Robert Rosen

Larry David on Fridays in an episode from 1980.

 

While dining last week with a group of friends I used to work with at Vanity Fair, the conversation turned to what a miserable town L.A. can be, especially when it comes to dealing with entertainment industry people. They were, it was said, passive-aggressive; they avoid any kind of confrontation; they lie; they don't return phone calls, etc., etc. One person told a joke about how an agent goes to a screenwriter's house, douses his wife and kids with gasoline, sets them on fire, and burns down the house. The screenwriter comes home and the cops tell him what happened. "You mean my agent came to my house?" he says.

 

I told my L.A. story about an unpleasant encounter with Larry David back in 1980. (Has anybody ever had a pleasant encounter with him?) That summer I'd been invited to try out as a writer for Fridays, L.A.'s short-lived version of Saturday Night Live.

 

In the Montecito Hotel, where I was staying, and at the ABC production facility, ideas for cold openings kept popping into my head. I thought they were funny and inspired. So I wrote them on a portable typewriter and handed the finished scripts directly to one of the producers. I was so sure I was going to get the job, it didn't occur to me to keep copies.

 

I waited to hear if I had the job. The producers kept me in limbo, though allowed me to sit in on meetings, rehearsals, and broadcasts. One day at a writers' meeting, Larry David, the head writer and a cast member, asked if they'd hired me.

 

"I don't know," I said. "I'm still waiting to hear."

 

He called security and had me thrown off the lot.

 

A few weeks later, the show's cold opening was security guards throwing a writer off the lot.

 

Maybe I didn't get the job because the producers wanted to see more than cold openings. And maybe the openings were too edgy for network TV. The skit I remember best was Charlie Manson—as popular in L.A. then as Trump is in New York now—doing a song-and-dance number on a conference table for the producers: I can sing!/I can dance!/I can act!/Need a chance!

 

I'd have loved that job; it would have set my career on a different path. And I'd love to have those lost Fridays scripts. But after all was said and done, I didn't have to spend half my life stuck in traffic, possibly in an encroaching wildfire, in a city where the weather never changes. And then the show was canceled.

_______

All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

My impending journey to L.A. for a May 12 event at Book Soup, where Beaver Street is currently a featured title of the week, is a bit of a homecoming. I lived in L.A. for a while, in 1980, at what was then the Montecito Hotel, on Franklin Avenue. Fridays, an upstart L.A. version of Saturday Night Live, had invited me to try out as a writer. Because of an ongoing writers' strike, it was a strange time to be in Hollywood; Fridays was one of the few shows in production.

At ABC studios, I met with the two producers, John Moffitt and Bill Lee, along with comedian Jack Burns, one of the show’s writers. They asked me to write some skits, and to give me a thorough understanding of how Fridays worked, they allowed me to attend meetings, rehearsals, and live broadcasts, and gave me access to their video room, where I could study tapes of all the shows.

Back at the Montecito, I sat in my room, gazing at the smog-enshrouded Hollywood Hills as I banged out on my portable typewriter a half-dozen skits, including a number of “cold openings” for the show, one of which involved a Charles Manson song-and-dance number.

Then I waited for what I was sure was going to be a job offer—and continued going to rehearsals, meetings, live broadcasts. But neither a job offer nor a rejection ever came. I found myself in a weird gray area, seemingly welcome at the studio, though not in any official capacity.

One afternoon at a writers’ meeting, Larry David, who was also a cast member, said to me, “Did they hire you?”

“No,” I answered. “Not officially.”

“Then,” he said, as everybody else looked on in utter silence, “you have to leave.”

David escorted me out of the conference room and then called security to have me thrown off the lot.

A few weeks later, back in New York, I turned on Fridays. The cold opening, which contained a few lines from a script I’d submitted, was a skit about a security guard ejecting a writer from the ABC lot.

My subsequent visits to L.A. have all been considerably warmer.

 Read More