his own right. Your twin brother.

Shriner: Right.

Tavis: Look at that face, Jonathan, put the camera on that face. Real, there you go.

Shriner: But he's a little more squinty and he's got no...

Tavis: There you go. Take your glasses off.

Shriner: No kids, no gray hair. Yeah. (Laughs)

Tavis: Are you seeing it? His twin brother played Scotty on 'General Hospital.' His brother's name is Ken. Played Scott. They're like, what? That's his brother? Yeah, that's his brother.

Shriner: My older brother.

Tavis: Your older brother played Scotty Baldwin for 20 years on 'General Hospital.'

Shriner: Yeah, 25 years on and off. And then when I was making this movie in Florida, he's living in Florida, too, and he goes, so where's the Clint Howard role?

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs) Ron Howard, Clint Howard, I get it, yeah.

Shriner: So he has a small, he plays our clerk. He likes to call it the pivotal role in the movie. (Laughs) The turning point of the film. But no, he's in it, he's funny. Luke Wilson is very funny, Tim Blake Nelson. We've got really funny people in 'Hoot.' It was great to have such a fun adult cast, and then to have a bunch of great kids. These kids that we found, one of them I'd worked with on 'Raising Dad' with Bob Saget, Bree Larson, who's just a real talent. She was sort of, for me, she wasn't a discovery, but everybody really has loved her in this movie.

Tavis: You had developed a relationship; I'll let you tell the story. You had developed a relationship some years ago with Bill Gates of Microsoft, and when it came time to do the two-hundredth episode of 'Frasier...'

Shriner: Well, that was a funny thing, 'cause I had done the 'Windows 2000' launch, and then Bill had asked me to write and direct his personal video. When he goes out and does speeches, he wanted a video. What's a day in, so we said, well, how about a day in your life? And so we made up this day in his life where he goes to the grocery store, the dry cleaner. (Laughs) And he was somewhat, like, confused by the comedy, let's say that.

Tavis: Right. (Laughs)

Shriner: And we had this giant computer that he had, and he said, well, I'd like a joke for that. And I said, well, how about you wouldn't believe how much trouble I had getting this giant computer in the overhead bin on the flight down here. And he looked at me, like, and I said, Bill, remember when you used to fly commercially, (laughs) how you put your luggage up above? And he goes, oh yeah. Yeah, that's good, that's good. I said, Bill, don't lose touch. Don't lose touch. (Laughs)

Tavis: Yeah, been a long time, yeah. (Laughs) A long time since he's flown commercial, huh.

Shriner: Yeah. But anyway, so, like, it was a week, 'Frasier' was doing their two-hundredth episode. They'd never had Bill on. And the show takes place in Seattle. And Bill was coming out with 'XP,' 'Windows XP.' So his people call and say, is there any way you could get us on 'Frasier?' And I said, well, they don't do that. I know they'd love to have you on.

And, like, two days later, the 'Frasier' people call and say, is there any way you can get Bill Gates on the show? And it was, like, within two days of each other. Let me see what I can do. (Laughs) So we got him, he came in, and he came into the radio station and talked about 'XP,' so everybody was happy.

Tavis: So what's it like writing jokes for Bill Gates?

Shriner: Well, sometimes, like, he goes into, we have this thing, there's a scene in a coffee shop, and he goes in, he's gonna order a half-caf, decaf latte or something. And I said, while you're waiting, walk over to that 'DOS for Dummies' book on the discount stand and buy it for 10 cents. And he goes, why is that funny? And I said, well, 'cause, didn't you make, like, your fortune (laughs) from DOS as the shell of? And oh, yeah, I guess so.

And it was things like that. We have him go to a dry-cleaning store, he takes six sweaters and he goes to pick up six of the exact same sweaters. (Laughs) And the guy behind the dry cleaning counter is wearing another one of the sweaters. And he says, "I'm missing a sweater." (Laughs) And he, for the life of him, he didn't really - he was confused by the whole thing. And then he watched the sweaters go around, he was like a kid in a candy store. He's a brilliant guy.

Tavis: That he is.

Shriner: (unintelligible) listen to him talk; but comedy's not his forte.

Tavis: Yeah. So where do you see this career of yours headed now, given that television is shifting, and you got one feature under your belt, and there are so many things you could do. What do you do next?

Shriner: Well, I really wanna write another film. I would love to do an adult Carl Hiaasen project. 'Cause Carl, I just think he's great. Adapting a book is a lot easier than writing an original film. I have this romantic comedy in the back of my head that I wanna write, so I think the way for guys like me, if you're gonna wanna direct, is you have to have a script that you attach yourself to.

And so I will sit in Florida and write another movie and work on another project with Carl, if it comes to be. And just come out to L.A. when there's TV work to be had. I've been in L.A. a long time, and I love Florida. I fell in love with it again. Making this movie there, we had a director of photography, Michael Chapman, who really captures the beauty of Florida. This film is, if nothing else, it's a postcard to, like, what Florida was in the fifties. And so, I'm 52. It's nice to have a little breather. It's hard work.

Tavis: Well, you deserve a break, but you ain't gonna stop no time soon. I can see that now.

Shriner: No, I love working.

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)

Shriner: I love doing stuff. I love always doing something different. So everything's a challenge, you just find new challenges.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you here.

Shriner: Tavis, thank you very much for having me.

Tavis: Tell Ken I said hello.

Shriner: I will. I will do that.

Tavis: (Laughs) That guy got me through college, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Shriner: Oh, yeah, well, you were watching soap operas, right?

Tavis: Watching those soaps. Yeah, exactly. 'Hoot.' In theaters right now. That's our show for tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International, check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A. Thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.