Martini Shot

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I pretend I’m the kind of person who has never and would never buy vitamin supplements from Instagram, but sadly that is not true. I also bought the Ronco Rotisserie from TV years ago, for the same reason — I see and ad fifty times, eventually I buy the thing.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I predict that the most popular and sought after audience demographic is going to be old people, because once they figure out how to subscribe to Netflix or Hulu or whatever, they’re not going to want to mess with it.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I try to talk some sense into the most stubborn jerk I know —me — and try to make him take the advice he’s always giving to other people, so if he’s smart — and that’s debatable — he’ll just shut up and write the script.

This is Rob Long. I got a “new email address” message that has the wrong email, and it’s emblematic of a bedrock truth about the entertainment industry: it was better when it was a Rolodex business.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I take a long boat trip to interesting and exotic places, and end up heading back to the boat for pizza night, which is a metaphor I hope everyone can relate to.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I try to teach a writing class and fail to properly refuse the call, mirror the resolution, or find the pinch point. And apparently that’s what writing is all about.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about my old leaky, oil burning car and why it was a mistake to get it fixed. Turns out, the oil leak grime was holding the whole thing together, sort of like show business.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I download the Face App and see what I look like when I’m wrinkled and decrepit, which will probably be what I look like next Thursday, but there is good news: old people are about to get very popular in Hollywood.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot my washing machine breaks down and I fix it, sort of, and it all makes me think about Disney Plus. They connect, I promise.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I tell you about the time I went to Costa Rica and drank ayahuasca for four days. There was probably a more artful way to put that, but, I went to Costa Rica and drank ayahuasca. I ran out of euphemisms.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I tell you about a game show called Phone Swap that is funny and creepy and also on Snapchat, in case you were wondering what the young people were laughing at.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I get super technical and talk about flywheels, which are those things on wheely machine parts which make it go whoosh, whoosh. See? Told you it was technical.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I buy a t-shirt and get an email and somehow it reminds me that writers aren’t always the greatest bosses, especially of other writers.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I commit acts of violence and mayhem on the Transitive Property of Mathematics, for which I apologize to my eighth grade math teacher.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I get an email from the third assistant of a powerful show business figure, who, you know, must be powerful because who else would need three assistants?

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about serial killers and families living together and all of the ways writers have of making the job a little easier and the viewer a little less inclined to grab the remote.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I explain how the entertainment business works. It’s like when you have some French fries on your plate, and people keep reaching over and taking some — because fries are delicious — but then why don’t they have any of their own?

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot, I get into an argument with a friend of mine, a fellow writer, at dinner, and teach the other two people there a valuable lesson about having dinner with two writers during a Writers Guild battle and that’s, don’t.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I download the DirecTV Now app to watch the HBO Go app and Showtime Anytime app, but what I needed to do was download the regular DirecTV app to watch the HBO Now app. I think. I’m still on hold with customer service.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I go to a pitch meeting and at the end of it, I have no idea who is supposed to call whom. That used to be an agent’s job.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot, writers are firing their agents, even agents that they like. An agent said to me, some of my clients have cried on the phone while firing me. I’ve never felt so loved, and also fired.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot, I follow a chain, from some really bad advice, to jail, and then all the way to an Emmy.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I commit technical violations of investment banking regulations by serving in an advisory capacity to certain mergers and acquisitions deals. Or I would, if anybody ever listened to me.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I describe — as best I can — the current disagreement between the Writers Guild and the big talent agencies. And I come up with what I think is a pretty interesting compromise. As best I can.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about the worst pitch I ever heard about, which involved a basketball, hot coffee, and a writer with bad aim.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot we talk about the one-page guide to everything you need to know about the entire entertainment industry, in all of its forms and shapes, and that’s the call sheet, which reveals all of the mysteries of show business.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about what an editor on a movie or TV show really does, which is, watch every take, every outtake, every shot. They see us all at our worst, which is probably why they’re always getting pushed around.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I try to explain why the most successful companies in the entertainment business are like the concession stand at the movie theater. You’re not selling the movie. You’re selling the Mild Duds.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I listen in on a conversation between a writer and someone giving the writer some very tough feedback on the writer’s latest script, which the writer is now really regretting having asked for. That old story.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I appear on an obscure talk show on CSPAN one time, get recognized the next day by one person, and think I’m now a famous person who will continue to be recognized by a fascinated public.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about how part of watching a movie or television show is about shopping, for clothes and home decor and maybe even friends.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about how you know when someone really loves you, by marshmallows and piles of shrimp.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about the worst sales pitch ever, which goes like this: you’re terrible at your job, you don’t know what you’re doing, please hire me.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I clean things out for the new year. Digitally, I mean, Clips and ideas and files from an extremely cluttered Dropbox, iCloud, and Evernote.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I give you the best Christmas gift ever, and ask for the same thing in return: Total digital absolution. You no longer need to keep up with what’s on Netflix or Hulu or your Kindle or your inbox. Merry Christmas to us.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot a friend opens a new coffee place in New York and I commit acts of influencing and plugola, in exchange for a tall drip.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I’d like to get a lot done this week but of course I can’t because it’s the holidays and it’s hard to get anyone’s attention until after the holidays when it’s crazy because we just got back from the holidays, so I think we’re talking February.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about impossible it is for some people to remember that they have enough stuff, enough of everything. And by some people I mean, me. But maybe not just me.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I tell the story of the movie star, the eighty dollar plumber, and the joys of a normal life. It all ties together, I promise.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about what happened when my tailor died and his shop was rebooted and remodeled and was better in almost every way except one: it was missing something, like a lot of reboots.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I hypothetically and with names changed, explore some of the ways writers get scripts written, from Adderall to ten micrograms of LSD, everything but just sitting down and doing the work.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about my most recent act of bad business judgment.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I tell the story of the older actress who wouldn’t play a grandmother, because she didn’t think the audience saw her as the grandmother type. She was eighty. And in real life, a great grandmother.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about that thing where when you go someplace foreign and you buy something you think you’re going to wear back home, but, you’re never going to wear it back home.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I struggle to wedge myself into child’s pose during yoga, while the woman next to me ignores the teacher entirely and just stretches out. It’s a lightbulb moment for me.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot, the first episode of my manifesto on how to get better television. It starts a little slow, like a lot of shows on premium cable and streaming services, but stick with it.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I tell the story of the young comedy writer who has dinner with the older comedy writer, and the young comedy writer has the temerity to say something funny. Bad move.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about the time I was in Gori, Georgia and I sat in Stalin’s old reading chair and it was pretty weird, and then I twist that into an analogy about the entertainment business, as I usually do.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I tell the story of two actors up for the same part who interpreted the character very differently, and what happened after that. Spoiler alert: they both got the job. Which almost never happens.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I use a very grim battlefield metaphor to describe the new Best Popular Movie Oscar award, coming in 2019. It’s a little dark, but then so is the entertainment business.