8 Book Review V I D E O A G E December 2022 Who has more director credits from iconic television shows than James Burrows? No one, that’s who. Burrows has worked in the industry since the 1970s, contributing to and directing some of the best-known long-running TV series, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, Laverne & Shirley, Night Court, Frasier, Friends, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Will & Grace, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, and many, many other beloved programs. Directed by James Burrows (368 pgs., Ballantine Books, 2022, $28.99) dives into Burrows’ career trajectory over 50 years. Working with the help of Eddy Friedfeld (a professor in the Film Television department at New York University), Burrows shares little-known anecdotes and behind-thescenes tales from the slew of sitcoms he directed. The book is part personal story, part history of contemporary American television, and part dispensing of advice about the TV biz for anyone who needs to hear it. The tone of the book is conversational yet informative, as if the reader is sitting down with a mentor. Burrows was born in Los Angeles on December 30, 1940, but he was raised in New York City, by his parents, Ruth Levinson and Abe Burrows, starting when he was five years old. An entire chapter is devoted to his dad and Burrows spends a significant amount of time discussing his father’s influence on his son’s eventual career. “My dad was always very present in my life, offering helpful advice and telling me stories about his early years in entertainment”, says Burrows. Brooklyn-raised Abe Burrows started out writing jokes for radio and nightclubs in the 1930s, but he would go on to become a humor writer, playwright, director, and producer. He had his own radio show, The Abe Burrows Show, and later directed shows on Broadway, even winning a Tony. After high school, the young Burrows went to Oberlin College in Ohio and grad school at Yale for drama. Once he graduated, he took gigs as stage managers and traveling directors for plays. His entry into network television happened in 1974, “during the Second Golden Age of Television”, he notes. At the time, he joined MTM Enterprises, the production company run by Mary Tyler Moore and her then husband Grant Tinker (an NBC executive). After describing this first foray into television, the book proceeds to zoom in and out of the many highlights in Burrows’ career, with passages devoted to his role in Cheers, the making of shows like Frasier, Friends, and Will & Grace, and the lessons he learned from all of them. With his decades of industry and storytelling experience, Burrows offers gems of advice to aspiring writers and producers looking to enter into the world of television. He tries to explain what makes a good story. For him, everything comes down to characters that audiences can relate to. “Whether working on an entire series, one episode, or just one scene, a director must be thinking about how to develop characters and have them interact with other characters who are also growing”, Burrows writes. “That’s what creates good comedy.” His advice doesn’t only apply to the creative side but the practical business concerns, as well. When discussing how to bring pilots to series (and as he reminds the reader, “I have directedmore than 75 pilots that have gone to series.”), his advice on storytelling continues to apply. He writes: “A successful pilot needs characters that the audiences would want to see every week, in a location that will appear again and again, with a series of conflicts and goals that viewers would want to tune in to see resolved. What’s the most important goal of directing a pilot? The obvious answer is to get the network to buy the show and put it on air.” Throughout the book, Burrows also notes what state of mind a sitcom director will need to maintain. During sitcom season, he recalls: “I’m very animated on set. I’m listening, I’m moving, I’m laughing. It’s a play. You have to keep rolling. You are part of the entertainment.” Burrows has led an enviable career, working with several of the most recognized actors in the world, from Mary Tyler Moore and Ted Danson to Jennifer Aniston and Debra Messing. He directed some of the most beloved TV shows of the last 50 years. And he’s still going at it. In recent years, he was invited by U.S. TV host Jimmy Kimmel to direct live versions of All in the Family and The Jeffersons, which aired in May 2019. In the epilogue to Directed by James Burrows, Burrows remains humble and encouraging. At 81 years old, he says that “[by] Norman Lear’s standards, I still have a lot of work to do.” Screenwriters and television producers Glen and Les Charles sum it all up well in their foreword to the book: “He’s simply become the greatest director of comedy in television history.” The director who helmed over 1,000 TV episodes presents insights and anecdotes from his long-running career in the TV show biz. Director Jimmy Burrows Shares Stories From the Last 50 Years By Luis Polanco “A successful pilot needs characters that the audiences would want to see every week, in a location that will appear again and again, with a series of conflicts and goals that viewers would want to tune in to see resolved.”
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