Cathy's World: 'Regular Joe' Daniel Stern

LOS ANGELES, April 1 (UPI) -- A couple of years ago, character actor Daniel Stern (best known for the "Home Alone" and "City Slickers" films) wrote and starred in a short-lived CBS family comedy called "Danny," about a good-hearted guy recently separated from his wife and his everyday travails in raising a couple of kids.

Now Stern has a new family comedy on ABC called "Regular Joe," about a good-hearted, recently widowed guy and his everyday travails raising a couple of kids -- plus his unmarried, teenaged daughter's baby.

So naturally, there were questions at the ABC news conference about why this new Stern vehicle should succeed when the old one so quickly failed.

"Just in defense of Daniel's (old) show, which I don't know why I'm defending ..." began David Litt, creator and executive producer of "Regular Joe."

"Yeah, thank you very much," interrupted Stern genially. "It had a crappy time slot too."

"But this is a different forum," continued Litt, who pointed out that "Danny" used the trendy new single-camera technique -- which produces a more cinematic look -- and "Regular Joe" is shot in good old-fashioned multi-camera style.

"Personally, I think he will shine better in multi-camera, but what do I know?" shrugged Litt.

As it happens, "Regular Joe," which premiered Friday, is far better than (and far different from) the leadenly winsome, "Ed"-like "Danny," and I hope ABC gives it a chance.

"Regular Joe" may be neither revolutionary nor brilliant, but it crackles along at a smart comedic clip, whereas "Danny" moped and sighed. Much of this is due to the expert hand of Litt, who co-created another regular guy show, "The King of Queens," a solid hit on CBS.

And Stern can be quite engaging. He's the sort of wryly funny, self-deprecating guy who makes an impression on people -- even when he doesn't always know exactly why.

Several years ago, Stern spoke to his old high school's graduating class -- he's an alum of Bethesda Chevy Chase in Maryland -- and a parent in the audience still remembers him as "the best graduation speaker I ever heard."

But the actor can't remember what he said.

"In any event, I'm sure I was brilliant," he joked, chatting by telephone from the "Regular Joe" set. "My high school career actually was not exactly stellar.

"I loved gym -- I played a lot of basketball -- and the drama department and choir," Stern continued. "But I think I had a reading problem, to tell you the truth. I never learned to read that well until I did 'The Wonder Years' and had to read all that narration."

The actor provided the adult voice of Fred Savage's teen character, nostalgically describing his remembered adolescence.

Stern, 45, grew up in the suburbs of Washington, the son of a social worker father and day care center manager mother. The honorary chairman of the California state PTA, Stern has long been involved in political issues affecting the environment and children.

As a boy, he had a paper route delivering the Washington Post. "I actually had an old baby carriage and pushed that around instead of a bike," he recalled -- and looked forward to reading the latest Woodward and Bernstein stories about Watergate each morning.

"So when it interested me, I COULD read," he admitted.

Stern noticed that his best friend "seemed to be getting all the girls' attention" acting in school plays, so he joined his high school's drama department. His drama teacher encouraged him, but his parents didn't.

"My mom came to see me perform -- this is a famous family story -- and she said, 'God, it was just so sad. What kind of attention do you need that you have to do that in front of people?'" Stern recalled.

But he quickly found professional success, moving to New York after high school graduation and getting steady work as an actor almost immediately. Early breaks included getting cast in "Breaking Away" and "Diner."

Because he knew how to work stage lights, Stern got a summer job at the Washington Shakespeare Festival, which also turned out to be his first professional acting gig. That experience was also Stern's first as an activist.

He and the other apprentice actors got $100 for the summer, but the producers were late in paying them, so Stern called a strike.

"I was 17, and I shut down the play during intermission," he recalled. "They had the accountant drive in -- it ended up being like a 45-minute intermission -- I told the audience what was happening and got a standing ovation. That was a crossroads for me, standing up for myself, and having teenagers now I can see how important that is."

Stern is quite a regular Joe in real life. He's been married for almost 23 years (a rarity in Hollywood), and he and his wife -- who together started a Boys and Girls Club of after-school activities in Malibu -- have three children, aged 20, 17 and 14.

When a couple of years ago the Federal Trade Commission accused Hollywood of targeting minors with R-rated films and other sexual or violent entertainment, Stern began organizing a campaign to educate schoolchildren about media.

One thing the actor constantly had to explain to kids: No, it didn't hurt when he got hit by those bricks in "Home Alone" -- if he'd been really hit that hard, he'd be dead.

Such naivete about fantasy violence convinced Stern of his campaign's importance. He teaches a three-week seminar at Malibu High School, which his younger two children attend.

The actor went to the most recent Democratic and Republican conventions to try to get Washington sponsorship for his program, which is connected with the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles and the Creative Coalition in New York. He's visited Capitol Hill to speak to congressmen about education as a better solution than censorship.

"I had a meeting with Sen. Joe Lieberman, who seemed to be on board, and (former Sen.) Fred Thompson was terrifically supportive," Stern says. But after Sept. 11, government interest in the issue waned.

Stern's other current project besides "Regular Joe" is a new Off-Broadway play called "Barbra's Wedding," which Stern wrote (but doesn't act in) after being annoyed by helicopters circling Malibu when Barbra Streisand married James Brolin a few years ago.

The comedy, which opened last month at the Westside Theatre in New York, examines the contrast between mega-celebrity like Streisand's and the has-been celebrity of the main character, an out-of-work minor star of a long-cancelled TV show.

Stern hasn't heard from Streisand yet about the show. They met at a dinner party shortly after "Barbra's Wedding" premiered in Philadelphia last year, but she didn't mention it and he didn't bring it up.

With "Regular Joe," though, Stern is happy to leave the writing to others.

"I'm just glad to be acting," he says. "And it's the sweetest job you could ever have."