I will be on a podcast

Today at 7 PM EDT/4 PM PDT I'll be Stu Shostak guest on his weekly podcast.  We'll be talking MASH, television, and my new book THE ME GENERATION... BY ME.  (Kindle version here.  Paperback here.) 

Anywho, here's the link to Stu's site.  Should be fun.   Hey, the man's had Betty White on his show.  And from I hear, she's going to be really pissed if you don't buy my book. 

Read More

Advice for young writers

A question I’m always asked is:

If I’m writing a spec script for an existing sitcom, should it be in a two-act or three-act format.

Some backstory. For years sitcoms followed the two-act formula. There was a big commercial break in the middle. Then some networks decided it would easier to retain the audience if they sprinkled the commercials throughout. Thus there were two breaks during the body of the show, not one. And thus the three-act format was born (or hatched).

This is important information because it means that the template was changed not so that stories could be better told but because of commerce.

My feeling always was that if I did my job and constructed an act break strong enough, it would hold the viewer through the commercials. The great Carl Reiner had an expression when he ran THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW. He wanted his act breaks to be “Hey, Maes!” The husband is watching the show in the living room and the act break is so compelling he yells out to his wife who’s in another room, “Hey, Mae! You gotta get out here and see this!”

The two-act structure is clearly better for storytelling in such a brief period of time. Plays can be three-acts, but they can also be three hours. Sitcoms get about twenty minutes. The two-act format: In the first act you build to a peak problem. Then in the second you resolve it. Nice. Neat. Hopefully the animated promo for WHITNEY at the bottom of the screen is not too distracting and you can follow the storyline. In the three-act structure you work towards a problem in the first act, work towards a complication in the second, and then have only a few minutes to resolve it in the third. Sometimes the animated promos are as long as the acts.

So what do you do if you’re writing a spec for an existing sitcom and they employ the three-act model? First, I would always follow the format the show uses. Showing them how they could do their series better does not generally win points.

But I would hedge. I would make one of the act breaks very strong, preferably the first one. The second is a complication and I’d make it a funny one if possible. So you’re ending that act on a good laugh. This structure does have one advantage: It forces you to get right to your story and build to an act break quickly. Young writers often get lost meandering around at the beginning of their scripts, trying to find the voices of the characters and just get comfortable writing that show. This structure reduces that.

Here’s how I plot out sitcom episodes: I come up with premise, then decide the act break (or breaks), arrive at a conclusion, and then fill in from there. I don’t plot A to B to C to D. I plot A to D to F then fill in B, C, etc. And along the way I’m always looking for the funniest, cleverest, most surprising ways to tell that story.

One other point: You have to follow this three-act structure because that’s what your show uses. But agents are also going to ask you for original material. At that point it’s totally up to you. It’s your pilot. You set the format. See how the story works best for you. Or, if you write a one-act play, it can be one-act.

As always, best of luck. Someone has to break through. Why not you?

Note:  Longtime readers of this blog know that whenever I can't find an appropriate photo I post one of Natalie Wood.  

Read More

What was HBO thinking???

HEMINGWAY & GELLHORN is so bad that if Hemingway were still alive this would have killed him. It’s hard to believe HBO could miss so badly but this is the HEAVEN’S GATE of cable.

What it’s supposed to be: a sweeping historic romance between two colorful larger-than-life characters.

What it really is: a seeping hysterical booty call between two cartoon characters.

Clive Owens plays Kevin Kline playing Cole Porter playing Ernest Hemingway. And he is Oscar worthy compared to Nicole Kidman’s performance, which wouldn’t get her cast as a walk-on in a high school play. Her take on a hard-bitten, hard drinking, bad-ass journalist Martha Gellhorn was absolutely laughable. Carol Kane would be more believable.

Every macho bullshit cliché is included in this bomb. Papa reels in giant marlins, has a rifle collection, mounted big game, drinks out of the bottle, eats raw onions, sings rebellious anthems, plays Russian roulette, wears flak jackets, and goes off to wars. Except when he’s at the wars he just sorta hangs out. Picture Geraldo Rivera in Iraq.


Nicole doesn’t pack a gun but never goes off to the front without her trusty red lipstick.  War is Hell-ena Rubenstein. 

The turgid, sexually-charged dialogue between her and “Papa” sounds like an old script from DRAGNET. I’m telling you, there are more laughs in the first ten minutes of this movie than the entire season of WHITNEY.

