Martini Shot

Ricochet

When you’re filming a movie or a television show, when it’s the last shot of the day, the first assistant director will call out, “This is the Martini Shot!” I call these stories “Martini Shots” because they’re exactly the kinds of stories we tell — and lessons we learn — after we’ve wrapped for the day. - Rob Long theankler.com

  1. 4 hr ago

    Forgiveness. That’s All There Is

    Rob Long talks about Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” — written as a graceful goodbye to Porter Wagoner when she left his show to go solo — as a way into the real question: how did Dolly stay beloved across a divided culture? He tracks the WNYC/Radiolab podcast Dolly Parton’s America, in which earnest public-radio producers keep trying to claim her as a feminist, a lesbian icon, an anti-Trump ally — and Dolly keeps politely declining every label. Her secret, Long argues, isn’t ideology but her small-C Christianity: she reconciled with and financially rescued the man who once sued her, she wrote emotionally true and honest songs, she loved the stranger.

  2. 30 Jul

    “Free to Pursue Other Opportunities”

    Last week’s Martini Shot prompted a lot of very kind notes that read like eulogies for what is essentially a back-end redirect of an audio feed. In that spirit, Rob Long reflects on the many ways Hollywood tells you it’s over without ever quite saying so: the actor who fired his agent while the agent was firing him, the showrunner removed from the show about his own father — they were right, by the way — and the writer whose deal simply wasn’t renewed, and who forgot to mention any of it to his assistant. Nobody was fired. Everybody felt fired. Next week, we set sail.

  3. 22 Jul

    Check Each Other for Mustaches

    Years ago, a woman told Rob the greatest story he’d ever heard: Her doctor put her on testosterone cream — and then required her to attend weekly meetings with the other women who were also on it, so they could compare notes. Rob pitched it as a sitcom. The executives stared at him like he had gone insane. This week: why the sanding-down of genuinely weird ideas doesn’t start in the conference room but in the writer’s own head, what he’s learning from a new script with comedian Sam Morrison — and a big announcement about the future of Martini Shot.

  4. 15 Jul

    The Hugh Bonneville Rule

    Jerry Lewis once blessed a nightclub audience by wishing them a life full of show business friends. Rob Long isn’t so sure that’s a blessing — show business friendship is a strange, contingent thing, built on projects that assemble and dissolve, sofas shared for a month, congratulatory phone calls that get read as job applications. This week: an awkward call to a not-quite-friend about her pilot, a rich old acquaintance unsettled by seminary news and a British actor stuck in contract purgatory at a long-ago dinner party who turned out fine. A theory of friendship, tested against thirty years of overlapping crews.

  5. 8 Jul

    21 Seconds or Less

    Rob Long is in Tbilisi, a city he last saw 26 years ago when it was broke and hopeful and is now prosperous and — inconveniently — cozy with Vladimir Putin. Turns out streaming had the same trajectory: total freedom, total data and somehow the timidest programming decisions in television history. Rob has notes for Netflix executives: bring back the 22-episode season — nobody wants a six-year relationship with your drama. Then his godson Jackson shows him the real numbers — how many viewers abandon his Instagram Reels by the one-second mark — and Rob realizes he’s become exactly the kind of storyteller he just finished lecturing.

  6. 1 Jul

    Set it Down and Walk Away

    The summer box office is having its best season since before the pandemic — and the first real hits weren’t the franchise machines, they were two cheap horror movies made by guys who started on YouTube. Naturally, the industry is busy reading the wrong signs: mine Reddit, buy a graphic novel, staff up a division. Rob Long has seen this con before — he knows a successful project that was a script disguised as a self-published graphic novel with a fan base of five. The right sign is simpler, and it comes by way of a high school basketball coach and a friend who survived a stroke: We didn’t lose the ability to make a fun summer movie. We lost the feeling. And the feeling is the part worth getting back.

  7. 24 Jun

    The Greatness of James Burrows

    Rob Long was 24 years old when he met James Burrows, one of the creators and executive producers of Cheers, where he had just been hired as a staff writer on a 10 week contract. It didn't take 10 weeks for him to realize just how brilliant Burrows was. The Will & Grace and Friends director knew how to tell if material worked even if it didn’t do much at the runthrough. He knew when a line was funnier when they threw it away, and he knew when a scene needed to be tossed and re-written. Rob still remembers the day he met Burrows — and the six words that stuck with him all these years later.

  8. 17 Jun

    A Little Human, A Lot Robot

    Rob Long’s friend has a near-perfect system for staying in touch: a text every five weeks to the day, the wording on rotation, the calls auto-booked — friendship by tickler file, a little bit human and a lot robot. Naturally, Rob sets out to sabotage it. But AI in Hollywood is a much different, nuanced debate. From screenwriting manuals to the algorithmic clockwork of Law & Order, Rob believes that the one thing the machines can’t do is make a really interesting, unexpected mess. So we should.

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About

When you’re filming a movie or a television show, when it’s the last shot of the day, the first assistant director will call out, “This is the Martini Shot!” I call these stories “Martini Shots” because they’re exactly the kinds of stories we tell — and lessons we learn — after we’ve wrapped for the day. - Rob Long theankler.com

Information

  • Creator
    Ricochet
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    176
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Ricochet
  • Show Website
    Martini Shot

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