Sepinwall on the Sitcom Room

Image stolen with little to no regard from Sepinwall

Well, I've joined good company. Like that other bald, heavy, huggable sociopath above, I've shown up in the Jersey mob's paper of record, the Star-Ledger. Dismember a few weeks back (oops, sorry, that should be "remember"...I've got to get Tony outta my head), I spent a glorious weekend at the fabulous LAX Hilton at Ken Levine's Sitcom Room? My favorite TV critic's written about it here.¹

After the all-nighter we pulled in our writers' room and my quick nap/workout/shower/shoveled breakfast, I headed up to the main conference room for the "Sitcon Room" and the performance of all our re-written scenes. I heard my team leader Liz say hi to Alan Sepinwall and figured I'd walk on over and say howdy. I've been reading him just about as long as he's been blogging and about six months ago realized he'd edged ahead of the SacBee's Rick Kushman as my go-to TV critic. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or maybe the mega-dose of MSG from the Chinese "food" Dan O'Day brought us on Saturday night, but I was as pleased to meet Alan as I was to meet Ken and all the amazing writers on Sunday afternoon's panel. (Just kidding, Alan. It wasn't the exhaustion or the flavor enhancement.)

Alan had taken a side trip over from the TCA summer press tour because he's a big fan of Ken's (and I suspect he wanted a break from some of this year's more contentious sessions). He probably thought this would be a fun lark for a few hours. I can only guess how excited Alan was when he witnessed the obvious quality of our output. I mean, here's a guy whose vocation and avocation is writing about television, witnessing the emergence of the next generation of great comedy writers from the womb of the airport Hilton. Being the smart guy he is, he grabbed a few of us and practically begged us to be interviewed. We tossed the guy a bone and a few of us gave him our email addresses. I mean hell, it's not the last time he'll need to interview us.²

In case you're wondering, the A-Team joke really is funny, but Jesse's right...it's a "sitcom joke". Trust me though, it's not the joke I feel bad about. Be careful what you say in a writers' room late at night. It might end up in the script against even your own better judgment. Especially if everyone belly-laughs for a half-hour.

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¹ Be careful with this one. I'm blogging about an article in which I am interviewed, written by someone who will also blog about writing the article, and possibly refer to the blogs of those of us he interviewed. When you unwind this recursion, be sure you end up where you started, Achilles.
² Unless Sam Simon's right. Then we're all fucked. Or if we're untalented hacks. I shouldn't discount that possibility, as remote as it may be.

Sitcom Room Recap

I'm conscious again! I'm conscious again!

Here's a rough pass at my Sitcom Room timeline:
Friday

• 2pm - arrive PHX for 3:45 Southwest flight
• 5:10 - board the 4:45 Southwest flight they put us on after ours was mysteriously canceled
• 6:15-ish - land LAX, get shuttle to Hilton, check-in
  
• 7:30-ish - take taxi to Santa Monica. The wife came along, figuring she'd lay by the pool and read, or go shopping, or just relax. She didn't count on cold and foggy weather or her damaged eardrum taking a beating on the plane. Regardless, anyone who truly knows my wife knows there was only one thing she really wanted out of this trip - dinner at Bubba Gump's. I know. She doesn't have what one might call a refined palate.
• 'Round midnight - turn off laptop and go to sleep

Saturday

• 6am-ish - head down to the hotel gym for a workout. No weights, just an hour on an elliptical. Sounds crazy, sure. Wait until tomorrow.
• 8-ish - breakfast in the Cafe. One egg white omelet, an order of toast, a diet coke, coffee, and oj, for the low-low price of, well more than my first car.
• 8:45 - into Century A&B to sign in, grab my nametag, and pick a seat. I went for the back row until I was shamed into the front. Ken doesn't spit when he talks, so it worked out very well.
• 9am - Here it is in Ken's words from his blog: "Saturday did begin at 9 with me telling them everything I knew about comedy and writing and life. Then we broke for coffee at 10."
• Noon - lunch in the Cafe. All of us. I believe Heaven's Gate cost less than our combined bill.
• 1-ish - the original scene. I don't know what IT is, but Kerrilee Kaski sure has IT. (Actually, I know what IT is, but I can't spell it.)
• 1:15-1:45 - Actor, network, and studio notes. Taking these and incorporating them into the scene-as-written would be only a little tougher than hammering out a workable solution to the Two-State plan.
• 2pm-4:20am Sunday - Off to our writers' rooms. I can't be very specific about the timeline in the room because it pretty much stood still. I haven't laughed that hard since that one time on America's Funniest Home Videos when the guy got hit in the balls.
  

Sunday

• 4:45am - Lights out for sleepy time. Jesse's crashed on the living room couch and the wife tells me if I get arrested for kidnapping, she knows nothing about it.
• 6:40am - phone rings. Dan O'Day calling to tell me that he and Ken never got the email with our scene. I boot up the laptop as I incoherently babble to Dan. Finally, I mail the scene off to the two of them. Dan tells me he's got it and I collapse to the floor to blog. I know. It's a sickness. Ken emails a short while later to confirm that he also got the files, and I get dressed to workout again. See, now that might be a sickness.
• 7:30-8:10 - I believe I listen to the Rocky theme song twice during my short workout, and Eye of the Tiger once. That's all that's keeping me awake.
• 8:30 - to the cafe to scarf some eggs and juice. I was there for just ten minutes, but the first five were for the credit check.
• 8:45 - Hallway outside the meeting rooms where we're milling about. I hear my team's leader, Lizbeth, say "Star Ledger" as she's walking toward someone I don't recognize at first...then I realize it's Alan Sepinwall, who's dropped in to watch the morning's activities. I go meet my favorite TV critic.
  
