Эпизоды
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It’s not easy being blunt in Hollywood, with a lot of time spent dancing around the truth. Is a network or studio actually interested in the pitch? How much money are they willing to pay? That’s why it’s worth remembering the fan letter an actress friend of Rob Long’s received, where the sender was less invested in her career than making sure she answered his more prurient podiatry queries. After all, someone has to ask for what you want, get to the point and keep everyone focused on the important things, which is how Rob finds himself praising, yes, his agent.
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When a fading comedian says they want new material, that's not what they want. What they want is “new old material,” meaning fresh jokes that sound like the ones they’ve already told. Hollywood today finds itself in the same predicament: needing new shows that feel like the old ones. Because, as Rob Long points out, the comforting and the familiar are what audiences crave — like Italian food — and can fix an industry today broken right down the middle.
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Пропущенные эпизоды?
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Rob Long has tried everything: Meditation, free writing, morning pages — all in an effort to be more present, to get out of reading trade headlines and reflexively wondering, But how does this benefit me? In an industry pathologically insular and insecure, it’s hard to imagine the world outside. Now with Hollywood in desperate need of a shakeup, Rob’s going first: He reveals the surprise masters degree he’s now pursuing and you won’t believe it. Just don’t say he left showbiz.
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Writing is a tough, lonely profession. One of its worse qualities: the payment structure, broken up into a zillion little pieces, withheld in full until the bitter end and altogether utterly unpredictable. The whole charade can make someone like Rob Long, understandably, crazy. That’s why, when a production company asks for a tax ID number, or a residual check comes in at $12, not $11, it’s hard not to get a little emotional.
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When tourists trek to Hollywood for their summer vacations, they want a look at the glamour they see onscreen. Instead they get Hollywood Boulevard, and filthy Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in a fist-fight. Yet when the tourists disappear and the season turns, so do Rob Long’s emotions: Into fears about age, the business passing him by, why he never had another career. But then, as reliable as Labor Day on the calendar, he puts the costume back on again.
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Ever tell the stranger sitting next to you on a flight what you do for a living? If you work in entertainment, your seatmate likely will first say, “Have I seen anything you worked on?” and then, “You know what you should do a show about?” And forget about answering the question about how your job exactly works. Because the rules of TV writing and the business have all the inconclusiveness and ambiguity of an annoying French sitcom.
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Why is it that the sweaty, doughy production assistants of decades past become the power brokers and “maximized” types of today? It’s the same reason the prolific, focused writers — regardless of quality — are able to get things made: They’re the ones actually sweating.
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When he heard news of Bob Newhart’s death, Rob Long reached into an old shoebox to find a picture of himself with the comedy legend. Like many who had such a memento, his first thought was, “Get that image on Instagram pronto.” But he held off. Why? Because if he learned one thing from the man known for comedic timing, it’s that sometimes less is more. Sometimes it’s better to take a pause, clear your throat and just say . . . Bob Newhart was the best.
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During Rob Long’s first job at Paramount, he would see a dusty, silver DeLorean on level two every day in the parking structure as he rolled in late for his gig on a hit show. Despite all the 1986 flash it signaled, its license plate gave the game away: That person had been on a popular show and now wasn’t. Everyone in Hollywood thinks they’ll always be parking on five, a place where you set your own hours and are flush with cash, but could end up, say, like Candle Media, back on two. So, Rob advises, maybe hang on to that Subaru.
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Grudges and feuds make Hollywood go ‘round. But sometimes, they are so longstanding that, as Rob Long learned, the aggrieved sometimes forget why they’re even mad. Which is why Rob is an advocate for, if not forgiveness, at least forgetfulness. Because without it, we wouldn’t be repeating the constant storytelling themes of friendship, money and family. And people would know that Succession was really just Dynasty.
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In this age of contraction, Hollywood is full of unemployed showrunners grinding out half fleshed-out pilot ideas. But a great sense of story isn’t the only attribute needed to be a showrunner. It also requires decisiveness, self-awareness and preparedness. And that last trait applies to more than just running a show. Just ask the medical professionals that put together Rob Long’s “home collection kit.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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