As the entertainment business slowly becomes a form of television and everyone slowly realizing that the television business depends on the management skills and personal discipline of…writers, some show runners are finding themselves replaced at...
In Hollywood, everyone is an *artist.* And as artists, they often feel they are entitled to a certain amount of eccentricity and perfectionism, including but not limited to having their cake and eating it too...
Rob explains why managing “the talent” —which includes anyone who interacts with studio management— sometimes calls for techniques that are more commonly associated with calming infants. Or 19th century schizophrenics. Rob also reveals the strategy...
In Los Angeles, everyone’s in show business. Everyone.
There’s only one phrase a scriptwriter dreads more than “we love it, but we have some notes”: “we love it and have no notes.”
Rob discovers a WWII era psyops spy manual and realizes it is the perfect guide for disrupting the business practices of modern content companies. But —as a New Year’s resolution— he vows not to use...
Rob gives a master class in the unnecessarily complicated etiquette of wishing friends and family “Merry Chr…”, er, “Seasons Gree…”; uh, “Happy Holi…”. Well, you know what we’re trying to say.
While walking his dog, Rob finds another writer’s set of index cards with the outline of a movie written on them. That leads to a realization about the perils of self-criticism when trying to create...
Rob explains an immutable law of show biz physics: bad news travels slow because there’s no money in it, while good news travels fast –really fast– turbo-charged by the notion that money is about to...
Preston Beckman was a network programmer at NBC and Fox for over 30 years. He brought the country “Must See TV” at NBC and was witness to the the start of the reality revolution when...