Rob Long once walked into a packed table read for a Paramount show airing on CBS, only to learn that Paramount had announced it was buying the network that very morning. Suddenly every exec who feared for their job materialized, bringing tension, chaos, and definitely not enough doughnuts. It’s hard not to picture a similar scene at Warner Bros. right now as Netflix scrambles to outmaneuver Paramount. But while bosses barricade themselves in conference rooms and pray for synergies that never happen, creatives shouldn’t wait for rescue. In the worst possible moment to be in this business, the best move is the simplest one: make something. Go to YouTube, Instagram, wherever your work can live today. Because Hollywood isn’t coming to save you. You’re going to have to save yourself.

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When the axe swings in Hollywood today, there’s no cushy deal, no soft landing, no assistant guarding your Rolodex anymore like in the old days. You’re out — at least for the moment. But after the gate stops lifting for you, there is a way back in. And it’s the same one it’s always been: you keep moving. You take every meeting. You hustle. You become that person — popular, persistent, maybe pitching a terrible show — who stays alive in the business simply by refusing to vanish.

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Bob Broder — legendary agent, executive and showrunner-whisperer — saw Hollywood for what it was: a sprawling mosaic of chaos, ego and opportunity. As Rob Long remembers of Broder, who first represented him in the Cheers years, and who recently died at 85, he “had a way of scanning for cracks and openings and opportunities.” Broder didn’t scream or throw phones; he won with poise, charm and a look that said he already knew how any potential deal was going to end. Broder led with kindness, foresight and the occasional killer shrug. A legend, and the last man in town to make “calm” look dangerous.

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A young hopeful recently asked Rob Long how to break into showbiz. His reply? “Bad timing — there’s no business left.” But for Rob, that’s also the fun part. When the old temples crumble, you get to build your own. Every Golden Age ends just as you arrive — usually somewhere on the 10 freeway — but stick around long enough and you’ll have your own wistful memoir moment: My Twenty Years in Hollywood.

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In 1923, to promote Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!, the studio didn’t buy ads — it bought a spectacle. They hired Harry F. Young, “The Human Fly,” to scale a Manhattan hotel in honor of the film’s most famous stunt (you know the one). He made it about 10 stories up before falling to his death — and right into the morning papers. It was, in every sense, earned media. A hundred years later, Rob Long finds that not much has changed in Hollywood’s endless climb for attention — except, maybe, the safety net.

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When Rob Long was 18, a dentist said his wisdom teeth had to go. His father told him to hang up the phone: “The whole wisdom tooth thing is a scam.” Forty years later, Rob's fine — mostly. And now, watching David Ellison try to merge Paramount and Warner Bros. in an industry where economies of scale rarely if ever succeed, he sees the same impulse at work: a painful, costly procedure masquerading as progress. 

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Those who lived in New York during the ’70s and ’80s knew to carry around “mugger money”: a small wad of bills kept handy on the assumption you’d eventually be mugged. While New York has improved since then, the concept of “mugger money” remains alive and well in Hollywood. The managers with non-writing producer credits, pilot directors with perpetual royalties, agents’ 10 percent and lawyers’ 5 percent — showbiz is built off people smart enough to get some for themselves. But, as Rob Long notes, with budgets shrinking and spending slowing, even the pickpockets are getting squeezed. 

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In show business, “after the holiday” — Labor Day, that is — are the three magic words that make August a breeze and September feel like back to school. But for Rob Long, it actually does mean back to school, as he starts his second year in the Master of Divinity program at Princeton Theological Seminary, and comes one step closer to his goal of pitching a multi-camera comedy while wearing a priest’s collar. If Rob had his way, though, we’d all be back in the classroom. Why? If Disney, owner of Lucasfilm and Marvel, can’t reach young male audiences, then we all need a core curriculum — one with every installment of the Porky’s franchise, Caddyshack and Taken.

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Industry jargon once separated the insiders from the posers. Rob Long remembers a network president who tried to talk the talk — pitching a spinoff with a cheery “bip bip bip” and some magician-like hand gestures. Cue hours of mocking behind closed doors. But the bigger joke may be on Hollywood itself: while words like “showrunner” have gone mainstream, the actual craft of making television — running a room, shaping a script, building a show — is slipping away. And that matters a lot more than knowing the lingo.

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Years ago, a well-known comic actor hosted an ill-fated late-night show that was canceled halfway through its 13-week run. But rather than leave town under a cloud of immense failure, this guy went to lunch. According to Rob Long, it was “the bravest lunch I’ve yet seen eaten,” and the comic was met with several well-wishers for his troubles. That’s because, as Rob says, people in Hollywood find failure exhilarating. “We wallow in misfortune,” he says. “We live to applaud the down-and-out. When people call you brave in the entertainment business, it’s almost always because you’ve done something that really sucked.”

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