My Secret Connection to “Land of the Lost”

The Will Ferrell version of the Sid and Marty Kroft-created Land of the Lost is taking a beating at the box office this weekend, unable to draw movie-goers away from the Bromance Hangover or the Pixar/Disney 3D animated Up.

I doubt I’ll put down 10 bucks (or, more importantly, use up two hours of limited free time) to see the movie version of Land of the Lost. But I have great fondness for the original TV show. For two reasons.

First is nostalgia for the show. I spent many a Saturday morning with the Marshall family, whose rafting expedition went awry and sent them into an alternate universe with dinosaurs, small hairy hominids called Pakuni and the menacing sleestaks, who hissed as they walked toward you, their didactyl hands at waist level.

And, second, my connection to Land of the Lost is one degree of separation between myself and Sid and Marty Kroft. Some years ago, as a graduate student, I was a teaching assistant for Robert Foshko, a recently-retired professor of Television and Film at the University of Texas. He worked with the Kroft brothers and wrote the pilot episode of LOTL. I’m sure he’s glad he didn’t write the movie script, which TIME’s esteemed movie critic Richard Corliss noted got “near-libelous reviews.”