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When you’re filming a movie or a television show, when it’s the last shot of the day, the first assistant director will call out, “This is the Martini Shot!” I call these stories “Martini Shots” because they’re exactly the kinds of stories we tell — and lessons we learn — after we’ve wrapped for the day. - Rob Long theankler.com
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As a professional model and actress since 1993, Valerie Bittner has seen and learned a lot. While still actively working in TV, film, and print, she enjoys sharing what she's learned over the years consulting on marketing and helping others get into the entertainment industry. This is The Martini Shot — Valerie's podcast — where if you or someone you know is an aspiring actor or model, the advice is invaluable.
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Look deeply into the eyes of many of the team surrounding Donald Trump and you might find the same hollow and exhausted looks ubiquitous on the faces of talent managers, agents and executives. You see, that’s because the past and future president is a lot like an insane director or temperamental movie star. And it’s why this industry is the one bes…
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A TV writers room can be a cranky, hostile place. Rob Long and his colleagues spend their days arguing over which story beats to keep, whose joke is funnier, and what to order for lunch. But is it better when that chaos happens with people you’ve worked with before or strangers? An academic study gave Rob the answer. Transcript here. For more enter…
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The next few weeks are going to be tough, a little bit like being force-fed goat cheese if you are Rob Long. So in this current toxic political environment, or really in any uncomfortable situation forced upon you, Rob has some simple advice. Use the word ‘huh’ — the one magic word that saves you from further confrontation. Transcript here. For mor…
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The Ankler recently launched The Ladder, a hub for early career entertainment professionals, which has Rob Long wondering one thing: What are these people thinking? Gone are the days where a 24-year-old like Rob could come to L.A. and months later be staffed on a show like Cheers, or make a lot of money specializing in just story beats or jokes. To…
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A normal person, when a friend tells them about their broke dad with cancer, think this is a sad story; this poor guy; how can I help? Not Rob Long. He latches on to the part of the story about the dad having to move in with his New-Age vegan daughter to be closer to the hospital, and begins to wonder could this be a pitch? Transcript here. For mor…
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We perform plastic surgery on a lot of things in Hollywood — even history. Say you’ve got an amazing true story about the highest-ranking woman in the mafia, as Rob Long once did, but you don’t know how many people she killed. Why not make it lots of them? Now it’s not quite true, it’s “based on true events,” but good enough. As Rob can attest, the…
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Like many writers, Rob Long enjoys opining on writing more than actual writing. There’s no greater procrastination than, say, teaching a class on “maintaining focus.” Meanwhile, there are other writers at their computers, getting ideas out the door that are getting pitched first. Which may be when it’s time for procrastinators to turn to the best T…
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Indiana Smith didn’t sound quite right to Spielberg and Lucas, so they changed it to Indiana Jones — and the rest is history. You never know what’s going to work and what’s going to fail. Or why. That’s part of what makes notes, a pillar of Rob Long’s existence, so tricky. Because sometimes you should play ball with what a network wants. But other …
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It’s not easy being blunt in Hollywood, with a lot of time spent dancing around the truth. Is a network or studio actually interested in the pitch? How much money are they willing to pay? That’s why it’s worth remembering the fan letter an actress friend of Rob Long’s received, where the sender was less invested in her career than making sure she a…
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When a fading comedian says they want new material, that's not what they want. What they want is “new old material,” meaning fresh jokes that sound like the ones they’ve already told. Hollywood today finds itself in the same predicament: needing new shows that feel like the old ones. Because, as Rob Long points out, the comforting and the familiar …
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Rob Long has tried everything: Meditation, free writing, morning pages — all in an effort to be more present, to get out of reading trade headlines and reflexively wondering, But how does this benefit me? In an industry pathologically insular and insecure, it’s hard to imagine the world outside. Now with Hollywood in desperate need of a shakeup, Ro…
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Writing is a tough, lonely profession. One of its worse qualities: the payment structure, broken up into a zillion little pieces, withheld in full until the bitter end and altogether utterly unpredictable. The whole charade can make someone like Rob Long, understandably, crazy. That’s why, when a production company asks for a tax ID number, or a re…
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When tourists trek to Hollywood for their summer vacations, they want a look at the glamour they see onscreen. Instead they get Hollywood Boulevard, and filthy Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in a fist-fight. Yet when the tourists disappear and the season turns, so do Rob Long’s emotions: Into fears about age, the business passing him by, why he never…
