Martini Shot

Not too long ago, I was producing a pilot and like all pilot-producing experiences, this one had its moments of panic, short-tempers, and those weird moments where you think we're talking about a script and a TV show, but we're actually talking about the network executive's crippling fear of the network president, or the studio executive's stomach-churning regret over having leased the Mercedes and not the Audi, which would have been a safer choice since everyone knows there are going to be big changes in the studio development department right after pilot season...

You’d think that a business famous for its double-talk and lack of candor would have more complicated and oblique jargon, but the entertainment business is pretty straightforward when it comes to that.

I'm teaching a writing class this semester at a large local university. Just one semester. Just one class.

When I started working in Hollywood, in the early 1990's, people were still talking about a movie called Howard the Duck, which was a comedy about a duck, named Howard, that was produced by George Lucas, and released in 1986 to an astounding and undeniable thud. Howard the Duck was a big flop, and years later people still used it as shorthand to describe a movie's performance, as in: the picture didn't do well, but we're not in Howard the Duck territory...

When you don't have any information to go on, the only thing you can do is make some up. That's sort of the way the brain works – when it faces an unknown, grey area, it just fills in whatever seems to fit. We try to make logical sense out of things, like the weather and traffic and network television pilot orders, when there may not be any real sense to be made...

The dating website OK Cupid is run by nerds. Very very nerdish nerds, who like to analyze the huge amount of data a site like that generates -- clicks, likes, messages between members, attractiveness ratings, etc. That swirl of data gets crunched and processed and discussed in their excellent blog, and the results are never less than fascinating...

A friend of mine has a pilot script at a network that was developing three scripts that dealt with the same basic subject.  So there was no way they were going to order all three pilots – everybody going into the deal knew how it would shake down: the three scripts would come into the network, and they'd choose which one they were going to make, and then put on the sad-encouraging-upbeat tone of voice and call the other two writers with the news...

Not too long ago, I was shooting on location – well, that sounds rather glamorous: the location was West LA – but the whole company was out there, shooting in some nondescript house on one of those streets in west LA that seem to rise up out of nowhere, between a Nails by Yuki and one of those not-Jamba juice chains...

This town shuts down for the holidays, someone told me years ago, around the end of October. Which isn't really the holidays – unless you've got a thing for Columbus Day, but the point was this: get your pilot scripts in early, because the town shuts down...

Everyone in this business knows someone who's had a close call. I don't mean crossing the street and almost getting hit by a bus, I mean a career close call. I can think of two people right now that a couple of years ago were seriously thinking about packing it in and doing something else, and who are now probably listening to this while driving a very expensive new car on the way to a very expensive dinner. Life, and fortunes, change – especially in this business.

A friend of mine who lives at the beach once woke up at dawn to discover that the house next door was surrounded by brightly colored yellow tape emblazoned with the words, "DANGER! HAZARDOUS MATERIALS! DO NOT CROSS!" Alarmed, he headed out to see what was going on...

One of the least meaningful words in the English language is the word "creative," because it implies that there's something else, something “non-creative” and that the two things need to be separated somehow.  As if creative people are just all walking around, thinking creative thoughts while the other half, are, I don't know, data entry drones...

It wasn’t too long ago that you could walk through a hotel or some other kind of breakfast spot, and everyone you saw was buried in a copy of Variety, or its scappier cousin, The Hollywood Reporter..

I was late to a meeting recently – really late, I mean, like 25 minutes late – and I'm aware, of course, that even five minutes late is late, and that part of the problem with doing business in this business is that a lot of people, like me, don't think of five minutes late as being really late – we think of it as a cushion, as a mulligan we take throughout the day.  I'm not saying we're right to do it, but we've all, occasionally, done it...

It's a storytelling axiom in Hollywood – and it's good business, too – to remember that whenever it's at all possible to deliver a happy ending, deliver one. If at all plausible – and even if it's a real stretch of the imagination and credulity and sometimes sheer forgetfulness of an audience – make sure the guy and the girl end up together. Make sure the house doesn't burn down. Make sure that earth is saved, the hero triumphs, the marriage comes off, the warring partners are reconciled, and the dog comes home, dirty but happy...

Once, when I was thinking about renting a small office to write in, I looked at a space being vacated by another writer. He had already moved out, and the place was bare and bright and perfect, except for an index card, taped solidly to the wall at about the height where the writer's desk was...

In olden times – or back in the day, as the kids say – as if they have any idea what that day was even like – but back in the olden day, if you were writing a television comedy, you'd gather the writing staff into a room, and they'd talk out --- sometimes yell out – the rewrite, with each word or joke pitch copied down in furious shorthand, mostly, or something called "fast notes" or even, as the people in the world who knew shorthand were gathered up by the Reaper himself, there appeared a bunch of enterprising young assistants who could type really fast, and so computers began to appear in the writer's room, which meant computer screens, which meant, eventually, large computer screens for everyone to in the room to look at, which to my mind anyway was not progress.  Was not an improvement...