Martini Shot

I have a friend, actually, I do, this part is true, who currently has a show on the air, and in a recent episode, they had a joke that was a bit too risqué, a bit too explicit for network television. Now what happens in this case is, usually, the joke appears in the table draft, which the actors read at the table reading, which is attended by about sixty thousand people from the network and the studio, all of whom gather in little clumps afterwards to think things over and decide exactly which parts of the script were the funniest, freshest, and most lively, and then ask for these specific parts to be removed...

For the past week I've been reading an excellent book called Getting Things Done by a very interesting guy named David Allen. The book's title sort of gives it all away: it's a book about, well, Getting Things Done, and it's a pretty thorough, compelling system for organizing your life and work for maximum productivity...

For the next, oh, ten seconds, I'm going to be lying to you... The script?  It's going really well.  It's basically done, we're just tweaking things here and there and trying to get it down to a tight 40 pages.  You should be getting it very soon.  Really, you know, in the next couple of…you know…just in the next…you know, sooner rather than later, of course.  Of course.  Seriously.  We're cranking on it...

We're halfway through a script -- it's going pretty well, it's funny and different and, oddly, fun to write, and I turn to my writing partner and say, "You know, this is really good.  I really like this script.  It reminds me of the first play we wrote together, back when we were I college.  What I really like about it is...

Every now and then I make the mistake of reading an essay by a writer writing about writing.  I know you've all read this kind of thing before.  It goes, "The craft of writing -- and I call it a craft, not an art, for there is too much an element of joinery and carpentry to be pure art -- but it's an ancient craft, the craft of the shaman in the fire circle, the troubadour, the world creator"...

I ran into a guy last week, in the waiting area of a big TV network. He was there to pitch a show, which was odd, because up until that moment, I had been pretty sure he was out of the business...

A few years ago, we had a show on the air and we were stuck writing an advice scene. You know what I mean: main character is in some kind of quandary, goes to another set somewhere where a colorful supporting character is often found, asks colorful supporting character for advice, which is given, in interesting and amusing dialogue, thus preparing the way for the conclusion and resolution of the quandary...

Year ago, when a friend of mine was leaving his small town in Missouri to drive to Hollywood, to be an actor, his mother hugged him good bye and said, "Don't lose your soul."...

When I tell people that I write television comedy -- actually, that's a bit of a lie: I never tell people what I do for a living, if I can help it.  When people ask -- on a plane, or in some kind of casual never-going-to-see-the-person-again situation -- I almost always say, "I'm a merchant banker," which leads to precisely zero follow-up questions.  I mean, when you tell someone you're a merchant banker, they don't then ask, "Oh, have you worked on any private equity deals I might have heard of?" And they don't say, "You know what's wrong with the capital markets?  Let me tell you... " and they especially don't ever say, "You know what would be a great private equity deal?  My life!  Seriously!  You should come to my office and meet my co-workers and then do a private equity round of early-investment financing with them!"...

I only know one way to pitch a show, and that's to pitch the story of the pilot.  That, of course, is how the audience is going to experience it -- and they, ultimately, are going to decide whether to stick around or see if there's a CSI on somewhere, and there is, there always is  -- so when it comes time to pitch a show, we usually go in, sit down, and tell a story...

I went to a lunch the other day hosted by a very high-up-there studio executive who works with a lot of writers.  It was a small lunch, and I was seated next to a visiting college professor.  "Tell me," he asked.  "how does the whole TV business work?"...

This is for the guy driving the BMW 5 Series, with a show on the air, a show that premiered sometime in the past few weeks, one that did okay the first week, a little worse the second, had okay reviews except from some losers who just didn't get it, a show that's actually pretty good -- it's funny (if it's supposed to be a comedy) and dramatic (if it's supposed to be a drama) -- but for some reason just isn't catching fire.  It just isn't breaking through....

I was having lunch with a friend of mine the other day.  And he suddenly looked up from his Cobb salad. "Oh, here's something I forgot to tell you," he says.  "You know who I ran into the other day?" "Who?"...

I went away for a few weeks this summer, and I grew a beard.  I didn’t plan to grow it. I just planned not to shave. You know how that is.

So, here's what went down a few weeks ago. Maybe you read about it. My agent, and his entire agency, were bought by another, larger, agency for a lot of money. Now, for years, they had been denying that they were even interested in such a thing. "Oh, no, never, we like our independence," they'd say. "Besides," they'd add, "we think our agency is worth a lot of money, and we're pretty certain there's no one out there with enough cash to make a deal..."

Here's a bit of technical background. One of the things you need to record, when you're shooting on a soundstage, or for that matter, on location, is the noise that the place makes all by itself. The noise of the room. I know, it sounds silly, but each place has its own special sound, and it's important to record that sound so that later, when you have to fix an audio track, or record a wild line, you have something to put underneath it so that it blends in with the rest of the audio track that was recorded live...

In the summer, all of the big media moguls gather in Sun Valley for a conference put on by investment banker Herb Allen. I couldn't make it this year. But I did see pictures of them, marching around in their awkward leisurewear and when I did, I thought of this story...

Let me ask you a question: if someone gave you, say, 50 million dollars today, would you think that's a lot of money? I'm not ashamed to say that I myself, me personally, would...