We’re going to Bensonhoist!

Design by Tom Corey & Scott Nash

We actually started Fred/Alan to make television shows.

In fact, we quit our jobs at MTV Networks to produce a series at the Playboy Channel. But, after that debacle branding and marketing took a higher bill paying priority for a while. There were some big and small shows here and there, but it wasn’t until 1987 we decided to hit it head on. 

Albie Hecht, 1988 @ 277 Water Street; Photography by Elena Seibert
Albie Hecht was one of Alan’s closest friends, we all went to college together, and worked at WKCR. Like us, he’d worked in the music business as a record company executive, writer, and manager (Crack the Sky and Dean Friedman) but morphed into television, starting to establish his reputation. Our company was becoming a full service advertising agency, and we realized if we brought Albie in to run the agency’s commercial production, we could have our cake and eat it too. We set up a joint venture, and Albie took on the task of establishing us in series and specials production. Albie and Alan took the lead on all our shows.

Chauncey Street Productions was named after the street Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton lived on in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn in The Honeymooners (Fred/Alan’s original home was Jackie Gleason’s production office in Manhattan). We asked Corey McPherson Nash to adapt The Honeymooners print work we’d done for Showtime when they reran the show for our logo. 

We had a good run. Despite all the scripts that never sold (par for the course), our series ran on MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, AMC. Pilots and specials for CBS, A&E, and VH-1. More on these another time.