Candidate for Worst New Show: THE PLAYBOY CLUB

I’m giving you fair warning:  This one is a turkey.  It premieres Monday night. You gotta see it to believe it.

THE PLAYBOY CLUB.

From the first second you know you’re in trouble when Hef himself narrates it. I will acknowledge that a hundred years ago Hugh Hefner was indeed a major force in popular culture. And his willingness to challenge society’s repressed attitudes on sexuality and

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Random rants

I'm just sayin'....

I read every day in the trades that networks are bidding on comedy pitches and handing out put pilots and stiff penalties for not going to series. Here’s what I would negotiate for: creative freedom. No notes. Screw penalty payments. Let me do my show my way. If I’ve come up with a brilliant idea or have such brilliant talent attached and you're just dying to be in

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Registration is NOW OPEN for the Sitcom Room

If you would like to participate in my two-day writing seminar, THE SITCOM ROOM, registration is now open to the public.  There's a maximum of twenty participants.  Here's where you go for info and to sign up.   

As you know, we had encouraged people who are interested in attending the first SITCOM ROOM in two years to sign up for our Early Alert List, which would give them the chance to

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Writing in the Mess Tent

When my partner and I started out we would lock ourselves in a room whenever we wrote. We couldn’t have any distractions. Most of the time that meant working in one of our apartments so it was easy to do… except for the neighbor across the courtyard who kept playing the Jethro Tull WAR CHILD album over and over. But we eventually killed him so that problem was solved.

When we finally went

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How to go insane in one day

I don’t find the casting process fun. It’s tiring, you hear your words trampled fifty different ways, and you’re well aware that these are most crucial decisions you will ever make on your project. Scripts can be fixed, scenes can be reshot, but if you have the wrong actors you’re dead. So there is a tremendous amount of pressure – not just for the actors but for the producers as well.

In

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9/11 and David & Lynn Angell

I re-post this every year on this date.
9/11 affected us all, profoundly and in many cases personally. Two of my dear friends were on flight 11. David and Lynn Angell. There hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought of them, missed them, and not felt grateful that they were in my life.David and I worked together on CHEERS, WINGS, and FRASIER (the latter two he co-created). We used to call him the “dean

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The pros and cons of gangbanging and other topics

For the first time in two years I'm going to conduct another SITCOM ROOM seminar.  It'll be the weekend of November 12-13 at the LAX Hilton.  Later next week I'll open registration.  Stay tuned.  Space is limited.  To whip you into a veritable frenzy, here is a re-post from a few years ago. 
SITCOM ROOM 3 was held this weekend at that shrine of comedy, the Los Angeles Airport Hilton. For two days

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