On my third day in show business, I walked into Stage 25 at Paramount Studios to grab a coffee and doughnut. It was January 1990—I had just been hired as a staff writer on the hit comedy Cheers, and within days, two profound truths emerged.
First: Every working soundstage holds a craft services table groaning with snacks, deli-sized refrigerators, and toaster ovens. The entertainment industry thrives on nervous eaters—newly hired writers on short contracts included—but this space is constantly replenished with sugary carbs, high-fat dairy, and gossip. It’s where everyone self-medicates while the chaos of production unfolds.
Second: No one in show business teaches you anything. If you’re new and want to learn, go get coffee and a doughnut at craft services and hide in a corner to watch. On that third day, I did exactly that. My boss, James Burrows—everyone called him Jimmy but I didn’t feel confident enough to use that nickname—I sat alone with him in the empty Cheers bar under the stairs. He was playing “I’ll Know” from Guys and Dolls on a piano.
Later, I learned his father was Abe Burrows, the legendary Broadway impresario behind Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Cactus Flower. Jimmy grew up surrounded by stars, music, and parties where famous adults would smoke, drink, laugh, and ask little Jimmy to play piano. He went on to direct hits like Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and The Big Bang Theory—yet even in modern multi-camera comedies, he stayed rooted in Broadway’s spirit.
Jimmy spoke in old-timey show-biz argot. When scripts felt too neatly plotted or overly choreographed, he’d shake his head: “Too center-door fancy.” Meaning: It feels airless, predictable. Make it funnier and messier. If audiences lost the thread, he’d remind us to add “sunny Spain”—a quick recap like Shakespeare’s characters announcing their location mid-scene.
That’s how he directed television: as if it weren’t television at all, but an off-Broadway comedy. He’d rehearse for days, get shows “up on their feet,” guide writers through revisions—and only then consider cameras and shots. The result? Shows like Cheers or The Big Bang Theory feel alive with characters entering, exiting, sitting, crossing—cameras barely keeping up. You feel like you’re there, just a little offscreen.
On most multi-camera sets, directors use “quad splits”—monitors showing every camera angle to perfect every frame. Jimmy Burrows never used one. When I asked why, he said simply: “The audience doesn’t watch the shots. They watch the show.”
At its best—most profitable—television comedy is theater with cameras zooming around action. Jimmy knew this instinctively, a gift from his father and Broadway that made him responsible for endlessly re-run hits and a generation of laughter. Today, though? Too many people watch the quad split instead of the show itself. Too many make little movies—not enough put on plays.
Rob Long is a writer and television producer, currently studying at Princeton Theological Seminary.