Martini Shot

Rob Long has a favorite story about network upfronts: a television network, unable to decide which of three pilots to schedule, flew all three casts to New York on the same plane, collected focus group results mid-flight, and met them at the gate — whisking some into Manhattan and stardom, and sending the others home. It contains everything you need to know about Hollywood: extravagant spending, procrastination and cruelty masquerading as efficiency. But here’s the thing — the focus group never actually went away. It just moved to TikTok. And it’s been telling Hollywood exactly what audiences want since approximately 1994. They just won’t look.

In Amsterdam last month, in front of a Dutch painting of a plump, nearly bald, angelic figure of indistinct gender, an old friend turned to Rob Long and said three words: “Hear me out.” It’s the great phrase that buys a few seconds of grace before you say something insane — along with its writers’ room cousin, not this, but. Oftentimes the ideas that emerge out of hear me out aren’t usable whatsoever. But Rob makes the case that its those risky Hear Me Out projects that the entertainment business runs on.

Rob Long remembers Radford Studios — the working lot in Studio City where the parking sheet promised “premium” spots that never quite existed, the guard who couldn’t understand why you’d skip the Leave It to Beaver street for the fifth floor of the garage, and a writer friend who stumbled, mid-meltdown, onto the abandoned set of Gilligan’s Island. This week, news broke that Goldman Sachs — having seized the lot after Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on a $1.1 billion mortgage — is selling it to Netflix for a fraction of what Hackman paid in 2021. Turns out the premium parking wasn’t premium after all. It never really was.

Rob Long is at a bar on a Monday night, pretending to pay attention to a conversation while secretly watching CBS’ The Neighborhood on a TV across the room, sound off. He predicts every beat of the episode anyway. A friend in the business says that’s exactly the problem with those shows. Rob disagrees — politely, and then less politely. Sitcoms are the same as they always are. That’s the point.

There’s a lesson Rob Long learned early in his television career: When an actor has a problem with the script, the smartest thing you can do is nothing. Don’t talk. Don’t fix. Don’t explain. Just listen — because sometimes that’s all anyone really needs.

The TV comedy writers’ room has a reputation as a creative paradise — funny people, good lunches, great jokes. That reputation is not wrong. It just leaves out the part where everyone is being systematically destroyed. Rob Long makes the case that the destruction is the point — that the specific cruelty available only to people who have been in rooms together for decades is what produces the trust that produces the comedy. Without it, you’re left with Zoom rooms and unfunny scripts. Transcript here

Rob Long has spent 30-plus years in the television business telling other people what’s wrong with their scripts. But the tables can — and often do — turn. Rob’s seminary classmate doing his first open mic informed Rob that his joke suggestions are, and this is a direct quote, “too wordy.” And Rob remembers the time a day player on one of his shows submitted a spec script for the very same show — titled, with magnificent audacity, “Billy Moves In” — and then proceeded to give Rob detailed notes on everything that was wrong with his series and how all of it could be fixed by the addition of his part. The lesson, such as it is: In this business, the note always lands, regardless of who’s delivering it. Even if it’s Billy. Even if it’s a seminary student. Even if they’re completely wrong. Which they were. Probably. Transcript here.

Every writing project hits the same wall: the neurotic feedback loop of details that don’t add up. Who’s watching the baby? Who’s watching the bar? Rob Long has been around long enough to remember the lost art of script research. You’d messenger your draft to a company, and they would send it back annotated with neutral and merciless notes. When Frasier Crane mentioned his deceased parents on Cheers, a margin note came back, Establishes for Frasier: parents deceased. Oh, how that same script research company must have reacted when they received the Frasier pilot.

We’re finally through Oscar season, which means it’s time to think about prestige, status and the difference between the awards you want and the awards you get. Rob Long has a People’s Choice Award obtained through what can only be described as informed consent, a WGA Award for the Earth Day Television Special, an LA Press Club Award that doesn’t read on camera and an Emmy certificate that looks terrific... on the wall.

A friend asked Rob Long for career advice at Zankou Chicken. Rob hates giving advice — especially career advice, which is mostly just autobiography dressed up as wisdom. But while his friend waited for an answer, Rob started thinking about a leather jacket he bought in the early 1990s with $400 he didn’t have — and how Hollywood, despite devastating unemployment numbers, has always run on the assumption that something great is about to happen. For Rob, it did. For everyone else: the hope still remains. Transcript here.