Martini Shot

Whether it was Sally Field as The Flying Nun or Julie Andrews playing a novitiate in The Sound of Music, audiences used to watch priests and nuns and ministers — unremarkably — as part of American life on screen. But that all went away, and Rob Long is well aware why that is. Church attendance declined steadily for decades, and the stigma around religion has become unavoidable. Which made it all the more impressive how Rian Johnson brought faith to the screen in one particular scene of Wake Up Dead Man: an embodiment of what prayer does for people. Transcript here.

Michael Lynton, the former CEO of Sony Pictures, has a new book that tells the story of greenlighting the Seth Rogen comedy that provoked North Korea into hacking his studio. He traces it back to an awkward childhood in Holland and a lifelong need to fit in with the cool kids. Rob Long also had an awkward childhood in Holland. He also ended up in show business. But he’s not sure Lynton’s story is really a cautionary tale. The entertainment business isn’t suffering from too much risk. It’s suffering from too little. Also: Puppets might have helped.

Rob Long tries — unsuccessfully — to convince his Hollywood friends that seminary isn’t a branding exercise. His stint at Princeton, where he’s working towards a Masters in Divinity and ordination, has all the hallmarks of a great pilot. But according to Rob, it’s the opposite. Show business has prepared him well for studying the Bible — and led him to the unsettling realization that biblical scholarship and credits arbitration are basically the same thing. Transcript here.

The late and irreplaceable Catherine O’Hara’s greatness lived in the microscopic choices — the mouthed lines, the half-beats, the emotions stacked on top of jokes — none of which were written down, and all of which made the comedy work. From Waiting for Guffman to Best in Show to Beetlejuice, she gave audiences “permission to laugh” by making even the most absurd premises feel emotionally true. Which is why the Home Alone franchise became a global phenomenon, and why for writers especially, her loss is painful in a very specific way: The best, funniest, most essential parts of a script aren’t written, if you’re lucky enough to have Catherine O’Hara reading your lines. Transcript here.

Correcting others in public is an irresistible temptation — and almost always a mistake. Rob learned that lesson early, as a young writer on Cheers, when he pointed out that a character, a sort of ‘80s finance type, couldn’t actually be arrested for launching a hostile takeover as the line was written. He was right. But it annoyed everyone. The lesson however stuck: knowing when to let things go matters a lot more than knowing you’re correct. Transcript here.

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. Transcript here.

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.  Transcript here.

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. Transcript here.

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. Transcript here.

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. Transcript here.