Martini Shot

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 awkward childhood in Holland and a lifelong need to fit in with the cool kids. Rob Long also had an awkward childhood in Holland. He also ended up in show business. But he’s not sure Lynton’s story is really a cautionary tale. The entertainment business isn’t suffering from too much risk. It’s suffering from too little. Also: Puppets might have helped. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, has all the hallmarks of a great pilot. But according to Rob, it’s the opposite. Show business has prepared him well for studying the Bible — and led him to the unsettling realization that biblical scholarship and credits arbitration are basically the same thing. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, and all of which made the comedy work. From Waiting for Guffman to Best in Show to Beetlejuice, she gave audiences “permission to laugh” by making even the most absurd premises feel emotionally true. Which is why the Home Alone franchise became a global phenomenon, and why for writers especially, her loss is painful in a very specific way: The best, funniest, most essential parts of a script aren’t written, if you’re lucky enough to have Catherine O’Hara reading your lines. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 ‘80s finance type, couldn’t actually be arrested for launching a hostile takeover as the line was written. He was right. But it annoyed everyone. The lesson however stuck: knowing when to let things go matters a lot more than knowing you’re correct. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 party he ever went to — the one no one planned — and traces how an industry that once knew how to have fun became serious, fragmented and anxious. His antidote to malaise? A really good, wide-open bash — that someone else pays for. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 “European-style” pool in Las Vegas, audiences are drawn in by the allure of illicit skin. And in a business where a hit can be hard to come by and certainty is nonexistent, nudity — whether from closeted hockey players or HBO hits of yore — remains the simple, reliable grease.  Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, and they were right to. But did Quibi fail because it was a bad idea, or because it spent and promised too much? Even Rob Long’s TikTok algo now serves soapy microdramas. Quibi may not have ended up a punchline because it was wrong, but because — after three glasses of wine — it ordered the deluxe version of the future and forgot the return policy. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Rob Long sits in his small New York City apartment surrounded by things — hard copies of old scripts, four umbrellas — he feels lucky to have it all. And in an industry where even modest success feels like a lottery ticket, Rob asks us to pause and consider an annual plea: supporting My Friend’s Place, an organization that works tirelessly to turn the tide for unhoused youth in Los Angeles. For young people failed again and again by the adults in their lives, My Friend’s Place does life-changing work — and for far less than this industry would spend on a half-hour pilot (if those even still exist). Head to My Friend’s Place, Rob’s charity of choice, to help support youth experiencing homelessness. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rob Long once walked into a packed table read for a Paramount show airing on CBS, only to learn that Paramount had announced it was buying the network that very morning. Suddenly every exec who feared for their job materialized, bringing tension, chaos, and definitely not enough doughnuts. It’s hard not to picture a similar scene at Warner Bros. right now as Netflix scrambles to outmaneuver Paramount. But while bosses barricade themselves in conference rooms and pray for synergies that never happen, creatives shouldn’t wait for rescue. In the worst possible moment to be in this business, the best move is the simplest one: make something. Go to YouTube, Instagram, wherever your work can live today. Because Hollywood isn’t coming to save you. You’re going to have to save yourself. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the axe swings in Hollywood today, there’s no cushy deal, no soft landing, no assistant guarding your Rolodex anymore like in the old days. You’re out — at least for the moment. But after the gate stops lifting for you, there is a way back in. And it’s the same one it’s always been: you keep moving. You take every meeting. You hustle. You become that person — popular, persistent, maybe pitching a terrible show — who stays alive in the business simply by refusing to vanish. Transcript here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bob Broder — legendary agent, executive and showrunner-whisperer — saw Hollywood for what it was: a sprawling mosaic of chaos, ego and opportunity. As Rob Long remembers of Broder, who first represented him in the Cheers years, and who recently died at 85, he “had a way of scanning for cracks and openings and opportunities.” Broder didn’t scream or throw phones; he won with poise, charm and a look that said he already knew how any potential deal was going to end. Broder led with kindness, foresight and the occasional killer shrug. A legend, and the last man in town to make “calm” look dangerous. Transcript here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A young hopeful recently asked Rob Long how to break into showbiz. His reply? “Bad timing — there’s no business left.” But for Rob, that’s also the fun part. When the old temples crumble, you get to build your own. Every Golden Age ends just as you arrive — usually somewhere on the 10 freeway — but stick around long enough and you’ll have your own wistful memoir moment: My Twenty Years in Hollywood. Transcript here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1923, to promote Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!, the studio didn’t buy ads — it bought a spectacle. They hired Harry F. Young, “The Human Fly,” to scale a Manhattan hotel in honor of the film’s most famous stunt (you know the one). He made it about 10 stories up before falling to his death — and right into the morning papers. It was, in every sense, earned media. A hundred years later, Rob Long finds that not much has changed in Hollywood’s endless climb for attention — except, maybe, the safety net. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Rob Long was 18, a dentist said his wisdom teeth had to go. His father told him to hang up the phone: “The whole wisdom tooth thing is a scam.” Forty years later, Rob's fine — mostly. And now, watching David Ellison try to merge Paramount and Warner Bros. in an industry where economies of scale rarely if ever succeed, he sees the same impulse at work: a painful, costly procedure masquerading as progress.  Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Those who lived in New York during the ’70s and ’80s knew to carry around “mugger money”: a small wad of bills kept handy on the assumption you’d eventually be mugged. While New York has improved since then, the concept of “mugger money” remains alive and well in Hollywood. The managers with non-writing producer credits, pilot directors with perpetual royalties, agents’ 10 percent and lawyers’ 5 percent — showbiz is built off people smart enough to get some for themselves. But, as Rob Long notes, with budgets shrinking and spending slowing, even the pickpockets are getting squeezed.  Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In show business, “after the holiday” — Labor Day, that is — are the three magic words that make August a breeze and September feel like back to school. But for Rob Long, it actually does mean back to school, as he starts his second year in the Master of Divinity program at Princeton Theological Seminary, and comes one step closer to his goal of pitching a multi-camera comedy while wearing a priest’s collar. If Rob had his way, though, we’d all be back in the classroom. Why? If Disney, owner of Lucasfilm and Marvel, can’t reach young male audiences, then we all need a core curriculum — one with every installment of the Porky’s franchise, Caddyshack and Taken. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Industry jargon once separated the insiders from the posers. Rob Long remembers a network president who tried to talk the talk — pitching a spinoff with a cheery “bip bip bip” and some magician-like hand gestures. Cue hours of mocking behind closed doors. But the bigger joke may be on Hollywood itself: while words like “showrunner” have gone mainstream, the actual craft of making television — running a room, shaping a script, building a show — is slipping away. And that matters a lot more than knowing the lingo. Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Years ago, a well-known comic actor hosted an ill-fated late-night show that was canceled halfway through its 13-week run. But rather than leave town under a cloud of immense failure, this guy went to lunch. According to Rob Long, it was “the bravest lunch I’ve yet seen eaten,” and the comic was met with several well-wishers for his troubles. That’s because, as Rob says, people in Hollywood find failure exhilarating. “We wallow in misfortune,” he says. “We live to applaud the down-and-out. When people call you brave in the entertainment business, it’s almost always because you’ve done something that really sucked.” Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rob Long’s experience with Paramount goes back so far, he was there in the Gulf and Western days. He was there when Barry Diller fought Sumner Redstone for the company in 1994 for the company — and lost. He’s seen Viacom and CBS and everything in between. So as David Ellison takes over the storied company, Rob has a key piece of advice, if the young mogul is willing to listen: think small and watch Brad Pitt’s Moneyball. Because when you succeed at small, the big will take care of itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Walk up Madison Avenue, and there’s Hermès, Gucci and Tom Ford. Then, down in Soho is The RealReal, a luxury consignment store where you can find largely the same Gucci stripes, pebbled Hermes leather or giant Tom Ford zippers. The stuff is just a little used — and a whole lot cheaper. That’s the challenge Hollywood faces. A-list celebrities and studio-level comedy are just a click away on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram. It’s a little rougher around the edges, sure. But it’s free. So what’s Rob Long’s solution for Hollywood? Let him tell you. Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices