Rob Long spent four seasons writing on Cheers, the iconic ’80s sitcom that lasted 270 episodes. Today’s Martini Shot podcast is about Rob’s time with Cheers co-creator James Burrows, who died on June 19 at the age of 85. The transcript of Rob’s essay is in full below. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
We’ve all had this experience, haven’t we? When you think back on a time in your life, and to a person who made a big impact on it — a mentor, a boss, someone like that — and then you do the math and realize that that person in your past, who seemed so wise and smart and accomplished, who had so much to teach you, was younger than you are now.
I was 24 when I met James Burrows, one of the creators and executive producers of Cheers, where I had just been hired as a staff writer on a 10-week contract. He was James Burrows on the screen credit, but Jimmy everywhere else — though it took me a few weeks to call him anything. He seemed, well, not old, really, but that he already knew so much. He knew how to tell if material worked even if it didn’t do much at the run-through. He knew when someone needed to cross, stop, drop the line and then start crossing again — and when it would be funnier if they just didn’t stop at all and dropped the line on the fly. He knew when an actor needed some more dialogue to help make a character turn, and when it would just show on the actor’s face. He knew when a line was funnier when they threw it away, and he also knew when a scene or a script needed to be thrown away and re-written. We got nothing, he would sometimes — rarely, say when he came back to the writers room after a morning of rehearsal. We got nothing, and you knew he meant it, and worse, you knew he was right.
He seemed older because he knew so much, and I wanted to learn it all. He was 48 when I met him, already a hugely successful television producer and director, but not quite yet the supernova impresario he would become. Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, The Big Bang Theory; I could go on and on. But when I met him, at 24, he seemed like our Jimmy — Cheers’ Jimmy, the beating heart of a long-running hit comedy, which had lasted for so long because the writing was great and the cast was fantastic… but mostly because both of those things came together on the screen in a hilarious, electric, irresistible way. That doesn’t happen automatically, or even naturally. You need Jimmy. And we were lucky that he was ours.
And honestly, it always made us a little jealous, those of us who knew him from Cheers — he went on to be Jimmy for the biggest hits of the next decade, and I remember watching an interview with the cast of Friends, and it was “Jimmy this,” and “Jimmy that.” I thought, Hey, he’s not your Jimmy. He’s ours.
But that’s what’s heartbreaking about mentors…
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