That Old Adage 'Write What You Know'? - Hogwash!
July, 19, 2012 9:43 am | Comments On #emmy awards, TelevisionIn the ‘90s, Hollywood gave me a conflicting, recurrent tip: “Write what you know.”
Between Rose Mehlman and Hollywood, someone was right, and someone was wrong. In order to decide, all we have is track record.
Quick story: When John Kennedy Jr. married Carolyn Bessette, Rose Mehlman said, “I have a feeling he’s going to have his hands full with her.” Clearly, even when her opinions are based on absolutely nothing, she’s usually right. So let’s stipulate that Rose Mehlman was the one who was right. When writing something fictional, you should not write what you know. You should...
Read MoreSorry, It's Just Not True That 'One Writer Fits All'
June, 21, 2012 10:19 am | Comments On #emmy awards, TelevisionSomeone suggested making a novel of my screenplay that started out as this sitcom idea:
Sigmund Freud is reincarnated as a co-ed in rural Alabama. She remembers her past life as miserable, wants no part of psychology in this life but can’t help talking depressed students off ledges.
The sitcom was for network TV, so the dumbed-down sales pitch ended: “It’s 'My Favorite Martian,' except instead of Ray Walston, it’s a super-hot girl!”
The networks loved it. And rejected it. Why? They didn’t feel viewers would know who Freud was.
At that moment, pitching the show to Al-Jazeera seemed a good idea, but an executive said, “You should write it as a screenplay.”
Two years later, director David O. Russell, actress Jessica Biel and producer Lynda Obst were “on-board” with the screenplay....
Read MoreA Once and Not-Future TV Writer's Ode to Joy
June, 20, 2012 9:47 am | Comments On #emmy awards, TelevisionMy reasons for checking out of network TV and checking back in six years later were based on … something. When your mind is a mid-level executive in your own life, you go with gut instincts despite knowing that guts, whatever they are, don’t really have instincts.
To the untrained stomach, everything seemed to move along so well: A sitcom idea brushed by me like a pickpocket, and I made some calls. The 12,000th time someone’s assistant said, “I don’t have him right now,” a super pesky spot of blue dabbed my thoughts, but I ignored it.
When the calls were returned, the one-line description of the pilot excited people. So much so, a studio bought the idea without hearing what it was.
In no time, managers, executives, accountants, lawyers and assistants swooped back in my orbit. I shook off a totally annoying analogy about...
Read More'Arthur' Remake Will Be a Desecration
June, 01, 2010 3:03 pm | Comments On #Arthur, Dudley Moore, Meryl Streep, MoviesSwarms and swarms of such happy moviegoers left the Beekman Theater one afternoon in 1981, a golden New York weekday that made you look around and think, “Does anyone in this city have a job?”
Yes, perfect. A perfect New York movie. Stranger in a Strange Google Land
August, 28, 2009 12:34 pm | Comments On #Google, YouTube
L.A.'s No Place to Experience the Depression
March, 25, 2009 3:32 pm | Comments On #economic crisis, Hollywood, layoffFor people who grew up hearing tales of the Great Depression over dinner, the current economic crisis is pretty disappointing. With things this bad, you expect to look out your window and see that the whole world is in black and white.
It's not. Not here in hi-def Santa Monica: Lilac yoga mats still bounce off the buff, brown shoulders of a fifth tri-mester women hopping out of black cherry Escalades so huge they should come with a fireplace standard.
Really, this is no place to experience a depression. No matter what bleak news you hear on NPR, L.A. sedates the crisis. Your 401K turns into a 201K but you spot Jessica Alba at the Farmer's Market. Unemployment hits record highs but the next joyously dumb license plate you see reads FLM EXEC. You ask a bunch of your friends if they'd take $50,000 to see "He's Just Not That Into You" and they all decline, no...
Read MoreSeven Phrases That Are Killing Our Economy
February, 17, 2009 9:42 pm | Comments On #reession, screenplaysThe following calculation, arrived at with no calculation, really sounds accurate: 79.429 percent of America's Gross Domestic Product consists of economic theory. In lieu of manufacturing actual products, America now churns out theories on why our economic pituitary gland conked out and what to do about it.
Unfortunately, all the theories come from way on high: Larry Summers, Paul Volcker and all the other multi-MBA moneycrats get on TV everyday and volley cash above our heads. Have they any idea what's happening here on the ground? Apparently not, or they'd turn their attention to the seven phrases that are truly killing our economy.
This may sound like soft-core capitalism. But all efforts at reversing the current economic downturn will go for naught, or even slightly less than naught, unless the Federal Reserve and...
Read MoreHugh Hefner’s Hollywood Love Lessons
February, 10, 2009 6:15 pm | Comments On #classic movies, hugh hefner, king kong, Movies, Peter Mehlman, woody allen"Everything I learned about love, I learned from the movies."
-- Hugh Hefner in the Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2009
Long before I created Playboy Magazine, my cinematic education in love began with Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece “Potemkin.” During the epic Odessa Steps scene as that poor mother lost hold of her baby stroller, it struck me how the great Russian director chose to shoot in black and white purely to mask any sense of what kind of body the woman had. For days afterward, the entire mise en scene haunted me until I realized that potato-shaped women in winter coats just weren't my type, so I moved to LA.
The first film I saw in Hollywood was “King Kong.” By the third reel, I knew this classic love story was talking to me and me alone, although a couple behind me thought the film was talking to them...
Read MoreWhy They Hated 'Seinfeld'
January, 26, 2009 8:13 pm | Comments On #Peter Mehlman, Seinfeld, TV networks
- Previous
- •
- •
- •
- •
- Next
Description
After graduating from the University of Maryland, Peter Mehlman started his career as a writer for the Washington Post. He slid from print journalism to television when, from 1982 to 1984, he wrote for and produced the television series, “SportsBeat” with Howard Cosell. For the next five years he returned to writing full sentences as a freelance writer in New York. His byline appeared in numerous national publications including the New York Times magazine, GQ, Esquire and every women’s magazine imaginable...
In 1989 he moved to Los Angeles where he bumped into Larry David, whom he'd met twice in New York. David, was developing “a little show with Jerry Seinfeld”, and invited Mehlman to submit a sample script. Having never written a script, Mehlman sent a humor piece he had written for the New York Times Magazine. Jerry Seinfeld loved it and gave Mehlman a writing assignment, out of which came the series’ first freelance episode, “The Apartment.” Mehlman was hired for the first full season of “Seinfeld” (1991-92) and wrote 23 episodes during the next six years and became an executive producer.
Mehlman is most famous for his “Yada Yada” episode, and he is also the author of such now classic Seinfeld-isms as “spongeworthy” and “shrinkage” and “double-dipping.”
In 1997, Mehlman joined DreamWorks and created “It’s like, you know...,” a scathing look at Los Angeles. In recent years, he has continued creating TV shows, writing screenplays and humor pieces for NPR, Esquire, The New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times while also appearing on-camera for TNT Sports and his own web program “Pete Mehlman’s Narrow World of Sports."
