Author: LB

A legendary figure in the television writing and production world with a career going back to the late ’60s, Larry Brody has written and produced hundreds of hours of American and worldwide television and is a consultant to production companies and networks in the U.S. and abroad . Shows written or produced by Brody have won several awards including - yes, it's true - Emmys, Writers Guild Awards, and the Humanitas Award.

LB Answers Your Questions about Animation Writing

Finn_writing_his_poem

Well, maybe not your questions, but those from a certain DP for sure. Here’s what he wrote:

I’m working on a half-hour animated show for the People’s Pilot. How should I gauge my Act lengths, or even my script as a whole? I’ve got a few THE SIMPSONS production scripts that I use as a guideline, each one about 50 pages, though that is longer than what most websites say, and longer than past winners I have looked at for the People’s Pilot (they tend to cap at about 30). Is there a general standard on how many pages each act should be/the script as a whole? It feels incredibly hard to tell. And I don’t understand why single-cam vs multi-cam shows should have different script lengths. read article

LB: Some Musings on the Silver Surfer (the greatest muser of all time)

Glad You Asked Dept. 1/16/14

That's Jack Kirby's version on the left, with Earl Norem's variation on the right.
That’s Jack Kirby’s version on the left, with Earl Norem’s variation on the right.

About a year ago I started what I intended to be a weekly column answering your questions about TV writing and the TV biz in general. I would’ve gladly answered questions about a ton of other things, but TV writing and TV biz aren’t just areas I know a lot about, they’re probably the only areas I know anything about.

The weekliness of said column didn’t last long because I didn’t get enough questions. Which, btw, was very disappointing. Recently, however, I’ve received a couple of inquiries that I think might be of interest to others, so here we go with the latest Glad You Asked.

Today’s question is about one of my favorite topics, the animated SILVER SURFER series that I ran back in the waning days of the 20th Century. It’s from JB (writing from France, which of course proves the wonderfulness of the interwebs when it comes to expanding our communication horizons). Where was I? Oh, right. JB’s question: read article

LB Sees ABC’s KILLER WOMEN (Well, the 1st episode anyway)

killer-women-tvwriter.comBecause with a name like that how could I not?

Especially since TVWRITER™ buddy Sal Calleros was one of the writers working on the initial order.

I wanted to like this show but knew I wouldn’t. And guess what? My prediction sadly prevailed. Or to put it another way: read article

Peer Production: DANGER: HUMANS

Ah, the wonders of peer production!

Why the universe fears us…and all 0f this is true:

read article

LB Sees HELIX

Helix-TV-Series-6
What does this shot mean? This stuff’s supposed to mean something, damnit.

Just finished watching the first 3 1/2 hours of HELIX. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Let’s say that the first 3 1/2 hours played through on my gigantor screen but I only saw the first 48 minutes because…

I say because…

Wait for it. read article