Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475547
Th a t 's M a r y R i c h a rd s o n " M a r y Ty l e r Moore," or Sam Malone on "Cheers." The writers create the "center" on a show, but the director has to put him (or her) in the right place. "Physically, the center is always in the middle of the set, so they can look and react both ways," Burrows writes. "It's much easier to shoot. It's not as funny looking left and then looking further left." Panning is discouraged in the sitcom world, he writes, but he used many such moves when directing "Taxi." "It was easier to establish the scene that way than through a big master shot," he writes. "It allowed for the person in the back, farthest from the camera, to not look like a moth on the wall. To avoid the need for scoring, I'd have an actor start talking during the pan." Anyone considering a directing career in sitcoms will prof it from spending time with this book. Burrows relished his reputation as a director who could swoop onto a sitcom and give it some spit and polish, but he wanted to run a show. "I was just a facilitator, the ringmaster, just coordinating, fitting the right three balls into the three holes in the head," writes Burrows, who, in the early 1980s, teamed with the Charles brothers, veterans of "Taxi" and other shows, to co-create "Cheers." N a t u r a l l y, B u r r o w s 's c h a p t e r s o n "Cheers" — arguably the show on which he left his most lasting mark — are among the best in the book. Burrows covers everything from the crucial casting of the characters Sam and Diane — William Devane and Lisa Eichhorn, as well as football player MARY ME: Burrows wrote Mary Tyler Moore in search of a job as he started his TV career in the 1970s. P H O T O : P H O T O F E S T 49 S U M M E R Q 3 I S S U E B O O K R E V I E W