Don Adams has passed away.

Don Adams played Maxwell Smart, in tv’s Get Smart. Click here for a very nice article about him and his work.

I can remember, many years ago, coming home from school and my Mom letting me sit in front of the tv with my snack to watch Get Smart and Lost In Space, back to back. They were in re-runs of course, but, boy-oh-boy, I just loved them! Don Adams had timing like you wouldn’t believe, his slapstick was first-rate. There’s no question that watching that show had a part in me wanting to make people laugh, to be the class clown that I was, and to do as many comedies as I do now as a director/producer. I LOVE to be a part of lightening the mood, helping people escape for a while. I used to watch that show, with the many secret doors opening and closing during the opening credits, and laugh my way through an entire after-school snack, knowing that it would all be okay, because Agent 86 believed it! Then would come Lost in Space – where I could pretend that I was Will Robinson, and that I lived on a spaceship!

Between Get Smart, Lost In Space, and my dad introducing me to Star Trek as a kid, I was hooked on the sci-fi/gadget world early on. Maxwell Smart’s shoe-phone? Come on, that’s genius!!! The communicators that Captain Kirk used? Tricorders? How can you NOT want one of those?! And Will Robinson’s Robot was just the ultimate! “Danger Will Robinson!”

Danger?! Yeah, Danger of getting me addicted to cool electronic gadgets that I LOVE! Danger of showing me worlds of such wonder that I would forever want to be a part of them. (Danger of crushing disappointment when they made a mediocre movie out of the series!)

It’s funny, those shows will always be linked in my mind. To each other, to after school snacks, but also to how I view the world. They believed. They knew, whether it was fighting the agents of KAOS or fighting aliens a zillion miles from home, they just knew that they’d make it through! There’s such a warm, homey feel when I see those reruns now, it takes me back to sitting on the living room floor, Mom making dinner while we waited for Dad to come home from work. Simpler times. For me, anyway.

*sigh*

So today we lost another man who helped make the world a little brighter.
Thanks, Don. Rest In Peace.