Folgen
-
As a child, Rob watched old sitcoms like Gilligan’s Island and Bewitched while pretending to do homework. He likes to say that his slacking off prepared him for the writing career he has now. Sure, he learned sitcom structure, but more important, by neglecting his schoolwork, he became less of a thinker. And in show business, thinkers just mess things up.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
When Rob Long sold his house in Venice Beach for his move to New York, the question from neighbors was universal: “When did you buy your house?” In other words, it wasn’t about where he was going, but how much money he was making. Selling high, of course, requires also believing things will get worse. Not hard in showbiz these days. Which explains why Rob recently found himself on the subway into the city from JFK.
Transcript here. Subscribe to The Ankler for more entertainment news.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Fehlende Folgen?
-
Show business largely operates on what Rob Long calls the “Monkey-Clown Relationship.” Sometimes you’re the monkey who loses it and attacks the clown. Sometimes you’re the clown, waiting in fear of the monkey ripping your face off. Increasingly, though, as the industry gets tougher, Rob’s friends aren’t waiting for the monkey to snap, they’re wondering if they should call it a day. But some may end up the tough clown that stays in there, fighting. Supreme logo and all.
Transcript here. Subscribe to The Ankler for more entertainment news.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Rob Long worked on the Paramount lot 15 years, and the pilot of Lenny & Squiggy — a spinoff of Laverne & Shirley — was a ghost that haunted the grounds, so mercilessly rejected by a focus group that the tape disappeared. Forever. Which makes Rob wonder: How can one hack a hackneyed system where random people are selected to give an opinion on your show — and the studio listens? There are ways. Ethics aside, of course.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Everybody knows that one William Goldman quote: “Nobody knows anything.” But, Rob Long asserts, sometimes, people know something you don’t. And that’s where the mystery of the industry lies. Because as much shakra and selenite crystal as you can harness, your fate lies in the hands of others, and that can require going to desperate measures to maintain your sanity.
Transcript here. Subscribe for more entertainment news to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Movie stars and aristocrats are just like you and me: They put their trousers on one leg at a time. We don’t really have a proper aristocracy anymore, so there goes half that saying. But do we even have stars? Rob Long considers what a star was, what a star is, and what it means for the industry. Also, if you should wear a t-shirt with your name on it.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Rob knows a quote . . . from which Chinese philosopher, he’s not sure. It goes, “If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.” Showbiz translation: If you stay in Hollywood long enough, you’ll see Paramount bought and sold many times over.
Transcript here. Subscribe here for more showbiz news from The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
No doubt, the internet and technology vastly improved the tedious labor of writing scripts and making revisions. But Rob Long believes something was lost in the disappearance of an actual paper trail: Archaeological artifacts that reveal the process of jokes moving, characters losing lines, and test audiences wanting (and getting) a happy ending. And it turns out, like his friend, you didn’t even need to read Save the Cat! to learn how to write TV. All you needed was to roll up your sleeves and sift through the studio garbage.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler here.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Remember the Burger King Kids Club, the chain’s ad campaign targeted to “the kids?” There was Kid Vid, the white, video game-playing leader; Jaws, the Black kid who loved to eat; and a boy in a wheelchair named (seriously) Wheels. The idea, Rob Long speculates, must have been devised at one of those offsite retreats, the kind TV execs love to do in Laguna. But hits rarely are born from suits tossing around banal concepts. Instead they begin with a writers’ novel idea, the equivalent of a delicious-looking hamburger.
Also, we’ve been nominated for a Webby Award, vote for us here by April 18th!
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler here.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld once complained about the way a room was decorated: “It was a lot of Louis Quinze mixed with Louis Seize,” he said. And then added: “Ugh!” The entertainment business runs on this sort of Lagerfeldian Ugh, a sort of lingua franca of Hollywood. But what if we tried, just for a while, to not slag others as conversational filler? Rob Long says then, very likely, you could expect a whole lot of deafening silence.
Also, we’ve been nominated for a Webby Award, vote for us here by April 18th!