Typical line of cheesy dialogue: “FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS is selling like ice cream in hell.”

One stylistic device they employ is blending into black-and-white. But they fade in and out of it completely at will. Forty-five times. And sometimes for good measure, they tint the color sepia. Remember how your grandma used to keep adjusting her first color TV? That’s what this was like.

Every frame of this movie is bogus. One of my favorite moments: Nicole has arrived in Spain. She’s in her hotel room, sleeping. The door bursts open and Papa storms in with three documentary filmmakers. They set the camera up at the window. We see out the window. Cut to actual newsreel footage: no less than half a million people are in the streets as troops march forth. None of this would wake her up? Later she storms beaches. Thank God the lipstick is waterproof. 

But they saved the very worst for the last. At this point the film stopped being unintentionally funny and became just jaw-droppingly atrocious. Should you make it to the end (and I doubt you will), there’s maybe the worst scene in the history of cinema. Nicole is observing the horrors of the concentration camps. Her concerned face is super-imposed over these gruesome shots and then dissolves into a skull. I just sat there flabbergasted. They didn’t really do that? They couldn’t really do that? Well… they did.


Worth noting is the supporting cast: Some terrific actors just wasted. Robert Duvall, David Strathairn (adventures in bad make up), Tony Shalhoub (no Emmy this time, Tony), Parker Posey, and Bob from BECKER.  That’s right. Bob is in it!  

What bothers me most about this astounding misfire is that it's a movie about writers. How many of them are there? They’re a hard-sell at best. We’re generally less exciting and cinematic as say Navy Seals. So when one is made and sucks it just makes it harder for the rest of us to get our movies. This is especially true in my case now that I have a new book out. A big budget film set in the swinging ‘60s about a teenage dork who draws comic books and can’t get to the beach because he can’t drive yet suddenly is no longer a slam dunk to be made. Thank you, HBO. First you give us LUCK and than this. I need a drink.

Read More

My 2012 Tony Awards Show Review

Time once again to review the lowest rated Awards show in America – the Tonys. I have more Twitter followers than Tony Awards Show viewers. And in L.A. it competed with the Gay Pride Parade so no one was watching.

Thus it’s understandable that there was no pre-Tony’s Red Carpet Show, which is a shame. Would love to see Ant and Miss South Carolina broadcasting from the Times Square R Train subway platform as all the stars got off.

The Tonys are also the only awards show to still be tape-delayed to the West Coast. I think they will air sometime next Thursday.

Part of the problem is that no one outside of Manhattan and Fire Island know any of the nominated shows. The two big musicals were NEWSIES from a 20-year-old Disney movie starring songbirds Christian Bale and Robert Duvall and ONCE, the small Irish movie that delighted audiences in all twelve art houses it screened in.

But the Tonys are only once a year in the summer so you can understand why CBS continues to air it despite so little interest. I mean it’s not like it’s a weekly series about Broadway. What network would be crazy enough to have one of those, spend big bucks on it, and then renew it? Even NBC couldn’t be that foolish, could they?

Usually the purpose of the Tonys is to celebrate excellence in New York theater, but this year it was to pimp the Royal Caribbean cruise line. They even featured a ten minute number from HAIRSPRAY direct from a ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Why spend money on a big name host? Next year just have cruise director Sergio emcee the Tony Awards.

My delightfully caustic daughter, Annie and her writing partner, Jon Emerson are also contributing this year. Annie (during the JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR number): “That musical has had more revivals than Jesus.”

Host Neil Patrick Harris was charming as ever, but his opening number didn’t have the same zing and sodomy jokes that last year’s had. Cruise director Sergio will be better next year. You’ll see.


The big surprise was James Corden winning Best Actor in a Play over Philip Seymour Hoffman, Frank Langella, John Lithgow, and James Earl Jones. I suppose if you want to outperform some of the greatest actors of our time just smash a trash can lid on your head.

Very happy that Nina Arianda won even though you’re saying who is she and what did she win for?

This year we had JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, GODSPELL, THE BOOK OF MORMON, and LEAP OF FAITH. Don’t producers know that JEWS are the people who go to the theater? What’s next? A Mel Gibson one-man show?

Let’s face it -- the big prize for a dazzling performance on Broadway isn’t a Tony. It’s a TV series the following season. Congratulations to Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad!

