TV Show Memorabilia

Frank's Proscar post reminded me of this thing, hanging in John's office.



There's still have a few A.D. things lying around here, like a Bluth jacket, and yes, Zanotab.

the writers' room

I emerged from my three week course of antibiotics and went to help a friend with a multi-camera comedy pilot he's making for a basic cable channel. It made me realize that I've written more about sitcom scenes I hate to write than I have about how much I hate to write them. I'd like to remedy that right now.

I'd forgotten about the crazy high spirits at pilot table reads, the banter so quick between executives dancing up to each other that the words themselves become the beat. They were literally dancing. People at pilots are as manic and raw and optimistic as in a scene from "All That Jazz" I vaguely seem to remember where a new show is being read aloud.

After the read, there's hours of talking, executives and non-writing executive producers going head to head, even though they're all saying the same thing.

Meanwhile the writers gather in "the room."

The writers' room was a romantic place to me when I was first starting out. The remarkable minds pulling jokes out of the air, the funny personal stories, and the food, the wonderful food from the finest midrange restaurants in town, food and coffee that just kept coming, riding into the room on a never-ending wave of bags and foil and cute young production assistants who also had funny stories.

Over time, I realized the jokes weren't coming from the air but from the jizz-stained files of passive aggressive hacks whose funny stories were mainly justifications for things they were still angry about. The production assistants also grew angry over time, at a business that promised riches but dried up before their turn at the trough and whose funny stories were more and more about jobs they were promised and didn't get.

Then the food began to smell. When you could get it. Some writers will never choose a restaurant but veto anyone else's choice. Certain showrunners pretend not to notice when the food has arrived and make everyone join in the charade. And lots of writers throw away their disgusting half-eaten dinners in the very room where you can spend up to seven days a week, sixteen hours a day.

So no I don't like writers' rooms very much. I get claustrophobic. I'm anxious until I've located a bathroom not too near but not too far. I watch the clock. I've made some great friends working for television. But I got into writing to get away from people, not to be locked in a room with them.

How do they do it?

You're very lucky if you create one hit television show. But for David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, the ideas just keep on flowing. The creators of Will and Grace have sold a new show to ABC, loosely based on their relationship, about the friendship and working partnership of a straight man and his gay best friend. From variety.com:

"The untitled laffer is not related to Kohan and Mutchnick's comedy pilot last year at CBS; that show also revolved around the friendship and working partnership between a straight man and his gay best friend."

Hill Street Blues versus Kung Fu

I'm honestly torn.

Lipstick Jungle versus Hill Street Blues

Hill Street Blues wins. I just want to show this isn't completely rigged.

Cashmere Mafia versus Lipstick Jungle

Lipstick Jungle wins, and I'm not just saying that because I have a horse in this race. I honestly don't have that much to do with how the show turns out. My job is to add a little comedy around the margins, and it can only support so much.

But mainly I'm thinking there are over three hundred thousand google hits off of this title, and there's no reason we shouldn't capitalize.

Arrested Development: Season 1 vs. Season 3

Many have failed to pick up on the major qualitative distinctions between these seasons. In fairness, it was rarely clear when the show was even on, let alone what season it was.

Michael Bluth: tenderhearted and ethical to a fault
Season 1: Bumbling courtship of Marta. Hilarious.
Season 3: Finds out he is the father of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss' child. Grossly out of character, terribly unfunny, and a serious continuity error even for a show that wasn't strict on continuity.

Maeby: unmotivated and bland high-school student
Season 1: Tries out for school play to be near a dumb jock she thinks is cute. Genius.
Season 3: Randomly ends up as the director of some giant Hollywood film. Grossly out of character, unfunny, and nonsensical.

Gob: narcissistic, scheming, incompetent brother
Season 1: Does not know the meaning of hermano despite having taken Spanish in school. Brilliant.
Season 3: Randomly ends up dating one of the Abu Ghraib perpetrators. Way beyond unfunny - this sequence made my skin crawl.

Winner: Season 1. Once you create a fictional world, you are obligated to abide by the rules governing your fictional world.