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler here.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Howard the Duck might not have won Best Picture, but if you’re a sandwich shop worker, or a young Rob Long at lunch with high-up producers, it’s probably best not to espouse how big a flop you thought it was. See, failure in Hollywood is a relative term. Movies fail, pilots fail, but after a failure of your own, it’s tough to see anything that makes it to the screen as defeat — especially if it came with a check. After all, getting paid in show business is getting paid to try. The later checks — the bigger ones — are about getting paid to succeed.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
When Orson Welles found an investor for a cheap little noir thriller, legend has it he devised a scheme. His opening sequence took up almost 10 pages of script, with descriptions and action all spread out. Except when he actually filmed it, he used only a high-tension, 12-minute “virtuoso” single tracking shot that became signature to Touch of Evil — but also fooled execs into thinking he’d be under budget and on time every day. As genius as Welles’ move was, Rob Long says he was also a practitioner of Haraka Baraka. And you should be too.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Sixty percent of Americans say they read the Bible regularly. But in Hollywood, where Jesus and religion can feel — how do you say it — downmarket, people rely instead on the series bible, where writers flesh out their TV series’ characters, situations and possible future episodes. But Rob Long suggests Hollywood, much like he has, take a fresh look at the Bible — the one with a capital B, no IP rights, and packed with tragedy, sex and human weakness fit for a limited series.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
When Rob Long pitches anything these days, he knows that he’s not going to sell that idea in the room. That’s over. But he wouldn’t be upset if he didn’t hear, “Fun stuff. We’ll talk internally and get back to you.” What’s fun about that? If we can identify fun — rather than fun stuff — the entertainment industry can get back to being like that big, noisy party Rob throws, with a supermarket ham and cheap booze. Overthink it, and the party’s over.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Rob Long loved his tailor — a man who ran his shop with unpredictable, cigarette-stained weirdness. But when he died, the business became faster, and it was easier to communicate with the staff. It was even open into the evenings. The new and improved shop certainly made for a better business. But the old tailor, for all his idiosyncrasies, was highly entertaining. And that is why Rob is not as worried about AI as many other people are. It may be more efficient, but can it pull a hilarious non-sequitur when you really need one?
Transcript here. Subscribe here to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Rob Long’s friend once wrote a line for a TV show where a character reveals he doesn’t have voicemail. You see, the character, explains, “I don’t get important phone calls.” The network executive in charge, however, was not having it, bellowing that no one would care about someone not important enough to not get important calls. And that was that. Rob himself has thoughts on the function assistants play as status symbol in the industry— and what his trip in a shipping container from Seattle to Shanghai may say about it all.
Transcript here. Subscribe here to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Liza Minelli, Private Detective. Sounds pretty good, right? Unfortunately, the series — Rob Long’s brainchild — will never see the light of day. Rob was told Minelli was “not available,” and in show business, when someone’s unavailable, you move on. It’s one of those unwritten rules, or mysterious studio lists, that we all believe in. But are any of them actually true?
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Whether trekking to the cable store or preparing for the TSA line, Rob Long expects disappointment. Not because he’s inherently negative, you see. Show business, and all its grinding rejection, has molded him into a pessimist. So, Rob questions whether we are all too invested in our work here (the answer: yes). And how we can be prepared — and ready — for the time Lucy hands us the ball.
Transcript here. Subscribe here for more entertainment news.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Bette Davis famously answered “take Fountain” — an L.A. street with fewer lights — when asked her advice for actors starting out. Thing is, the questioner didn’t actually want practical advice. In fact, most of us say we want the truth when we actually prefer our feelings to be protected. Which is why executives wind up delivering notes with fluffy preamble, and why Rob Long was once taken aback when asked if his canceled show meant — ouch — that he was “washed up.”
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Every question that comes up in Hollywood these days is really a variation on money, and the big one on everyone’s minds is: how are we going to make buckets of money in the TV business again? By reinventing an already reinvented model, says Rob Long. Hate the ad model coming for streaming? Well, Rob says consider it akin to the cover charge and drink minimum required to enter a jazz club.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices - Mehr anzeigen