Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 25 - Peter Tolan (The Job / Rescue Me / The Larry Sanders Show / Dave Chappelle)

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This time I’m letting Peter Tolan talk.

Peter is one of the best TV writers in the business as well as one of my favorite storytellers, either of which would be plenty enough excuse to have him as a guest. But when I traded emails with him a few weeks back, he said he was confident that I’d be able to come up with a legitimate reason to bring him on as a guest, and he was right: as I record this intro, which will also be the day that I release this episode, it will be the 25^th anniversary of the premiere of the ABC series THE JOB, a.k.a. the first collaboration between Peter and Denis Leary.

Maybe you remember the series, maybe you don’t, but as Peter and I discuss, it was definitely an anomaly on ABC’s prime-time landscape at the time, in that it was a half-hour single-camera comedy with occasional dramatic elements. It was also a pretty great show, but despite that, it only lasted for two short seasons…although to be fair, the fact that it lasted for more than a single season was a legit shocker to everyone involved, so there’s that achievement, at least.

So, yes, Peter and I discussed THE JOB at length, but of course we talked about other things from his back catalog as well, including his subsequent collaboration with Denis Leary – RESCUE ME – as well as his work on THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW, including his favorite guest-star story and why he feels like he was able to get along with Garry Shandling when others weren’t. We also talked about a couple of his screenplays, including MY FELLOW AMERICANS and WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM, with the latter leading to some great Mike Nichols stories. I also got him to talk about the Dave Chappelle pilot that led to a major squabble with Fox, his recent experiences with a pilot for FX that were a little disappointing, to put it mildly, and he even teases a new series that he and Denis Leary are trying to get off the ground, one that would reunite them with a former RESCUE ME guest star…

Well, that should keep you listening for the long haul. It’s time to let Peter Tolan talk.

 

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