Have not seen Best Play, CLYBOURNE PARK but hear it’s wonderful. All the nominees this year were supposedly great. They’ll get their chance again next year when they’re all up for Best Revival of a Play.

The theater community was thrilled and relieved when Audra McDonald finally won for lead actress. Her four other Tonys were just for supporting actress. Highlight of her speech was saying it was an honor to get raped by Philip Boykin every night.

How nice to have an awards show where the “Harvey” they’re saluting is Fierstein not Weinstein.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN won for best revival of a play, which makes sense since it’s maybe the best contemporary play ever written.

Was I dreaming? Did they really play walk-off music when Mike Nichols was making his acceptance speech? Seriously? They devote ten minutes to a bunch of Croatian kids singing a HAIRSPRAY medley but have no time for Mike Nichols?

Sheryl Crow looked fabulous! May she look that way for the next forty years.

ONCE was the big musical winner. I’ll see it on my next Royal Caribbean cruise to Costa Rica.

CBS kept promo’ing Ricky Martin as if that was a big deal.

In Los Angeles this was a Channel 2 news tease: “A mother and her two kids are missing. The search after the Tony Awards.” As if the search party couldn’t be torn away from their TVs while Ricky Martin was still scheduled to perform. 

The universally panned GHOST performed a number. To show that Mark Evans was the ghost he was followed by a blue spotlight. Annie said, “Why not just throw a sheet over his head and call it a day?”

Ellen Barkin has turned into Cloris Leachman.


I always find in unnerving to see a Judy Garland impersonator who isn’t a man.

Not hard to guess what demographic watches the Tonys. Sponsors included Embrel, Celebrex, and Cymbalta. I’m sure when the ship stops in Mexico you can pick up all of them for a fraction of their regular price.

The production numbers are always more fun at the Macy's Parade where they do the same thing but in 20 degree weather. If I don't see steam coming out of mouths I'm not as transported.

Ever notice that every Broadway musical has these same two songs -- “Love Me For Who I Am” and “I Have to Follow My Dream”? Or did you just fast-forward the minute you saw Matthew Broderick attempting to dance?

Play people take themselves waaaaaaaay too seriously. Musical people take nothing seriously. I prefer musical people.

PETER AND THE STARCATCHER won for best scenic design of a play. I thought it had no set. And it was up for Best Play even though there’s singing and dancing.  Hell, submit it for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film.  

Of all the great songs in FOLLIES, they chose that one? Danny Burnstein’s orange suit blended right into the red curtains. This won’t be a problem on the Royal Caribbean because the stage curtain is blue. And a Bingo tournament follows the show! 


Bernadette Peters was exquisite in her strapless purple gown. It’s what the well-dressed mermaids are all wearing this season.

Notice the guy with the giant Lion King head in the audience? I’m guessing that was the only person in the audience you were able to identify. Good luck to the poor schmucks sitting behind him. Annie: “As if Julie Taymor isn’t hated enough.” Jon: “Ruining the experience one person at a time.”

As usual, off stage announcer, Randy Thomas, was smooth and flawless. I want to win just so someday I could hear her say my name (and maybe plug my book).

Judith Light won the Tony for best revival of a face.

Tony speeches tend to be more heartfelt than other backslapfests. Lots of tears, even from the women. I loved when James Corden acknowledged the mother of his child and said, “I can’t wait to marry you.”

PORGY & BESS won Best Revival of a Musical. It seemed like thirty producers got up to accept the prize. All of them white.

Mandy Patinkin and Patti LaPone were presenters together. That’s like Godzilla and Mothra on the same stage. There must be teeth marks on every piece of backstage scenery at the Beacon and three neighboring theaters.

Otherwise, Hugh Jackman won an award for being Hugh Jackman. Ricky Martin was not worth the hype. Side effects of Cymbalta include a fast heart rate, suicidal thoughts, hallucinations, canker sores, high cholesterol, and acne.

The show ran over. Normally that’s no big deal but there are three missing people out there with no one looking for them.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to join the after-theater crowd for an elegant midnight barbeque buffet on the Lido Deck.

Sea you at the theater!

Read More

My new book is now available in paperback

Okay, all of you who said you'd wait for the paperback when the Kindle came out, now's your chance to make good. Please go here to order. Many thanks. And of course the Kindle version is still available right here.

Seriously, it would make a great Father's Day gift and if you order now you'll have it in plenty of time.  Trust me, Dad doesn't want a brunch.  He wants THIS. 

