Friday Questions

A weekend can not officially begin without Friday Questions, so here they are.

VP81955 kicks us off:

Have you ever written for Chuck Lorre, and if he contacted you about writing an occasional ep for him (with no constraints about having to be part of a writers' room for a prolonged period, given your schedule and commitments), would you?

I have not officially written for Chuck, but when I was directing for him (DHARMA & GREG) I would sit in on rewrite nights and help out. I recall those nights as being great fun. Chuck always puts together rooms of terrifically funny writers.

As for doing an episode, that’s not the way he works. All of his scripts are room-written. Writing credits are just assigned. So no.

From Peter:

This question might be a bit left field, but I'm just wondering. When meeting an executive or an agent, is a writer expected to wear a suit as though going for a job interview or can you dress casual?

Is there such a thing as “nice casual?” I never wear a suit and tie, but I do wear a collared shirt, sports jacket, and no jeans. Whether the dress "requirements" are more relaxed today I couldn’t tell you, but if you’re going in to pitch an executive of some sort show a little respect (whether you actually have respect or not).

Cheryl Marks asks:

Why does "Show Runner" never appear in the credits?

Because it doesn’t sound impressive enough. “Executive Producer” sounds way more cool.

It's like “Chief of Staff” sounds way more elegant than “psychotic man-child wrangler.”

Matt wonders:

Have you ever done a cameo in any of the shows you’ve been a part of?

Twice. Once in OPEN ALL NIGHT where I played a swinging lawyer trying to pick up a female mud wrestler in a mace class, and once on THE MARSHALL CHRONICLES, where I played a gay lawyer my mother was trying to fix up with a girl at a Jewish wedding.

I’ve also been an extra in a couple of shows a la Hitchcock. And I’ve done voice-overs as sports announcers on probably fifteen shows (including THE SIMPSONS).

But I’ve had no real desire to act in any of my shows. Better that real actors who need the money and credit (and have way more talent than me) get those gigs.

And fellow blogger Earl Pomerantz has today’s final question.

What was it like transitioning from the quippy one-liners of MASH to the more nuanced and subtle dialogue of Frasier and Cheers? Was it hard to make the adjustment, or was the change in style relatively easy?

The transition was made much easier because my partner (David Isaacs) and I had been on staff of THE TONY RANDALL SHOW before MASH so we had some experience in multi-cam.

But it was a little tough doing our first script for CHEERS because the joke forms were so different. We never had “set ups” on MASH. It was just a steady stream of zingy banter.

On CHEERS, for the audience, there were definite set ups. “They call the Coach 'Red' because he had red hair?” “No, because he read a book.” We would never do a joke like that on MASH. So there was a learning curve. By our second script we pretty much had it down.

As someone who has done both I've always felt it was much easier to go from multi-cam to single-cam (i.e. shot like a movie) then the other way around.   You have more flexibility in single-camera shows to do different kind of jokes, and the jokes themselves don't always have to get laughs.  In multi-camera shows you have 250 strangers in bleachers and you need to make them laugh out loud.  You better know your joke structures.