Here's a bit of recommended reading for you. I just finished "You're Lucky You're Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom." It's a memoir by Phil Rosenthal, who created the massive TV sitcom hit "Everybody Loves Raymond."
The book is extremely funny, insightful and interesting. It's also one of the best behind-the-scenes
television books I've ever read. Anyone interested in working in television really ought to read this. It's got the scoop on how "Raymond" was conceived and developed; how Rosenthal, the child of Holocaust survivors, navigated the minefield of network executives involved; how a writers' room works (good food seems to be key); and how the family lives of those who wrote the show became fodder for each week's episode.
For example, there's the story of how Rosenthal, as a young, out-of-work actor, takes a job as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and is fired for falling asleep on a 300-year-old bed. The incident later showed up in a Rosenthal script.
Then when he's finally making some money as a TV writer, Rosenthal sends his parents a membership in the Fruit of the Month club. When the first shipment of a dozen pears arrives, the Rosenthals are convinced their son has enrolled them in some weird fruit-eating cult. The incident showed up in the "Raymond" pilot.
Big "Raymond" fans will love the book, but you need not have watched the show to appreciate this look into what goes into getting a TV show made, and then, once it's on the air, what it takes to make it a hit. Beyond the TV nuts and bolts, the book is about staying true to one's values even in an industry where the author is tested constantly and where it often seems the easiest way forward is to jettison what you believe in favor of protecting your own rear end.
Rosenthal never does, and his family – nutty as he makes them out to be – always remains his priority, as does a show rooted in reality and in love, as strangely as some of the characters choose to show it.
They say Hollywood's a Jewish business, but sometimes its values don't seem to be. Rosenthal shows us that need not be the case.
