Friday Questions

Who’s up for some Friday Questions? Leave yours in the comments section. Thanks.

Tommy Raiko starts us off.

One recent rom-com success story folks point to is Crazy Rich Asians. It did very well in many international markets, but based on its domestic box office alone it'd certainly be considered a success. What do you think Crazy Rich Asians had going for it, that other recent modern rom-coms lack, that contributed to its success?

Some movies just hit the zeitgeist at the right moment. I couldn’t tell you why because I didn’t love the movie. The same with MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. Huge sleeper boxoffice hit. I always hated it.

I could speculate, but those conjectures would be based on nothing . So I’ll just say luck, timing, and they must’ve done something really right (although I don’t know what it was).

marka asks:

Say I appear on a tv show as a guest star. I get paid for that. Two seasons later my scenes are used in a flashback episode. Do I get paid again for the second use of my work? Still later my scenes are used on a "funniest moments in tv" show. Do I get paid for that use as well?

It depends on how many seconds of your episode they use, and I don’t know the formula.

But the short answer is, YES. You do get paid – for flashbacks, for retro episodes, for Dick Clark specials.

When Dick Clark was doing his blooper show, I made a nice chunk of change because they used several bloopers from episodes I either co-wrote or directed. It was a beautiful thing.  Crystal Bernard dropping a whole cake on WINGS made me a lot of money. 

And when CHEERS and MASH did their retrospective episodes -- Ka-ching!

Now… I don’t know how it works in streaming. Although I imagine if they use part of your episode on another episode as a flashback you still get paid. But streaming is the Wild West.

From Blogger Terry:

I was watching "Goodbye Radar" the other day and I noticed, particularly in Part 2, that Gary Burghoff's voice sounded different. It sounded deeper and gruffer. It didn't sound like the innocent kid Radar that we had come to know and love. Do you know if that was a deliberate choice, either on Gary's part or the part of the director, to make Radar sound older as he was growing up and going back home? Or did Gary just have a cold that day?

Not so much the voice but he refused to wear his hat. And we felt that made him look too old. Obviously the goal was to show that Radar had matured as a result of his MASH experience but without the hat we felt he went from 20 to 40.

Still, I think the episode worked well and Gary was great in it.

And finally, from Mike Bloodworth:

You've mentioned in the past how being in the army helped you write for M*A*S*H. You've also talked about you and other writers using real life situations in their scripts. But surely there were times when you had to write about something with which you were NOT familiar. e.g. I've never heard you mention a sibling. (Maybe you did and I missed it) But, if you don't have a brother how did create such brilliant dialog between Frasier and Niles? I seriously doubt that you're an alcoholic, ex-jock, yet you were able to successfully write for Sam Malone. You're not an asshole, but you wrote dialog for Becker. Etc.

Bottom line: What tips do you have for dealing with subjects you don't know about?

Research. Learn as much as you can about whatever arena you’re writing about.

And even then sometimes you have to let your imagination be your guide. You can’t interview any former Jedi warriors. If you’re writing TOY STORY 5 you can’t interview toys. When we wrote MANNEQUIN we studied a department store but did not bring a mannequin home with us on a motorcycle.

Do the best you can. And then, As James L. Brooks always says, “At some point you’ve got to become a writer.”