• 9am - The actors start kicking the ass out of the scenes. Ours will be last, as they're being performed in the order of completion. Speed, I suppose, is something our team needs a bit more of.
• Noon-ish - lunch with my team. I had a bowl of ramen that cost more than my flight to LA, but it was good. No banana sauce though. I had to settle for Tabasco.
• 1-ish - back to our writers' room (the smell of bad chinese food will forever permeate that conference room at the Hilton) to polish our scene. Our biggest problem was a lack of smooth transitions from one mood to another, so we tried to work that out. Ken came in and gave us a great bit to use, though it did mean the death of the Iguana 2000.
• 3pm - the panel discussion. Holy crap. Giants. We're not worthy. I'm very embarrassed that I have to take a quick break from the proceedings to run to the restroom. My father was right: make sure you go before we leave.
• 5pm - Quick video interviews, we say our goodbyes, and head to the bar. Finally, like real writers we drink! (Really nothing like real writers. We're too tired. One drinkypoo and some food is all.)

This was a fantastic weekend, and worth every penny I spent. Two meeting rooms, two conference rooms, and two suites set Ken and Dan back quite a bit. Add on the actors and the Chinese food (it's expensive to find food that bad) and this was a steal for the price. And immense fun.

My team completely rocked. Funny, smart, clever writers all of them. We were locked in a room for just under 15 hours and had a ton of fun. I'd be locked in a room with Lizbeth, Dan, John, and Jesse anytime.

Thank you Ken, for a great, and memorable weekend.

Day 2 - It's all over

Actually, I'm way too tired to blog about the awesomeness of today, but figured I'd at least put up a quick message to say it was an amazing experience. I worked with some great, smart people, learned a lot, and got to meet some of my favorite writers.

Tomorrow, a fuller recap, including tales of the special guest stars!

Morning 2, or is it Night 1 Neverending?

Ouch. I was off the grid most of the day yesterday in a conference room without wireless. That's probably all for the best, as my team was hard at work putting together the bestest episode of Jolly Happy Father with too Skinny Wife ever! I can't say much about the process because every time I start to type anything about it my captors friendly assistants hired by Ken and Dan poke me with a rifle pencil and suggest I move on.

Suffice it to say, I think the hours the five of us (and the other three teams of five) spent in our writers' room were a fantastic learning experience. We got in the room around, I don't know, maybe 2pm and out around 4:30am. I have to say, being a software engineer with long experience with 18- and 36-hour shifts helped a lot. Especially when I got the call twenty minutes ago saying the email from my teammate with the files never showed up in Ken's in-box. A good two-hour sleep was plenty for me to grab the copies I fortunately had on my laptop and resend them. And it gave me an excuse to wake up a little earlier to blog for you, fair readers, before heading off for a quick workout.^*

Trust me. If you'd ever spent a night writing server code with my friend Scott, this would have been a cakewalk. True the dartboard was missing for a healthy distraction, but Ken and Dan don't yell like Cujo.

The actors did a yeoman's job yesterday with Ken's *ahem* masterfully written scene. I hope they have fun with the four scenes they'll be playing this morning. We'll find out in a few short hours!

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^* Lest anyone think I'm fit, or some kind of workout fanatic...I'm going to need the exercise to get energized for another full day (and hopefully not night) of work. I'm acting tough, but I'm not a kid anymore!

Sitcom Room, Morning 1

"Go fuck yourselves."

And so ends the first segment this morning. Ken's been cracking us up and regaling us with stories (and, you know, giving us a picture of sitcom rooms) and ended with perfection. With that line, I feel right at home!

Sitcom Room, Night 0

That's right. I'm here in L.A. for Ken Levine's Sitcom Room. Figured I've got the laptop, I've got the wireless, I've got the means and motive...what the hell, I'll try to blog about it.

This is Night -1. Or, I guess it could be Night 0. It really depends on how you want to count it out. Let's go with Zero. Must tell¹ you about my day.

It sucked. Frickin' Southwest canceled our flight and didn't bother to use the contact information they had to notify us. Since it didn't occur to us to check on its status before heading out to the airport - sunny day in PHX, flying to sunnier LA - we ended up getting bumped to a later flight, pushed back to B-group, and generally pissed off. Shoulda taken the batmobile on its new wheels instead. Would have been more fun, and could have stopped off in the desert on the way home to shoe shop. Alas.

Anyway, I'm about to call it a night here in room 1614, or as I'm calling it Hymen's Triumph² after Samuel Daniel's magnificent play of that fateful year. I find that the easiest way to remember your hotel room is to recall a great event or artistic achievement of that year. 1614 was too obvious. Who can't relate to Daniel's masterpiece?³

I'll try to blog at least once tomorrow and once on Sunday, but as I said over on Ken's blog, I'm not sure this isn't a clever ruse to rustle up some cheap (read: slave) labor to ship overseas for a sitcom sweat shop. If I survive, I'll blog.

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1 Did anyone catch that, or was that joke just for me? Sometimes, I feel like a fiddler...on a roof.
2 Seriously, if the Hymen triumphs, you're not doing it right. And you'll never live it down.
3 Um, yeah. If you think I even know who the hell Samuel Daniel was, let alone knew about this play, you're crazier than I am. I was hoping there'd be a Bacon or Shakespeare play attributed in that year, though I guess I could have gone with the Cervantes poem. Thanks, Wikipedia!