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Ever tell the stranger sitting next to you on a flight what you do for a living? If you work in entertainment, your seatmate likely will first say, “Have I seen anything you worked on?” and then, “You know what you should do a show about?” And forget about answering the question about how your job exactly works. Because the rules of TV writing and …
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Why is it that the sweaty, doughy production assistants of decades past become the power brokers and “maximized” types of today? It’s the same reason the prolific, focused writers — regardless of quality — are able to get things made: They’re the ones actually sweating. Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler. Learn mo…
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When he heard news of Bob Newhart’s death, Rob Long reached into an old shoebox to find a picture of himself with the comedy legend. Like many who had such a memento, his first thought was, “Get that image on Instagram pronto.” But he held off. Why? Because if he learned one thing from the man known for comedic timing, it’s that sometimes less is m…
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During Rob Long’s first job at Paramount, he would see a dusty, silver DeLorean on level two every day in the parking structure as he rolled in late for his gig on a hit show. Despite all the 1986 flash it signaled, its license plate gave the game away: That person had been on a popular show and now wasn’t. Everyone in Hollywood thinks they’ll alwa…
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Grudges and feuds make Hollywood go ‘round. But sometimes, they are so longstanding that, as Rob Long learned, the aggrieved sometimes forget why they’re even mad. Which is why Rob is an advocate for, if not forgiveness, at least forgetfulness. Because without it, we wouldn’t be repeating the constant storytelling themes of friendship, money and fa…
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In this age of contraction, Hollywood is full of unemployed showrunners grinding out half fleshed-out pilot ideas. But a great sense of story isn’t the only attribute needed to be a showrunner. It also requires decisiveness, self-awareness and preparedness. And that last trait applies to more than just running a show. Just ask the medical professio…
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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 thi…
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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 …
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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 wonde…
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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 …
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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 main…
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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…
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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. Transcript here. Subscribe here for more showbiz news from The Ankler. L…
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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. A…
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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…
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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 con…
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Howard the Duck might not have won Best Picture, but if you’re a sandwich shop worker, or a young Rob Long at lunch with high-up producers, it’s probably best not to espouse how big a flop you thought it was. See, failure in Hollywood is a relative term. Movies fail, pilots fail, but after a failure of your own, it’s tough to see anything that make…
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When Orson Welles found an investor for a cheap little noir thriller, legend has it he devised a scheme. His opening sequence took up almost 10 pages of script, with descriptions and action all spread out. Except when he actually filmed it, he used only a high-tension, 12-minute “virtuoso” single tracking shot that became signature to Touch of Evil…
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Sixty percent of Americans say they read the Bible regularly. But in Hollywood, where Jesus and religion can feel — how do you say it — downmarket, people rely instead on the series bible, where writers flesh out their TV series’ characters, situations and possible future episodes. But Rob Long suggests Hollywood, much like he has, take a fresh loo…
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When Rob Long pitches anything these days, he knows that he’s not going to sell that idea in the room. That’s over. But he wouldn’t be upset if he didn’t hear, “Fun stuff. We’ll talk internally and get back to you.” What’s fun about that? If we can identify fun — rather than fun stuff — the entertainment industry can get back to being like that big…
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Rob Long loved his tailor — a man who ran his shop with unpredictable, cigarette-stained weirdness. But when he died, the business became faster, and it was easier to communicate with the staff. It was even open into the evenings. The new and improved shop certainly made for a better business. But the old tailor, for all his idiosyncrasies, was hig…
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Rob Long’s friend once wrote a line for a TV show where a character reveals he doesn’t have voicemail. You see, the character, explains, “I don’t get important phone calls.” The network executive in charge, however, was not having it, bellowing that no one would care about someone not important enough to not get important calls. And that was that. …
