If you want to suck up to your audience, Peter Tolan probably isn't your best choice. But as moderator of a panel of hit TV-series creators -- all with shows nominated Tuesday for Golden Globes -- he really can't be beat.
Tolan (left; all photos by Getty Images), executive producer-writer-director of FX's "Rescue Me," got things off to a warm and fuzzy start by flipping off the audience as he took the stage at the Hollywood Radio & Television Society's Hitmakers lunch Wednesday.
Then he made a crack about the size of the audience, saying if one discounted the staff in the Century Plaza Hotel's ballroom, the remainder would about equal the audience for last night's "Jay Leno Show." "That's great for the HRTS, and an acceptable number for NBC," he quipped.
Tolan then started telling the panelists to "f--- off" for assorted reasons, such as their being younger or more successful than he is.
However, "How I Met Your Mother's" Carter Bays, "Modern Family's" Steven Levitan, "Glee's" Ryan Murphy and "Mad Men's" Matthew Weiner took the ribbing in stride.
His first question was about the panelists' worst jobs, "so we can all take some pleasure in your past pain." Bays (far right) confessed that he'd worked at Hooters -- "Those shorts were not flattering!" he joked -- for half a summer as a fry cook, while Levitan said he'd earned extra money as a camp counselor by cleaning out the bathrooms.
Weiner confessed, "I'm a writer because I'm unemployable in every other profession." And Murphy (near right) cracked up the crowd by detailing "a week of terror at a mall" when he was 15, which started with part of a day at Florsheim (he got fired by 4 p.m. because he was afraid to touch feet), segued to a stint at the Gap (he got fired for being too lazy to shelve jeans on the higher shelves) and concluded with happiness as a jewelry gift-wrapper, a job that lasted two years.
The creatives then discussed their various shows, talking about their genesis.
Bays said he and partner Craig Thomas (who was scheduled to be on the panel but was called away) had two ideas when they started out -- one that involved a lot of research into things such as nuclear reactors, and one based on their own lives. They decided, as he said, "Let's be that show people watch and say, 'That's me, I've been there.'"
It was at that point that they recalled having jotted down the title "How I Met Your Mother" in a notebook somewhere, thinking it would work for a movie or show or just about anything.
The structure of the show, which is flashing back from the now-middle-aged narrator to his younger single days, came about because "dating or being single is so uncertain," Bays said. "It was nice to come at it from a place where you know it will turn out well," where the narrator is happily married with two beautiful kids.
