My take on the Golden Globes

Some fleeting thoughts on last night’s Golden Globes. Not a full recap. I save those for real award shows. But here are just some random observations.

All you need to know about the Golden Globes is that Angelina Jolie got nominated for THE TOURIST. She gave maybe the worst, stiffest performance since Wilson the volleyball in CASTAWAY.

Judging by his most gracious speech, I think the only person who thinks less of the Golden Globes than me is Robert De Niro. I can’t imagine the Foreign Press being touched that their honoree called them waiters and proposed they be deported.

But where else are you going to see Steven Spielberg and Ryan Seacrest viewed as peers in the same audience?

Ricky Gervais is always funny although I bet middle-America just hates him. It’s so clear he’s playing to the room not the television audience. But so what? Introducing Bruce Willis as Ashton Kutcher’s dad was the line of the year.

When Colin Firth gave his acceptance speech for THE KING’S SPEECH, didn’t you wish he stuttered?

Is it me, or has Helena Bonham Carter become creepy weird since marrying Tim Burton? On film she’s gorgeous, at public appearances she looks like Bif Naked.

I was thrilled for Katey Sagal. Considering her table was practically in the parking lot, she was clearly an upset winner. If you haven’t seen Katey in SONS OF ANARCHY, treat yourself. She’s the biker chick you don’t have to be in prison to love.

I don’t care how good an actor he is, NEVER give Al Pacino another award. You’d think after 127 wins the guy would know how to give a speech. Instead, it’s that crazy homeless guy outside the 7-11 who rambles incoherently.

Claire Danes was stunning. She wore a lovely simple sleek gown. As opposed to Olivia Wilde who looked like she was wearing a velvet haystack.

How can the Golden Globes expect anyone to take them seriously when Judy Dench and Piper Perabo are both nominated in the same acting category? Oh, and January Jones.

Remember Pia Zadora once won a Golden Globe. And when Sir Laurence Olivier won, the trophy broke in his hands as he was giving his acceptance speech.

The one thrilling moment: the standing ovation for Michael Douglas. Actors go on and on about their courageous “journeys”; this guy has been on a journey.

Every time they cut to a reaction shot during a TV award you saw six movie people in the background who could not be more bored.

January Jones remains the most beautiful woman on the planet who has no idea how to dress herself.

What a touching and elegant presentation speech by Robert Downey Jr. for the Best Supporting Actress category. Talking about how he needs to fuck them all. Class-yyyy.

Did Lea Michele’s cat die? I can’t believe she was really crying every five seconds over the friggin’ Golden Globes. I mean, welling up when Justin Bieber was introduced?

By the way, Justin Bieber was the only presenter who was shorter than the statue.

I guess Dennis Quaid had gotten over Meg Ryan dumping him. That was some Jessica Rabbitt hanging on his arm.

MAD MEN lost even though it was better this season than two in which they won.

Laura Linney is an amazing talent, but remember when the Best Actress in a Comedy had to be funny? You’d think Tina Fey would have a pretty good shot considering her competition was a cancer victim, a schizophrenic, a pop singer, and a disgruntled nurse. Tina, next year go for Best Actress in a Drama. You’ll probably win.

Was BOARDWALK EMPIRE really that good or is the Foreign Press just Martin Scorsese’s bitch?

Notice that Jim Parsons forgot to thank Chuck Lorre?

I’m sure if Aaron Sorkin had more time he would have thanked me. That would have been some moment – me, sitting stunned in front of my TV, Lea Michele crying uncontrollably.

Shows on host network NBC won exactly no Golden Globes.

Happy that SOCIAL NETWORK won. But if I were a waiter fearing deportation I would have voted for THE GOOD WIFE and MODERN FAMILY in the TV categories.

Bring on the Oscars. Or the TV Land awards. Anything.

On another note: There are still a few remaining spots open for my free teleseminar on Thursday night. Here's where you go for information or sign-up.

This is why you need to follow me on Twitter

Thank God for Twitter! Without that invaluable service I could never share with friends the really important moment-to-moment details of my life. In case you’re not following me I’ve reassembled the Tweets you most recently missed.

Having a colonoscopy tomorrow.

Going out for magazines.

Is it just me or does Susan Boyle look like John Madden?

Okay. Starting to take the stuff.

Ugggghhh! It tastes terrible. Mood: Irritable.

Thinking of a Staycation this year. Any suggestions where I could stay?

It’s been a half hour. When is this stuff supposed to work?

45 minutes. Still nothing.

53 minutes and counting.

An hour. What’s the deal???

Just filled out my WGA awards ballot.

HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kill me NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. I can breathe. Whew.

YEOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s working.

8rXX3 thinks Susan Boyle looks like… wait a minute….

HOLY FRIGGIN’ SHIT!!!!!!!

How long is this supposed to last?

Oh Christ! I forgot. Today’s the day we scheduled an OPEN HOUSE here.  Awk!

Dennis Franz. That’s who 8rXX3 thinks Susan Boyle looks like.

No, you can’t see the bathroom! It’s currently occupied!  Awk!

I would trade my Emmy right now for a Tums.

Wow, there are a lot of ads in VANITY FAIR.

Bowel mood: very irritable.

Hey my legs have gone to sleep. Has that ever happened to you? Awk!

There are eight people walking through my house. I almost knocked one down during the last urge. Awk!

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I’m in hell.

Moving on to ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY and MERCENARY LIFE.

Thank you guys. Hearing your colonoscopy stories have really helped. LOL.

It’s been three hours.

And two rolls.

No offers on the house yet. :(

How stupid am I part two? Choosing to do this on the day of the TOP CHEF marathon?

Okay. I think the worst is over.

Wrong!!!!

Seriously. Someone. Kill me.  OMG!  Awk!

Oh great. My real estate agent just dumped me. For some reason she feels my house doesn’t “show well”.  OMG!  Awk! :(

I’m whipped. Better get some sleep. But here’s the good news: I convinced the doctor to just give me a local. So I’m bringing my laptop and you can expect tweets during the procedure. Please check back every five minutes.

See the faces behind the voices

A reader pointed this out. Here's a video made featuring Mark Elliott and four of the other top voice over guys. Sadly, Don LaFontaine is no longer with us. Happily, John Leader reads this blog.

What have they done to Sela Ward?

Decided to check out CSI: NEW YORK last night. Hadn’t seen it since a friend was killed on it a few years ago. I won’t watch CSI: MIAMI because David Caruso is such an utter joke. And the original CSI is just not as good without William Peterson. But if it’s on and I’m already seen this week’s HOARDERS, I will check it out. It’s amazing the budgets those police forces must have. They each contain every piece of whiz-bang equipment ever invented. Those labs must cost two billion dollars. They’ll have a giant Hubble telescope type contraption that measures tire wear based on skid marks. How often would you use that? Who approved that acquisition?

So I sat down to watch CSI: NEW YORK. I don’t know the characters but so what? They’re all interchangeable. You got the male star who once had a feature career, the female star, and a gaggle of J. Crew models who serve as the field investigators along with cute television-acceptable nerds who work in the lab. Gary Sinise is solid. He’s like Greg Kinnear but always better.

What I didn’t know was that Sela Ward is now on the show. I have to say that when she first came on the screen I let out an audible gasp. My God, who did her face work? I was horrified. Squinty eyes, skin pulled way back – whatever softness and expression she once had is gone. With her bone structure and plastic surgery she now looks like Jack Lord. I found this so sad I could no longer enjoy the program. No matter what she said she had this odd smirk on her face. She’s consoling a grieving mother and involuntarily smiling.


Sela Ward is a beautiful woman. Yes, she’s now in her mid-50s but so what? Without any help, she’d be beautiful in her 70s. So she’ll never be offered the part of Gidget? Big deal. The real beauty of Sela Ward was how real she was. She always played smart, she always played sexy, but you knew there was a real person in there. Now she’s a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills.

Maybe television won’t let actresses age gracefully. And with HD you can’t get away with soft focus anymore. Perhaps if Sela Ward didn’t dye her hair jet black and have her cheek bones lifted to above her eyes she couldn’t have gotten that role on CSI: NEW YORK. It can be an ugly heartless business. So it saddens me that talented people like Sela Ward have to sign a Faustian-like contract with the devil… known to some as Beelzebub, known to them as Botox.

Free teleseminar on TV writing

A special bonus for Friday Question Day!! Next Thursday, January 20th at 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern, I will be conducting a FREE teleseminar, answering your writing questions. It will last between 60 and 90 minutes. And you can get an mp3 of it to play on your boombox. You just go here for more information and to sign-up. Again, it’s free. No obligation. No salesman will call.

If I can't think of an appropriate photo I always just use one of Natalie Wood.

Okay, on to today’s Q’s:

We start with John, who has a follow-up to last week’s discussion of warm up men:

In the role of the "keep 'em warm" guy, was there ever a time when you did that for one of the scripts you an David had written where earlier, but the audience reaction to certain jokes hadn't been what you expected. Did that make you feel like you had to try harder to get the audience in a more receptive mood for the rest of the show, or were you thinking, "These miserable SOBs have no sense of humor, and probably ought to be shipped over to sit in the 'Happy Days' studio audience, where maybe they'll think Ted McGinley is a laugh riot." Or did someone else have to do the rewarming part, because you were in one of those set conferences with the producers on why you didn't get the reaction everyone was expecting?

