Martini Shot

Forgiveness. That’s All There Is

Rob Long talks about Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” — written as a graceful goodbye to Porter Wagoner when she left his show to go solo — as a way into the real question: how did Dolly stay beloved across a divided culture? He tracks the...

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“Free to Pursue Other Opportunities”

Last week’s Martini Shot prompted a lot of very kind notes that read like eulogies for what is essentially a back-end redirect of an audio feed. In that spirit, Rob Long reflects on the many ways Hollywood tells you it’s over without ever quite saying...

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Check Each Other for Mustaches

Years ago, a woman told Rob the greatest story he’d ever heard: Her doctor put her on testosterone cream — and then required her to attend weekly meetings with the other women who were also on it, so they could compare notes. Rob pitched it as a...

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The Hugh Bonneville Rule

Jerry Lewis once blessed a nightclub audience by wishing them a life full of show business friends. Rob Long isn’t so sure that’s a blessing — show business friendship is a strange, contingent thing, built on projects that assemble and dissolve, sofas...

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21 Seconds or Less

Rob Long is in Tbilisi, a city he last saw 26 years ago when it was broke and hopeful and is now prosperous and — inconveniently — cozy with Vladimir Putin. Turns out streaming had the same trajectory: total freedom, total data and somehow the...

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Set it Down and Walk Away

The summer box office is having its best season since before the pandemic — and the first real hits weren’t the franchise machines, they were two cheap horror movies made by guys who started on YouTube. Naturally, the industry is busy reading the...

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The Greatness of James Burrows

Rob Long was 24 years old when he met James Burrows, one of the creators and executive producers of Cheers, where he had just been hired as a staff writer on a 10 week contract. It didn't take 10 weeks for him to realize just how brilliant Burrows...

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A Little Human, A Lot Robot

Rob Long’s friend has a near-perfect system for staying in touch: a text every five weeks to the day, the wording on rotation, the calls auto-booked — friendship by tickler file, a little bit human and a lot robot. Naturally, Rob sets out to sabotage...

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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 remembers called The Sniper: same city, same crime, same...

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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. Writers do it at auditions, following along with...

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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 group results mid-flight, and met them at the gate —...

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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 great phrase that buys a few seconds of grace before you...

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 the Leave It to Beaver street for the fifth floor of the...

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 episode anyway. A friend in the business says that’s...

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 listen — because sometimes that’s all anyone really needs.

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 systematically destroyed. Rob Long makes the case that the...

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 open mic informed Rob that his joke suggestions are,...

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 lost art of script research. You’d messenger your...

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 obtained through what can only be described as...

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 for an answer, Rob started thinking about a leather...