Pilot Season

by Michael Taylor

I have worked as a juicer (set lighting technician) in Hollywood for over 30 years and have the battle scars to prove it. This column is dedicated to explaining various aspects of the media industry. This is the third in a four-part series on television pilots - you can find the second part here.

Part III: Back to You

“It’s Chinatown, Jake.”
from Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, 1974
 
Early in June, the set lighting Best Boy (the head lighting technician) from the pilot of Gary Unmarried left a message on my voice mail telling me the show had been picked up for CBS’s fall lineup.  I’d already read the good news in the trades, but his call was a welcome confirmation that I would indeed have a job on the crew. In late July, the construction gang began assembling the sets on stage, and two weeks later, the set lighting crew started hanging the two hundred and fifty or so lamps it takes to light a modern sit-com.  By mid-August, production on the first of twelve new episodes – and doubtless many more – was well underway.

But if the Gods of Hollywood giveth, so do they taketh away – which is why the crew that worked so hard to make the pilot (including this juicer) is once again on the outside looking in. Yet another Hollywood promise evaporates into the smoggy haze above LA.

Truth be told, I was not surprised.  Disappointed, yes, but I’d harbored a lingering suspicion something might go sour with this deal. Call it intuition or just a hunch, but everything seemed to fall into place a little too neatly.  Good things do occasionally materialize without much visible effort (and I must admit, the pilot really did just drop into my lap), but this remains the exception.

What happened? We got hosed, that’s what, and if the manner in which this hosing occurred is a rather convoluted tale, it also serves as a useful lesson in the facts of life here in Hollywood.  The explanation begins with some background information that may at first seem irrelevant (patience,grasshopper), then turns to what I know of what happened, and finally ends with an intriguing –  if unverifiable – tale of hubris, conflict, and bloody revenge far above-the-line.

Call it icing on this rather bitter cake...

The 2007 television season kicked off with the debut of a brand new sit-com called Back to You.   Starring Kelsey Grammer (still aglow from his eleven year run on Frazier), Back to You was widely viewed as the White Buffalo of the sit-com world – a tangible symbol of hope and renewal for those of us who prefer to work these multi-camera comedies. This wishful thinking sprang from a basic Industry truism: all it takes to trigger a stampede in this desperately insecure town is one Really Big Hit. If this new show managed to become a monster smash, the networks might see the light, burn off their reality-show garbage over the summer months, then rush en masse to fill the fall lineup with multi-camera sit-coms attempting to capitalize on the success of Back to You.  That would mean work for us all – not the easy, indolent life of picking hundred dollar bills from the heavily-laden branches of the Money Tree, but decent, humane, non-abusive work at full union scale.

Adding fuel to this hopeful fire was a wide-ranging media blitz accompanying the launch of Back to You, painting this new show in the shimmering rainbow hues of the Next Big Thing. One afternoon, I turned on NPR – the public radio network known for its measured, thoughtful coverage of national and world events – and was astonished to hear a twenty minute piece on Back to You, including long interviews with Grammer and legendary director/executive producer Jim Burrows.

In the shaky world of television – a hothouse of ass-covering, over-caffeinated anxiety – Burrows is as close to a Sure Thing as ever walked the star-spangled sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard. I’ve no doubt that deep in the plush enclaves of the network suites, high-echelon executives sink to their knees and pray at shrines dedicated to Jim Burrows, murmuring His Name in hushed, reverential tones. In above-the-line Hollywood, there is no more enduring love than that generated by a long track record of big-money success. Having cut his teeth on shows like Bob Newhart and Mary Tyler Moore, he moved on through Taxi, Cheers, Friends, Frazier, and Will and Grace (among others) to emerge as the Big Dog of the sit-com world. More than any other living human, Burrows has the Midas Touch – and if ever there was a Messiah to lead us all back to the Promised Land of sit-com heaven, Jim Burrows was The Man. Given his track record, and the star power of his cast, Back to You was on the fast track to big time success. 

Such was the gauzy, sepia-tinted dream, at least: an impending return to the fat-and-happy glory days of sit-coms.  But even the greats can’t always make their magic happen.  Mighty Casey sometimes really does strike out, and rather than soar on golden wings into the infinite blue of sweet success, you wind up holding a lead balloon – the exception that proves the rule.  If buzz was hot before the first episode even aired, buzz alone can’t push a show over the top to make it a hit. In a season brought to its knees by the three month long WGA strike, Back to You was never quite able to find and maintain a comfortable stride.  By the time the strike ended, and an oddly truncated Pilot Season had stumbled through the spring of 2008, the show was dead in the water. 

That such a high-profile show would flop isn’t in itself so unusual – shows drop from our television screens with metronomic regularity – but the real shock was that it happened to a Jim Burrows show.
I did a lot of day-playing on Will and Grace during the final two seasons, and got to watch Burrows in action. He’s everything a director/producer should be: smart, quick, and mercilessly blunt. He knows what works and what doesn’t, and will neither mince words nor waste time in his drive to make each show as good as it can possibly be. His famous intolerance of incompetence pays off for everyone involved; Burrows routinely blocks a complete show by noon, at which point, most directors are still picking their way through the rubble of Act One. Having already made more money than God, he continues to work simply because he likes to and is good at it – and is thus in the enviable position of not having to take shit from anybody.

Next issue:Gary Unmarried