Well, I wasn’t doing the warm-up this one night on THE TONY RANDALL SHOW for a episode that David Isaacs and I wrote that played great all week long. But on show night it died. We were stymied. Turns out, half the audience was bussed in and couldn’t speak a word of English.

We didn’t know that at the time, and neither did Jay Tarses, the producer who was also doing the warm-up. He flat out turned on them. He’d say stuff like, “Hey, your Hearse is outside waiting” and “Raise your hand if you’re awake.” The half that did speak English was pissed. 

Rarely will the showrunner do the warm-up. He has too many other things to monitor and worry about. So any show that I ran, I left that chore to someone else. I was always available for those emergencies huddles to fix a scene or a joke.

The thing you have to remember about audiences: the ultimate quality of a show does not depend on the audience. I’ve seen shows go right through roof on the stage and you look at them in editing and say "what the hell were they all laughing at?  This is awful!"  Likewise, a show that played to a flat audience may come way up on the screen.

Here’s another follow-up to last week’s post by Troy:

So how much does a warm-up guy make per taping?

Top guys in multi-camera can make as much as $4,000 a night. Disney and Nickelodeon pay around $1,500 or less.

I don’t know about talk shows, but I would guess the warm-up guys for Leno, Letterman, and Conan get top pay.


carol asks:

I tried writing a script once, just for fun, and one of the hardest things for me was to introduce the characters and history in the 'pilot' without resorting to the whole 'as you know, Bob' thing.

What kind of 'show don't tell' exposition tricks do you have up your sleeve?

First off, don’t lay out all the exposition at one time. Dole it out slowly. And in comedies, try to weave the exposition into jokes. That’s for backstory.

As for conveying just who a character is, let his behavior, attitude, and decisions do that for you. How he reacts in specific moments when you know he has options informs us as to who he is.

Exposition is the hardest part of a pilot. That’s why I suggest your pilot stories be as simple as possible. The audience has a lot to process. Usually, their first priority is to get a handle on the characters. Then they have to piece together the relationships and decide whether or not they like these fictional fun devils. If the audience is still trying to figure out just who is who then they’re not going to laugh at the jokes.

For that reason, don’t cast two actors that look very similar. And although it’s a popular trend, don’t give girl characters boys’ names. Until we know these people well, when two characters are talking about Alex, and Sam, and Mel, we’re going to think those are three guys.

There’s also a lazy way of getting out exposition and that’s by using a narrator. Or, if you really don’t give a shit, just do the pop-up video thing and use those little cartoon bubbles. Blip!  He has a crush on Sally.  Blip!  She's the stupid sister. 

And finally, from Lou H.:

If the sitcoms you've written had been on networks that didn't run commercial breaks, would this have affected the way you broke the stories into acts?

Probably not to a great degree. You still start with a problem, build to a crisis, and head to a conclusion. Without commercial interruptions though, we’d have more flexibility on when that crisis point would come. On network shows it needs to come right around the middle. On non-commercial shows it could come anywhere. And if the story is better told with two smaller crisis points (a three act format), you’d have that luxury too. Networks generally give you very strict formats to follow. And they can be stifling, but then I see a show like THE GOOD WIFE and it follows all of the network conventions, and has solid act breaks that fall right where they need to be, and still they’re turning out the best written show on television.

What’s your question? Who knows? It might be one I answer next Thursday night in my teleseminar.

How to break into voice overs without holding up a sign

With all this hoopla about homeless Obama impersonator, Ted Williams going from a street corner to a voice over career, let me tell you the story of how another VO artist broke into the biz.

Mark Elliott. You may not know the name but you sure as hell have heard the golden voice. He’s done thousands of trailers, God knows how many promos for CBS, and for many years was the exclusive voice of Disney. (He probably had to say “experience the magic” 7,000,000 times.)

In the mid ‘70s Mark was a disc jockey – a very successful one mind you – on top rated LA station, KHJ. But how many times can play “The Night Chicago Died” without wanting to kill yourself? Mark thought voice over work was the way out.

He started taking classes, knocking on doors. Nothing. No one was interested. And remember, this guy has pipes! If not the voice of God than the guy who fills in for Him on the weekends. At the time his girlfriend was a beautician and one of her customers was a dude who owned a company that made movie trailers. She told him about Mark and he said Mark could call him. It’s amazing how gracious people can be when someone is holding a sharp pair of scissors to their head.

