As a child, Rob watched old sitcoms like Gilligan’s Island and Bewitched while pretending to do homework. He likes to say that his slacking off prepared him for the writing career he has now. Sure, he learned sitcom structure, but more important, by neglecting his schoolwork, he became less of a thinker. And in show business, thinkers just mess things up.

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When Rob Long sold his house in Venice Beach for his move to New York, the question from neighbors was universal: “When did you buy your house?” In other words, it wasn’t about where he was going, but how much money he was making. Selling high, of course, requires also believing things will get worse. Not hard in showbiz these days. Which explains why Rob recently found himself on the subway into the city from JFK.

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Show business largely operates on what Rob Long calls the “Monkey-Clown Relationship.” Sometimes you’re the monkey who loses it and attacks the clown. Sometimes you’re the clown, waiting in fear of the monkey ripping your face off. Increasingly, though, as the industry gets tougher, Rob’s friends aren’t waiting for the monkey to snap, they’re wondering if they should call it a day. But some may end up the tough clown that stays in there, fighting. Supreme logo and all. 

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Rob Long worked on the Paramount lot 15 years, and the pilot of Lenny & Squiggy — a spinoff of Laverne & Shirley — was a ghost that haunted the grounds, so mercilessly rejected by a focus group that the tape disappeared. Forever. Which makes Rob wonder: How can one hack a hackneyed system where random people are selected to give an opinion on your show — and the studio listens? There are ways. Ethics aside, of course.

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Everybody knows that one William Goldman quote: “Nobody knows anything.” But, Rob Long asserts, sometimes, people know something you don’t. And that’s where the mystery of the industry lies. Because as much shakra and selenite crystal as you can harness, your fate lies in the hands of others, and that can require going to desperate measures to maintain your sanity.

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Movie stars and aristocrats are just like you and me: They put their trousers on one leg at a time. We don’t really have a proper aristocracy anymore, so there goes half that saying. But do we even have stars? Rob Long considers what a star was, what a star is, and what it means for the industry. Also, if you should wear a t-shirt with your name on it. 

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Rob knows a quote . . . from which Chinese philosopher, he’s not sure. It goes, “If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.” Showbiz translation: If you stay in Hollywood long enough, you’ll see Paramount bought and sold many times over.

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No doubt, the internet and technology vastly improved the tedious labor of writing scripts and making revisions. But Rob Long believes something was lost in the disappearance of an actual paper trail: Archaeological artifacts that reveal the process of jokes moving, characters losing lines, and test audiences wanting (and getting) a happy ending. And it turns out, like his friend, you didn’t even need to read Save the Cat! to learn how to write TV. All you needed was to roll up your sleeves and sift through the studio garbage. 

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Remember the Burger King Kids Club, the chain’s ad campaign targeted to “the kids?” There was Kid Vid, the white, video game-playing leader; Jaws, the Black kid who loved to eat; and a boy in a wheelchair named (seriously) Wheels. The idea, Rob Long speculates, must have been devised at one of those offsite retreats, the kind TV execs love to do in Laguna. But hits rarely are born from suits tossing around banal concepts. Instead they begin with a writers’ novel idea, the equivalent of a delicious-looking hamburger.

Also, we’ve been nominated for a Webby Award, vote for us here by April 18th!

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Legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld once complained about the way a room was decorated: “It was a lot of Louis Quinze mixed with Louis Seize,” he said. And then added: “Ugh!” The entertainment business runs on this sort of Lagerfeldian Ugh, a sort of lingua franca of Hollywood. But what if we tried, just for a while, to not slag others as conversational filler? Rob Long says then, very likely, you could expect a whole lot of deafening silence. 

Also, we’ve been nominated for a Webby Award, vote for us here by April 18th!

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