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,...
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 à¢Â€Â“- I say I
think because you have to pay to get access to the real stuff, what
they call "the television industry`s premier...
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..."
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...
Supermarket
One of the things that`s happened recently, since the sharp drop in the
number of scripted television shows on the air, is the corresponding
shop rise in the number of television show runners who are hanging
around unemployed, reading the complete...
Drunk
A brilliant actor once told me that the hardest thing to play is drunk. And then he told me how to do it...
Burn
Southern California is burning again, just like last year. But unlike
last year, when the heart of the blaze was tony, expensive Malibu, this
year, maybe in honor of the universally diminished financial picture,
the blazes are mostly in Sylmar...
The Seventies
There are two kinds of people in the world. The kind that can name, or
at least picture, the two Darrens on Bewitched, and everybody else...
The Carousel
Something strange is happening in Hollywood: people are getting fired. Well, let me clarify: people get the sack all the time around here.
Executives are tossed out with such routine indifference that any
executive who hasn`t been fired at least three...
We Got Nothing
Once, I was working on a show when the director walked into the
writers` room. Most of the time, the director spends the entire day on
the stage, working with the actors. At some point, he calls the writers
to the stage to watch a run-through of the...
