Conversations With My Agent - Softcover

Long, Rob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452277132 ISBN 13: 9780452277137

Publisher: Penguin Group USA, 1998

Synopsis

Rob Long rose from staff writer to become co-producer of Cheers in its final season. When the show went off the air, he went from being top dog on a highly rated program to just another writer scrambling to get any project rolling. It wasn't pretty, but as Conversations with My Agent demonstrates, in hindsight at least, that's the hilarious reality of life in the wonderful world of the Hollywood sitcom. Suddenly thrown into the absurdity of Hollywood television development, Long and his writing partner find themselves with an office, an assistant, lots of cigars, and absolutely no idea what they are going to write. But that doesn't matter in Hollywood, where hype is more important than substance. Especially when you have a good agent. Here Long recants the true tale of his time in that limbo, from the wildly funny but awful meetings with studio executives to the unending string of phone calls with his self-absorbed agent, who is emblematic of the uniquely absurd chaos that is Ho

About this title

About the Author

Rob Long was co-executive producer of Cheers for its eleventh and final season. He was also the co-creator and executive-producer of the short-lived television series Pig Sty and Good Company. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

From Kirkus Reviews

The road to sitcom hell is paved with yucks galore in this sharp and sprightly Hollywood tale. Long had one of the best jobs in America. As co-executive producer of the sitcom Cheers, he was responsible for writing and running one of television's greatest cash machines. Then Ted Danson decided to leave, and the show was suddenly over. All of the power and status that Long and his writing partner Dan Staley had accumulated quite suddenly evaporated. The only way back was to start again, so after the feverish grunion-like courtship of a number of studios the two men signed a two-year development deal to create a television series. It was a marked change from the busy, meat-grinder schedule of Cheers. ``A development deal,'' Long explains, ``is one of those entertainment industry creations that when described, sounds suspiciously like goofing off.'' Eventually, guilt intruded into Long and Staley's late-to-work, long-lunch, home-early schedule, and they began creating a sitcom. That's when their troubles really began: endless meetings, duplicitous agents, lies and uncertainty, and, most of all, bureaucracy. ``The main reason television sitcoms are so bad,'' Long suggests, ``is that too many educated people are involved in creating them.'' Much of the book is taken up with hilarious conversations, not only with Long's agent, but with all manner of familiar Hollywood types. Long is preserved from the pitfalls of Hollywood clich‚ by his deft sense of timing and his keen ear for the industry's various tangled argots. Eventually, after any number of funny but frustrating travails, he and Staley produced a show that ran one unsuccessful season on a start-up network. Long will undoubtedly go on to greater successes, but those two years were hardly wasted. After all, they produced this finely wrought comic gem. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Group USA
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452277132
• ISBN 13: 9780452277137
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180