Horizontal Hold: The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot - Softcover

Paisner, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504029836 ISBN 13: 9781504029834

Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 2016

Synopsis

Absurdly funny, trenchant, and provocative, this outside-looking-in account of the stillbirth of one particular television series is a must read for every serious and not-so-serious television viewer.

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel Paisner is the author of twenty books, including The New York Times bestsellers Mountain Get Out of My Way (with Montel Williams) and Exposing Myself (with Geraldo Rivera).
 

From Publishers Weekly:

The author of The Imperfect Mirror: Reflections of Television Newswomen has already made it clear that he doesn't think much of network TV fare, and this devastating chronicle of an aborted series offers ample justification for his attitude. Paisner details the genesis of a pilot episode about a group of presidential speechwriters who work near the White House, a concept that evidently sounded better to originator Bruce Paltrow (fresh from his triumph with St. Elsewhere ) and his co-workers than it does to the reader. Filmed in New York City, then retitled and reshot in Los Angeles with a new cast, the pilot failed to win the bankers' approval in either version. But the story of its death--with producers hyping themselves, the networks demanding tried-and-true situations, the creators proudly pointing to their use of a "real" laugh track (a reorganized tape of actual studio audience response)--makes for an impressive revelation of contemporary cloud-cuckoo-landspelling and punctuation per Webster's .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1504029836
• ISBN 13: 9781504029834
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228