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Magnificently Dated
Clint Eastwood just turned 96 — older than the talkies, a man who’s been alive for every talking picture ever made. Which got Rob thinking about Dirty Harry and a 1952 thriller almost nobody…
Heads Up
Rob Long is watching a Satyajit Ray film on Criterion while eating ice cream and staring at his phone — which means he is, essentially, just eating ice cream. Rob is a pro at keeping his head down.…
Fan Fiction Focus Group
Rob Long has a favorite story about network upfronts: a television network, unable to decide which of three pilots to schedule, flew all three casts to New York on the same plane, collected focus…
Wait, Hear Me Out
In Amsterdam last month, in front of a Dutch painting of a plump, nearly bald, angelic figure of indistinct gender, an old friend turned to Rob Long and said three words: “Hear me out.” It’s the…
Premium Parking
Rob Long remembers Radford Studios — the working lot in Studio City where the parking sheet promised “premium” spots that never quite existed, the guard who couldn’t understand why you’d skip…
Sound Off
Rob Long is at a bar on a Monday night, pretending to pay attention to a conversation while secretly watching CBS’ The Neighborhood on a TV across the room, sound off. He predicts every beat of the…
Shut Up and Listen
There’s a lesson Rob Long learned early in his television career: When an actor has a problem with the script, the smartest thing you can do is nothing. Don’t talk. Don’t fix. Don’t explain. Just…
I See Dead Shows
The TV comedy writers’ room has a reputation as a creative paradise — funny people, good lunches, great jokes. That reputation is not wrong. It just leaves out the part where everyone is being…
Too Wordy
Rob Long has spent 30-plus years in the television business telling other people what’s wrong with their scripts. But the tables can — and often do — turn. Rob’s seminary classmate doing his first…
Who’s Watching the Bar?
Every writing project hits the same wall: the neurotic feedback loop of details that don’t add up. Who’s watching the baby? Who’s watching the bar? Rob Long has been around long enough to remember…
The Monkey’s Paw Award
We’re finally through Oscar season, which means it’s time to think about prestige, status and the difference between the awards you want and the awards you get. Rob Long has a People’s Choice Award…
Hollywood's Employed Unemployeds
A friend asked Rob Long for career advice at Zankou Chicken. Rob hates giving advice — especially career advice, which is mostly just autobiography dressed up as wisdom. But while his friend waited…
‘Wake Up Dead Man’ and Religion on Screen
Whether it was Sally Field as The Flying Nun or Julie Andrews playing a novitiate in The Sound of Music, audiences used to watch priests and nuns and ministers — unremarkably — as part of American…
My Dutch Boyhood
Michael Lynton, the former CEO of Sony Pictures, has a new book that tells the story of greenlighting the Seth Rogen comedy that provoked North Korea into hacking his studio. He traces it back to an…
Faith Is So Hot Right Now
Rob Long tries — unsuccessfully — to convince his Hollywood friends that seminary isn’t a branding exercise. His stint at Princeton, where he’s working towards a Masters in Divinity and ordination,…
Catherine O’Hara, A Writer’s Dream
The late and irreplaceable Catherine O’Hara’s greatness lived in the microscopic choices — the mouthed lines, the half-beats, the emotions stacked on top of jokes — none of which were written down,…
It Didn't Matter That I Was Right
Correcting others in public is an irresistible temptation — and almost always a mistake. Rob learned that lesson early, as a young writer on Cheers, when he pointed out that a character, a sort of…
What Happened to Our Great Parties?
Awards season is here, which means Hollywood is again awash in parties, cocktails and mocktails. And yet, somehow, none of it feels like much of a celebration. Rob Long remembers the best awards…
‘Heated Rivalry’ and The Oldest Trick in Showbiz
Heated Rivalry, the horny hockey drama, employs a classic Hollywood formula: Sprinkle in some nudity, and suddenly the odds of your crapshoot becoming a hit improve. Like the perpetually packed…
Quibi: Short Form, Long Regrets
The easy thing to say about anything new in show business is, “Never gonna work.” In the case of Quibi — Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s short-form mobile streamer — plenty of people laughed,…
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Martini Shot has published 168 episodes since June 2022.
Martini Shot is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 11m.
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