From Kansas City to "Hannah Montana"

To see a slideshow of Brian Hall's holiday cards, click here.

Two months ago, Brian Hall's cell phone rang. It was his assistant at “Hannah Montana” in Hollywood, Calif., calling to say there was a desperate mom from Leawood on the other line. Seems that her two children absolutely had to be in the audience at the Sprint Center on Dec. 3 when Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana, performed. She said if Hall was willing to "donate" two tickets to her kids for the sold-out show, she'd pay him $1,500 -- tax deductible, of course.

“It gets better,” Hall says. “Her 14-year-old is the one who got my name. She was watching the closing credits and wrote down the first two names that came on the screen.” His was the second: Associate Producer Brian Hall.

“Wait,” I say, “she didn't know you were from around here?”

“I didn't know this person,” he says.

Brian Hall is full of stories like this. He loves to tell them. They connect him with people, and as he'll tell you, that's what it's all about. CNC, his dad taught him: contacts, networks, communications. People knowing people.

Yet there's also something about this story that he can relate to. Cold-call total strangers in a time of need? He's done it himself. It wasn't so long ago that he was in New York, working for free at the David Letterman show, earning side money as a gofer for Dick Clark, living on his parents' dime. He looked like a carefree kid from Kansas, but inside he was burning to kick-start his career as a producer on television shows.

And so, he says, “I was determined that I had to start talking to people. That's how I was able to give up Letterman and get jobs -- I just started talking.”

***

Brian Hall and I met for the first time this summer at TV critics' tour in California. We talked for three hours. He's 32, stocky, red-headed, pleasant, not overbearing, not cocky -- my kind of schmoozer. His parents, Tom and Georganne Hall, still live in Kansas City. His uncle Bill Hall runs the Hall Family Foundation. Phil Witt, the Fox 4 anchor, got to know Tom Hall when the latter was spokesman for the old Gas Service Company, and the Hall and Witt families have been close-knit since.

“Brian does not have an enemy in the world,” Phil Witt told me this week. “He enjoys people. We've had a mentor relationship over the years, but Brian is now the master and I'm the teacher.”

When Brian was 14, Witt gave him a tour of the WDAF-TV studios. Within two years, he was working part time on the weekend assignment desk -- “which was quite unusual,” said Witt, “but Brian was so mature and capable.”

In 1995, when he was on summer break from the University of Kansas, Hall went to New York to attend a taping of “Late Show with David Letterman.” He chatted up a CBS cameraman at the Hello Deli next door, and got a personal tour of the studio.

“I never wanted to 'see Dave,'” Hall says. “I wanted to see the way the show worked. When I left New York, I thought: Hey, I've got a shot at this.”

“This” was an internship at the “Late Show,” which in 1995 was the biggest thing in TV. Competition for the unpaid internships was brutal. He was interviewed for 10 hours straight by a battery of staffers. Three months later -- “the best day of my life,” Hall says -- he got the call to come to New York, if he could afford it. His parents made sure he could. At the “Late Show,” Brian worked for a former New York City cop named Mike McIntee in the production department. “I liked him right away,” said McIntee. “He was this big, aw-shucks, golly-gee guy from Kansas. Seeing the city through his eyes for the first time was kind of exciting.”

Having a fun-loving Midwesterner around must have appealed to the host as well. Letterman and Hall chatted often during live shots outside the studio on 53rd Street, and Hall made cameo appearances in comedy sketches. “I was the fat one,” Hall says, admitting he topped out at 290 pounds. Dave preferred small talk. He and Brian would chitchat about the Chiefs and Royals -- Tom Hall worked for the Kansas City Royals in the 1970s.

Letterman had a fleet of cars stored in a garage near the show's midtown Manhattan studios, and Hall began to get car duty. This meant walking over to the garage and driving the vehicle of Mr. Letterman's choosing back to the Ed Sullivan Theater. One night Hall was asked to bring back the Volvo. The garage attendant “gave me this look,” he recalls, then Hall heard a loud roar, and up pulled the car. It had been fitted with an Indy-car engine.

“Press slowly on the pedal,” the attendant told him. Later, staffers deep inside the building told him they could hear the Volvo coming from down the street.

McIntee was impressed. “I've never heard of any intern, before or since, who got to do that,” he said.

For money, Hall ran errands for the Daytime Emmys and Dick Clark Productions. Hall said he knew he'd made the grade when he managed to bring back an order of ice cream for Clark at midday without it “looking like a milkshake.”

But Hall wanted to be a producer, and he knew the real action was in L.A.

He found gofer work in California using his CNC, but what Hall really needed was GPS. One of his first tasks was delivering a tape to Carol Burnett, whose house was buried deep in the hills somewhere. “I literally got sick driving the winding roads. I couldn't find her mansion. It was dark. I parked my car and put the hazards on. Finally, someone stopped. It was a neighbor of hers. I followed his Bentley all the way to the top. I was sweating when I delivered it. I thought: This is the worst move I've ever made.”

“When he was in Kansas City,” said Tom Hall, “if you asked him to find 17th and Grand in a car, he'd be gone four hours. But people like his attitude. He wants to please people, he listens well and he executes.”

Indeed, an old Letterman producer, Daniel Kellison, called him up not long after. “We need your logistics,” he said. Kellison was working for Rosie O'Donnell, who was bringing her red-hot talk show to L.A. for a week.

One day Brooke Shields was a guest. This was during her “Suddenly Susan” days. A producer on the show told Hall, “We might be looking for a PA (production assistant).”

And so began a series of jobs, each building on the one before, as Hall burrowed his way into the technical side of making TV. He dropped 100 pounds -- which he calls his proudest achievement -- and gained experience as well as contacts and, not least of all, amusing stories.

Working on hidden camera stunts for the “Jamie Kennedy Experiment.” Scoring a box of Krispy Kremes (back when they were a delicacy) for Chris Rock. Pulling together a golf tournament in Las Vegas for Tiger Woods. Working a Chiefs-Raiders game for CBS in Oakland. In a Chiefs jacket. “Someone threw a double-D battery at me and I went down,” he says.

Persuading “Baywatch” star Gena Lee Nolin to nuzzle up to him in a one-piece bathing suit -- more about that later.

“Jamie Kennedy” was his first producer credit. He worked for Richard King, who's now his boss at “Hannah Montana.” One of the head writers of “Suddenly Susan” was Steven Peterman. He's one of the executive producers of “Hannah Montana.”

“It's all about relationships,” Hall says. When a network picks up a show, he explains, the producers have to hire a lot of people in a hurry. CNC is crucial. “Richard and I hired the entire crew. We oversee 125 people. We're in charge of everything except the writers.”

Hall's network of friends now stretches from L.A. to Kansas City to New York. And every holiday season, they get a card from him with some first-rate beauty at his side. It started with Nolin from “Baywatch.” McIntee said he and Letterman rate each one they get: Brooke Shields, Kathy Ireland, George Clooney … “I was upset when I got Clooney,” McIntee said.

Saturday's episode of “Hannah Montana” features a guest appearance by Heather Locklear, who will play the hot mom of Hannah's friend Lilly. From the picture Hall had taken of him and Locklear, I think I know who's going on this year's holiday card.

“I have no comment,” Hall says cheerfully.

He will be in town Dec. 3 for the big concert. He has no tickets.