Describing Kelly Oxford As A Writer Is A Fairly Large Stretch

8.71K

Beejoli Shah

10/25/13 12:28PM

Filed to: Lying Liars

Fox Buys Retirement Home Comedy From Twitter Writer Kelly Oxford http://t.co/ZRzbHOOdmP
— Deadline | TV (@DeadlineTV) October 25, 2013

Here's hoping Warner Brothers TV and Fox are in for a rough ride—as someone who witnessed and worked directly on Oxford's disastrous attempt at developing a 'tiger mom' sitcom with NBC, I know Oxford was prone to being very late to notes calls with the studio and network (and sometimes missing them entirely), and turning in incredibly sub-par drafts lacking in jokes.

Add in the fact that Oxford is known for reusing her own material because she can't think of anything else original (and no, Twitter is not standup, so please don't use the argument that standup comedians reuse sets all the time), there's a good chance her 32 page script will just be one page of material, with 33 callbacks to the first few jokes.

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Raineyb1013 Beejoli Shah 10/25/13 06:46PM

Twitter writer? This is a job?

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Beejoli Shah Raineyb1013 10/25/13 08:26PM

Apparently. (But hey, so is Defamer writer, so perhaps I shouldn't be judging.)

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AngryCaveman Beejoli Shah 10/25/13 04:20PM

Seriously, why are you so shitty to comedians famous with a tiny portion of the public? Isn't this an entertainment site? Shouldn't you focus on entertainers who would get more clicks? Your Kanyes, your sitcom stars, and not say, people who just got script deals and you are reporting on those script deals.

Besides, she's funny. Is this blog under the illusion that the public loves hackery or something? Must be something there to get her positive attention outside this little corner.

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Beejoli Shah AngryCaveman 10/25/13 04:38PM

Her tweets are hilarious. Less so, however, when you've followed her for years and they just keep recycling themselves every 3 months. Even less so when she is a horrible pain to work with and an unpleasant person. Bad scripts are par for the course in development, don't I know it. Being a bad person? That's a conscientious choice.

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Pepper Beejoli Shah 10/27/13 12:20AM

New online game: try to guess which supportive comments about Oxford are her sock puppets. (Remember when she got busted for that on YouTube last year? That was tons funnier than anything she's ever written.)

And I did read her "book" - when it wasn't repugnant and self-serving, it was merely awful. As Kelly herself said, "apparently you don't need to sell many books to be a best-seller." (Luckily, I just borrowed it.)

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Pepper Beejoli Shah 10/27/13 12:52AM

I'm surprised you spoke up about your experience working with her - one producer told me that number of people in the business loathe her (and her "work"), but are too afraid of her agent to go on record about it.

chriskraft Beejoli Shah 10/29/13 01:22PM

Ms. Shah- I worked on that pilot and at every stage Kelly was incredibly easygoing and friendly. Her pilot didn't go forward but that's true of 99% of all pilots. Her draft was of the highest quality and she was never late to anything. I don't recall dealing with you in any part of the process.

Beejoli Shah chriskraft 10/29/13 01:40PM

Which part of it did you work on? Were you part of NBC's comedy development team with Tal Rabinowitz, Renate Radford, Simran Sethi, David Sleven and Alex Lin (not to mention coordinators Michael Sebastian, Peggy Cheng and Shelly Tseng, who were part of the department at the time)? Or were you at Universal TV comedy, in our very small bungalow with Tracey Pakosta, Andy Weil, Drew Uhrig and myself? Then there were producers Todd Holland and Karey Burke, and their assistant Brendan Casey, as well as the "Tiger Mom" the project was based off of, Christina Lurie. You can see a breakdown of everyone entity involved here. At no step of the way did I see a Chris Kraft in the development process...but since you definitely weren't on the network or studio side—the studio being the people who actually fund the project, and expect a certain ROI—I'd have to imagine you were somehow connected to the producers, who of course have a vested interest in their project appearing the best it can be.

Furthermore, I know that the majority of pilots don't go forward—hence my opinion that if what she turned in was indeed her best work, then her best work is unfortunately quite bad. She also was late to multiple notes calls—something I still have e-mails on from the network assistants asking when Oxford would be ready, as all the executives were waiting. Which is fine, being late to calls happens, but it was a commonly held opinion at bot the studio and the network that Oxford was difficult to deal with, and turned in material that was not so great in addition to that. An unfortunate combo.

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theflyingsidekick Beejoli Shah 10/25/13 01:12PM

Not following her, Jenny Johnson, and Rob Delaney makes twitter a much more entertaining experience. We get it you're edgy.

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NigelAstydameiaburn4 Beejoli Shah 10/25/13 01:18PM

Ugh. I've actually spent more time on Twitter lately trying to see if there's anything good there (comedy wise). Very little. After a while you think, "God, just SHUT UP!"