Here are two reviews -- one from someone I don't even know.  Tomorrow I review the Tonys (not that anyone will watch them). 

Fun and funny stuff....an entertaining look back at the 60's through the eyes of a normal L.A. valley boy... insightful and dead-on. The Claudine Longet chapter was worth the price of the book by itself! Jam-packed with hilarious morsels, this book is nice because it's not some cheap 120 page double spaced nothing like one often seems to find in books attempting comedy. Anyone who grew up during or around this decade is sure to love it. ...Amusing and enjoyable read!

-Frida

Ken Levine is a true pro and gentleman who writes with amazing charm, candor, insight and self-deprecation. The man's humanity comes shining through on every page. It's the story of a real guy telling a real story about a genuine slice of American life, not another navel-gazing treatise on the tumult we've heard a million times before. You emerge from this quick and exhilarating read feeling like this a guy you want to know better. He isn't afraid to show his nerdy warts or to admit he loves his parents. Indeed, something emerges in the prose that's uplifting and unexpected: We see a side of the '60s we haven't experienced before -- the real side featuring ordinary people leading ordinary lives. There's a sublime grace in that. Bravo to Ken for a book that's as honest as it is entertaining.

-Ray Richmond -- Contributor, Deadline Hollywood

You'll be supporting this ad-free blog (hint hint), alleviating yourself of any guilt, and enjoying a look back at a happier time when no one knew how to dress. 

Read More

Should announcers say there's a no-hitter going on?

YES!!

This topic always crops up whenever there’s a no-hitter in progress. The latest example was last night in Seattle where six Mariner pitchers combined to no-hit the Los Angeles Dodgers. I wasn’t watching the Dodger telecast with Eric Collins so I don’t know how he handled it. I watched the Mariners’ telecast with Dave Sims and he dutifully reported throughout the game that a no-hitter was in progress.

And as sure as the sun rises, Dave has taken a lot of flack for it.

People, let's get REAL.  

Announcers can’t “jinx” the outcome of a baseball game. That responsibility is YOURS. If you’re watching a no-hitter and get up from the couch to get a beer you alone will cost the pitcher his one chance at immortality. If you scratch your nose during warm-up tosses or answer an odd number of emails during an even numbered inning the entire game will change.

So don’t blame us announcers. It's not our fault.  Nor is it the players who play the game. Or the umpires whose decisions control the game. Nor is it the official scorer who must rule on judgment calls. It’s YOU. All YOU. Especially you who ate mixed nuts during the game and didn’t eat all the cashews last. How could you do that to your team? 

Dave Sims did a great job last night. If I were in his place I would have handled it the exact same way.

So far I’ve called two no-hitters. Amazingly, no one ever congratulated me for being responsible for these two historic accomplishments.

Congratulations to Kevin Milwood, Charlie Furbush, Stephen Pryor, Lucas Luetge, Brandon League, Tom Wilhelmsen, and YOU for combining on a seven-man no-hitter.  

Read More

Speaking farce-y

One writing question I'm often asked is how are farces constructed? I’m sure fifty different comedy writers would give you fifty different approaches but this is mine.

First off there must be jeopardy. Something the characters need very badly and are willing to go to the greatest lengths to achieve. The situation can be totally absurd to us but to the characters themselves they’re very real. In fact, the greater the jeopardy the crazier they can act.

Secondly, a farce is built on a lie. A character lies and then to keep from getting caught must lie again. The lies multiply, the character digs himself into a deeper hole. And generally, there are several characters forced to lie. Often the lies contradict each other.

Needless to say, this takes careful planning. The structure of a farce is critical. Things have to happen with exact precision. The pressure must never let up. Constant roadblocks must be introduced. Complications on top of more complications. The vice tightens…and tightens…and tightens.

Generally, farces take place in real time. There are no fade outs, no dissolves, no relief. And as the piece builds the pace quickens. If done right, a farce should be a snowball rolling down a hill, gaining momentum and size.

Neil Simon, who wrote the wonderful farce RUMORS, is quoted as saying “At the final curtain, the audience must be as spent as the actors, who by now are on oxygen support. If the audience is only wheezing with laughter, you need rewrites or actors with stronger lungs.”

They’re incredibly tough to pull off but unbelievably satisfying when you do. And for my money, no show ever did them better than FRASIER.

Read More