Pun Salad

The subtitle notes that James Burrows directed many episodes of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, and Will & Grace. You can look at his IMDB page and find over a hundred more.

Including, if you care, one episode of Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers. Reader, that is a different guy. Just as well: Burrows says: "As affable as he was, Paul was not a series lead. He was too ephemeral and asexual to have the appeal a sitcom star needed at the time." And, indeed, the show sputtered to a halt after one season.

Anyway: I've had bad luck with celebrity memoirs, always looking for, and failing to find, something insightful and revealing about creative genius. This book, perhaps because it's from a guy who's mostly behind the scenes, is much better on that score. Burrows describes his directing and producing process in great detail. You will learn the major differences in the number of cameras used to film an episode. ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show": three. Friends: six.)

But mostly, Burrows tells stories, and they are pretty good, especially if you (like me) loved most of those shows. Great, hilarious scenes are described with script excerpts. Burrows praises … well, nearly everyone he's ever had dealings with: actors, producers, network honchos, you name it. (Only one exception: Rob Schneider, the SNL alum. Burrows doesn't seem to like him at all.)

And there's the time Burrows found himself at a Rita Wilson (Tom Hanks' wife) show at the Café Carlyle, sitting between Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney. Who were clapping and singing along to Rita's performance of "Harper Valley P.T.A."

Burrows namedrops nonstop. He occasionally drops into cliché territory ("Comeraderie and kindness are not just the right thing to do, they are the tools for success for any smart director.") But that's OK.

I suspect that this book was produced without Burrows doing much actual typing. The text has a pronounced "as told to" flavor; the cover says "with Eddy Friedfeld", so I suspect that's the guy who did the work of assembling Burrows' oral history onto the printed page.

I'll note that while I loved four out of the five sitcoms named in the subtitle, I found Will & Grace unwatchable. In fact (consulting the IMDB page), I'm not sure if I've watched more than one series he's been involved with since Friends. What changed, sitcoms or me?