Martini Shot

Once, not too long ago, I ran into an old friend at a party.  She was with her new boyfriend, and when I asked the normal stuff – you know, how long had they been going out, how did they meet, that sort of thing – she kind of waved her hand in the air and said, to forestall any more discussion, He's just somebody for now...

A friend of mine was running an action adventure show not too long ago, and he heard what I think is the worst pitch ever from a writer who wanted a free-lance episode. Our heroes confront a shadowy nemesis. That was it. That was the whole pitch. Which is admirable, in a way.  I mean, yes, I guess that would be an interesting episode, in that it describes every episode. But if you're on the other end of it, you kind of want more...

Here's how it used to work, all over show business. You'd show up at a meeting at a studio or network, and you'd wait for a few minutes and drink water from a foreign looking bottle, and then someone would come and get you – and not just you: sometimes it would be you and a few other people, like maybe your agent or someone – and then you'd go into an office and tell your little story and then...

Not too long ago, I had a meeting at a network. It was going to be a big meeting – big meaning a lot of people, not big meaning important. And these days, I shouldn't even really bother to say "big" either because every meeting I have seems to involve at least four more people than there are chairs, and one or two poor souls on speakerphone, who can't be heard, ever, because someone in the room is always talking and the speaker only goes one way, and they can't hear anything on their end anyway because that odd star-shaped speakerphone thing is positioned too close to someone with a pen-tapping habit, which manages to drown out the other voices...

A friend of mine pitched a television show last week to a big cable outfit.  He told me the pitch went really well – everyone was making good eye contact, they were nodding and taking notes attentively, laughing at the right spots, leaning forward at the exciting places – and then, he said, things went south...

I went to a party recently at a giant house out somewhere in the mountains around Malibu. It was one of those houses with lots of rooms and pools and splashing ponds, room for tennis and volleyball and outdoor living, enormous stones from some exotic river had been sent across an ocean in a shipping container, then dragged up the hill by smoking and squealing trucks, arranged along the pathways and then dramatically uplit. It was the kind of place that you walk around and think, instantly, this house belongs to a Bond villain.  I expected piranhas in the koi ponds and guys in matching jumpsuits...

It doesn't end well, I don't think, for the kids on MTV's Jersey Shore.  I don't know exactly what the third acts of those lives are going to be, but they don't strike me as the kind with the swooping orchestral track and the crane shot.  They strike me as the kind of third acts that end up in a Cinnabon somewhere...

If you've called me anytime since early last week, I probably didn't get the message, if you left a message, because I have no way of knowing there's a message waiting for me...

Anything you want to know about the television business you can learn from watching the Dick Van Dyke show, which has it all, including a perfect example of the mis-lead in the opening titles...

The best way to get money in Hollywood is to act like you don't need it.  That's the logic, I think, behind giving millionaire celebrities lots of cool, free swag just for announcing award nominees or showing up at a charity function. On the way home from some swank event, inside every expensive car gliding away from the port cochere – or whatever that's called, let's call it an awning, but an expensive one – there's the deafening sound of tissue paper being ripped apart, bags being emptied and turned out, as whoever is in the passenger seat – and, occasionally, the driver's seat, too – tears open the gift bag to find out how much free stuff they got...

A veteran television writer once said to me, "My career goal is to go home." Meaning, let's get this rewrite done and get into our cars as fast as possible. Real professionals in this business don't really want to have late-night writing sessions, or production shoots that go past eleven....

There’s an old story about a terrible production of the play, The Diary of Anne Frank. It was so awful, apparently, that in the scene early on, when the Gestapo comes to search the house, someone from the audience called out, “She’s in the attic!  She’s in the attic!” You know, because they wanted it over and stuff...

A few years ago, I got a call from a studio executive I was working with.  It was about this time of year – pitching season – and the executive wanted to know what, if anything, I was thinking about pitching...

A nice friend of mine wrote a great feature film script, and he gave it to me to read, he said. But he didn't really care if I read it. What he wanted me to do was send it along, to agents or producers or directors I know. Which was fine – it really is a great piece of work – but he's new to the business, so he asked me to wait a week. Until, he said, he had time to register it with the Writers Guild...

People often think that pitching a television series is unpleasant. It's not. It's not easy, of course – you sort of have to work out a lot beforehand, and then there's awkward small-talk to negotiate – but the process itself can be sort of fun. I mean, look, it's the easiest kind of sales call to make: the buyer is in the market to buy. They have a budget all worked out. It's sort of like selling cars – it's not easy work, of course, but anyone who walks onto a car lot and looks around for five minutes is going to buy a car from someone...

Last week, almost five million people refused to obey orders. They watched a show called Hot in Cleveland, which has older female stars who are well-known to television audience in a multiple camera sit-com shot in front of a live audience...

Hollywood is what they call an OPM business. Other People's Money.  That's really the key to success around here – the ability to take someone else's money and gamble it on an entertainment product, after taking a small fee, of course...

You can get all artsy about it, I guess, but the truth is, the way most writers approach a writing project is, first, they ask themselves this question: what's the least amount of writing I can do before someone will write me a check?

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot on KCRW and it's not 6:44 anymore, it's 4:44 now, which is called, in the television business, a time slot change...

Once, not too long ago, I went to a local coffee shop and ordered a tall coffee with room at the top for milk.  Those are pretty much the words I used: tall coffee, room at the top, but what I got was a tall coffee with no room at the top.  Filled to the rim...