Martini Shot

By KCRWArts

Martini Shot episodes

February 19, 2009 Honesty
I have a friend who's an executive at a large television network. No, seriously...

5 min
February 12, 2009 Monkey
Circus monkeys, deep down, are mean. Someone once told me that a decent
circus monkey is only good for about seven or eight years until he
decides to retire, which can come at any time -– hanging around the
other monkeys, in the middle of a show -– no one ever knows when,
exactly, a monkey suddenly says to himself, "Okay, had enough" but when
he does, here's what happens...
6 min
January 29, 2009 The DVD Player's Not There
Right now, we're deep into something called "Awards Season" here in
Hollywood, and if you're not careful, you just might start to think
these kinds of things matter. They do in a kind of generalized
morale-boosting way, but the truth is, the people who pay for the
full-page ads and the mountains of screeners and the Oscar night
parties are really just engaging in an elaborate kind of marketing...
5 min
January 22, 2009 Watching the Baby
We’ve got a new president. Of the United States, not the studio or network – although we’ll have a new one or two of those before long, I’m sure – and I thought I’d share some show business wisdom with him...
5 min
January 15, 2009 We Don't Have a Phone
First, a little background: Once, a long time ago, a joke in a script fell flat.
This happens every now and then, of course, Well, more than every now
and then. But the key is, fixing it. When you're in production, and
you've got a few rewrites ahead of you, and a joke falls flat at a
runthrough, you try to come up with something better. You try to fix
it...
5 min
January 08, 2009 Easy Sell
One of the many, many reasons for never telling anyone on a plane or a train or wherever you happen to be sitting next to a stranger, "I work in the entertainment industry," is because they'll inevitable say something like, "You know what you should do a show about?" And then they'll tell you...
5 min
January 01, 2009 The Definition of a Problem
I spent most of December on a container ship, heading from Seattle to
Shanghai, across the roof of the Pacific. Bad weather to the south
forced us to hug the Alaskan coast, slip through the Unimak Pass, cross
over into Russian waters, then drift south, battling 10 meter swells,
into the Sea of Japan...
6 min
December 25, 2008 My Friend's Place 2008
For some reason, I get an e-mail every now and then from an outfit
called "TV Tracker." It's a pretty good service, I think –- I say I
think because you have to pay to get access to the real stuff, what
they call "the television industry's premier on-line, on time source
for what's happening in TV" and if there's one thing I hate doing, it's
paying for things...
5 min
December 18, 2008 Lies
There's an old reporter's saying that they use when a story or rumor
perfectly illustrates the point the reporter is trying to make. "Too good to check..."
5 min
December 11, 2008 High Seas
Here's where I am right now. Well, I'm in the KCRW studios right now
right now, but where I'll be when this is broadcast is somewhere in the
Pacific, aboard the Hanjin Boston, a huge container ship making a slow,
grinding passage from Seattle to Shanghai, carrying, I'm told, the only
thing we have that the Chinese want to import – animal skins and scrap
metal...
5 min