Conversations with My Agent

An account by a former writer and producer of the hit television show Cheers follows him as he tries to secure another deal in Hollywood, answer the endless calls from his agent, and maybe write something.

Amusing and insightful, this is a deftly sketched portrait of life inside the Hollywood "development deal," that limbo in which writers get paid generously to create something new for a notoriously fickle set of bosses. Long and his writing partner, still in their 20s, had risen to become coproducers of the popular TV series Cheers before it expired; they were rewarded with an office, long lunches and many meetings at which to try to pitch their ideas. (No, their new shows never took off.) Long makes the story entertaining by rendering many scenes-especially those involving his nameless, genderless agent-in sitcom form (dialogue, stage directions, etc.). "People in this business love their souped-up vocabulary," Long writes, and he affectionately skewers Hollywood pretension ("I love a quirky love," says one exec). Long doesn't tell us much about himself or his relationship with his writing partner, but the story skitters along fast enough for that to be forgivable. And when one reviewer calls their pilot "snappy" and another denounces it as "without snap," you can sympathize if well-paid creative types think the world wretched. Unfortunately, the book's charm and verisimilitude are vitiated by Long's contradictory admissions that it is "half true" and "mostly true."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.

Television writer Long (Cheers) has written a humorous account of what it means to be a TV scriptwriter in Hollywood. It's a TV version of Linda Obst's recent insider's view of feature filmmaking, Hello He Lied (LJ 10/1/96). Interspersing the book with conversations with his agent and writing in the style of a TV script, Long imparts the "inside" story on getting a TV deal, "one of those entertainment industry creations that...sounds suspiciously like goofing off. Essentially the studio agrees to pay a writer a minimum sum,...hopeful that the writer...will decide, 'What the hell, I may as well create a hit television show.' " Though very funny at times, it's a bit too much of an insider's view for the general reader. Though not an essential purchase for public libraries, it would be a good addition to media colletions.?Rosellen Brewer, MOBAC Lib. System, Monterey, Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In three short years, Long and his TV-show-writing partner, Dan Staley, progressed from hopefully offering scripts around Hollywood to being co-executive producers of the perennial hit sitcom, Cheers. But then, after just one season with Long and Staley at the helm, series star Ted Danson decided to move on, and the pair's cushy jobs instantly turned into a paragraph on their shared resume. Their brief stint at the top and their struggle to regroup and carry on are the subjects of Long's entertaining, fast-moving memoir that profits from his decision to cast the text into TV-script format, complete with stage directions. The story lends itself delightfully to this device. Whether as an entertaining recreational read or as a cautionary tale for would-be scriptwriters, a worthwhile effort. Mike Tribby