Conversations with My Agent and Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke - Softcover

Rob Long

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408855828 ISBN 13: 9781408855829

Publisher: Bloomsbury India Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

Barely out of film school, Rob Long struck the jackpot and landed a job on the phenomenally successful TV sitcom, Cheers. However, with the demise of the show, Long was faced with the question, 'Is there life after Cheers?' Mercilessly witty about the daunting process of setting up a new series and getting it on air, these two books tell the absurd tale of what came next. Getting from pitch to pilot is a tricky path to navigate successfully, from making non-negotiable changes and deal-breaking edits, combined with accommodating the whims of studios, networks and agents, often the finished product ends up a long way from where the script-writer started. With the help of his agent, her constant demands, monstrous salesmanship, brutal irony and unswerving loyalty, Long's career fluctuates from wannabe to player, from award-winning script-writer to burnt out has-been. And it's all, as he says 'half true'.

About this title

About the Author

Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood. He began his career writing and producing TV's long-running Cheers and served as co-executive producer in its final season. During his time on the series, Cheers received two Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe awards. Long has been twice nominated for an Emmy Award, and has received a Writers Guild of America award. His current series, Sullivan & Son, appears on TBS. His upcoming series for FX, Death Pact, begins filming in New York in the winter. He is a contributing editor of National Review and writes regularly for Time magazine and The National, Abu Dhabi's English-language daily newspaper. He continues to work in film and television in Los Angeles. @rcbl

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: Bloomsbury India Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408855828
• ISBN 13: 9781408855829
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384