Mark did phone the guy and predictably was told there was nothing for him. He already had announcers he used on a regular basis. But Mark asked if he could check back from time to time and the guy said sure.

Mark called him every single week. Finally, after a full year, the guy said he might have something for him but no promises. He had a director who had no clue what he wanted. He already went through three voice over guys who just threw up their hands and ran. If Mark wanted, he could work with this nut, but there was no guarantee his trailer would be used and if not, he wouldn’t get paid. This would all be work on spec. Hours and hours of it.  Mark said he’ll take it.

Now remember, Mark was a top disc jockey. I’m sure many other jocks in his position would be insulted. How dare they be asked to work for free? They’d be saying, “Do you know who I am, even though I don’t use my real name?” But Mark was willing to do the work.

For the next two weeks, when he got off the air, he drove to the studio and worked ten hours a day voicing a gazillion variations of this trailer. Finally, the director was happy and Mark’s trailer ran.

The movie was STAR WARS. The crazy director was George Lucas.

Almost immediately, Mark’s voice over career took off. A few weeks later he did the trailer for THE GOODBYE GIRL. More offers came pouring in. And the rest, as they say, is all profit.

I know everyone loves the Ted Williams story. I do, too. It’s that one-in-a-million fairy tale and allows us all to still believe that miracles can happen, even to us. But I prefer the story of the schmoe who worked his ass off and made it because of his passion and sacrifice. Even if it means no one will ever do a movie-of-the-week about him.

A day on the Warner Brothers lot

My partner, David and I went to Warner Brothers yesterday to help punch-up a friend’s pilot. Judging by the nine-story-high billboards, I guess they tape Conan there. We were directed to a large parking structure across the street. That’s when you know your career is in the dumper – when they don’t give you a drive-on. When you’re assigned the lot reserved for audience members of ELLEN. Forget that we weren’t in a lot with all those fancy Porsches and BMW’s. We were the only car in the whole structure that had California plates.

I felt bad for the ELLEN audience. There they were in this confusing Byzantine parking structure, SUV’s coming at them from every direction. They had no idea where they were going. Was it really worth it to see Ellen interview 12-year-old basketball prodigy Jordan McCabe?

We crossed the street along with three people in clown outfits. At least they all came in one car. We next had to go through a TSA-like security check. There was a time that Warner Brothers practically seduced us to come to work for them. Now we’re considered potential terrorists.

We had to show our ID, and the guard (a very nice woman, by the way), compared my driver’s license photo to my actual face. I thought to myself, what happens when the clowns go through?

Once on the lot, we soaked up the Hollywood vibes. Every soundstage has a plaque listing what productions were filmed on that stage. So on one you might see CASABLANCA, THE JAZZ SINGER, $#’! MY DAD SAYS.


The first time David and I were ever on the Warners lot, we were like an hour early for a meeting. We were just starting out in the business. I think we had sold one script. And we were still given a drive-on. But I digress. We killed the hour by just walking around the lot. Standing by one stage door, in full costume, was John Wayne smoking a cigarette. He was making his last movie, THE SHOOTIST. He spotted us and said, “How’s it going, boys?” We were completely tongue-tied. “Uh…gr-gr-great, Duke”. We moved on and thought to ourselves, “Wow, we have ARRIVED!”

Today I think I saw that Asian guy from THE MENTALIST who talks like Jack Webb. But I can’t be sure. He could have also just been another maintenance guy on his way to hanging the seventh giant Conan poster.

We found our building, a charming older structure with a tile roof, and headed upstairs to the conference room to work. I always wonder -- what classic shows down through the years have been rewritten in this very room? Was 77 SUNSET STRIP created here? Or MURPHY BROWN? Or THE OBLONGS?

I have to say, there are few things as much fun as sitting around a room with incredibly funny people. So many laughs. I just feel bad that none of them got into the script.

Styrofoam lunch from the fabulous Warner Brothers commissary is a must. I was feeling nostalgic so I picked the entrée that traveled the worst – their world famous “homemade” chicken pot pie.

I knew it would come back cold, but I had no idea the presentation would be so, uh… unique. The goopy contents of the chicken pie were in the main compartment and a biscuit sat in one of the others. This was a homemade chicken pot pie? Where was the pot and the pie part? Good luck to the guys from THE BIG BANG THEORY who get to order here every day.

After five hours of everyone sharing their latest brain aneurism and Holland Taylor stories, we finished the polish. I hope the people coming in tomorrow are better.

On the way out I passed the stage where I directed EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. “God, I miss this!” I said wistfully. David reassured me that I’d direct another show. “No,” I said, “My parking space.”