Horizontal hold
the making and breaking of a network television pilot
A sitcom set in the Washington offices of the speechwriters for the President: Sound like a prime-time hit? It wasn't - in fact, it never even got a commercial break. So how did a highly talented television team launch such an ambitious pilot, only to watch it crash over and over again? In the spring of 1990, television producer Bruce Paltrow (The White Shadow, St. Elsewhere) granted author Daniel Paisner unlimited access to the New York-based production of his. Sitcom-in-progress, E.O.B. With a cast including veteran stage actress Mary Beth Hurt and Saturday Night Live alumnus Rich Hall, E.O.B. was one of the most promising shows on CBS's development slate. Production was to have taken less than two months, culminating in a hoped-for six-episode summer run on the networks. Over the next year, however, Paltrow's effort was folded, spindled, and mutilated by forces both beyond and within his control. The show, rechristened The. War Room, was shelved. So he and his colleagues tried again, this time in Los Angeles, in the spring of 1991, with a new cast (including St. Elsewhere's William Daniels, plus singer Gladys Knight), a new director, and a new title, Word of Mouth. This project, too, never made it onto network airwaves. Horizontal Hold does for the television industry what Thirty Seconds did for advertising and what The Devil's Candy did for Hollywood: it brings the big picture down to size. With small strokes, offering behind-the-scenes details of daily life on and off the set. Television pilots, the author maintains, are the best and worst indicators of where the medium has been and where it is going. Absurdly funny, trenchant, and provocative, this outside-looking-in account of the stillbirth of one particular series is a must read for every serious and not-serious television viewer.