Walking into a Reality Show

Dropping off some drycleaning I saw some velour track-suited women, cell-phones in hand, a TV camera pointed at them entering the nail salon: the Kardashians. I know they have a reality show on TV which I've never seen, and I know that their step-father is Bruce Jenner, and I do have fond memories of his Wheaties box gracing my breakfast table as a kid (and the OJ trial reference as well). I'm pretty sure these ladies do nothing all day but get their hair and nails done, and Isa was curious about the large camera, so two signed- waivers later, Isa is at the manicurist's table, and I am trying to sit somewhere so I am not in the shot, and the reality camera is rolling.
Bruce Jenner's wife comes in with a round of hellos. There's a lot of cell- phone usage, and the apparent planning of a wedding, and some seemingly-pseudo arguments about candles for said wedding, but no one seems to have the energy to really pull a 'contentious moment' together. I realize quickly that there is no witty banter, no clever repartee, and after thirty minutes not a single person has made another crack a smile, let alone laugh. These people are all about talking about objects: candles, appointments, polish, bikinis, clothes. It's enough to make one feel sleepy.
I find myself unwittingly in many of the shots, so I do just that, prop my hand against my cheek, and close my eyes. No, I'm not getting my nails done. The old lady across from me is visibly agitated by the scene; however, and keeps waking me up to get my thoughts on the matter.
Her manicurist is the boss, or owner perhaps, and she's made him move to the back chair, so she's away from the action. She's loudly complaining about the liability of letting these people in here. In a soft tone, the Vietnamese man gently tells her that it's okay, he knows them, that they are good, decent customers, so he agreed to the filming.
"But what about liability?" she howled in his ear and then looked at me to make sure I was listening.
"WHAT IF THEY BREAK SOMETHING?"
We all looked over at the four women getting their nails done, with a camera pointed at them.
The manicurist spoke in his softest tone.
"Really, I think it will be OK. I don't foresee a problem."
The old lady shifted in her seat and harrumphed and mumbled something about whether anyone had insurance or not. I was hoping someone would point the camera at her. Then she waved at me again and yelled, "I can't BUFF! They won't let me BUFF!"
She gesticulated her red nails everywhere and the poor nail salon owner/manager winced.
"They won't BUFF ME because the machine is too loud because THEY are in here!"
I felt sad for the nail salon people, proudly displaying their Pamela Anderson signed photos next to their health certificates. I realized I had nothing to offer Isa on the Bruce Jenner connection, and we took our leave. I told her maybe if we watched the episode and she could see how the editing process whittled that down to three minutes (or added a fake storyline that never happened) could help her see how reality TV worked. But, we won't watch it. Transformers Anime; however, has Isa hooked!

Sitcom Scenes I Hate to Write, Part One

There are certain set-ups that don't lead to anything good. "Box canyons," writer Don Reo used to call them. "We're in a box canyon!" Best you can do is get out.

I carry with me a mental checklist of such scenes. Sometimes the set-ups themselves are inherently flawed. Sometimes it is possible to fashion a scene that is "correct," but lacking in all other virtues (to me, the only thing worse than a correct scene is a correct joke). Other times, I'm just being an asshole. So here's my list:

Scenes where characters get along on first dates, with an emphasis on eating food together to establish a short hand for intimacy. Is it ever interesting to watch two people hit it off? And once they start eating, it's just disgusting.

Scenes where characters open gifts. I have spent too many late nights in writers' rooms, pitching on what's in the box. Better for there to not be a box. Nina Wass may disagree. She has a story about Jim Vallely pitching crotchless panties as a gift for Blanche on the Golden Girls twenty years ago that was the right joke for the right moment. To me, that's the exception that proves the rule.

Jokes that have the word "since" in the middle. I haven't seen her this upset since...

The danger here is in not taking the first decent pitch and moving on. Because all decent since jokes are basically the same, once you set the bar a little higher, it becomes like turning down the first house you looked at--the one that, in retrospect, was perfect. Now you have this impossible standard. I've seen rooms grind to a halt over that elusive bit of funny history, all to service a stupid little word that never should have made it into the sentence in the first place.

Scenes that serve no purpose other than to explain why someone decides to do something. These scenes are almost always reductive, making the decision more understandable but only in a connect-the-dots sort of way, while eliminating anything interesting we might learn about a character doing something slightly off kilter. In editing, these scenes come right out.

Sometimes it is difficult to separate a box canyon from a firmly held superstition. Tony Thomas hated what he referred to as Man Who Cam to Dinner stories. "You don't want to do Man Who Came to Dinner," he'd warn, about any story involving an unwanted house guest. Even a guest star taking a coat off and sitting down made Tony nervous. At the time, I thought it was silly. But experience has taught me Tony was right. Man Who Came to Dinner stories never work. You don't want to do Man Who Came to Dinner.

Other times, our pet peeves can lead to self fulfilling prophecies--scenes that never work because we're determined that they not work. Is it possible? I'd rather be right than watch a successful scene featuring a man and woman eating Chinese from the box and talking about their childhoods?

Tony Thomas had a huge pet peeve about scenes set in restaurants. "You don't want them sitting in a restaurant," he'd say, "with the waiter, and the guy hiding behind the potted plant." There wasn't going to be a guy hiding behind a potted plant, we'd assure him, which was true because we hadn't considered the possibility until that moment. But Tony was adamant, "You've got to have the guy hidding behind the potted plant."

(to be continued)

Sopranos series finale

Sunday afternoon in Topanga canyon, and I'm going on the record with my predictions. We're going to be left with a final image of Meadow becoming a mob wife, capable of making all the same rationalizations as her mother. And not one person will be talking about the Tony Awards tomorrow.