Playing Sam Malone today: Ignatz Gloogdeberg

After a sitcom has been on the air for a number of years – like ten -- it’s understandable that the cast loses a certain amount of interest. They know their characters so well and they know the routine so well that they don't require as much rehearsal as in the early discovery years. Also, they become big stars by year ten. They suddenly have movie careers. They front worthwhile charities. They start their own production companies and split...

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Show parties

INSTANT MOM premieres tonight at 8:30 on Nick at Nite and 10 pm on the new Nick Mom network. This is the show my daughter Annie and her partner Jon are staff writers on. It stars Tia Mowry-Hardrict (the cuter of the identical twins on SISTER SISTER), Michael Boatman (you loved hating him in THE GOOD WIFE), and Sheryl Lee Ralph (one of the original DREAMGIRLS – Dreamgirl #2 I believe). Other than the BREAKING BAD series finale, this should be...

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Why I could never be in a musical -- even one that I wrote

These are pictures from the musical I co-wrote with Janet Brenner, THE 60s PROJECT. Just by looking at them you can tell it was a great show, right? Thanks to Janet for the pix.The show was produced in 2006 at the Goodspeed Theater in Connecticut. It was theater summer camp except they never made us play basketball. Someday I hope there’s another production. It was very well received. Chris Berman from ESPN loved it. Not sure how...

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Video you've GOT to see

This is Christina Bianco. She does uncanny impressions... of divas. Here she is singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as everybody from Adele to Barbra to Celine.  I love this girl.  Check her out....

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Every tech commercial

Funny video from CollegeHumor on every tech commercial you see these days.CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Vid...

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Yeah, I know Richard Castle

More Friday Questions and answers:Duncan Randall has the first Q:I was reading Naked Heat by "Richard Castle" when I noticed a reference to Levine and Isaacs Public Relations. I'm betting you know who the real ghostwriter is (and won't tell us, so I won't ask THAT). So, what do you think about this type of book? I think it's a hoot, even if they are not intended to be high art. Seems like a good thing for the fans of the show, and especially this...

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Good morning, Sydney

Tomorrow I’m going to co-host the morning show on 790 KABC with Doug McIntyre from 7-9. I’ve done morning shows from time to time during my less-than-celebrated radio career. They’re always fun. Morning drive is radio’s version of primetime. Folks are going to work or school, checking to see the day’s weather, catching up on overnight news and the listening audience is higher than any other time of the day. Morning hosts generally have more...

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Did Shelley Long try to get Kelsey Grammer fired?

I’m getting so many requests to respond to a recent Cracked.com article that I thought I’d just take a day and respond to it.The article claims that when Kelsey Grammer first appeared on CHEERS, the only reason producers kept him on for more than the initial three episodes he was signed for was because Shelley Long hated him and the producers hated Shelley so much they retained him purely out of spite. They weren't just fabricating a story. The...

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Orange is the New Black: my review

From the first moment there was pay cable there were women-in-prison movies. It’s almost as if the delivery system was invented just for that purpose. They came on late at night and were ridiculously gratuitous. After all, since you could now show naked women on TV, why not show them naked all the time? Like reading their mail while showering. These movies were all singularly awful, filled with sadistic lesbian prison guards and showgirls...

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The 2013 Emmy Awards: My review

Someone told the Emmy producers that the “In Memoriam” segment always got a ratings spike. So this year they presented the most maudlin award show ever. It was one long funeral interspersed with production numbers. In addition to the normal obit montage there were individual tributes, musical tributes, presidential tributes, and we even got to see Lee Harvey Oswald shot again. Why not just hold the festivities at Arlington National Cemetery?...

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Confessions of an Emmy winner

The 65th annual primetime Emmy Awards are tonight. As usual, I shall be reviewing them tomorrow. I’ve reviewed them quite a few years now, which means I haven’t been nominated for an Emmy in quite a few years. To be quite honest, unless you win one, it’s not really that much fun to attend. The only thing worse than losing is losing early. Then you have to sit there for three hours and watch other people bound up to the stage. If you’re not...

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Louis CK's take on Twitter

This will either lose me followers or gain me followers but here's Louis CK's very funny take on Twitter. RT ...

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And the thousand Emmy winners are...

Who deserves an Emmy for producing a comedy or drama? It used to be easy. There were four or five of them – the show runner and those few writers who have worked their way up the ranks to producer. Now every show has more producers than West Virginia has registered voters. Stars get producer credits, in-explicitly, so do their managers, non writing executives jump on the band wagon, studio executives horn-in on the credit, punch-up guys are...

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Who's your favorite Darren Stevens?

Here are this week’s Friday Questions comin’ attcha:Hamid gets us started:Who's your favorite Bond?Sean Connery. I know it’s usually the Bond you grew up with he also established the template. There are no other Bonds if he didn’t make the character a worldwide screen sensation. And he could do things none of the others could. No one could pronounce “Poosie Galore” like Sean Connery. The man is a genius. I think the bigger more important question...

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Different structures for different genres

Here’s one of those Friday Questions that ended up being an entire post. It’s from Sitcom Room alum, Wendy Grossman:You've talked separately about the various things you've written - screenplay, stage play, TV scripts. What, to you, are the most significant differences in how the scripts for those three different media need to be structured?Each has its own challenges.The length is a big determining factor.TV scripts need to be carefully outlined...

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The trouble with binging

No, this is not about eating disorders (in case you found your way here through a search engine or activist group that didn’t bother to read the post before linking to it). It’s about television binging. It’s about watching a hundred episodes of DEXTER at one sitting and then never being able to sleep with the light off.Binging is the new way we’re watching television. Viewers now have to make a tough choice. Wait a week for the next installment...

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Uncovered: a lost gem from Levine & Isaacs

In 1980, David Isaacs and I wrote a series of one-act plays called CITY OF ANGLES.  It was an exercise to write in four different comic styles.    They were performed at the Fifth Street Studio Theater at 5th and Western downtown over a pizza parlor.  Theatergoers took their lives in their hands by attending.One performance was videotaped for posterity and promptly buried.  Only recently did I find it and get it digitized.  ...

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You can CALL me, Al.

Now that the NFL season has begun (this is week three or twelve – I dunno. Los Angeles is too small a town to have an NFL team so I don’t follow as closely.), Al Michaels is back for another year on NBC’s Sunday Night Football. So to get you in the mood, thought I’d share a nice Al Michaels story. Personally, I think Al is the best all-around play-by-play guy in the business. He of course, will be forever remembered for the US Olympic hockey...

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Happy birthday, Cliff Levine

Tomorrow marks my father’s 86th birthday. How can this be? He’s not that old. He still attends classes, travels, surfs the net, and is on Facebook (although he's not sure why). He has a natural curiosity and zest for life that makes him far younger than his years. And when he was young, he had a maturity far greater than his years. He was a parent in his early 20’s. I think back to myself at that age and I was a complete idiot....

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A handy writing tip

Just saw one of my favorite DICK VAN DYKE SHOW episodes, “100 Terrible Hours”. It’s the one where Rob was a disc jockey and had to stay on the air for 100 straight hours just before interviewing with Alan Brady for a writing job. I love that episode for many reasons but first and foremost is the structure. I imagine Carl Reiner and the staff thought it would be fun to see Rob’s initial job interview and of course it had to be a disaster....

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