Conversations With My Agent (And Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke) by Rob Long

Author:Rob Long [Long, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408855829
Google: qGHYAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2014-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

SUMMER: ‘IS THERE A SHOW IN THAT?’

Fade in:

Hollywood has two pompous nicknames for itself: ‘The Business’ and ‘The Industry’. Both names pack an ironic punch: calling it ‘The Business’ must surely elicit a sickly smile from shareholders of the Sony, Vivendi, and AOL/Time Warner Corporations, who are probably still waiting for the spending to stop and the business to begin; while the nickname ‘The Industry’ – with its connotation of industriousness – is equally silly when one considers that the most prevalent activity on any soundstage or location shoot is the reading of magazines and the eating of pastries.

Still, the beehive that is Hollywood manages to churn out enough news, gossip and press releases to fill two daily newspapers, Variety and its scrappier cousin, the Hollywood Reporter. Around here, we call them the ‘trades’ – short for ‘trade papers’ – and they are read with bitter intensity every morning by anyone who’s anyone, and anyone who’s trying to be anyone, in The Business.

Walk through the various breakfast spots in Los Angeles, and it’s easy to spot the out-of-towners. They’re the ones reading the trades in public. Out-of-towners think that Variety and the Reporter are filled with interesting Industry news – stock quotes, reviews, box-office figures, that kind of thing – and, of course, they are. But the more practiced reader, the Industry denizen, reads the trades for one reason and one reason only: to find out how much other people are being paid. And as this leads almost inevitably to violently obscene language, reading the trades is something to be done in private.

CUT TO:

EXT. STUDIO PARKING LOT – DAY

I walk to my office.

My writing partner and I have recovered, slightly, from our recent cancellation and we are now back at work, trying to come up with another series. In Hollywood, failure is like childbirth – it’s messy and painful and often requires hospitalization, but when it’s all over, some magic amnesia takes place and you can’t wait to do it again.

This isn’t really an act of heroic non-sulking. It’s our job, actually. We have what is called an ‘Overall Deal’ at a large studio. Which means, essentially, that they pay us a tidy sum to come up with, write, produce, cast, and generally generate television shows, which we then try to sell to the various television networks.

It’s a great system, but it doesn’t make much economic sense. In baseball parlance, we’re being paid to ‘swing for the fence,’ to aim for a monster hit. Because one monster hit generates enough profit for the studio to pay for everyone else’s failures. At least, that’s how the system is supposed to work.

CUT TO:

INT. MY OFFICE – CONTINUOUS

My assistant tosses Variety at me with sadistic glee.

MY ASSISTANT Page three.

ME Good morning.

MY ASSISTANT It won’t be when you read page three.

CUT TO:

INSERT SHOT: PAGE THREE OF variety

An article reports that a television writer – a friend of mine – has recently signed a deal with a studio for a whopping huge sum.

CUT TO:

CLOSE-UP: ME, READING

I am aware that my eyes are bulging out of their sockets.

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