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My Friend's Place 2008 Dec 25, 2008

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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...

Lies Dec 18, 2008

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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 Dec 11, 2008

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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...

Supermarket Dec 04, 2008

Show notes

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 newspaper and sitting in coffee shops with notebooks filled with pages that say "Pilot Idea: Person, workplace question mark question mark. Marriage conflict difficult. Family. City question mark question mark."

Drunk Nov 27, 2008

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A brilliant actor once told me that the hardest thing to play is drunk. And then he told me how to do it...

Burn Nov 20, 2008

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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 Nov 13, 2008

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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 Nov 06, 2008

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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 times in his career is probably not very good at his job...

We Got Nothing Oct 30, 2008

Show notes

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 script, and after that the writers go back to the room and complain about the run-through, make filthy jokes, complain about other shows on TV, attack and undermine each other personally, order dinner, then settle in to do the re-write...

Medical Oct 23, 2008

Show notes

I once worked with a very talented actor who mostly worked in features. We didn't really know who he was when we were casting that particular role, but his agent and manager sent us his reel –- a tape with a sample of some of his best work 0– and it was obvious from the first clip that he was a gifted, smart, winning, and very funny guy...

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