Awards season is here, which means Hollywood is again awash in parties, cocktails and mocktails. And yet, somehow, none of it feels like much of a celebration. Rob Long remembers the best awards party he ever went to — the one no one planned — and traces how an industry that once knew how to have fun became serious, fragmented and anxious. His antidote to malaise? A really good, wide-open bash — that someone else pays for.

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Heated Rivalry, the horny hockey drama, employs a classic Hollywood formula: Sprinkle in some nudity, and suddenly the odds of your crapshoot becoming a hit improve. Like the perpetually packed “European-style” pool in Las Vegas, audiences are drawn in by the allure of illicit skin. And in a business where a hit can be hard to come by and certainty is nonexistent, nudity — whether from closeted hockey players or HBO hits of yore — remains the simple, reliable grease. 

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The easy thing to say about anything new in show business is, “Never gonna work.” In the case of Quibi — Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s short-form mobile streamer — plenty of people laughed, and they were right to. But did Quibi fail because it was a bad idea, or because it spent and promised too much? Even Rob Long’s TikTok algo now serves soapy microdramas. Quibi may not have ended up a punchline because it was wrong, but because — after three glasses of wine — it ordered the deluxe version of the future and forgot the return policy.

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As Rob Long sits in his small New York City apartment surrounded by things — hard copies of old scripts, four umbrellas — he feels lucky to have it all. And in an industry where even modest success feels like a lottery ticket, Rob asks us to pause and consider an annual plea: supporting My Friend’s Place, an organization that works tirelessly to turn the tide for unhoused youth in Los Angeles. For young people failed again and again by the adults in their lives, My Friend’s Place does life-changing work — and for far less than this industry would spend on a half-hour pilot (if those even still exist).

Head to My Friend’s Place, Rob’s charity of choice, to help support youth experiencing homelessness.

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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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