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Liza Minelli, Private Detective. Sounds pretty good, right? Unfortunately, the series — Rob Long’s brainchild — will never see the light of day. Rob was told Minelli was “not available,” and in show business, when someone’s unavailable, you move on. It’s one of those unwritten rules, or mysterious studio lists, that we all believe in. But are any o…
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Whether trekking to the cable store or preparing for the TSA line, Rob Long expects disappointment. Not because he’s inherently negative, you see. Show business, and all its grinding rejection, has molded him into a pessimist. So, Rob questions whether we are all too invested in our work here (the answer: yes). And how we can be prepared — and read…
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Bette Davis famously answered “take Fountain” — an L.A. street with fewer lights — when asked her advice for actors starting out. Thing is, the questioner didn’t actually want practical advice. In fact, most of us say we want the truth when we actually prefer our feelings to be protected. Which is why executives wind up delivering notes with fluffy…
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Every question that comes up in Hollywood these days is really a variation on money, and the big one on everyone’s minds is: how are we going to make buckets of money in the TV business again? By reinventing an already reinvented model, says Rob Long. Hate the ad model coming for streaming? Well, Rob says consider it akin to the cover charge and dr…
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Ever hear of iPartment? It was a Chinese knockoff of Friends, with some Big Bang Theory rolled in, that received complaints from viewers over lines and scenes ripped directly from these American shows. Outright joke stealing is, of course, wrong, but Rob Long can’t help but also ponder the full spectrum of today's content “borrowing” — whether it’s…
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An entertainment CEO’s to-do list for the year could include, among other boring and depressing things: layoffs, a merger with Paramount, a sell-off of local TV stations, an acquisition of Lionsgate, and the making of one’s quarterly debt payment. Long to-do lists are, however, as a psychiatrist once told Rob Long, self-sabotage. So instead, he sug…
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Rob Long loves Christmas presents — expensive ones, preferably — and money. Lots of money. It’s an affliction that impacts everyone in entertainment, he argues, where enough is never enough. Even during a particularly confusing and hard year, we’re lucky to be able to complain about the work most of us do, which Rob realized at the paint store. And…
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This week, Rob Long reminds us that nobody likes to work for free — which is why, more often than not, writers find themselves in a tricky predicament. In an ideal world, a writer gets hired off a pitch. But other times, the writer ends up drafting a script on spec, a.k.a for free. And even when a writer does sell a pitch, the executives who buy it…
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According to Karl Marx, “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” And in the eyes of Rob Long, so, too, does material in the entertainment industry. When something works as a drama, for example, people will try to find a way to jigger it into a comedy (cue the side-splitting version of Breaking Bad). Most films and shows these days…
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This week, Rob Long explains his number one rule for sharing emotions in entertainment-industry relationships: Don’t. After all, the best and longest-lasting relationships in Hollywood are the ones that stay frozen in place, uncomplicated by unnecessary interactions until there’s a business reason to reconnect. Also: never confuse love for you with…
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When asked an honest opinion about someone’s appearance, you’ve likely enacted the Fix-It Rule: that is, if someone has the ability to do something about it — a stray hair, for example — you say something; if it’s congenital, well, you keep your mouth shut (or lie). That philosophy extends to Hollywood too, where almost everything is fixable, but e…
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Ever notice the insecurity of those flying to and from L.A.? Everyone is discretely eyeballing everyone else, figuring out who is in first class, and — in the case of one agent Rob Long met at the airport — over-explaining why he was not. You see, in an industry where people rise and fall, and often outright disappear, visible status symbols take o…
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Bone marrow biopsy? Hahahaha. Or so says Rob Long, who, after his procedure (he was fine!) was able to find the comedy — something that weirdly arrives in the wake of high-stakes moments, particularly around death, disease and crisis. So the world seems like it’s falling apart, but this time for real? As a writer who has spent decades in the comedy…
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With the writers strike ended, execs all over town are figuring out which pitches they agreed to pre-walkout actually will get produced. Like chefs taking food out of the freezer, suits give a sniff test — assessing what kept on ice can be safely thawed out, and which should be tossed. And as Rob Long explains, the most dangerous place to be — in a…
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The industry today sorely lacks optimism, says Rob. How to get it back? Harness the memory of your early-career freedom. For more news on the entertainment industry subscribe to The Ankler at theankler.com/subscribe. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theankler.com/s…
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